Fetus fetish

Last year I gave a talk on abortion law reform at a local students' association.  There were about twenty people in the audience, if I recall correctly, and when we got to discussion time there were clearly two who were anti-abortion.  

Putting aside the fact that both of these people were young men, what really struck me was how strongly one of them in particular identified with fetuses.  I've come across the fetal personhood argument before, not least in five and a bit years of Catholic schooling.  But this experience, with this not unpleasant young man who clearly sincerely believed what he was saying, provided a real light-bulb moment for me; it's not just that some who are anti-abortion believe in fetal personhood, it's that some seem to sub-consciously identify as fetuses.

Now I haven't put that quite correctly, so forgive me if we have to work through this a bit in comments until I work out precisely what I mean.  I'm definitely interested in discussing 

What I observed was how fervently this young man seemed to feel personally the perspective he imagined a fetus might have.  I've seen others do it too, now that I have started looking for it.  He actually said something along the lines of "If I was a fetus I wouldn't want to be aborted."  

Not only does that seem to me an incredibly odd projection, but what does it say that someone thinks they can imagine what it would be like to be a fetus, and speaks from that perspective, yet cannot seem to put themselves into the shoes of a person, an actual person, much more like them than a fetus, who is pregnant and doesn't want to be.  

I still remember, vividly, the moment when I thought I was pregnant and in a situation where that would have been disastrous.  It was almost half my life ago.  I doubt I'll ever forget the sensation of the walls of the room closing in around me.  I felt trapped.  I just could not re-imagine my life with all the changes that a pregnancy, let alone a child, would bring, and so it really seemed as if it was an end to my life, as I could not see beyond that moment to even what I would do in five minutes' time.  The relief when the test result was negative made me realise I was holding my breath, in more ways than one.

And I recall the happy positive pregnancy tests too, tinged with nerves and all sorts of other emotions.  The sorrow of miscarriage, the fear of labour, the apprehension of becoming a parent, the shock of contractions, the weirdness of having operations that resulted in babies. 

All of these are human emotions that people feel.  For myself I've worked out that I could not have foretold exactly how I would feel in these situations, and I don't feel like I had proper empathy for these experiences until I'd had them myself.  But they weren't completely alien, far from it.  I'd felt shadows of all of this before in other contexts, at other times, and I have since too. 

Once upon a time, before I was a person, I was a fetus.  I've not yet had an unwanted pregnancy.  Yet I still find it far far far easier to attempt to put myself in the place of an unwillingly pregnant person than try to channel a fetus.  

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This is part of a week of Pro-Choice Postings hosted here at The Hand Mirror starting on Friday 28th October 2011.  For an index of all the posts, being updated as they go up, please check the Pro-Choice Postings index.  And if you'd like to submit a post for cross-posting, guest posting or linking to please email thehandmirror@gmail.com.