In the years leading up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, you could always find protestors waving signs and yelling at patients going into abortion clinics, particularly those in urban areas where there was easy access to public transit. The protestors were usually religious fanatics but there were some who didn’t seem especially religious, older white men who seemed to take it as a personal affront that women were able to control their own bodies. These kind of anti-abortionists also dominated the trolls on social media who harassed women and abortion staffers online and uploaded their home addresses and any other private information they could dig up.
In her latest novel, Mercy Street, Jennifer Haigh does a good job of rendering one such anti-abortionist, a white veteran who is filled with rage that young women are aborting their babies instead of doing what he thinks they should — populating the world with white babies to counter what he perceives as a takeover of the United States by minorities. Victor, as the character is named, also hoards firearms — no surprise there — and believes the end of the world is coming. Victor could easily be a stereotype of an angry white racist and yet Haigh portrays him in a nuanced way — as a recluse filled with bitterness and regrets and at the same time oddly attracted to the young women seeking abortions whose pictures he has had taken for an online website he calls Hall of Shame.
In the novel, Victor decides to confront one woman whose likeness has been captured by a protestor in his network and his decision to find her frames the primary tension in Haigh’s book. I won’t divulge what happens here, but if you’re interested in understanding why some men who couldn’t care less about religion are violently anti-abortion, you might want to read Mercy Street. It made me think about the extent to which military service and fighting in foreign wars damages men, particularly those who don’t have loving families to support them. Haigh, by the way, also delivers nuanced portrayals of several other characters in the novel and I found it highly readable, if a tad disturbing.
This blog is also posted on medium.com.
