Letters to the Editor
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Feminism and Childbirth
The most astounding part of this article was Epstein's confession that she didn't know that "there were any feminist politics in the birth world." My gosh, how is this possible? What issue could be more relevant to feminism than childbirth?
My own two kids were born at home during the early 1980s and most of us who were "normal birthing" activists back then also identified as feminists. At that time, the concept of reproductive choice was being applied to all aspects of pregnancy, from safe,legal abortion to safe, legal home birth. My friends and I lobbied for the liberalization of midwifery laws and marched on behalf of abortion rights--on at least one occasion during the same weekend--believing that these were essentially the same issues.
At some point, however, feminists became preoccupied with abortion to the exclusion of all other pregnancy issues, and in the process more or less handed childbirth over to the anti-choicers. The result has been a loss of ground in both areas and it has occurred to me that continued access to legal abortion may depend upon feminism's willingness to embrace pregnancy in its completion as well as its termination: in terms of paternal control over maternal functions, there is no ideological difference between birth-by-scalpel and abortion-by-coathanger.