What Abortion Selfies Tell Us About American Community

You have by this point likely heard about the story of New Jersey abortion counselor Emily Letts’ decision to film her surgical abortion, which this week met with the kind of reaction you could expect from online communities. If you have not watched the video, I encourage you to do so, or to at least read her piece for Cosmopolitan explaining her decision and walking readers through the social media reaction to it. There’s a reason Letts wrote that “every time I watch the video, I love it. I love how positive it is. I think that there are just no positive abortion stories on video for everyone to see. But mine is.” The video is an intentional effort to create a “positive” story. She talks about how similar the experience was to birth (she has no children). “I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby,” she says. “I can make a life.” And she can destroy it, too.

For me, the striking thing about the video is how alone Letts is in nearly all of it. Her Cosmopolitan piece emphasizes the opposite – how she felt enveloped by support. But the depiction comes across as one running direct to camera reality show, with an abortion in the middle. In the video, clearly in pain and focused on her breathing, she grips the hand of a clinic attendant, who offers brief words of support. Letts describes herself as a struggling actress, and she has enough ability to manage a wan smile before she’s wheeled out – but it comes across less as triumph than as “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” She keeps the sonogram, smoothes her hair with automatic hand, and puts a record on the gramophone.

The concept of the abortion selfie is in some ways an inevitable consequence of an increasingly atomized culture. Consider instead the lure that would motivate one to seek to share this moment, and then to share in the reaction to this moment from social media, and then to share again in the reaction to that reaction in the pages of Cosmo. This is an individual seeking out the affirmation and attention of others – for good or ill, it is an attempt to find a community, a grasping for a sense of belonging.

Set aside Emily Letts for a moment, and consider these comments from someone on the other side of the culture wars: Rick Santorum, who is out once again in his green paisley van hunting for the ghosts of Reagan Democrats. Santorum’s latest book includes a call for Republicans to reject free trade, raise the minimum wage, and rediscover protectionism to defend traditional blue collar industries. As an economic message, Santorum is as disappointing as always (on the trade issue, for example, his longtime support for the protectionist status quo lines the pockets of well-connected cronies at the expense of everyone else). But on the issue of family and community, Santorum’s comments about individualism are worth noting:

“A blithe attitude about economic disruption and the decline of traditional industries goes along with what Santorum sees as a philosophical overemphasis on individualism. Conservatives, he argues, have neglected an important strand of political thought in which the family is the fundamental unit of the polis. “The basic unit of the society is the family,” he writes, not “the individual.” … Santorum explicitly blames libertarians for the rise of individualism, but it’s hard not to feel as if he’s taking issue with most of his party.”

Read more from this story HERE.