Abortion

Abstract

A deprivation of women’s reproductive rights has occurred by the right-wing turn in recent United States’ politics. Looking at the details of Roe v. Wade, (1973), and Dobbs (2022), the author notes the limited legal, but predominantly emotional, thinking in the Supreme Court’s opinions that led to the overturn. The contemporary legal coup is seen here as yet another age-old attempt to control the female body’s reproductive powers and capacities. Using an example, the author notes the unconscious male fear of female’s bodily self-governance that inhibits any empathy for “the other.” She also reflects on a widespread archaic unconscious horror – and thus hostility – toward the female qua female, akin to Kristeva’s description of “the abject,” which the author likens to the raw products of an aborted conception. Such graphic unconscious reactions seem to skew the Law, which here fails to uphold the logic of equal status among adult humans.

Keywords:

• Roe v. Wade (1973)
• Dobbs (2022)
• misogyny
• male fear of females
• female autonomy
• archaic female body horrors
• “the abject”

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Pender, a psychoanalyst, was the 2021 president of the American Psychiatric Association, and Chair of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women in the United Nations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rosemary H. Balsam

Rosemary H. Balsam F.R.C.Psych (Lond), M.R. C. P. (Edin), (originally from Belfast, N. Ireland), is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Yale Medical School; staff psychiatrist in the Yale Department of Student Mental Health and Counseling, and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, New Haven, Conn. Her special interests are female gender developments; young adulthoods; the body in psychic life; the work of Hans Loewald. She is on the editorial boards of PQ and American Imago. Among her honors in 2018, she received the Sigourney Award,—the first female awardee in the United States). Her most recent book is: Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis (2012, Routledge) and she is co-editing 2 books on Hans Loewald’s work, at present.