Personhood and Birth Control

It seems like when a woman gets pregnant; all focus must fully be on the fetus growing inside her. She must revolve her life on what will make the fetus happy, even if these actions limit her in her everyday life. Susan Bordo article “Are Mothers Persons?” discusses how a woman is “supposed to efface her own subjectivity” in order to be viewed as a good mother. Women lose their personhood and a ripped of their rights because of what is growing inside them. How can this sound fair?

To help understand this better, Bordo discusses the idea of personhood and pregnant women.  Personhood suggests that one has control over their body.  In many abortion cases this has been the debate. Some may argue that a women’s body is made for reproduction and it should be embraced no matter what the circumstances are. Others would argue that a woman has the right to choose if she is ready to have a child, whether or not she is pregnant. Unfortunately, this debate never ends well.  Bordo claims that “in the face of such a conflict, her valuations, choices, consciousness are expendable” (79). Women lack the freedom of choice and are still fighting to have subjectivity when it comes to reproductive rights.

I believe that this is mainly due to our society's constructed gender roles. Before the Women’s Rights movement, a woman’s main goal was to get married and have a family. The female body was viewed as an object that was meant for reproduction. However, with the introduction of birth control, women were finally given the opportunity to control their bodies. Slowly, women were able to focus more on their careers and goals without the interruption of an unexpected pregnancy. However, the invention of birth control also had negative effects on various groups of people. In Harriet Washington’s article “The Black Stork,” she explains how Margaret Sanger was involved in the Nego Project, which used the eugenic principle to help find the best way to reduce the black population. (196). This project was meant to benefit black women who were being denied access to health services (197). Although, birth control may have been helpful to the black community, a long history of forcible sterilization led to suspicions that this was a new way “to limit or even to erase the black presences in America” (198). While white women praised the birth control pill because it enhanced their freedoms, black women viewed it as another form of genocide.

This evidence shows how different races experience reproductive rights in different ways. You could argue that their experiences are based off of what the socially constructed stereotype is of that race. Bordo states that the sterilization of black women emerged from a racist image of a “promiscuous breeder, populating the world irresponsibly” (79). Due to this stereotype, black women experience pregnancy differently in comparison to other races. However, Bordo seems to suggest that despite race, all women lose their personhood when they become pregnant.