Orphan Black, Margaret Atwood and a Woman's Right to Choose

Tatiana Maslany as Orphan Black

From time to time, one of my loyal readers tells me I should write a book.  In my healthy fantasy life, I actually write one.  In real life, I don’t have an outline or even a paragraph.

We are great fans of the BBC TV series Orphan Black. In a near future world, a young woman discovers she is a clone and has 6, or is it 8, clone-sisters roaming the planet.  The evil mega-corporation that invented them has a patent on their DNA and seeks to control the outcomes of their reproductive lives.  It’s terrifying for the clones, as you can imagine.

I am a fan of novels that extrapolate social trends into a near future world.  Kurt Vonnegut and Margaret Atwood have demonstrated mastery of the genre and have written some of the most fascinating books of the 20^th Century. 

In my head, my novel would focus on a near-future world in which women are rounded up and forced to give birth through cesarean section to satisfy the moral code of the men that run society.  It would be terrifying. 

Then, my wife sent me an op-ed piece from the New York Times.  As it turns out, my would-be novel would not be a work of fiction.  Women are being rounded up today and being forced to give birth through cesarean section to satisfy the moral code of the men that run society.  It’s terrifying.

Somehow, laws that purportedly intend to preserve the right to life are being used to deprive women of their freedom – not of choice – I mean their physical freedom.  They are being jailed.

The most egregious example might be that of a pregnant, terminally ill woman in Washington, DC who was forced by a judge to undergo a cesarean section in spite of the risk to her life.  Neither she nor the baby survived the procedure.

A one time, off-the-wall example?  No, it’s not.  A pregnant Iowa woman who fell down a flight of stairs was arrested for attempted fetal homicide.  I recall that my ex-wife tripped and fell on our lawn when she was very pregnant.  I wonder…  If that happened today, would she be arrested?  (The twins are doing fine, BTW.)

A Louisiana woman was locked up on manslaughter charges when she showed up in a hospital with vaginal bleeding. It turns out she was having a miscarriage.  She spent a year in jail before it all got straightened out.

The authors of the Times article have published a peer-reviewed study documenting 413 such cases.  More than half of the incidents occurred in the South. Eighty-six percent of the women were charged with a crime – 74% with a felony.

Margaret Atwood’s award winning book, The Handmaid’s Tale (later made into a movie starring Natasha Richardson in the title role), foretold a society where most women were made barren by pollution.  Those who could reproduce were forced into sexual slavery as “handmaids” who would give birth on behalf of wealthy couples.  The culture envisioned by Atwood was a mix of Old Testament dogma and misogyny.  It was terrifying.

Has the near future envisioned in Atwood’s novel arrived?

There is an ongoing effort in many states to define the “personhood” of a fetus as having the same rights as a child that has been born or an adult who has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  This initiative is part of the political campaign to criminalize abortion.

The women who are being arrested and forced into a medical procedure they don’t want are not women choosing an abortion.  Yet, they are subject to a loss of their freedom at the hands of people who pretend to stand for liberty and a free society.

That most of the people involved in the decision to deprive these women of their freedom are men is no coincidence, in my opinion.  Still, I wonder how the legislators who make these laws, the sheriffs who arrest these women  or the judges who make these decisions would react if the woman in question was their own daughter.  Would they treat someone they love in the same way?

I doubt it.

WHO WILL LEAD?

Institutional failure and my narrow military mind

Map of the path of the White House intruder

I spent five years of active duty in the Navy bouncing around the Atlantic Ocean practicing for things that were unlikely to happen and, in fact, never did.  I was Chief Engineer and later Executive Officer of a minesweeper.  If the Soviets had laid mines in Chesapeake Bay, we could disarm them.  Or, if a German U-boat had popped up in the Savannah River, we could help track it down.  Those things never happened; but, if they had, we were ready.

Does that seem foolish to you?  Well, not to me.  Readiness is critical to responding correctly when a crisis occurs. 

Perhaps it’s my military background that has caused me to have a common reaction to what many are calling institutional failure at every level of government. 

When a policeman shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, my first thought was…

… training and culture.

When an intruder made it into the White House despite five layers of Secret Service security, my reaction was…

… training and culture.

When two nurses who had treated an Ebola patient in Dallas, TX contracted Ebola themselves, I wondered about…

… training and culture.

What kind of training did Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson go through before someone pinned a badge on his chest?  Was it like we have seen on a TV show or movie?  You know, the trainee is tiptoeing through a faux urban landscape doing his or her best to separate the real threats from moms with baby carriages in a split second.  React incorrectly and you either kill the mom or get killed by a pistol toting drug dealer.   

Did Darren Wilson go through that kind of training?  How did he do?

My impression of the Secret Service has always been aligned with my view of an elite force, like the Navy SEALS or the US Marshall Service.  Longstanding tradition reinforces habits that lead to near flawless execution.  So, how does anyone hop a fence, run across the White House lawn and get halfway to the President’s living quarters before someone catches up with him?

Those trained for these professions go through some sort of thought reform aka brainwashing to reprogram the way they respond when faced with a deadly threat.  I am not engaging in hyperbole.  Our central nervous system is geared to trigger a fight or flight response when facing a threat, real or imagined.  Our adrenal glands secrete cortisol, causing us to react according to nature’s programming.  To overcome the instinct, we practice and drill until our brains are rewired to respond differently.  Brainwashing requires isolation and control, an environment found in boot camp or a police academy.

Nurses don’t all work for the same organization obviously.  However, their training requires the same kind of rigor.  Their effectiveness is the result of how well they absorbed their training and how well they are supported and enabled by the institution for which they work.  So, when the head of the Centers for Disease Control says we’re “rethinking” our response to Ebola and nurses say they’re not ready, we should be concerned.  That’s tantamount to going to war when soldiers haven’t been trained to fire their weapons. 

Maintaining a strong institutional culture requires ritualistic behavior; a concisely worded, well-understood, oft repeated mission statement, and respect for the long-standing traditions of an organization.  It requires that leaders tell compelling stories that are repeated in the ranks.  It is essential that people at the top solicit the opinions of people at the bottom to ensure they are getting the right training and the right support to perform the mission.  As Colin Powell put it, “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership”.

Addressing these challenges requires a military approach to training and the visible presence of a credible leader with the authority to get the job done.  Imagine if the President had appointed the right person to be the “Ebola Czar”, he or she would have been on TV that day calming our nerves by telling us what will happen and how.  His or her mere presence and bearing would give us confidence.  We saw small samples of the impact of physical and visible presence when New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio visited the same restaurants and the bowling alley as Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer and when US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power visited West Africa.

Imagine if the Ebola Czar (what’s his name?) evoked the power of those images.

WHO WILL LEAD?