Medea v. Antigone: The Tragedy of Abortion

 

Medea, a woman who chose to abort twins

Antigone, a nurse who witnessed the abortions

Scene: At the Calvary cemetery in Salt Lake City

 

MEDEA: You had no right to bury those fetuses.  You are interfering with my life.

ANTIGONE:  Unborn children are people too.  They deserve to have a decent burial after death.

MEDEA: They are not “children.”  The Court of Courts says that they are not even legal persons.

ANTIGONE: Proponents of slavery said that a slave was not a person either.

MEDEA: You are violating my right to privacy.

ANTIGONE: Slave-holders also used privacy as an argument for harming others.

MEDEA: Abortion is protected by the Constitution.

ANTIGONE: Slavery advocates also used the Constitution to justify their practices.

MEDEA: I was the slave.  Those parasitic twins were leeching their strength from my body.  I can do what I want with my body and anything that grows in it.  You stole those aborted fetuses and then you memorialized them, as if they were human beings.

ANTIGONE: Slavery proponents also argued that slaves were not human.  But President Lincoln said that chattel slavery was doomed to extinction, and I know that chattel abortion is also doomed to extinction.

MEDEA: What do you mean by chattel?  Unwanted pregnancies are not entitled to monuments and epitaphs.

ANTIGONE: Chattel means ‘disposable personal property.’  Human babies are not disposable. They should not be dissected and dumped in medical waste containers.  They should not be torn up and incinerated, like trash or garbage.

MEDEA: We live in a democracy.  This is a free country.

ANTIGONE: Senator Alexander Stephens used the freedom-of-choice argument to defend slavery.

MEDEA:  This is not about slavery.  This is about a woman’s right to choose.

ANTIGONE:  Are murderers free to choose killing?  Are rapists free to choose assault?  Are abusers free to choose violence?  They are not free to choose the aftermath of such actions.

MEDEA: Well, neither are you.  When you placed a headstone over those twins, you placed a tombstone over your career. You will never practice as a Nurse again.

ANTIGONE: Mother Teresa said that “abortion destroys two lives, the life of the child and the conscience of the mother.”  I fear that you are now suffering three great losses.

MEDEA: You do not care about me.  You care nothing about the health of women.  You only care about the useless bodies of surplus infants.  I want women to have power.

ANTIGONE: Birth is empowerment. Abortion is disappointment.

MEDEA: Your position denies equality to women.

ANTIGONE:  Birth is an equal opportunity employer; abortion is a fetal opportunity destroyer. 

MEDEA: Your infantile emotional attachment to other people’s offspring is despicable and discriminatory.

ANTIGONE: Elective abortion discriminates against babies by size, sex, age, race, handicap, or socio-economic level.  Birth welcomes all children: male and female, black and white, bond and free, small and great, weak and strong, rich and poor.

MEDEA:  Your slogans are anti-female.

ANTIGONE: Your twins were female.

MEDEA:    You have betrayed all women.

ANTIGONE: Two healthy little girls, perfect in every way, harmless as doves.

MEDEA:    It was none of your business.

ANTIGONE: I saw them in the ultrasound.  Their fingers were entwined.  I saw their beating hearts.

MEDEA: What about me?  Do you see me?  What about my broken heart?

ANTIGONE: Sacrificing the blood of your children will not heal you.

MEDEA: I could have donated the bodies to medical causes, to cure Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. I could have sold the bodies for stem-cell research to rehabilitate paralysis victims, but you took the bodies for your own selfish purposes.  You gave them a funeral to ease your hypocritical, hyper-active sense of duty.

ANTIGONE:  Can a woman forget her unborn twins, that she should not have compassion on the children of her womb?  She may forget, yet I will not forget them. [Isa 49:15-16].

MEDEA: You are sick.

ANTIGONE: Mine eyes have seen the gory pictures

of dismembered babes;

They have pulled them from their mothers,

and then harvested their brains;

They have burned them in incinerators,

dumped them without graves,

While Life goes marching on.

MEDEA:  You are a silly spinster.

ANTIGONE:  From the beauty of the body,

they are suctioned into bits;

Or they're sliced in ragged pieces

to a mass of broken limbs;

Or the saline poison stops their hearts

and broils their fragile skin,

But Life goes marching on.

MEDEA: You are obscene.

ANTIGONE: In the name of human freedom,

they tear babies from the womb;

They have labeled life sub-human

and made liberty a tomb;

They use violence for solutions,

and their clinic profits boom,

But Life goes marching on.

MEDEA: I will not heed your grisly parody of that self-congratulatory abolitionist hymn.

ANTIGONE:  Little children are the kingdom;

Little children have a mission;

Little children bring us vision,

And Life goes marching on.

MEDEA:          You are not a woman.

You are a fiend. 

You are a Fury. 

You are Medusa.

ANTIGONE:  I named them.  I christened your daughters.  I called them “Galilee” and “Jubilee.”  Even in death, they looked so tender, pure, and delicate.

MEDEA: Motherhood is all poetry for you, but it is all politics to me.

ANTIGONE: They were your little girls, created in your image, and in the image of God.

MEDEA:  They were not my children.  They were not little goddesses.  They were abortions.  They were just masses of tissue, just products of my desire.

ANTIGONE:  The body is a temple.

MEDEA: Dig them up.

ANTIGONE:  If you cannot grant them the gift of life, I beg you to grant them at least a safe resting place.

MEDEA: I said start digging.  Now.

ANTIGONE: I have no tools for that.

MEDEA: I have a knife.

ANTIGONE: Please put the knife away.

MEDEA: This dagger shall thy memorial be, . . .

ANTIGONE: Oh, pity and fear.

MEDEA: . . . inasmuch as you have done this unto me.

ANTIGONE: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

MEDEA: My rest is your silence.

ANTIGONE: If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Selected References

 

Chaliha, Jaya and Edward Le Joly.  The Joy in Living: A Daily Guide to Living with Mother Teresa.  New York: Viking, 1996.

Corrigan, Robert W., ed.  “Medea.”  Euripides.  New York: Dell, 1975.

Duffy, Bernard K. and Halford R. Ryan, eds.  American Orators Before 1900.  Westport,

CT: Greenwood, 1987.

Greer, Judith.  “Between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.”  Salon.com (23 Feb 2001).

Hallen, Cynthia L. “Birth as Empowerment."  Latter-Day Digest (October 1993): 48-49.

Holy Bible (King James Version).  Salt Lake City, Utah:  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1988.

Howe, Julia Ward.  “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Salt Lake City, 1985.

The Riverside Shakespeare.  “Hamlet.”  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

Watling E. F., trans.  “Antigone.”  Sophocles: The Theban Plays.  New York: Penguin, 1985.