Children, at what price?
See this excellent column by Nancy Gibbs at Time magazine about the moral cost of reproductive technologies.
What’s up? Ceaseran deliveries
When are women going to wake up and take responsibility for their bodies? See this article about the unprecedented rise in c-sections to 30% of all deliveries. The medicalization of a natural event continues to send the message that our bodies are a problem to be treated with aggressive intervention. Women will never feel completely at home in their bodies until they regain awareness about their fertility and the birth process. Modern medicine should be there to assist and render aid not run over the birthing process. Aid not conquest should be the role of medicine. Yet it is often women themselves who have bought into the idea of a convenient and efficient birth. It’s irksome to hear women make comments that show loathing for their own bodies. This has implications in how we view our entire lives which are messier than we would like to believe.
Women as wombs
It finally happened. Doctors are close to attempting a womb transplant. See this story in the New York Times. It seems that there are women who will resort to extreme measures in order to bear a child. There is so much wrong with this that one doesn’t know where to start so I ended up writing a whole book about women’s bodies. Let’s just start by saying that womb transplants and related technologies see women as breeder, their bodies as manufacturing plants and children as products for consumption. When woman is reduced to mother all women including mothers are diminished. If you are interested in this topic I recommend the book by Janice Raymond, Women as Wombs. I also discuss reproductive technologies in my book Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body.