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The symbolism of coat hangers

The coat hanger made its appearance-- or reappearance-- in American culture this week in two odd ways.

First, the show American Horror Story-- which defies brief description-- recently featured a woman attempting to perform a self-abortion with a wire coat hanger. You'll have to read the Salon article about the episode, but, intentionally or not, the show's producers built a case for abortion-as-necessary so over the top that it almost undermines itself.

Second, the owner of a dry cleaning business in Ohio placed pro-life messages on the coat hangers that go back to customers with their clothes. The owner of the business seemed genuinely obtuse regarding the symbolism at work, although there is some evidence that people had been complaining about the hanger messages for a couple of years. A blogger who broke the story called this "the worst marketing decision ever." I posted a link to the article on a Facebook page I maintain for my students, and one of them said they checked The Onion web site to make sure this wasn't a hoax.

What is it about coat hangers? The coat hanger as the symbol of desperate, unsafe and illegal abortions has been part of the cultural imagination of Americans for 40 years.

The coat hanger symbol is just that, a symbol-- it does not entirely track with reality but resonates emotionally because it captures a deeper truth about the world. First, the wire hanger was not and is not the implement of choice for unsafe abortions performed by illegal abortionists or for self-abortions. There are a wide range of methods used in unsafe abortions (an article in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine has a table of various methods). The wire hanger is the type of implement that is sometimes used, along with knitting needles and other long, sharp objects that are easily available. Second, the use of something like a wire hanger has a little less to do with the proverbial 'back alley abortion' than with self-abortion.

The deeper truth here is that women attempt and have abortions regardless of their legality. One of the fundamental tenets of the pro-choice movement is that making abortion illegal (or legal but difficult to access) does not fundamentally reduce the number of abortions but makes the abortions that do occur unsafe and sometimes fatal.

Below are some links to articles that explore unsafe abortions in the United States before-- and after-- the Roe decision.

Links:

Article in Salon (December 13, 2012): "American Horror Story's" coat hanger abortion

Article at The Huffington Post (December 11, 2012):  Pro-Life Coat Hangers at Springdale Cleaners: 'Worst Marketing Decision Ever'

Essay in The Atlantic by Rebecca J. Rosen that discusses the symbolism of the coat hanger (August 23, 2012): Consider the coat hanger

Essay in The New York Times by a retired doctor about treating women who attempted to self-abort with various implements (June 3, 2008): Repairing the Damage, Before Roe

Article in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (November 2009 issue): The Back Alley Revisited: Sepsis after Attempted Self-Induced Abortion

Article in Slate that discusses the phenomenon of post-Roe self-abortions in the United States; the article also links to a couple of scholarly studies about self-induced abortions (January 18, 2011): The DIY Abortion

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