The horror perpetrated on others within our own boundaries is despicable and heartbreaking - starving children, gun violence, abused undocumented immigrants, racial inequality - I could go on and on. And now this. The human cost is immeasurable. When will we acknowledge that we are only as healthy as the least among us?
What really bothers me is that that -- caring for the people who need it most -- is the core tenet of Christianity, which so many of these people claim to follow.
Greg, you give the Middle Ages a black eye here. In fact, the life of the mother was the most important thing in medieval gynecology and obstetrics and the fetus was not even considered viable in any way until after "quickening"--the first movement of the fetus in the womb. The horrors of obstetrics you are actually thinking about were perpetrated in the misnamed "Enlightenment" era, with the invention of the forceps in the late 16th/early 17th c but first used regularly in the 18th c. The reason why this device changed the calculus of childbirth for women was twofold. First, male physicians, who had formerly eschewed dealing with pregnancy and childbirth to a great degree--leaving all that nasty business to midwives and doulas--adopted the forceps as their special device, forbidding anyone but licensed physicians (i.e. men, not women) from using them and promoting their use for "difficult" births (which they knew very little about since they still thought of the uterus as either a creature that moved around the woman's body, à la Hippocrates, or as an inanimate, inert, and rigid "bell jar" that had to be broken for the baby to emerge, à la Aristotle). This removed knowledgable women from the birthing chamber in ways that were invidious to women's health. Second, the physicians using the forceps never cleaned them. This meant that the rate of postpartum infection went through the roof when forceps were used and male doctors' dirty hands were in the picture. Midwives and doulas were actually concerned about hygiene and home births that used women to run the proceedings were generally safer and more sanitary.
The disastrous population morbidity in the Middle Ages happened usually after birth--about 30-40% of babies died in the first year--because of disease and poor nutrition. Women who survived the birth of their first child generally remained robust unless they were forced to have too many pregnancies (such as occurred when wet-nurses were utilized). In addition, there are quite a few medieval historians--most notably Monica Greene--who have investigated the use of birth control methods and abortion/miscarriage inducing drugs in the Middle Ages and these were rarely prosecuted despite the Church's claim that such things were not allowed. Then, as now, most Catholics tend to make their own decisions about such things. For example, in Ireland, some 75% of the Catholic population admitted to using birth control in a survey a few years ago. And abortion is now legal in Ireland--because the population voted in favor of it, as well as for same-sex marriage.
So please don't blame the medieval word for the incomprehensible and deranged attitudes of the anti-choice movement. Their motives are quite different: the complete removal of women's bodily autonomy from the equation. And the women in the anti-choice movement who accept the Patriarchal Bargain of losing their bodily autonomy in exchange for the benefits of being attached to a dominant male have deluded themselves into thinking that will be okay. Of course, that is, until said male demands his pregnant mistress get an abortion . . .
Some years ago I heard a fascinating certified professional midwife (CPM or CM) speak about her PhD research on modern maternity care in India, where pregnant women of the lowest class, living in the dessert, were given rubber mats by the state health authorities and instructed to use this more modern and sanitary equipment for birth, instead of the dirty process they had been using for millenia. But, this new advance resulted in a significant increase in both maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. The CPM's research showed that the "dirt" the lower caste midwives had the pregnant women labor on, was procured from specific places, then "cured" in a sterile process of drying over a specified number of days in the hot sun. The sand was clean, absorbent and comfortable. The rubber mats were quickly contaminated (and there was very little water available for cleaning them), wet with body fluids and very uncomfortable in the hot climate. Let us not discount the women's wisdom of the ages!
“…losing their bodily autonomy in exchange for the benefits of being attached to a dominant male…until said male demands his pregnant mistress get an abortion…” So true! He’ll have her in the GYN/OB office so fast she won’t have a chance to process it!
I heard that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign committee intends to provide all Texas high school girls with coat hangers. While appropriate, this is probably just satirical rumor. It is not his MO: as a Republican, he’s not likely to give anything away, not even coat hangers to raped girls.
This woman Alexandra DeSanctimonius Jarrs is not special or unusual in her point of view. She may well be speaking for a hefty percentage of the people who voted for Trump, the reactionary segment of the US stuck in the old ways, the people who don’t want social change for the better. *Certainly* she speaks for a large segment of religion in America. The 74 million people who voted for Trump, out of the total of 155 million people who voted, is 48% of the voting public in the US. People you know, a lot of people you know, are comfortable with keeping sexism & control of women’s bodies etc. etc. alive and well.
What I don’t see mentioned often enough when this subject comes up, I will mention here:
Religions want their numbers to grow. They want to get bigger. It’s common for them to develop a culture, a system of blindly accepted and unchallenged rules, which promote this expansion. Brainwashing is not by any means limited to religion, every commercial is trying to brainwash you too, but religions have been doing it for far longer. So the messages get deeply ingrained in the psyche and the DNA. That corruption is hard to remove.
“We must have more babies. Every fetus must live. We must have more fetuses and therefore more people.”
More babies means more power for that religion, more members.
It’s also not uncommon for a religious group to want to project their beliefs out into a society. The Mayflower carried both religious liberals and religious reactionaries fleeing oppression in Europe. In the latter camp, the Puritans, who I cannot revile enough, executed a teenage Quaker girl on Capitol Hill in Boston because she disagreed with them. The Quakers ended up having to flee Massachusetts to Rhode Island because of that persecution. If you weren’t a Puritan, just like if you’re not aligned with the Taliban, your life is at risk.
At the risk of offending readers, I will also say that the LDS church, an offshoot of the larger Protestant Christian church, also heavily promoted making babies, with some highly questionable early misogynistic and male-centric practices. And of course there’s the Catholic Church. And many other examples.
So here we have a combination of zealotry to make babies, combined with the desire to force that zealotry on society at large. If I didn’t have my very conservative and reactionary father, I would have a hard time understanding how this works, but he frequently frequently made suggestions for controlling society in ways that conformed to his personal life choices.
Is it despicable to have a religion run a society? Absolutely. That’s why we have separation of church and state, which right now is not in the case in Afghanistan and other places.
But having religious radicals heavily influencing and perhaps controlling the Supreme Court is not separation of church and state, on the contrary. There is good reason even the joy-music-and-dance-hating Puritans were forced to leave their homes and travel to a terrifying unknown. Religion has no place in government, any branch of government, and that includes the judiciary. Regressive social (misogynistic male) control of women’s bodies is completely unacceptable in America.
I agree: "Pregnant women of Texas are the first casualties of this illegitimate Supreme Court. They won’t be the last. Investigate Kavanaugh. Expand SCOTUS. The transition from democracy to dictatorship is well into the third trimester. We’re running out of time."
The horror perpetrated on others within our own boundaries is despicable and heartbreaking - starving children, gun violence, abused undocumented immigrants, racial inequality - I could go on and on. And now this. The human cost is immeasurable. When will we acknowledge that we are only as healthy as the least among us?
What really bothers me is that that -- caring for the people who need it most -- is the core tenet of Christianity, which so many of these people claim to follow.
But hypocrisy is also a tenet...sadly.
Greg, you give the Middle Ages a black eye here. In fact, the life of the mother was the most important thing in medieval gynecology and obstetrics and the fetus was not even considered viable in any way until after "quickening"--the first movement of the fetus in the womb. The horrors of obstetrics you are actually thinking about were perpetrated in the misnamed "Enlightenment" era, with the invention of the forceps in the late 16th/early 17th c but first used regularly in the 18th c. The reason why this device changed the calculus of childbirth for women was twofold. First, male physicians, who had formerly eschewed dealing with pregnancy and childbirth to a great degree--leaving all that nasty business to midwives and doulas--adopted the forceps as their special device, forbidding anyone but licensed physicians (i.e. men, not women) from using them and promoting their use for "difficult" births (which they knew very little about since they still thought of the uterus as either a creature that moved around the woman's body, à la Hippocrates, or as an inanimate, inert, and rigid "bell jar" that had to be broken for the baby to emerge, à la Aristotle). This removed knowledgable women from the birthing chamber in ways that were invidious to women's health. Second, the physicians using the forceps never cleaned them. This meant that the rate of postpartum infection went through the roof when forceps were used and male doctors' dirty hands were in the picture. Midwives and doulas were actually concerned about hygiene and home births that used women to run the proceedings were generally safer and more sanitary.
The disastrous population morbidity in the Middle Ages happened usually after birth--about 30-40% of babies died in the first year--because of disease and poor nutrition. Women who survived the birth of their first child generally remained robust unless they were forced to have too many pregnancies (such as occurred when wet-nurses were utilized). In addition, there are quite a few medieval historians--most notably Monica Greene--who have investigated the use of birth control methods and abortion/miscarriage inducing drugs in the Middle Ages and these were rarely prosecuted despite the Church's claim that such things were not allowed. Then, as now, most Catholics tend to make their own decisions about such things. For example, in Ireland, some 75% of the Catholic population admitted to using birth control in a survey a few years ago. And abortion is now legal in Ireland--because the population voted in favor of it, as well as for same-sex marriage.
So please don't blame the medieval word for the incomprehensible and deranged attitudes of the anti-choice movement. Their motives are quite different: the complete removal of women's bodily autonomy from the equation. And the women in the anti-choice movement who accept the Patriarchal Bargain of losing their bodily autonomy in exchange for the benefits of being attached to a dominant male have deluded themselves into thinking that will be okay. Of course, that is, until said male demands his pregnant mistress get an abortion . . .
Thank You Linda for this excellent and so insightful review of medieval maternal infant care and culture.
Some years ago I heard a fascinating certified professional midwife (CPM or CM) speak about her PhD research on modern maternity care in India, where pregnant women of the lowest class, living in the dessert, were given rubber mats by the state health authorities and instructed to use this more modern and sanitary equipment for birth, instead of the dirty process they had been using for millenia. But, this new advance resulted in a significant increase in both maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. The CPM's research showed that the "dirt" the lower caste midwives had the pregnant women labor on, was procured from specific places, then "cured" in a sterile process of drying over a specified number of days in the hot sun. The sand was clean, absorbent and comfortable. The rubber mats were quickly contaminated (and there was very little water available for cleaning them), wet with body fluids and very uncomfortable in the hot climate. Let us not discount the women's wisdom of the ages!
Lowest caste, I meant.
“…losing their bodily autonomy in exchange for the benefits of being attached to a dominant male…until said male demands his pregnant mistress get an abortion…” So true! He’ll have her in the GYN/OB office so fast she won’t have a chance to process it!
Thanks for this, Linda. I was using "medieval" colloquially, but you're absolutely right!
I heard that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign committee intends to provide all Texas high school girls with coat hangers. While appropriate, this is probably just satirical rumor. It is not his MO: as a Republican, he’s not likely to give anything away, not even coat hangers to raped girls.
Thank You, Greg, for telling it like it should never be.
This woman Alexandra DeSanctimonius Jarrs is not special or unusual in her point of view. She may well be speaking for a hefty percentage of the people who voted for Trump, the reactionary segment of the US stuck in the old ways, the people who don’t want social change for the better. *Certainly* she speaks for a large segment of religion in America. The 74 million people who voted for Trump, out of the total of 155 million people who voted, is 48% of the voting public in the US. People you know, a lot of people you know, are comfortable with keeping sexism & control of women’s bodies etc. etc. alive and well.
What I don’t see mentioned often enough when this subject comes up, I will mention here:
Religions want their numbers to grow. They want to get bigger. It’s common for them to develop a culture, a system of blindly accepted and unchallenged rules, which promote this expansion. Brainwashing is not by any means limited to religion, every commercial is trying to brainwash you too, but religions have been doing it for far longer. So the messages get deeply ingrained in the psyche and the DNA. That corruption is hard to remove.
“We must have more babies. Every fetus must live. We must have more fetuses and therefore more people.”
More babies means more power for that religion, more members.
It’s also not uncommon for a religious group to want to project their beliefs out into a society. The Mayflower carried both religious liberals and religious reactionaries fleeing oppression in Europe. In the latter camp, the Puritans, who I cannot revile enough, executed a teenage Quaker girl on Capitol Hill in Boston because she disagreed with them. The Quakers ended up having to flee Massachusetts to Rhode Island because of that persecution. If you weren’t a Puritan, just like if you’re not aligned with the Taliban, your life is at risk.
At the risk of offending readers, I will also say that the LDS church, an offshoot of the larger Protestant Christian church, also heavily promoted making babies, with some highly questionable early misogynistic and male-centric practices. And of course there’s the Catholic Church. And many other examples.
So here we have a combination of zealotry to make babies, combined with the desire to force that zealotry on society at large. If I didn’t have my very conservative and reactionary father, I would have a hard time understanding how this works, but he frequently frequently made suggestions for controlling society in ways that conformed to his personal life choices.
Is it despicable to have a religion run a society? Absolutely. That’s why we have separation of church and state, which right now is not in the case in Afghanistan and other places.
But having religious radicals heavily influencing and perhaps controlling the Supreme Court is not separation of church and state, on the contrary. There is good reason even the joy-music-and-dance-hating Puritans were forced to leave their homes and travel to a terrifying unknown. Religion has no place in government, any branch of government, and that includes the judiciary. Regressive social (misogynistic male) control of women’s bodies is completely unacceptable in America.
I agree: "Pregnant women of Texas are the first casualties of this illegitimate Supreme Court. They won’t be the last. Investigate Kavanaugh. Expand SCOTUS. The transition from democracy to dictatorship is well into the third trimester. We’re running out of time."
Thank you, Greg, but the SCOTUS is about power, not the law. And pleasing the troglodyte GOP base is the only way the can hold onto it