pregnancy

"Open Embrace," Closed Mind, and the Failure of Radical Natural Birth Control as Ideology

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2011-07-22 16:31

In a poignant, heartwrenching essay on Natural Family Planning method birth control use in the alt-conservative Protestant counterculture Sarah Morice-Brubaker of Religion Dispatches reflects on her own experience and that of a couple, Sam and Bethany Torode, who's book Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception is a best-seller in it's small but ideologically passionate niche.

Morice-Brubaker makes the awesome case that "an ideal method for the couples who can make it work" isn't the same thing, at all, as ideal period.

I know couples who say that they’ve had a very positive experience with NFP. I don’t second-guess their reasons for saying so. There’s no reason not to take them at their word, as far as I’m concerned. But would their testimonies have made for a telling rejoinder to Oppenheimer’s column? I don’t think so.

Remember, Open Embrace does not advance the view that natural family planning might be a fun thing for married couples to try just for kicks—like a book club or dance lessons—on the off chance that you might be one of the married couples that turns out to bond over it. Open Embrace presents natural family planning as a really good thing for married couples, as such, to do. It is predicted to bring them closer. Married couples. In general. As a group.

In their early 20s, the Torodes believed they could predict this—about themselves, and about all the potential married couples who might read their book; including, presumably, couples facing mental or physical health problems, lack of support, or simple inability to reliably take body temperature at the same time every day.

So, really, the question is not: “Are there NO couples out there who ever have a positive experience avoiding artificial contraception?” Surely there are. Rather, the question is this: “Can every married couple everywhere really benefit from avoiding artificial contraception—and more to the point, who in the heck could possibly be in the position to know this?”

Source: Religion Dispatches

In other words? No.

In fact, so "no" that just a few years after writing their "classic" pean to NFP as the ultimate bonding experience the Torodes were divorced! Sam Torodes now says "I am out of the business of trying to tell people what they should do. I am out of that business for good."

Good rule for authors of parenting books to live by? Don't write a book about the success of... well, pretty much anything related to parenting or domesticity when you've only been doing it two years. And definitely don't wait only two years to start bragging about how radical, bonding, nurturing, and foolproof your controversial method of birth control method is until, you know, you've successfully managed to, say, space two pregnancies.

Say what you will about the (smug? extremist?) Duggar parents with their 20-odd children but at least they had the sense to wait till their first four children were out of high-school before starting to issue propaganda tracts about white Christian men's duty to keep their wives continuously pregnant and white Christian wive's duty to let them.

As Morice-Brubaker puts it

[A]s I read them, the authors of Open Embrace have thus presented their own “balance.” In 2002, they proffered the view that natural family planning is an inherent benefit to marriage as such, with the implication that it’s possible to honestly make such pronouncements about people’s lives whom one does not know. Now, in 2011, they’re saying that it’s more complicated than that

Yeah, that.


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I Gave $100 to Planned Parenthood Today

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2011-03-11 17:19

I gave $100 to Planned Parenthood today.

Even though in general when I give to reproductive-health organizations I give to smaller, local ones that have neither the visibility, the clout, or the fundraising capabilities Planned Parenthood does.

But today, these days, now, that visibility, clout, and capability is precisely what's painted the right wing target "surveyor's symbol" on Planned Parenthood's back.

To paraphrase the silly Grateful Dead bumper sticker from the 1970s, Planned Parenthood may not always be the best at what they do, but in a lot of places they're the only ones doing it.

If I had $10,000 I'd have given them that instead.

If you've got something to give this year might be a good time to do that.


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Searched for Origin of "Coerced Paternity After Oral Sex" Story, Found Sherry Colb's Interesting FindLaw Blog Instead

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-02-24 19:03

So about a week ago Amanda Hess mentioned a peculiar paternity case that's making the rounds of the blogosphere lately... even though the case in question was decided back in 2005.

The saga of Dr. Richard Phillips and Dr. Sharon Irons continues: "Phillips accuses Dr. Sharon Irons of a 'calculated, profound personal betrayal' after their affair six years ago, saying she secretly kept semen after they had oral sex, then used it to get pregnant," the Associated Press reports. After toiling in Chicago courts for years, "An appeals court said [Phillips] can press a claim for emotional distress after learning a former lover had used his sperm to have a baby. But he can’t claim theft, the ruling said, because the sperm were hers to keep." Irons, who has established Phillips' paternity of the child, claims that she and Phillips had sexual intercourse on multiple occasions during their relationship..

Source: TBD

As I usually do when stories that resemble "evergreen" memes crop up I started looking for any other references to either of the two doctors and... pretty much couldn't find anything that wasn't related to the 2005 appeals court ruling.  Nothing about the initial ruling, nothing about other allegations, nothing about the child who'd now be a 10 or 11 year old, and definitely nothing about whether Dr. Phillips might have come to appreciate having a child even if (as he alleges but she disputes) Dr. Irons conceived the child in a very deplorable manner.  (I'd be bloody horrified to learn I had a child I didn't know about because I really, really enjoy being a father and it would totally gut me to miss out on the first two years of one of my children's lives, even if the mom was a total dick.)

Anyway, the only serious non-knee-jerk discussion of the case I found was this pretty cool and even-handed consideration of the case and its circumstances by Cornell Prof Sherry Colb at FindLaw, again, back in 2005: When Oral Sex Results in a Pregnancy: Can Men Ever Escape Paternity Obligations.

On the one hand, she says, the law is and has been since roughly the Code of Hammurabi that "when a baby comes into the world, both the man and the woman whose genes led up to the child's existence are ordinarily responsible for the care of that baby, regardless of whether the child was 'wanted' by both parents."  On the other hand "even if one accepts that intercourse equals consent to paternity, what happens when a man does not consent to intercourse? Does he still bear the risk of becoming a father? The case of Phillips and Irons ... tests our intuitions about that very question."

While Colb clearly accepts Phillips's claims for the sake of the argument she does nicely construct hypothetical cases where a man unambiguously (and, significantly, non-sexually) could become a biological partner.  And asks, correctly, why would a victim be held responsible for the care of a child he literally had only an absconded-with biological connection to.  (Colb doesn't mention it but see also the extreme-outlier statutory-rape/paternity mix-up case I mentioned a few posts ago.)

You need to read her post for the details, the upshot of which makes you realize that not only are there no easy questions, there are no easy answers either.  But in the end Colb comes down, narrowly and tentatively on the side of not holding a biological parent legally, economically, or physically responsible who literally has no responsibility for the creation of his child.

To which I would just add, implies, strongly, that the same must be true of holding legally or economically responsible a biological parent who equally literally has no responsibility for the creation of her child.  An item which, if Colb's opinion were made law, would offer an entirely non-"privacy penundrum" foundation for quite a bit of law regarding reproductive choice.  Egregious "no exception for rape" clauses being only the most obvious.

And finally, no, I never did find out anything else about that now-old appeals court case except a few terse newswire accounts and a lot of angry people's speculations and opinions thereof.  (Even Colb's post, while informed in terms of the law, is speculative in terms of the actual case.)  Nor is there any reason why such an old story would find itself revived.

Still, I'm glad it did.  Turns out Colb has written a ton of articles on legal issues near and dear to most of our hearts.  She doesn't always come down on my general side of issues but she usually does.  At this rate I'll be up all night reading pretty interesting treatments of gender, rape, reproductive rights, LGBT rights, etc, from her FindLaw blog.


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Via Bridget Crawford an Unusual Statutory Rape Case Suggests Need to Revisit Pre-Feminist Assumptions About Paternity

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2011-02-22 23:04

Via Bridget Crawford here's a highly unlikely but also deeply gender-bound hitch in paternity law

Nathaniel was a California teenager who became a father in 1995. The mother of Nathaniel’s child was named Ricci, and at the time of conception, she was thirty-four years old. Nathaniel, however, was merely fifteen. Although Nathaniel admitted to having sex with Ricci voluntarily about five times, the fact that he was under sixteen years of age at the time made it legally impossible for him to consent to sexual intercourse. In other words, under California law, Nathaniel was not only a new father, but was also a victim of statutory rape. Nonetheless, in a subsequent action for child support, the court held that Nathaniel was liable for the support of the child who was born as a result of his rape. According to the court, “Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities.”

Source: Feminist Law Professors

This is particularly vexing because unlike the standard "pro-life" solution for pregnancy and statutory rape when the victim is a woman, the unwilling, underage father is pretty much positively unable to "relinquish" his child for adoption unless the child's adult mother is willing.  Thus he can be held liable in a way that underage maternity victims are not: he's held to "responsibilties" an underage, or even of age female counterpart wouldn't be.  Without getting all rabidly MRA about the femininister hegemony being responsible (it isn't since nearly all paternity laws vastly, vastly predate feminism) one can still notice that it's... pretty unequal treatment under the law.

So.  Short term such laws really ought to be changed.

Next, I'm still annoyed at the part where the woman who seduced the child isn't being held liable for the transgression.  Let alone being allowed to keep the infant herself rather than, say, surrendering it to the victim's family.  Even if they chose to "relinquish" the infant for adoption he or she would still end up in a better home than the mother would likely offer.  (There's certainly precedent for this -- Mary Kay Laterno's victim's family raised the baby she had as a result of repeatedly statutorily raping her 13-year-old victim.)

The rest of the paper Prof. Crawford passes along might be a little more problematic.  Having identified one area where an involuntary father can be held liable for an offspring he was unable to consent to the author, Michael J. Higdon of, I think, the University of Tennessee, proposes extending the standard release of parental liability given to voluntary sperm donors for IVF to non-consenting, involuntary sperm donors.  That's problematic, I think, because without a really clear definition of "involuntary" you're going to open the door to a lot of guys who are perfectly happy to consent to sex but don't want to bother with the semi-inevitability of paternity.

But one way or the other the Nathaniel/Ricci case suggests that (pre-feminist) gender presumptions about men's and women's agency and responsibility in the domain of pregnancy really do need to be adjusted.


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Coke Talk on How to React to a Partner Who Suggests Your Pregnancy "Might Not Be His"

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-01-27 23:00

A Coke Talk reader asked

I told him I was pregnant. First thing he did was ask if I’m going to get it “taken care of”. When I said yes and asked him to help me pay for half of it, since it is half his, he said why should he if he isn’t even sure it’s his. I have never slept with anyone else during our relationship, or even thought about it. I need some strong words to help me get out of this situation and move on from him.

Source: Dear Coke Talk

You can only imagine what the reply was.

I expect once Coke Talk cooled off her reply would have been... pretty similar.

(Note: I can't find the link but quite a few years ago I echoed someone else's very good post about how even though we think of it as awkward it's critical to begin your conversation about attitudes about choice before you begin having sex. Assuming you're heterosexual, etc., of course.)


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Walgreens Pharmacist Refused to Dispense Miscarriage Medication Unless Caregiver Broke HIPAA Patient/Privacy Laws

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-01-13 17:54

Jill Filipovic's post at Feministe is short and... well, not exactly sweet but terse enough, and important enough, to quote in full.  Emphasis mine.

Pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for potentially life-saving drugs

If those drugs are possibly being given to women who have had abortions. A nurse practitioner at an Idaho Planned Parenthood called a local Walgreen’s pharmacy to fill a prescription for Methergine, a medicine used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or an abortion. The pharmacists refused to fill the prescription unless the nurse told her whether or not the patient had an abortion. Because of patient confidentiality laws, the nurse refused to disclose that information, and asked for a referral to another pharmacy. The pharmacist hung up.

Let’s recap: A nurse practitioner needed a medication to prevent bleeding. The pharmacist refused to fill it without knowing if the patient had an abortion because… why? If the patient had terminated a pregnancy, the pharmacist would refuse to give her medicine to stop bleeding? That is how you kill people. And if you’re a pharmacist, refusing to fill prescriptions because you don’t like the choices a patient may have made should be grounds for immediate firing.

Source: Feministe

Given that, contrary to murderous wingnut fantasies, Planned Parenthood is a full-service reproductive-health service (which is why it's called Planned Parenthood!) can you think of any third possible reason why a patient might need to prevent or control uterine bleeding?

I know, how about a miscarriage?

Let's take a quick look at the Google stats for the key phrase "Methegrine abortion"

Hmm... Google turns up "About 8,190 results (0.36 seconds) " for that combination.  Ok then.  Now let's try the same thing with the key phrase "Methegrine miscarriage"

Oh look, Google turns up "About 60,800 results (0.48 seconds)!!!"

Sounds like it’s not just the pharmacist’s priorities, ethics, or “conscience” that need evaluating! Since

a) Planned Parenthood is a full service reproductive-care organization for low-income and otherwise dispossessed women and men, and not just an “abortion mill,” and
b) It appears to be fairly unusual to prescribe methegrine after an abortion, but
c) It appears to be fairly common to prescribe it after a miscarriage

then

d) whatever of her personal opinions might be the pharmacist should be assumed to be professionally unprepared to do her job competently.

Oh, and while we're at it?  Let's take a look at the legal penalties the caregiver would have been subject to if she'd complied with the pharmacist's demand and disclosed medical information about her patient.

Penalties Under HIPAA

42USC1320d-5 General penalty for failure to comply with requirements and standards

(a) General penalty
(1) In general Except as provided in subsection (b), the Secretary shall impose on any person who violates a provision of this part a penalty of not more than $100 for each such violation, except that the total amount imposed on the person for all violations of an identical requirement or prohibition during a calendar year may not exceed $25,000.

* * *

42USC1320d-6 Wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information

(a) Offense

A person who knowingly and in violation of this part-
(1) uses or causes to be used a unique health identifier; (2) obtains individually identifiable health information relating to an individual; or (3) discloses individually identifiable health information to another person,

shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

(b) Penalties

A person described in subsection (a) shall-
(1) be fined not more than $50,000, imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both; (2) if the offense is committed under false pretenses, be fined not more than $100,000, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both; and (3) if the offense is committed with intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm, be fined not more than $250,000, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

Source: UC Davis Health System Compliance Program

HIPAA being federal law the penalties would be the same in Idaho.

And now for a practical question: assuming was legal for a healthcare provider to disclose patient confidentiality in the first place, and assuming it was any of the pharmacist's fucking business in the second, do you think the average woman having a miscarriage wants the news blabbed all over the greater Boise metropolitan area by some professionally incompetent snoop?  I didn't think so.


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Horrors! "Bill May Encourage Women to Keep Babies That May Be Best Cared for By An Adoptive Family"

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-01-03 11:55

Speaking of Ross Douthat and the monstrosity that is the "pro-life" adoption industry, while looking for any evidence that any "pro-life" organization, anywhere, had remarked upon the negligent homicide of Amy Lynn Gillespie (who was bizarrely jailed for becoming pregnant and then, while still pregnant, died of untreated pneumonia) I stumbled across The Daily Bastardette notes a proposed reason for withholding original birth certificates, family, and (in particular) family health records from adult children who were "relinquished" for adoption as children.  One that... you probably wouldn't have thought of yourself.

(E) THE BILL MAY ENCOURAGE WOMEN TO KEEP BABIES THAT MAY BE BEST CARED FOR BY AN ADOPTIVE FAMILY.

Women who place their babies up for adoption look forward to moving on with their lives and putting the experience behind them. Many come to peace with the decision they made and want to begin a new life. They struggle with the process of severing the bond that has been created with the child during pregnancy. Telling a women who is considering adoption that she will never be able to completely detach herself from that child and live the rest of her life anonymously unless she constantly submits to an invasive and tedious process may lead to her foregoing adoption altogether.

Now let's get this straight. A woman who wants to maintain her "anonymity" through a sealed birth certificate and detach from her kid will keep and attach to the kid if she can't be promised that anonymity in adoption. HoHoHo OK!

Source: The Daily Bastardette

One of her commenters deliciously snarks that

Wow. So there's a change. It used to be that bills would encourage women to have abortions.

I guess since that myth was dispelled, they have moved on to a new tactic.

Clue: If adoption were really all about being in the best interest of the child we sure as heck wouldn't have such an amazing array of barriers preventing them from a) staying with their birth parents, b) staying in touch with their birth parents, or, especially, c) finding their birth parents when they reach adulthood or, for that matter, finding out anything about them including even birth-family medical records. But then the modern adoption industry really isn't about children's needs is it? At all. People who seek to place children in foster care into adoptive families? Oh yeah, you bet! They often do incredible work trying to find homes for children who really need real homes and real families. Funny though, isn't it, how little the predatory "pro-life/crisis-pregnancy" adoption industry involves itself in foster care adoptions?


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The One and Only Way HIV, Fecal Matter, and Sperm Are... Or At Least Ought to Be... Treated Identically Under the Law

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2010-12-31 01:11

So... we're pretty agreed that it's a bad thing, and often a separate criminal offense, if an individual knowingly transmits HIV or other sexually-transmitted diseases to an unknowing sex partner.  (If we're not agreed please let me know in comments.)

And... one hopes we're even more in agreement that it's a bad thing, and hopefully always a separate criminal offense, if an individual knowingly puts fecal matter in a restaurant salad bar where patrons will unknowingly consume it.  (If we're not agreed... actually please don't let me know because I don't want to... but also please never work around a salad bar!!!)

But here's where it gets tricky.  There's evidently not agreement that it's a bad thing if an individual knowingly transmits fertile sperm to an unknowing fertile woman, let alone that it should be a separate criminal offense.

Can anyone explain why one of those things should not be like the other ones?  In each case the consequences for the recipient isn't always fatal almost always is painful, incapacitating, and costly in terms of time, health, and money.  And in each case the benefit for the deliverer is marginal: marginally less wasted washing one's hands for one example, marginally more pleasurable sex for the other two.

I'd add that there are consequences not only for the direct recipients.  When word gets out that people have been sickend by fecal mattter in a local salad bar, huge numbers of people begin avoiding that particular salad bar, sure, but almost everybody becomes more wary of salad bars in general.  Same with HIV -- indeed, exploiting that avoidance tendency is a key tactic of homophobes.  Same, for that matter, that fear of pregnancy is exploited by abstinence-only types.

So... let's say you were a big fan of salad bars -- not just for personal consumption but for general consumption.  If you're such a fan how do you feel about the benefits or liabilities of regulating fecal matter in salad bars... or even criminalizing putting fecal matter in salad bars?

Similarly, let's say your'e a big fan of casual sex -- not just for your own enjoyment but for the population at large.  If you're that kind of fan how do you feel about the benefits vs. liabilities of regulating the knowing transmission of HIV or other STIs... or even criminalizing knowing transmission thereof?

And finally, lets say you're a big fan of not just casual sex in general but casual heterosexual sex in particular.  If you're that kind of fan how do you feel about the benefits vs. liabilities of regulating knowingly transmitting sperm against the expressed preference of a fertile partner?

Can anyone explain why one of those things should be unlike the other ones?

(Note: If you say yes are you sure you want to go there?  Really sure there should never, ever be any legal consequences for knowingly transmitting sperm without the partner's consent?  Beyond maybe a stern "that's what you get for lovin' me?"  Sure the police nor courts nor laws should ever become involved?  Sure there should be no special considerations or exceptions or changes in current law on behalf of aggrieved parties? Absolutely sure?  Because just a second ago, as I was wrapping up this post, it occurred to me that the issue cuts both ways.  If you were one of the guys who was sure before reading that link are you still sure now?)


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Medical Procedures: With Friends Like These It's Very Difficult To Distinguish Prejudicial Care

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2010-09-15 10:38

Last spring Matthew Yglesias quoted Richard Ablin, discoverer of the PSA test for prostate cancer, on the cost of the test’s adoption (and misuse!), on both the healthcare system and patients themselves. (Emphasis Yglesias’s)

The medical community is slowly turning against P.S.A. screening. Last year, The New England Journal of Medicine published results from the two largest studies of the screening procedure, one in Europe and one in the United States. The results from the American study show that over a period of 7 to 10 years, screening did not reduce the death rate in men 55 and over.

The European study showed a small decline in death rates, but also found that 48 men would need to be treated to save one life. That’s 47 men who, in all likelihood, can no longer function sexually or stay out of the bathroom for long.

Albin said it in the NYT, here.

Yglesias adds

In the health care domain, in particular, a mix of weak science, bad economic incentives, and poor mathematical understanding leads to a fair amount of over-treatment. And over-treatment for cancer isn’t just an issue of spending money that didn’t need to be spent—treatment for prostate cancer normally has very unpleasant side effects and it’s really cruel to inflict it on men who don’t actually need the treatment.

He said it here.

Yup. Prostate surgery is necessarily pretty brutal. A urologist friend told me once that just to reach it you have to carve through some of the toughest, most interconnected muscles in the body. And then since the prostate completely surrounds the urethra, nearly all nerves and blood vessels to the penis, and the base of the penis itself, it’s extremely difficult for even very-targeted surgery or radiation treatments to a) remove cancerous tissue without b) severely degrading bladder control, erections, and anything else one might ordinarily do with a penis. Then you have to recover the use of all the pelvic and leg muscles and connective tissue the surgeons must go through to get to the prostate in the first place.

And then somebody, somewhere in the economy, has to pay for it.

All with a 47-1 chance that the debilitation and the expense was unnecessary.

And lest I seem to be dwelling disproportionately on prostate cancer, Yeglesias points out

...as far as cancers go, that’s totally typical. Reducing over-screening and over-treatment would probably save money (though it’s always hard to know what the long-term impact will be since everyone eventually gets sick and dies) and will definitely spare patients a lot of pain and suffering.

Anyway, while this post came up way before the recently raised concerns about the mistreatment of women in maternity I think it nicely illustrates the problem faced with distinguishing specifically misogynistic treatment of women in maternity with plain old ordinary mistreatement of people in medical treatment.

Most urologists are men, as of course are all prostate patients. And so by only the most convoluted reasoning could one construct a case that treatment was influenced by misogyny. And yet protocol is such that 46 men are effectively castrated and rendered incontinent at extraordinary cost for every one man who’s life and/or post-recovery quality of life is likely to be improved.

This is so not one of those “but men are mistreated too” arguments. Instead the point is that under present practice everyone is a potential candidate for mistreatment, with the result that distinguishing mistreatment motivated by misogyny (or racism, classism, ageism, ableism, or conversely by incompetence, indifference, or vindictiveness) is very, very difficult.

Or, approaching it from the other direction, finding ways to eliminate the sort of abuse and inconsideration that appear to be inherent in much of contemporary medicine (medicine of all stripes including much of alternative and “non-western” practice) would have two strong benefits in the fight against misogyny and other prejudice-based abuses.

First, it would just plain make the remaining cases of prejudice-based abuse vividly apparent.

Second and even more importantly, it would make it way more difficult for prejudiced practitioners to hide their behavior in the greater noise of non-prejudiced injury.

Case in point, the capricious 4th-degree episiotomy Chingona mentions in comments at Kittywampus would have been unambiguously targeted for prosecution were 2nd- or 3rd-degree episiotomies not also considered perfectly routine. But even better, under other circumstances whether it was motivated by sheer prejudice or merely by the OB’s personal pettiness it most likely wouldn’t have happened at all.

(Quick note for the majority of people who are seriously deficient in maternity practices. The entire medical justification for episotomies is to avoid 4th-degree tearing. Consequently a caregiver snipping one for shits and giggles ought to have been caught anyway. That it wasn’t… assuming it wasn’t… is evidence that that which is routine desensitizes supervisors and lay people alike from distinguishing actual abuse.)


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The Unfamiliarity at the Heart of Ambivalence Towards Maternity and Progressive/Feminist Maternity Activism

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2010-09-14 23:04

Terminology note: I’m going to compress the distinct phases of pregnancy, labor and delivery, and post-natal recovery into the shorthand term “maternity.”

Longer follow up on that earlier post about “birth rape” and the more-recent post about the way environmentalism tends to have credibility and to get more respect* than do feminist maternity activists.

Seems kind of startling given that genuinely essential but temporary changes during those roughly 10-13 months — from somewhere in the first trimester to the end of the (little discussed) post-partum “fourth trimester” — is one of the most common “natural” justifications for building entire civilizations (including most of ours) around the notion that at all times women should only be 2nd-class citizens at best… and no more than livestock at worst.

But issues of the process of pregnancy get short shrift. Why? I dunno. Could be denial maybe? Ideology? Speculation? Avoidance? Blunt lack of experience until one’s in the thick of it? Maybe. Or maybe its women in maternity’s near-total invisibility, especially right before and after birth?

Or could it perhaps be because for most women involved in the conversation, and their partners, there really isn’t enough time spent in maternity to develop and promulgate critical consciousness, let alone activism? Because before you get into maternity you’ve got other fish to fry. Then when you’re in it you’ve got other fish to fry. And then when you’re far enough through the process for your partner(s) to shoulder half or more of the load and you can start thinking about trying to return to the workforce you’ve… once again got other fish to fry.

Consequently in contemporary culture the majority of feminism-oriented people who are in it, and who tend to stay in it long enough to start developing theories and policy founded in the reality of pregnancy/childbirth/return, tend to trend far enough towards, I dunno, “hippie-ness,” “woo-woo,” or feminine-gender essentialism to be comfortable around — or even having — multiple births. And those same qualities tend to create a mutual alienation between them and their more professional, academic, or “mainstream” counterparts.**

I’d add that thanks to that mutual alienation between mainstream and maternity-oriented feminists the people maternity-rights feminists instead butt heads with most often area) the medical/obstetrics profession, b) religious conservatives and other “quiverful” style activists. In that context of opposition from mainly socially conservative forces and absent engaged support from progressives it might seem perfectly logical for maternity activists to equate the atrocious, violating treatment too many women receive as tantamount to “birth rape.”

I happen to think “birth rape” is still a terrible term for that treatment. Largely because broader society’s reluctance to recognize and deal with permutations of the real thing. But it’s also because I still think the term misstates rather than overstates the sort of violations, great and small, medical and merely social***, that are inflicted on women in maternity. And finally because, as FiveofNine and I and others have noted, the generally rotten, disrespectful, and abusive treatment… and some-time medical violations, assaults, and batteries laboring women receive at the hands of some maternal medical professionals is materially similar to what’s received by women (not to mention men) who are merely elderly, juvenile, developmentally or mentally disadvantaged, incarcerated, suspected of substance abuse, or simply suspected of “malingering.”

* With the result that a birth-rights activist catches more quite a bit shit for invoking the metaphor of “birth rape” than the average environmentalist gets for invoking the same metaphor as in, for instance, “raping the planet.”

** For every ugly stereotype about mainstream feminist activist “cat ladies” there’s an equally ugly stereotype about pro-natal activist feminists shearing llamas and nursing till seventh grade.

*** For instance nearly everyone knows better than to put their hands on a woman’s ass, breasts, or even hair without being invited to. Even the ones who do it know better. Yet hardly anyone recognizes how rude it is to put their hands on a pregnant woman’s abdomen without permission.


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