North Dakota is trying to push a fetal personhood bill
through the legislature this session, and I’ve been thinking a lot (at night,
in bed, staring at the ceiling while my brain whirs) about the long, long
history in this country of our preoccupation with the bodily rights of people
capable of giving birth.
In the 20th Century, you see, we were obsessed
with THE WRONG PEOPLE having babies. The justification of Eugenics (which I have written about elsewhere and address also in fiction) was used by
the state to PREVENT “undesirable” people from reproducing. Mostly these people
were poor and disenfranchised (though generally speaking, as a category, disenfranchisement
for women was the status quo on the whole for much of history, so it feels kind
of silly to use that word here.) They were people who were perceived to be
mentally incapable in some way—though it’s important to note that it really WAS
about perception alone.
There was no method to this madness. Just men proclaiming
that such and such a person should not be allowed to reproduce for reasons that
amounted to hearsay. Maybe the person in question was deemed anti-social,
somehow. Maybe they were an embarrassment of some kind to their wealthy family which
could not afford the risk to their reputation (remember, those wealthy families
were happy to lobotomize their daughters if they were considered too uncontrollable).
Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or subject to abuse
that left mental scars. It literally did not matter.
Equally as important to
note: It would not have been less horrific if it had been grounded in science
or any kind of real means testing.
We like to believe we’ve evolved as a society, that these
kinds of programs, if they existed, were VERY PROMPTLY abandoned after World
War II and Hitler’s genocide showed us the end result of giving the state the
power to decide who is worthy of—well, life. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Sterilization
programs continued well into the 80s, from what I’ve found. And we still see
cases of the reproductive rights of people deemed “incapable” going before the
courts today.
But more pernicious still, you can hear the echo of this
unexamined, unconfronted social agreement every time someone talks about how “people
should have to pass a test before they’re allowed to have children.” Because we
don’t talk about Eugenics, you see, or our very big role in supporting the
movement, in our schools. We prefer to see ourselves as the heroes of WWII and
erase our culpability in its atrocities altogether, as a result. (Convenient,
really.)
In the 21st Century, plagued by the outrageous
and white supremacist notion of the “Great Replacement” in combination with the
Capitalist need for an unending supply of labor (as in people able-bodied
enough to work), legislation has tried to move in the other direction. Instead
of PREVENTING people from having children, the law wants to force them to do so
(under terms, of course, still dictated by the state.) This is where Abortion Bans
and Fetal Personhood bills come into play.
First you tell people that any pregnancy MUST be carried to
term, and then you criminalize and punish them if they fail to accomplish that
goal. There is no recognition of the fundamentally adversarial relationship of
a fertilized egg inside a womb from the moment of implantation onward. No
understanding of the fact that gestation is an INCREDIBLE metabolic strain for
the person carrying that fetus, and not every body is capable of
carrying that load while also trying to survive in a capitalist society that
refuses to provide basic necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare as a
baseline right, or even carrying that load under the BEST of circumstances
(which these are… not). No consideration of the fact that miscarriage, is, in
fact, an incredibly common experience among pregnant people, or how dangerous
carrying a child to term can be for the person doing it.
Anecdotally, nearly ALL my friends with children have some firsthand
experience of the heartbreak of miscarriage OR some horror story about how they
nearly died of blood loss or other complications during the process of giving
birth. Decades of people not talking about it because of propriety or shame does
not make a thing rare. The reality of reproduction is that you can do
everything right, take every precaution, employ every possible mitigation,
desperately want a child, and still NOT BE ABLE to produce a baby that can
survive outside the womb. There is NO MEANS by which humans can control what
the outcome of the implantation of a fertilized egg in a womb will be which,
fundamentally, makes legislating it ENTIRELY RIDICULOUS.
North Dakota’s personhood law does contain vague exceptions
for “spontaneous miscarriage” and the “life of the mother”, but by leaving
those exceptions vague, it makes the state itself the judge of what will be
considered an acceptable level of risk to a person’s life, and what will or
will not be ruled “spontaneous miscarriage” vs “purposeful abortion.” You can
certainly see, I hope, how problematic that might be for the person who has
just suffered a loss—of a child they desperately wanted, or a child they were
still coming to terms with the idea of bringing into the world, or a baby they
did not feel themselves capable of caring for properly.
If the person dares to express relief at a miscarriage, will
they be subject to investigation? Just to be CERTAIN the miscarriage was truly “spontaneous”
after all? If a person expressed reservation about becoming pregnant, and then
found themselves in that state, will they be asking for the additional trauma
of criminal charges in the event of a miscarriage? Just to be CERTAIN they didn’t
do anything that could have caused it? If a person has a history of drug use,
or mental health issues (which North Dakota already exempts from the category
of threat to a mother’s life, of course, though our mental health is as physical
as any other illness), and something goes awry during gestation, will we
criminally investigate them, also? For a relapse, or a mental breakdown?
Declare the results of either a murder though there is no knowing if that fetus would have survived to term or not, regardless?
And what will that investigation do to someone already
mentally ill, already struggling with addiction? Is that not also a threat to
the life and well-being of the Actual Person Living? Do you really think that
anyone takes lightly the responsibility of bringing a life into the world? That
they (BOTH PARENTS, THE ENTIRE FAMILY) won’t already be SUFFERING enough both physically
and mentally, without also being accused of murder?
Ask yourself for a moment what you would be feeling in that
scenario. And then, once you’ve reassured yourself that you’re a good person
who would feel properly devastated, ask yourself why you can’t trust that OTHER
people would not already be suffering in the same way that you would be? Why
you feel it is necessary to impose the terror of criminal charges to ensure
it?
None of this is about protecting lives, unless you don’t
actually believe that PREGNANT PEOPLE are also LIVING PERSONS worthy of
FULL and EQUAL protections under the law.
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