2022.05.07一个被美国国旗的条纹束缚的女人

shiyi18

Liberty No More
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the very definition of what it means to be American will change for women and girls in the United States.

By Adrienne LaFrance
A woman bound by the stripes of the American flag
Oliver Munday / The Atlantic
MAY 7, 2022, 6 AM ET
SHARE
About the author: Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic. She was previously a senior editor and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the editor of TheAtlantic.com.

How strange it is, the condition of having a body, of being a body. Consider the sponge of the marrow that makes your blood, the skeleton frame that holds in your organs, the tendons that attach your muscles to bone, the heart that pumps blood through your veins, the electrical signals that travel along the optic nerve from your retinas, the neural networks that light up the galaxies of your brain like constellations.

A person’s interiority—your sense of youness—is typically understood to be situated in the mind, yet the mind and the body are inextricable. What, then, must it mean to be in possession of a body in America? This is, we are told, a land of tremendous abundance, of self-reliance, of liberty, and of invention. The promise America makes to its people, the covenant that we Americans can feel in our bones and in our blood and in our beating hearts, is the guarantee that we are free.

Liberty is given to us by God, by nature, by our own humanity—not by government. I am American and so I am free to speak, free to publish, free to worship, free to assemble, free to keep and bear arms. It is to me self-evident that I am free to pursue the life I choose, without interference from the state. Freedom of mind does not come without freedom of body.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, as now appears likely, the very definition of what it means to be American will change for women and girls in the United States. If the state makes a claim to your body—a claim therefore to your self—you can no longer be American, not truly. To allow the state to control the body of a citizen is to deny her full personhood. To allow the state to control the body of a citizen is to undermine the very notion of what America is, the core promise it makes.

Abortion presents, as Justice Samuel Alito writes in his draft opinion in the Dobbs case, “a profound moral issue.” None of us can claim to understand with certainty the mysteries of human life. As medicine and science have advanced, the moral questions about abortion that we must contemplate have only grown more complicated. But none of that changes the fact that government control of women’s bodies—interference from the state that obliterates women’s freedom and in some cases ends their lives—represents a monumental blow to human rights.

American women are now attempting to process what this loss of freedom will mean for them, both in principle and in practice. I wanted to hear from people in positions of power—women who are vibrating with rage in this moment, women who remember well what living in a pre-Roe world was like, women who might do something about it. I asked Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts, to try to recall the last time she was this angry. “I’m going back to my divorce,” she said with a laugh. Then, more serious: “How far will we go in letting an extremist majority [on the Supreme Court] determine the personhood of every other being in this nation? … There is a fringe group in this country that is trying to impose its own self-referential values on everyone else.”

RECOMMENDED READING

The Risky Dream of the Fast-Food Franchise
MARCIA CHATELAIN
A couple kisses following their wedding ceremony by a lake in Milford, Iowa.
Do Married Millennials Cheat on Each Other?
OLGA KHAZAN
People peer out of the eyes of interconnected smiley faces
The Subtle Mindset Shift That Could Radically Change the Way You See the World
ARTHUR C. BROOKS
She wasn’t the only U.S. senator to mention to me a comparison circulating among feminists: What if, instead of legislating abortion, the state decided that “all adolescent males should be given vasectomies, and then when they are older and they can establish that they are ready to be fathers … the vasectomies can be reversed,” she said. “If this makes you uncomfortable, then how do you think women feel about laws passed to say that their bodies are something just to be manipulated by men?” The example is useful in its improbability—such a law should never and would never be enacted. It is useful, too, in revealing the failure of imagination among those who see the state-led denial of women’s most basic freedoms as acceptable, or at least tolerable, precisely because only women are subject to it. This same mentality casts the demise of Roe as a “women’s issue” rather than an attack on human rights. Yet this is a human rights emergency.

Warren was not alone in her anger about the “fundamental intrusiveness” of it all. “How dare they?” said Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota. “How dare these people think that they know better than us what is good for us? How dare they think that those are decisions that they get to make? It feels so deeply disrespectful—so deeply disrespectful to the capacity of women to make good decisions for themselves.”

When I called Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, she had just tweeted “Mood” atop a pie chart, a post that promptly went viral. The chart was labeled “Chances I won’t use the word fuck in a sentence today” with two sections: “None” shaded in pink, and “Also none, but in yellow,” shaded in yellow. Before a press conference on the issue, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had razzed her, she said: We have to wait for Mazie; she’s taking all the fucks out of her remarks.

Hirono, who was in college pre-Roe, first entered politics to fight for abortion rights. “This has been a fight for me for decades,” she said. “I knew then as I do now that women should be able to control our own bodies. What could be more fundamental than the government forcing us to have babies? … I said for so many years that women in this country are going to wake up one day and realize we no longer control our bodies. That day is here.”

“We can’t afford to let them get away with it,” Warren told me. “I am ready to have that fight on the floor of the Senate. I’m ready to have that fight out on the street corners. I am ready to have that fight.”

American women have had this fight already, of course. And it took long enough, didn’t it? American freedom was conditional from the start. Only men were created equal, and only some of them at that. Women were not free. Enslaved people certainly were not free. One of the central hypocrisies of this great nation was always the exclusion of whole classes of people, their humanity waved away so casually, so cruelly. Unalienable rights and liberty—no, no, wait, not for you. When Roe was decided in 1973, women still couldn’t open their own bank accounts or get their own credit cards without permission from a father or a husband. Only if our country attempts to include all citizens in the expression of its values can the American idea even begin to be realized.

Alito, in his draft opinion, went looking for abortion in the Constitution, and used its absence as proof that abortion lacked constitutional protection. He went looking in a document from an era in which women could not hold public office, could not vote, and, as the writer Jill Lepore recently pointed out, legally “did not exist as persons.” The men who wrote the Constitution wholly and deliberately excluded women, and neglected to imagine them as part of their polity. No wonder Alito dismissed “attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy.” His refusal to consider autonomy as a constitutional principle spins us backwards in time, to an era in which the Constitution couldn’t perceive of women as equal citizens.

The thing is, the Constitution does not need to spell out that American virtue is derived from the ability to self-govern, that self-governance requires individual freedom, and that individual freedom requires bodily autonomy. We know that it is so. The moral questions posed by the reality of abortion are intricate, and the government already interferes with people’s bodies in many ways for many reasons—the state requires people to get life-saving vaccines; the state incarcerates people. But any conversation about abortion needs to begin with the recognition that bodily autonomy is a prerequisite for freedom. When the state is willing to seize the bodies of its citizens, it does so at an enormously steep price. For women, the price is freedom: the very essence of what it means to be American.

It has been fashionable to say that American history is an arc bending triumphantly upward, a trajectory of progress toward justice. But I prefer an image set forth by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once wrote about society as a wave—never advancing, only receding and gaining in equal measure, taking on the contours of barbarism, civilization, and science to match the times. “The wave moves onward,” he wrote, “but the water of which it is composed does not.” We need not consult the Founders to understand that if America denies freedom to some of its citizens, our great experiment is doomed. It is easily apparent that our collective freedom is premised absolutely on individual freedom. As Emerson pointed out, the individuals who make up the wave will change, but the wave carries on. The indignity of mortality will visit each of us. The body gives out. But while we are living, while we enjoy the wild fortune of being on this planet, the experience is made possible only through bodyhood. Encroachment by the state on a citizen’s body is an encroachment on her independence and the elemental rights required to secure it.

Alito’s draft opinion spends more time considering the complexities of legislative bodies than female ones. Yet it is only within the human body that these thorniest questions can be answered. Does the placenta belong to the woman or to the new body she is making out of her own tissue and bones? Does the ductus venosus, the embryological channel where the circulation of the mother’s blood transfers into the circulation of the fetus’s blood, belong to one of them, or to them both? If the fluidity of these physiological realities troubles Alito, if he believes that the Constitution guarantees any rights to women worthy of consideration before allowing the state to steal their bodily autonomy, he gives no sign.


But any mother can tell you this, for it is a truth that can be felt as deeply and as durably as her love for her child: You can no more disentangle the body from the mind, or the body of the developing fetus from the body of the mother, than you can separate bodily autonomy from what it means to be American. And in carrying out the values that make this country what it is, you cannot separate the individual from the populus. America ceases to be America when its people cease to be free.

Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic. She was previously a senior editor and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the editor of TheAtlantic.com.




自由不再
如果罗伊诉韦德案被推翻，对美国妇女和女孩来说，作为美国人的定义将发生变化。

作者：阿德里安娜-拉芳斯
一个被美国国旗的条纹束缚的女人
奥利弗-蒙代/《大西洋》杂志
2022年5月7日，美国东部时间上午6点
分享
关于作者。Adrienne LaFrance是《大西洋》的执行编辑。她曾是《大西洋月刊》的高级编辑和撰稿人，以及TheAtlantic.com的编辑。

拥有一个身体，作为一个身体的条件是多么奇怪。考虑一下制造你的血液的骨髓海绵，容纳你的器官的骨架，将你的肌肉连接到骨头上的肌腱，通过你的静脉泵血的心脏，从你的视网膜上沿着视神经传播的电信号，像星座一样照亮你大脑的星系的神经网络。

一个人的内在--你的感觉--通常被理解为位于头脑中，然而头脑和身体是密不可分的。那么，在美国，拥有一个身体意味着什么？我们被告知，这是一个巨大的丰富、自力更生、自由和发明的土地。美国对其人民的承诺，我们美国人在骨子里、在血液里、在我们跳动的心脏里都能感受到的盟约，是对我们自由的保证。

自由是由上帝、自然、我们自己的人性赋予我们的，而不是由政府赋予的。我是美国人，所以我有说话的自由，出版的自由，崇拜的自由，集会的自由，持有和携带武器的自由。对我来说，不言而喻的是，我可以自由地追求我选择的生活，不受国家的干涉。没有身体的自由，就不会有心灵的自由。

如果 "罗伊诉韦德 "案被推翻，现在看来是有可能的，对美国妇女和女孩来说，作为美国人的定义将发生变化。如果国家对你的身体提出要求--因此对你的自我提出要求--你就不再是美国人了，不是真正的美国人。允许国家控制一个公民的身体，就是否认她的完整人格。允许国家控制公民的身体就是破坏美国的概念，破坏它的核心承诺。

正如塞缪尔-阿利托法官在多布斯案的意见草案中写道，堕胎是 "一个深刻的道德问题"。我们中没有人可以声称肯定地理解人类生命的奥秘。随着医学和科学的发展，我们必须考虑的有关堕胎的道德问题只会变得更加复杂。但是，这一切都没有改变一个事实，即政府对妇女身体的控制--来自国家的干预抹杀了妇女的自由，并在某些情况下结束了她们的生命--代表了对人权的巨大打击。

美国妇女现在正试图处理这种自由的丧失对她们意味着什么，无论是在原则上还是在实际上。我想听听身居要职的人的意见--那些在这一时刻怒火中烧的妇女，那些清楚地记得生活在罗伊之前的世界里是什么样子的妇女，那些可能为此做些什么的妇女。我请马萨诸塞州的民主党参议员伊丽莎白-沃伦(Elizabeth Warren)试着回忆一下她上次如此愤怒是什么时候。"她笑着说："我要回到我的离婚案中。然后，她更严肃地说："我们将在多大程度上让[最高法院]的极端主义多数决定这个国家每一个其他生物的人格？......这个国家有一个边缘群体正试图将自己的自述价值观强加给其他人。"

推荐阅读

快餐连锁店的危险梦想
玛西亚-查特莱恩
一对夫妇在爱荷华州米尔福德的一个湖边举行的婚礼仪式后接吻。
已婚的千禧一代会互相欺骗吗？
奥尔加-卡赞
人们从相互关联的笑脸的眼睛里探出头来
可能从根本上改变你看待世界的方式的微妙心态转变
亚瑟-C-布鲁克斯
她并不是唯一一个向我提及在女权主义者中流传的比较的美国参议员。她说："如果国家不对堕胎进行立法，而是决定 "所有青春期的男性都应该接受输精管切除术，然后当他们长大了，可以确定他们已经准备好做父亲了......输精管切除术可以被逆转。"如果这让你感到不舒服，那么你认为女性对通过的法律有什么感觉，说她们的身体是可以被男人操纵的东西？" 这个例子很有用，因为它是不可能的--这样的法律不应该也不会被颁布。它也很有用，因为它揭示了那些认为国家主导的对妇女最基本自由的剥夺是可以接受的，或者至少是可以容忍的，正是因为只有妇女受制于它，所以他们缺乏想象力。这种心态把罗氏的消亡说成是 "妇女问题"，而不是对人权的攻击。然而，这是一个人权的紧急情况。

对于这一切的 "基本侵扰性"，沃伦并不是唯一感到愤怒的人。"来自明尼苏达州的民主党参议员蒂娜-史密斯说："他们怎么敢？"这些人怎么敢认为他们比我们更了解什么对我们有好处？他们怎么敢认为这些是他们可以做出的决定？这让人感觉非常不尊重，非常不尊重妇女为自己做出良好决定的能力。

当我给夏威夷的民主党参议员马齐-希罗诺（Mazie Hirono）打电话时，她刚刚在推特上发布了一个饼状图的 "心情"，这个帖子很快就传开了。该图表的标签是 "我今天不会在句子中使用他妈的这个词的机会"，有两个部分。"没有 "用粉红色阴影，"也没有，但用黄色"，用黄色阴影。在关于这个问题的新闻发布会之前，参议院多数党领袖查克-舒默曾对她大加指责，她说。我们必须等待马齐；她正在把所有的乱七八糟的东西从她的言论中拿出来。

赫罗诺在罗伊法案之前就已经上了大学，她第一次从政是为了争取堕胎权。她说："几十年来，这一直是我的一场斗争，"她说。"我当时和现在一样知道，妇女应该能够控制我们自己的身体。还有什么能比政府强迫我们生孩子更根本的呢？......我说了这么多年，这个国家的妇女总有一天会醒来，意识到我们不再控制自己的身体。这一天就在这里。"

"我们不能让他们得逞，"沃伦告诉我。"我已经准备好在参议院会议上进行这场斗争。我已经准备好在街头巷尾进行这场斗争。我已准备好进行这场斗争。"

当然，美国妇女已经进行了这场斗争。它花了足够长的时间，不是吗？美国的自由从一开始就是有条件的。只有男人生而平等，而且只是其中的一部分。妇女并不自由。被奴役的人当然也不自由。这个伟大国家的核心虚伪之一就是始终排斥整个阶层的人，他们的人性被如此随意、如此残酷地挥霍掉。不可剥夺的权利和自由--不，不，等等，不是为你。当罗伊在1973年被裁决时，妇女仍然不能在没有父亲或丈夫的允许下开设自己的银行账户或获得自己的信用卡。只有当我们的国家试图将所有公民纳入其价值观的表达中时，美国的理念甚至可以开始实现。

阿利托在他的意见草案中，在宪法中寻找堕胎，并将其缺席作为堕胎缺乏宪法保护的证据。他在一个妇女不能担任公职、不能投票，而且正如作家吉尔-莱波尔（Jill Lepore）最近指出的那样，在法律上 "不作为人存在 "的时代，去寻找一份文件。撰写宪法的人完全故意将妇女排除在外，并忽略了将她们作为政体的一部分。难怪阿利托驳回了 "通过呼吁更广泛的自主权来为堕胎辩护的尝试"。他拒绝将自主权视为一项宪法原则，使我们在时间上倒退，回到了宪法无法将妇女视为平等公民的时代。

问题是，宪法不需要说明美国的美德来自于自治的能力，自治需要个人自由，而个人自由需要身体的自主。我们知道是这样的。堕胎的现实所带来的道德问题是错综复杂的，政府已经在许多方面出于许多原因干预人们的身体--国家要求人们接种拯救生命的疫苗；国家监禁人们。但是任何关于堕胎的对话都需要从承认身体自主权是自由的先决条件开始。当国家愿意夺取其公民的身体时，它是以巨大的代价进行的。对妇女来说，这个代价就是自由：这正是美国人的本质。

有人说，美国历史是一条胜利地向上弯曲的弧线，是一条走向正义的进步轨迹。但我更喜欢拉尔夫-瓦尔多-爱默生提出的一个形象，他曾写道，社会是一个波浪--从未前进，只是在同等程度上后退和增加，具有野蛮、文明和科学的轮廓，以适应时代的发展。他写道："波浪在前进，""但它所组成的水却没有。" 我们不需要请教建国者就能明白，如果美国剥夺了一些公民的自由，我们伟大的实验就注定要失败。很容易看出，我们的集体自由是以个人自由为绝对前提的。正如爱默生所指出的，组成波浪的个人会改变，但波浪会继续。死亡的屈辱将拜访我们每个人。身体会衰竭。但是，当我们活着的时候，当我们享受在这个星球上的狂野幸运的时候，这种体验只有通过身体才能实现。国家对公民身体的侵犯是对她的独立和确保独立所需的基本权利的侵犯。

阿利托的意见草案花了更多时间考虑立法机构的复杂性，而不是女性机构。然而，只有在人体内部，这些最棘手的问题才能得到解答。胎盘是属于妇女还是属于她用自己的组织和骨骼制造的新身体？静脉导管，即母亲的血液循环转入胎儿的血液循环的胚胎学通道，是属于其中之一，还是属于他们两个？如果这些生理现实的流动性给阿利托带来困扰，如果他认为宪法保障了妇女的任何权利，在允许国家窃取她们的身体自主权之前值得考虑，他没有给出任何迹象。


但任何一个母亲都可以告诉你这一点，因为这是一个可以像她对孩子的爱一样深刻而持久地感受到的事实。你不能把身体和思想分开，或者把发育中的胎儿的身体和母亲的身体分开，就像你不能把身体的自主权和美国人的意义分开一样。在执行使这个国家成为现实的价值观时，你不能将个人与民众分开。当美国人民不再自由时，美国也就不再是美国了。

Adrienne LaFrance是《大西洋》杂志的执行编辑。她曾是《大西洋》杂志的高级编辑和撰稿人，以及TheAtlantic.com的编辑。