I see more interest in birthing autonomy among feminists than I do pro-choice (abortion and even contraception wise) beliefs among natural birth and midwives, but that’s just a generalization based on the midwives I worked and trained with in real life (many strong anti-choicers there, even telling people not to use OCPs because they killed babies) and on the my mostly internet interactions with feminists, who seem to be very pluralistic about birth choices, and not a big fan of turning over bodies to the patriarchy at any point. But, I don’t hang out at Jezebel. Both camps are large, heterogenous groups. There is a lot of integrated support from both, and I have never had a problem writing about Tim Tebow’s ad one day and VBACs the next.

One of my favorite examples of this support is the inclusive pro choice, abortion supporting position of the ACNM, the American Academy of Nurse Midwives. And, when I was at my first Med Students for Choice annual meeting, the keynote address hit all sorts of varied points, to supporting access to fertility treatments for people regardless of income, access to midwives and homebirth, etc.

I wrote an article on the subject during the week that the Super Bowl aired and “choice” advocates seemed to only care about Tebow’s mom, while ignoring major media coverage of birth choices stripped away from women.

http://www.thefeministbreeder.com/Ive-been-annoyed-with-feminists-this-week

We, as reprojustice advocates, have got to start caring about both. The right to full bodily autonomy should apply to all women, pregnant or not.

NYCprochoiceMD and Courtroom Mama, I totally agree with both of you. There are many folks who care about birthing and reproductive rights and are doing incredible work around those issues simultaneously. I apologize the post didn’t give enough credit to them.

Courtroom Mama, I unfortunately am not in the place to be convincing anyone about the intentions of first wave feminists, but I think even if it is simply modern antis claiming historical intentions it is useful to note. Maybe that’s silly though.

I was struck by something in your theory — you trace the divide back, in part, to the beginning of the women’s movement, but I tend to feel pointing to Susan B. Anthony as being anti-choice is really a new phenomenon, along with people who are anti-choice claiming feminist pedigree… see also, Sarah Palin. (Although I guess I’m not willing to say that being pro-choice is a prerequisite to being feminist. hm.) But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

I can really only speak to legal aspects because that’s my area of expertise, but I think that there really is some legitimacy to the idea that the feminist paradigm that gained supremacy in the 70s was more concerned with formal, legal equality than functional equality, so an allocation of of energy left some issues, even ones that affected primarily women of privilege, on the curbside. So, along with the left-behind women of color, we still have these persistent problems that affect mothers primarily (e.g. why is it only now that there is legal protection for breastfeeding?) There are some “personal is political” issues that made the cut, domestic violence and sexual harassment for example, but I think that ultimately there there was a discomfort with essentialism–which was useless for a legal movement centered on equality–that made feminists of the second wave cut a wide berth around anything that had to do with babymaking. Which is really too bad because a lot of very interesting stuff was happening around birth at that time, including the proliferation of Lamaze and the natural birth movement, the founding of the Farm, the list goes on and on.

Not that that justifies the current animosity toward RJ advocates from some… there can be a little bit of suspicion of those of us who are pro-choice in birthing circles, like on some level we don’t care about babies or something. Nothing could be further from the truth.