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
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