Biology and liberty

[Alceste]

I've been reading a lot of women's history lately, and it's incredibly striking how the cycle of near-constant pregnancy, childbirth and child-care entrapped women in a perpetually second-class, non-liberated state.

A typical pioneer story I read was a woman's account of how she had squirreled away $10 just in case she didn't like the homestead her husband had prepared, she could run away back to civilization, where she thought her husband would probably join her eventually.

So they got there and she absolutely hated it. She immediately resolved to leave as soon as possible, but by the time they arrived, she was pregnant. She waited for the baby to be born, then thought she could flee when he was old enough to walk. But by then she was pregnant again. On and on that story goes, with her resolution to leave enduring for YEARS, until eventually her husband fell off a roof and was debilitated, so she felt like she had to stay. She ended up spending her $10 on a plow.

My great grandmother lived that life. She was married at 15 and continually pregnant or nursing for the next 25 years - 16 kids, she had. She ran the homestead herself and raised all those kids alone - food, clothes, water, everything from scratch - while my great grandfather worked on the railroad. It was miles from anywhere. I have no doubt that she hated it. But how do you leave with 16 kids tugging on your skirts?

When I was brought to my great-grandparents for the first time, my mother put me into her grandmother's arms. Baba said (in her limited, heavily accented English) "Ugh - too many babies" and handed me straight back in disgust.

Pioneer women often begged each other for ways to stem the tide of endless pregnancy, but it was actually illegal for any doctor to help them control their own bodies in ANY way. Including innocuous home remedies to attempt to control conception.

Anyway, reading these stories is making it totally clear why complete, autonomous control over our reproductive health is totally fundamental to our liberty. Are there any pro-life feminists here who disagree? Any thoughts on the subject?

 

[MysticSang'ha]

I've been reading a lot of women's history lately, and it's incredibly striking how the cycle of near-constant pregnancy, childbirth and child-care entrapped women in a perpetually second-class, non-liberated state.

A typical pioneer story I read was a woman's account of how she had squirreled away $10 just in case she didn't like the homestead her husband had prepared, she could run away back to civilization, where she thought her husband would probably join her eventually.

So they got there and she absolutely hated it. She immediately resolved to leave as soon as possible, but by the time they arrived, she was pregnant. She waited for the baby to be born, then thought she could flee when he was old enough to walk. But by then she was pregnant again. On and on that story goes, with her resolution to leave enduring for YEARS, until eventually her husband fell off a roof and was debilitated, so she felt like she had to stay. She ended up spending her $10 on a plow.

My great grandmother lived that life. She was married at 15 and continually pregnant or nursing for the next 25 years - 16 kids, she had. She ran the homestead herself and raised all those kids alone - food, clothes, water, everything from scratch - while my great grandfather worked on the railroad. It was miles from anywhere. I have no doubt that she hated it. But how do you leave with 16 kids tugging on your skirts?

When I was brought to my great-grandparents for the first time, my mother put me into her grandmother's arms. Baba said (in her limited, heavily accented English) "Ugh - too many babies" and handed me straight back in disgust.

Pioneer women often begged each other for ways to stem the tide of endless pregnancy, but it was actually illegal for any doctor to help them control their own bodies in ANY way. Including innocuous home remedies to attempt to control conception.

Anyway, reading these stories is making it totally clear why complete, autonomous control over our reproductive health is totally fundamental to our liberty. Are there any pro-life feminists here who disagree? Any thoughts on the subject?

Our family still discusses all the old wives tales of how to control reproductive health. Douche after sex. Have sex while standing up. All in the hope that pregnancy can be curtailed since having babies was the norm for at least a decade in many women's lives in generations past. Mostly it was for the purpose of having labor on the farm. But all of us now have known for a while how futile these attempts were, but back then women were hoping to find some sort of contraceptive loophole to help space their pregnancies better, or to not be pregnant at all.

FWIW, when I was a pro-life feminist, my argument in favor of discouraging abortion was to encourage breastfeeding as a natural spacing tool for pregnancy and childbirth. I had known practically every other mom in my circle of friends who were successful in spacing their kids every 3-4 years, and they swore to the effectiveness of exclusive breastfeeding. While my outrageous uterus all up and decides to be in that rare percentage of breastfeeding moms who becomes fertile again within 6 months of birth. I wound up being the oddball in the group by getting pregnant when my son was 6 months old, so I found myself nursing all through pregnancy and then tandem nursing an infant and a toddler until they weaned on their own.

They swore I wasn't breastfeeding enough. I swore to them they weren't having enough sex. The teasing was all in good fun, though.

But to continue with the argument from perhaps the pro-life stance, my guess is to ensure absolute and unrestricted access to contraceptives and local family planning services. I also advocate for couples to be educated on what constitutes reproductive coercion, which falls under the definition of domestic violence.