Blog for Choice Day: On “trusting women” (all women)

Please note that I wrote this piece with a pro-choice audience in mind. If you’d like to know more about and/or debate my views on abortion, please see On being a pro-choice vegan., which I published earlier today at easyVegan.info as part of Blog for Choice Day.

37 years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Roe v. Wade, upholding a woman’s right to abortion (albeit simultaneously leaving the door open to restrictions). In commemoration of Roe, NARAL began organizing an annual Blog for Choice Day in 2006. Each year, pro-choice bloggers are asked to share their thoughts on a specific topic or question. This year’s theme – which holds a special significance – is “What does Trust Women mean to you?”

The martyred Dr. George Tiller – a late-term abortion provider from Wichita, Kansas who was murdered by “pro-lifer” Scott Roeder last May – often wore a button which simply read “Trust Women.” After his death, these two simple words became a rallying cry among supporters of Dr. Tiller and his family; placards bearing the slogan were a common sight at candlelight vigils held in his honor.

 
This year’s Blog for Choice Day honors the life and legacy of Dr. Tiller as much as it does the anniversary of Roe v. Wade; for, in the absence people such as Dr. Tiller and the staff at Women’s Health Care Services – brave men and women who risk their lives daily to provide women with a most basic form of health care – Roe v. Wade would be moot, practically speaking. In many ways, and for the most marginalized of women, it already is.

To me, Dr. Tiller’s mantra – “Trust Women” – signals something that is sorely lacking in this patriarchy (kyriarchy? megatheocorporatocracy? all of the above? take your pick!) in which we live.

“Trusting women” means trusting women to make decisions about their own health care, including but not limited to issues of reproduction, sexuality and contraception. It means trusting women to know what is right for them, for their bodies, and for their families, at any given point in their lives.

“Trusting women” means trusting women with knowledge. It means empowering women by making information widely available, and seeing to it that this information finds its way into the hands of women – all women, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, class, (dis)ability, sexual orientation or gender identity. Knowledge is power; through comprehensive sexual education, continuing and community education, parenting classes, job training and the like, women become powerful.

“Trusting women” means trusting women with the tools they need to take charge of their health, particularly their sexual health. It means affordable (or free) and accessible (or universal) access to multiple forms of contraception, voluntary sterilization, and abortion at any point during pregnancy, and for any reason. When you trust a woman, you may not agree with every choice she makes – but you understand that these are her choices to make, regardless of the outcome.

“Trusting women” means affordable (or free) and accessible (or universal) health care, including prenatal and child care. Trusting women means that society accepts a moral responsibility to provide for its children – some of its most vulnerable members – regardless of the choices their mothers may or may not have made.

Just as “trusting women” means trusting a woman’s decision to use contraception, undergo sterilization and/or obtain an abortion, so too does it mean trusting a woman’s decision to forgo contraception, sterilization and/or abortion. Coercing or forcing contraception, sterilization and/or abortion on women is just as oppressive and exploitative as is denying women’s access to these forms of health care.

“Trusting women” means taking women’s “yeses” and “nos” at face value.

A society which trusts women does not demand that pregnant women do any of the following before they are granted “permission” to obtain an abortion: undergo mandatory counseling; “sit on it” for the duration a 24-hour waiting period; view an ultrasound of the fetus; get a doctor’s note; notify or obtain consent from her spouse/partner/rapist; notify or obtain consent from her father/mother/guardian/a judge; press charges against her rapist; prove that she is the victim of rape or incest; or name the fetus and decorate a nursery.

Clearly, our society has a long way to go before it demonstrates a complete trust of women.

Yet, all of this barely scratches the surface. At its core, “trusting women” means trusting all women, regardless of species membership, with their own bodies.

Humans hijack, manipulate and exploit the bodies of nonhuman animals – females and males alike – for their own purposes, to the tune of billions a year. Yet, it is usually the females of the species who suffer the most egregious and prolonged abuses, as the reproductive systems of nonhuman animals are the most common sites of oppression and exploitation. Sows, hens, ewes, does, nannies, cows, heifers, mares, bitches, jennies, jills – whether captive or free-living, all are subjected to unwanted and involuntary procedures, including rape, forced pregnancy, forced birth, the theft of their children (and their children’s milk), involuntary abortion, and/or involuntary contraception and sterilization. More often than not, these abuses end in death. Murder. The theft of one’s very being.

Take, for example, animal agriculture, the very foundation of which rests upon the intersection of speciesism and misogyny. Without the systemic and brutal exploitation of female animals – chickens, pigs and cows, mostly – the animal agriculture industry would crumble.
 

 
“Breeding sows” are impregnated against their will and confined to tiny gestation crates for the duration of their pregnancy. Once they give birth, the mothers and their piglets are transferred to farrowing crates, again so small that the mothers cannot stand up and turn around. Here, new mothers nurse their babies through bars. Piglets are weened early and quickly removed to dark, cramped pens, where they are fattened into “pork.” Meanwhile, it’s back to the gestation crate for mom. Breed, gestate, deliver, nurse, grieve, repeat: this is a sow’s lot. Her only respite comes in death.
 

 
The process is much the same with “dairy cows,” whom dairy farmers must keep perpetually pregnant so that they continue to produce milk. Unlike pigs, however, cows imprisoned on dairy farms are not allowed the small comfort of nursing their young for but the briefest of time, as this milk is destined for the mouths of human children and adults. Once born, a cow’s babies are removed from her side swiftly and painfully. The sons of dairy cows are tortured into veal; the daughters replace their mothers as “dairy cows.” When a cow is no longer able to produce milk to her “owner’s” satisfaction, she is “retired” to the slaughterhouse. Breed, gestate, deliver, nurse, grieve, repeat: this is a cow’s lot.
 

 
More horrific still is the “life” of a “laying hen,” who spends what little time she has here on earth confined to a battery cage. Under more natural conditions, expectant mother hens develop a deep attachment to their chicks, even before they have hatched. Mother and baby communicate through the eggshell – conveying fear, distress, contentment; offering reassurances; caring for one another; bonding and forming attachments. In an an egg production facility, however, a hen’s unfertilized eggs are ferried away from her via sloped cage floors. Though her body is manipulated – through the regulation of food and light, as well engineering at the genetic level – into producing more eggs than her body can spare, she never knows the pleasure of incubating them, of nurturing the lives inside, of experiencing her babies’ development and birth, or of raising these children in the wild, as nature and evolution intended.

Then again, a hen’s eggs do not give life to offspring who are born into slavery and servitude as were their mother. If she could talk, most likely she’d assure us that she prefers this lesser of two evils.

We do not trust women; we do not even respect them. We live in a society which benefits the top few at the expense of the bottom many. Women, people of color, gays, lesbians, trans people, the young and the old, the “fat” and the “ugly,” the dis-/differently-abled, those living in developing nations, nonhuman animals – we’re more alike than we are different. Our oppression – our suffering – springs from a shared, poisoned well. The only way up is together.

My body is mine.
 

 
It does not belong to the state, nor to my husband, nor to a fetus. It is mine, and mine alone.

Her body is – should be – hers, and hers alone.
 

 
It does not belong to me, nor to you, nor to the puppy mill operators who claimed it as their own.

She is a mother, a woman, a person – every bit as much as am I, and in every way that matters.

It’s time we trust the bodies of animals – all animals – to their rightful owners.

 
 
Photo credits, top to bottom:

Trust Women: Blog for Choice Day 2010 logo courtesy NARAL.

“George Tiller: ‘Trust Women’ – An attendant at the candlelight vigil for Dr. George Tiller in Boston, Massachusetts. Tiller often liked to wear a button reading ‘Trust Women.’” CC image via qwrrty on Flickr.

“Farrowing Crates” – A mother pig, having recently given birth, is confined to a farrowing crate, the bars of which are so close together that she cannot get up and turn around. As she lays on one side, two small piglets nurse from her exposed nipples. This is the picture of “motherhood” on a “pork farm.” CC image via Animal Rights Advocates Inc.’s on Flickr. The photo belongs to a set titled “Piggery Investigation – Gingin 2004.”

“dairy_DSCN4607: A mother cow refuses to leave the side of her dead calf at a California dairy.” CC image via Farm Sanctuary on Flickr.

“Hens in battery cages: Practically all egg laying chickens in the U.S. are crowded in wire battery cages which are lined up in rows and stacked in tiers.” CC image via Farm Sanctuary on Flickr.

5/13/06 – Me, playfully smothering my dog-kid Peedee with smoochies. Image hosted on Flickr.

“NC Puppy Mill Raid ’09: The Humane Society of the United States partners with Wayne County Animal Control to bring an end to the suffering of 300 neglected dogs in North Carolina.” CC image via HSUS on Flickr. The HSUS press release detailing the rescue is available here.