Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 18:52:19 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Historicize the Fetus (was Re: M-TH: Britain's abortion row)


Rob Schaap wrote:
>> But I point to it so that abortion too can be historically conceptualised.

Shouldn't you also historicize the fetus? When and how did some people
begin to make emotional investment in the fetus? Why? For what purpose? To
what effect?

I venture to say that to the extent that people make emotional investment
in the fetus, people disinvest from the ideals of women's agency,
self-determination, sexual freedom, and emancipation.

Why? Because emotional investment in the fetus creates emotional capital
which will be re-invested to exploit women's physical and affective labor.

Now that the nuclear family is becoming untenable under material assaults
by capital while it continues to be criticized from many perspectives
(feminist, marxist, communitarianist, libertarian, etc.), some folks seem
to be responding to this "crisis" of the nuclear family by creating a new
nucleus of human belonging ("bonding with the fetus") to serve as a
substitute "haven in the heartless world."

As marxists and feminists, we ought to historicize this new "haven" of
"innocence," as we have done so with the nuclear family.

Yoshie




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