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Some say the fetus is the "tiniest citizen." If so, then the bodies of women themselves have become political arenas--or, recent cases suggest, battlefields; A cocaine--addicted mother is convicted of drug trafficking through the umbilical cord. Women employees at a battery plant must prove infertility to keep their jobs. A terminally ill woman is forced to undergo a cesarean section. No longer concerned with conception or motherhood, the new politics of fetal rights focuses on fertility and pregnancy itself, on a woman's relationship with the fetus. How exactly, Cynthia Daniels asks, does this affect a woman's rights? Are they different from a man's? And how has the state helped determine the difference? The answers, rigorously pursued throughout this book, give us a clear look into the state's paradoxical role in gender politics--as both a challenger of injustice and an agent of social control. In benchmark legal cases concerned with forced medical treatment, fetal protectionism in the workplace, and drug and alcohol use and abuse, Daniels shows us state power at work in the struggle between fetal rights and women's rights. These cases raise critical questions about the impact of gender on women's standing as citizens, and about the relationship between state power and gender inequality. Fully appreciating the difficulties of each case, the author probes the subtleties of various positions and their implications for a deeper understanding of how a woman's reproductive capability affects her relationship to state power. In her analysis, the need to defend women's right to self--sovereignty becomes clear, but so does the need to define further the very concepts of self-sovereignty and privacy. The intensity of the debate over fetal rights suggests the depth of the current gender crisis and the force of the feelings of social dislocation generated by reproductive politics. Breaking through the public mythology that clouds these debates, At Women's Expense makes a hopeful beginning toward liberating woman's body within the body politic.
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At Women's Expense
At Women's Expense STATE POWER AND THE POLITICS OF FETAL RIGHTS
Cynthia R. Daniels
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
Copyright © 1993 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Second printing, 1996 First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 1996
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Daniels, Cynthia R. At women's expense: state power and the politics of fetal rights / Cynthia R. Daniels. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-05043-6 (alk. paper) (cloth) ISBN 0-674-05044-4 (pbk.) 1. Fetus-Legal status, laws, etc.-United States. 2. Pregnant women-Legal status, laws, etc.-United States. I. Title. KF481.D36 1993 342.73'0878-dc20 [347.302878] 93-4102
With love and gratitude, for Bob and Katie
Contents
Introduction: Fetal Rights, Gender Difference, and Political Power
1
Fetal Animation: The Political and Cultural Emergence of Fetal Rights
9
2 Bodily Integrity and Forced Medical Treatment: The Case of Angela Carder 3
4
From Protecting the Woman to Privileging the Fetus: The Case of Johnson Controls
31 57
The Politics of Vengeance: The Case of Jennifer Johnson
5 Toward a New Body Politics
Notes Acknowledgments Index
97 133 151 175 179
Introduction: Fetal Rights, Gender Difference, and Political Power
A CESARIAN section is performed on a terminally ill woman against her will, resulting in the deaths of both mother and child. Women employees at a battery production plant are required to undergo surgical sterilization or prove they are infer