Mary Harrington Is In A Toxic Relationship With Abortion
*Audio Available* Abortion Schizophrenia, The Road from Misogyny to Misandry, and Cigarettes
I Like Mary Harrington
First, I want to make something clear,
is one of my favorite writers, so I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Also, her significance stretches far beyond my opinion. I would argue she has become one of the more important writers and thinkers of our day. I have read and highly recommend almost everything she writes, especially her book “Feminism Against Progress.” She’s become somewhat of a leader of a new feminist movement, sometimes called “reactionary feminism” or “sex-realist feminism.” It’s branded as a newer more conservative feminism that is willing to admit ways the sexual revolution has hurt women (and men) and is creating a more prolife, pro-woman, and pro-family vision. She is also part of a broader collective of writers called Fairer Disputations that has been putting out excellent material over the last couple years.Her most recent article “Fetal Schmittianism” led me to write this. If you have five minutes, please go read it, it is well worth your time. In this article, Harrington offers a few insights on abortion that are worth exploring. Some of her insights are fascinating while others really show her hand and why her position on abortion is inconsistent and confused. As powerful and insightful as she is, when it comes to abortion, Mary Harrington is ultimately wrong (and I think she knows it, more on that later).
Quick Summary
Harrington offers a brief and clarifying summary of the different positions within the abortion debate today, as she describes, there are essentially three categories of people: there are the “abolition” folks who assert that life begins at conception and advocate for things like a federal ban on abortion, there are the “abortion maximalist” folks who believe the fetus isn’t a person until after they are born and advocate for things like abortion up to birth, and then there are the vast majority who are not sure and exist somewhere in between these two.
For the last 50 years, we have tried to split the baby and land somewhere near 24 weeks when the baby is considered “viable” and can exist outside of the womb with the aid of machines and other advanced medical technology. Since technology progresses at such a rapid pace, this timeframe when the baby is “viable” keeps getting pushed back earlier and earlier. This middle ground approach is largely due to our culture’s commitment to the doctrine of expressive individualism,1 where our institutions allow the mother to choose based on her desires, within limits. I would also argue that the middle ground approach is the government’s attempt to “third way” the issue and make everyone happy.
But abortion has consistently remained a deeply divisive issue for the last 50 years, and of course Roe v. Wade was overturned, and so it seems quite clear that this middle ground approach is not working.
Abortion Schizophrenia
To clarify, when I say “schizophrenia” here, of course I am not using it in a literal or clinical sense, I am not diagnosing all people who I would argue hold inconsistent views on abortion as literally insane. I am using the word schizophrenia here metaphorically or as a descriptive term. The purpose of the term is to serve more as a mental picture to help illustrate how confused I believe we are as a culture on this issue. The first few sentences of Harrington’s article are noteworthy, she explains that in the UK:
“Grieving parents who have lost a baby through miscarriage before 24 weeks can now apply for a ‘baby loss certificate’, according to a Thursday headline from The Guardian. The very next day, The Telegraph reported that Parliament will soon hold a free vote on whether to decriminalize abortion to term, predicting that most MPs will support the measure. So is an unborn baby a person to be mourned, or not?” (emphasis mine)
Along the same line as Harrington’s examples above, I have wondered, how is it possible that in the same culture it can be acceptable for one woman to hold a funeral for her miscarried baby, and another woman to bake a cake celebrating the abortion that killed her baby?2 That someone could simultaneously accept both of these responses as plausible points to our culture’s schizophrenic understanding of this issue.
I guess it would be more accurate to describe our disordered views on abortion as a sort of reverse schizophrenia: schizophrenic people see and hear things that are not real, we on the other hand refuse to see and hear things that are real. Either way, our general understanding of this issue as a culture is not based in reality.
I have argued before that in our culture, expressive individualism is the highest form of moral authority and deceives us into thinking we can rationally violate both the law of noncontradiction3 and objective reality. “I think each woman should decide for herself” becomes the expressive individualist trump card used to end difficult conversations about abortion. Essentially, our culture’s doctrine of expressive individualism asserts that whether the baby is truly a person or not fundamentally hinges on the thoughts and desires of the mother.
And so it goes like this, if the mother wants it, it’s a “baby” to care for and cherish. If the mother doesn’t want it, or feels she can’t give birth, then it’s a “fetus” and the abortion is simply “a procedure to end a pregnancy.”4
But Harrington’s question remains, “…is an unborn baby a person to be mourned, or not?” If we say that a fetus can be both a person worth mourning and a clump of cells we can discard, at the same time, then we violate the law of noncontradiction.
Additionally, if the unborn baby is a shapeshifter whose meaning and identity is at the mercy of the mother’s personal desires, then we violate the natural law of fixed, objective reality. We ignore that the unborn baby is something that can be seen and observed independently from subjective and differing views.
Let’s pause for a quick note on language.
“An abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy” is standard technocratic5 nomenclature and a commonly used definition today. It is also a prefect example of what I referred to earlier as reverse schizophrenia. Unlike schizophrenia where people see things that are not real, here language is being used to help people not see what is real. This evasive language sooths and shields our mind’s eye from imagining what really happens in an abortion. George Orwell described this linguistic maneuvering as “naming things without calling up mental pictures of them.” Language functions to shape our worldview and forms our social conscience on abortion, helping us decide as a society what we will tolerate, and what we won’t.
For example, we might accept living in a culture where we routinely permit “ending a pregnancy.” However, we may not be as quick to broadly accept the systematic and routine act of “killing a baby.”
From Misogyny to Misandry
First, let’s define our terms. Merriam Webster defines misogyny as a “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women.” And misandry is the reverse, “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against men.” The #metoo movement, the rise of figures like Andrew Tate, and the “red pill,” “manosphere,” and “pick up artist” internet subcultures make very clear that misogyny is still deeply with us.
Also, with prevalent hashtags like #killallmen and the American Psychological Association pathologizing “traditional masculine ideology” by referring to it as “psychologically harmful,”6 people have noticed the views towards men are growing increasingly negative. Widely acclaimed books like the NYT best seller “Of Boys and Men” by Richard Reeves and “The Toxic War on Masculinity” by Nancy Pearcey point to the dire state of men today and a growing hostility towards men in our culture. Misogyny is certainly alive and well today, but let there be no doubt, misandry is gaining some serious steam.
As I discussed earlier, in our culture today abortion is mostly understood as a woman’s issue. Most people today would agree that it is up to the mother and the doctor she chooses to decide if the baby should live.
In her article, Harrington points out that this was not always the case. Here’s Mary:
“In the Roman order that governed Europe before Christianity, babies weren’t considered people until formally acknowledged by the paterfamilias. Absent this, newborns were routinely ‘exposed’: that is, left to die. Personhood wasn’t given, as a function simply of existing as a human, but in the gift of the household head. Should we adjust our law to decriminalize late-stage abortion, in effect we’ll be returning to this order: declaring that a baby is a baby at the discretion of his or her mother. A baby born at 24 weeks may be left to die, or kept alive with every miracle of modern technology, dependent only on what the mother wants. The main difference between the Roman approach and this one, then, is that whereas in antiquity personhood was ascribed by the patriarch, now the authority is the mother.” (emphasis mine)
Harrington places abortion historically and maps out for us the long road of personhood that the baby has traveled down. As she mentions, in Rome the personhood of the baby was a status given to the baby by the patriarch, the father. Today, this asymmetry has been reversed. The authority to designate personhood has exchanged hands from the father in antiquity to those of the mother in modernity.
Just a side note, I have laid all my cards out on the table regarding abortion. Not long ago I wrote something I called “Acknowledgements” where I articulate nine things that are worth acknowledging in any conversation about abortion, click here to read that. In that article I go over how many abortions happen because of a lack of support from the male partner, or because the woman is pressured by her father or her boyfriend into getting the abortion. So, I am not saying women are 100% responsible for all elective abortions today.
What I am saying is that the broad cultural message today is that it is the woman who has the right to choose, regardless of the feelings of the father. And if that is the case, then our culture is saying the quite part out loud and providing evidence for the claim I am making here; that the issue of abortion today is animated by an ethos of misandry.
Final Thoughts
Mary Harrington’s article reveals that our cultural thought pattern on abortion is schizophrenic and dependent on the impoverished and false precepts of expressive individualism. This error violates both the law of noncontradiction and objective reality. If we assert that the unborn can be both a baby worth protecting and a fetus worth discarding at the same time, only depending on the feelings of the mother, then we violate the law of noncontradiction. And if the thing in her belly can shapeshift and change in form and substance based on the mother’s thoughts and feelings, then we violate the natural law and fixed, objective reality.
Mary Harrington also correctly maps out the path that abortion has traveled through history, from a culture of misogyny to a culture of misandry. In Rome, the authority to designate personhood existed solely in the hands of the father, the patriarch (misogyny). Today, that power has shifted to the hands of the mother and she has “the right to choose,” and the father can be completely removed from that decision (misandry).
This is what Mary Harrington gets right.
But is there a better way for us to understand where the value and meaning of human life and personhood comes from? I wonder if what the misogyny of antiquity and the misandry of modernity teach us, is that neither solution is workable. Maybe we need to dust off a philosophical relic, a truth from the past that feels outmoded and that we may be quick to forget today. Let me offer a suggestion.
Our natural right to life comes from one source alone, God. As our nation’s founding document correctly reminds us, we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. Our right to life does not come from any earthly authority, whether that be a parent or a government. Our right to life can only come from, and be taken away by, the One who makes us alive in the first place.
When we accept the false premises of expressive individualism in the abortion debate, where each individual can customize his or her own moral framework, we incorrectly assign to humans the authority and power to define human life and personhood. We directly usurp the authority of God and take it into our own hands. The minute we commit this grave act of moral vigilantism, we have yet again fallen for the satanic lie that is as old as Eden, that “ye shall be as gods.” We were not designed to carry that weight, and we buckle under that pressure.
As she admits in her article, Harrington remains committed to a “centrist” position on abortion. And if you read her own words carefully, it seems clear that even she isn’t really buying what she is selling. Here is what she says:
“And (to the disappointment of some more Christian friends) I remain fairly centrist in my stance on abortion, as I outlined in the book: though I think it [abortion] is profoundly anti-feminist, I don’t think any feminist remedy can take abolition as its starting point.” (emphasis mine)
I have read almost everything Mary Harrington has written and have seen her say things like this before. This is where Harrington’s intellectual scaffolding starts creaking and she really shows her hand. If abortion is “profoundly anti-feminist” then how could abolition not be considered a reasonable starting point, even for feminists? Substitute abortion here for any other thing we could all agree is “profoundly anti-feminist.” What if Harrington said “though I think wife abuse is profoundly anti-feminist, I don’t think any feminist remedy can take zero wife abuse as its starting point.” For her to call a thing “profoundly anti-feminist,” and then immediately assume that any workable remedy must allow it, exposes a glitch in her logic. For such a brilliant woman to say such an observably inconsistent thing tells me that she may not really believe what she is saying here.
This is what Mary Harrington gets wrong.
Harrington’s unwavering commitment to a centrist position on abortion, even given her article and admissions about our culture’s schizophrenic views on abortion, reminds me of stories my mom would tell me. My mom has been an emergency room nurse for about 45 years, and she has seen it all. She has met many addicts through the years and heard incredible stories about how they were able to stop using all kinds of hard drugs: heroin, crack, pain meds, you name it. But for all of their strength and capacity to break free from some of the most addictive substances known to man, there was one thing that so many of them could never kick: cigarettes.
Abortion is Mary Harrington’s cigarettes. She has come such a long way from her hyper-liberal, anarchist feminist days. She has seen and articulated some of the devastating affects of feminism and the sexual revolution, she advocates against hormonal birth control for goodness sakes, she advocates for women to get married and have children, she openly states that men and women are different and that a man cannot become a woman and that this widely accepted lie is dangerous for women. She has gotten very comfortable speaking the unspeakable truths and committing cultural blasphemy on a regular basis.
As anyone who has ever been in a toxic relationship understands, the dilemma is that deep down you know it’s wrong but you just can’t bring yourself to leave. And when a person is doing something that they know is wrong, there are basically two options: fess up, own it and deal with it, or rationalize it and find reasons to tell yourself why it is ok.
And so, like with many other well-meaning “new feminists,” she remains committed to abortion: the violent act that kills more girls than any other cause of death. The #1 reported cause of death for women in the U.S is heart disease, and in 2021 it killed roughly 310,000 women.7 In the U.S. in 2020 alone we aborted 930,000 babies and it is safe to assume given current population trends that most of those killed were baby girls.8
Mary, I love you. But you’re wrong about abortion, and I think you know it.
Thank you so much for reading. If you read this and have a thought, please leave a comment here or email me (below). My primary motivation for writing is to create more good conversation around cultural, theological and political issues. I would love to hear your thoughts.
jeffreycharlescaldwell@gmail.com
Charles Taylor on expressive individualism “I mean the understanding of life which emerges with the Romantic expressivism of the late-eighteenth century, that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that it is important to find and live out one’s own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority.” click here for more
Aristotle is responsible for the logical “principle of non-contradiction”. Essentially this law states that assertions that contradict one another cannot both be true at the same time. For example, “x is the case” and “x is not the case” cannot both be true, they contradict each other and are therefore mutually exclusive.
An example of why I use the word “technocratic.” If you are watching a YouTube video on abortion, you’ll likely see a “context” box underneath where you can click to receive “abortion health information”. When you click the link, it will take you to a website where the expert class will define for you (in very medical and therapeutic terminology) what abortion is and explains different ways one can receive an abortion. At the very top of the page you’ll see “An official website of the United States government.” Click the link in footnote 4 to see this website.
Pearcey, “The Toxic War on Masculinity” page 18
Excellent, as always. Your logical reasoning brings such clarity. Thank you.
Keep it up.
I stumbled upon this post tonight and when I was done here, I read another…and then another. We share many of the same views. How refreshing! I hope you’ll keep writing. I enjoyed reading all three posts.