The pregnant Lena Grove in William Cuthbert Faulkner’s Light in August (1932) thinks to herself in the novel’s first paragraph, while walking to Mississippi, “‘I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.’” We are all journeying to Mississippi these days, seeing that Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is due for Supreme Court oral argument on December 1, and the world watches. 2021 is a “fur” (far) piece from Roe v. Wade in 1973, or even Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992; and one wonders what that Mississippian muse, Faulkner, would make of Dobbs, especially its perverse aspects. Can we learn anything from him?
The present author submitted an amicus brief on Mississippi’s side in Dobbs, but believes that both “pro-life” and “pro-choice” sides deserve some respect, at least for good intentions and raising worthwhile questions. Faulkner, too, may have seen different sides of the abortion issue, as one may guess from his fiction. (It is rumored that he may have helped his wife Estelle, who’d been married to someone else, get an abortion; but that is not fully substantiated.)
I. Faulkner May Have Valued Live Birth Over Abortion, As Does Mississippi Law After 15 Weeks
For one, he may have been no enthusiast for abortion. E.g., If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (a.k.a. The Wild Palms) (1939), in its section “Wild Palms”, features the character Charlotte Rittenmeyer, a sculptress and adulteress who dies from a botched, illegal abortion administered to her by her weak, inept unmarried lover Harry Wilbourne, who once aspired to be a professional abortionist. (“There was no especial shape beneath the sheet now at all and it came onto the stretcher as if it had no weight either. The stretcher whispered into motion again, wheeling sibilantly, sucking through the door again when the officer now stood with his hat in his hand. Then it was gone.”)
In contrast, the novel’s other section, “Old
Man”, features a heroic escaped convict who helps a woman successfully give
birth during a disastrous flood. By implication, then, Faulkner may be
lionizing live birth of a child over having an abortion.
On a similar note, Light in August reveals that protagonist Joe Christmas’ racist grandfather Eupheus Hines tried to have Joe aborted since Joe was born out-of-wedlock, but had trouble finding a doctor to do it. This may be an effort to create sympathy for Joe, which, again, may show some hesitance by Faulkner about abortion.
All that considered, modern-day Mississippi, with its 2018 Gestational Age Act’s (“the Act”) ban on abortion (except for medical emergency or life-threatening fetal deformity) after 15 weeks, the subject of Dobbs, would presumably welcome Faulkner’s implied preference for birth over abortion.
II. However, Faulkner’s Writing Shows Sympathy for Those Having Difficulty Getting Abortions
On the other hand, Faulkner seemed to have some sympathy for the plight of unwillingly pregnant women. For example, As I Lay Dying (1930) goes into painful detail about the struggles of pregnant Mississippian teenager Dewey Dell Bundren to get an abortion, all while being burdened by her Southern-Gothic dysfunctional family. First, she tries to get abortion pills from pharmacist Mosely, but he only gives her a religious lecture and refuses to help her abort. (A “right of conscience” for healthcare providers to avoid supporting abortion may be acceptable; but self-righteous lecturing may never be very humane.)
Later, Dewey Dell is fooled/coerced by drugstore clerk Skeet MacGowan into sleeping with him—arguably a form of rape—to get abortion pills and other alleged “treatment”: pills which he knows are really just talcum powder. (“‘Where do I take it?’ she says. ‘Down in the cellar,’ I says.”) Finally, her work-shy, manipulative father Anse commandeers the ten dollars she’d saved for an abortion and uses it to buy a set of false teeth for himself, to woo Dewey Dell’s future stepmother.
Thus, without endorsing abortion, Faulkner at least shows some of the ugly burdens that can go with attempts to get an abortion. Patriarchy can be a problem, too, e.g., three males in a row making life difficult for Dewey Dell re abortion, even taking her money. And, there is the vileness of MacGowan cheating and manipulating/raping her. (The 2007 Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days also features a sleazy abortionist who demands sex from a woman seeking an abortion.)
III. Mississippi’s Faulkneresquely Perverse Switch from Just Asking to Preserve the Act, to Demanding Roe/Casey Be Overturned
Where this issue of cheating or manipulation is especially important to Dobbs, is Mississippi’s infamous turnaround from merely asking that the Act be upheld (in Mississippi’s petition for certiorari), to asking that Roe and Casey be overturned (in the state’s merits brief), resulting in an ultra-lenient “rational basis” framework for judging the legality of abortion law. If not “cheating or manipulation” per se, the switch from one goal to a much broader one certainly looks funny. (As the late, great Stephen Sondheim said, “Send In the Clowns”.)
If Mississippi had been consistent and all along just asked for the Act to be upheld, that would have some integrity to it. But by doing an arguable “bait and switch” and moving the goalposts from banning abortion at 15 weeks (the Act) to maybe banning it at zero weeks (possible under “rational basis”), the Magnolia State may be abandoning much of its moral credibility in Dobbs. (Under rational basis, technically, both doctor and patient could be executed for “murder”, or jailed for life for “attempted murder”, for an abortion.)
While Mississippi is a great state (like the other 49 states), its behavior in Dobbs thus risks falling into the “Southern Gothic” nightmare, à la Dewey Dell’s travails, about which Faulkner famously wrote throughout his life. (Texas’ abortion laws may be even worse, at the moment; but laws even worse than Texas’ might happen under “rational basis”.)
IV. Mississippi’s Fraught History Regarding Underprivileged Groups, Re Abortion
Speaking of “Southern Gothic”, Mississippi’s record vis-à-vis minorities, poor people, and women has not always been enviable, whether before or after the Civil War—as Faulkner might agree with. Then again, Mississippi has shown some concern for minorities and women, at least in the womb, in its 2020 banning of race- and sex-selective abortions. Or, is this ban hypocritical “virtue-signaling”, in light of the way that already-born people, especially various subgroups, are treated in Mississippi?
Indeed, District Judge Carlton W. Reeves said of the Act, in his order granting an injunction against it,
[T]he Mississippi Legislature’s professed interest in “women’s health” is pure gaslighting. . . . Its leaders . . . choose not to lift a finger . . . to address our alarming infant and maternal mortality rates. . . . [L]egislation like H.B. 1510 is closer to the old Mississippi—the Mississippi bent on controlling women and minorities.
If Reeves is correct, then the Act is problematic. And misogyny can be deadly: in Light in August, Eupheus Hines called his unmarried pregnant daughter a whore and denied her a doctor while she gave birth to Joe Christmas; she died in childbirth, likely as a result of having no doctor. In real life, plenty of Mississippians, women or otherwise, may needlessly die too.
Interestingly, Mississippi
plans a rally to “Empower Women and Promote Life” on December 1st at
the Supreme Court. It may take some explanation as to how cutting women’s abortion rights to near-zero (if Roe/Casey are overturned) empowers women, except maybe the (unborn) ones whom the Act prevents from being aborted, or those who would’ve been coerced to have an abortion but don’t have one because they can’t legally do so. But what about all the other women? Thus, the slogan risks being Orwellian, somewhat like Mississippi’s flip-flop from just defending the Act to trying to destroy Roe/Casey.
V. Faulkner Might Recommend a Compassionate Look at Both Sides in the Abortion Dispute
So, what is to be done? seeing all the turmoil and the conflicting good intentions on each side. Not all pro-lifers are Bible-thumping fascists, nor are all pro-choicers atheistic baby-killers. A look at a famous address of Faulkner’s may be inspiring here.
His 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech discusses “the human heart in conflict with itself” and commends “the old universal truths . . . . love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” While this doesn’t have any specific insights about abortion or abortion rights, it does note that the truths are “universal”, so that both pro-life and pro-choice sides may have a right to honor, pity, love, compassion, and sacrifice from the other side.
E.g., if the pro-choice side may get fewer weeks of unrestricted abortion than it would like (say, 15 weeks instead of 24), and the pro-life side may have to pay higher taxes than it would like to subsidize more support for pregnant women and their children (reducing infant and maternal mortality, re Judge Reeves’ comments), that could be seen as a “compromise” that would show honor to both sides, and reciprocity. (The more restricted abortion is, the more financial-or-other support should be given to those who are losing some of their abortion rights: a reciprocal relationship respecting both the “supply side” and the “demand side” of abortion.)
Indeed, broadly speaking, there’s the longtime precedent of a “European” model of abortion rights, which restricts second-trimester abortion but provides more social support to mothers than usually occurs in the U.S. If the Court decided on something like that rather than fully overturning Roe/Casey, Faulkner, and many thinking people, might understand, and even applaud. (The Court, in Mississippi v. Tennessee, recently rebuked Mississippi for not being equitable enough re groundwater rights; perhaps they may find Mississippi’s Dobbs merits-brief requests about abortion rights aren’t equitable either.)
In conclusion: Lena Grove in Light in August eventually gives birth after walking “a fur piece” to Mississippi, but she is aided in her struggles by the compassion of many people along the way. If the Court writes an opinion in Dobbs which respects the humanity of people on all sides of the debate, and “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner), we might have light in December, the month of the Dobbs oral argument, rather than darkness in December, the darkness resulting from an opinion which disrespects either side’s humanity. We can only hope, and pray, the Court is up to the task.
