There are things that I refuse to discuss, points that I won't argue. It is not so much that I am afraid of the discussion or fear losing the argument; No, it is that I am right and am too bothered by the physical impact of anger at other peoples' stupidity. You know, high blood pressure, headaches, ice picks in the eyeballs, boiling water on the legs, t-t-t-twitchy fingers.
Shoot. I have been challenged by a dastardly dare: to use the word concupiscence in a way that does not jar, that flows, that does not cause the eye to blink as if jab-jab-jabbed by a pointy index. Shoot. It just doesn't fall into my text with the ease of a dead oak leaf, not if I am referencing -- primarily -- abortion.
Fred has been warned, verbally, not to broach the topic with me. In exchange, I will occasionally throw him a bone and discuss why even such-and-such serial murderer, undeniably imbued with the spore of Ultimate Evil, does not "deserve" the death penalty. I let Fred litter me with all his best shots... Anything, just to keep him from bringing up abortion.
I suppose I could have worked concupiscence into that last paragraph easily enough. Easily enough but *not*, I think, well enough. That an ultimately evil serial killer might list concupiscence among his attributes, well... yawn. Also, not bloody likely.
I had two abortions as a young woman.
Why is it that this statement always obliges me to give the rest of my conceptual obstetric history? It's not like you are my gynecologist, it's not like I still believe that my gravida/para/abortus numbers define who I am. The urge to balance out my abortion stats with live births and miscarriages is evidence of my training as a woman in this culture. And I would rather bite off my tongue right now than give in to that urge; I would rather starve than to salivate at the sound of that bell.
I remember almost every detail of the first abortion. Remembrances are as imbued with value-judgments as any constructed story, just as they are less subject to critical interrogations. Until today, I had forgotten the primum movens to that event: the long distance telephone operator.
The mustard yellow rotary phone, one of those that hang on kitchen walls, with extra long curly cords so that you can pace on the kitchen linoleum or the pine of the dining room, rich in Murphy Oil, in which is reflected that beloved old cut-glass vase, the facets painstakingly colored by tulips.
Maybe I am the only woman idiotic enough to ask for directory assistance to locate an abortion clinic. I surely was a limited edition in those days, when there was only one such clinic within a large swath of my region, and when everyone in that region knew its name. Everyone but me, the pregnant girl.
I had within arm's reach an independently published student newspaper, and surely there was an ad for abortion services in it, an ad with a phone number. At the very least, I could have ferreted out the name of the place, a name which bore no reference to its most famous function.
Still, I did what I'd been trained to do when I needed help. I dialed the Operator.
Even then they weren't particularly chatty, didn't exactly exude warmth, and usually opened with "What city?"
I didn't know what city, of course, though I had a general idea. First, though, I had to rid myself of the compulsion to tell her where I was and what phone number I was calling from by telling her where I was and what phone number I was calling from. I then proceeded to request the name, phone number, and address of the closest abortion clinic. Who knows, maybe I even asked for one that had Saturday hours and served post-procedure brunch.
A great line for this story would include the detail "and she didn't miss a beat..." but, of course, she did. There was, in fact, a long moment of dead air.
Not too long, probably, though it seemed a small eternity. Long enough for me to have trapped my free hand within the curly phone cord, to have noticed that it felt a bit grimy, to have made a mental note to wash the filthy, filthy phone, long enough that I had to struggle to free my fingers so that I could hold the pencil so that I could write the name, the address, and the phone number of the abortion clinic in my otherwise empty steno book. (To this day, I don't know why I had a steno notebook.)
After her carefully enunciated announcement, she said, "Would you like me to connect you, free of charge?" Then. At that time. Back in those days. They made that offer at the end of every Directory Assistance call, probably with some reference built in to AT&T or one of the Bells.
I sometimes wonder how long I'd have stayed in the warm cocoon of my fugue state had she not made that perfunctory query. What if I had said "No" instead of "Sure"?
It was long distance, turns out, so she probably then thanked me for "using AT&T," the only option.
The receptionist at the clinic sounded so amateurish by comparison, her questions like being poked with hot, electrified wires; Downright garish. I remember wanting to ask her not to talk so loud.
She didn't thank me for anything, not even for calling, not even for choosing her clinic, for granting my patronage.
She dared question my assessment of the pregnancy (there might have been a sneer in her voice). I said 9 weeks, she said, "We'll see, after the ultrasound." I said I would come alone, she said, "We won't perform the procedure." She kept repeating the cost and the litany of Ways to Lose Your Appointment. There was no question of partial payments, down payments, credit or debit cards, and once you arrived, you could not leave, and you had better not have had breakfast, not even a cup of black, black aromatic coffee. Cold hard cash, and something about Rh factor that I did not understand. No reference to a PDF comparison chart of abortion techniques, no offer of RU486, no mention of nitrous oxide or pain. Something mumblemumble involving a group counseling session, something about cramping, and pads.
I don't think she used the word abortion once.
By the end of our conversation, after I had hung up the phone and pried the pencil from my hand and until about an hour ago, today, the directory assistance telephone operator was absent from the recollected proceedings of My First Abortion. In the interim, I have been a staunch supporter of reproductive choice for women. I have endured many attacks on that position, even some that assumed I'd be discomfited by having my equally ardent stance as a death penalty abolitionist gleefully unveiled as if it were some anti-argument to abortion rights. What sometimes made me laugh was the certitude with which they thought I'd be *surprised* by the juxtaposition of my own beliefs.
(Where is it written that I shall not be discordant?)
But as I said at the outset, I don't argue any longer. I just don't engage. I believe that all women should have unfettered, uncomplicated, and affordable access to pregnancy planning services and to termination of pregnancy.
I believe that the death penalty should be abolished.
There used to be considerable iteration of nuances, too. In the case of rape. In the case of incest. In the case of an 8 year old. In the case of the suburban wife and mother of three. In the case of the guilty, the innocent, the retarded, the juvenile offender. In the case of a black man. In the case of a sociopath. In the case of Hitler. Those iterations are no longer of interest and now only serve to enrage me... Which brings me back to high blood pressure, headaches, ice picks in the eyeballs, boiling water on the legs, and t-t-t-twitchy fingers.
You probably wonder what brought me to this topic, given my insistence against such arguments and such iterations, and the dire inescapable onset of nystagmus and delirium tremens brought about by their mention.
The iPhone, of course. Not that I have one. More specifically, a tweet by someone I "follow," one rejault. I follow too many people on Twitter, but at least that assures me a varied, entertaining, and highly informative timeline. Yes, thank you, that *is* what I choose to believe!
Anyway, this is what caught my eye: #Siri permet d'acheter des armes mais pas de trouver une clinique pour avorter http://t.co/zZevKZ3g [Pink italicized emphasis, mine, all mine.]
Apple's ad pitches Siri this way:
Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it.I can understand how having access to such a feature might ignite the latent investigative urges. A few hundred fun possibilities immediately popped into even this weary head. Which just underscores my conviction that, were I able to afford an iPhone (any model, much less a 4S... When does the 5 come out, again?), it would so zap my already waning productivity that you'd never ever see, for example, another blog post here. And wouldn't that be a shame?
Siri launched the day before Steve Jobs died, adding to its mythos ( “plot is essential to tragedy, ethos is second to plot”).
An "intelligent software assistant," the ad goes on to have your new best friend find Italian food in North Beach (that's a tough one!), tell your wife you are running late and remind you to call the vet.
The article that @rejault referenced in his tweet is from So Particular: Un Coup d'Oeil Sur Ce Qui Bouge aux U.S., a blog dedicated to keeping an eye on the internet and tech innovations, stores, and marketing in the Americas (but mostly the northern climes). Bertrand, the blogger also known as @nyfrenchgeek, picked it up from The Raw Story, which ran a story yesterday called "10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion."
[I also do not apologize for my obsession with attribution. At best, we get an impression of the trajectory that takes us "from" Point A to Point B.]
[I promise you that, in real life, I don't make air quotes with anything approaching frequency, and that an intent of "smarmy derision" is the farthest thing from my mind.]
It turns out that a very modern young pregnant me would be crap out of luck were I searching for an abortion clinic today -- assuming that the thoroughly modern me still had but one shot at escaping the tethering confines of pregnancy's fugue-inducing wily ways. I can see the Siri automated voice standing in for the flesh-and-blood telephone operator of my youth.
It jibes, I say, as an appropriate resonance.
Raw Story's Megan Carpentier* reports:
Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won’t direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she’ll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women’s Health Center, an anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania. Ask Google the same question, and you’ll get ads for no less than 7 metro-area abortion clinics, 2 CPCs and a nationwide abortion referral service.Carpentier then constructs a list designed to elicit acerbic chuckles, if there are such forms of belly laughter, by the unsettling juxtaposition of an unwanted pregnancy with Siri's able assistance at locating Viagra and places to score some pot.
Ask in New York City, and Siri will tell you “I didn’t find any abortion clinics.”
It’s an experience that’s being replicated by women around the country: despite plentiful online information about actual places to get an abortion, Siri doesn’t seem to provide it. It’s a similar experience for women seeking emergency contraception: in New York City, Siri doesn’t know what Plan B is and, asked for emergency contraception, offers up a Google results page of definitions.
Are you in the nation's capital and in dire need of a blow job? Siri know where to go! While at the Charming Cherries Escort Service, you can have them remove the hamster from your rectum. Although, I suppose, the service is probably offered in situ or on-site, and all you have to do is call. Life, as they say, is good.
Well, okie-dokie and alrighty-then. I'm off to find an ice-pack and some ibuprofen, and until the antispasmodics kick in, I guess I'll put this excess nefarious energy to good use and do some laundry or something. The only news around The Manor is that we did labs yesterday and will see the surgeon again tomorrow at the wonderfully awful hour of 4 PM, when there is considerable traffic congestion, even in idyllic Tête de Hergé, where there never has been need for abortion services, rape-counseling, or any of the adjunctive arms of Amnesty International.
My only regret thus far today stems from my failure to incorporate concupiscence successfully into this blog post. But I am feeling all Scarlett-O-Hara-ish-y, so I suppose there's always Friday.
* Megan Carpentier
Megan Carpentier is the executive editor of Raw Story. She previously served as an associate editor at Talking Points Memo; the editor of news and politics at Air America; an editor at Jezebel.com; and an associate editor at Wonkette. Her published works include pieces for the Washington Post, the Washington Independent, Ms Magazine, RH Reality Check, the Women's Media Center, On the Issues, the New York Press, Bitch and Women's eNews.
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