Exploring the ongoing shift in our cultural narrative illustrated through film

How, oh how to sweep away the mess of language left from decades of furious mangling by religious fundamentalists on this issue of reproductive rights?  You see, there, I’ve had to italicize because the words and phrases associated with a woman’s ability to give birth have been voided of their capacity to hold meaning.  The language has been turned to stone.  Or maybe salt and fallen, a coned pile at our feet, it demands a rest.

So, I’ve decided to turn on the wayback machine and bring you some pages from an essay,  Putting Women Back in the Abortion Debate, written in July, 1985 by Ellen Willis.  Ms. Willis was an editor and writer for the Village Voice back in the day when it was still possible to be counter cultural. (You see, those italics again.)  She’s also a hawkeyed explorer from the heady days of early contemporary feminism, when change at a fundamental level seemed right around the corner.  Now we know.  Be that as it may, Ms. Willis caught my attention as I can not, am not sure anyone could, lay out the essential issues of the abortion debatewith more precision and clarity than she does in this essay from her book No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays, Wesleyan U Press, 1992.