I was taken to task, rightly so, by a reader who categorized my saying “no one… has an abortion without anguish” (you can read B’s articulate comment, and my response, in the 2/22 Comments) as “hokum.” She might also have said “hogwash.” Mea culpa. “Anguish” was a poor descriptive choice. “Serious thought” maybe; “self-reflection,” “concern.” Actually, the decision does involve anguish for many women, especially those whose rights are being denied by lack of access or harsh state restrictions.
But one word can wreak havoc.
Take the hyphenated word “pro-life,” which has been appropriated by those who are ferociously anti-woman. As if the issue of abortion — always complex and private, and occasionally anguishing — involved nothing at all beyond the (potential) life of a fetus. I consider myself ferociously pro-life, it’s just that I value the life of a woman. And am pro-woman’s-life enough to honor and trust her ability to make her own decisions about her body.
Or the emotionally charged word “suicide.” Those of us who believe in the individual’s right to a compassionate and dignified death have worked hard to get that word out of the discussion. Suicide is the desperate act of a despairing person; “physician aid-in-dying” is a compassionate choice made by a terminally ill, mentally competent adult.
Word choices took much of the focus in a fascinating panel on “Defining Death” sponsored recently by the University of California San Francisco Medical School. More about that event on HuffingtonPost as soon as I can get to it. Cases under study included the tragic, ongoing story of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, and the equally tragic story of 14-week-pregnant Marlise Munoz, whose brain-dead body was briefly kept on “life” support because the hospital and the State of Texas placed the potential life of that pre-viable fetus above the expressed wishes of her husband, parents and even Munoz herself. The distinguished UCSF panel of experts on medicine, law and ethics spoke repeatedly of how much anguish — the word definitely fits here — might have been prevented if only a few, kind words could have replaced some of the jarring words that unfortunately must eventually be said.
Imagine you’re the patient, or family, or attending healthcare worker (try to leave the lawyers out of this.) When does a moments-ago-healthy person become a “corpse”? A “dead body”? Who decides if a pre-viable fetus is a “person”? How can the average person even understand “brain-dead”? If you bring the lawyers in, you encounter “property.” In more than a dozen states there are laws on the books that say that if a pregnant woman dies her body must be maintained until the fetus can be delivered… no matter what advance directives she may have that specify her wishes to the contrary. One family fought against this outrageous miscarriage of justice by claiming their dead loved one’s body — which was, in the eyes of the law, their “property.”
It’s a scary world we live in. But that word JUSTICE. If we can only hang onto that one.
Well, I wish I could add something pithy and wise, but as usual, you have said it all, most beautifully. Thanks yet again, Fran, for the insight, compassion and wit and wisdom.