What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Abortion?

Published for HIQuarterly, a magazine managed by Students Association of International Relations, University of Indonesia ( https://issuu.com/hmhiui/docs/hq_vol._1_no._2 )

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This essay is a response to “An Argument for the Legalization of Abortion” by R. Moh. Hiu Dilangit Ramadhan Sasongkojati and “When, Where, and Why You Can Kill Your Baby” by Enrico Christian. Both Essays are published on ‘KASOSPOL Update’ by HMIP FISIP UI (hmip.fisip.ui.ac.id). Reading both essays is advised to understand the full context.

To quote my colleague’s essay as one of the essay I intend to cite and argue (Sasongkojati, 2018), abortion is a topic everyone is hell-bent to avoid discussing: it is controversial, morally ‘ambiguous’, and discussing the topic results in fiery debate based on strong beliefs. One of the example is his colleague’s essay that argues with moral standards on where, why, and when you should (not) abort your baby (Christian, 2018). Sasongkojati then proceeds to argue with rational argument to explain abortion legalization. To respond to the two articles, I have three main points to put into light. First, Christian's moral framing of his anti-abortion arguments is invalid since abortion is inherently different than a human rights violation or genocide, and he did not position himself accordingly to the female experience. Second, while it is interesting to explain abortion through a rational lense, a rationalexplanation of ‘abortion’ is not a compherensive and holistic approach to the issue. It is better to resort to an understanding approach to fully understand (rather than limitedly explain) the issue of abortion with feminist approach. Third, Kasospol Update has made quite a fatal decision as a media of catering a harmful view of abortion by approving Christian's article into its editorial. Two articles posted in KASOSPOL Update raising the issue of abortion are both written by men. While this should not necessarily pose a problem, turns out both writers dismissed an important aspect: female experience. This creates a gap in talking of abortion. To understand female experience, one must take a look through the feminist lense. Feminism emerged as an alternative lense to make sense of subjective reality. It seeks to question the authority and challenge the masculine bias in the society system (Beasley, 1999: 3). Reality is never neutral: it is masculine, male-dominated, and has little room for females and their femininity, thus marginalizing their voices and experiences. Female experience then becomes a constitutive analytical concept of feminist criticism (Mulinari and Sandell, 1999: 287). To discuss an issue related to women, female experience has to be taken into account as the fundamental analytical framework. For so long, women hold subordinate status as second-rate or ‘the Other’/not-man (Beasley, 1999: 5), therefore are silenced and restricted from their own authority and rights. This restriction has led to the stripping of women’s rights and control of their own body. While every branches of feminism seeks to regain gender equality, radical feminism approach is more focused of body politics. Their agenda is to gain control over their own bodies and biology. Politics is seen as inherently patriarchal, thus intervening the women’s private sector (politics of the private) and stripping women from authority and control over their bodies. (Ibid.: 57-8). One of the rights of the body that women (should) possess is reproductive health rights, thus making reproduction rights as a women's issue. (Cisgender) women have reproductive functions, and they bear the burden of those functions: pregnancy and childbirth. These functions call for health care and medical attention. Even if they have not been or are not in the reproduction process, women always go through reproduction cycle which also calls for health care. Not to mention the psychological and social burden caused by those biological functions. This is the female experience of bodily reproductive functions. As a body and health matter, the owner of the body is the party that experience any bodily (dis)functions, therefore being the sole party that has a right to decide what to do with their body. Stripping their options and restricting access to their choices are a violation of this right, and reducing their status from a fully independent subject to a second-rate object (to the subject that decides for them). When we talk about abortion, we talk about reproductive rights. Abortion is one of the reproductive rights women are and should be entitled to. The debate of abortion should not be taken out of reproductive rights context. Taking abortion out of reproductive rights frame will end up framing abortion as plain murder, as how Christian (2018) framed it: If you restrict a baby’s right to live you are no different with the people who held slave to ensure they work for them and controlling every aspect of their live. You are no different with Nazis that held Jews on their concentration camp just because they like it. It is a great sin on the morality when we kill the most innocent among us.”

Christian’s essay has taken abortion out of women’s reproductive rights framework, thus framing it as a murder. The womb is a part of women’s body, with every aspect of women’s bodily functions changes 1800 upside down. There is a massive difference on women needing to have abortion and, say, Colonial Slavery or Nazi Genocide. While women’s reproductive rights are to provide women’s need of their biological functions, slavery and genocide are mostly based on one’s abuse of power, the ego of superiority and possession with violent intention. A woman’s calculation of motherhood are an entirety of emotional, physical and biological, economic, and a whole future and lifetime she has to face ahead. Is she willing to pay the high cost of motherhood? Moreover: does she has the access, support, and capabilities (economically, emotionally, physically, and by other factors) to pay the high cost of motherhood? Comparation to any kind of human rights violation, such as murder, slavery, or even genocide is too far-reaching. Human rights violation does not have even the smallest similarity of background and calculation of abortion. Cringe as much as you need to, but the following sentence is a firm statement of my stance that everybody has to understand: men would never, ever, understand the depth of female experience even when they take a feminist stance. It is an experience embodied in every aspect integrated as one within a life as a woman. Let this statement sink in and conceive it well. That is why, even if I could have just countered every logical fallacy coming out of Christian and any other man speaking eagerly against abortion; as what I interpreted from one the main assumptions of feminist thought, female experience is an intersubjective experience, knowledge, and understanding among women that could only be comprehended subjectively when you are the subject experiencing and living through it. Therefore, Christian not only spectacularly failed to understand the existence of female experience, he also arrogantly failed to understand his position to the women experience — in which he is not only far and would never intersect with it, but in his article he also dismissed it completely and took a patronizing stance of speaking what is good or bad for women, and consequently, for society. This is severely, misogynistically harmful for reproductive health rights activism and women's livelihood, as he framed women specifically ("Hiding behind the reproductive right doesn’t do it. Hiding behind the convenient and choice of a mother also don’t do it.") of murder—while women's body and entire livelihood are at stake—in a very patronizing and moralist manner. The latest Criminal Code Draft is a severe implication of extreme arrogancy of men who take patronizing position like Christian, policing women's body without understanding the existence of female experience and the position of men in relation to female experience. Criminalization of extra-marital sex and abortion heavily blames and burdens the women as they specifically target women, acutely threatening vulnerable women such as victims of rape, women with disability, and medically endangered women. Criminal Code as the lex generalis should have only established general law, and abortion should have fallen into the lex spesialis of the Medical Law. Setting a general law for abortion in Criminal Code creates a blur of norm, therefore weakens the specific Medical Law that grants exception for victims of rape and medically endangered women (PKBI, n.d.), putting vulnerable Women with Unplanned Pregnancy in the risk of prison and other risks that follow: biological (unsafe abortion or unmonitored pregnancy), psychological (prone to stress, depression, and other forms of mental disorders), economic (unstable jobs, income, and lifestyle), and social (prejudice, discrimination, and other social sanctions by society). Sasongkojati then came with his article, countering Christian's argument by explaining why people choose abortion to "present an actual rational look at an emotional issue" (Sasongkojati, 2018). While he explained neatly the whys through the Roe v. Wade case study, he still put abortion outside of the reproductive rights frame, reducing the subjectivity of female experience on abortion. This, of course, posed less problem than Christian's patronizing stance, but incomprehensive nevertheless on analyzing abortion. Sasongkojati quoted Levitt (2005): when a woman does not want to have a child, she usually has good reasons: she may be unmarried or in a bad marriage. She may consider herself too poor to raise a child. She may think her life is too unstable or unhappy, or she may think that her alcohol intake or drug use will damage the baby’s health. She may believe that she is too young or hasn’t yet received enough education. She may want a child badly in a few years, but not now. For any of a hundred reasons, she may feel that she cannot provide a home environment that is conducive to raising a healthy and productive child. This, I dare to say, is one of the aspects of female experience. A woman's calculation of having or not having a baby is heavily influenced on her past experience, her current situation, and the implications on the future she and her baby may experience as a woman. While Sasongkojati quoted this female experience, he has not quite acknowledged it as one, nor his article has recognized the existence of female experience. To quote his own argument (emphasis added): Lastly, it’s safe to say that legalized abortion is indeed important, especially for those that live in poverty. If you’re someone that’s poor and living in an unsafe neighborhood, there is a big chance that a woman somewhere close has had unprotected sex or even raped at least once. Such cases oftentimes lead to unwanted pregnancy. Now let’s say that the woman is your partner, then consider the situation in which you are poor with a baby coming up. Abortion is deemed illegal in your country, so whether you like it or not, you have to support the baby. ... Abortion serves as an option for these disenfranchised portions of the population to build a better life for themselves without the biological and material burden of supporting another. Although this argument is not necessarily wrong, the implication might pose a problem. His hypothetical situation indicates a male's perspective. My work here intends to fill the gap on Sasongkojati's argument and his article as a whole that has not bring up women's perspective on abortion. As there is no other response to the topic those two articles raised, a feminist argument is an appropriate synthesis of the two. Both articles raised the issue of abortion with male's perspective, and a feminist perspective is needed to fill the gaping hole. Abortion serves as one of reproductive health rights for women of every layer of society that they are entitled to have access to. Talking of abortion outside of reproductive health frame reduces the understanding of the concept of its rights, thus limiting its access to women with particular conditions such as rape of victims only or women defined by the systems as 'living under poverty line', which by legal definition are sometimes blurry and indefinitive (for instance, some legal systems in several countries do not recognize soft rape or marital rape as rape crime; and what constitutes a person as living in poverty varies across literature and legal definition). Ban on abortion is not only limited to economic implications as Sasongkojati chose to focus on his explaining. In order to talk of abortion, one must understand the multidimensional aspects as it is a bigger issue than just 'abortion'. Abortion ban has wide and deep implication on women's health, safety, and well-being, also family planning, maternal health, HIV prevention and services, the LGBTIQ community, sex education for young people (globalfundforwomen.org, n.d.). Of course, it might take days and dozens of pages to write it all down, but it's still worth mentioning to keep in mind the need of the in-depth understanding of abortion in the frame of women's reproductive health rights. Lastly, as both Christian's and Sasongkojati's article is posted on KASOSPOL Update, the platform is on my criticism list as it approved Christian's article into its editorial. His view is a threat to the progress of reproductive health rights movement, and KASOSPOL Update had consciously provided a platform for such view, possibly in the name of "opening up a space for discussion." Similar case happened recently, although long after the publication of Christian's article, to mojok.co. It published the article “Panduan Memahami Gelagat Cewek Sange buat Para Cowok” (literally translated "Guide to Understand Horny Girls' Attitude for Boys") and (especially) “Jangan Munafik: Bukan Perkara Catcalling-nya, tapi Siapa Pelakunya” (literally translated "Don't Be Hypocrite: It's Not About the Catcalling, It's About Who Does It"), two misogynistic articles that received harsh and massive public criticism. Unlike mojok.co, KASOSPOL Update is perhaps saved by its small scale and low rate of readers, but it certainly does not slip out of my radar. Publishing Christian's article, however well its intention is, inevitably raises question on the integrity of the platform, and consequently, the institution itself. Considering the state of heavily misogynistic Indonesian mainstream media that often released objectifying and discriminative articles towards women, KASOSPOL Update has contributed and worsen the sexism in media by exposing harmful view influential to readers via its public platform. To quote Permata Adinda, a columnist at asumsi.co, on her criticism towards the mojok.co case (2019), "as a bridge [and source] of information, media is substantially responsible on how it frames its writings." If KASOSPOL Update intends to open up a room for discussion, "it does not necessarily mean it has to provide a space, let alone a justification, for such [misogynistic] views," and "media must instead take part to end gender-based discrimination. Information conveyed by the media reflects reality. Media packaging or framing of an issue is a form of constructed reality." Therefore, KASOSPOL Update failed to understand its position as a public platform with open access for everyone, thus holding the same effect and mechanism as a media—if cannot be established properly as 'media'—that delivers a constructed reality and influences the perspective of its readers.

As a woman and a feminist, I acknowledge my bias and subjectivity on this issue that might be explicitly visible in my writing. But as I acknowledge those bias and subjectivity, I firmly assert them as precisely my point on bringing women's perspective to understand abortion as a feminist issue of reproductive health rights. If you wonder why and how hell-bent I am to write almost 3,000 words to criticize three parties at the same time with seemingly small impact anyway, imagine how tired women are to be constantly policed and stripped off of our rights. Unsurprisingly, it usually came from letting small-scale damages get away, then it escalates into a whole set of oppressive policies and discriminatory acts towards women. So, I promised myself, no matter how small-scaled it is, I have moral obligation to call it out.