The Stories We Tell
Linda Greenhouse
FEB. 5, 2014, NYT
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion famously wrote in her essay collection “The White Album.” It’s a haunting line, because it’s so universally applicable. We tell ourselves stories not only for profound reasons but for mundane ones as well: to process the ambiguous and complex events that unfold every day around us, or even to try to understand the issues presented in a major Supreme Court case.
Last month, the court heard arguments in an abortion-related case from Massachusetts. The question was whether the 35-foot buffer zone that the state maintains around medical offices where abortions are performed violates the First Amendment. The case is McCullen v. Coakley. Coakley is Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, whose office is defending the 2007 law. McCullen, in whose name the challenge to the law was brought, is Eleanor McCullen, and the story many people seem to be telling themselves about this case is hers.
Eleanor McCullen is a 77-year-old grandmother whose photograph, with an oversize cross hanging from her neck over a bulky winter coat, has been ubiquitous in accounts of the case. For many years she has positioned herself outside the entrance to a Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Boston with the mission of dissuading women from going ahead with their scheduled abortions. Her argument in the case is that the buffer zone means she can’t engage the women in low-key conversation as she wishes, but instead has to raise her voice in order to get their attention and deliver a message that as a result is inevitably perceived differently.
(More here.)
FEB. 5, 2014, NYT
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion famously wrote in her essay collection “The White Album.” It’s a haunting line, because it’s so universally applicable. We tell ourselves stories not only for profound reasons but for mundane ones as well: to process the ambiguous and complex events that unfold every day around us, or even to try to understand the issues presented in a major Supreme Court case.
Last month, the court heard arguments in an abortion-related case from Massachusetts. The question was whether the 35-foot buffer zone that the state maintains around medical offices where abortions are performed violates the First Amendment. The case is McCullen v. Coakley. Coakley is Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, whose office is defending the 2007 law. McCullen, in whose name the challenge to the law was brought, is Eleanor McCullen, and the story many people seem to be telling themselves about this case is hers.
Eleanor McCullen is a 77-year-old grandmother whose photograph, with an oversize cross hanging from her neck over a bulky winter coat, has been ubiquitous in accounts of the case. For many years she has positioned herself outside the entrance to a Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Boston with the mission of dissuading women from going ahead with their scheduled abortions. Her argument in the case is that the buffer zone means she can’t engage the women in low-key conversation as she wishes, but instead has to raise her voice in order to get their attention and deliver a message that as a result is inevitably perceived differently.
(More here.)
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