As a woman who was raised from childhood to be “pro-life, pro-patriarchy, and a vessel for motherhood and my husband’s desires for children,” this one stabbed right where it needed to. I’ve since left that “faith” (cult), and faced extreme opposition to having custody of my own children.
Well written. Bravo. Thank you for saying so eloquently what we need to be SCREAMING back into their faces.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I watched my wife go through her pregnancy. It was high risk from the start … people don’t tell you what it is and what it does to women’s body.
I really appreciate that insight around Semen, and how men need to be held accountable on their end when it comes to the reproduction process. And highlighting the double standard the hypocrisy. I know that the focus here is on pregnancy, but even after birth, if a mother decides to breast-feed (some are socially shamed to do so) that’s also a big part of body autonomy. and then on top of that the very little time that mothers get for parental leave. Expected to just be thrown right back into work after a major surgery. Thank you thank you again for taking the time and educating. I learned a lot here. And sharing on my end.
I had a real *oh, damn* moment when I read what you wrote about how even corpses (and we ourselves *as* corpses) have more bodily autonomy than living women and trans, non-binary, and intersex people capable of pregnancy: "bodily autonomy is otherwise so sacrosanct that even if you die, the state can’t use your organs to save your brother-in-law’s life without your prior consent. Even a corpse's right to bodily autonomy overrides the need to sustain and save another life." Just damn. I'd made the connection to how every other "person" in this country, including clusters of cells if they manage to pull off fetal personhood (and they probably will), has more bodily autonomy and *right to life* than we do, but this is even more shocking, more degrading and infuriating. Thank you so much for writing such an important and painful essay.
Yes, exactly. The Georgia state judge who struck down the state’s forced birth bill laid it all out clearly: the state should not be able to enslave women because they can get/are pregnant. Of course, there are higher state courts that would like to close their eyes to the situation and uphold the incredibly unconstitutional law.
Thank you for writing this, more pieces should be published on this topic in this detailed way - including the effects of sperm quality on fetuses! Even with my male friends who are progressive, in their 30s and advocate for women's rights, almost none of them are aware of sperm quality on the fetus.
Well done! We need all the words to describe our situation, our oppression. What is happening now is that they are overthrowing the government so that amendments and trying to enshrine women's rights becomes a moot point.
I started thinking about drawing lines. Why would we go along with the definition that reproductive behaviour starts at penetration and ends at ejaculation? There is no Real reproductive act, it’s all a matter of linguistic convention.
We could equally well say that the woman’s reproductive act doesn’t end until birth, and also claim that everyone has the obvious right to cease an act where there isn’t an obvious obligation to keep it going.
Claiming that fetuses have a need that we have an obligation to meet is properly begging the question fallacy. We’re undertaking the activity of reproducing and we have the right to stop doing that activity.
There is one way to take our rights back. Mass voluntary sterilization. Every single woman of reproductive age makes the first appointment available and gets permanently sterilized. We can withhold all reproductive labor until men get back in their lane. They need to be shown how reproductively irrelevant and powerless they really are. So ladies, take your rights back. Get on Reddit's childfree doctors list and get those tubes out. I'm sorry it has to come to this, but this is where we are.
When starting to trace my family tree, I decided to make my focus all the lost women. By that I mean women who had literally lost their identities, in my family tree. In spite of contributing half of the DNA of the next generation and then incubating and rearing it, their histories were lost. It’s as if their families had been evaporated when they took on another family name, their husband’s. What was really interesting is that their lifespans were ridiculously short compared to that of their mates. Just getting pregnant was life-threatening. I have grandfathers of many generations back who remarried more than twice because their wives died of pregnancy or childbirth complications. In fact, one patriarch is famous to this day in family lore for his quip on marrying his fourth wife: “if I survive, I’ll make it five.” Disposable women, of course. My own father, grandson of the patriarch I just quoted, actively dated when my mother was hospitalized with complications of childbirth. And again, when she was in long-term care.
What you gave us is exhaustive and very informative. I don't want to appear to change the subject or detract from everything you've laid out. But when you mentioned the ultrasound images it reminded me of how they tried to scare me away from seeking hormonal treatment. I had to sign forms as a transgender person. In order to receive hormonal care I had to sign documents from the state of Florida which laid out information that was meant to scare and confuse me. And exhaustively list every risk possible (no matter how slight or statistically improbable). The state did not want me to control my body and make my own choices. They were influencing me to not seek gender affirming care. It was not done in the spirit of consumerism, but rather to scare me off. To steer me away from transitioning. Now I'm running across similar resistance with my name change and having to resubmit documents for the local Family Court where I live. They simply do not want me to be in control of my life. And make my own choices. They want to decide what's best for me (by making the process difficult). I will be leaving the state of FL to get the complete care I need. The parallels of the transgender care and abortion care have some similarity in this regard.
As a woman who was raised from childhood to be “pro-life, pro-patriarchy, and a vessel for motherhood and my husband’s desires for children,” this one stabbed right where it needed to. I’ve since left that “faith” (cult), and faced extreme opposition to having custody of my own children.
Well written. Bravo. Thank you for saying so eloquently what we need to be SCREAMING back into their faces.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I watched my wife go through her pregnancy. It was high risk from the start … people don’t tell you what it is and what it does to women’s body.
I really appreciate that insight around Semen, and how men need to be held accountable on their end when it comes to the reproduction process. And highlighting the double standard the hypocrisy. I know that the focus here is on pregnancy, but even after birth, if a mother decides to breast-feed (some are socially shamed to do so) that’s also a big part of body autonomy. and then on top of that the very little time that mothers get for parental leave. Expected to just be thrown right back into work after a major surgery. Thank you thank you again for taking the time and educating. I learned a lot here. And sharing on my end.
I had a real *oh, damn* moment when I read what you wrote about how even corpses (and we ourselves *as* corpses) have more bodily autonomy than living women and trans, non-binary, and intersex people capable of pregnancy: "bodily autonomy is otherwise so sacrosanct that even if you die, the state can’t use your organs to save your brother-in-law’s life without your prior consent. Even a corpse's right to bodily autonomy overrides the need to sustain and save another life." Just damn. I'd made the connection to how every other "person" in this country, including clusters of cells if they manage to pull off fetal personhood (and they probably will), has more bodily autonomy and *right to life* than we do, but this is even more shocking, more degrading and infuriating. Thank you so much for writing such an important and painful essay.
Yes, exactly. The Georgia state judge who struck down the state’s forced birth bill laid it all out clearly: the state should not be able to enslave women because they can get/are pregnant. Of course, there are higher state courts that would like to close their eyes to the situation and uphold the incredibly unconstitutional law.
Thank you for your thought provoking essay. The extent of our collective ignorance is profound.
Thank you for reading it.
"The goal isn’t care, its power." I don't have much to say but thank you for writing this!
The photographs speak volumes.
The anti-abortion movement, is all about ownership and domination of females.
Thank you for writing this, more pieces should be published on this topic in this detailed way - including the effects of sperm quality on fetuses! Even with my male friends who are progressive, in their 30s and advocate for women's rights, almost none of them are aware of sperm quality on the fetus.
Such a rich piece. Thank you for this!
Well done! We need all the words to describe our situation, our oppression. What is happening now is that they are overthrowing the government so that amendments and trying to enshrine women's rights becomes a moot point.
I started thinking about drawing lines. Why would we go along with the definition that reproductive behaviour starts at penetration and ends at ejaculation? There is no Real reproductive act, it’s all a matter of linguistic convention.
We could equally well say that the woman’s reproductive act doesn’t end until birth, and also claim that everyone has the obvious right to cease an act where there isn’t an obvious obligation to keep it going.
Claiming that fetuses have a need that we have an obligation to meet is properly begging the question fallacy. We’re undertaking the activity of reproducing and we have the right to stop doing that activity.
This is all so true
There is one way to take our rights back. Mass voluntary sterilization. Every single woman of reproductive age makes the first appointment available and gets permanently sterilized. We can withhold all reproductive labor until men get back in their lane. They need to be shown how reproductively irrelevant and powerless they really are. So ladies, take your rights back. Get on Reddit's childfree doctors list and get those tubes out. I'm sorry it has to come to this, but this is where we are.
Brilliant and important. Thank you.
Profound.
When starting to trace my family tree, I decided to make my focus all the lost women. By that I mean women who had literally lost their identities, in my family tree. In spite of contributing half of the DNA of the next generation and then incubating and rearing it, their histories were lost. It’s as if their families had been evaporated when they took on another family name, their husband’s. What was really interesting is that their lifespans were ridiculously short compared to that of their mates. Just getting pregnant was life-threatening. I have grandfathers of many generations back who remarried more than twice because their wives died of pregnancy or childbirth complications. In fact, one patriarch is famous to this day in family lore for his quip on marrying his fourth wife: “if I survive, I’ll make it five.” Disposable women, of course. My own father, grandson of the patriarch I just quoted, actively dated when my mother was hospitalized with complications of childbirth. And again, when she was in long-term care.
What you gave us is exhaustive and very informative. I don't want to appear to change the subject or detract from everything you've laid out. But when you mentioned the ultrasound images it reminded me of how they tried to scare me away from seeking hormonal treatment. I had to sign forms as a transgender person. In order to receive hormonal care I had to sign documents from the state of Florida which laid out information that was meant to scare and confuse me. And exhaustively list every risk possible (no matter how slight or statistically improbable). The state did not want me to control my body and make my own choices. They were influencing me to not seek gender affirming care. It was not done in the spirit of consumerism, but rather to scare me off. To steer me away from transitioning. Now I'm running across similar resistance with my name change and having to resubmit documents for the local Family Court where I live. They simply do not want me to be in control of my life. And make my own choices. They want to decide what's best for me (by making the process difficult). I will be leaving the state of FL to get the complete care I need. The parallels of the transgender care and abortion care have some similarity in this regard.