Splitting the Baby: The Culture of Abortion in Literature and Law, Rhetoric and Cartoons (review)

Few topics have generated more heated discussion in recent decades than abortion, a central polemical issue in contemporary United States culture. What Linda Myrsiades offers us in Splitting the Baby is not polemic but perspective, one that seeks to analyze and to contextualize the abortion debate by viewing it through the multiple lenses of literature, law, rhetoric, and cartoons. It is a new and illuminating approach to a subject of considerable moral, political, and social significance.

Myrsiades's first chapter, "The History and Tradition of Abortion Law," treads some familiar ground in examining the historical evolution of legal and medical positions on abortion. Yet her survey of the conflicting efforts to protect both the individual and society humanizes the legal and medical discussions that have historically affected women's abortion options. Revealing the clash of individual and institutional needs and desires around abortion, this chapter well illustrates the Hegelian notion of tragedy as the conflict of right against right.

"Rosaries v. Ovaries: The Rhetorics of Abortion" focuses on the language of debate between defenders of "choice" and defenders of "life." The chapter begins with a profile of the abortion and anti-abortion movements of the twentieth century, giving particular attention to the legal and political issues and images in the rhetorical arsenal of each camp. Of special interest here is Myrsiades's examination of selected public relations advertising campaigns, employed to construct the ramparts of battle, and what they reveal as well as conceal about the abortion wars. Directing her attention to evolving technology's transformative impact on the combatants' rhetoric, she observes that a reduction of hostilities may be in the offing. In her view, "The greater flexibility demonstrated in contemporary public relations ad campaigns suggests, indeed, that we may have arrived at a place where there is at least as much light as there is heat. We may be at the beginning of an understanding on both sides—at least in the more populous mainstream of the debate—of both core and overlapping values that can be discussed, tolerated, or shared" (74).

In "Cartooning Crisis: Visualizing the Abortion Wars," Myrsiades illustrates another important artistic weapon in the abortion debate.. Drawing on the creative images of some of the United States' most prominent cartoonists, she presents an array of visual commentary on abortion-related events and legal issues taken up by the Supreme Court in the final three decades of the twentieth century. (It is unfortunate that the actual cartoons are not included.) Viewing these cartoons as a mechanism for communication as well as combat, the author reiterates her assertion that there may, in fact, be a chance for accommodation between the two sides. In her assessment, the humor and irony of abortion wars cartoons ultimately serve to defuse tensions by helping to dislodge fixed notions on both sides of the conflict.

In "The Poetry of Abortion," Myrsiades views abortion and its effects, issues of women's identity, and the male perspective in the mirror of contemporary poetry. Here she examines the work of numerous poets—including Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell, and William Carlos Williams, to name but a few—with the aim of identifying the themes and images employed in their abortion poetry. One of the most interesting aspects of this chapter, which is based on sixty poems, is the author's analysis of gender perspectives. It is her observation that despite significant differences, there is important comparability between women's and men's poetry: both female and male perspectives are nuanced and reveal considerable conflict. Finally, Myrsiades suggests here that the poetic discourse around abortion also serves to move abortion wars combatants closer to common understanding. "It is difficult . . . to read these abortion poems," she observes, "without gaining a deeper sympathy for all the players, just as it is difficult to maintain an unyielding position on the political and ideological issues abortion raises" (132...