Lead Post for 3/23

Reading the actual account of the Opinion of the Court on Jane Roe v. Henry Wade was very interesting. First, if everyone knew that Norma McCorvey was Jane Roe, why did she use a pseudonym? Or maybe they did not know she was pressing charges but I would just like to find out more about her choice to use a pseudonym. I also found the discussion of privacy very interesting because the Constitution never discusses privacy directly but does work to protect it for individual persons. Is privacy then a requirement for personhood? The Muscio reading also came to an interesting conclusion about privacy-- the idea of an organic abortion is very personal and allows the woman to reclaim her body through her own actions, not through a machine. I definitely agree that organic abortions should be more heavily researched but wonder if they are not because there is probably an industry devoted to machine-centric abortions. Here is a picture of the "abortion machine."

The list of ideas revolving around the notion of medical health and cultural understandings in the court ruling were also interesting because the court simply could have said that they are ruling in favor of privacy. Instead the court named all of these reasons why it ruled the way it did, which read a little bit like excuses. Also, my roommate just told me that the Norma McCorvey has since become a pro-life activist, is this true? Here is a picture of her from the early days.

Looking at the language of the court decision after looking at the Arcana piece made me think about cultural changes. The court decision noted that the laws about abortion were developed in the latter half of the 19th century in order to uphold Victorian ideals which discouraged illicit sexual conduct. This related to Arcana's historical notes that society used to respect women's understanding of their bodies. The court decision did not agree that women's power over their bodies were absolute but Arcana showed how history (or herstory) has typically allowed women complete control over their bodies and their children. I wonder when this switch developed and I wonder if it is more feminist in making family life more of a partnership or less feminist in taking power in the family away from the mother.

The Crews piece was really fun for me to read because it is exactly how I feel, except I would probably choose to have the abortion. Crews took ownership of her position in a way that freed her from social constrains; this is the right that Roe fought for, the right to claim our own bodies. Interestingly, my mother always told me that if I got pregnant before I was ready to rear a child I would not have a choice and would have to get an abortion. We are Jewish and believe that the soul enters the body at first independent breath. But now that I come to think about it, she raised me as a Jew and she claims that I would have to get the abortion she fought for as a feminist activist in the 1970s. The more I think about it, the less feminist this actually sounds. She is claiming my choices over my own body, saying that she sacrificed too much for me to just have a baby. But what if that was really what I wanted? Now, in no way am I ready to be a mother nor is that what I want at all, but if feminism is really about being pro-choice in all aspects of our lives, how can any feminist, even my own mother, try to control my choices. In my life, my mother replaced patriarchy with matriarchy and I am looking for not anarchy but simple freedom.