Vile? It's a troubled psyche
by Clara Chow
LAST month, an American woman published a memoir detailing her addiction to abortion – 15 pregnancy terminations in 16 years, to be exact.
The book, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony Of An Abortion Addict, by Irene Vilar, was immediately controversial.
On her website, Vilar writes that the book is “committed to eliminating the stigma of abortion by creating new ways to talk about abortion honestly and publicly”.
Despite being a literary agent herself, she found her manuscript rejected 51 times before finally finding a publisher willing to take on her explosive topic.
And explosive it proved to be. Bloggers and columnists leapt to condemn Vilar. The press in the United States labelled her “Bad Irene”.
The 40-year-old, now the mother of two daughters living in Denver, even received death threats. One online opinion piece called her “deranged” and proclaimed that “she should not have the right to have the blessing of children of her own, after purposefully getting pregnant just to destroy an unborn child”.
While I have not read her book, her story kept me thinking for several days, even as I was preparing to give birth to my second child.
There will be those who will shy away from the book, and even lobby for it to be banned, simply because they are afraid that impressionable young minds will follow in Vilar’s footsteps.
Meanwhile, the pro-life and pro-choice debate has reared its head again, using Impossible Motherhood as a springboard.
Vilar is aware of the implications her actions have cast on the Women’s Movement. She explains to The Los Angeles Times in an interview: “My feeling was that I let them down. They risked their lives to give me this, and I abused that right. But, thanks to that right, I’m alive.”
Still, as some media watchers have pointed out, using the story to advance the argument of any side is to ignore the complexities of her motivations and actions.
Her deliberate attempts to get pregnant, and subsequent abortions, were a reaction to being in a marriage with a much-older man who forbade her to have children.
Hers was, and perhaps remains, a deeply troubled psyche. And given that she is an intellectual – both a former academic prodigy and respected editor – the common perception that the right to abortion can be abused by uneducated, unthinking teenage mothers springs a big leak here.
Vilar’s case is extreme, and should not be made an example of, for any cause.
The tragedy of her story is that she did not seek and receive help for her “addiction” earlier. That no one recognised the signs that she was hurting herself and her unborn babies, or – in her former husband’s case – chose to ignore or even encourage her.
If I have daughters in future, I won’t hesitate to let them read her book, letting them know that a woman’s decision to become a mother should never be taken lightly.
Meanwhile, I am glad that Vilar has found a new husband who has gladly started a family with her. Abortion may still be shrouded in a tragic, taboo mist in society. But nobody should suffer the fate of not having a second, third – or 16th, for that matter – chance of feeling unconditional love for one’s baby in her arms.
That love, in itself, is redemption.
