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Is That All There Is?
Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, Helen Hardacre, 1997, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 310 pages

John C. Sonne, M.D.
The Journal of Psychohistory V. 25, N. 4, Spring 1998

The title of this book refers to the emergence in Japan during the 1970s of a semireligious commercial practice called mizuko kuyo (water children rites), whose promoters marketed a ritual aiming to comfort and honor the spirits of aborted, miscarried, or stillborn fetuses, so that they will have no desire to carry out tatari (spirit attacks) against the mothers of these fetuses and against others of her intimates as well. This practice arose a few decades after the deritualization and medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth in Japan following World War II, and the passage and reaffirmation of the Eugenics Protection Law, which permitted abortion on grounds of economic hardship.

Although this book is a fascinating and well researched study of mizuko kuyo and also gives a comprehensive view of much of Japan's culture and religion, the fact that the author has an underlying ax to grind embedded in her presentation becomes quickly apparent. Hardacre's unstated premise, implicitly revealed in the epigraph preceding her main text, in which she extensively quotes a passage from Anne Rice's The Witching Hour (Rice, 1990), is that those who feel guilty about having aborted one of their children, or who are haunted by anything that reminds them of their lost child, are clearly being ridiculous. The first sentence reads: "Judith moved out while Michael was at work. The bill for the abortion - Boston hospital and doctor - came a week later. Michael sent his check to the appropriate address. He never saw Judith again." Shortly thereafter Michael found himself experiencing a fear of sexual intimacy, and he was unable to forget his dead baby, whom he had nicknamed "Little Chris." He also began to experience haunting and incapacitating reminders of his lost child when he saw crying, angry or revengeful fetuses in the movies Alien, Eraserhead, The Kindred, Ghoulies, Leviathan, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, and Pumpkin Head. In the final sentence of this quotation, Michael dismisses all of his torment, and laughs at himself.

Presumably in agreement with Michael's laughter, and implicitly expecting the reader to be so too, Hardacre further supports her position of guilt-free abortion with a quote from Petchesky (1984), that only in the last two decades, "when traditional justifications for restricting access to abortion became culturally anachronistic and constitutionally impermissible," has "the moral value attached to the fetus [become] a central issue in American culture and law." Although the quotation from The Witching Hour describes guilt in a male, Hardacre's main focus is that guilt about abortion is primarily induced in and experienced by women. Her general thesis is that attitudes about abortion and women's sexuality are intimately related, and that the "fetocentric" view of those who are concerned about the welfare of the fetus, who speak of guilt, and who oppose abortion, contains within it a motive by "callous men" to exploit and condemn the sexuality of "foolish women." She sees mizuko kuyo as an expression of this: "Mizuko kuyo selectively applies fetocentric rhetoric, usually to young, unmarried women, using an ideology of motherhood to stigmatize nonreproductive sexual activity in them, but not their male partners, and casting much greater moral opprobrium upon single women than upon married women who have abortions. It seeks to motivate young, unmarried women to pay for rituals to appease wrathful fetuses."

Although the author presents her work as a scholarly multidisciplinary research study and analysis of mizuko kuyo, with numerous references, documentation and descriptions of this ritual and its marketing, it is clear that she is using this research to further her not so well hidden agenda of scornfully rejecting any position that defends the life and rights of the unborn, and of ignoring any evidence that the unborn are sentient human beings capable of mentation and communication. She is guilty of the very smuggling of ideology in the luggage of science that she accuses researchers of prenatal life of using. Furthermore, even though she may not agree with their position, there is no respect whatsoever given to the position of many people who are opposed to abortion because they believe in the sanctity of all human life from conception to death, believe in the soul, believe in God, and who are concerned not only about the life and soul of the unborn, but about the future welfare of the child's parents, their intimates, and the welfare of society as well. Contempt for this position is evident in phraseology which is replete with the nuance that any such position is hopelessly anachronistic, no longer held by anyone who has any intelligence whatsoever, and the assumption that the reader is, of course, in complete agreement with the author. Only the misguided would disagree with her.

In addition to her bias against what she calls fetocentrism, she has a second not-too-hidden agenda, an unrelenting polemic against "callous men." On pages 172 and 173, she quotes extensively from an unreferenced pamphlet entitled, "The Frightful Notion of Cutting Off a Small Life." (The omission of citation by Hardacre is especially egregious in a study that cites over 200 references, especially considering that this quotation is the longest one in her book.) In the pamphlet the unnamed author describes the public horror of the Japanese people in 1981 when they learned that a mother, a university graduate, had on two separate occasions strangled each of her newborn children. The author goes on to comment, "But what if the baby were disposed of by abortion, before birth? In that case it would not have been out of the ordinary and would never have been reported." (Incidentally, George Will (1997), commenting on similar killings of newborns in America recently, pointed out the same paradox, adding that if these babies had been killed a few moments earlier, all the mothers would have been guilty of would have been practicing medicine without a license.) Hardacre's comments about the Japanese piece- and I assume she would feel similarly about Will's essay - was, "This passage is characteristic of the combination of misogyny, fetocentrism, and nationalism just beneath the surface of mizuko kuyo rhetoric. Because the strategy is so frequently recapitulated, it is worth analyzing in some detail." The first item of Hardacre's "analysis" is no more than a repetition of the pamphlet writer's criticism of the mother's behavior, as if mere repetition would find the reader joining Hardacre in seeing things her way. Her "analysis" continues with a listing of things she disagrees with, a defense of her "common sense" on abortion presented in Chapter 2, and a lament that "the Callous Man is no where to be seen; the Foolish Woman must assume all the blame"

Although the author claims to have a multidisciplinary approach, noteworthy is the absence of any psychoanalytic perspective. From this perspective, how could one not consider that many women, despite the more permissive legal and social framework existing in Japan, America, and elsewhere today, which the psychoanalytically uninformed might consider would help them to have socially and legally sanctioned abortions without guilt, would nevertheless have guilt, and that this guilt is projected onto the spirit of the fetus who is then reified as revengeful. The same dynamics of guilt about masturbation can be operative despite one's living in a society that is permissive and not guilt inducing.

One of the tasks in helping fathers and mothers deal with their feelings about having aborted their children, feelings that are often repressed or denied but may nevertheless be generating a wide variety of symptoms the origins of which may remain hidden unless the therapist is alert to, and open to hearing, their possible existence, is to help them to forgive themselves, to grieve, and to be open to love and be loved. This is not possible if what they have done in aborting their children is swept under the rug as a matter of little import. Not uncommonly parents who have aborted their children are abortion survivors who are acting out their own unresolved dynamics about having been threatened with being aborted (Sonne, 1994a, 1994b). If mothers and fathers who have aborted their children deny guilt, or condemn themselves or others ruthlessly, they remain stuck with unprocessed feelings (Sonne, 1996). One feels guilty because of one's own dynamics. Guilt is only partly reinforced or induced by society, and it can be only partly relieved, and sometimes not relieved at all, by society. Did the reader ever try to help a mea culpa friend to not feel guilty? Even psychotherapists may have difficulty helping someone with a too harsh superego, and it may be even harder helping one who has a too lenient one. Furthermore, to blame "callous men" for the guilt felt by Hardacre's "foolish women" defines these women as dependent, and contributes to infantilizing the very women whom Hardacre has already labeled as "foolish." It solidifies their victimhood as well. Blaming neither solves the women's conflicts about abortion, pregnancy, sexuality and their ability to look out for themselves and to love and be loved by honorable men, nor does it help them to deal with their own responsibility and their own striving toward maturity.

I have no quarrel with the author's criticism of those who exploit women who are vulnerable to the idea that the fetus is reified as a vengeful spirit, and who, for a fee, offer to free her from this revenge. Aside from this ethical issue, however, I, as a psychoanalyst, see the intensive and extensive focus on and condemnation of the exploitative use of misuko kuyo, and the characterization of it as representative of the exploitation by "callous men" of the guilt about sexuality and abortion of "foolish women," without giving major consideration to the issue of the internal origin of guilt and the need for denial and projection, as an incomplete analysis of the dynamics of this phenomenon. Furthermore, relative to the desirability of the development of a more genuine capacity for heterosexual love and respect in the world, Hardacre's generalizations about men and women included in her appraisal of misuko kuyo work against this goal by augmenting, polarizing and emphasizing the hostility between the sexes in such a way that the reader might conclude that she sees hostility as the main ingredient in almost all male-female relationships, and little love. To believe these generalizations would deflect both men and women in the global community from the task many face of resolving their internal conflicts about sexuality, love and abortion.

Correspondence should be addressed to John C. Sonne, M.D., at 443 Shady Lane, Moorestown, NJ 08057.

1. Petchesky, R. (1984) Abortion and Woman's Choice. London: Verso.

2. Rice, A. (1990) The Witching Hour. New York: Ballantine, pp. 64-65.

3. Sonne, J. C. (1994a) "The relevance of the dread of being aborted to models of therapy and models of the mind. Part I: Case examples." The International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, 1994, 6(1): 67-86. Reprinted in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Journal, 1995, 9(3): 195-219.

4. Sonne, J. C. (1994b) "The relevance of the dread of being aborted to models of therapy and models of the mind. Part II: Mentation and communication in the unborn." The International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, 1994, 6(2): 247-275. Reprinted in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Journal, 1995, 9(4): 257-294.

5. Sonne, J. C. (1996) "Interpreting the dread of being aborted in therapy." The International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, 8(3): 317-339. Reprinted in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Journal, 1997, 11(4): 195-214.

6. Will, G.F. (1997) "Abortion culture comes to the prom." Washington Post, p. C-89, June 15th..

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