Reproductive issues does not only include abortion.
something that is seriously frustrating me right now is that the way abortion is constructed is that it is the total be-all end-all of reproductive issues. The mainstream rhetoric about this basically looks like this:
when actually it looks like this:
There are so many other issues involved in reproductive rights. Things like the ability of trans* parents, queer parents, parents of color, and poor parents to keep their children. Things like access to good and respectful birthing centers. Things like the sheer cost of birth and how that affects those who don’t have insurance. Things like that all of this incredibly complicated for undocumented immigrants.
Things like the utter lack of support for people (especially people of color, who are overly sexualized anyway) to breastfeed at the same time that breastfeeding is pushed down our throats as the only thing we could ever do if we love our kids. This results in a lot of people trying to breastfeed exclusively and doing it solely from the home, which - news alert!- reproduces the whole work/domestic gender dichotomy.
Things like the utter inaccessibility of child care for anyone who is not super rich, but how the rest of us poor folks actually really need it because we are the ones working all the damn time. And you know, I think you can make links here to the disgusting disparities in public education, as well.
Things like the fact that people of color have been historically and systematically forcibly sterilized on the one hand, and on the other are vilified for ‘having too many kids’. That is eugenics, people.
Constructing reproductive rights only as who has access to abortions - who is choosing not to be a parent - excludes so many of these issues. It also ties the whole notion of reproduction to biological abilities, which leads to oodles of cissexism.
I am not saying abortion and birth control aren’t important - they are. they are incredibly important, and those battles definitely need to be fought, and waged, and won. But reproductive rights also includes the right to reproduce and parent, as well, and those are battles being fought and waged and lost by queer people, people of color, and poor people. I want to see that included in mainstream feminist dialogue along with abortion.
(I totally made those graphics myself because I love diagrams)
(via ladyatheist)
