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Abortion's Mother: Early Works of Simone de Beauvoir

Germain Kopaczynski, O.F.M.Conv.

Simone de Beauvoir's first novel, <She Came to Stay>, has as its epigraph
Hegel's comment: "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other."1 The
fundamental hostility of human beings toward each other remains constant in
Beauvoir's works all her life long. In a sense, her whole literary output as well as her
life can be regarded as a long, running commentary upon <She Came to Stay's>
epigraph. In the French feminist's stance on the practice of human abortion, we witness
the same clashing of human consciousnesses ending in death:

The immorality of women, favorite theme of misogynists, is not to be wondered at;
how could they fail to feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous principles that men
publicly proclaim and secretly disregard? They learn to believe no longer in what men
say when they exalt woman or when they exalt man; the one thing they are sure of is
this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there.
It is at her first abortion that woman begins to "know." For many women the world will
never be the same.2

The Mother of a Movement

Simone de Beauvoir's <The Second Sex> is the <sine qua non> of contemporary
feminist readings. Camille Paglia has it exactly right:

<The Second Sex> remains for me the supreme work of modern feminism. Most
contemporary feminists don't realize to what degree they are merely repeating,
amplifying, or qualifying its individual sections and paragraphs.3

Though she devotes a sizeable section of the book to the topic of motherhood, Simone
de Beauvoir spent her whole life avoiding it.4 Her attitude toward motherhood never
wavered: she never wanted to become a mother and spent much of her talent first as a
writer5 and then as a feminist urging women either to avoid motherhood completely or
else to choose the timing of it very carefully, going so far as to state repeatedly that
such motherhood should preferably be carried out by means of artificial insemination
in order to have a life planned as one wished.6 Never a biological mother, Simone de
Beauvoir has nevertheless become the mother of a movement.7

With allowances made for the varieties of feminism, Simone de Beauvoir is
either at the source of the second feminist wave or else serves as a transition figure
between the first and second feminist waves. Wherever she is situated, she is a
formidable presence. She is the closest thing to a revered figure by modern feminists, as
much for her lifestyle as for her thought,8 and this despite some recent studies strongly
suggesting that she was more a pseudo-bourgeois housewife doing the best she could
picking up the pieces after Sartre's love affairs than total mistress of her destiny.9

After first examining Beauvoir's indebtedness to Sartre which includes
existential ethics and atheism, we will examine how the mother of modern feminism
regarded the practice and the ethics of abortion in several works written before <The
Second Sex>. What she has to say in these early works may help us to see that, while
the practice of human abortion is by no means an essential feature of feminism <per
se>, abortion and the killing that is concomitant with it is a key feature of the sort of
feminism that Beauvoir eventually came to promote, a feminism grounded in Hegelian
dialectic _ "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other" _ and taking root in
Sartrean soil: "L'enfer, c'est les autres."

Regarding abortion, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre began writing on
the topic at approximately the same time. Not surprisingly, they think along the same
lines.10 Not only was <The Second Sex> written by Beauvoir to follow up on a
suggestion made to her by Sartre, what passes for a plot in Sartre's novel <The Age of
Reason> revolves around its protagonist finding the money for his lover's abortion.11
Something similar takes place in Simone de Beauvoir's first literary treatments of the
abortion issue.

"La Grande Sartreuse"12

It is practically <de rigueur> that a study of Simone de Beauvoir must include
her lifelong relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.13 While some feminists are uneasy with
what they consider Beauvoir's somewhat subservient relationship with Sartre,14 others
take comfort in the view that Sartre's existential philosophy is congenial to feminist
aims and demands them as its logical complement.15 Her devotion to Sartre is
complete. In her posthumously-published <Letters to Sartre> Beauvoir often speaks of
Sartre as "my little absolute."16 It is probably not coincidental that Simone de Beauvoir,
despite the acclaim heaped on her by grateful legions of feminist admirers, accepted the
label of "feminist" only in 1973 as Sartre's own health declined.17

At the end of her autobiographical volume, <Force of Circumstance>, Simone de
Beauvoir treats at some length the oft-raised question: did she owe her success to
Sartre? Jean Guitton had said that with another man, Beauvoir may well have become a
mystic. The French feminist takes umbrage, seeing in the Catholic critic's comments
nothing more than the old ideas of her father,18 namely, that woman is made by others:
"But people in our society really do believe that a woman thinks with her uterus _ what
low-mindedness, really!" (<Force of Circumstance>, p. 644). She then goes on to lament
the fact that while Sartre earned fame, she reaped only opprobrium.

Beauvoir once remarked of herself and Sartre that freedom was their very
substance.19 If liberty was their substance, then death was their message. This was
precisely as it had to be, according to Simone de Beauvoir. In point of fact, as "Notre-
Dame de Sartre" read the evidence of women's oppression in her key of existentialism
as filtered through Sartre's gaze, violence and killing were regarded as the keys to the
whole mystery of woman's secondary status.20 Why has man always been superior to
woman? Beauvoir answers:

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why
superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that
which kills (<The Second Sex>, p. 58).

Simone de Beauvoir then adds the pregnant comment: "<Here we have the key to the
whole mystery>" (ibid., author's emphasis).

For those who would equate the feminist movement with the change in society's
sexual mores, that is, for those who accept in principle and live out in practice the
sexual revolution, abortion is regarded as little more than a routine hazard of an active
sex life.21 In another sense, especially in the hands of Sartre's and Beauvoir's version of
existential philosophy, abortion is to be nothing less than the harbinger of the entrance
of woman into full humanity. To Simone de Beauvoir, the sex that kills is the sex that is
honored. Indeed, killing is the key to the whole mystery.22

Beauvoir and Ethics

In 1947, two years before <The Second Sex>, Simone de Beauvoir published an
elaboration of existential ethics.23 Here we find some of the key strands of what will
pass for her moral philosophy. In this work she defends atheistic existentialism against
the charge of being amoral. On the contrary, says the French existentialist, it is precisely
because God does not exist that human actions take on an absolute character. God is
able to pardon and compensate for sins, but "if God does not exist, man's faults are
inexpiable" (<The Ethics of Ambiguity>, p. 16). She attempts a definition of the sort of
humanism she espouses: the moral world is not a world that is given but rather a world
as it is <willed> by human beings, precisely as their will expresses its authentic reality.
Being moral and being free is the same choice.

Existentialist ethics is an effort to become aware of and then to avoid <mauvaise
foi>, bad faith, bad willing, the free choice to let others shape one's destiny, resulting in
the anomaly of a free adult human being living in an infantile world. How is it
possible? As Descartes observed, children have no choice but to live in this way (<The
Ethics of Ambiguity>, p. 35). Women, on the other hand, <do> have a choice, yet they
often choose to live in bad faith. That women, free and rational beings, choose freely to
live in bad faith, is a theme to which Simone de Beauvoir will return in her later
works.24

Several times in <The Ethics of Ambiguity> Beauvoir discusses three categories
of persons that she will examine in greater detail in <The Second Sex>: the infant, the
slave, and the woman.25 As she nears the end of her treatise on existential ethics, after
discovering the complexity of human ethical behavior, Beauvoir tells her readers that
ambiguity is not to be confused with absurdity.26

Though the terminology is ours and not hers, if we were to question Simone de
Beauvoir for a moral methodology, it seems clear that hers would be decidedly
teleological. In discussing a question pertaining to violence, for example, she observes
that human beings can never judge the good in a given situation <a priori.>27 As the
very title of the work suggests, Beauvoir is also mindful of the difficulty of the subject
matter of human ethical action: "What makes the problem more complex is that the
freedom of one man almost always concerns that of other individuals" (<The Ethics of
Ambiguity>, p. 143).

Is existential ethics open to the charge of individualism? Yes, but then again,
opines Beauvoir, so is Christianity, so is Kantianism. Free human beings find their law
in freedom (p. 156). The volume ends with a plea for an existential ethics cut to human
and earthly standards; her atheism will not permit her to admit that there are any
others.

When we slice through the existential rhetoric of <The Ethics of Ambiguity>,
Simone de Beauvoir's existential ethics looks remarkably like the ethics of secular
humanism. Both are enamored with the perfectible human subject, both pin their hopes
on the power of modern technology to bring about a more just, humane society, and
both herald the advance of secular civilization which will succeed despite noticeable
religious obscurantism. The atheism that animates both is by no means the least of their
likenesses.28

Beauvoir, Atheism, and Religion

Always religious as a young girl, Simone de Beauvoir stopped believing in God
when she was fourteen, as she recounts at some length in the first volume of her
autobiography. The loss of faith in God was gradual.29 The foundations of her girlish
faith were weakened in an episode that took place with her confessor, Abbe Martin.30
The example given by her father continued the gradual process of unbelief.31 Her faith
in God finally toppled one evening at Meyrignac. Reading the forbidden Balzac and
realizing just how much she loved the world, the precocious fourteen-year old Simone
de Beauvoir became an atheist:

"I no longer believe in God," I told myself, with no great surprise. . . . That was proof: if
I had believed in Him, I should not have allowed myself to offend Him so light-
heartedly. I had always thought that the world was a small price to pay for eternity; but
it was worth more than that, because I loved the world, and it was suddenly God
whose price was small: from now on His name would have to be a cover for nothing
more than a mirage. For a long time now the concept I had had of Him had been
purified and refined, sublimated to the point where He no longer had any countenance
divine, any concrete link with the earth or therefore any being. His perfection cancelled
out His reality. That is why I felt so little surprise when I became aware of His absence
in heaven and in my heart. I was not denying Him in order to rid myself of a
troublesome person: on the contrary, I realized that He was playing no further part in
my life and so I concluded that he had ceased to exist for me.32

We might find it strange, therefore, that despite her atheism, and even if only
indirectly, Simone de Beauvoir tells us that her Catholic faith had a large hand in
shaping her vision of the world.33 Her social consciousness, for example, she attributes
to her Catholic faith:

My Catholic upbringing had taught me never to look upon any individual, however
lowly, as of no account: everyone had the right to bring to fulfillment what I called
their eternal essence. My path was clearly marked: I had to perfect, enrich, and express
myself in a work of art that would help others to live.34

In a volume which includes several interviews, French critic Francis Jeanson
reiterates what Beauvoir has related regarding the great lessons her faith taught. Chief
among them is the infinite worth of the individual, women as well as men.35 Perhaps it
is this religious upbringing that haunts Simone de Beauvoir when she approaches the
question of abortion.36

Two Early Fictional Accounts

While her most elaborate statement regarding abortion is found in <The Second
Sex>, Simone de Beauvoir treats the topic of abortion in several of her earlier writings.
These initial attempts to deal with the abortion issue are remarkably similar: in fictional
narratives, Beauvoir describes situations in which there is no love between the man and
the woman who conceive the child; there is disgust at the situation, dehumanizing
language is utilized to refer to the child in the womb, and in both accounts we discover
a suffused, smoldering rage at the human condition. <When Things of the Spirit Come
First> points out the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality on abortion; <The Blood of
Others> uses the abortion decision to make a point about woman's power to choose.

When Things of the Spirit Come First, ca. 1937

Written, as Beauvoir remarked, "a little before I was thirty," but not published
until 1979,37 <When Things of the Spirit Come First> is Beauvoir's taking issue with
what she considers the hypocrisy of her bourgeois milieu, including the Catholicism
which she blamed for bringing about the death of her best friend, Elizabeth Mabille,
affectionately known as Zaza.38 In this youthful work we locate the first mention in the
writings of Simone de Beauvoir of the child developing in the womb.39 In the story
"Chantal," we find one of the characters, Monique, facing an unplanned pregnancy. It is
she who is speaking to her friend, Andree, about the father of the child, Serge:

"I went to bed with him three months ago and I'm pregnant. I don't know what
will happen to me."

Andree gazed at her friend with horror, though she could not yet quite believe
her. It seemed impossible that a mysterious bit of rot should be spreading in that slim,
graceful body. . . .

Andree shivered. She looked at Monique but without being able to overcome an
immense disgust. Under the blue silk dress, under her belly's satiny skin there was
something shapeless, something living, that grew and swelled with every minute. . . .
(<When Things of the Spirit Come First>, pp. 85-86).

The two friends decide to go to their teacher, Plattard,40 in hopes of coming up
with a way out of the embarrassing situation. Andree reassures Monique of their
teacher's help:

"Let me tell her; she'll understand," said Andree, gently stroking Monique's hot,
feverish hand. "She has no prejudices. She will be able to advise us _ tell us about
something you can take, the address of a midwife. They say it's easy: all you have to
know is what to do." (<When Things of the Spirit Come First>, p. 86).41

Approaching Plattard on behalf of her friend, Andree tells her of the disaster that has
befallen Monique. Believing initially that Monique is in fact Serge's mistress, Plattard
agrees and asks Andree: "What will her parents say? There will be the most appalling
scandal." Beauvoir continues the narrative:

The trouble and the look of reprobation that Andree saw in Plattard's eye froze
her heart; in a hesitant voice she said, "But isn't there a way of not having babies? Don't
you know any? Or people that could tell us?"

Plattard looked at her with a kind of horror. "God, what filth!" she said in a
deeply shocked voice. "To think that such an idea can have come into Monique's head,
and into yours, Andree. It's unbelievable."

Andree went white . . . "But why?" she cried passionately. "Why is it wicked?
Monique can't have her whole life ruined because of this nonsense."

Plattard's features grew sharp. "Who has been influencing you? Have you no
moral sense at all? It's monstrous!" (<When Things of the Spirit Come First>, p. 88).

Much of Simone de Beauvoir's writing in the future will be an effort to exonerate
Andree and silence what Beauvoir considers the false moralizing and hypocrisy of
Plattard who, in Beauvoir's eyes, is guilty of bad faith. These themes of hypocrisy and
bad faith recur in Beauvoir's other treatments of abortion, most notably in <The Second
Sex>.

The Blood of Others

Another fictional treatment of abortion follows, an abortion undergone by the
heroine, Helene Bertrand, who dies at the end of <The Blood of Others>, not of the
abortion but while fighting in the French Resistance in World War II.42 She is perhaps
the most heroic female protagonist in all of Beauvoir's writings.43 Ironically, her death
is practically an act of self-sacrifice on behalf of the male hero, Jean Blomart.44

The description of the abortion scene has some parallels to her earlier treatment.
In both instances, the abortion is sought because there is no true love between the man
and the woman. (In fact, Blomart is not even the father of Helene's child.) The language
Beauvoir uses is also similar, especially that of refusing to acknowledge any sort of
human standing to what Beauvoir calls "that thing in the womb."

It is Jean Blomart who is doing the narrating:

She [Helene] stood outside my room with a timid expression that I had not seen before;
she carried a big parcel under her arm. My last hope faded: Yvonne had not lied, it was
no jest. Under Helene's blue dress, beneath her childish skin, was that thing which she
fed with her blood" (<The Blood of Others>, p. 113).

And again:

But in a room there was Helene with that thing in her womb. . . . Her teeth were
chattering violently and her hands were clutching the sheet. "Do I disgust you?" "My
poor child, what do you take me for?" "But it's disgusting,"she said brokenly. A tear
rolled down her cheek (<The Blood of Others>, p. 114).45

Beauvoir paints a bleak and somewhat contrived picture in detailing the
abortion episode. Nine references to <blood> and <red> occur in the five pages of the
abortion scene. There is talk of disgust, things feeding on blood, vague odors filling the
room, a practically blind old abortionist, unsanitary conditions, and guilt on the part of
both protagonists (cf. <The Blood of Others>, pp. 118-119).

Blomart regards the pregnancy experience and the abortion which Helene will
shortly undergo as her coming of age:

How young she was! She liked chocolate and bicycles and she went forward into life
with the boldness of a child. And now she lay there, in the midst of her red woman's
blood, and her youth and her gaiety ebbed from her body with an obscene gurgling
(<The Blood of Others>, p. 118).

Helene feels relief after the abortion: "It's all over," she said. "I can't believe it. I
feel so well!" There follows an exchange on freedom and choice. Helene tells Blomart:

"I'm not a little dog. . . . You have said to me so often that you respect other people's
liberty. And you made decisions for me and treat me like a thing" (<The Blood of
Others>, p. 120).

Blomart replies: "I didn't want you to be unhappy." Helene answers:

"And if I prefer to be unhappy? It's for me to choose." She leaned her cheek against my
hand. "I have chosen." She repeats once again: "It's for me to choose" (<The Blood of
Others>, p. 120).

Perhaps it is only fitting that "It's for me to choose" ends this discussion of Simone de
Beauvoir's first attempts to deal with the abortion question. Much of contemporary
feminism will follow her lead in this regard. Indeed, in these early works, "Notre-Dame
de Sartre" is, in effect, laying the groundwork for a popular feminist pro-abortion
chant: "Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide."

Conclusion

We began this discussion of Simone de Beauvoir by citing the epigraph of her
first novel, <She Came to Stay>: "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other."
As we conclude, we go to the novel's final words.

In a recent article attempting to establish a right to abortion, American feminist
Gloria Steinem begins with the words:

The most crucial question of democracy, feminism, and simple self-respect is not:
<What> gets decided? That comes second. The first question is: <Who> decides?46

That Steinem is being a dutiful daughter of Simone de Beauvoir we see in the final