Slighcarp and Grimshaw

So, have any of you guys read this article on so-called Post-Abortion Syndrome in the New York Times Magazine? As you may know, despite how much I hate reading about abortion in the news, I can never resist doing so.

And this whole post-abortion syndrome is the worst, comes up over and over–Woman are so fine after abortion! No, woman are so regretful, all of them, after abortion!–and rarely is there any synthesized, holistic and complicated portrait of the effects of abortion.

I gave a poetry reading a couple months ago. The day before, I suddenly realized I was about to read a bunch of intense, disturbing abortion poems to strangers. Total strangers (and Jeff). I only had one person act kind of weird about it. She told me “everyone appreciates being born” and then proceeded to tell me that my poems could be used in an “anti-abortion anthology.” Ugh. God save me from ever having anything I’ve written anthologized for the sake of justifying an ideology or point of view. I like writing that explores the complicated mess, the chaotic, multivalenced experience–not writing that boils itself down into propaganda.

Which brings me back to the Times. Now, I like Emily Bazelon, who researched and wrote this sucker. She writes for Slate, which I read a lot and so must like; she once wrote about hosting a book swap for birthday parties instead of having other kids bury her son in plastic, craptacular toys–and how cool is that? But in “Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?” she does that thing that journalists do sometimes where they title the article with a question and then proceed for ten pages saying this side, then that side, back to this side, back to that side without ever actually answering the question.

I was really hoping for a well-balanced article that came to a conclusion based on its fair and accurate reporting of both sides. But, alas. This is the closest thing to “conclusion” that I could find:

At the prison the day before, I watched the inmates drink in Arias’s preaching, too. Abortion-rights leaders would accuse her of manipulation, of instilling guilt in women to serve the anti-abortion movement’s political ends. But Rhonda Arias ministers from the heart; the lack of scientific support for her ideas merely underscores that she is a true believer.

(For the record, I think Arias is manipulative. She goes into prisons and counsels women who regret their abortions–gives them “heritage dolls” to symbolize their dead fetuses, asks the women name them, writes up un-birth certificates, then plays swelling gospel music and urges the women to “let go.” Anyone else find it fishy she has the women get attached to these unborn babies by naming them and clutching dolls to their breasts before she asks them then to let go?)

Dang, so close. Is it so hard to see and portray Arias as both manipulative and sincere? Is it so awful to call her manipulative? Is Ms. Bazelon just too close to her subject, to Arias, to whom- or whatever that she can’t call a spade a spade?

Also, the writing wasn’t very interesting and was quite repetitive. Screw that, too. Check this instead: Project Voice. Word.