Doing Feminism

This past Friday, I attended a lecture by Dr. Rebecca Stringer, a professor from the University of Otago in New Zealand, who presented, “Fact, Fiction, and the Foetus: Violence Against Pregnant Women and the Politics of Abortion.” It was, primarily, an academic approach to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) in America.

America previously used the “born alive” rule when dealing with harm inflicted on the foetus, which held that matters such as homicide or assault only applied to children outside the womb, so that a foetus in utero, if harmed, would result in no charge against the person who had harmed it. UVVA overturned this.

What UVVA does is utilise a separate entities model, meaning that the mother and foetus are two separate beings. In UVVA discourse, though, the foetus is defined as an “unborn child” or a “child in utero”: a “member of the species homo sapiens at any stage of development who is developing in the womb.”

Prior to the UVVA, Stringer says that two issues posed a problem: fetal viability and criminal intent (there is the question of whether a person actually intends to harm the pregnancy or not). The notion of transferred intent seems to have solved that problem, at least for the anti-choicers. Through transferred intent, whether there was intent to harm the foetus or not, since the foetus is granted personhood, it may still be framed as “an innocent bystander.”

An essential quesiton must be posed, though, and one that Stringer does ask is, “Can such a law exist alongside women’s reproductive rights?” The answer seems to be an overwhelming No. Stringer states that homicide is the leading cause of death for women in America, and the UVVA poses as a great solution to that problem. Indeed, “UVVA seems to protect rather than restrict women’s reproductive rights,” and that is why it’s so problematic. UVVA uses violence against pregnant women as a cover, as a means to slip anti-abortion legislation in. What is perhaps most frightening, though, is UVVA gives weight to feminists and against feminist arguments: It’s difficult to refute something when mainstream audiences are convinced it will curb the rates of violence against pregnant women. Tellingly, though, Stringer mentions that most of those who voted for UVVA voted against the Violence Against Women Act.

Despite what the proponents of UVVA assert, the act does have a lot to do with abortion. As I’ve stated (and Stringer brought up as well) in a previous article, it is an inherent contradiction to grant a foetus personhood and simultaneously allow women to seek abortions. Furthermore, Stringer indicated that co-sponsors of the bill were open about their position that they wanted to undermine Roe v. Wade. Simply put, the UVVA and those behind it advance a strict anti-abortion position.

If we are to abandon the UVVA and similar legislation (and we should), Stringer asks how we should treat violence against pregnant women. Also, how should the mother-foetus relationship be characterised?

Stringer explained three models for characterising the mother-foetus relationship: The “single entity” model; the “separate entity” model; and the “not one but not two” model. In the single entity model, the foetus is simply ragarded as a part of the woman, as much as her arms or vital organs might. The separate entity model is the model anti-choicers opt for, and the one UVVA adopts. Under the separate entities model, the mother and foetus are, as discussed above, viewed as separate, distinct beings. This model is extremely problematic, of course, and could have, if not one, several posts of its own. Finally, the not one but not two model regards the mother and foetus as separate, but also as indivisibly linked.

Now, the single entity approach is problematic, because the pregnant woman and the foetus may both suffer non-identical harms, but it perhaps offers the most protection to a women’s reproductive rights. The separate entity model recognises that the two suffer separate harms, but at a considerable cost to women’s autonomy. In addition, “violence inflicted against the foetus is necessarily inflicted against the woman.” The solution to me seems to be to use the not one but not two model.

Now, after Stringer’s lecture, I asked a question. In Canada, we’re currently facing the threat of Bill C-484, or, the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill. I assumed that in her research she must have come across acts of resistance against the UVVA, and also concluded that they weren’t as effective as would have been hoped: UVVA passed. So, I asked what I, as an activist opposing Bill C-484, could do to effectively fight the bill. She had a short but insightful answer: We cannot allow the anti-choicers to co-opt our rhetoric. The anti-choicers ultimately do not care about women’s rights, and do not care about violence against women. As stated earlier, it is simply a cover so they can get their anti-abortion legislation to pass. If we are to succeed in fending off Bill C-484, we must not allow the anti-choicers to “monopolise feminist positions,” as she put it.

So, dear readers, I have some questions for you. How should we deal with violence against pregnant women? Which model should we use to characterise the mother-foetus relationship? How should we keep the anti-choicers from co-opting feminist ideas, and how do we reclaim them once they have done so? I’d love to hear your feedback.