|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
“The Abortion wars” “Articles of Faith a Frontline History of the Abortion Wars” is a work that attempts to present all sides of the abortion argument and seeks to come off as unbiased and nonjudgmental. Gorney explains abortion through personal experiences. She stresses the legal and political battles in public policy and the court decisions that shaped the abortion issue. Gorney writes about abortion through the people that it affected. Overwhelmingly, she puts names and faces to the abortion issue. Missouri serves as the overall setting through which Gorney interprets and explains the “abortion wars”. “Articles of Faith” is told from a human perspective. Therefore, the background of the main characters is very important. Judith Widdicombe was an obstetrics nurse she was a strong willed and upfront woman. In nineteen sixty eight Judith was a thirty year old middle class Methodist woman. One night a week she volunteered to counsel on a suicide prevention hotline. This is where her involvement in the abortion movement more or less began. Some of the calls she took were from women who were not suicidal in fact, they were inquiring on how to get an abortion. Consequently, Judith began to get involved in a secret abortion referral service. Sam Lee in nineteen sixty eight was extremely spiritual for his age. He “wanted to understand spiritual commitment, and in particular the kind of commitment that makes tangible, dramatic changes in individual human lives”(p. 229). Lee’s fascination with spirituality gave him an admiration to the Franciscans’ of the Catholic Church. Lee was very eager to learn about abortion and from his research he acquired a disdain for the act. Lee, then became involved Franciscan House of Studies in St. Louis. This was a group of young idealistic Catholics who despised abortion. Lee’s affiliation with this group propelled him to be a leader in the pro-life movement. In the opening chapters Gorney morbidly describes what abortions were like even though the procedure was illegal. Gorney describes how women performed abortions on themselves and the gruesome methods they used. “Articles of Faith” portrays unapologetically cliché free descriptions of gruesome abortions Widdicombe spoke on the methods used by some women “bicycle spokes, umbrella spokes, Lysol, burned holes in the rectum, feces passing through the vagina, the sickest women I ever saw” (p. 21). I assume Gorney went to these lengths to illustrate the desperation of these women. The detail in too which Gorney went made my stomach turn at times. One case in particular illustrates my claim; “There was blood on the walls. There was blood on the floor. There was blood on the gurney. Beneath them lay a woman whose skin had gone pallid and slack, and when Duemler lifted her legs into the stirrups and cleaned some of the blood away, he saw that someone had pushed inside her vagina with a sharp instrument and aimed it toward the cervix and thrust straight up.
Approximate Word count = 1852
Approximate Pages = 7.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|