feminist blogs in english

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Department on Womens Health, is having a contest to choose the cover photo for an update of its Easy Guide to Breastfeeding. I popped over there when I saw the notice on Twitter and thought the choices weren't very interesting. They are generic photos, none of which [...]

A recent episode of the PBS program Frontline was called "The War on Vaccines." The title alone should have been the tip off that the producers' goal was to inflame and incite – to assume this was an entirely adversarial discussion between diametrically opposed viewpoints. But I knew that my colleague Jennifer Margulis, Contributing Editor [...]

The National Center for Health Statistics has come out with a report that shows Caesarean births in the United States are at an all-time high. One third of all women now give birth via C-section, a rate that has been increasing over the past decade. The procedure raises risks for both mother and baby, and increases the hospitalization cost. Though C-Sections are necessary during birth complications, and to save the life of the mother or baby, experts say the procedure is being used far too often.

This report comes about a month after a series of articles were released detailing the rise of maternal mortality in the United States. According to an Amnesty International report, rates of maternal death in the US are higher than in 40 other countries. For instance, American women are 4 times more likely to die in childbirth than women in Germany and 5 times more likely than women in Greece.

The report includes striking racial differences in maternal care:

White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. For African-American women, that rate is 32.7 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies.

In many states, African-American women are 4 times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women. Much of this racial disparity has to do with poverty, poor standards of care, and lack of health insurance. About 13 million women of reproductive age (defined as ages 15 – 44) do not have health insurance, and about 52% of those women are women of color.

It’s shocking that in the United States, which spends more money than any other country on health care costs, and more on OBGYN care than other hospital care, the maternal mortality rate has doubled in 20 years. The absolute number may still be low, but this is a trend in the wrong direction.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Jennifer and Scott Spiegel are suing the hospital in which Ms. Spiegel gave birth because she was accidentally brought the wrong baby to breastfeed. I haven't found a copy of the legal Complaint seeking damages in excess of $30,000 for the couple, but in every interview with the Spiegels I [...]

When I was pregnant with my first son, I gave myself permission to eat as much as I wanted. On some level I decided "you're eating for two now" could reasonably be interpreted as "you're eating for twelve now." Having had a long history of binge eating and binge dieting, being pregnant gave me a [...]

Guest writer Shanman is a queer trans boi working on a PhD in Women’s Studies. He is interested in constructions of motherhood, queer theory, and Wii Punch Out. His dog is his best friend. Shanman regularly blogs at Transgrad.

What does choice mean? When we talk about choice are we only speaking about abortion or does choice encompass more than access to abortion? I believe that reproductive choice not only means that female-bodied people can terminate a pregnancy if they desire to but also includes the right to reproduce.

Commentary about the recent Octomom documentary about Nadya Suleman suggests that the decision to reproduce is one that only certain (read: economically stable, responsible, and mentally “healthy”) people should be able to make. In response to the question “What do you think of the ‘Octomom’ documentary?” one Los Angeles Times reader responded, “I did not watch and I do not care! Everybody knows that she’s a loser and all of her kids should be fostered out to some good families, sorry to say. But for their future, it has to be done. They have no future staying with this woman!” This comment and the many others like it suggests that reproductive freedom is about much more than abortion.

Francis Kissling expressed a similar sentiment earlier this month in a Salon.com article where she argues that it is better morally for a poor ignorant woman to have an abortion then to have a baby (I am paraphrasing, of course). She does not tell her readers what a poor smart woman or rich ignorant woman should do with an unintended pregnancy, perhaps for Kissling these kinds of women do not exist.

Kissling’s argument is a response to Congresswoman Rosa Delauro’s statement that the U.S. should
“foster an environment that encourages pregnancies to be carried to term.”

This statement is part of a promotion for the Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act. I must admit that I have not yet read this act. Delauro’s statement and the Acts title, for me, suggests that this act is problematic on several levels.

For Kissling:

“In its extreme application DeLauro’s ideal would applaud Pope John Paul II’s plea to Muslim women in Bosnia and Herzegovina who had been raped by Christians during the war. In a 1993 letter he called on the community to draw close to these raped and degraded women and “help them transform an act of violence into an act of love and welcome” by having their rapists’ babies.”

Whoa!

Kissling starts off with a valid question: Should we encourage women to have babies? For me this question might lead to a discussion of heteronormativity, government sanctioned gender roles, or how the desire for parenthood is constructed. But Kissling isn’t interested in thinking critically. Instead she argues that sometimes it is morally better to end a pregnancy. The people whom she thinks should abort are poor ignorant 22 year olds who are caviler about the consequences of sex, are confused about life and have low self esteem.

And being poor and ignorant and living in a country that doesn’t care that you are both doesn’t eliminate personal responsibility or moral agency. Somewhere along the line it would be helpful if feminists acknowledged that far too many women (and men) are irresponsible when it comes to sex and pregnancy. If we want to say that women can be trusted to make good decisions about reproduction, then we need to demand of each other that we make good decisions about not becoming pregnant.

I am pro-abortion and pro-choice; I do not believe that having or not having a child is a moral decision. And although Kissling acknowledges that rich people can be bad parents and that poor people can be good parents, her piece slides down a slippery eugenicist slope and lands squarely on the mind set of “if you can’t feed them; don’t breed them.”

Kisslings’ description of who should not reproduce-poor, young, economically unstable women with low self esteem—is similar to comments about what Nadya Suleman should not have done (become impregnated with eight fertilized eggs) and should be doing (giving some of her children to the state). In both instances the right to reproduction is linked to mental health status and economic status implying that only certain people are fit to reproduce. Both those who speak against abortion and those who say that some people shouldn’t reproduce wish to control the reproductive freedom of female-bodied people. Working for choice means working for the right to reproduce as well as access to abortion.

I’m a big fan of reading the Best of Craiglist because it is such a fascinating, hilarious and gross sampling of humanity’s highs and lows. It’s also fun trying to guess which of the posts are written sincerely and which ones are total fabrications that are purposely meant to be jaw-dropping. One such “Is this real or not?” Craigslist post a reader sent me was this one:

I am due in June. I have read a lot about how great for your health it is to eat your placenta (after all, most mammals, even vegetarians, do this). Unfortunately I don’t have a strong enough stomach to just eat it, so it was recommended to me that I dry it out in a food dehydrator, put it in a coffee grinder, and put it in capsules to take daily. Again, I just don’t have the stomach (and may not have the energy after birth to do this.) What I need is someone who is reliable…someone who has given birth or watched a birth, knows what a placenta looks/smells like/etc, who is 100% comfortable handling something like this. I have read that it can take up to 10 hours of work. Please e-mail me why you would be willing to do this and how much you would charge.

There’s something about this ad that is really beautiful (that mythical quality of ingesting the power of the placenta) and sweet (OMG, dude, after giving birth, you’re happy to eat just about ANYTHING that someone else has cooked for you). But there’s also something about it, too, that points to the growing list of things that perfect mothers are supposed to do. You can’t just squeeze the watermelon out from between your legs in a beautiful, orgasmic, fast-but-not-too-fast, doula and midwife-assisted home birth while wearing a white nightgown in a candlelit room (and that’s just the birth! Forget about actually raising the kid!). You’ve got to worry about processing the placenta into a palatable form; otherwise, you’re wasting the power of mother nature. Seriously, after living through birth, I’d had just about enough of mother nature, thankyouverymuch.

That’s why I’m wondering: does anyone actually know anyone who actually ate the placenta? Or does this exist strictly at the level of urban myth?

Related posts:

1. New research determines eating is good!
2. Worthy cause