“Unwind”: High Payoff, Weird Concept

Set in the future, the second civil war is fought over abortion. To end the war, a compromise is reached that ends the practice of abortion but creates an alternative called “unwinding.” Between the ages of 13 and 17, parents or guardians can choose to have their children unwound, which involves having every part of their bodies harvested to be “donated” to another person so, technically, they don’t really die. – Amazon.com book description of Unwind, by Neal Shusterman

Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? Well, this is the premise of a young adult dystopian novel by Neal Shusterman published in 2007. The three main characters are a rebellious teenage boy whose parents give him up for unwinding because he’s too difficult, a ward of the state who is given up for unwinding to make more room for the system, and a religious kid who was born for the sole purpose of being unwound so his family could tithe 10% to the church.

Soon enough, these three characters come together and run from the law, trying to change their fate.

For obvious reasons, I was attracted to the premise of this book as soon as I saw it on the young adult shelf in the library. The story was gripping and the shifts in perspective were believable. Most of all, I found the concept of unwinding to be frighteningly plausible in a not-too-distant future.

The problem is, I don’t find it to be a plausible result in a battle over reproductive rights.

Dystopian sci-fi novels can be difficult to write. The author has to present the reader with something fantastical and over-the-top while also making the reader believe that this future could exist. There are many aspects of Unwind that I find plausible.

The culture makes a point of using euphemisms to downplay the horror of what they’re doing. When a person is unwound, society doesn’t call the unwound person “dead,” but “living in a divided state.” The society also makes a point of only allowing unwinding from the ages of thirteen to eighteen, and I can easily believe that premise in a culture that fetishizes children but views young adults and teenagers as untrustworthy and easily disposable – especially angry, problematic teenagers, the one with tempers and the ones who clutter the state system with too many extra bodies. I especially like that Shusterman gives a whole chapter that describes the actual process of unwinding – it’s a horrifying procedure and we read it from the perspective of the patient undergoing it.

Still, I have a hard time believing that this procedure would be suggested, and widely accepted, as a solution to the abortion debate.

I spend a lot of time reading articles about abortion and looking at opinions from the pro- and anti-choice sides of the issue. Arguments become heated and compromises are never found. While I think a small group of individuals from each side might latch onto the concept of unwinding, I can’t see the majority of either the pro-choice or pro-life sides agreeing to it.

Much of pro-choice philosophy is based on the idea that a woman should not have to be pregnant against her will; the culture in Unwind makes it easier for women to drop off their unwanted babies, but doesn’t take care of that forced pregnancy issue that is, well, really important to pro-choicers.

As for the pro-life side, they’ve often been accused of only caring about unborn children while advocating cuts in prenatal care and education. (As George Carlin put it, “If you’re preborn, you’re fine. If you’re preschool, you’re fucked.”) This contradiction comes up quite often, especially with our increasingly radical right in Congress. Even so, there are plenty of pro-lifers whose hearts I believe truly are in the right place and really do care about “the children,” and I can’t imagine a majority of them supporting a procedure that would take children apart and harvest their organs.

That doesn’t mean the story isn’t still strong, but it doesn’t work for me as a commentary on abortion. I think it works better as a story about human trafficking and how certain people who don’t fall into a certain mold are viewed as disposable.

The sequel to Unwind, Unwholly, is being released in two months. I look forward to seeing where the story goes and reading about the horrifying twists to come. I just hope the reproductive rights issue is downplayed, because that concept doesn’t completely work, not when you consider the arguments most frequently made by people on different sides of the abortion issue.