April 2021 Edition
Eve Tushnet on Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Art
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Interviews and conversations are a periodic element of The Pelican. In general, I look to talk with individuals who have special expertise, knowledge, insight, or experience related to the topics I cover here. I interview people who can (I hope) help readers sharpen their own knowledge or understanding, but their inclusion in the newsletter doesn’t entail that I agree with any given view they express. The views expressed by interviewees are not mine but their own.
This month I’m delighted to host an interview with Eve Tushnet, the author of Punishment: A Love Story, Amends: A Novel, and Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith, as well as many articles at a variety of publications. When she’s not writing, she spends time volunteering at a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Washington, DC, among other pastimes.
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You've volunteered with crisis pregnancy centers. CPCs have become politicized in the context of America debates about abortion, with pro-choice writers or activists claiming that they don't serve women well (for instance, because they provide medically inaccurate advice) or that they have ulterior motives (such as Christian evangelization). Pro-lifers, of course, are deeply supportive of these organizations, and sometimes cast them as alternatives to (for example) Planned Parenthood. How did you get involved with CPCs and how do you understand the nature of the work they do?
I became pro-life in college, semi-independently of becoming Catholic. When I graduated I knew that I wanted to (in some way) work with women in need. I looked into a few different options, not all of them in the pro-life arena, but the pregnancy center where I volunteer had the longest training time. Since I knew I had no experience, that made it a good fit. (I should say up front that if you know where I volunteer, you should assume that anything I say reflects personal opinion and not the policies or opinions of the institution! It's a pregnancy center in Washington, DC serving mostly lower middle-class to poor communities with a mix of races and national origins.) I did the training in 2001 and started counseling on my own in early 2002. Until the pandemic I would usually do one two-hour shift per week. For those interested in getting involved in this kind of thing, I don’t know of any general recommendations I could give—the best idea is to ask around and investigate the places nearest to you.
One thing I really respected, which speaks to your point about people's fears and concerns about pregnancy centers, is that our training included a session with a woman who'd been to a crisis pregnancy center in the 1980s and had been treated terribly. She'd felt shamed and pressured. She did in fact have the abortion, and her experience at the pregnancy center only added to her suffering. She really brought home to us the importance of honesty, compassion, respect, and listening.
I think people have different emphases in how they view pregnancy centers' work. I initially viewed it pretty bluntly as anti-abortion counseling. I'm fairly sure I always viewed the woman and not the baby as the primary person I was serving, but I don't think I had a very holistic understanding of my role. Over time it became obvious that pregnancy centers can do so much to help women and families for whom abortion was never in question. We can help people find resources, build or rebuild relationships, renew hope, and begin to trust that other people see their needs and want the best for them.
Before the pandemic I would say I only did actual counseling about abortion maybe once every other month or so, although it varied a lot and sometimes I'd do multiple crisis-pregnancy counseling sessions in a week. The majority of my clients were there for diapers, clothes, and other resources. But we still ended up having sometimes very intense or deep conversations about relationships, faith, domestic violence, or other things they're dealing with.
Respecting anonymity and any other reasons for discretion, can you tell us about any striking or surprising experiences you've had through your volunteer work, or anything you feel you've particularly learned from it?
[Laughing] Every day is an adventure. No, I guess, things I think I've learned: Lots of people who are considering abortion already have strong reasons not to do it. Not always, but very often, my job as a counselor involves drawing out the beliefs people already hold and supporting them in that. To the extent that people do have their minds changed or receive new information, the most important type of information is pictures and descriptions of fetal development. Also, once people have that information and have a safe place to explore their beliefs about abortion, they are very, very willing to make hard choices that put them at an economic disadvantage, in order to give their child life. None of this is universal but it's more common than I'd expected. As someone who grew up totally, unquestioningly in favor of abortion as an option, it really surprised me that most abortion-minded women are actually very ambivalent about it.
I feel like nowadays everyone knows this, but two of the biggest factors pushing people toward abortion and away from marriage and family formation are the inability to find affordable housing, and a desperate need to maintain employment.
The majority of my clients believe that marriage is best for kids, but they also believe that the most secure or responsible path toward marriage is dating -> sex -> cohabitation -> long engagement -> marriage. I wrote about that here so I won't go on at length, but basically, I'm not sure you can speak responsibly about abortion or family formation on a theoretical or policy level without addressing the belief that premarital sex is the responsible path.
And on an individual level, I've tried to learn good ways to open a conversation about relationships: fears, hopes, trust and mistrust, beliefs about marriage, etc. Sometimes that ends up becoming a discussion about mistrust and whether this relationship is good for your self-respect. Often it's a conversation where I'm basically trying to help a woman give herself permission to marry a partner she deeply trusts, in the face of a culture which tells her it's irresponsible for economically precarious couples to marry. Often it's a complex mix of longing and ambivalence, where I'm trying to help a client frame the question of where her relationship is going, instead of getting stuck in inertia.
Anytime you hope a person will make a change in their life, it's important to see what is keeping them from making that change and affirming anything good in their reluctance to change. This is especially clear with women in abusive relationships, who often have their best qualities and truest beliefs used against them—compassion, patience, forgiveness. Making it clear that you see the good thing they're trying to do can make a huge difference when they're often surrounded by people basically yelling at them for not leaving already. "You have shown so much love and compassion to him, and it breaks my heart that he isn't showing the same compassion to you." "You really want to forgive people and give them a chance, but you can't let your children live in fear." Those approaches build someone up, rather than just telling them it's crazy to stay or they're foolish or weak, which is what they're already telling themselves.
Again, absolutely nothing is universal and every client is unique, but I've been surprised at how often people really like it when we pray with them. People specifically mention it as something they like about the center. I think if you're able to make it an offer, rather than something you pressure people into, it can make the relationship more individual and less bureaucratic. Also [laughing] most people do believe in God. The book Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty captures a lot of what we see at the center.
You do a lot of writing covering film and other art forms, and are yourself the author of two novels. Are there any works of art that touch on pregnancy or abortion that ring especially true to you in light of your experience working with pregnant mothers?
A few artworks that really rang true to me are:
Blood Quantum, a horror film set in a Canadian First Nations community. The movie contains a couple's tense conversation in an abortion-clinic waiting room; a child becomes a symbol of hope, and especially hope after genocide and mass death.
"Flies on the Ceiling: The True Story of Isabel in Mexico," a horror comic by Jaime Hernandez, part of the Love and Rockets series. The comic illustrates the way anti-abortion activism can deepen women's suffering instead of actually helping them choose life. It also depicts religious guilt, including guilt after abortion.
“Harvest,” a short story by Danielle Evans. In this story, race is a factor in both abortion and egg donation and it explores the price tags put on black and white babies' lives. I think this story specifically would be thought-provoking for people on both sides of the pro-life/pro-choice divide.
A Small Killing, a horror comic by Alan Moore. This comic is about guilt and repentance, and ends up exploring a man's post-abortive guilt; a new pregnancy presents a second chance.
These choices obviously reflect my own taste as a horror fan. I haven't seen any of the most popular films about abortion or choosing life—I haven't seen Juno, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Bella, etc. [A couple of the artworks listed above are discussed by Eve here]
Oh, you know what else? Lauryn Hill's beautiful song for her son, "To Zion": "They said, 'Lauryn, baby, use your head'/But instead I chose to use my heart." That is absolutely how the choice for life feels for so many of my clients.
You singled out “Harvest” by Danielle Evans specifically as thought-provoking. Can you say more about the questions that this story raises? What makes it compelling?
So the major philosophical question it raises is whether our increased control of reproduction, through both abortion and egg donation, exposes the way society places a direct dollar value on a child's life—a value determined by racism and other forms of dehumanization. The song from the great '70s punk band, the X-Ray Spex, called "Genetic Engineering" puts it like this: "When he becomes the creator/Will he let us exist?" But I think Evans really weaves these moral questions into her characters' lives; I've had conversations in the counseling room which echo some of the ways her main character thinks about her decision. Religion, and specifically Catholicism, also plays an ambivalent but very recognizable role here. Again, it's symbolically important as a "pro-life" religion (maybe, in the American imagination, the pro-life religion par excellence), but it works in the characters' lives in ways which aren't overly symbolic, predictable, or propagandistic.
Are there any directors, novelists, or the like who haven't really explored these topics that you wish would? Who and why?
The Dardenne brothers seem to specialize in catastrophic people changing and discovering their own capacity for love because of their unwanted collisions with other people's lives, and that's the story of a lot of women with unintended pregnancies.