Abortion law’s moral horror is hypocritical condemnation that endangers women
Evidence
There are few subjects on which bourgeois society exhibits more hypocrisy: abortion is a repugnant crime to which it is indecent to make an allusion. For an author to describe the joys and suffering of a woman giving birth is perfectly fine; if he talks about a woman who has had an abortion, he is accused of wallowing in filth and describing humanity in an abject light: meanwhile, in France every year there are as many abortions as births. It is such a widespread phenomenon that it has to be considered one of the risks normally involved in the feminine condition. The law persists, however, in making it a misdemeanor: it demands that this delicate operation be executed clandestinely. … It is claimed to be a dangerous operation. But honest doctors recognize, along with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, that “abortion performed by a competent specialist, in a clinic and with proper preventative measures, does not involve the serious dangers penal law asserts.” It is, on the contrary, its present form that makes it a serious risk for women. The incompetence of “back-alley” abortionists and their operating conditions cause many accidents, some of them fatal. … It must be pointed out that the same society so determined to defend the rights of the fetus shows no interest in children after they are born; instead of trying to reform this scandalous institution called public assistance, society prosecutes abortionists; those responsible for delivering orphans to torturers are left free; society closes its eyes to the horrible tyranny practiced in “reform schools” or in the private homes of child abusers; and while it refuses to accept that the fetus belongs to the mother carrying it, it nevertheless agrees that the child is his parents’ thing … It must be added that the men who most respect embryonic life are the same ones who do not hesitate to send adults to death in war. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1416
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes the key liberal-feminist argument that criminalizing abortion is the cause of its danger—a foundational analytical move this reader will build on.
- XREF: The same-people-who-defend-fetus-send-adults-to-war point resonates with the moral-panics literature on selective moral outrage in this reader’s noise/moral panic thread. — connects to: Classical civilizations legally tolerated abortion as a normal practice; 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)
- QUESTION: The 1990s French abortion debate ended in decriminalization with a time limit; worth checking how the ‘dangerous operation’ framing she attacks was actually resolved.
Broader Connections
- Male moral hypocrisy over abortion is borne physically by women
#expands(0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1432 - Illegality transforms the physical anguish of abortion into moral punishment for women
#expands(0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1430 - Disgust is not moral in itself; causing it unfairly is.
#expands(0.75) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 665