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Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light

Picoults neuestes Buch behandelt wieder ein überaus kontroverses und problematisches Thema - Schwangerschaftsabbruch - und mich wundert eigentlich nur, warum sie es noch nicht viel früher angegangen hat. Außerdem präsentiert sie es auch noch im Rahmen einer Geiselnahme, und als ich nach dem ersten Kapitel feststellen musste, dass die Geschichte rückwärts erzählt wird, und das auch noch nach einem richtig gemeinen Cliffhanger, der erst im Epilog aufgelöst wird, raufte ich mir schon die Haare. Im Nachhinein erkannte ich aber, dass die hergebrachte Erzählweise hier nicht so gut funktioniert hätte, viele Sachen, die in den letzten Kapiteln zutage kommen, hätten zuviel vorweggenommen. Das Buch muss ich auf jeden Fall noch einmal in Ruhe lesen, beim ersten Mal sind mir durch die nervtötende Spannung einfach zuviele schöne Stellen durch die Lappen gegangen.
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There was, of course, the history, too. Women had been property. Their chastity had always belonged to a man, until abortion and contraception put control of women's sexuality in the women's hands. If women could have sex without the fear of unwanted pregnancy, then suddenly the man's role had shrunk to a level somewhere between unnecessary and vestigial. So instead, men vilified women who had abortions. They created the stigma: good women want to be mothers, bad women don't.
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What she would miss were these details. She wondered if, when you left this world, you got to take a certain number of them deep in your pockets, clenched in your fists, or tucked high on the roof of your mouth, with you forever.
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He looked into the eyes of each of the women. Warriors, every one of them. Every day, he was reminded of their grit, their courage in the face of obstacles, the quiet grace with which they shouldered their troubles. They were stronger than any men he'd ever known. For sure, they were stronger than the male politicians who were so terrified of them that they designed laws specifically to keep women down. Louie shook his head. As if that could ever be done. If he had learned anything during his years as an abortion doctor, it was this: there was nothing on God's green earth that would stop a woman who didn't want to be pregnant.
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Today he was reading the research of a team from Northwestern University, who had recorded a zinc flash at the precise instant a sperm fertilized an egg. A rush of calcium at that moment caused zinc to be released from the egg. As the zinc burst out, at attached itself to small, fluorescent molecules: the spark that was picked up by camera microscopes. Although this had been seen before in mice, it was the first time in humans. More important, certain eggs glowed a little brigther than others at the moment of conception - the same ones that went on to become healthy embryos.
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As a resident, he'd sat with his share of terminal patients, and what you heard was true: people who were dying talked of a tunnel, with a warm glow at the end.
It stood to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light.
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She had come to the clinic because she didn't want to be a little girl anymore. But it wasn't having sex that made you a woman. It was having to make decisions, sometimes terrible ones. Children were told what to do. Adults made up their own minds, even when the options tore them apart.
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(Aus dem Nachwort)
The woman who had come in to have that abortion at fifteen weeks had three other children under the age of four. She could not afford another child without compromising the care of the ones she already had. Did coming to the clinic make her a terrible mother, or a responsible one?
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Laws are black and white. The lives of women are a thousand shades of gray.
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Honestly, I do not believe we, as a society, will ever agree on this issue. The stakes are too high, and both sides operate from places of unshakable belief. But I do think that the first step is to talk to each other - and more important, to listen. We may not see eye to eye, but we can respect each other's opinions and find the truth in them. Perhaps in those honest conversations, instead of demonizing each other, we might see each other as imperfect humans, doing our best.

(Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light, 2018)