In this post, I examine how abortion language functions in M. R. Carey’s 2014 zombie novel The Girl with All the Gifts. I devoured (heh, heh) most of the novel last week on an airplane. One of the things that struck me was how a group of children–not quite human, and not quite zombie–were referred to as “frigging little abortions.”
This post will be as spoiler-free as possible. Some of you may want to read the book, which I enthusiatically recommend. Or, you may want to see the film, which I haven’t seen. (Carey wrote the novel and the screenplay at the same time). If you worry about spoilers, perhaps avoid this post.
The Girl with All the Gifts centers on the relationship between Melanie, a human/zombie hybrid of some kind, and the people around her. The central relationship in the novel is between Melanie and her teacher, Miss Justineau. This relationship is nourishing and reciprocal, but also fraught. The relationships that form between Melanie and others, particularly Dr. Caldwell, Sergeant Parks, and Private Gallagher are also worth attending to. (As a side note, Dr. Caldwell is the scariest, and most compelling, villain I’ve encountered in recent memory).
Sergeant Parks’s “frigging little abortions”
On page 4, Sergeant Parks refers to the human/zombie hybrid children as abortions. About a quarter of the way through the novel, Parks ceases to use this language. Even when “abortion” is used, it’s sparing. On my quick skim back through the first fifteen chapters, I only noticed “abortion” used three times. Parks uses other images to describe the human/zombie hybrid children as well. In addition to “abortions,” in the first quarter of the novel, Parks calls the children bastards, animals, and its.
Parks dwells with the human/zombie children. He doesn’t like his assignment. He thinks that keeping the children alive is dangerous. But Parks is a good soldier, and he stays in line. By calling the children abortions, Parks is able to use language to exert the semblance of control. Through speech, he rejects the children’s worthiness to be alive. As Parks so often reminds us, they aren’t alive. They’re undead.
Abortion language and fetal personhood
This use of abortion language, however sparingly used, reinforces anti-choice arguments that confer personhood on fetuses. To varying degrees, the humans around Melanie come to recognize her as a person, even though she isn’t (quite) human. As other characters humanize Melanie, the novel seems to invite the reader to regret Parks’ application of “abortion” to her. She is a person, her life is worth living, and it is worth saving.
Further, arguments about fetal personhood depend on the presence of a (potential) mother who will nurture and facilitate the coming of this life. Miss Justineau fulfills the metaphorical role of guiding Melanie’s entrance from Plato’s cave (as Melanie puts it) into the dystopian world outside the barracks. Their relationship is complex. In many ways, loving Melanie isn’t something that comes naturally or immediately to Helen Justineau. One might read her decision to fight for Melanie’s continued existence as an affirmation of women who choose to carry pregnancies to term despite “pressure” to abort.
Normalizing abortion
Narratively, I found Sergeant Parks’s use of abortion language to be effective in sucking me into the novel. It made me pay attention. However, Parks’s use of “abortion” in conjunction with the shift in how the characters relate to Melanie may perpetuate anti-choice ideologies.
I think there’s a more subversive reading of how abortion language functions in The Girl with All the Gifts available to us. I think we can read abortion as a normalized practice that, at least prior to the zombie apocalypse, women could access.
First, Parks’s casual use of the term “abortion” suggests that this practice wasn’t as stigmatized or difficult to access as it is in many parts of contemporary Canada, the US, or globally.
Second, Parks cares about choices being available. He makes sense of his world in a context where, because he is a soldier (well, and because zombies have taken over), his options for choice are limited. He resists and acts against the reduction of choice.
Third, Parks’s use of “abortion” is a category mistake. His devaluation of Melanie is about confronting difference, not about valuing a human life. Melanie is a person, but as I’ve indicated, she’s not quite human either. She exists, and she’s conscious. She’s (mostly) alive. This use of “abortion” isn’t analogous to what actually happens in unwanted pregnancy, where the fetus does not have a presence in the same way Melanie does.
This more subversive reading about how abortion might be interpreted as normalized within the context of The Girl with All the Gifts is consistent with Sergeant Parks’s realizing that Melanie is a person. We can accept abortion as a legitimate choice, but reject they way he initially interacts with and views Melanie.
Abortion and trash
My reading is a bit of a stretch. An unpleasant odor lingers. If we take me reading, we are still left with the connotation that aborted things are trash. Parks’s language around abortion suggests that the human/zombie hybrid children are humanity’s abortion, their unwanted and discarded offspring that do not have a place in our world. Further, the human/zombie children might be read as differently-abled, which invites connotations of eugenics. Connections between abortion and trash run counter to the most widely documented reasons why women choose abortions: they cannot have a child due to other family care-giving responsibilities or due to financial instability. Aborted fetuses should not be viewed as waste. Doing so ignores the complexity of women’s reproductive decision-making. Abortion is not a impulsive action, but something most women undertake with care, self-reflection, and thoughtfulness.
This post has been about a very small point. But in any case, The Girl with All the Gifts is a fantastic read. Check it out.
A note on sources
I’m sure you can find The Girl with All the Gifts pretty much everywhere. I bought mine at Words Worth Books in uptown Waterloo. I’ve been reading Charis Thompson’s Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). This post has benefitted from my thinking about this book.
The film poster is from IMDB.com.