The Dobbs Decision, Forced Birth, and the Fantasy of the Selfless Mother

Abstract

The Dobbs decision and the U.S. abortion ban, or forced birth, is a clear human rights violation. With zero access to safe abortion, a pregnant person must either stay pregnant and give birth to a child they may not want, or put the child up for adoption. This will disproportionately affect already marginalized people and communities managing systemic racism. And it is forcing pregnant people with the life-changing responsibility of caring for all unwanted, unplanned children—whether they want to or not. How will this affect the life and trajectory of the person giving birth? How will the unaborted infant receive the necessary love and attention to grow and thrive? While legislation can impose forced birth, it cannot enforce the conditions of love and care. The Supreme Court majority’s ideal or fantasy of the selfless mother is a disembodied dissociated version of motherhood– an image of a mother–living unwittingly in the shadows of cultural expectation and intergenerational patterns of maternal silence. With the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court has enshrined the idealized fantasy of the selfless mother into law.

Keywords:

• abortion
• forced birth
• legacy of silence
• women
• selfless mother
• Dobbs
• Roe
• idealized mother

This Special Issue of Contemporary Psychoanalysis on Abortion was collected, organized, and guest-edited by Naomi Snider and myself. In September of 2022, an emergency meeting of the Board of Section III: Women, Gender and Psychoanalysis (of Div. 39: Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology) was convened to explore the antecedents and implications of the overturning of Roe in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Feeling the pressing need for psychoanalytic holding and reflection in a time of despair, we were seeking deeper insight into the social and legal aspects of the current political mindset that led to this confounding decision. We were looking for psychoanalytic support and discernment, but—not knowing where to find it given the lack of psychoanalytic literature on the topic of abortion—we decided to create the literature we were searching for.

In this Special Issue, we attempt to expand the psychoanalytic literature on abortion and seek psychoanalytic space to unpack and witness the Roe reversal. We are a group of psychoanalysts, activists, writers, educators, and legal scholars, who have come together to challenge and affect change for human rights and bodily and reproductive freedom and justice. This issue brings together varying voices, a symphony of sorts, to put into words our complex thoughts, theories, and experiences surrounding reproductive rights and abortion.

A Note about Gender and Language

Throughout this introduction, I make various references to pregnant people as well as to women and mothers. I have grappled with how to write about abortion in a way that is gender inclusive and reflective of the fact that not all pregnant people identify as women, while also acknowledging the political reality that abortion bans are designed as an assault on “women” as a class of rights holders. Being aware of the political and social reality that—historically—access to abortion and reproductive health care has been a women’s issue, I am also aware that the term women’s issues for some has come to denote cis-gendered heterosexual “White women’s issues”—calling for an update and change in language as well as an intentional and purposeful inclusion of LBGTQIA+, gender nonbinary, and nonwhite.

Power, Not Reason

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court’s decision making. (Marshall, T., dissenting, Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S., at 844)

On June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, undoing a near half-century of constitutional precedent protecting the legal and fundamental right to abortion in the United States. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was a devastating blow for abortion rights, returning the power to individual states to decide and regulate abortion law. This being contrary to the global trend toward liberalization, the U.N. Human Rights Committee has condemned the U.S. abortion regression as a clear human rights violation (Kaufman et al. 2022).

Access to safe abortion has been established as a human right by multiple international organizations. On March 9, 2022, The World Health Organization released new detailed guidelines and “recommendations to improve access to high quality, person-centered services… to protect the health of young women and girls and to prevent the 25 million unsafe abortions that happen worldwide each year” (World Health Organization, 2022). On July 2022, The UN Women’s Rights Committee expressed their solidarity with girls and women in the United States, repeatedly stating that unsafe abortion is one of the leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality, calling for all states to end the criminalization of abortion, especially in cases of incest, rape, threats to health or life of the pregnant person, and severe fetal impairment (United Nations, 2022).

In the past 30 years, 39 countries have expanded abortion law, while only three countries have rolled it back: Poland, Nicaragua, and El Salvador (Miller & Sanger-Katz, 2022). Complete abortion bans exist in only five countries worldwide: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Malta. The UN Human Rights Council has acknowledged that denying abortion in incidents of rape, in the view of international law, can be considered torture, as it puts people’s health and lives at risk, inflicts psychological and physical pain and suffering, and forces a person to do something against their will (ReproductiveRight.org, 2022). Therefore, in the United States, in the states with no abortion exceptions, people who become pregnant by rape or incest are subjected to two acts of torture: one being the rape itself, and the second being forced to carry the result of such pregnancies to term.

At the time of this writing, there are 11 states where there is zero access to abortion care for any reason—12 including Mississippi, where abortion is banned with exemption for rape, but not incest (The New York Times, 2023). Zero access, whether the life of the mother is at risk, the viability of the pregnancy or health of the potential infant is at risk, whether the pregnancy is from rape, incest, or an unwanted pregnancy—making it impossible to terminate a pregnancy at any time during the pregnancy. In 11 states, it is law; pregnant people are being forced to remain pregnant whether they want to or not, under every imaginable and unimaginable circumstance.

Abortion restriction, abortion ban, abortion regression (Kaufman et al. 2022)—whatever we call it—the dwindling and limited access to abortion care is happening in the United States as you read this. The enactment of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the subsequent lack of practical and legal access to abortion care has forced people to remain pregnant against their will, and it is happening in our country. The term forced pregnancy (Keegan et al., 2023)—that is, being forced to remain pregnant without access to abortion—has been used to describe the United States abortion ban, as well as state sanctioned forced birth: Both terms describe forcing a person to remain pregnant and to give birth whether they want to or not. Forced birth leaves the pregnant person with no choice but to stay pregnant and give birth (both being psychically and emotionally rigorous and life-threatening) and either raise a child they do not want or put their infant up for adoption and terminate their parental rights (which many experience as a life-long loss). State sanctioned forced birth law can be broken down into the choice between “forced motherhood” or “forced child surrender” (Manning, 2022).

With abortion care now illegal and inaccessible in a dozen states, people already impacted by discrimination and systemic racism will be most significantly affected. Those disproportionately affected will be Black and other people of color, undocumented persons, people with disabilities, and the LBGTQIA + community, as well as lower income people, young people, and those living in rural areas–people who are already confronted with the most significant risk during pregnancy and childbirth (Fuentes, 2023; Kaufman et al., 2022). Chalker (2023) writes that the overturning of Roe v. Wade is about much more than abortion: It is about “life and death.” The Dobbs decision, she asserts, will prevent access to essential routine health and gynecological care (i.e., mammograms and pap smears to screen for cancer) for women, especially impacting Black and other people of color who are already exposed to medical racism and the dangerous realities of discrimination and systematic mistreatment in maternal health care.

Post-Roe America

You may remember the media frenzy in the summer of 2022, following Dobbs v. Jackson, around the harrowing story of the ten-year-old Idahoan girl who was raped. Although her parents reported the rape and subsequent pregnancy to authorities, she was legally prohibited abortion access in the state of Idaho. The girl and her family needed to cross state lines to get an abortion in Indiana. Speaking of this child, a former representative for the National Right to Life stated, “She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child. We don’t think, as heart-wrenching as those circumstances are, we don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father” (Messerly & Wren, 2022).

Let’s think about this. The state of Idaho is deciding the fate and health of a 10-year-old girl, still a child. And in this decision, Idaho is deciding that it is medically sound and safe for a very young female body to give birth. Was a medical expert consulted? What is the physical ramification of such a momentous decision on the health, body, and life of this child? Regarding psychological factors, giving birth conceived from rape, or having a baby at 10-year-old—what are the psychological risk factors of a child giving birth to a child? Was a psychological professional consulted? It is clear the life of neither child is being considered nor protected. The autonomy and will of the person who is pregnant, the subjective experience of the pregnant person, is overlooked.

In the Dobbs decision, the personhood of the one who is pregnant is disempowered, and the “personhood” of the fetus is given voluminous weight. The potential needs of a fetus outweigh the real needs of a human mother and child. The subjective experience of the person giving birth, the mother, the one most affected by these factors, is rendered nonexistent. Katie Gentile (2023) writes of the overt preoccupation with fetal personhood, in what she terms the “Magical Fetus,” rendering people capable of pregnancy irrelevant as subjects with agency and desire. She speaks to the phantasy of the potential of the translucent White fetus, of a being with the status of personhood—a helpless being, in need, floating alone––and notes that the White male majority identifies with this translucent solitary object, essentially in need of the biological connection with their mother’s body. Fromm (1956) describes the everlasting longing to be cared for and protected like a young child as being at the heart of all personality organization. It is this wish to be cared for and a need for connection for which White men fight—the right to own and to have entitlement to a woman’s body and reproductive capacities. It is both sad and terrifying that this longing for care and protection, turned power-seeking domination and control over a needed and desired other, is now federal law.

In post-Roe America, how does an unaborted infant receive the necessary love and attention required by a caretaker to enable it to grow and thrive? As psychoanalysts, we know the baby as a real, whole, sentient being that needs sensitive care and attention to grow (Beebe & Lachmann, 2013; Bowlby, 1958; Schore, 2001). How will pregnant people forced to bear a child they do not want affect the psychosocial-emotional development of the child? How will the child feel having been born of “mandate” not of “desire?” I have a patient in my practice whose knowledge that she “was a mistake”—that is, that her mother mistakenly became pregnant after already having all the children she wanted—has her feeling that she is a burden. This sense she was not wanted has significantly and negatively affected her life, identity, and sense of worthlessness in the world. Another patient was adopted, after spending a year and a half in an orphanage; this has contributed to her feelings of disconnection, depression, and meaninglessness in her life. What will happen to the children who are born to parents who cannot care for them post-Roe? Who will care for them? While a state can impose parenthood through forced birthing, it cannot legislatively enforce the conditions of love and care.

Idealization of the Mother

I have written about the idealization of the mother (Darcy, 2017) as an unrealistic notion of a mothering fantasy—an all-generous, all-giving, mother ideal. This idea of the fantasy mother as “all-accepting” is a disembodied, dissociated version of self-as-mother. An idealized notion of motherhood creates a nebulous concept of “mother,” a false self, an image of a mother, living unwittingly in the shadows of cultural expectation and intergenerational patterns of maternal silence. Claudia Lament (2015) writes that mothers are alternatingly viewed as omnipotent and perfect, or are denigrated and devalued. With Dobbs, the Supreme Court has essentially enshrined this idealized and denigrated fantasy of the selfless mother into law.

Richards, in this issue of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, speaks to the idealization of the mother, saying that the patriarchal ideal of the selfless woman is so immersed and powerful that it’s hard to imagine being pregnant as burdensome at all. Embodying this notion of an idealized mother seems to assume that women can naturally and instinctually fulfill the immense needs of an infant or child. This patriarchal ideal, a gendered binary and hierarchy, is essentially forcing a split between the self and other: where men have a self (Gilligan & Snider, 2018), and women only have the ideal of the selfless other.

When selflessness is the moral lens through which mothers are seen and judged, then the eradication of their rights is inevitable (Richards, 2023). Being viewed through this patriarchal lens as an attachment object, the mother becomes invisible, a relational attachment, seen in relation to an other and not in relation to a self. The Supreme Court, by allowing forced birthing, is essentially greenlighting the erasure of maternal subjectivity. Now, more than ever, our research and psychoanalytic theories need to be reevaluated and expanded upon. How do we see the mother as a complete, human person, and not an idealized notion of a biologized nurturer in the throes of maternal preoccupation? The subjectivity of the mother has never been more important.

This assumed role, mother as caretaker, is leaving pregnant people with the life changing responsibility of caring for all unwanted unplanned children, relieving men of a responsibility for nurturing and childcare. Why are women inherently assumed to be the nurturers? Why not fathers? When I asked Beatrice Beebe (personal communication, 2016) about her infant-focused research and why it was always mothers in her study and not fathers, she responded that her research call for participation was always for parents but it was always the mothers who showed-up.

The Danger of Biologizing Motherhood

The thought that nurturing is instinctual for women is a precarious one: With Dobbs there’s the implication that the biology of women makes becoming a mother innate. But taking care of a child is learned. One must want to be a nurturer and caretaker in order to embrace the rigors and complexities of raising a child; confusing the love that one may have for their child with innate knowledge of care is a mistake. Caretaking is a complex interplay between emotional, psychosocial, relational, biological and economic factors. Biology is not the sole attribute, nor does it predefine, the day-to-day responsibilities of providing care to another being. Projecting the responsibility of care as women’s work contributes to others feeling a lack of responsibility and ability. Fathers can and do nurture, and thinking otherwise precludes the opportunity for caretaking that men can and do provide–a missed opportunity for both fathers and child. The responsibility of care of an infant and child is required by many people; partners, fathers, extended family, good child-care, social benefits, and community support. They are all integral in the healthy development and raising of a child. This is no secret, it’s an international premise, an historical proverb, an age-old promise from our grandparents’ parents, yet this principle has somehow been fed through the current American political grinder and emerged as the mother’s role. How our children are raised needs all of our attention and support.

How do we create a shift within our country, from the needless hyperfocus of the “woman as caretaker and nurturer” to one that considers focus of care on the health and safety of the family system as a whole? Rather than the mainstream feminist singular focus on reproductive choice only, we need to shift our attention to the humanity and civility of care and respect for the parent(s) and child. We need ongoing and persistent care of the mental and physical health and safety of those giving birth, as well as for the child, and family unit as a whole. Of vital importance is the environment of the family and child—not the hyper-Americanistic Individualism (and historically patriarchal and White) focus only on the individual and individual choice.

Alexander-Floyd (2023) writes about reproductive rights as seen through the reproductive justice lens. She describes the needs of the mother, children, and family as essential, and states that abortion is a collective concern beyond the purview of the individual. What is needed is a more expansive frame that not only includes the right for a woman NOT to have a child, but also the right to have a child and raise them with dignity and safety in a healthy and supportive environment—free from hunger, fear, and violence (SisterSong.com, 1997). Moving forward, reproductive rights need to be seen through the reproductive justice lens.

The Silence

The theme of silence is a pervasive one in this issue. Moshtagh (2023) examines the silence of Iranian women, and the defensive criminalization of abortion by Iranian men. In the United States before Dobbs there was persistent cultural silence about the topic of abortion. Here, Snider writes about the silencing of abortion in consulting rooms, a place where people are expected to speak openly about their lives, experience, and feelings. Speaking of the paucity in our psychoanalytic literature about abortion, Snider poses the question, “in not thinking about abortion, what are we trying to avoid” (2023, p. 177). Jill Gentile similarly writes in this issue that despite “psychoanalysis’s self-anointed reputation as the ‘talking cure,’ it has participated in this silencing” (2023, p. 117). Basescu, in her article Birthright (2023) notes that she submitted the very same article to this journal 20 years ago, but the article was rejected for being too experimental and not “appropriate” for a psychoanalytic journal. It was suggested that she might try a women’s magazine.

Here is our contribution to end the silencing about abortion. We must fully examine women’s unique experiences in order to understand their position—to bear witness, encourage self-expression, scream it from the rooftops, even—to break this legacy of silence.

I am profoundly grateful to the writers and editors who worked passionately and tirelessly to get this issue published in a quick and timely manner given the urgency of the situation. I’d like to thank the Editors-in-Chief, Ruth Livingston and Susan Fabrick, for their wholehearted collaboration and editorial acumen. For their editorial help I would like to thank Hopeton Shaw, Ellen Toronto, Helena Vissing, Isheh Beck, Rick Rubens, and Kathy Bacon-Greenberg. I particularly want to thank Naomi Snider for her clarity of thought, measuredness, and indefatigable analysis of the material. This Issue could not have been created without each and everyone’s contribution and care.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meredith Darcy

Meredith Darcy, LCSW-R, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and Dobbs Ferry, NY. She is President of the Board for Section III: Women, Gender and Psychoanalysis of Div. 39: Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology; faculty and supervisor at The Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program at The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology; and associate editor for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She was awarded the 2018 Lawrence Kaufman Award for her paper “The case of Cora: Psychotic anxieties, containment, and the role of group supervision” and authored the chapter “Too warm, too soft, too maternal: What is good Enough” in the 2017 Routledge book, A Womb of Her Own: Women’s Struggle for Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy (E. Toronto et al.). Her paper “Spicy Inside-Out Roll: Dealing with Revulsion in the Analytic Space” was featured in chapter 7 of Joseph Newirth’s book From Sign to Symbol (Lexington Books, 2018). Much of her practice, and writing, focus on exploring gender identity and expectation, sexuality, the body, attachment, and the development of the self.