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Women’s Work
Snapshot
Lisa H. Harris
I carefully balance the tray of metal instruments, bloody
gauze, and the sterile bowl full of tissue, and make my way
out of the procedure room to the sink. I set down the tray,
and pour the bowl’s contents into a hand-held kitchen
strainer. It is an ordinary kitchen strainer that I purchased at
the bed-and-bath store down the street, even remembering
the 20%-off coupon my father had saved for me. I run
water through the strainer to clear away the blood, and
empty the strained contents onto another tray. The patient
whose abortion I have just done was early in her pregnancy.
No fetal parts are visible yet, and it is hard to distinguish
the gestational sac, which would only be the size of
a cotton ball, from the uterine lining and blood clots that
emerged with it. So I move the tissue into a square Pyrex
baking dish and turn on the light box to illuminate the
dish from below. (The light box came from the craft shop
next door to the bed-and-bath store). Transillumination
helps me identify fluffy white tissue, and reassures me I’ve
removed the pregnancy. And only now, as I use ordinary
kitchen tools and craft supplies, do I feel transgressive.
I do society’s “dirty work,” as sociologists would say.
So I transgress all day long, physically and socially. I drive
past picket lines. I use ultrasound to see inside bodies. I enter
body cavities with metal instruments. I erase evidence of
sexual transgressions. I turn women into non-mothers
(well, not really; I know full well that most women seeking
abortions are mothers, or will be later). And fetuses die at
my hands. Oddly, though, it is not with these recognitions
that I feel transgressive. Instead I am overtaken with this
feeling when I use ordinary kitchenware in the course of
an abortion procedure.
Maybe kitchenware reminds me of my own defiance
of gender-role stereotypes: I am a woman working as a doctor,
rather than baking and doing arts and crafts at home—
although I enjoy those things, too. I certainly find irony
in the fact that abortion—this most contested part of U.S.
social life, which paralyzes legislators and holds federal
budgets hostage—uses everyday objects. No doubt I get
a hint of delight imagining the shock to conservative
sensibilities that comes with realizing that kitchen tools,
objects of domesticity, are simultaneously tools of reproductive
agency. And I feel relief using domestic objects for
safe abortion care, so women don’t need to rely on other
domestic objects (knitting needles, coat hangers) to end
their pregnancies. But mostly these objects are reminders
that “women’s work” includes abortion. Anti-abortion
politics and rhetoric rely on the lie that abortion is not a
legitimate part of women’s everyday lives and experiences.
But, in fact, it is.
Lisa Harris, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics &
Gynecology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.
Design: Anonymous Design, Inc.