CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 335
its claim to define the semiotic and symbolic dimension of human
embodiment,asthenextsectionwillshow.
NationalIntimacies:The"PoliticsofLife"andtheReligiousRight
That an individual body can emerge in moments of emergency
surcharged with meaning for larger social and cultural issues is by no
means a thing of the past, neither are such emergencies a thing of the
moment only. Since 1973, since the United States Supreme Court's
landmarkdecisioninRoev.Wade(410U.S.113),animportantsegment
oftheU.S.population,andagrowingoneatthat,livesinoneprolonged
state of emergency—an emergency that is precipitated, in their
understandingatleast,byliberalabortionlaws.Intheirview,humanlife
in its most vulnerable condition, unborn life, is in constant danger
because women can terminate pregnancies as they see fit. Without
doubt, abortion is an important ethical and Civil Rights issue which
cannot be adequately dealt with in the brief space of these pages whose
overallinterestslieelsewhere.Butthepublicpresenceofhumanbodies,
whichismyprimaryconcernhere,nonethelessmattersinthiscontext,if
onlyparadoxicallyso,becausetheasyetunbornbodieswhichcannotbe
somatically present are invested with an immense load of semantic
significance. Concerning this, it is worthwhile noting that in the onging
debateaboutfetuses(asearlierintheEmmettTillcase),embodimentin
its somatic givenness is conceptually (and certainly emotionally)
detached from life, from the idea of a living breathing human being
(Bennett 86). In both instances, this detachment reflects a historical
processwithalonghistoryofitsown.
In the 1970s, partly in response to the socially experimental 1960s,
U.S.-American Protestantism in its evangelical branches came to be
born again. What distinguished the new Protestant Right from its
predecessors and also from other mainline churches was "its intense
focus on the arcana of sexual politics and family values" (M. Cooper,
LifeasSurplus168-69).Manyofthepublicinterventionsonthissubject
matter from the pro-lifer spectrum are characterized by a high-pitched
rhetoricofemergency,whichlinksthefateofthefetusquitedirectlyand
unambiguouslytothefateoftheUnitedStatesasanation"underGod."
In thisspirit,then,didthe"Pro-LifeTeaParty," asegmentofthelarger