Gaslighting for God

When I was sixth form, in religious education class, we talked about abortion.

By that time - we’d been children raised in the faith, but were now sixteen and seventeen - we knew the dogma. The difference, I suppose, was that we now felt old enough, cocky enough, to challenge it.

Mostly, the challenges weren’t exactly radical. One day, my friend - with some egging on from me - asked how come Jonah wasn’t digested by the whale’s stomach juices. The teacher replied, with a little frustration, that the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally. I simply blinked at this new knowledge. I’d spent my early childhood imagining, vividly, the hell to which my non-believing father would be sent.

On the day we talked about abortion, it was my friend who asked, what about abortion in the case of rape?

I need to say, the teacher wasn’t a bad person. He was a middle-aged bloke with a kind and honest temperament, primarily a science teacher. Religious education was his side gig. He explained, sincerely, if it’s real rape, then abortion isn’t needed.

My friend piped up again, wanted to know why.

Now, the teacher became desperately uncomfortable. He shuffled in his loafers. He said, when it’s real rape pregnancy can’t happen, because there’s no ‘lubrication’.

I have thought about this a bunch of times, in the intervening thirty years.

Sixth form, as it was back then, is about the age you start to decide stuff for yourself. Catholic womanhood offered me and my mates two choices for lives we didn’t want: chastity, or babies we never planned. But this was the 1990s, not the 1950s. We considered the options and decided to order off the menu.

Still, I have found myself trying to dismantle, link by link, the chain of misogyny - not all his own - that could cause a teacher to say such a thing. The denial of abortion, of course, but every other perverse belief that led up to it.

The refusal of bodily reality: that you can get pregnant whether you want sex or not. And the bizarre implication that pregnancy shows you must have consented, no matter whether you say you did. After all, a woman who behaves like that - lets a man get her in trouble, and worse, wants to get rid of it - is hardly trustworthy.

And there was the denial that consent - or sex, or ethics - can be something more nuanced than an on/off switch. The insinuation that if you consent to something, it’s a yes to anything and everything. After all, we’ve established a ‘lubricating’, wanting body can’t be raped. That it’s your fault, therefore, if you offer an inviting inch, and he then takes a coercive mile. Because the trustworthy woman gives nothing at all.

I couldn’t have articulated all of this thirty years ago. And if I could, I wouldn’t have bothered. Challenges to doctrine were taken the same way: as signs the challenger wasn’t quite smart enough, high-minded enough, to understand. And since challenges about reproductive rights came mostly from young women, it was easy to figure out which gender the good Lord had made a little scatterbrained. Why were we thinking about sex anyway? Untrustworthy.

I checked out. I’d been given two choices for a life I didn’t want. Either choice, it seemed, made my womb my identity. Both choices came with rules made up by blokes. I packed up my uterus and went home in a huff.

But here’s the kicker: it wasn’t just the way the Church saw my body. My greater hurt is its refusal to see my mind. A sigh when I asked a question. ‘Logic’ that disqualified me at every turn. The message that my own moral agency was childish or silly. When you’re Catholic, your conscience is your animating force, integral to your humanity. I came to understand that mine was faulty.

It all added up to a Catch 22 - maddening, deflating, belittling - designed by men in robes.

When the teacher stood that day, talked about real rape and lubrication, I think I felt a little sorry for him. He was a science teacher. He knew the importance of evidence, the need to reason rigorously. But he had been convinced, or told he must convince himself, of an ethical travesty, a lie. He struggled to look at my friend and I. When he did, I suppose he must have seen girls who deserved two choices for lives they didn’t want: chastity, or babies they never planned. Perhaps he told himself, maybe they can learn to want what is right.

I still go to Church sometimes, which is surprising, especially to me. I sit alone, sometimes cynical, sometimes reflective, always on my own terms. I don’t really pray, but only think. I figure out what I believe is right or wrong. I’m in charge of my body and I know my mind. Right now, I need to speak. Every person of conscience has to.

Roe v Wade hangs in the balance. It will be decided by another conclave who flatter themselves they serve something greater. But it will not be the quality of arguments that matters. Never is, when women’s bodies and minds are at stake.

Different robes, same bullshit.