John Collier, “Hetty Sorrel” (from “Adam Bede”)
Monday
How do those wishing to deny reproductive services to women, including access to birth control and abortions, deal with the fact that millions of women desire them? Even as abortion opponents argue a religious belief in “life,” they ignore the complexities of individual lives and minimize the hundred of thousands of women each year (I’m just talking about the United States here) who want to end pregnancies.
Authors such as George Eliot provide a human face to the issue. Adam Bede seems particularly relevant at a time when conservative state legislatures are aggressively targeting clinics offering reproductive services.
The consequences of the attacks have been predictable. A recent Texas study reports that, in 2012, between 100,00-240,000 women attempted to self-abort. The numbers will go up if the Supreme Court in the upcoming session does not rule against so-called TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers), which aim to shut down clinics.
An article in Slate describes the situation:
A new paper from the University of Texas’ Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) predicts that the law will escalate the incidence of self-induced abortions across the state, too. TxPEP’s 2012 study on the subject revealed that 7 percent of abortion-seeking patients in Texas had attempted to end their own pregnancies before coming to the clinic, compared to less than 2 percent in the country at large in 2008. The study released today shows that between 1.7 and 4.1 percent of all Texas women aged 18 to 49 have tried to induce an abortion at home. In other words, between 100,000 and 240,000 women in Texas have attempted to terminate a pregnancy by using herbs, teas, vitamins, caffeine, alcohol, drugs, abdominal trauma, or a medical abortion pill (misoprostol) obtained on the black market or from a Mexican pharmacy.
Through interviews with patients who’ve tried to induce their own abortions, TxPEP found that most would have preferred a clinical abortion, but found it inaccessible because of financial barriers or lack of nearby facilities. Latina women living near the Mexican border and women who, due to cost or clinic proximity, had a hard time getting any reproductive health care at all, including Pap smears and contraception, reported abortion self-induction at significantly higher rates.
In Eliot’s novel, written in 1859 and set in 1799, Hetty is a gorgeous woman who catches the eye of the squire-to-be Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty dreams of becoming his wife, even though this is socially impossible, and she becomes pregnant. Never one to face up to facts, Hetty doesn’t admit that she is pregnant until the baby is born, and even then she has the notion that she can wish the child away. The baby dies after she buries it under a pile of wood chips and she is condemned to be hanged. She doesn’t acknowledge what she has done until the evening before she is to be hanged:
I came to a place where there was lots of chips and turf, and I sat down on the trunk of a tree to think what I should do. And all of a sudden I saw a hole under the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it darted into me like lightning—I’d lay the baby there and cover it with the grass and the chips. I couldn’t kill it any other way. And I’d done it in a minute; and, oh, it cried so, Dinah—I couldn’t cover it quite up—I thought perhaps somebody ‘ud come and take care of it, and then it wouldn’t die. And I made haste out of the wood, but I could hear it crying all the while; and when I got out into the fields, it was as if I was held fast—I couldn’t go away, for all I wanted so to go. And I sat against the haystack to watch if anybody ‘ud come. I was very hungry, and I’d only a bit of bread left, but I couldn’t go away. And after ever such a while—hours and hours—the man came—him in a smock-frock, and he looked at me so, I was frightened, and I made haste and went on. I thought he was going to the wood and would perhaps find the baby. And I went right on, till I came to a village, a long way off from the wood, and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry. I got something to eat there, and bought a loaf. But I was frightened to stay. I heard the baby crying, and thought the other folks heard it too—and I went on. But I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark. And at last, by the roadside there was a barn—ever such a way off any house—like the barn in Abbot’s Close, and I thought I could go in there and hide myself among the hay and straw, and nobody ‘ud be likely to come. I went in, and it was half full o’ trusses of straw, and there was some hay too. And I made myself a bed, ever so far behind, where nobody could find me; and I was so tired and weak, I went to sleep….But oh, the baby’s crying kept waking me, and I thought that man as looked at me so was come and laying hold of me. But I must have slept a long while at last, though I didn’t know, for when I got up and went out of the barn, I didn’t know whether it was night or morning. But it was morning, for it kept getting lighter, and I turned back the way I’d come. I couldn’t help it, Dinah; it was the baby’s crying made me go—and yet I was frightened to death. I thought that man in the smock-frock ‘ud see me and know I put the baby there. But I went on, for all that. I’d left off thinking about going home—it had gone out o’ my mind. I saw nothing but that place in the wood where I’d buried the baby…I see it now. Oh Dinah! shall I allays see it?
One can only wish that Hetty had had access to a Planned Parenthood clinic. But I bring up Hetty, not to imagine what could have been had she lived in modern times, but to make a point about unwanted pregnancies. There are millions of Hetty Sorrels every year, each with a similarly complex story (although few, thank God, commit infanticide). Women who are desperate need support, and conservative legislatures are systematically stripping women of that support.
Hetty narrowly escapes execution. At the last moment, Donnithorne arrives with a commutation of her sentence. She is to be transported to Australia instead:
“Close your eyes, Hetty,” Dinah said, “and let us pray without ceasing to God.”
And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity.
Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort of awe—she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to her ear, like a vast yell of demons. Hetty’s shriek mingled with the sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror.
But it was not a shout of execration—not a yell of exultant cruelty.
It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others. See, he has something in his hand—he is holding it up as if it were a signal.
The Sheriff knows him: it is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying in his hand a hard-won release from death.
Hetty is fortunate to have a powerful advocate, one with money and influence. Today, women with money also have options.
Those who don’t have such friends or such resources, however, are increasingly feeling compelled to resort to drastic measures. No amount of moralizing is going to change that fact.
Added note: I hope it is clear that I am not in any way defending Hetty’s crime. My point is that people who are desperate sometimes do desperate things, and we are increasing desperation by closing down Planned Parenthood clinics.
On the subject of infanticide, I should add that there are anti-abortion protesters who regard abortion as infanticide. Once one engages in the irresponsible rhetoric of describing fetuses as babies, it becomes just a matter of times before certain individuals, such as the Colorado Springs shooter, starts committing acts of violence. After all, if babies really are being killed, then violence can seem like a justifiable response.