Women and Children are or were Chattels?
When it comes to medicine (and it’s laws/protocol) as a field, sometimes it’s hard for me to grasp where autonomy is or isn’t in play.
We still get treated like we have no rights and others are allowed to make our decisions for us. Use our bodies to make their life easier. Or more pleasurable.
- (women) incubators – surrogate,
vs abortion, vs hysterectomy refusal,
coerced or forced sterilization - (women and children) or parts’ factories – egg donor, organs.
- sex trades.
Our bodies and the circumstances we are in are allowed to control us and our children. Where our poverty is used to control us and separate us.
4. foster care, adoption
And even though they don’t technically own us, they still act as if they do. So they can put us into hospitals (as mentally ill, as addicts) , prisons and congregant care.
So which is better? Their ownership or their paternalism? Have we actually gained freedom if they don’t see us as autonomous beings of equal value to them?
mspeachierocks 