Author: Jeff Koloze

Abstract:  After reviewing some contemporary scholarship which attempts to connect transgenderism and the right-to-life issues, this study applies the five questions of right-to-life literary theory to recent fictional work concerned with transgenderism and abortion and euthanasia.

           When Ryan T. Anderson wrote his When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment in 2018, transgender activism may indeed have been perceived as a moment, a blip, in the otherwise distorted perspectives of LGBTQ and transgender activists against heterosexual normativity.  These distortions have since been forced by the academy on students, by the leftist media on the entire nation, and by the Democratic Party on its candidates running for office.

Certainly, claims by transgender activists that the transgender population of the United States merits more government and social acceptance and support can be questioned by statistics from valid gay and lesbian sources regarding whether there is an urgent need to do so.  In terms of raw political power, the numbers of persons affected by gender dysphoria suggest that transgender activism does not merit increased government promotion.  The Nation, for example, reports that, while 11,000,000 persons in the United States purport to be LGBTQ, the “Portion of US adults who are transgender or nonbinary” is estimated to be 1.6%, or 5.3 million (“By the Numbers”).[2]  Now, as the end of 2022 approaches, the past four years of transgender political activity seem only a prelude to an entrenched philosophy which must never be questioned in academia, the media, or in government.

          Moreover, the oppression of those who uphold traditional sexual values regarding gender dysphoria is abetted by academics who should support them in the interests of freedom of thought and speech but do not because academia has fallen victim to the aggressive transgender ideology, a belief system characterized by two inherent logical fallacies in gender identity discourse that most scholars fail to recognize.[3]

First is a phrase used often in transgender political discourse which functions as a rallying cry for extremist transgender activists.  While Anderson correctly points out that gender is not “assigned” but “recognized” at birth (77) and, as fetologists know, perceived well before birth, many scholars persist in using the erroneous language of sex assigned at birth, probably because doing so comports with the political view that gender is a social construct instead of a natural factor of human identity.  For example, Heidi Moseson and her fellow researchers preface their definitions of the various categories of sexual identities with frequent use of the “assigned” phraseology:

[slide 2]  Gender identity can be consistent with or different from the sex that someone was assigned at birth.  Sex assigned at birth is typically based on external genitalia, and is recorded as female, intersex, or male.  “Transgender” is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned to them at birth, while “cisgender” is a term for people whose gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth.  (2)

Second is a recent phenomenon (within the last year or so), the biologically fallacious yet politically correct idea, according to leftist theorists, that pregnancy can occur in men as well as women.  One thinks of how the phrase “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant woman” or “mother” has been excoriated in social media by those who affirm that only women can become pregnant, often ridiculing leftist theorists for sacrificing biological facts of gender identity among humans for the cause of advancing an LGBTQ or transgender agenda.  The illogicality of this newest trend has not disturbed some researchers, however, such as Sydney Calkin and Cordelia Freeman, who answer a question about the connection between gender identity and abortion in their field of feminist geography thus:

[slide 3]  How are social and cultural geographers leading work to understand the diversity of bodies in relation to reproductivity to better account for the diversity of gender experiences among pregnant people?  Research on abortion often uneasily navigates the tensions of gender diversity and fluidity.  Restrictions on abortion access are widely understood as gender-based discrimination against women, but not all pregnant people self-identify as women.  Moreover, trans and non-binary pregnant people often face the greatest vulnerability in accessing reproductive care.  Geographers should do more to account for the intersection of gender with other axes of inequality including sexuality, class, ability, and race in abortion access.  (1329-30)

It would seem as though any claim for “rights” of persons experiencing gender dysphoria have only the vaguest connection with any of the three right-to-life issues (abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia), the sexual factor of abortion being the only possible nexus where a transgender person could argue that his or her “rights” are somehow being ignored, frustrated, or trampled.  Beyond this vague possibility, however, what does any argument for transgender sexual rights have to do with three practices which kill human beings?

          The scholarship surrounding transgenderism has not yet questioned the union of any claim to transgender “rights” and an anti-life mentality.  Instead, scholars have decidedly placed themselves fully in support of abortion and other anti-life practices often without delving deeper into the rationale behind the conjoining of the two radically different political issues.  For example, Barbara Sutton and Elizabeth Borland argue that

Abortion has also figured prominently in feminist politics, activism and theorizing.  Yet as gender binaries are deconstructed in dialogue with queer theory and movements, the meaning of “woman” and “man” cannot be taken for granted, and contemporary abortion politics reflects these contestations.  There have been increasing calls in activist spaces to “queer” abortion rights advocacy, to incorporate non-normative understandings of gender identity and sexuality into abortion struggles and services.  ([1378])

Furthermore, the naiveté by which these scholars have accepted abortion as being a transgender concern can be reduced to the notion that supporting sexual “freedom” means supporting abortion.  One can concede how this political position could have been obtained by leftist activists, for it does seem ineluctable to argue that, if a woman not only wishes but also has a right to engage in unrestrained sexual activity, she then must have the right to kill the unborn child who was not desired yet created by that sexual activity.  If there is a “right” to sexual activity, then the domain of that purported right extends only to sexual activity and not to the domain of another person’s body, the person in question being an unborn human being.  Moreover, as transgender activists assert, a human body is not necessarily recognized as one of only two genders, but whatever gender a person believes he or she is, disregarding the evidence of his or her genitalia and chromosomal endowment from his or her parents.  The scholars who ally themselves with transgender activists, therefore, have unfortunately failed to see the logical fallacy of such a conclusion.[4]

          Of course, pro-life academics are able to contend with the assault on heterosexual normativity by LGBTQ and transgender activists by emphasizing the scientific data in their respective fields.  Psychologists can assist persons with same-sex attraction to negotiate their unnatural affections, sociologists can direct persons with same-sex attraction to appropriate social services providing support, and medical staff can aid LGBTQ and transgender persons in understanding their bodies as male or female entities with discrete advantages for the promotion of human life.

Given that most faculty and scholars in the humanities, however, have acquiesced to the premises of LGBTQ and transgender political activism (probably because of a misunderstood or distorted sense of what diversity, inclusion, and equity mean), how can any faculty member or scholar in the humanities, particularly in literature, contribute to the severe gap in scholarship which affirms heterosexual normativity and refutes the claim that transgenderism must align itself with practices which lead to the death of human beings, specifically, the unborn by means of abortion, the handicapped newborn through infanticide, and the elderly or medically vulnerable by euthanasia?  The balance of this paper will venture to answer that question.

          For several years now, I have applied five questions of what I name right-to-life literary theory to various works written on the life issues, a method of literary criticism which, unlike the various theories used in the academy, can assist students of literature to understand a work’s perspective on human life more comprehensively than any of the current literary theories which are restrictive, such as feminist literary criticism, which emphasizes the tired concepts of patriarchy and oppression of women; deconstruction, which strives to prove the instability of language; or Marxist literary theory, which emphasizes the importance of economic power on human life.

          [slide 4]  The following are the five questions which constitute right-to-life literary theory.  First, does the literary work support the perspective that human life is, in the philosophical sense, a good, some “thing” which is priceless?  Second, does the literary work respect the individual as a being with inherent rights, the paramount one being the right to life?  Third, if the literary work covers the actions of a family, does it do so respecting heterosexual normativity and the integrity of the family?  Fourth, does the literary work comport with the view that unborn, newborn, and mature human life has an inherent right to exist?  Finally, when they are faced with their mortality, do the characters come to a realization that there is a divine presence in the world which justifies a life-affirming perspective?  These five questions will be applied to two representative transgender novels: Vickie Weaver’s Billie Girl (2010) and M-E Girard’s Girl Mans Up (2016).[5]

          [slide 5]  The plots of the novels can be briefly summarized before the questions of right-to-life literary theory are applied.  Weaver’s novel is mostly a first-person account by Billie Girl, who was abandoned by her birth parents and raised by various people, including two transvestites who called themselves her mothers; she eventually learned that “Big Mom was a boy” and that “Mama Edith was a boy, too” (42).  She ends her days in a nursing home where she euthanizes fellow residents.  Girard’s novel concerns Pen (Penelope), an eleventh grader who thinks that she must engage in same-sex activity because she is attracted to females and who thinks she is transgender because she likes to wear men’s clothing and style her hair as males do.  In the course of her ventures, Pen assists another high school student in obtaining an abortion and engages in both hetero- and homosexual episodes with her high school friends.

          These synopses may suggest that the novels may not be worth examining.  While Weaver’s is the better novel in terms of deeper issues to explore, both novels suffer from a discursive, if not insipid, style.[6]  Moreover, an adult reader (both novels are written for the young adult audience) may not appreciate the emotional trauma that the main characters experience and may thus consider the narratives verbose and immature.  However, both novels provide a rich insight into the minds of transgender characters and, certainly, into the views of Girard, a transgender author.  Moreover, when the five questions of right-to-life literary theory are applied, readers will discover the life-affirming ideas of both novels even though they seem to support abortion (as in Girard’s work) or euthanasia (as in Weaver’s novel).

A.  The Pricelessness of Human Life

          [slide 6]  To answer this first question of right-to-life literary theory, both novels do not convey a sense that human life is either precious or priceless, a standard principle typical of much modern fiction.  Perhaps this can be attributed to the lack of religious sensibility that the major characters in the novels display.  Perhaps the characters’ lack of piety, a necessary foundation to appreciate the value of human life, is displayed to meet what the publishing world thinks is the dominant secularist view of the young adult demographic, if not of the entire American reading public.  Both novels indicate that life is more a drudgery than an opportunity either to fulfill one’s life according to set values (a purely secularist view) or to collaborate with the Supreme Being to accomplish good works in this life as a preparation for eternal life (the Judeo-Christian view).

          The evidence that human life is more drudge than delight permeates the novels.  Pen’s motivation in life, which matches that of her friends, is that she is “a boyish, video-game-playing girl” (Girard 2).  Billie Girl seems merely to advance from one episode to another, without any direction or goal beyond satisfying her immediate needs; the men in her life are as migratory as the jobs they pursue.

B.  Respect for the Individual’s Right to Life

          On this second question of right-to-life literary theory, the selfishness which permeates contemporary fiction for young adults is evident in both novels.  Thus, while characters would be hard pressed to assert the right to life of other people, the young adults in these novels seem much more concerned about their own lives.  Adolescence is supposedly the time when young people define and refine themselves, their places in society, and even their relationships with other people and God; Girard’s characters perform none of these adolescent tasks.

Similarly, Billie Girl’s beginnings as an abandoned child should give her reasons to explore her purpose in life; she, like Girard’s characters, also does not operate in her fictional space to consider these questions of life and her place in the world.  Her philosophy is encapsulated in the commonplace that “We do what we have to do” (Weaver 132), an expression which is unclear regarding moral purpose, suggests dominance of one human being over another, and carries a fatalistic tone (“having to do” something cannot be as joyous as “wanting to do” something).  That the characters in these novels are self-centered to an extreme precludes any other interpretation than that they care more for themselves than others.  (The moral implications of such self-centeredness will become evident in response to other questions.)

C.  Heterosexual Normativity and Integrity of the Family

          One would presume that the global answer to this third question of right-to-life literary theory would be negative since both novels depict transgender characters who are not only comfortable with their gender dysphoria but also aggressive or militant in supporting the transgender distortion of heterosexual normativity.  There is sufficient evidence for this generality and for the characters’ distorted views of sexuality.

          Unlike religious-based persons who recognize that sexual relations are the province of a husband and wife to accomplish the goals of sacramental marriage (being able to engage in sexual activity to satisfy the human need for pleasure and to be open to the possibility of children), the characters in both novels have a warped sense of sexuality as merely a pleasurable activity, almost on a par with video games to satisfy their entertainment needs.  For example, Colby, one of Pen’s friends, uses her to obtain other girls as his sexual targets so that the girls won’t think he is “a jerk just trying to get laid” (Girard 8).  Tellingly, it is this same character who later says that “Getting in their pants isn’t worth it” and “I just wanna have fun and get laid” (Girard 29, 30).  Another of Pen’s friends, Garrett, has a distorted sense of male sexuality.  His philosophy, uttered in the commonplace expression (noted above) which evokes more humor than rational thought, is that using condoms is what men do: “A man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do” (Girard 130).[7]

          Similarly, Billie Girl’s first exposure to sexuality is a distortion of the sexual act; she learns about male sexuality from a boy whom she masturbated and was masturbated by a man later in life ostensibly as a cure for heavy menstrual cramps.  Although not explicitly stated in the novel, these sexual experiences may have affected Billie Girl’s attitude toward her reproductive powers: “I had never wanted to be a mother”, she claimed (Weaver 132).

D.  The Inherent Right to Exist of the Unborn, Newborn, and Mature Adults

          Both novels fail in answering this fourth criterion of right-to-life literary theory, and the failures are expressed in a surprising and ironic manner.  For example, one would expect that Pen, who is steeped in the transgender ideology, would think that assisting a fellow student in obtaining an abortion is consistent with her philosophical beliefs about gay and lesbian activism, which anti-life feminism distorted to include the killing of an unborn child.  One does not expect, therefore, that the abortion episode in the novel would be so cavalierly handled.  Perhaps the author did not want to make her novel preachy.  More likely, the brevity of the abortion incident suggests that, in a transgender character’s (and author’s) mind, abortion is not as important a matter as asserting one’s “right” to unlimited and unrestricted sexual activity with persons of the same sex.  After all, the six pages which mention Olivia’s abortion (191, 241, 262-3, 286, and 353) constitute 1.6% of the entire novel of 373 pages.  Granted, this is only one calculation in one novel, but this example counters the ideology asserted in scholarly literature that abortion is somehow vitally important to the rights of transgender people.

          More disturbing is the idea that animal life may be more valuable than human life as when Pen declares that she is emotionally bothered by blowing up video game dogs: “It kind of bugs me that I have to blow up dogs” (Girard 32).  Similarly, Pen later expresses in strong language her sadness about killing snails in her back yard: “I kind of feel like crap for destroying their home and murdering them” (Girard 51).  Since this idea is not contained in a solitary incident, one must conclude that the author deliberately conveyed these bits of information to convey the anti-human mentality of such a character.  Remember that it is Pen who assists her friend Olivia in obtaining an abortion, so an unborn child’s life obviously is not as valuable as a real snail’s life or even a video game dog’s.

          [slide 7]   Both novels express well the confusion over language at the center of the abortion and transgender issues.  For example, Pen’s confusion over words like “dude” and “girl” is central to the transgender debate: “It’s like one second, I should be a better dude.  I should stop being such a girly douche, and I should just man up.  Then, it’s the opposite: I’m too much of a guy, and it’s not right.  I should be a girl, because that’s what I’m supposed to be” (Girard 42).  Furthermore, Pen’s inability to understand English words which have stood the test of hundreds of years is evident in the following passage wherein she examines LGBTQ vocabulary:

I don’t think of myself as being gay, because that word sounds like it belongs to some guy.  Lesbian makes me think of some forty-year-old woman.  And queer feels like it can mean anything, but like—am I queer because I like girls, or because I look the way I do?  Maybe I don’t know enough words.  (Girard 65; italics in original)

Perhaps this is why Pen is confused in identifying her relationship with Blake, her lesbian lover; she wants “to be a boyfriend who is a girl” to Blake (84).

          [slide 8]  Consistent with the characters’ faltering over ordinary language to denote their sexuality is their failure at using language to denote the acts of killing in both novels.  Although she recognizes, albeit using incorrect anatomical language, that “there’s a baby inside Olivia’s stomach” (Girard 190), Pen falters when she asks Olivia when she will “start looking…you know?” (Girard 117; ellipsis in original).[8]  Pen falters again when she begins to state, “You’re going to get an abor—” (Girard 118).  That Pen is unable to recognize, let alone utter, the words “pregnancy” and “abortion” suggests the inherent philosophical problem that transgender persons represented by this fictional character have in overcoming the denotative power of these heterosexual terms.

          If verbal recognition of the unborn child occurs in the novel, then there is also the urge to keep the abortion of that child secret.  Pen urges Olivia not to talk with Colby, who fathered the child: “Say you wanted to decide stuff.  I just don’t think letting him in your head would help.  Things would get all twisted and confused” (Girard 161).  Pen’s justification for Olivia to abort is purely subjective more than rational thought based on religious principles, such as the sacredness of human life: “I think maybe you shouldn’t think about doing what’s right, and maybe you should just do what feels less wrong “(Girard 193; italics in original).  Pen is utterly unable to perceive the logical consequences of her decision to assist Olivia in obtaining an abortion; rather, she “was hoping the whole thing just went away” (Girard 242).  After the abortion, Pen uses a string of “feeling”-based expressions in a conversation with Olivia to reinforce her standard of adhering to a pure subjectivism:

[slide 9]  You don’t have to feel bad for having done it, but I think you might end up feeling bad about something, anything.  Like feeling bad you could never tell your mom, or feeling bad you didn’t get the pill, or feeling bad for liking Colby, or…anything really.  (Girard 269; ellipsis in original)

          It may be the author’s intent to show that Pen is not a static, but a dynamic character.  Pen is able to overcome a significant linguistic inability and seems to recognize that an anti-life philosophy is anti-human.  For example, only much later in the narrative can Pen utter the word “abortion”, as when she debates whether she should text Olivia, using first the third-person neutral pronoun followed by an apposition: “I want to ask her if she regrets it, the abortion” (Girard 286).  Also, Pen seems to understand the anti-human nature of abortion as when she accuses Colby of discarding his friends and his former lover, Olivia: “They’re people you threw away” (Girard 318).  It is ironic, of course, that she chides Colby for doing what she and Olivia have collaborated in doing, discarding the unborn child by having him or her killed in an abortion.

          One of Pen’s final lengthy reflections towards novel’s end functions as a summary of her adventures throughout the work, and it is interesting that this passage contains not only the explicit mention of Olivia’s abortion, but also her claim that she has no regrets about her involvement in the killing or, apparently, her lesbian activity:

          [slide 10]  I’m full of bad feelings.

          Not because I feel guilty, or because I regret what I’ve done, though.  It’s like I keep telling Olivia when she thinks about the abortion: it’s okay to feel bad about how things went down, but it’s not okay to drown in guilt and regret every day for having made decisions other people don’t agree with.  At some point, we all have to man up and decide to do what we have to do, despite the people around us who try to get in the way.  (Girard 353)

The astute reader would recognize the repetition of the commonplace “do what we have to do” and, hopefully, see that such a philosophy incarnates the logical fallacy of begging the question (what exactly is the “what” that anybody must do and is it moral?).  Also, like Hemingway’s famous character in the short story “Hills Like White Elephants” who feels “fine” when she discusses abortion with the father of the child, the repetition of “regret” twice in this brief passage should trigger the reader to question whether Pen is indeed free of guilt.

          Readers may fail to understand how Weaver’s novel also does not meet this fourth criterion of right-to-life literary theory without understanding its surprising and ironic dénouement.  The reader has followed Billie Girl from babyhood, through her adolescence, to young adulthood, to mature adulthood, to old age.  One would expect that a life negotiating and overcoming major disappointments would convince Billie Girl to appreciate her inner strength and live the remainder of her days knowing that throughout her life she accomplished “what [she had] to do” (Weaver 132).

          [slide 11]  The contrast in character development, then, which occurs at novel’s end is profound.  Billie Girl calls the elderly in the nursing home where she resides “other old, useless, decomposing human beings—most of them not in their right minds” [Weaver 221].  With such an attitude, Billie Girl obviously favors mercy killing: “Though I had helped Grandma meet her Maker, it took me being life-wounded myself to understand the mercy of killing” [Weaver 221].  She decides to kill fellow nursing home residents with pills, and her further killings are expressed casually, as though the people she dispatched were taking some means of transportation for a long journey: “The next two residents I sent on their way” (Weaver 225).  The hyperbatonic structure of this sentence should signal the reader that something is indeed wrong about the activity of killing people.

          Unlike other pro-euthanasia fiction which dwells on the terminal status of some patients and their pain (which, for some reason, is never alleviated by proper palliative care, even in circumstances which are the most technologically advanced), Billie Girl decides whom to kill based on the most specious of reasons.  For example, she kills her roommate because “She had pooped in the bed” (Weaver 228).  Given such a positive view towards killing fellow human beings, it is not at all surprising that Billie Girl would commit suicide: “I covered up and shoved my hands into my sweater pockets to keep warm.  Out of habit, my fingers groped around.  I came across two pills in the right-hand pocket.  Two pills” (Weaver 231).

E.  Realizing the Divine Presence When Faced with Mortality

          As is typical with most modern fiction, the word “God” is almost never used in both novels as the noun to refer to the Supreme Being, but as an interjection (usually lower case) or as the vulgar command to damn someone or something.  The personal lives of the characters do not manifest any sense of piety.  Pen recognizes that her Portuguese parents are devout Catholics, but she does not follow the faith; Billie Girl, similarly, never expresses a belief in God or in Scriptures.  Answering this last question of right-to-life literary theory, therefore, is especially challenging unless one deconstructs several passages to locate characters’ sense of their mortality and any relationship with a Supreme Being.

          The closest one can come to perceive that Pen has a sense of the divine presence in the world occurs when she states her antipathy towards killing animals.  (Recall that she was distressed when she had to “to blow up dogs” in video games and felt “like crap for destroying [a snail’s] home and murdering them” (Girard 32, 51).  Her code of ethics, then, must align with a sense of the divine, most probably derived from her parents’, especially her mother’s, Catholicism, for she uses highly connotative words to describe her actions.  “Blow up”, “destroying”, and “murdering” indicate that she knows that these actions are morally wrong; not being able to see how these negative actions kill unborn human beings is her moral blind spot.  Furthermore, that she maligns her mother throughout the novel is beside the point; Pen had expressed her opinions about the Portuguese traditions of living the Catholic Faith often, so the concepts must have been internalized.  Since Pen is only sixteen, one must conclude that her spiritual journey can only be fulfilled with decades more of soul-searching.

          In contrast, Billie Girl’s sense of the divine in human life comes almost exactly at the end of her life, when she asserts that, “Though I had helped Grandma meet her Maker, it took me being life-wounded myself to understand the mercy of killing” [Weaver 221].  The reader must conclude, therefore, that the use of the words “Maker” (note the capitalization, unlike other modern novels where the term is always lower case) and the phrase “the mercy of killing” presumes some religious sensibility obtained at this, the end of her life.  Even though the terms indicate a generic and warped sense, respectively, their presence in the novel at the crucial step in the plot where the drama ineluctably ends with her death can be interpreted as, first, evidence that Billie Girl recognizes a Supreme Being (denoted by His function of Creator) and, second, that she is aware of the benefits that death provides to a weary life.  Note that she did not use the more commonly understood phrase “mercy killing”, but the lengthier prepositional phrase; although it is one involving “killing”, the term “mercy” is thus highlighted as the major noun in the phrase since “killing” is subordinated by the preposition.  One hopes, therefore, that what Billie Girl was striving for in killing others and herself was God’s mercy more than anything else.

          What summary comments can conclude this brief study of only two recent transgender fictional works on the life issues?  I offer two comments and recommend a course of criticism to respond to such works of fiction.

First, recent transgender fiction reinforces the anti-life ideas of traditional pro-abortion fiction.  The same plot devices occur in transgender fiction as in fiction written by or involving heterosexual characters; one thinks, for example, of Pen’s collaboration with the mother to abort an unborn child, a template dating from pre-legalization times involving a willing accomplice to the abortion killing.  Billie Girl’s euthanasia activities mimic those fictional works which suggest that killing the elderly or the medically vulnerable equates with the alleviation of pain or emotional distress.

          Second, transgender fiction on the two life issues discussed here includes an abortion and euthanasia episode for no apparent reason beyond being activities which comport with a distortion of the purposes of human life and, most importantly, human sexuality.  Abortion and euthanasia have no bearing on sexual activity of transgender persons per se; their engaging in immoral sexual activities concerns sexual morality more than the first civil right to life.

          Why transgender activists (especially those in academia) and writers support abortion, therefore, indicates an irrational philosophical position that must be disclosed and countered.  When transgender fiction includes an episode involving the life issues and seems to accept the killing of the unborn, the newborn, or the elderly, I recommend that it is every faculty member’s, student’s, and reader’s duty to challenge the forced connection between transgenderism and an anti-life philosophy.  Criticism of these two novels using right-to-life literary theory is a good beginning.

[slide 12]  Works Cited

Anderson, Ryan. T. When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. Encounter Books, 2018.

“By the Numbers.” Nation, vol. 315, no. 1, July 2022, p. 13. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=157599203&site=ehost-live.

Calkin, Sydney, Cordelia Freeman, and Francesca Moore. “The Geography of Abortion: Discourse, Spatiality and Mobility.” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 46, no. 6, Dec. 2022, pp. 1413–30. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.eresources.cuyahogalibrary.org/10.1177/03091325221128885.

Evaristo, Bernardine. Girl, Woman, Other. Black Cat, 2019.

Girard, M-E. Girl Mans Up. HarperTeen, 2016.

Goenawan, Clarissa. The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida. Soho Press, 2020.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Men Without Women. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927. 69-77.

Herman, Aimee. Everything Grows. Three Rooms Press, 2019.

Kelly. “YA Abortion Books: Fiction About Terminating a Pregnancy as a Teen.” Stacked, 13 September 2021. https://stackedbooks.org/ya-abortion-books/.

Lacombe-Duncan, Ashley, et al. “Minority Stress Theory Applied to Conception, Pregnancy, and Pregnancy Loss: A Qualitative Study Examining LGBTQ+ People’s Experiences.” PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 7, July 2022, pp. 1–24. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271945.

Moseson, Heidi, et al. “Development of an Affirming and Customizable Electronic Survey of Sexual and Reproductive Health Experiences for Transgender and Gender Nonbinary People.” PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 5, May 2020, pp. 1–15. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232154.

Peters, Torrey. Detransition, Baby. One World, 2021.

Sutton, Barbara, and Elizabeth Borland. “Queering Abortion Rights: Notes from Argentina.” Culture, Health & Sexuality, vol. 20, no. 12, Dec. 2018, pp. 1378–93. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2018.1437221.

Talcott, David. “Building a Culture of Life.” Human Life Review, vol. 45, no. 4, Fall 2019, pp. 53–60. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=140951020&site=ehost-live.

Weaver, Vickie. Billie Girl. Leapfrog Press, 2010.

Works Consulted

Abi-Karam, Andrea, and Kay Gabriel, eds. We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. Nightboat Books, 2020.

Ebershoff, David. The Danish Girl. Penguin Books, 2000.

Jenkins, Christine A., and Michael Cart, eds. Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.

Tolbert, T. C., and Trace Peterson, eds. Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Nightboat Books, 2013.

Tremain, Rose. Sacred Country. Washington Square Press, 1992.

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[1] This paper was first presented on Saturday, 29 October 2022, at the annual conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists held at St. Vincent’s College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

[2] While his assertions that “millennials appear to be slightly more pro-life than their parents, not less” is not only encouraging but also statistically accurate, citing Michael New’s research, the idea embedded in the dependent clause preceding this claim (“While traditional ethical views on gay marriage, transgenderism, and other anthropological innovations are being rejected by young people”) seems incorrect, given both conservative and liberal reaction to the numbers of students who claim to be transgender. especially in public schools (Talcott 53). More research needs to be conducted to determine if the high number of students who claim to be transgender can be attributed to genuine gender dysphoria or to the efforts by their transgender activist teachers to push the LGBTQ agenda on them.

[3] The opinions of scholars are emphasized in this study if only because those who meet the criteria of being called such (persons who, first, have terminal degrees, second, have been published in their respective fields of study, and, finally, who are working in those fields) should be able to discuss controversial issues such as transgenderism in an objective manner.  Claims made by unknown entities on internet sites which suggest that transgenderism and abortion are intimately connected can be discarded as scholarly opinions but appreciated as an indicator of the “mood” of activists on the issues, such as this posting by “Kelly”:

[slide 2]  Abortion isn’t a women’s rights issue.  It’s a human rights issue, and we need to address it as such.  Nonbinary, transgender, and agender folks, as well as those who identify outside those labels who can get pregnant deserve to be heard in this discussion, too.  Their already-marginalized bodies and experiences are only further harmed with the language we use to discuss abortion.  It’s not a decision between a woman and her doctor.  It’s a decision between a pregnant person and their doctor or other healthcare worker who can do the procedure.

That the author of this posting lacks the courage of her (the Stacked website uses the pronoun “she” in her biographical entry) convictions to supply her surname should be significant enough for any reader of her work.  However, one can appreciate this passage as an example of a transgender activist willing to sacrifice logic and grammar to advance her political purposes.  Unfortunately, what this nondescript web author posted mirrors many “scholarly” opinions mentioned in this essay.  Faculty, students, and the general public may therefore be justified in disregarding whatever academia has to say about such controversial issues and trust the values taught in their families or in their places of worship instead.

[4] To compound the problem of scholars’ inability to perceive anything but a pro-abortion connection with the LGBTQ or transgender movements, gender activists  may further fail to understand that some LGBTQ persons strive for life-affirming choices in reproduction, as Ashley Lacombe-Duncan and other researchers have claimed, when they noted that “Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (trans), queer, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) people desire to conceive children” (1).

[5] In the interests of time, four other novels with transgender themes have been excised from this presentation but will be discussed in future research at another conference in 2023: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (Black Cat, 2019); Aimee Herman’s Everything Grows (Three Rooms Press, 2019); Clarissa Goenawan’s The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida (Soho Press, 2020); and Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby (One World, 2021).

[6] Consider, for example, the following insipid lines of needless dialogue:

“I’m smothering, honey,” I said.

He set the fan on the dresser and aimed it at me.

“Is that better?”

“Just right.”  (Weaver 204)

[7] It may be more than a coincidence that both novels contain this expression.  Billie Girl states that “We do what we have to do” halfway through the novel after she admits that she was relieved when her child was stillborn because she “had never wanted to be a mother” (132), a negation of the maternal function.  Likewise, Garrett’s use of this commonplace reinforces a negation of his paternal function.

[8] One can argue that the confusion over “stomach” and “uterus” may not simply be bad writing but a deliberate attempt to show that Pen is not only sexually immature but also ignorant.  Such a claim may not be tenable, however, since Pen is depicted as an intelligent student.

Abstract:  This study examines Lisabeth Posthuma’s Baby & Solo, a contemporary abortion novel (2021) geared for the young adult audience.  After applying principles of some of the major literary theories used to explicate literature, the five questions of right-to-life literary theory are used to evaluate the life-affirming content of the work.

          Many contemporary abortion novels geared for the young adult audience are written by authors who openly profess their support of the anti-life movement, particularly the abortion enterprise Planned Parenthood.  One thinks, for example, of Christine Heppermann’s Ask Me How I Got Here (Greenwillow Books, 2016) or Bonnie Pipkin’s Aftercare Instructions (Flatiron Books, 2017).  Absent an explicit affirmation of abortion in her author’s biographical statement either on the book jacket or following the text, however, Lisabeth Posthuma’s Baby & Solo (Candlewick Press, 2021) may be an exception to the rule.

          Posthuma’s Baby & Solo is a well-written, complex work of fiction which follows a template which authors have used for decades to structure their abortion plots, consisting of a mother who wishes to abort and a young man who joins her in the journey motif of locating an abortionist willing to do the killing.  Posthuma’s novel, however, alters the template by describing the odyssey of a male teen, Joel Teague, who presents to the reader a possible case of a gender identity problem; this young man befriends a teen mother, Nicole Parker, who seems to accede to the abortion killing at first, but who ultimately rejects it.

          Posthuma’s rendition of the standard abortion plot has achieved some popularity.  [slide 3]  Amazon shows that Posthuma’s novel has earned a rating of 4.8 out of 5 with 59 customer reviews.  Although the novel ranks #835,186 in the best sellers category, it occupies spot #1,486 in the “Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Fiction” category, #1,052 in “Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Death & Dying”, and #507 in the category “Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Depression & Mental Health”—all respectable numbers for a novel published in May 2021 (“Baby and Solo”).  Moreover, Goodreads.com gives the book a 4.38 rating from a wider field of 504 ratings (“Baby & Solo”).[1]

          The above brief summary of Posthuma’s work does not, nor should it, satisfy contemporary readers living in a fast-paced culture as ours who want to spend their time wisely.  That is, readers want to spend time on reading contemporary fiction to accommodate the ancient principles not only of entertaining them, but also of educating them.  Thus, contemporary literary theories can expand readers’ appreciation of a given literary work by offering different perspectives from which the work can be viewed.

[slide 4]  This study will consider some aspects of twelve of the more common literary theories used in the academy to help students appreciate contemporary fiction: archetypal or Jungian criticism, biographical criticism, critical disability studies, critical race theory, deconstruction, feminist literary criticism, formalist criticism, gender criticism (gay and lesbian or queer studies), historical criticism, Marxist literary criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, and reader-response criticism.[2]

Archetypal or Jungian criticism

          An archetypal or Jungian critic could focus on the age, religious, and employment stereotypes of Posthuma’s characters: young people who are seemingly irreligious and who work in a 1990s video store.  The archetypal elements of the novel are enhanced by the unique naming strategy of the store’s employees; instead of using their real names when dealing with customers, the workers must identify themselves by names of movie characters whom they admire.  Thus, Joel Teague is known as the Star Wars hero Han Solo throughout the novel.  The young woman whom he befriends, Nicole Parker, becomes Baby; it is ambiguous whether she is named because she was admonished not to be a “baby” about associating herself with a film character or whether she is named after the character Baby in the film Dirty Dancing (which, appropriately, further alludes to the abortion element in that iconic film’s plot).

This unique naming strategy demonstrates a cross-fertilization of literary theories at work in the novel.  Joel’s identity as Han Solo suggests the personality of the hero character of the Star Wars film, which further suggests the psychological component of a human being identifying himself more with a fictional character than his own ordinary humanity.  Similarly, that Nicole becomes Baby indicates not only the archetypal standard of an infant (helpless, reliant on parents, and ostensibly the object of love from those parents), but also a key principle of anti-life feminist literary criticism (that a woman’s life is subordinate to the life of an unborn child, especially if that child is unwanted).

Biographical criticism

          A biographical critic would wonder what connection the plot has with Lisabeth Posthuma’s life.  The author’s website contains two biographies written for “the press”, both of which may appeal to the young adult audience for whom she writes, but, for biographical literary critics, present significant obstacles since the humor of the biographies obscures the facts of the author’s life.  [slide 5]  For example, “Press Bio 1” succinctly conveys only the author’s likes:

Lisabeth Posthuma is a devotee of obscure documentaries about drive-ins, a lover of rotary telephones, and a trophy-winning champion of TV trivia. She lives in Michigan with her two parakeets, Tiki Bon Jovi and Alaska Riggins. Her favorite story is probably Frankenstein.  (“Media”)

[slide 6]  “Press Bio 2” provides more biographical information, some of which justifies a one-to-one correspondence with the novel under examination:

Lisabeth Posthuma was a high school teacher, a photographer, and most importantly, a video rental clerk before becoming a writer.  She holds an English degree from one of those really expensive private liberal arts colleges that no one can afford (including her).  She grew up obsessed with teen soaps, which her therapist says explains a lot, and likes to brag about that one time she attended the cast party for The OC.  Orange is her favorite color because in first grade no one chose it, and she felt sorry for it.  She currently lives in Michigan where the winters are too long.[3]  (“Media”)

Readers who like to determine whether aspects of an author’s life informed his or her work would find the above entries challenging.

          Even more challenging for the abortion-minded (either anti- or pro-life) biographical critic, determining Posthuma’s position on the first right-to-life issue is difficult.  Some bloggers, like Kelly Jensen, have jumped to the conclusion that Posthuma is promoting an anti-life perspective.[4]  However, the excerpt which Jensen includes on her blog post wherein Posthuma discusses abortion as a topic in young adult fiction is ambiguous.

[slide 7]  Knowing abortion affects so many people who make up the young adult demographic, it’s a disservice not to acknowledge the subject’s necessary place in YA media.  Though public discourse about abortion continues to be divisive and heated, young adult content creators can provide our audiences with low-stakes avenues through which to wrestle with their difficult feelings about difficult subjects.  Realistic fiction is a valuable gateway to rediscovering the lost art of uncertainty, for recognizing the gray within the false narrative of a black-and-white world.  In fact, it might be the most fertile soil for empathy to grow in.

[slide 8]  I’m learning that the hypothetical is the safest space to feel unsure.  It’s seemingly the only place where there’s no urgency to form the “right” opinion.  It’s where people can privately challenge their own thoughts, explore nuances, and ultimately grow in their understanding about the issues that affect them.  I wish that at thirteen I’d had more safe places to contemplate issues like abortion, but I didn’t.  As an adult, however, I’m grateful that I can join with other writers who want [to] change things for this generation’s YA audience.  I am hopeful that as abortion continues to be a relevant subject, even more authors will seize the opportunity to create these spaces for teens, too.

Posthuma’s language affirms neither the anti- nor the pro-life sides of the controversy, but reads merely as a defense of freedom of speech, arguing for the inclusion of controversial issues in literature for young adults so that they can explore those issues freely.  In fact, one can argue that Posthuma’s argument would benefit anti-lifers more than pro-lifers.  Since pro-abortion persons have blocked themselves from a life-affirming choice, anti-lifers can use works which have a life-affirming content as sites “where [they] can privately challenge their own thoughts, explore nuances, and ultimately grow in their understanding about the issues that affect them.”

Critical Disability Studies

Those who use critical disability studies would offer much to enhance readers’ appreciation of Posthuma’s characters.  Although no character has a physical disability, all suffer from emotional and psychological trauma.  Joel’s supervisor at the video store, Scarlet, suffers from post-abortion syndrome, which most likely accounts for her being so angry later in the novel that Baby is giving birth to her unborn child.  Joel’s psychological trouble, documented throughout the novel, is sometimes described in language which suggests that emotional trauma has a physical effect.  [slide 9]  When he describes the impact that his brother’s suicide at age sixteen had on him, Joel’s language conveys more physical disability than psychological: “It wrecked me.  It broke me in half.  And it ruined my fucking life” (368).

          Moreover, it is interesting that there are many instances where a character’s psychological problems are described with religious imagery.  For example, when he confides his mental illness to Baby, Joel compares the disclosure of such personal information to a key sacrament: “I ended my confession” (226).  The confusion between psychotherapy and religion is repeated when Joel mentions that his mother brought him to a priest for an exorcism regarding his mental illness.  Joel’s father spends Sundays “at the nearest AA meeting” (unpaginated 83).

Critical Race Theory

          Proponents of critical race theory would face a severe challenge in applying their literary theory to Posthuma’s novel, except for one crucial element: all the characters are white, which could be construed either as white oppression of minorities or, a particularly egregious form of oppression, a perception that abortion does not concern minority groups.  Pro-life activists, of course, know otherwise and have been alarmed at the abortion rates of African-American and Latina mothers, so critical race theory could offer much to draw the reading public’s attention to the genocide against minorities which is legalized abortion.  However, since most critical race theory proponents are politically leftist and since a prime political strategy of the leftist movement is to secure the abortion policies of the Democratic Party, one fails to see how critical race theory could abandon its pro-abortion focus and recognize that abortion is significantly reducing minority populations.

Deconstruction

          A deconstruction literary critic could delve into several statements which demonstrate the essential concern of the theory, the instability of language.  When he realizes that he is a tabula rasa at the video store, Joel implicitly affirms the idea that language is not an essential element of being human; he enters his employment at the video store and, by extension, his life, without language, without any markers common to all humans, without the vocabulary necessary for human beings to function in the world.

The word play which deconstructionist critics delight in can be further evidenced even when the characters use the language common to all English speakers.  When Indiana Jones, the father of Baby’s unborn child, gives an envelope to Joel to forward to Baby, saying that Baby is “expecting something” (34), the reader is uncertain to what the term “something” refers.  (The pun on “expecting” adds further delight to the expression.)  It is only later that the reader understands that the “something” is not a thing at all, but an unborn human being, Baby’s child.  It would be interesting for a pro-abortion deconstructionist critic to consider the pro-life implications of this passage on the further erosion of language, an effort to which deconstructionists have contributed, since the goal of destabilizing the language affects the human relationships which the language denotes.

Feminist Literary Criticism

          Applying feminist literary criticism to the novel seems obvious, given the plot details; this novel does, after all, concern abortion, the quintessential political issue for a feminism which is fast becoming irrelevant because of its refusal to recognize the right to life.  Besides that, the traditional concerns of anti-life feminist literary criticism (the oppression of women, the dominance of patriarchy putting women in a “subject” position, and even newer phrases of feminist theory such as heteropatriarchal oppression) become feeble concerns, given the independent women depicted in the novel and the men who are either weak because they accede to the women’s desires or have same-sex attraction.  For example, Joel does not question Baby’s request to drive her to an abortion clinic, and his father is obviously not “the man” in the house; Joel’s mother has significantly more dialogue and controls the family more than his father.

However, whatever attention a feminist literary critic could give the novel must face the many life-affirming statements from women characters, which will be discussed in the section on right-to-life literary theory below.

Formalist Criticism

          Formalist critics would appreciate the irony, let alone ignorance, of several characters’ statements, which manifest their attitude towards religious values.  For example, responding to Baby’s claim that he could have objections to abortion, Joel asks, “What kind of morals would I have if I made a girl take a cab to her own abortion?” (59).  While non-religious contemporary readers may not see the irony in such a statement, educated readers would immediately understand that the rhetorical question which Joel offers indicates his warped values; not driving a mother to an abortion clinic is not a moral concern of greater priority than stopping that mother from having her child killed in an abortion clinic.

          Since they are intensely aware of the unity of a literary work, formalist literary critics would revel in the progression of the novel from its exposition; to several crises; to climax moments not only regarding the relationship between Joel and Baby, but also Joel and the integration of his seemingly fragmented self; and ultimately to the denouement, where all the remaining issues in the novel are resolved as neatly (and happily) as a compact mystery novel.

Gender Criticism (Gay and Lesbian or Queer Studies)

          Gender criticism, also called gay and lesbian or queer studies, would focus on a variety of elements evident in Posthuma’s work.  For example, from the beginning of the novel, Joel expresses his desire to be “Normal” (5; capitalization in original).  Even though the novel is set in 1996, contemporary readers must deal with the connotations of the word signifying not merely the mean of opposing standards, but also the possibility of characters having same-sex attraction which was emerging as a force against heterosexual normativity in the 1990s and which, for the contemporary reader in 2022 and beyond, is the dominant social construct, forcing people against their moral principles to accept gay and lesbian sexual activity as equivalent with heterosexual activity.

Historical Criticism

          A reader aware of the tenets of historical criticism would have much to say regarding the setting of Posthuma’s novel.  Why Posthuma would place her characters in the 1990s in an outdated technological industry with characters who have no ambition and, apparently, no transferrable skills once technological advances destroy their livelihoods are matters which a historical literary critic could resolve.  Posthuma herself explains that she set the novel in the 1990s for two reasons: first, doing so helps us understand the history behind social issues which began in that decade and which persist today, and, second, she happens to like this period of twentieth-century literature; she states that she is “obsessed with twentieth-century pop culture” (Author).

Absent the expressed opinions of the author, of course, a historical literary critic might conjecture that Posthuma places the action in August 1996 because that time may have been the “golden age” of pro-abortion history.  Clinton had been in the White House for a disastrous four years, trying to force his pro-abortion policies on the nation and the world, rolling back the pro-life advances of Presidents Reagan and Bush.  In a few months, he would be reelected, and the pro-life community would suffer through four more years of a virulently pro-abortion president.  Abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood were receiving federal tax dollars.  A vibrant anti-life activism was emerging in academia as professors and the media became more strident in their support of abortion.  No wonder some abortion-minded writers chose the decade of the 1990s as the setting for their works.

Marxist Literary Criticism

          If they are not blinded by support for abortion, Marxist literary critics could isolate the financial transactions in the novel as evidence of underlying power structures at work in the characters’ lives.  One such passage of the display of economic power is especially telling in terse prose.  While Joel seems oblivious to the meaning behind the money in the envelope that Joel received from Indiana Jones, Baby immediately realizes that the money is meant not to assist her in giving birth to the unborn child, but to procure an abortion.  Joel stupidly remarks not in irony but in bland reportage that “Somehow this was enough information for Baby to figure out the answer, because a few seconds later she said, ‘Oh’” (44).  Baby’s single-term interjection demonstrates that she has more wherewithal than Joel in perceiving the choices available to her.

Furthermore, a Marxist literary critic would also point out the competing ideologies at work in the unstated conversation(s) which must have occurred between Baby and Indiana Jones, the father of the unborn child.  Unlike other abortion novels, where the mother confronts the father with news about her pregnancy and engages in a dialogue about options for or against abortion, Posthuma’s novel contains no such encounter.  In Marxist terminology, Baby must have tendered her ideology to Indiana Jones, who must then have countered her belief about the possibility of raising the unborn child with him with his own worldview of being single and unfettered by the responsibility of caring for a child or the child’s mother.  Indiana Jones’ proffer of a packet of money to be used for the abortion closes any option other than his desire to maintain his ideology, the single life and its economic status that he wishes to maintain.  The absence of the exchange between the ideologies can thus be construed in Marxist terms as one economic power struggle dominating another, Indiana Jones’ ideology winning the struggle.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

          The repertoire of concepts from psychoanalytic criticism would generate much interesting, albeit contorted reading.  The reader quickly becomes aware that the character Crystal may be Joel’s alter ego, and, if so, the disintegration of personality can be appreciated by a study of psychological concepts inherent in the theory.[5]  Furthermore, Joel’s stipulative definition of “the girl you sometimes hallucinate is more in line with a schizoaffective disorder” (45) is a small bit of literary evidence that Freud’s ideas have continued force in contemporary literature.

          Of course, as the common knowledge perception renders it, psychoanalytic literary criticism is heavily based on Freudian theories and is often reduced to (in the classroom, certainly) an analysis of phallic and yonic imagery evident in a literary work.  The novel does not disappoint the more salacious aspects of this theory by providing some instances of phallic imagery which should titillate, if not educate, the eager young minds reading the novel for intellectual pleasure.  For example, when Joel says, “After a few minutes outside in subzero temperatures, my balls retracted into my body, and I was able to think about what had just happened with my brain instead of my dick” (unpaginated 260), an adult reader might guffaw at the adolescent use of vulgarisms, while a young adult reader, the novel’s target audience, may think that the passage demonstrates how relevant and “hip” the character and the author are.

Reader-Response Criticism

          Reader-response critics can use one key concept of the theory to assist contemporary readers to appreciate the novel more: the idea of the competent reader.  Unless they are active members of pro-life groups, readers in 2022 may be unaware of the long history not only of abortion in the United States, but also of the pro-life efforts to restore the first civil right to life.  Perhaps this accounts for Baby’s complete ignorance of pregnancy support groups which flourished during the anti-life Clinton administration to assist mothers like herself who are unmarried and abandoned by their lovers because of untimely pregnancies.  Similarly, contemporary 2022 readers may be ignorant of the large body of literature which, by 1996, had already countered anti-life claims.  The absence of any pro-life entity in the novel makes it seem as though the pro-life movement was non-existent.[6]  Whether this lack of knowledge is deliberate on the author’s part to show the ignorance of the characters or whether the ignorance is an effort by the author to ignore the pro-life movement’s effects on anti-life culture are research questions proper to a detailed biographical literary critic’s study.

Right-to-Life Literary Theory

          Even the above applications of contemporary literary theories should not suffice for readers who want to learn more about Posthuma’s novel, however, since all contemporary literary theories are deficient in two areas: first, they focus only on one aspect of human life; second, they fail to address several key questions which precede any literary discussion, all of which concern the value of human life.

          The archetypes that archetypal or Jungian criticism stresses are not the paramount concern of human life, nor are the details about an author’s life, the focus of biographical criticism.  Whether one is able-bodied or differently abled as Critical Disability Studies suggests is important, but not the essential criterion of being human.  Nor is the race of a human being as Critical Race Theory demands, or the stability of the language that deconstruction is concerned with, or the gender of a human being as feminist literary criticism or gender criticism demands.  The milieu in which a human being lives, the focus of historical criticism, is important but not a defining element of human life, nor is the economic status of a human being as Marxist literary criticism suggests, nor is the psychological state of that human being as psychoanalytic criticism asserts.  Finally, both formalism and reader-response criticism, both of which focus on the literary work itself, either by examining the words themselves or the reader’s understanding of those words, falter as comprehensive literary theories since reading and writing, albeit key markers of human activities, are not essential for the existence of human life.

          [slide 10]  Since these literary theories are all deficient, applying right-to-life literary theory should enhance discussion of Posthuma’s novel because the five questions which the theory asks address foundational matters about human life before any written work can be produced which illustrates some aspect of that life.

The Pricelessness of Human Life

          First, does the literary work support the perspective that human life is, in the philosophical sense, a good, some “thing” which is priceless?  There is overwhelming evidence in the novel that this first question of right-to-life literary theory can be answered affirmatively.  (This sets aside the principle that whether the author herself is anti- or pro-life is beside the point; she has written a work which per se is a life-affirming artifact.)  Joel’s wish at the beginning of the novel to be “Normal” (5; capitalization in original) is itself an affirmation of human life.  So, too, is Baby’s response to receiving the envelope of cash from Indiana Jones for an abortion.  Her simple interjection “Oh” (44) implies sadness obviously that the father of the child does not want to help her either give birth to the baby and release him or her for adoption or give birth and help her raise the child; her simple interjection, therefore, is a further testament to her valuing human life as priceless.

Respect for the Individual’s Paramount Right to Life

          Second, does the literary work respect the individual as a being with inherent rights, the paramount one being the right to life?  This question can be answered affirmatively, thanks to the gender dysphoria topic which the novel incudes as a subplot, but which is not crucial for this discussion of the first life issue of abortion.  The gender confusion which Joel’s brother, Brian, experienced at a young age until his suicide at sixteen illustrates a philosophical position which the pro-life community has adopted since its inception: that one’s right to life is not predicated on age (whether at the moment of fertilization or beyond birth), location (in or out of the womb), condition of dependency (able-bodied or not), or sex (whether the unborn child is male or female).  Posthuma’s novel, then, comports with the pro-life perspective that, even though he committed suicide as a teenager, it was correct for Brian to have been born, if only to try to resolve his gender dysphoria.  The novel further shows that Brian’s life, although brief, had a severe effect on someone who loved him deeply, his brother Joel, who declared that Brian’s suicide “wrecked me.  It broke me in half.  And it ruined my fucking life” (368).

Heterosexual Normativity and the Integrity of the Family

          Third, if the literary work covers the actions of a family, does it do so respecting heterosexual normativity and the integrity of the family?  Answering this question of right-to-life literary theory involves a pro-life interpretation of quotes and passages which would be overlooked by many other critics, whose perspectives are restricted to certain aspects.  For example, soon after Baby decides not to abort, about halfway through the novel (243), a passage illustrates the burgeoning affection, if not love, between Joel and Baby.  [slide 11]  Before she gives birth, Baby implicitly acknowledges the emotional bond inherent in the heterosexual family when she says, “I think I’m going to feel lonely afterward, once it’s gone” (275).

          The emergence of the heterosexual family unit works to restore the love which should exist between its members.  About three-fourths of the way into the novel, there is a long (seven page) and touching scene between Joel and his father (319-25).  The pain of giving her child up for adoption is lightened for Baby when Joel’s psychiatrist, Dr. Schwartz, and his wife agree to adopt the child, and the adoption scene makes it clear that Baby would remain active in the child’s life (341-4).  To signify further that a helpless newborn baby can bring more joy than anxiety to an unmarried mother and her circle of friends, even Scarlet, Joel’s supervisor who aborted the child fathered by her live-in boyfriend, reacts lovingly to Baby’s child.

The Inherent Right to Exist of Unborn, Newborn, and Mature Human Life

          Fourth, does the literary work comport with the view that unborn, newborn, and mature human life has an inherent right to exist?  Scattered throughout the second half of the novel are numerous references to Baby’s unborn child, and these remarks are dominantly life affirming instead of the dehumanizing language used by explicitly anti-life authors.  The respect which Baby shows the unborn child begins early in this second half of the novel (page 244) when she gives Joel an envelope that contains a notation about the sex of her unborn child; she does not want to know the child’s sex (the baby is a girl).  Showing a character who is unwilling to know the sex of an unborn child may be bizarre for contemporary readers, familiar with gender-reveal parties, a practice which began in the first decade of the twenty-first century.  In this instance, however, Baby is following the practice of previous generations, and her decision not to know can be interpreted as acquiescence that there is something more important than knowing the sex of the unborn child: letting him or her develop in the womb.

          The life-affirming statements continue in rapid succession.  Referring to her eventual labor pains, Baby remarks that “the godawful amount of pain will be all the clue I need that the person inside of me is trying to break out” (264).  Unlike fiction written by anti-life authors, the unborn child is personalized as the following passage between Joel and Baby indicates:

“Was that a kick?”

“Or an elbow.  I can never tell.”

I was completely amazed.  “It has elbows?”  I looked down at Baby’s stomach and then back at her face.  “There are elbows in there?”  (274)

It is after this brief conversation that Baby asks the rhetorical question “Did they not show you the Miracle of Life video in homeschool?” (275).  After she gives birth, the newborn is not denoted as a burden to Baby, the single mother, or as a non-human entity in dehumanizing legal terms, but respectfully; the baby, now named Daphne, is described as “an impossibly small human” (341) and a page later “such a small person” (342).

The Divine Presence in the World

          Fifth, when they are faced with their mortality, do the characters come to a realization that there is a divine presence in the world which justifies a life-affirming perspective?  Answering this last question of right-to-life literary theory is especially challenging since religious references are scarce in the novel.  When he realizes that he “really did have a blank slate at this job” (24; italics in original), Joel does indeed seem to be bereft of any religious or moral institution which could ground his biological beliefs about abortion or other aspects of human life.  Although Joel’s mother is ostensibly Catholic, it is obvious that Joel’s parents are cultural Catholics if anything; remember that his father spends Sundays “at the nearest AA meeting” (unpaginated 83).  Furthermore, when characters reference God, the noun is always lower case.

          How, then, can an answer be supplied to this last question of right-to-life literary theory?  Throughout the novel, Joel engages with “Crystal” who, to the reader, seems as though she is his alter ego or a manifestation of his fragmented, perhaps schizophrenic personality.  [Recall that Joel himself suggests the possibility of such a mental disorder when he declared that “the girl you sometimes hallucinate is more in line with a schizoaffective disorder” (45).]  It is only towards the novel’s conclusion that it is clear that Crystal is truly a manifestation of Joel’s brother Brian, who committed suicide at age sixteen, most likely because of his conflict over his gender dysphoria.  It is significant that, at novel’s end, Joel concludes that his own life is “Normal: (380; capitalization in original) only after he was able to visit Brian’s grave and experience a final appearance of Crystal.

          Other than this episode, the characters—young, rejoicing over the birth of Daphne, and blissfully unaware of the collapse of their employment because of technological innovations soon to come—do not address the larger existential questions of human life.  It would take another novel, perhaps, to demonstrate their maturity.

          Anti-lifers who think that Lisabeth Posthuma’s novel Baby & Solo could be used as a literary artifact to advance an anti-life, specifically pro-abortion, agenda on the cultural scene would be seriously mistaken.  Using the many literary theories to which students have been exposed for decades (some theories, like formalism, for nearly a century) and the newer principles of right-to-life literary theory, an objective reader must conclude that the novel has a stronger life-affirming perspective than an anti-life one.  This conclusion is remarkable, given the characters’ secular outlook (no character is either grounded in religious teachings or expresses any piety) and seeming obliviousness to the pro-life movement which, by the time of the novel’s setting, had established itself as a political force in the nation despite anti-life political victories.

Since the customary logical arguments for and against abortion are not presented in this work of fiction in passages of dreary didacticism (a feature which makes most anti-life fiction propaganda pieces for the pro-abortion movement), Posthuma’s novel, therefore, can be a site where both anti- and pro-life readers can explore the controversial issue of abortion in a fictional environment, bordering on fantasy, where, as the author herself hopes, “people can privately challenge their own thoughts, explore nuances, and ultimately grow in their understanding about the issues that affect them.”  Her novel could be the means by which anti-life readers are able to challenge their ideology that unborn human life is worthless, explore the ways in which an approach to life which affirms and does not destroy it is most satisfactory, and ultimately mature in their understanding about how abortion affects mothers, unborn babies, and fathers.

[slide 12]  Works Cited

“Baby & Solo by Lisabeth Posthuma.” Goodreads.com, www.goodreads.com/book/show/44084731-baby-solo. Accessed 8 June 2022.

“Baby and Solo Hardcover – May 11, 2021: Product Details.” Amazon, www.amazon.com/Baby-Solo-Lisabeth-Posthuma/dp/1536213039. Accessed 8 June 2022.

Heppermann, Christine. Ask Me How I Got Here. Greenwillow Books, 2016.

Jensen, Kelly. “’The Hypothetical Is the Safest Space to Feel Unsure’: Lisabeth Posthuma on Abortion in YA Lit.” Newsletters Dev: Getting It Done!, 2022, https://newsletterdev.riotnewmedia.com/2021/10/18/the-hypothetical-is-the-safest-space-to-feel-unsure-lisabeth-posthuma-on-abortion-in-ya-lit/.

Pipkin, Bonnie. Aftercare Instructions. Flatiron Books, 2017.

Posthuma, Lisabeth. Author Lisabeth Posthuma Discusses Her Book Baby & Solo. Vimeo, uploaded by Candlewick Press, 14 October 2020, https://vimeo.com/468304935.

—. Baby & Solo. Candlewick Press, 2021.

—. “Media Kit.” Lisabethposthuma.com, 2021, https://www.lisabethposthuma.com/media-kit.

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[1] Statistics for both services are current as of 8 June 2022.

[2] Several other literary theories could be applied to Posthuma’s novel, but doing so would expand the scope of this paper from a conference presentation to a dissertation topic.  Besides, contemporary readers (and I am thinking not only of ordinary students of literature but also of readers who consume novels like Posthuma’s for some didactic value certainly, but more for entertainment) would slide into somniferous boredom if any professor, lecturer, or television personality began applying postcolonial literary criticism, post-Structuralism, Structuralism, or semiotics to the work.  It is not that these theories are passé, especially now that newer and “sexier” theories like critical disability studies have emerged on the academic scene.  It is the case, however, that some literary theories serve no benefit or practical use for students who still approach literature with the formalist questions of what the literary work means before they can enjoy it, which are themselves formulations of the ancient principles that literature has a didactic and an entertainment value.

[3] Both biographies were obtained from the author’s website on 8 June 2022.

[4] Jensen concludes her excerpt of Posthuma’s discussion by saying, “Whether or not abortion is a choice they agree with for themselves or others, the reality is abortion is healthcare and should not be outlawed.”  Such a conclusion cannot be obtained from Posthuma’s remarks.

[5] The disintegration of Joel’s character becomes more apparent to the reader and, accordingly, a plot feature when Joel is visited by Crystal and when Joel’s mother discovers a dress in his closet; shortly after that, Crystal manifests herself to Joel.

[6] Baby’s query to Joel, “Did they not show you the Miracle of Life video in homeschool?” (275) cannot be cited as evidence of a pro-life group’s educational effort since no such group is identified.  Besides that, Baby makes it clear that the 1983 documentary (a publication not of a pro-life group, but of NOVA) was offered not in a school setting, but at home.