Spatchcock: A culinary term for our times

Reflections on the Supreme Court’s recent abortion ruling

Spatchcock is both a noun and a verb, a cooking technique and a finished dish. You might say, we’re having spatchcock tonight, or let’s fire up the grill and spatchcock. 

An old word, with supposed Irish origins dating to the 18th century, spatchcock is a variation on the expression “Dispatch the cock.” The cock in this case is a chicken, or one of its smaller bird relatives. Spatching the cock means to cut out its back, turn it breast-side up and press on the chest until completely flattened. 

My friend Ann says spatchcocking is kind of violent, and she’s right. 

A lesser known, non-culinary definition of spatchcock is to interpolate, which is another way of saying to corrupt, alter or insinuate someone or something into a situation, to sandwich in foreign matter or inject something that just doesn’t belong. 

Like, for example, the government in my uterus and in yours. 

What the Supreme Court has just done — snatching a constitutionally guaranteed right from the public record and throwing it into the garbage — is violent, too.

In the days since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, I have screamed in horror and cried with rage. I told another friend I felt a mix of bile, venom and heartbreak. But I have struggled to find the words to express that feeling of someone taking something away from me that I held dear for most of my life. 

I am a chef who writes and a writer who cooks. I earned my first tiny paycheck as a reporter when I was 22 and fresh out of the Ivy League oven. At 30, I graduated from culinary school, thinking my days of journalism  – or any kind of writing – were done. Instead, my worlds collided. Food became more than my beat; it became both a language and a lens for understanding my time on earth. 

In my mind’s eye, I see a spine symbolizing the legal support and protection afforded by Roe v Wade for 50 years. Although imperfect – abortion access is disproportionately restrictive for poor women and women of color – at least there was a spine to work with. 

With the Roe reversal, the court has shattered this spine, a tangle of splintered vertebrae, like a chicken carcass that’s been spatchcocked. 

The right to choose what to do with my body shaped the backbone of my own life. With Roe on the books, I had the privilege of having access to three legal abortions. 

I was 24 when I had my first legal abortion. I was that budding journalist mentioned earlier. My boyfriend was a really nice guy whose condom broke when we were on vacation. I can still hear the voices as we walked from the parking lot to the clinic entrance, the voices shouting religious epithets, the voices urging me to turn around. The voices that would silence me until now. 

I was 29 when I had my second abortion. I was hopelessly in love with a complicated man who was in love with alcohol. When I tell him that I’m pregnant, his reply is no reply. No bedside manner, no ‘Baby we got this.’ No money,  no conversation. Jackshit. My girl Eliza was my ride to the clinic and my constant companion. There was no drama at the front entrance, no voices in my ear this time. Just mine. Not ‘What have you done?’ More like, ‘What the hell are you doing with your life, girlfriend?’

Six months later, I applied to cooking school and moved away.

I was 35 when I had my third abortion. I was a single, self-assured woman rocking the online journalism world. I got entangled with a duplicitous man from Barbados who got at least one other woman pregnant at the same time. He disappeared as soon as I told him the news. I wondered if this would be my last chance to be a mom, but I decided it was worth the risk to have him gone, all of him.

But really, it doesn’t matter how or why I came to that decision three times. The law was clear, and so was I.

The right to decide allowed me to become the woman I am. That woman is about to turn 56. My multi-faceted career includes writing three cookbooks and teaching people to cook. I’m an honorary auntie. Married at 40 to a good egg after dating dozens of rotten ones. Mentor. Good friend. Yogi. Gardener, world traveler, humanitarian. 

The choices that were mine to make allowed me to forge my own path. They’ve given me the wisdom to know this: Without safe, legal abortion, this country is spatchcocked.