Abortion can turn a woman’s body-mutilation guilt into lasting coldness toward the man involved.

Evidence

Men universally forbid abortion; but they accept it individually as a convenient solution; they can contradict themselves with dizzying cynicism; but woman feels the contradictions in her wounded flesh; she is generally too shy to deliberately revolt against masculine bad faith; while seeing herself as a victim of an injustice that decrees her to be a criminal in spite of herself, she still feels dirtied and humiliated; it is she who embodies man’s fault in a concrete and immediate form, in herself; he commits the fault, but unloads it onto her; he just says words in a pleading, threatening, reasonable, or furious tone: he forgets them quickly; it is she who translates these phrases into pain and blood. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1432 (#expands, via linked claim)

But the slide from generous enthusiasm to masochistic rage is easy. The woman in love who finds herself before her lover in the same situation as the child before his parents also recovers the feeling of guilt she experienced around them; she does not choose to revolt against him as long as she loves him: she revolts against her self. If he loves her less than she desires, if she fails to interest him, to make him happy, to be sufficient to him, all her narcissism turns into disgust, humiliation, and self-hatred that push her to self-punishment. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1863 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Coerced and clandestine abortion attempts physically and psychologically scar young women. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1425; Illegality transforms the physical anguish of abortion into moral punishment for women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1430; Male moral hypocrisy over abortion is borne physically by women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1432 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Male moral hypocrisy over abortion is borne physically by women #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1432
• The woman in love re-experiences infantile guilt turned inward as masochism #complicates (0.70) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1863