Woman's Identity vs. Mothers Identity

In our past discussion in class, in the midst of going back to Bordo's work , we brought up the debate about pro-life, pro-choice. We also posed the question of whether or not Bordo actually draws the attention of this debate from the baby, to the woman who actually has to make that decision between aborting the child or having it. There is so much focus on the life of the child that we often times forget about the emotional or mental impact that this process may have on the woman whose carrying the child. Bordo, does shift our attention to the woman asking us to consider at what circumstances does this process become even harder for women to make these decisions against such pressures of her taking away someone else's life. I would then argue that a woman takes on a different identity as a mother because she is then challenged and bombarded with greater responsibilities and her actions and decisions become affective to her life, and another's; in that case she is judged or critiqued even harder based on those decisions. I would also say that when a woman becomes a mother she is stripped from her individual rights, because of her pre-destined obligations that she holds as a mother. In being a mother, you have to make sacrifices and make decisions that may suit yourself and your child, but sometimes that requires you to dissatisfy yourself, or even make yourself uncomfortable simply from social pressures to act as a "mother" would. In respect to the controversial debate about pro-choice, pro-life, I think these ideas can certainly apply because often times we do not consider to include in this conversation whether or not the woman can actually hold responsibility for the child and maybe thats something that discourages the woman from going through with the pregnancy. We also don't consider in what circumstance does the woman conceive the child, it could be due to rape or an abusive relationship, which in respect to the woman, it would be a tough situation to carry the child and then have it. There are emotional ties to the child that we do not consider, we only think about the celebration of new life, when it can also be a product of a woman's trauma and memory of something which she does not want to be reminded of depending on the circumstance. So I pose two main points, that being a woman and being a mother are two separate identities, both with complex responsibilities that sometimes contradict each other, and both with pre-destined expectations, which in my opinion limits the flexibility of a woman to act as an individual rather than someone preoccupied to fulfill the expectations that immediately stifle her true womanhood.