Abortion and the single woman as literary tropes in the works of Amos Oz — Page 3:
11 In decoding the authorial intent of the Oz stories dealing with the sentiment and landscape of abortion, four areas of contextual strategy can be identified. The first, depicts the decision of those to procure abortion as selfish and in violation of certain moral edicts, through its principal protagonists flashing back to their shameful episode, haunted by these past ghosts as an imprint of horror engraved on their conscience. Second, similar to the tactics the Right to Life activists were encouraged to adopt, emotive vernacular is employed to describe the foetus, humanising and renaming it as the 'unborn baby/child, portraying abortion as the murdering of a living, entity-like person. Moreover, and taking the literary manipulation a step further, the author uses the motif of 'foetus becomes a person at the time of conception' to breathe corporal life and endow the foetus with fully formed personhood, in addition to having their female and male characters sonorously speculate on the life of their potential offspring. Thirdly, the actual procedure and method of abortion is re-contextualized to present it as metonymic of a bloody and inhuman operation; frequently, the issue of the disposal of the foetuses is replicated to further activate abortion guilt. Lastly, the dark side of the abortion myth is revived through the manifestation of physical and psychic risks resulting from the procedure in one of the heroines who underwent the operation.
12 An exemplar of the first model of literary manipulation is used in the novel Fima. Yael, the former wife of the eponymous hero recalls back with remorse to her decision to have an abortion: "I got a child by you and you didn't want it. So, like a good girl, I murdered it so as not to mess up your poetic life" (241). Similarly: "[...] we murdered it and we shut up [...] We both murdered it. Only you didn't want to hear when or where and how. All you wanted to hear from me was that it was all over" (244). Fima, for his part, demurs: "You know very well that what you said earlier isn't the whole truth. You didn't want the baby either" (243).
13 The reflection by Yonatan Lifshits concerning his wife's abortion, in another novel, A Perfect Peace, merits a long citation for its sheer orchestration of a morality lecture on the evils of abortion:
She used to put my hand on her belly to feel the baby move [...] When she had that abortion? Madness. Mysteriously , Yonatan had the sensation of the baby moving in his own belly…Come on, I yelled at her, it's too soon for us to have children. The two of us are fine by ourselves. It's not my job to sire a dynasty for my father. I don't want my parents getting into bed with us. And so one morning she went to Haifa and came back empty. (338-339)
14 Aunt Janya, the bitter and tough-talking protagonist in the novel My Michael, personifies the stock image of the heartless female who seeks abortion for purely economic reasons — an image cribbed from the lexicon of portraits the antiabortion movement seeks to push. When she hears that Hanna, her nephew’s wife is pregnant, she is maddened by the prospect of a child endangering Michael's future career, and proposes the option of abortion. Hanna recalls the shattering conversation, "She accused me of irresponsibility. I would ruin all Michael's efforts at getting on and achieving something in life. Didn't I realise that Michael's progress was my own destiny? And right before his final examinations, too!" (49). It is, however, Janya’s underlying financial reasons and the manner in which she raises the issue that brings to the simmer the emotions of horror and disdain the reader experiences. Given Aunt Janya's deportment it is not surprising that Hanna reacts with dismay to the suggestion, running into the kitchen and crying. Later, she remarks on the incident, "I remembered Aunt Janya's distasteful visit at the beginning of my pregnancy, and at times I imagined perversely that it was I who had wanted to get rid of the baby" (67).
15 As Komisar notes, "Opponents also say that someone great may have been lost to the world by abortion" (37) in protesting the imagery and semantic battle the antiabortion movement marshals to incorporate its ideology into mainstream culture. By elevating the foetus into infant status, or at an extreme, the public is in a sense asked to imagine the unborn as a fully grown child, the anti-choice camp wields enormous emotional appeal. It is in this sense, that writers and political activists become bedfellows.