The Second Sex (91 page)

It is through motherhood that woman fully achieves her physiological destiny; that is her “natural” vocation, since her whole organism is directed toward the perpetuation of the species. But we have already shown that human society is never left to nature. And in particular, for about a century, the reproductive function has no longer been controlled by biological chance alone but by design.
¹
Some countries have officially adopted specific methods of birth control; in Catholic countries, it takes place clandestinely: either man practices coitus interruptus, or woman rids her body of the sperm after the sexual act. This is often a source of conflict or resentment between lovers or married partners; the man gets irritated at having to check his pleasure; the woman detests the chore of douching; he begrudges her too-fertile womb; she dreads these living germs he risks leaving in her. And for both of them there is consternation when, in spite of precautions, she finds herself “caught.” This happens frequently in countries where contraceptive methods are rudimentary. Then anti-physis takes a particularly acute form: abortion. As it is even banned in countries that authorize birth control, there are many fewer occasions to have recourse to it. But in France, many women are forced to have this operation, which haunts the love lives of most of them.

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. Nothing is more absurd than the arguments used against legislating abortion. 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. Forced motherhood results in bringing miserable children into the world, children whose parents cannot feed them, who become victims of public assistance or “martyr children.” 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; this very week, a surgeon committed suicide because he was convicted of performing abortions, and a father who had beaten his son nearly to death has been condemned to three months of prison
with a suspended sentence
. Recently a father let his son die of whooping cough by not providing medical care; a mother refused to call a doctor for her daughter in the name of unconditional submission to God’s will: in the cemetery, other children threw stones at her; but when some journalists showed their indignation, a group of right-thinking people protested that children belong to their parents, that outside control would be unacceptable. Today there are “a million children in danger,” says the newspaper
Ce Soir;
and
France-Soir
writes: “Five hundred thousand children are
reported
to be in physical or moral danger.” In North Africa, the Arab woman has no recourse to abortion: out of ten children she gives birth to, seven or eight die, and no one is disturbed because painful and absurd childbirth has killed maternal sentiments. If this is morality, then what kind of morality is it? 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.

The practical reasons invoked against legal abortion are completely unfounded; as with moral reasons, they are reduced to the old Catholic argument: the fetus has a soul, and the gates to paradise are closed to it
without baptism. It is worth noting that the Church authorizes the killing of adult men in war, or when it is a question of the death penalty; but it stands on intransigent humanitarianism for the fetus. It is not redeemed by baptism: but in the times of the holy wars against the infidel, the infidels were not baptized either, and massacre was still strongly encouraged. Victims of the Inquisition were undoubtedly not all in a state of grace, nor are criminals who are guillotined and soldiers killed on the battlefield. In all these cases, the Church leaves it to the grace of God; it accepts that man is only an instrument in his hands and that the soul’s salvation depends on the Church and God. Why, then, keep God from welcoming the embryonic soul into his heaven? If a council authorized it, he would not protest against the pious massacre of the Indians any more than in the good old days. The truth is that this is a conflict with a stubborn old tradition that has nothing to do with morality. The masculine sadism I have already discussed also has to be taken into account. The book Dr. Roy dedicated to Pétain in 1943 is a striking example; it is a monument of bad faith. In a paternalistic way it underlines the dangers of abortion; but nothing seems more hygienic to him than a Cesarean. He wants abortion to be considered a crime and not a misdemeanor; and he wishes to have it banned even in its therapeutic form, that is, when the mother’s life or health is in danger: it is immoral to choose between one life and another, he declares, and bolstered by this argument, he advises sacrificing the mother. He declares that the fetus does not belong to the mother, that it is an autonomous being. But when these same “right-thinking” doctors exalt motherhood, they affirm that the fetus is part of the mother’s body, that it is not a parasite nourished at the mother’s expense. This fervor on the part of some men to reject everything that might liberate women shows how alive antifeminism still is.

Besides, the law that dooms young women to death, sterility, and illness is totally powerless to ensure an increase of births. A point of agreement for both partisans and enemies of legal abortion is the total failure of repression. According to Professors Doléris, Balthazard, and Lacassagne, there were 500,000 abortions a year around 1933; a statistic (cited by Dr. Roy) established in 1938 estimated the number at 1 million. In 1941, Dr. Aubertin from Bordeaux hesitated between 800,000 and 1 million. This last figure seems closest to the truth. In a March 1948 article in
Combat
, Dr. Desplas wrote:

Due to the fact that the operation is often carried out in disastrous conditions, many abortions end in these women’s deaths:

It is sometimes said that abortion is a “class crime,” and this is very often true. Contraceptive practices are more prevalent in the bourgeoisie; the existence of bathrooms makes their use easier than for workers or farmers deprived of running water; young girls in the bourgeoisie are more careful than others; a child is less of a burden in these households: poverty, insufficient housing, and the necessity for the wife to work outside the home are among the most common reasons for abortions. It seems that most often couples decide to limit births after two children; an ugly woman can have an abortion just as can this magnificent mother rocking her two blond angels in her arms: she is the same woman. In a document published in
Les Temps Modernes
in October 1945, under the title “Common Ward,” Mme Geneviève Serreau describes a hospital room where she had to go once, and where many of the patients had just undergone curettages: fifteen out of eighteen had had miscarriages, half of which were induced. Number 9 was the wife of a market porter; she had had ten children in two marriages, of which only three were still living, and she had seven miscarriages, five of which were induced; she regularly used the “coat hanger” technique that she complaisantly displayed, as well as pills whose names she shared with her companions. Number 16, sixteen years old and married, had had affairs and contracted salpingitis as the result of an abortion.
Number 7, thirty-five, explained: “I’ve been married twenty years. I never loved him: for twenty years I behaved properly. Three months ago I took a lover. One time, in a hotel room. I got pregnant … So what else could I do? I had it taken out. No one knows anything, not my husband, not … him. Now it’s over; I’ll never go through it again. I’ve suffered too much … I’m not speaking about the curettage … No, no, it’s something else: it’s … it’s self-respect, you see.” Number 14 had had five children in five years; at forty she looked like an old woman. All of them had an air of resignation that comes from despair. “Women are made to suffer,” they said sadly.

The seriousness of this ordeal varies a great deal depending on the circumstances. The conventionally married woman or one comfortably provided for, supported by a man, having money and relations, is better off: first, she finds ways to have a “therapeutic” abortion much more easily; if necessary, she has the means to pay for a trip to Switzerland, where abortion is liberally tolerated; gynecology today is such that it is a benign operation when performed by a specialist with all hygienic guarantees and, if necessary, anesthetic resources; failing official approval, she can find unofficial help that is just as safe: she has the right addresses, she has enough money to pay for conscientious care, without waiting until her pregnancy is advanced; she will be treated respectfully; some of these privileged people even maintain that this little accident can be beneficial to one’s health and improve the complexion. On the other hand, there is little distress more pathetic than that of an isolated and penniless girl who sees herself ensnared in a “crime” to erase a “fault” that people around her consider unpardonable: in France this is the case of approximately 300,000 women employees, secretaries, students, workers, and peasants; illegitimate motherhood is still so terrible a stain that many prefer suicide or infanticide to being an unmarried mother: proof that no punishment will ever stop them from “getting rid of the infant.” A typical case heard thousands of times is one related by Dr. Liepmann. It concerns a young Berlin woman, the natural child of a shoemaker and a maid:

The school pastor, having learned the story from a letter gone astray, gave her a long sermon, and she left the young man; she was called a black sheep:

Afterward, she became a children’s maid in a professor’s home and stayed for four years:

It is often the seducer himself who convinces the woman that she should rid herself of the child. Either he has already abandoned her when she learns she is pregnant, or she altruistically wants to hide her disgrace from him, or else she finds no support from him. Sometimes it is not without regret that she refuses to have the child; either because she does not decide to abort early enough, or because she does not know where to go to do it, or because she does not have the money at hand and she has wasted her time trying ineffective drugs, she is in the third, fourth, fifth month of her pregnancy when she tries to eliminate it; the miscarriage will be infiitely more dangerous, more painful, more compromising than in the course of the first weeks. The woman knows this; in anguish and fear, she tries to find a way out. In the countryside, using a catheter is hardly known; the peasant woman who has “sinned” accidentally lets herself fall off an attic ladder, throws herself from the top of a staircase, often hurts herself
with no result; it also happens that a small strangled corpse is found in the bushes, in a ditch, or in an outhouse. In towns, women help each other out. But it is not always easy to get hold of a backstreet abortionist, and still less easy to get the money demanded; the pregnant woman requests help from a friend, or she may perform the operation herself; these cut-price women surgeons are often incompetent; it does not take long to perforate oneself with a coat hanger or knitting needle; a doctor told me that an ignorant woman, trying to inject vinegar into her uterus, injected it into her bladder instead, provoking unspeakable pain. Brutally begun and poorly treated, the miscarriage, often more painful than an ordinary delivery, is accompanied by nervous disorders that can verge on epileptic fits, sometimes provoke serious internal illnesses, and bring on fatal hemorrhaging. In
Gribiche
, Colette recounts the harsh agony of a little music-hall dancer abandoned to the ignorant hands of her mother; a standard remedy, she says, is to drink a concentrated soap solution and then to run for a quarter of an hour: with such treatments, it is often by killing the mother that one gets rid of the child. I was told about a secretary who stayed in her room for four days, lying in her blood, without eating or drinking, because she did not dare call anyone. It is difficult to imagine abandonment more frightful than the kind where the threat of death converges with that of crime and shame. The ordeal is less harsh in the case of poor but married women who act in accord with their husbands and without being tormented by useless scruples: a social worker told me that in “poor neighborhoods” women share advice, borrow and lend instruments, and help each other out as simply as if they were removing corns. But they undergo severe physical suffering; hospitals are obliged to accept a woman whose miscarriage has already commenced; but she is sadistically
punished
by being refused sedatives during labor and during the final curettage procedure. As seen in reports by Serreau, for example, these persecutions do not even shock women all too used to suffering: but they are sensitive to the humiliations heaped on them. The fact that the operation they undergo is a clandestine and criminal one multiplies the dangers and makes it abject and anguishing. Pain, sickness, and death seem like chastisement: we know what distance separates suffering from torture, accident from punishment; with the risks she assumes, the woman feels guilty, and it is this interpretation of pain and blame that is particularly distressful.