Abstract
I was recently asked by a student why I continue to advocate for women’s educational and workplace equity. She stated, “It’s not the 1970s anymore when you were a college student.” I responded that I believe antifeminist treatment of women has reappeared in a slightly altered form and with a different label during each decade of my life. I discussed ways that women were told they gained “reproductive freedom” but were not told that “women” was defined in a way to exclude women of color, single women, women in countries other than in the United States, women who live in rural areas, women who lacked health insurance, women who were raped or survivors of incest, and women of low income. I wanted to show the student that legislation, while appearing on the surface to value women actually may be detrimental to women’s lives. I asked her to consider events that were occurring in the United States in the 1970s through 2014 that encouraged maintaining antifeminist legislation. In short, I wanted to encourage her to engage in critical thinking about feminism in historical, cultural, and generational contexts.
This is what Laury Oaks has asked us to do about baby safe haven laws, legislation begun in the United States during the years 1999 and 2009, which gives parents the option of relinquishing an infant legally and anonymously at specified locations, for example, hospitals. This legislation was introduced and passed at a critical time in our history: when politicians had us engaged in debates about teaching sex education in the schools, child abuse, abortion, especially late term abortions, and increasing teen pregnancy rates. The lives of babies were being valued; women’s lives and realities, however, were not. We were told that baby safe haven legislation would solve these “women’s issues” related to unwanted pregnancies; it would give options for women who are not “maternal” and were putting babies in dumpsters. However, Oaks notes that baby safe haven laws reinforce antiabortion policies.
In addition, her analysis highlights that such legislation aims to pit women against each other in terms of being a “good mother” versus a “bad mother,” adding to the dichotomies of women identified by Sigmund Freud and others. “Good” mothers can offer children a good life; “bad” mothers should use safe havens. The legislation assumes that bad mothers are adolescent women, women of color, and women living in poverty. Baby safe haven legislation, according to Oaks, “conceals the social injustices that coerce some women and girls to relinquish their newborns” (p. 221).
Similar to earlier legislation, Oaks notes that women’s lives and realities are relegated to less or no importance. Prolife has never really meant prowomen’s lives. The fact that in some states baby safe haven laws are referred to as “Baby Moses laws” speaks loudly about devaluing women.
Oaks provides a feminist revisionist perspective of baby safe haven legislation by discussing the absence of women’s voices in the development of such legislation and by recognizing that such legislation conceals the abandonment of women by legislators, safe havens, and the entire society. She concludes, “we must focus…on working to reduce social inequalities and insist on stronger support for all girls and women who are faced with challenging life circumstances and difficult reproductive decisions.” Oaks asks all of us to work for reproductive justice; we do this by ensuring women have political, economic, and social power to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.
As I told the student, a woman’s work is never done.