Thoughts on Toxic Bodies

Growing up in a post-Silent Spring world on an organic farm staffed and patronized largely by devout environmentalists, I was taught a great deal about toxic chemicals (primarily lead and BPA-laden plastics) from a very young age. Sections of my family’s house still required cleanup as a result of lead paint and trimmings, certain water sources were known to utilize lead pipes, and my parents and friends were constantly on the search for alternatives to plastic for food and water storage, especially for the farm. To me, this was a part of everyday life, and as such I was surprised at how much focus was given to the issues of chemical and plastic leeching in high school science classes. Of course, I was unaware of the wider and more prevalent dangers of toxic chemical buildup outside of the agrarian settings which spurred much of my education on the subject.

Now, a few years later, I’ve come to notice a surprisingly similar trend between the (often) well-meaning but entirely wrong explanations constructed by families in nearby towns and the medical excuses made for a binary definition of gender as written on by Suzanne J. Kessle. There is a particular insistence upon one particular definition of “normal” that, once instilled in the mind of a group, persists forever and a day. In the case of doctors and intersex babies, it was an unshakeable belief in the binary nature of gender. In local families, it was a firm belief that pesticide and manure runoff was entirely unrelated to more than doubled rates of cancer and infant deformity in communities serviced by local water lines. While the two situations were entirely dissimilar, I was honestly incredibly surprised at the similarity in justifications used by the two entirely disparate groups.

On the subject of Toxic Bodies, my initial thought upon completing Chapter 1 was, sadly enough, that the evidence presented in the previous pages in regards to birth defects, especially any studies related to birth defects, might be used to justify the the status of intersex individuals as somehow “wrong”. While I have no doubt that chemicals have affected the fetal development of many thousands of people, justifying a diverse range of cases across hundreds of years of recorded history based on nonhuman studies is a stretch to say the least. More disturbingly, it seems to be the kind of “evidence” that would be rapidly and widely accepted given the overwhelming historical support for the gender binary.

Marxist Feminism: The Fall of Capitalist Oppression/ The Rise of Proletariat Personhood

"Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property,

a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange,

is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom

he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce

is but the history of revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production,

against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie 

and of it rule. "(Marx's Communist Manifesto, p. 6)

Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto is a very important part of the building-blocks for many feminist theories. Marx was the first philosopher to assert that gender roles are not predetermined by nature, but rather by environmentally driven social forces. He argues that as capitalism progresses more rapidly, different needs arise for the human condition such as the distribution of labor, which changes societal implications for both genders. We saw this happen during the 1950's during WWII and then again in the 1970's and after the Vietnam war. During WWII many men were away at war for a long period of time, and women were needed in the workforce. After the Vietnam war, our depressed economy led to many mothers taking up jobs to support their families.

Marx's critique of capitalism has come with many modifications and critiques. Reading Marx during my Junior year in high school, I agreed with most of what he said, but severely questioned his prophesies regarding what capitalism would inevitably amount to. After all, Marx does not have a crystal ball that reads into the future of capitalism. After a few more years of higher education and a sharpened eye for injustice and oppression however, I see his prophesies becoming true all around me. Every year our  world seems a little different, every year the richer get richer and the poorer get poorer, every year cooperations get larger and family-owned businesses get smaller.

Every decade, society's expectations for women inflate and get more difficult to fulfill. Regardless of women's rights to vote and have a place in the workforce, these rights still did not grant women, especially pregnant women, subjectivity in the eye of the law. Yes a woman shall work, as long as it's a pink collar job (and now we're back to marx's division of labor). Yes a woman may vote, but they'll never be fit for presidency. Yes a woman is equal to men, except for when she's pregnant, in that case, she's not even an actual person.

In Susan Bordo's "Are Women Persons", she describes case after case of pregnant women being treated as "fetus incubators" in the eyes of the law and the medical world. They are denied their personhood and subjectivity because they are carrying a life. Bordo does not offer an explanation of why a fetus is seen as more of a person than the woman who is carrying it, heck, pro-lifers can't even explain that themselves, but I think Marx can be very helpful in giving us a backdrop on how the aims of capitalism are equal to that of the American dream, and how this leads to a disdain for "selfish" women who do not want children.

See, when pro-lifers say a fertilized egg has the potential for life, what they are actually saying (mostly unknowingly) is that a fertilized egg is a potential consumer, another little one to fit in the assembly line chain and carry his father's lineage. Another little one that parents need to buy diapers for, christmas gifts, a college education, an iPhone, etc.  We know this due to our country's long horrid history of eugenics and forced sterilization. If a family is well-off, that fetus rules over anyone who is opposed to letting the pregnancy go to term, usually a woman who was not planning for a baby in the near future. However, when a family is deemed poor or "un-fit to care" for a future child in any way, several states have gone through lengths to ensure that they will be incapable to bear children. They will not be good consumers, they are too poor to buy macbook pros and contribute to our capitalist economy, therefore they are unworthy. Their subjectivity vanished.

There is one thing in our society that is valued more than the personhood of women and the poor, and that one thing is money. The invent of capitalism has created a society that runs on a green piece of paper. Individual craft is gone, everything is mass produced for bigger profit. Workers are not people, they are commodities who serve in a business while receiving relatively little in return. Women are not people, they are commodities who serve the men in our society, forced to create for them that American dream. While the men work the assembly lines, the women are the fetus incubators, hatching out the working man's seeds, giving him something to work harder for. Trapping them both, so that a man must work with capitalism to feed his children, and a woman must work with capitalism to keep the home expensively beautiful and clean for the working man to come home to.

Capitalism, the American dream, the emphasis on family, and lack of abortion rights in the US are all highly intertwined. Capitalism feeds off of a family's needs to keep up with society's ideals. These ideals are upheld by the media portraying really expensive upper-middle class homes as the norms of society. The media tells us that babies are the epitome of purity and innocence and they must be protected above all cause. Capitalists want us to believe that the family and that white picket fence is the most important thing, that it'll bring true happiness because this is how they make their money. A decently well-off  white mother getting an abortion is unheard of, a waste, a selfish act, she's a witch. Her subjectivity is nulled in the eyes of profit-based bureaucracy. But mass sterilization of poor minority women is justifiable, subjectivity non-existent. This is not a coincidence. One can look at any evil done by the US government since its birth, and trace back every single one of those evils to the greedy aspirations of wealth and production.

Are Women Persons? Well, That Depends....

It’s become so worn out, so overdone, that it almost feels cliche to state. Those who align themselves with pro-life beliefs often argue that life begins at conception, that pregnancy is sacred, that the fetus - the baby, child, however they chose to label it - deserves protection at all costs… but once that fetus leaves the womb? The same group of people who so militantly “protected” the life of that fetus are often the ones who cut down attempts to protect the child and their mother. The same politicians who so vocally condemn abortion are the ones who have made it so difficult for pregnant women and new mothers to receive the assistance that they deserve throughout the pregnancy as well as during the first few years of their child’s life. 

Our healthcare system is deeply flawed in this country. Susan Bordo draws from Katha Pollitt, quoting a section from “Fetal Rights: A New Assault on Feminism”: 

Judges order pregnant addicts to jail, but they don’t order treatment programs to accept them, or Medicaid, which pays for heroin treatment, to cover crack addiction— let alone order landlords not to evict them, or obstetricians to take uninsured women as patients, or the federal government to fund fully the Women, Infants, and Children supplemental feeding program, which reaches only two-thirds of those who are eligible. The policies that have underwritten maternal and infant health in most of the industrialized west since World War II—a national health service, paid maternity leave, direct payments to mothers, government-funded day care, home health visitors for new mothers, welfare payments that reflect the cost of living—are still regarded in the United States by even the most liberal as hopeless causes, and by everyone else as budget-breaking giveaways to the undeserving, pie-in-the-sky items from a mad socialist’s wishlist. (83-4)

The healthcare and reproductive rights debate is often one of choice vs sanctity of life; we often fail to even account for the complexities surrounding reproductive rights. It’s true that women’s bodily autonomy is important when thinking about pregnancy and reproductive rights, but we fail to go beyond the choice to end or continue a pregnancy. Pollitt talks about our failure to fully fund Women, Infants and Children, which, ideally, would provide comprehensive health care, including resources like food, medicine, and check-ups to every pregnant woman — and child up to five years of age — who is “at risk” medically or financially. Pollitt states that those policies have existed in “most of the industrialized west since World War II,” but are seen as “hopeless causes” in America. Bordo even notes that there existed a government task force that came to the conclusion that “if we just delivered routine clinical care and social services to pregnant women, we could prevent one-quarter to one-third of infant mortality” (84).  The answer is so obvious that it seems absurd. But if we look deeper — if we, as Bordo asserts “leave the realm of rationality and enter the realm of gender ideology (and, in many cases, of racial prejudice as well)” we can see the complexities of this system of reproductive control (78). 

The political cartoon I attached at the beginning of this blog post is further complicated if we look at the mother as poor, as a woman of color, or as a woman who immigrated to America. If she is any of these things — not to mention a combination of those identity groups — she is, somehow, unworthy of care or protection. Poor women, women on welfare or other types of assistance, have historically been subjected to forced sterilization in order to prevent what is talked about in the Walker v. Pierce example: 

“[T]his is my tax money paying for something like this [having children while poor]… I am tired of people going around here having babies and my tax money paying for it” (79-80). 

Obviously, because someone pays their taxes they’re allowed to make decisions about other, lower-socio-economic-status people’s lives… right? Here, a person’s autonomy is tied to their ability to be a productive citizen — at least in the context of working. This woman, along with many other “non-productive” women, have been subjected to forced sterilization under the assumption that they were being given a kind of solution to the “problem” that was their economic status. Their personhood — as well as their literal ability to procreate — was taken from them because, as an exploited class, they were stripped the power to speak for themselves. In the same country where we have a problem teaching young people comprehensive sex education, unbiased and without any motive save for education, we have punished people (historically: disabled, non-white, non-English-speaking, poor people) for not knowing what we didn’t teach them — rather, for our perception that they did not understand what we refused to teach them about reproduction. To withhold comprehensive sex education and then punish those who do not adhere to our conception of correct knowledge (and correct bodies in which to practice that knowledge) is something the United States has certainly been guilty of.

In this country, we seem to operate on a model of savior-ism, while, in reality, suppressing and oppressing the groups we have claimed to have saved. We (and I’m using “We” to describe the current and popular beliefs in society, not my specific beliefs) seem to believe that people who make decisions that are divergent to our perceived correct decision are in need of help; they simply need to see the right way to go about things — and this extends to our backwards conception of pregnancy and childbearing. We have set up a system in which women can only fail. If women decide to carry the pregnancy to term, and are not married, middle- or upper-class, able bodied, white, or any number of privileged groups, we see them as a drain on society. If women decide to terminate a pregnancy because of a number of reasons (not limited to financial reasons like the cost of raising a child or simply not wanting to have children), we vilify them for putting themselves first, for electing to not bring a child into a world where there are little to no resources for them. 

Lauren Zuniga performs "To the Oklahoma Lawmakers" in response to invasive reproductive rights legislation

Why Father’s Rights Confuse and Irritate Me

Father's Rights ad, found on this site here.  I understand the viewpoint, however I can't help but be unsettled by this image.  Just because she's your daughter, does that not make her the mother's daughter too?

            In our most recent class on Tuesday, we spent time discussing Susan Bordo’s book titled Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.  Specifically, the chapter we focused on was called “Are Mothers Persons?  Reproductive Rights and the Politics of Subject-ivity”.  And within this chapter, one of the subjects brought up was the movement for father’s rights.  The particular subject and movement of Father’s Rights really stood out to me, mainly because I have never heard of it before encountering it in this reading. 

            The movement for father’s rights was essentially born from men’s desire to control women and their potential offspring.  Also, Bordo presents additional reasoning for the pushing of father’s rights: “One reason why the movement for father’s rights has grown so rapidly is the culturally powerful rhetoric of ‘equality’ with which the movement has trumpeted its cause,” (page 89).  However, Bordo goes on to elaborate that the notion of “equality” is more misconstrued and in reality becomes a mission to gain leverage over a mother’s rights.  Bordo states that “Any father seeking his ‘rights’ in such a case is claiming that his desires should not merely be equal but supersede those of the mother.  That is, what is being sought in father’s-rights cases is not equality for fathers but the privileging of parental interests,” (page 89).  When explained that way, I was appalled that fathers would try to assert their desires over those of mothers, who are the ones physically carrying the child.  Mothers are the ones who carry most of the weight in the baby-making process, and that is one reason why I believe if anything the mothers should have a higher control over their own bodies, not the fathers. 
            Many men also try to argue father’s rights on a belief born from our Western culture that fathers are the “true parents” instead of just one half of a child.  This belief originates from many different sources, some from Greek mythology to the Genesis story to Aristotle’s teachings.  These beliefs additionally contribute to the “mothers are only fetal incubators” idea, which I find to be sick and disgusting, because it is wrong to depersonalize women/mothers into baby-creating machines. 

            While writing this blog today, I keep coming back to one particular quote that we discussed in class regarding father’s rights.  This quote is from Erin Conn, a man suing his wife and taking a strong father’s rights position.  To defend his case, he argues that the “reproductive system” set in place is unfair because he himself cannot carry the fetus, and because he is half of that child he should have a say in whether or not it was aborted.  He makes a very possessive claim over the unborn child, claiming that he is part of this child just as much as the child is a part of him.  Following this claim, he asks: “She wants control of her body.  But what about me?  Am I not allowed to have control of my body?” (page 92).  This quote has been stuck in my mind, because quite frankly I find it completely absurd and outrageous.  This man is attempting to lay claim over a partially-developed fetus that only has half of his genetic material and is being gestated inside the body of another human being.  He seems to be forgetting that half of that fetus is also his wife’s, and that it is his wife that is physically pregnant and not him.  To me, those two factors alone completely outweigh his arguments.  Thankfully, most court cases align more with my thoughts, as mentioned by Bordo the Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth case where the Supreme Court ruled that “…since ‘it is the woman who physically bears the child and who is the more directly and immediately affected by the pregnancy … the balance weighs in her favor.’,” (page 90). 

            I guess what mainly gets on my nerves about the father’s rights movement is how it tries to take away power/rights from women/mothers, who already struggle as is to get and maintain various reproductive and medical rights.  Men have a lot of privilege and rights in our country already, and I feel that matters of pregnancy and abortion are not places that men should be sticking their noses into.  Pregnancy happens to women’s bodies, and I believe it should be left up to them to decide what they do with their bodies.  On a final note, I was browsing Upworthy for any parent-topic articles and came across this comic created by a feminist dad.  What’s really nice about this comic is that the father is realizing that he should not be controlling what his daughter will or won’t want.  It may not be related directly to father’s rights or women’s reproductive rights, but it is on the right track for allowing women to make decisions for themselves. 

Father Activism $1.00 to $0.77 the mother makes to 0.57 other Women Make

            In the Susan Bordo piece, Are Mother’s Persons? She raises the question of the lack of subjectivity a pregnant woman lacks. Bordo explains; through clear mapping of her choice of topic how she will explain the criminalization of mothers along with the lack of say to what happens to their bodies. To me, that was a relevant topic. Not only women not have say over their reproductive rights but they also cant do anything right, if they are not providing for their children in the way that they do. It is a statement that goes beyond the subjectivity of a pregnant woman; I am interested in this hierarchy of the mother. I am referring to the article written by Sarah Jaffe, Mariame Kaba, Randy Albeda and Kathleen Geier “How to End the Criminalization of America’s Mothers. In this article published in the blog The Nation. The authors explain and have each a piece to say and explain how mothers, and mothers of color are especially criminalized, charged, and painted in the worst light through news media if they show neglect of their children at all.

            One of the main examples the article has is about a mother, Shanesha Taylor.  Who left her two children in the car, while she interviewed at a part time job. The family of a single mother I presume was currently homeless, she had one job interview and she took it. The children were found in the parking lot taken from her and she was later in jail for the neglect of her children. What is missing from this narrative that is often heard of in any city or town, is the one of the mother, and her struggles. The general narrative that this mother is painted with is a careless, poor woman of color that cannot take care of her children. Where the truth, is that she needed that job in order to provide for her children, she needed that interview to get a job, which will gain her some income. That would lead into that family not living in a car anymore. It would lead to those children being provided for by the mother, who in fact is probably all they have. In the later reports when healthcare officials checked the two children, they were not harmed in any way-- Yet their mother was in jail. After much public outcry at the mistreatment of the mother, many organized to raise money to pay her legal fees, and signed a petition in her favor and was able to leave jail.

            This example and the mistreatment of this mother is something that happens everyday. Yet the dominant society fails to see the intersection of race, gender and socioeconomic status within the role of a mother. Even more so a mother who struggles to find a baby sitter to watch her children while she looks for a job.  A woman who might not have the resources to get to an interview, has to take the bus, maybe she doesn’t know how to drive. Higher intuitions that keep these issue stratified are an issue, the root of the issue. Along with stigmatization of working mothers, poor mothers with their inability to provide for children. In not one of the examples did the father seem to make an appearance, maybe because most of these mother’s are single mothers. They might be father and mother, the only source of income and care. Nonetheless, dominant society always paints them as deviant for not taking care of children. Yet we have Father’s Rights watch groups. Yet we tell these women they can’t have an adoption, that they can’t have access to birth control and limit it. If they do have access it might be against their will.

            The whole idea of men’s rights groups is complete vile. However, they try and reserve their ground on the idea of equality. Just as Bordo along with James Bopp try to describe in the article Are Mothers Persons? To me if the father wanted the right, to have  the responsibility and the need to have a right in the life of a child, you should prove being a father. It is just not enough to be a participant of how the baby was made but rather raising the child and taking the responsibility of bringing this child into the world. Not taking too much interest in Men’s Rights groups.  I will move onto another issue that goes without being talked about.

            It is always the criminalization of women of color, understanding that the term  “women of color” is to describe anyone who is not white. I will assert the following: women of color do not mean everyone is on the same basis, Latina, Asian, black, indigenous women are not the same. It is to say that by being categorized in one group as well takes away from all the other factors and facets that we are not thinking about in an intersectional way. I should also point out that across race women get paid less in the workforce.

(Women's Round table discussion on Gender Pay Gap, Oregon University) 

As a Latina woman, I am supposed to understand, and experience what other women with the same ethnicity feel. That once again lumps me together with the rest of the women that come different backgrounds and other countries. I have been very privileged, I am able-bodied, I am a cis-gendered woman, I am a legal resident of the United States of America, and I attend a higher learning education institution. Unlike many Latino women do not, same with men. Often these voices never get out, often we don’t hear them because they don’t exist, because they do not have citizenship. Understanding that is it not a fight to see who is more oppressed but, the article speaking of Shanesha Taylor reminded me of something that other mothers have to face, not speaking the language of a country that they have emigrated to, not knowing how the world works, and leaving the other world behind in other to give your children the best possible future. Some of these mothers might have their children, some mothers leave their children behind in their countries of origin, offer domestic labor in the U.S and raise other people’s children and not their own, in order to provide for their them. This topic is also something that we need to keep in mind in the lack of subjectivity women have, those of color, that have so many other facets to worry about. This topic has been widely discussed by Arlie Russel Hoschschild and Barbara Ehrenreinch in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in The New Economy. 

Disclaimer: I should mention, that I mean no disrespect white women, or men in the case of Men’s issues. But for this purpose, I do not wholeheartedly agree on men’s rights activist. I wanted to raise the topic on other women of color that suffer from this criminalization, from the stigma that reaches them differently because of their background.

The Plight of the Modern American Mother

Mothers in America are put under a great deal of pressure to do whatever is best for their children, an expectation that seems impossible to meet. In our patriarchal society, women, especially mothers, have less opportunity than men to accomplish any goals they may have. Mothers are expected to balance a job and housework and every single responsibly that comes with having kids. Single mothers are under even more pressure because they can be the sole provider and caretaker for their children. Despite how hard these mothers may work to better their children, society never believes they are doing enough. On top of that, non-white, poor, single mothers are the most likely to be criticized and deemed as careless parents, and in our society they are seen as criminal. So why can’t these poor mothers just get jobs so that their children can live comfortably?

                Raising a child can easily be a full time job, and without help from a spouse, single mothers do not have time for much else. Imagine not being able to afford childcare, a reality for many Americans, and without childcare you cannot get a job because your children cannot be left home alone all day. Even with a job, most, if not all, of your income will be going towards feeding your children and sending them to school, along with the countless other expenses.  You still probably could not afford the childcare you need. It is a vicious, endless cycle. The article “How to End the Criminalization of America’s Mothers” gives some shocking examples of the struggle many mothers face. Sanesha Taylor is an example of one mother who simply ran out of options and did what she felt she had to get out of the situation she was in. She was homeless and struggling to support her children so she went in search of a job. When she went in for the interview, she had no one to take care of her children so she left them in the car. She was arrested with charges of child abuse. If not for the support of certain strangers her charges most likely would not have been dropped.

                Hopefully the difficulties of motherhood are becoming more undeniable. To add to the problem mothers face in finding employment, if they do succeed it comes a price. That price is the wage gap, and it is very relevant to every female looking for work in this country. Statistically speaking, a woman in the workplace, compared to a man with the same job, is only making $.77 for every $1 that man makes. Even working a full time job, a single mother is unlikely going to struggle to support their children due to their low pay. The low wage can partially be attributed to the fact that women have the possibility of getting pregnant, and therefore may have to take a leave period. Businesses see this as an unnecessary expense and to compensate, the women they do hire, receive lower pay. 

Societies Solution:

                Instead of offering more welfare options for single, poor mothers, our nation chooses to point fingers and throw these moms in jail. They watch and wait for a mother to mess up and if and when she does, they call her unfit to be a parent and often attempt to take her children away from her. They tell her she should just get married and then somehow all her problems will go away. Our nation simply turns there back on the mothers out there that just need a bit of assistance.

The poverty rates in single mother families in America are shockingly high in comparison to other countries. What makes our rates so much higher is the lack of a welfare program for mothers in need. Most European nations have some sort of welfare plan in place to help mothers be able to support their families. These plans can provide childcare for working women, they can provide jobs for single mothers, and have other benefits such as child allowances. The effects of this aid are clear in the low poverty rates of these countries. Women are not given the same benefits in America as they are in many European countries. Earlier I brought up the issue of maternity leave, and here we see another area where our country is lacking. In our country women are typically given 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, whereas other nations provide at least 12 weeks of paid leave, and some nations provide almost a full year of paid leave. An interesting article about how our nation’s high rate of single mother poverty compares to other nations, and how they have nearly ended their poverty problems, can be found here.

The Reform:      

                Our nation needs to realize the flaws in our system, whether it be our eagerness to criminalize mothers, or our inability to help those mothers in need. The implementation of a welfare program for poor mothers will go a long way. If we help mothers get jobs and give them childcare then they can better provide for their children and avoid the harsh judgment of society. Women also need to bring more attention to the wage gap and push for equal pay. We are discriminated against for our potential to get pregnant, and that ability is something all women are born with, not a choice we make. Along the lines of pregnancy, America needs to mend the maternity leave offered to pregnant women. Women should not be discourage from having kids because they fear they will have difficultly providing for a newborn while not being paid for 12 weeks. The best option is to ensure paid maternity leave, and potentially extend the leave for mothers who need time to find proper childcare. Most importantly, we need to collectively learn to commend mothers for the hard work they do and stop blaming them for every little mistake they might make.

What about innate rights and bodily integrity?

Abortion is such a touchy subject that I rarely discuss about it with my parents and friends. However, there are a couple of exceptions where I do talk about it with people who are very close to me.  Those people are very open-minded, and willing to hear from both sides. In fact, my best friend from high school whom I still talk to were talking to me about a hypothetical situation where if she got pregnant now, she would choose to have an abortion because she said that she still has her life ahead of her. She told me that when she talked about what she would do with her boyfriend, her boyfriend immediately rejected her hypothetical choice. He said that she should go through the pregnancy, and if she does not want the baby, he will raise it instead. But, she got upset because she retorted back saying why did she have to go through the birthing process if she did not plan to have the baby. In this, I realized that based on the article, “Are Mothers Persons,” when the author mentioned the father’s “reproductive rights,” my best friend’s boyfriend was acting on that very same rights in that he should have a role in deciding whether my friend should give birth or not. It seems that what is always, always omitted in these types of conversations is the the innate rights of those involved, whom in this case is the women.

Another example of this omission is present in the reason why I do not talk about abortion with my parents. I was raised in a Christian family due to my father being a minister, and my mother being actively involved in the church. So, it is obvious that both my parents are very religious because it is such a huge part of their lives.  It is specifically because of that reason that it is really difficult to discuss social issues with them. When I have asked them what their opinions were on abortion, they told me that they believed that it should not be an option because it is taking a life of a human being which goes against the laws in the Bible. Yet, when I told them about considering the pregnant woman's choice to choose whether she wants to abort or not, they still believed that abortion should not be available. My parents did not truly take in consideration of the rights that belong to women.

Those rights should be factored in issues such as abortion. These rights are a natural part of women especially those who are pregnant. They should have the ultimate right to decide what is best for them while at the same time, knowing all the options and consequences for those options. In class, we discussed what bodily integrity was. Wikipedia defines this term as “the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy and the self-determination of human beings over their own bodies.

Many times, we have seen women’s bodily integrity being violated. Through acts of domestic violence, sexual assault, and mainly through the limited access to contraception such as abortion. I want to mention the state senator Wendy Davis who delayed the new, current Texas abortion law with a marathon filibuster. Unfortunately, this law still passed, and has closed many abortion clinics, preventing the women to choose the option of abortion. I found an article where recently, the Supreme Court blocked the abortion law, therefore allowing 13 abortion clinics that were once closed to now reopen. What I want to question is why the women ’s rights so easily disregarded are? Especially by the mainly male Texas legislators who, in truth, have no right to make these decisions related to reproduction system. It is the same concept with the fathers’ “reproductive rights” where in this case, it is the Texas politicians deciding what are available for the women without considering the women’s choices. In the words of Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America:

“Politicians are interfering with the personal medical decisions of women who already have the least access to birth control and preventative health care. If this law goes into effect, there is no doubt it will end safe access and legal abortion for many women, leaving some resort to desperate and dangerous measures. We won’t let that happen.”

Take note of the phrase, “interfering with the personal medical decisions of women.” Women’s bodily integrity is tarnished. It is completely invaded by people who clearly do not understand the women’s lives, and thus is disregarded. I wonder if how many people realize this problem, and that we need something to change especially in women’s reproductive rights.

I was discussing the article, “Are Mothers Persons?” with my one of my close friends, and I asked her the question of why do people do this to pregnant women. Why did the government force upon C-sections on pregnant women against their will because of the state’s interest in the fetus. Why. Why. Why. I feel frustrated and upset just thinking about it. My friend responded something that made me feel resigned. She said that things will not change unless men are somehow able to reproduce. If not, then it will be very difficult to change the way things are. She explained how women’s only purpose was to reproduce and make babies, and it has been that way in history for a long time which is why it is still transcending to modern day. That idea is still fixed because women are seen to not even consider abortion as an available option, but rather if pregnant, they should go through with it like in the case with my best friend and her boyfriend.

In conclusion, I can truly say that I learned a lot especially on the reproductive rights of women. I also found that we really have more work to do, and that we cannot think that we are content with the way things are now. Yet, I am as to unsure on how to make a change because the issue on the violation of women’s bodily integrity is so deeply rooted that it will be very difficult to change the perspectives of people who do not clearly understand the true meaning of bodily integrity.

Miscarriages and Blame

There are 600,000 miscarriages annually. Many women expierence more than one miscarriage if they experience one at all. 10-20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriages. 1 in 200 women will have a repeated miscarriage, meaning they will experience more than one. With miscarriages being so common it almost feels as if a part of being pregnant is the risk of miscarriages. As if an inherent part of possessing a pregnant body is running the risk of doing everything right and still not being able to keep your pregnancies.

     The women in Langston’s book Toxic Bodies certainly feel that having a miscarriage is an inherent part being pregnant. “… For women on the reservation have taken meticulous care of their health during their pregnancies, yet they still have high rates of pregnancy loss” (1). Sadly in their instance it doesn’t seem like there is much for these women to do, as the problem likes in environmental factors and not individual choices.  The chemicals causing the miscarriages also seem to still be around through generations and can affect women two generations removed from the original women who was affected by these environmental toxins. It has also been proven that even very low levels of these toxins can interfere with the life of a fetus. Yet these toxins have yet to be completely eliminated.

     In Borodo’s “Are Mothers Persons?” it is pointed out that recently fetuses have almost been granted super-subject status, as the right to a future life has taken priority over the mother’s right to her current full-fledged life. Mothers are villianized for wanted to make their own choices over doing everything they possibly can to avoid anything that might remotely harm the baby, even though the mother is a person with her own life and her own morals and the fetus has not yet born. Together these two ideas seem to conflict. In the one the very real and proven possibility of a toxin killing a fetus is not enough to get rid of the toxin. But the idea that a mother might do something even remotely dangerous to the health of the fetus is enough to make her into a villain.

     I think this discrepancy exists because in both cases if something goes wrong it comes back to hurt the mother, and can be blamed on the mother. With the toxins, despite the fact that they are known to be harmful there is also always the chance that when a miscarriage occurs it could have been caused by something the mother does. I think in our society we tend to believe that because some women are genetically designed to carry a fetus, the health and well being of that fetus are always in the hands of the mother. Because it exists in her body and relies on her for life, if anything goes wrong the blame lays with her.

     However, the mother is not allowed to act as if the fetus is a part of her body, she is not allowed to treat it as if she has control over it. If she starts to treat the fetus as if it is just another part of her body, and a part that she has autonomy and control over she is seen as incorrect and heartless as this fetus could become a child. When it comes to birth and pregnancy, the second a woman wants to take control over her body, she is met with resistance.

     I think there is an inherent double bind when a woman becomes pregnant. In society she is no longer a woman, but a mother, and immediately held to higher standards. Suddenly her life is not as important as the potential one she carries. She is no longer a person, but a mother and it becomes common and expected for her to do as she’s told and put the fetuses well being in front of her own. If she does not it is regarded the same as if she harmed or abused her own fully formed child. This directly links to women feeling upset and guilty after a miscarriage. Because they are so often place with all of the responsibility for anything that happens to the fetus they carry, when something does go wrong they are the ones that take blame.

     Many women also think that miscarriages are far and few in between and when they do have a miscarriage believe that is it a personal defect and that they are one of the few women to ever have a miscarriage. However, this is not true, not only are miscarriages more common than we are generally lead to believe, that are so many factors that can cause a miscarriage it is unrealistic and unfair to believe that the blame lays with the mother. Despite the fact that pregnancy is a common and encouraged part of life basic knowledge about pregnancy is rarely common knowledge. As this Huffington Post article explains, most women believe a lot of myths about pregnancy.