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Older Liberal Women and Abortion

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Clarissa

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Evan Barker observes several times in the pages of her book that older liberal women often seem completely obsessed with abortion. These are women who have aged out of any need to worry about getting pregnant, yet this is their defining political issue. I have noticed this too, and I believe that this happens precisely because they have aged out.

When the fertile era of a woman’s life ends, it is not easy to come to terms with that. Especially since this doesn’t happen in such a radical and complete way for men. You are still young, attractive, fit, and energetic, but you no longer can do that one thing that makes you a woman. Even if you didn’t want to get pregnant again or at all, you still have to come to terms with the fact that it’s no longer a choice. The process is easier for women who understand this and make efforts to create a narrative of the self that is now forever infertile.

If you can’t afford to bring this to the conscious level of your psyche, however, pregnancy becomes a sore point. You subconsciously dislike getting any reminders that younger women can still do it. You no longer have your own potential pregnancy to consider, so you get very emotionally invested in the pregnancies of others. I experience this myself, but in the opposite direction. I become inordinately, and I would even say hysterically, happy when I hear that somebody I know has become pregnant, especially if it’s an older woman.

Menopause can be completely devoid of any unpleasant physical symptoms. But it can never be free from a psychological reaction. We’re not robots. You can’t press a button and download a different software update. We’re too fixated, in my opinion, on the physical symptoms of menopause and don’t talk about its psychological effects. This happens because it’s politically incorrect to say that female physiology is a thing and that fertility has a deep psychological value to a woman. And that is a big mistake.

8 responses to “Older Liberal Women and Abortion”

  1. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    The weird thing is, I’ve seen this even in older women who are against abortion. It comes out in different ways. They get obsessed with “educating” people about contraception, and just really, embarrassingly overconcerned about the number of kids other women are having, maybe go on at unseemly length about the risks of having babies after forty. As if her OB wasn’t already trying to scare her to death about that. I find myself torn about whether to call that out, or just… pretend I didn’t notice what they are out there advertising about themselves because it’s too icky.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. It’s clear evidence of an unbearable affect that is erupting in this unhealthy way because they haven’t found the strength to face it, honestly. I’ve seen this, for example, in somebody I know who’s very anti-abortion but who entered menopause and became strangely and unhealthily obsessed with a woman we both know who has five children. Why did she need to have all those children? She is too poor to afford them. She is too weak to manage them. It got to the point where I lost it and rudely asked her, “What do you want this woman to do now? Stick them back up her uterus?”

      I’ve always had deeply negative feelings towards the idea that somebody has too many children, and I’ve gotten more intolerant about this with age. My mother was one of six children who grew up in great poverty. But how heartless and rude do you have to be to suggest that any of them shouldn’t have been born? They are all mothers and grandmothers now, so by imaginatively erasing them, you negate the existence of a whole bunch of other people. And what is it to you anyways? They aren’t asking you for anything. So annoying.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        This is my MIL. For my sins.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Oh, I’m so sorry. It sucks.

          You continued the lineage three times. You’d think that the people whose lineage you continued would be awed and overjoyed.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            IKR? What’s crazy is that you described it so perfectly it’s like we know the same person, and that’s not possible. One minute you’re dealing with a unique human person, and then they get off on this one topic and now you’re dealing with… I dunno. A predictable disease process. A strange bit of malicious code. Not a thinking being anymore, but a set of mechanical responses. It’s creepy.

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              With all of the self-help books, videos, and gurus, where is there an intelligent, detailed discussion of this very widespread phenomenon? When I mention it to people, very often they have an immediate look of recognition on their faces. They say, “Oh, so that’s what it is! I often wondered what was causing it.” But there is a strange taboo on even thinking in this direction. It’s so bizarre that in a society that destroyed every sexual taboo, often unnecessarily, there is still this reticence to talk about the psychological aspects of menopause.

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    There’s certainly truth in what you say. I have nine sisters and they had some 65 children between them. All are now 60 and over. They joked about it but I could see they hated menopause. No doubt fertility and motherhood had played huge part in their lives and a big part of how they saw themselves including their physical attractiveness to men. I could tell they had a quiet resentment of me still having children into my 50’s. Of course none of them are pro abortion. They all tend to live vicariously now through their daughters to varying degrees. But I still think the number one driver of old liberal women being fiercely pro abortion is the guilt from earlier abortions. A cousin of mine, a flawless beauty, once told me she sometimes heard a baby crying at night. She had obtained an abortion in her teens. She’s now a hopeless derelict drug addict. I believe there is a supernatural level to this. When Trump was elected in 2016, it was evident at the Womens March in January that it was really all about abortion. It was as if they somehow knew his election would mean the end of Roe and that was unacceptable because as long as it was “legal” they had done nothing wrong.

    Walnut

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      This is another very important topic, Mr. Walnut. There is no place for women to talk openly or even among friends about the terrible guilt and pain of abortion. Again, we’re supposed to be machines where you simply switch over to a different cycle. Of course, I have never aborted and would never consider it, but I know women who have. 20, 30 years later, it’s still an enormous part of their lives. There’s a lot of pain and guilt attached to it, but since they’re told that they’re not allowed to have these feelings, often it all gets trampled down. Then it comes out in very unhealthy ways.

      The thing that holds all of these issues that we are discussing in this thread together is that what real women are is extremely different from the way women are supposed to be according to the ruling ideology. Real actual women are trapped between what they are and what they’re told they must be, and the result is a high degree of neuroticism.

      These are important topics, and I’m glad that we’re talking about them.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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