Men are overawed, not to say terrified, by the ability of women to produce babies. (Asked by a lady intellectual to summarize the differences between the sexes, another bishop responded, "Madam, I cannot conceive.") It gives women an unchallengeable authority.
This excerpt appears in a dreadful Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens. It offers a bit of insight into another reason that people seek to control us by controlling our births. We lose this "unchallengeable authority" if we are unable to deliver babies on our own, but only with the help of a medical professional, surrounded by other medical professionals and hooked up to machines.
He goes on to quote Kipling:
So it comes that Man, the coward,
when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council,
dare not leave a place for her.
Substitute "the medical establishment" for Man, and let "her" refer to the midwife.
1 comment:
Good girl! I read Christofer Hitchens, but with considerable trepidation - he is an iconoclast, but seemingly indiscriminantly, I cannot discern a moral ground for his fulminations. Your ground is much clearer...
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