Personhood, U.S.A.
A performance piece on the continued discussion of and fight for women’s autonomy in the United States of America.
Given the circumstances of my existence and our current political landscape, I felt a compulsion to create a video piece on the continued discussion of, and fight for, a woman’s right to make decisions for her own body. While focusing on the issue of legal access to abortion in the United States specifically, the piece speaks to the all-encompassing societal and governmental error of regulating how much control any woman has over her own existence. In a broader sense, the work begs us to question the rights of all people and ownership of themselves.
The fight for the individual’s control of their own body is continually prevalent, as our current president was elected on radically restrictive campaign promises. To begin with, Trump’s cabinet is full of men who publicly voice their distaste for abortion, and politicians who actively advocate and vote against abortion access. Departing from the actions and ideologies of his peers, Trump himself, as one of his very first presidential actions, signed an executive order cutting funding to international women’s health-care providers who offered abortions. He also makes a great effort to boast about electing a Supreme Justice who will overturn Roe v Wade. These imminent threats seem to directly impact women specifically, but the larger implications are control over individual freedoms.
Considering the complexities of the abortion debate, I resolved to keep the content of my work as simplified as possible. By filming an enduring performed act, where the same deed is repeated, I aim to mirror the long-running defense of female autonomy. Where my somewhat censored framing may strike critiques of feminist art as ‘puritan’, I am very calculated in my choice of the abdomen as the host where the womb develops. The objective is for the information to be presented on the very plane which is being regulated. I indicate that it is a woman’s private right to make decisions for herself and her body, decisions that I don’t think any woman would take lightly, but that regardless she has the right to take however she so chooses.
In Personhood, U.S.A I lay myself bare, both physically and ideologically, to impose a consideration of what’s truly at stake in the abortion debate. I feel a profound sense of urgency to make work on this topic, to hopefully compel someone who is skeptical or an anti-abortionist an opportunity to reconsider. I am grateful and indebted to the activists before me who fought for my right to choose what I want to do with my own body. Safe and legal access to abortion affects me as a woman, as an American citizen, and as a human. In the United States, a woman’s choice to end her pregnancy remains one of the most emotionally charged political controversies, even today, 44 years after abortions have been made legal. Unfortunately, despite the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade, there are still impending threats to women’s ownership of their own bodies in the United States. Considering the histories of this country, it is both perplexing and disturbing that the fight for women’s autonomy must continue. The Declaration of Independence is demonstrative of eighteenth-century concern for the interests of the individual, making the rights and potential of ‘the individual’ the cornerstone of American values. Grasping beyond doubt “self-evident” the notion that “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” that these lines are among the most quoted, testifies to the power and resonance of the commitment to individual freedom in American culture. We cannot know if the writers of our nation's foundation truly believed that all of humanity is created equal. They did not write specific indications, so we have been forced (nevertheless able) to fight for the equal rights of all people, of all skin-tones and gender identities as a result.
The Supreme Court decided in 1973 that the unborn fetus has no constitutional rights until the third trimester(24-28 weeks), as it is unable to function independently from the mother until then. Remarkably, despite this, anti-abortionists protest for the fetus’s right to life—its status as a potential human being. Those in opposition to abortion call themselves ‘pro-life’ and see abortion as murder, violating the rights of the unborn. They vocalize that there is ‘inherent value in life’ and that abortion is murder for destroying that value. The disturbing irony here is that some anti-abortionist individuals and coalitions commit terrorism on abortion providers, going as far as bombing clinics and shooting doctors dead. The most extreme of these anti-abortionist organizations even consider those in prison for murdering abortion providers and/or terrorizing clinics, “American heroes.” These anti-abortionists prove that they don’t actually have the highest regard for life, so it begs the question what exactly are their motives? More than this, the conservatism that coincides with the ‘Pro-Life Movement’ generally tends to show a lack of regard for the lives they fight to protect once they are out of the womb. The idea of being ‘pro-life’ is hypocritical and increasingly questionable, as most politicians who run on a pro-life agenda support institutions and policies which actively diminish the value of lives, and infringe upon personal liberties, such as the War on Drugs, death sentencing and the construction of our prison industrial complex, cuts to welfare and health care, cuts to education, etc.. Another increasingly disturbing complexity of the ‘pro-life’ argument is a vehement disinterest in providing comprehensive sex education, and a disdain for contraception. To conceive a child all you need is semen and a woman who is physically capable of carrying a baby to term. We know for a fact this process does not require any love, but to raise a child there must be devoted love for that child. In the U.S. there are no truly accurate numbers, but we have estimates of over 650,000 children in foster care, with roughly 135,000 children adopted each year, 59% from the welfare/foster care system, 26% from other countries, 15% voluntarily relinquished American babies. Furthermore, the conservative states that oppose abortion also oppose lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from adopting children.
This project is for the women who have died attempting to save themselves, and an effort to prevent these tragedies from reoccurring. Though it is impossible not to associate Personhood, U.S.A with a ‘pro-choice’ motive, I hope I created a piece that any viewer can enter without feeling their ideology is being attacked. While my naked body may be alarming to more conservative viewers, the goal is not to aggravate, but to simply provide a moment of deeper consideration for the actual implications of limiting the control one has over their own body.
