>And, now, let's get to gender questions. Do heterosexual men take
'personal
>responsibility' for their reproductive capacity as much as women have
been
>forced to do so? If they did, vasectomy and condoms would be vastly
more
>popular, and men would be jumping up and down demanding the 'male Pill'
>instead of Viagra. And it seems to me that many men love being
dependent
>upon women's domestic labor.
It just so happens that I attended a session of the Critical Resistance conferences in Berkeley a few weeks ago, a conference on the prison industrial complex. I heard the lawyer Lynn Palgrove speak in a session on women and substance abuse issues.
She told an anecdote about South Carolina, where child abuse laws are being interpreted as fetal abuse laws:
A woman was made pregnant by a man. The man promised to pay for the abortion. The woman waited, unable to pay. The man didn't do as promised. The second tri-mester came and the woman was desperate because of her situation so she shot herself in the stomach, feeling she would not be able to have the baby and raise it well (because of her financial situation). The fetus was killed, but she lived--and she was arrested for killing her fetus.
Lynn Palgrove, who has worked a long time in this field, believes this is a trend (the child abuse=fetal abuse interpretation) that will move beyond South Carolina.
-Alec
-Alec
______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com