Legalizing Subjectivity

Today in class we were asked to jot down questions about Susan Bordo's Are Mothers Persons? and Harriet Washington's The Black Stork: The Eugenic Control of African American Reproduction from Medical Apartheid. In response to Susan Bordo's reading I asked, why is subjectivity of the female body so easily imposed upon as if it were a blank slate? As a class we discussed cultural, and legal understandings of motherhood as feminine and reflecting sexist discourse. My question was formulated from Bordo's point of an American failure to locate the female body in structures of power. I think her philosophical point that pregnant women (I use this term specifically because can one really say they are mothers yet?) have subjectivity is important but does not go far enough to re-frame the debate on women's reproduction. I believe this to be true because pro-choice can argue for the subjectivity of the women's body and pro-life argues for the subjectivity of the fetus once again making the debate about ethics. Her theory would require state removal from the issue entirely and a re-education of the way doctors treat the fetus to centralize the pregnant woman. Not to be a pessimist but this seems far off.

However I think Bordo's philosophy on subjectivity can be put to better use in what Washington names the Negro Project. The Negro Project was a political and medical campaign to reduce the number of children of specifically Black and Latino women in America. The disproportionate use of birth control, sterilization treatments and medical exploitation of colored American women can be understood as an eugenics movement in America. This article contextualizes black history in America and focuses on how her body has been the object of state policies.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the story of an African American woman born in 1920. After her fifth child she developed skin cancer and went to John Hopkins Hospital for treatment. During the radium treatments to her cervix the doctors also removed pieces of her cervix, without her knowledge or consent of course. The sample which came from her went on to become known as the HeLa cells, the first cells to live, reproduce and thrive outside of the human body. They helped create a cure for Polio and are even used today in the testing of cures for AIDS and Cancer and who know what else. But do the 'rewards' or ends justify the means? Her body lacked subjectivity in the eyes of doctors, doctors who are supposed to be highly esteemed and have respect their patients. It is silly to me to argue for the subjectivity of the unborn when grown women do not even have the ability to have complete subjectivity of their own lives and bodies. Perhaps, if laws started to focus on instances like that of Henrietta Lacks paradigms would shift on subjectivity and eventually alter the reproduction debate as well?

I am currently in a class on charity/poverty. A lot of the tactics to end poverty are focused on women's bodies. For example in Egypt family planning is strongly supported because it is believed developed countries have fewer children per family. This places the burden of poverty heavily on the poor, because poorer families often have more children than wealthier families. This may be true but is that because developed countries became developed because fewer children were born or are fewer children a byproduct of developed/modernized countries? It just seems like eugenics hidden in pro-development/nationalist rhetoric to me. What does a constructive solution look like for poverty that gives individuals their subjectivity?