An Essay on Sexual and Reproductive Rights Defenders
More than 2,000 women from 40 countries attended the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels. The aim of the tribunal was to raise public awareness about and foster networks among advocates working on issues related to violence against women, reproductive rights violations, and gender discrimination. . .
In her essay “Take a Good Look at Our Problems,” which was published in the book Pamela Newman wrote “The very idea that women are here on earth just for having children isn’t true either. We have minds and have the right to determine what we do and say. Child rearing should be a profession, not an automatic duty.” .
However, this begins with safety throughout the pregnancy and child delivery. It also includes the freedom to regulate fertility devoid of health hazards. The right to perform and take pleasure in harmless sexual relationship is also a critical element of reproductive health.
Why History Matters: Reproductive Rights and Justice.
Of course, it would be unfair to ignore the positive motivations that sometimes guide the rhetoric of choice. The idea is to ameliorate suffering by allowing for uncoerced choices. But, when people with disabilities are viewed as inherently unhealthy, and when their existences are reduced to tropes of suffering, it becomes much easier to view their eradication as the moral choice. According to Saxton, "What is too often missed in medical training and treatment are the social factors that contribute to suffering" (109). When we think solely in terms of biology, of a particular brand of biology that is assumed to be uncontaminated by signification, then we make it that much easier to make bad choices. And ultimately, these are not free or good choices. They are choices based on anxieties and a misapprehension of what it means to be disabled. For Finger, the issue of choice is wrought with difficulty. She reminds us that, "A woman with a family history of Huntington's can elect to have amniocentesis and then an abortion. Or she can choose not to. But she must choose" (37). Even ignorance involves choice, because "you also have to choose not to choose" (37). The overriding problem, then, is that in order to rethink choice and reproductive rights we have to rethink the relationship between disability and feminism.
Holmes, moreover, frames the ethics of in utero politics by claiming that one of the consequences which feminists would seek to avoid would be the widespread abortion of female fetuses in favor of their male siblings. This is certainly an uncontroversial point and presumably one that most activists, whether they identify as feminists or disabled, could agree upon. On the other hand, she worries that since males tend to be present with genetic disorders, whereas females only tend to be carriers, the technologies of sex selection would lead to the widespread termination of male fetuses. While this is something of an extreme scenario, it does signal the fears that are produced when we are faced with what I would characterize as techno-abortion. But, despite both her caution and apparent beneficence, Holmes acknowledges what are to her mind potentially positive consequences of allowing women to avoid bringing to term a child with a profound disability: "Although I support the personal reproductive rights of parents to choose not to bear and raise a defective child, I cannot wholeheartedly support the use of sex detection and selective abortion for sex-linked disease" (130). It is unconscionable that this technology, the virtual speculum, might be seen as an effective way to ensure the health of one individual by terminating the existence of another. Yet, this is precisely the result of the discourse of choice, which assigns agency and viability to an individual based exclusively upon that individual's perceptible independence and health. This is related to what I have elsewhere described as the process of somanormativity, which is the compulsory independence that buttresses ableist rhetoric (Caeton 2010).
Moreover, through her discussion of so-termed sacrifice surgeries, and in particular through her discussion of Rosie and Gracie Attard, Dreger points to the problems with humanistic subjectivity and with discursive uses of parasitism when discussing abortion. When deciding whether Rosie Attard should be surgically destroyed so that her sister Gracie might live unconjoined, the original judge concluded that doing so would violate Rosie's rights. The case, however, was appealed by the plaintiff and it was reviewed by a three judge panel. Curiously, the sentiments of Lord Justice Ward, one of the members of the appellate panel, are reminiscent of the discourse which has emanated from the pro-choice movement. Ward concluded that, "[Rosie] may have a right to life, but she has little right to be alive. She is alive because and only because, to put it bluntly, but nonetheless accurately, she sucks the lifeblood of [Gracie]" (101). Is this not the same position that any fetus is in, never mind whether it be disabled or able-bodied? The implications of Dreger's complex appeal to the reader — that the example of conjoined twins must make us rethink our attitudes toward ability — are as true of abortion as they are of disability. Fundamentally, we must ask who qualifies as human and in what instances do we refuse to assign viability to a subject.
That such importance is placed upon autonomy and individuality when speaking of reproductive rights is not surprising given that both of these values are the central pillars of liberal humanism. Kant, for example, placed freedom at the heart of his philosophy, and it was the central piece of a priori knowledge that enabled and animated future discoveries. In contrast, what Alice Domurat Dreger offers in One of Us — indeed what disability itself offers — is another way to think about autonomy. Rather than forcing us to fixate on individual autonomy, disabilities such as those experienced by conjoined twins offer a way to conceive of subjectivity and agency within networks of dependency. So, while Ruthie and Verena Cady and Abigail and Brittany Hensel have unique preferences and personalities, they also "walk, run, and swim in harmony by a system not fully understood by doctors" (40). Dependence and reliance on others, which are antithetical to the ethos of independence, are assets for the conjoined twins that Dreger examines. Rather than breeding suffering or acrimony, their dependence makes them "better prepared than singletons for the rigors of the world" (40 emphasis original). Paradoxically, then, Dreger's examples illustrate how the abstract notions of independence that guide our moral and political systems are in fact fetters.
Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Post-Roe v. Wade
The issue, therefore, seems to be one of allegiance. Disability would have us swear ourselves to the fetus, while feminism would have us take an oath to the pregnant woman carrying it. From the vantage of feminism, the fetus is a biological byproduct of the mother, an entity that should not be anthropomorphized any more than any other internal organ. Yet when we admit that technoscience allows for the targeting of disabled fetuses we have already humanized the fetus. This discursively renders the fetus to be more than a mere clump of cells. Saxton, therefore, calls us to understand that, "When we refer to the fetus as a disabled (rather than defective) fetus, we personify the fetus via a term of pride in the disability community" (110). This perforce means that, "The connection disabled people feel with the 'disabled fetus' may seem to be in conflict with the pro-choice stance that the fetus is only part of the woman's body, with no independent human status" (110 emphasis original). If we are to remain true to the ethos of choice that guides the rhetoric of reproductive rights, then we would need to not only deny protection to fetuses with disabilities, we would need to take the even more radical step and deny that fetuses can exhibit humanizing traits such as a disability.
thesis statement of a topic ‘’who should have reproductive rights'?''
By way of engaging this problem, we might turn to Allen E. Buchanan's expressivist argument. According to Buchanan, the expressivist argument against selective abortion is characterized by the contention that selective abortion of disabled fetuses fosters the oppression of people with disabilities. Writing in The Hastings Center's report on disability and genetic testing, Erik Parens and Adrienne Asch summarize the expressivist argument, stating that "many people with disabilities, who daily experience being seen past because of some single trait they bear, worry that prenatal testing repeats and reinforces the same tendency toward letting the part stand for the whole" (14). We might also think of this as the synecdochal model, where disability functions as the pars pro toto of subjectivity. Parens and Asch elucidate potential criticisms of what I am referring to as the synecdochal model. Some find it flawed because, "The argument presumes that we can distinguish between aborting 'any' fetus and a 'particular' fetus that has a disability" (15). This distinction, between any fetus and a particular fetus hinges on the disconnect between the rhetoric of choice and the potential lives of people with disabilities. In other words, the synechdocal model is accosted by some for its apparent incompatibility with pro-choice rhetoric. How can we ensure the liberty of a woman to decide what will emerge from her body if we are to argue for the preservation of people with disabilities as a historically vilified group?There exists a contradiction, then, between arguing for the right of a woman to abort any fetus and arguing that a unique fetus must be preserved. Rather than undermining the position of disability rights advocates, though, I think that this points to the instability and illogic of choice. What constitutes a choice? On what basis is choice made and, given the hegemonic interpolation of dominant ableist culture, can a choice ever truly be considered freely made? By emphasizing a staunch pro-choice position, feminists appear to be supporting an unreflexive model of the subject that has the liberty to navigate the world free of cultural constraints. We certainly aren't irresistibly inculcated by ideology, but nor are we completely autonomous rational beings. Instead, choice occurs within cultural constraints that ultimately undermine its free operation and which contour the subject herself.
Influences on Women’s Reproductive Rights and the Notion of Backlash
The outright killing of a child after it has been removed from its mother's body strikes us as an abhorrent practice. However, if the child is within the confines of another body its status as human is downgraded. This has been part of the rhetoric of choice, which at its most extreme has depicted a fetus as a lowly clump of cells whose very functioning is contingent on either the aid of technology or the aid of another body. The rights of the woman carrying the fetus are assumed to take precedence over those of the fetus, because the fetus is presumed to be an unviable entity. It is incapable of survival without assistance and as such it possesses no discernable subjectivity. This discursive treatment of the fetus takes on a new dimension, however, when one considers disability. Are adults who require the assistance of machines also to be considered unviable? What really is the difference between such people and a second-term fetus in this respect? Anne Finger, in her profound chronicle of experiencing pregnancy as a woman with post-polio syndrome, poses an equally arduous question: "If abortion is acceptable because a fetus's brain isn't fully developed, and therefore they aren't human, then what is a person with brain damage" (59)? What does this parallel say about our understanding of subjectivity and dependency? As Paul Longmore points out, albeit in the context of physician-assisted suicide, "the specter of 'dependency'" is frequently raised to instill in able-bodied people contempt for and fear of the lifestyles of people with disabilities (188-89). Is independence — which serves as the basis for viability — really the most important metric of humanity? Like the rhetoric of health, the rhetoric of viability only remains unproblematic so long as disability is ignored.