Re: Women vs. the State, et al (was Re: Murder vs. Killing)

["bob brown" <vacirca@xxxxxxxxx>]

"solidarity means sharing the same risks" - Che
( la solidarita significa correre gli stessi rischi)

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>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>
>To: A place for marxist-feminists to hang out <M-Fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Women vs. the State, et al (was Re: Murder vs. Killing)
>Date: Thu, Aug 26, 1999, 4:38 AM
>

>Carrol wrote:
>>Any terminology
>>(such as Kelley's slang term "killing") that directly
>>or indirectly, implicitly or explicitly, metaphorically
>>or literally attributes interests to a fetus is obscurantist.
>
>I agree.  What is obscured in this obscurantist discourse is the actual
>power relations in struggles that concern reproductive rights.  The
>anti-abortion movement is, for obvious reasons, not a movement of, by, and
>for fetuses.  The actual struggles for power in reproductive politics
>concern primarily the following: women vs. the State; women vs. doctors;
>women vs. the anti-abortion movement; women vs. the men who want to control
>women's sexuality and reproduction; and young women vs. the parents who
>want to control their daughters' sexuality and reproduction.  By employing
>fetuses as symbolic vehicles, all groups named above have and are still
>seeking control over women.  (As Kristin Luker notes, it is doctors'
>struggle for licensing law and professionalization that first made
>abortions criminal in America.)
>
>Many fertilized eggs and fetuses are destroyed during the course of
>fertility treatment; however, the anti-abortion movement has not killed
>doctors who are engaged in this service, nor have the abortion-ambivalent
>made a big fuss about it.  Providers of fertility treatment are increasing,
>while abortion providers are decreasing.  That is because in the ideology
>of sexism, not just any egg and fetus can gain symbolic value: in this
>ideology, valuable symbolic eggs and fetuses are the ones _outside_ of the
>aura of desire for motherhood that fertility treatment projects.
>
>Yoshie
>yesss yessss yesssssss bob brown
>