The masturbation scenes don’t deflect from the plot’s abortion; rename this novel “Teens Who Kill.”
The masturbation scenes in Mesrobian’s novel are titillating but not as remarkable as the euphemisms hiding the chemical abortion plot. Of course, the scenes which abuse male sexual power are meant for the sexually immature (teens or young adult readers). Serious readers (everybody else) can use Mesrobian’s fiction as yet more evidence of the linguistic gymnastics, if not duplicity, which pro-abortion characters use to promote a practice which harms mothers, kills unborn children (whether surgically or, as in this case, chemically with abortifacients), and alienates fathers.
The euphemisms to refer to the killing practice called “abortion” are numerous. Daisy, a main character, expresses surprise that “the things required to unmake a pregnancy would be sold someplace as ordinary as Walmart” (84). “Unmake a pregnancy”? Why the euphemism? You mean abortion, right?
Daisy’s claim that her aunt “knows someone who—” (87) with the dash indicating that the sentence is unfinished is a literary technique other writers have used to hide the fact that characters are talking about, yet again, abortion.
The chemical killing of Lilah’s unborn child is discussed with the usual impersonal third-person pronouns and deceptive language. “It’s starting”, Poppy says, using “it” to refer to the abortion (155). Poppy “explained […] that it would be slowly happening now, the lining shedding in layers of blood and tissue” (157). “It”, of course, refers to the abortion, and “the lining shedding” obscures the fact that it is not only “the lining” which is “shedding” but the unborn child him- or herself who is being killed by “shedding” along with the “lining” and “tissue.”
Daisy’s boyfriend Hugh asks if her sister is “not-pregnant” (160). The narrator records Daisy’s reactions that “whatever lived inside in Lilah began its descent” (162). Translation: the dead body of the unborn child, now separated from his or her warm and life-giving uterus and therefore dead, is being passed out of that uterus, thanks to an abortifacient drug which his or her aunt gave to his or her mother. (Yeah, nonsexist language is cumbersome but must be used to be fair to the unborn child character who may be one of the two genders.)
One character’s Freudian slip—“to get rid of the baby” (174)—is quickly covered by deceptive abortion language a page later when Lilah talks about what some mothers did to “expel the contents of the uterus” (175).
Just like other abortion novels, whether written for teens or adults, post-abortion syndrome is obvious even here, in a novel whose characters clearly do not advance pro-life ideas and are hostile to religious persons who are pro-life. Typical of mothers who have aborted, Lilah seems happy after her abortion (197).
Jane’s last reminiscence, however, which closes the novel, suggests that Lilah suffers from post-abortion syndrome: “She thinks of the babe she did not have; she ponders names late at night in bed, her eyes on the once-fractured seam in the celling. When I watch her, I find myself remembering what I cannot reclaim. It is the closest I can come to human pain now” (208).
This is not literary evidence of abortion which is supposed to make a woman happy. It is, obviously, literary evidence of post-abortion syndrome.
Overall, even though the author is most likely a leftist and pro-abortion Democrat (same thing; consult her Twitter feed), Mesrobian’s work could suggest a fascinating paper for a student to write about the dishonest language which abortion-minded characters and authors use to dehumanize the unborn child, to suppress evidence of post-abortion syndrome, and to ignore the role of the father.
Just make sure your professor is pro-life and not a feminist hag who thinks abortion is the only choice for an untimely pregnancy.