I’ve been doing thought experiments ever since I began college, I think. Perhaps most people have at a similar age – considering the “what if” of various propositions. I think it is a healthful mental exercise. Recently, in the context of Texas’ SB 8 abortion legislation, I have been considering various aspects of Satyagraha.
As you probably know, Satyagraha is a term based in Sanskrit that is used to describe various forms of non-violent protest. It was a term used by Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others. I’m not a scholar on this subject, but I think that it applies to passive resistance, mass non-compliance, sit-ins, and other protest actions that do not require harming others. At least some Buddhist and Hindi philosophers would include acts of self-sacrifice or martyrdom as a form of non-violent protest. I’m thinking self-immolation here.
So, here is my thought experiment. What if pregnant persons unwilling to carry a pregnancy were to present themselves to a venue of a governmental authority (the SCOTUS, a Governor’s mansion, a State Capitol, etc.) and self-immolate or otherwise ritually sacrifice themselves as a form of protest against their inability to access legal abortion services? Would it make a difference? Would it change abortion restrictions? Would anyone even take notice for more than one 24-hour news cycle?
I am not advocating such actions; I am simply updating the plot of Aristophanes’ women, in the play Lysistrata, to the current day. My version is not about withholding sex from men but about withholding life from men who seek to control those lives.
If such acts were to have an effect on public policy, how many women’s lives would it take? Would one suicide on the steps of the SCOTUS be sufficient to reinstate Roe v. Wade? How about ten? A hundred? Would it matter if a thousand pregnant women martyred themselves each year?
In my thought experiment, I consider the impact of school shootings and changes that they haven’t had on our gun laws. Hundreds of children are sacrificed on the altar of gun manufacturers’ lobbying dollars and political contributions, and nothing changes. If hundreds of reluctantly pregnant women leapt to their deaths or set themselves aflame, would it have any effect in changing laws meant only to control women’s’ bodies?
I also consider the fact that there are approximately one million abortions in the US each year – give or take, but only about 700 women die of pregnancy-related complications each year. Would it really take a million pregnant sacrifices to get lawmakers’ attention? Maybe a half-million would suffice since each pregnant person’s sacrifice would be a two-fer.
I do not know, but I fear that the answer is like the answer regarding the impact children’s’ deaths at the hands of men with firearms (it is almost never women, by the way). I have to wonder if there are some problems that will not submit to Satyagraha. Non-violence may not always be the answer to injustice.