March Blog Post- Alisha Elson

            As a single female in my late twenties, I have really taken an interest in learning about women’s rights and the oppression that still exists today. Just this semester alone, a large part due to my Communication & Culture class, I have been empowered to learn more about advocacy for women. That being said, the most powerful reading this month was in week 10 when we were assigned Word Wielding Womb: Using the Body to Fight the War on Women by Amy Arellano. All four of the pieces by Arellano stirred up emotions inside of me, and I periodically find myself pondering certain lines from the text. The piece that had the strongest impact on me was Mississippi Burning aka Personhood Amendments.

            This piece was full of very strong words and phrases that conveyed deep emotion for me. One line in particular stood out, “because the kick has more rights, kick her to the curb, her suffering is not enough, and the state will sacrifice postpartum guilt.” To me this sentence means that even though the woman was impregnated unwillingly by force and rape, the unborn fetus inside of her has more rights in the eyes of the law than the woman herself. It means that the moment she was raped, she was not only personally stripped of her dignity, but also stripped of all the rights to her own body. Essentially, she was not only forced in to sex and pregnancy, but then forced to give up her own personal rights because of the unjustifiable act.

            Upon researching the concept of “legitimate rape” further, I found several comments made by politicians and law makers that quite literally made me shutter because they were so cold. One in particular was from a woman named Barbara Listing who is the president of Right to Life Michigan. Ms. Listing attempted to explain that insurance should cost extra even in cases of rape: “it’s simply, like, nobody plans to have an accident in a car accident, nobody plans to have their homes flooded. You have to buy extra insurance for those” (New Republic). Disgusting. I don’t understand how anyone, a woman especially, could be so inconsiderate towards such a subject. Pro-life of pro-choice, in the case of rape, the decision and rights of the woman affected by the heinous crime should be 100% supported and aided in carrying them out by the government, in my opinion.

            These pieces by Arellano really brought to my attention the primitive mind set many of the people in the world still have today. I will act on the hurt, sad, angry, disgusted emotions it stirred up in me. I have looked in to getting involved with feminist movements as well as enrolling in a gender studies class for the fall. Knowledge is power, and I want to be as educated as possible to be considered a legitimate advocate for women’s rights. I want to support and be a voice for the women who are suffering and feel banned from making their own decisions by their government. I know pro-life/ pro-choice is an ongoing battle, but in cases like this, it seems to me that the solution should be black and white: when raped, let women decide what they want to do with their bodies; keep the government out.