Most people perceive issues
of women’s rights as a problem of the past.
The modern woman is perceived to have all her human rights intact. After all, women can now vote, work outside
of the home, and own property just as men can.
Despite making a bit less than men, women today seem to have it pretty
good. I think almost everyone would
agree that women have been empowered throughout the years of progression of the
women’s rights movement. What many
people neglect to consider is the undeniable disempowerment a woman experiences
when she becomes pregnant.
Being pregnant can be an
amazing experience. Some women wait
their whole lives for it and describe it as the happiest time in their lives.
As soon as a woman learns she is pregnant, many mothers report a feeling of
immediate attachment and love for the fetus. Unfortunately, as soon as the woman
announces that she is pregnant she becomes secondary in our society’s eyes. The main concern shifts toward the growing
fetus inside her and keeping it safe, even if that means debasing the mother’s
bodily integrity in order to do so.
From the time that women
announce they are pregnant they lose their subjectivity. The fetus becomes empowered and the mother in
result is disempowered. I would argue
that this disempowerment happens on both a legal level as well as a cultural
level. Pregnant women are not only surveillanced
by almost everyone they come into contact with but they may also be at risk of
losing their rights to their body legally as well.
Susan Bordo, author of Unbearable Weight Feminism, Western Culture,
and The Body, examines many instances of legal double standards concerning
the bodily integrity of pregnant women, cases where women are treated as fetal
incubators rather than living, breathing people. Bordo offers several examples of cases that
strip women of their sense of self in order to benefit the fetus (Bordo). For example doctors kept a brain dead women alive, against her husbands wishes, in order for the fetus she was carrying to
continue to develop until it could live separately from the mother. In this case the mother was mistreated and
denied her wishes concerning life support because of the fetus growing inside
her. Essentially the fetus was
determined to be more important than the mother’s basic human rights. Another extremely eye opening case is Angela Carder’s case from 1987. When Carder was twenty-six weeks pregnant doctors discovered
her cancer, which was thought to be in remission, had recurred and metastasized
to her lungs. The doctors at George
Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. did not
agree with Carder’s wishes to undergo chemo and radiation, putting her own life
ahead of the life of her unborn baby’s.
The hospital did not treat her cancer and pushed for her to have an immediate
C-section (before she died). Even though
it was against Angela and her husband’s wishes and would likely end Angela’s
life, the immediate C-section was authorized.
The baby died shortly after the surgery and Angela died two days
later.
Although it is hard to
hear such an upsetting story it is also extremely important to open people’s
eyes to the injustices pregnant women face in western culture. Some may disregard these cases as extreme and
rare but the reality is, pregnant women rarely enjoy the same rights they did
prior to their pregnancy. Even without
forced C-sections or legal matters, pregnant women are surveillanced everyday
by everyone around them. Mothers have to
meet a strict set of cultural expectations while they are pregnant or they will
be seen as bad mothers.
Mothers are
immediately looked down upon if they engage in any activity that could put the
health of the fetus in jeopardy. Our
society essentially expects a woman to make herself the second priority for the
rest of her life after she gets pregnant.
A pregnant woman is constantly questioned whether her actions are safe
for the baby. Everything a woman does when she is pregnant is brought into
question. If she is exercising, is she
exercising too much? If she is dieting,
is she denying the baby proper nutrition?
These basic private entities of a person’s life become public when you
are pregnant. In our society a bump under your shirt gives all onlookers an
invitation to judge you based on your caffeine intake or whether or not you
drink a glass of wine with dinner. In one particular case, Jane Hampson, a 37 year old pregnant woman, was actually refused a small glass of red wine because the bartender "didn't want it on his conscience". Not
to mention, all personal space and touching barriers are erased when a curious
passerby sees a belly bump.
Fetal rights have
exploded into a national obsession. What
makes this problematic is not that the fetus is being treated like a person
with rights, but rather that the fetus is stealing the rights of the mother. Although some believe that the fetus is a
living being at the point of conception, it is still living off of another human’s
body. Therefore any rights that may be
given to the fetus must not be at the expense of the mother’s bodily
integrity. We would never force a refusing
son to donate bone marrow to save his dying mother even if he was the only
direct match. So a mother should never
be forced into a C-section to save the life of her struggling unborn son. By empowering the fetus and providing it with
human rights, our culture has stripped pregnant women of their basic human
rights and bodily integrity.
Works Cited
Bordo,
Susan. "Are Mothers Persons." Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western
Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California, 1993. N. pag. Print.
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