To Be a Mother

Mamasquab, a guest contributor at Shakespeare's Sister, has posted one of the most eleoquent defenses of a woman's right to choose that I have ever read. Go read the whole thing... but here's a taste:

The justification for this vicious piece of misogyny [the SD anti-abortion law] seems to be based on the following notions: (a) a woman is a mother from the moment a fertilized egg begins to grow in her body; (b) mothers are morally obliged to take care of their children at any personal cost to themselves; and (c) it is the state's responsibility to force reluctant mothers to meet their moral duties to their children. I won't waste my breath upbraiding the South Dakota legislators for their apparent indifference to the social context in which women are assigned these duties--a context where there is unrelenting violence against women, much of it perpetrated by husbands or boyfriends; where rape and lesser forms of sexual coercion are widespread; where mothers, not fathers, are almost solely responsible for hands-on childcare; and where social institutions and practices are systemically rigged to favor the interests of men over those of women. These points have been made many times before and I haven't the heart to repeat them. Instead, I'm going to plead for a revised understanding of what pregnancy is. It's when we think of pregnancy as something that happens to a woman rather than something she does - when we think of pregnant bodies as flowerpots, ovens, or incubators - that the awfulness of the particular kind of wrong about to be done to South Dakota women escapes our notice.