Kirsti Clapsadle WGS 101 Reading Response Megan Burke, 1:00-1:50 This week in class, we spoke a lot about

birth and womens choice in birth. Abortion Is a Motherhood Issue, by Judith Arcana, was in the beginning very graphic, to say the least. Even though I have a vagina and I know what goes on in that region, the way she described her vaginal history is slightly discomforting. Now that my disgust for genitalsbothe male and female genitaliais out of the way, Arcana continues on to talk about how abortion is often not associated with motherhood, but it is a motherly choice because it is a decision made by the mother for the life of the mothers child (Arcana 225). One analogy she makes that I have a hard time accepting is this: Choosing to abort a child is like choosing to send it to one school and not another, choosing whether or not to allow it to sleep with you in your bed (Arcana 226). I understand that she is simply relating choosing abortion to making a motherly decision, but the size of the decisions compared just dont, well, compare. It should have at least been compared to something as big as going to school at all versus working at McDonalds his/her whole life. The other thing I noticed is that she uses the term it instead of he/she, him/her. Even if the child is unborn, he/she should not be called it. It implies that she is talking about an object, or possibly an animal whose sex is unknown. I am all for womens choice in abortion, but I had a hard time agreeing with Arcanas take on the subject. In the chapter Womens Bodies, Womens Health, in Womens Lives, many subjects are touched upon, from womens bodies in general, to obesity, to reproductive health, and more. The subject that caught my attention most was reproductive health and rights. Abortion is a very controversial topic that began many years ago. Historically, the Catholic Church held the view that the soul did not enter the fetus for at least forty days after conception and allowed abortion

up to that point (Okazawa-Rey 212-13), however in the United States, abortion was allowed until a woman could feel the fetus until the mid-nineteenth century. There are and have been numerous different opinions and laws about abortion. Abortion is interesting to think about, but even more interesting to me, is a similar topicthe topic of birth. Before reading this article (and watching the video in class) I never had thought about homebirth. Now, I have a difficult time even considering a hospital birth as an option unless I have extreme complications. It is unnatural and often unsafe. In Giving Birth, Naomi Wolf worsens my view on hospital births further. First, she is awkwardly required to take part in a nipple stimulation in order to speed contractions, then, when contractions arent close enough and the babys heart beat is irregular (after a listening that was too short), she is rushed to the delivery room for an emergency delivery. Wolf describes her experience saying I had imagined a team of birth supporters rooting for me. Instead of such hands-on support, I followed my midwives watching the printouts as if I were a commodity on the New York Stock Exchange (Wolf 137). While I am sure some people have less awful experiences with hospital births, I have a hard time looking at it in quite the same way. Rahna Reiko Rizzuto humorously describes her second birth in good detail in What My Mother Never Told Me, or How I Was Blindsided by Childbirth and Survived. Rizzuto had been blindsided first by the breaking of her water, then later by her forgetting exactly how to have a baby. Rizzuto did have the support of the doctors, something Naomi Wolf had the misfortune of missing out on. Nearly everyone in the room was cheering Rizzuto on to push her baby out. Rizzuto has complications this time around, just as she had the first time. Her second baby was trying to come out with the head facing up just as the first baby had (Rizzuto 17). Even while the mood throughout this story is not negative, the conclusion does still have a

negative tilt about hospital births. She had missed out on parts of her first childs birth, and even though she didnt miss out on the same things the second time around, she did have some of the same experiences: But even this time, my son was out of reach, so I was left to try to recognize him from afar (Rizzuto 21). When I have a child, I want a positive experienceone where I can remember everything (even the painit lets you know youre alive!) and I can see and hold my child the instant he or she is born. Joy Harjos story of the birth of her children in Three Generations of Native American Womens Birth Experience, angered me for reasons aside from medical idiocy. While this story took place over twenty years ago, discrimination in the United States is still common. Harjo was offered sterilization while in the hospital giving birth and denied the offer, but Later [she] would learn that many Indian women who werent fluent in English signed, thinking it was a form giving consent for the doctor to deliver their babies (Harjo 240). Harjo was also not allowed to be alone with her son until she left. Ridiculous acts of discrimination always set me off. I realize this was quite a long time ago, but I also know that this sort of thing is likely still happening. Sterilization might not still be offered, but the rest is very likely. Medical stupidity does also come into play, when she wants to sit up to hold her child. She was not allowed to sit up because one of the drugs side effects was paralysis when sitting up. Seriously? Paralysis? They administered drugs to mothers that could cause paralysis! Do I really even need to explain why that is ridiculous? She doesnt mention whether these drugs are given to her while the child is in the womb, but if they are, they could really negatively affect the child too. And if not, why dont they just give a painkiller that doesnt cause paralysis? I have begun to really enjoy the articles we are assigned, but I have also begun to become more furious about them. In the beginning of the term, I felt like the subjects that we read about

were the same things in different words, by different women, over and over. Im sure the topics probably werent even that similar for me to have felt this way, but now I can see the difference. Now I become empathetically angry/sad when I read a story of a womans suffering.