Why a novelist chose to write about a fictitious abortionist
by Carder
The main starting point for writing this book - using abortion as the medical subject that I was looking at - was that as a novelist, I was very interested in interrogating what it is that all of us feel we can’t say to people. And the idea that I came up with was that a young woman of reproductive age who was performing abortions for a living instead of having babies would be the most stigmatized and difficult story to tell that a woman could possibly tell.
So, I actually came to the subject matter of abortion more from that point of view than because I had any particular ax to grind about abortion politically.
~ Novelist Gabriel Weston explaining the starting point for her new book about the life of a fictitious abortionist, Dirty Work, NPR, August 9
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
A botched abortion, portrayed in popular media?! That could be awesome.
From NPR article:
“On her detailed descriptions of the abortion procedure
It was probably the biggest challenge of the novel. In the end, I opted for changing the font when I come to describing the abortion procedure, in order … to flag up for the reader that this is the part in the novel that they might not want to read. So I hope that I have given the reader an out if they need one. But I did feel that writing a novel on abortion wouldn’t be complete without tackling, you know, what it actually is like to see that done, or in the case of this character … I’m writing from her point of view, and she is doing the procedure.”
Wow. A botched abortion and detailed descriptions of the procedure? I hope this book changes some hearts and minds.
“I came up with was that a young woman of reproductive age who was performing abortions for a living instead of having babies would be the most stigmatized and difficult story to tell that a woman could possibly tell.”
I think the stigma comes just from being an abortionist, period. I don’t think the being a woman of reproductive age and not having babies thing has anything to do with it.
I’d say read the book and find out what the real deal is.
The couple reviews I’ve seen have said the book is very good.
Anything that keeps the conversation growing is good for life, women, and children.
I listened to the NPR interview with the doc, who is the author.
I probably won’t read the book since docs are rarely great fiction authors, but are good at aggrandizing themselves or their profession of medicine as some unassailable, magnanimous enterprise beyond scrutiny.
The author notes that her effort to portray pro-life and pro-choice characters authentically led her to the conclusion that both are well-intentioned.
In this part of the interview, the author stressed how she worked to appreciate the views of “both” sides, but she missed one point of view: the life in question.
It is the height of morality to advocate for those with no ability to advocate for themselves, for the weak, for the powerless, for the compromised, for the handicapped. Why? Because they are humans, but the prevailing system has no means for giving them a voice in the discourse of human affairs.
We liberals are all over the real estate trying to define an ever-expanding range of less-powerful constituencies to fold into our portfolio of victims for which we must advocate – thus sustaining our careers as advocates.
A young Black bully thief in St. Louis? Sure, we are all over that before getting a scrap of evidence.
A defenseless baby?
Not so much.
The doc dehumanizes a class of humans by failing to appreciate this third constituency involved in the matter of abortion.