The Abortion Boat

Chris Weinkopf

Under most circumstances, Rebecca Gomperts is the sort of pioneer the left would despise. A white European, she seeks to circumvent laws, trample non-Western cultures, and overturn indigenous customs throughout the Third World. While she’s at it, Gomperts will actively try to curb the growth of various non-white populations and impose Western attitudes over local religions and values.

If Gomperts were exporting blue jeans or Big Macs, liberals would roundly condemn her for the crime of cultural genocide. But instead, she is exporting abortion, for which the left’s enthusiasm exceeds its disdain for cultural imperialism.

Gomperts, who declined an interview for this piece, is a 34-year-old Dutch abortionist. She is also the founder of the Women on Waves Foundation—an effort to literally ship abortion to the one-quarter of the world’s nations that enshrine the right to life in their laws. Gomperts’ plan is to charter a 150-foot ship, christen it Sea Change, and convert the boat into a floating abortuary that would anchor itself just outside the territorial waters of countries that ban abortion. From that safe distance, Women on Waves would not only expand the abortion industry to untapped markets, but also spread the worldview that sustains it. The Sea Change would deliver euphemistic utilitarianism, amorality, women’s exploitation, and lawlessness—all hallmarks of the culture of death.

Preparing for the maiden voyage

“We are not intending to commit any crime,” Gomperts insists, because “in international waters, abortion is not a crime.”¹ In fact, because the Sea Change would fly under the Dutch flag, Dutch law—abortion on demand after an initial consultation and a five-day waiting period—would prevail. The Sea Change would come into port and offer consultations, distribute contraceptives, and operate a dockside museum on sexual education. After picking up about 20 prospective customers, the ship would sail to international waters, where Gomperts would ply her trade. “An abortion performed by trained providers is a very simple and safe procedure which can take no longer than 5-10 minutes,” Gomperts explains.² She estimates that the Sea Change could rid about 100 mothers of their unborn children each week. Depending on local demand, the ship would stay in port for up to six months at a time.

Gomperts came up with the idea for Women on Waves between her two stints as shipboard doctor for Greenpeace’s second Rainbow Warrior ship. (The first was sunk by French commandos in 1985 for obstructing France’s nuclear-testing program in the South Pacific.) The Sea Change puts a feminist spin on the Rainbow Warrior’s brand of activism-piracy. The ship would have an all-female crew, consisting of one or two doctors, a nurse, a captain, and deckhands. It would be equipped with all the usual tools of modern seafaring, like satellite communications and navigation equipment, plus some less conventional amenities: an ultrasonograph, a suction machine, hospital beds with stirrups.

The medical equipment is all part of the $50,000 abortion “treatment room” encased in a shipping container that attaches to the vessel. Designed by Dutch artist Josep van Lieshout, the room “is aimed at transforming a clinical environment into a friendly and comfortable place.”³ Or, put less euphemistically, it seeks to create a cozy atmosphere that conceals the efficient brutality that takes place inside. To that end, the interior is painted in a placid “duck eggshell white.” The blueprints note that to “make this small place agreeable, sharp edges and straight edges are avoided.” Outside the abortion chamber is the reception area, “a friendly warm space where the client can speak to the doctor and have a drink or a refreshment,” just like Jiffy Lube.

The design of the facility, like the choice of the word “treatment room” itself, is consistent with abortion-rights proponents’ tendency to claim that abortion is merely one of many “health services,” morally no different from a lumpectomy. The strategy requires that its adherents choose their language carefully. There can be no suggestion that the decision to have an abortion is anything other than liberating, or that the lump being excised possesses any of the characteristics of a human being.

Women on Waves, for example, seldom uses the word “termination” to describe an abortion. Instead, it offers such statements as “pregnancies will be treated”—as though pregnancy were an easily curable but otherwise dangerous affliction. Its website makes references to the need to “save the life of the pregnant woman,” while careful not to call pregnant women “mothers.”

The site’s “procedures” page discusses abortion clinically, in a matter-of-fact manner that portrays the operation as uneventful, even banal, instead of lethal and traumatic. “Attach suction canula to suction machine and vacuum inside uterus” is followed by “Give emotional support.” After all, “women can experience some cramping.” Acknowledging the real reason why women might need emotional support after an abortion would be to concede too much.

Abortions aboard the ship would be free of charge, but those who can afford to would be asked to pay $100 to help defray the costs for future clients. Women on Waves is not about making money. “We want to empower women. We are a nonprofit organization,” Gomperts explains.⁴ Women, however, are not the only intended recipients of the group’s philanthropy. Gomperts has stressed that those in most need of her organization’s services are “women without financial means and adolescents” [emphasis added].⁵ Presumably, girls would be welcome aboard the Sea Change, with or without their parents’ consent. If the sovereign rights of nations to enforce their own laws won’t stop Gomperts, it’s hard to see why parental rights would.

It’s unclear when, if ever, the Sea Change will set sail. Its biggest obstacle is raising $190,000 in seed capital, but the crew and the $50,000 mobile abortion clinic are already in place.⁶ “If the money came in tomorrow,” Gomperts boasts, “we would be able to sail in a month.”⁷ The boat’s first destination has not been set, but Gomperts avers that “wherever abortion is illegal, that is our target country.”⁸ Her preference is for developing nations in Africa and South America, but Malta, Poland, and Ireland have all been named as possible sites. Predominantly Catholic countries, naturally, top the list. Not surprisingly, Women on Waves has won the support of the anti-Catholic left, including Catholics for a Free Choice.⁹

Any difficulties the organization has had raising funds stem less from principled opposition than from skepticism about the feasibility of a floating abortuary. The New York Times describes Gomperts’ reception with American abortion-rights advocates as “warm but cautious.”¹⁰ Although intrigued by the prospect, potential backers are worried that the ship would be detained, impounded, or sunk upon entering the waters of an unsympathetic nation.¹¹ Gomperts is less concerned. She is confident that international law is on her side, and that even though the Sea Change will seek media attention, it will also be able to evade detection when necessary. She notes that the boat will include various security systems, from surveillance cameras to high-tech devices she is unwilling to disclose.¹²

For now, though, fundraising remains the top priority. Women on Waves has received financial support from Mama Cash, a Dutch feminist group, and it solicits tax-deductible donations from its website. The Dutch Minister of Development has endorsed its agenda, and the Dutch parliament has even considered extending it a public subsidy.

Calling all martyrs

Women on Waves has many goals, but its “main idea,” Gomperts says, “is to reduce mortalities caused by unsafe abortions.”¹³ She invokes statistics from Planned Parenthood’s Alan Guttmacher Institute to support the claim that worldwide, 70,000 women die in botched abortions each year. The Sea Change, she argues, “is a chance to provide safe services. Research shows that when abortion is legal, morbidity decreases dramatically.”¹⁴ To reduce the chance of complications, Women on Waves will offer only first-trimester abortions. It will also dispense RU-486 to women who haven been pregnant for less than seven weeks.

Still, there is good reason to be skeptical about the plan’s safety. Gomperts’ confidence assumes that safe medical conditions can be achieved on a relatively small vessel sailing on the high seas, with the closest full-service hospital at least twelve miles away. It assumes that women who suffer post-abortion complications (including RU-486-induced bleeding) will be able to seek treatment in countries where doing so requires confessing to a crime. And it assumes the professional credibility of an organization that essentially faces no legal or financial repercussions for its mistakes or malpractice—a here-today, gone-tomorrow abortion mill.

Far from preventing the illegal, unsafe abortions that Gomperts decries, Women on Waves plans to aid yet more of them by offering instruction to would-be abortionists in the pro-life countries it visits. The Women on Waves website promises that “by training local service providers (5 each week) in techniques of vacuum aspiration and post-abortion care, we will ensure that the services delivered by the ship will continue to be available after it has departed.” In other words, back on land, hastily trained, unaccountable and unlicensed abortionists will be able to carry on the carnage in the Sea Change’s wake.

If they’re so inclined, the indigenous abortionists will then be able to pass along their skill: “These local providers will be recruited by the local groups and will be trained in such a way that they will in turn be able to train other service providers to support local capacity building.”¹⁵ Beyond simply promoting an alternative to illegal abortion, Women on Waves aspires to lay the foundation for its host countries’ very own black-market, back-alley abortion industry. So much for Gomperts’ insistence that “neither we nor the cooperating local groups will ever conduct any illegal or criminal activity.”¹⁶

While Gomperts’ concern for the safety of women is surely real, it rates as a distant second priority to her overriding zeal for spreading the abortion revolution overseas. She seems to accept the idea that the cause of internationally legalized abortion is worth the cost of a few women. Despite Gomperts’ assurances that the law is on her side, there is a strong possibility that her clients would face criminal sanctions in their home countries. In Malta, Social Policy Minister Lawrence Gonzi warned that his government would take legal action against any of its citizens found collaborating with Women on Waves.

On the “Question and Answers” portion of the Women on Waves website, one query asks, “Will women who have had treatment on board face social or juridical problems when they return to land?” The response remarks that “history has taught us that in all countries where abortion has been legalized, test court cases have taken place and women have had to stand up for their rights. The ship will serve as a catalyst and give will [sic] women the opportunity to do so.” That’s no doubt the opportunity that Third World women crave—the chance to be a legal guinea pig.

And what comfort does Women on Waves have to offer its clients, should they be victimized by one of the “anti-choice” terrorists that abortion defenders are convinced dominate the pro-life movement? Outside of North America, its website claims, attacks are unlikely, but in any case, “the consequence of violent action against providers and clinics . . . has been huge support for the pro-choice cause.” Martyrs make for great press.

The larger purpose of the Women on Waves agenda, as detailed in the foundation’s mission statement, is to “re-energize pro-choice activism and counter anti-choice backlash.” The group’s plans for the Sea Change are much greater than simply performing a few hundred, or even a few thousand, abortions. It hopes the boat will “draw public attention to the consequences of illegal abortion and catalyze efforts to liberalize abortion laws.”¹⁷

This is guerrilla activism, the feminist version of fighting logging policies by hijacking a tree. Gomperts hopes that by skirting nations’ abortion laws, she will ultimately overturn them. “I want these countries to change their laws,” she explains. “The only way to get the law changed is to push the issue.”¹⁸

As America’s experience since Roe v. Wade has shown, once abortion becomes readily available, society’s behavior conforms to it—until “choice” looks to many like “necessity.” When the Sea Change anchors off shore in one of its target countries, it will bring not only a quick and easy fix to the problem of unwanted pregnancies, but also a highly addictive and corrupting way of life. By turning its clients into agents of the abortion culture, and then facilitating that culture by establishing a domestic abortion industry, Women on Waves could do more to overturn anti-abortion laws than any amount of propaganda or politicking.

Gomperts is one of abortion’s true believers—more than a student-activist type mesmerized by the libertarian-sounding promise of “choice.” She considers her line of work “a very satisfying profession.”¹⁹ Abortion, for her, is far more than a trade, or even a form of service—it is a galvanizing force for social good. “The possibility for women to decide over their own fertility has everything to do with women’s empowerment and emancipation,” she proclaims.²⁰ The Women on Waves website charges that “Availability of safe and above all affordable abortion will also have implications for the future financial situation of such women and/or their families and can therefore be considered part of the struggle against poverty.”

Exporting the revolution

Gomperts’ use of Marxist imagery—talk of “emancipation” and “the struggle”—is indicative of the revolutionary approach that governs the pro-choice philosophy. Her effort is less about changing the world than recreating it, replacing the tyranny of biology with a utopian vision of unrestrained sexual liberation, where abundant contraceptives and abortion on demand unhinge sex from its moral and medical dimensions.

Like the twentieth-century utopian revolutions before it, the abortion-rights campaign needs to be waged continuously in order to remain viable. Otherwise, the public might begin to question why the revolution failed to deliver on its promised liberation. At least that’s what Gomperts perceives in her homeland, which long ago embraced the abortion culture. Women on Waves’ website complains that, “as in the US, the increasing influence of an anti-choice backlash is noticeable even in the Netherlands. This is mostly due to an aggressive, well-funded and media savvy anti-choice movement that has forced the supporters of choice into a defensive position.”

The defensive position is one the revolution cannot sustain for long. When scrutiny, biological evidence, and moral reasoning enter the debate, the abortion edifice crumbles quickly. The revolution thus must always be on the attack, knocking down one last barrier, fighting against an elusive but dangerous cadre of counter-revolutionaries. As the Women on Waves website puts it, “To counter this tendency, the pro-choice movement needs to once again take on its activist role and clearly set the public agenda.”

The Sea Change is only the first step. Ideally, Gomperts would like to see the boat generate enough publicity and attention that it could influence the political culture of the countries it visits, as well as raise enough revenue to construct a full armada of floating abortuaries to continue exporting the revolution. “We want to develop our activities simultaneously at numerous locations and are thus looking for additional ships that would allow us to do so,” the Women on Waves website informs its viewers. “Do you have a ship which fits the above description?”

In building a perfect world in the place of God’s failed prototype, the revolutionaries feel no compunction to obey the laws—natural or man-made—of the old model they seek to discard. That’s why abortion-rights activists are so dismissive, even disdainful, of the question of when life begins. Who cares about losing a few million—or even tens or hundreds of millions—of human lives when the greater goal is perfecting humanity itself?

As for those who stand in the way of “reproductive rights,” whether parents or governments, these are unjust authorities that must be toppled. Gomperts herself has no qualms about trying to undermine nations’ abortion laws and their pro-life culture because she views the laws themselves as fundamentally unjust and the cultures as hopelessly backward. An account of the history of abortion laws on the Women on Waves website illustrates this attitude:

Prior to the beginning of the 19th century, there were no abortion laws in existence. In 1869 Pope Pius IX declared that ensoulment occurs at conception. As a result the laws in the 19th century did not allow any termination of pregnancy. These laws form the basis of the restrictive legislation on abortion that still exist in many developing countries. Between 1950 and 1985 almost all developed countries liberalized their abortion laws for reasons of human rights and safety. Where abortion is still illegal this is often due to old colonial laws and not always an expression of the opinion of the local population.

The Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion (which has origins as early as the first century) is dismissed as self-evidently false, like flat-earth cosmology. By this reasoning, superstition alone keeps abortion illegal in the few colonized corners of the world that remain undeveloped or illiberal—and unconcerned for human rights or safety.

If there’s one reason why pro-lifers and pro-choicers have such a difficult time finding common ground, this is it. Pro-lifers take the question of ensoulment—or, put in secular terms, when a human being becomes a human being—seriously, while pro-choicers think it irrelevant. Ultimately, the debate is a clash between two fundamentally opposed worldviews—the spiritualist and materialist—and a question as to whether higher truths trump personal wants.

Neither Rebecca Gomperts, the organization she has founded, nor the revolution she hopes to export can do much to refute the spiritualist worldview, but that’s not their aim. They hope only to displace it.