Clair Lewis said:

Hi great article and shocking news.

These days I think there's more emphasis on eugenics and medical interference/intervention than actually providing choice about how medicalised our pregnancies are, providing choice about the holistic support people who are pregnant need, lots of which is natural.

For example, as a disability rights activist I think that relevant services should be promoting the feeling amongst all people who have chosen to become parents that our children are equally welcome in this society, not identifying for disposal particular potential oiffspring of people who have already chosen to parent and are pat the usual legal termination date. I consider this simply to be a national eugenic screening program.

Sorry I keep talking about pregnant people, as I have birthed also and I am genderqueer so I feel weird saying women regarding pregnancy when I am talking myself, though I think it's right that this is a women's issue and it is about women in the main. Even those of us who are not women who become pregnant (I still identified as female both times) can only do this because of our history being raised as girls and young women, so it still revolves around our common biological experience whatever our actual gender. I think! Hard one to navigate this, just trying to say despite using the word people myself, I think it somehow wouldnt be right, at least not now, to expect everyone to begin to discuss people's rights when pregnant, as opposed to women's rights. And if care and support for pregnant people was better, more individualised and personal, less medicalised, I expect it would absorb and support non female people better too.

Thanks for this piece from an ally and in solidarity!

Clair Lewis (AKA Dennis Queen)

Posted on 03 March 2010 at 8:44 AM

Clair Lewis said:

I thought this blog might be of interest on the topic of pregnancy and how it starts the ball of disability prejudice and discimination rolling, this is my only public piece of writing concerning being pregnant.

http://clairlewis.livejournal.com/#asset-clairlewis-12772

Actually I have been meaning to write for years a strong appeal to feminists to support disability rights when discussing women's right to choose and pregnancy so if anyone is interested in interviewing an ally regarding this, I wonder if actually it would be better placed as reporting on by a feminist woman than a rant from someone who no longer identifies as female.

Simply, I think it is abusive to make people who have chosen to remain pregnant the pressure o f expecting them to help society out by disposing of children they wanted, by failing to provide for our needs as mothers and our children's needs, equally. These days many women are made to feel as if any abuse they and their children suffer is their own fault if they don't take the eugenic way out. I think society is wrongly pitching this as a 'right to choose' issue to make it untouchable. I don;t remember women ever asking to take the blame for a whole population screening and termination program. And I have touched on this in another article here:

http://clairlewis.livejournal.com/#asset-clairlewis-16915

I think making women take the blame for this prejudice, this neglect of our children, and to be pressured into abortions is disgusting and against our right to make real choices - what about the choice to have all our children welcomed? it's similarly abusive to making women become parents when they don't want to.

Posted on 03 March 2010 at 8:56 AM

Belinda Phipps said:

Lots of photos here. It was a brilliant day.

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=media#!/album.php?page=1&aid=2057045&id=1285782503

Posted on 08 March 2010 at 7:49 PM

Horry said:

I'm late reading this thread, but am surprised that Clair's comments on "the eugenic way out" have gone unchallenged for so long. Claiming that women who have the wrong sort of abortion aren’t really choosing for themselves but are simply responding to how they are “made to feel” is such a classic, double-edged ploy aimed at restricting choice while pretending to support the very people whose choice you aim to restrict. No woman should have to carry a pregnancy to term without her full consent, freely given at all times (and here I agree with Clair that the law is inconsistent on this). To talk of “disposing of children” when what you’re actually talking about is ending pregnancies, pregnancies which require the full physical and emotional involvement of the mother, is not only inaccurate but harmful, regardless of the reason why a termination takes place. It’s easy to talk about a lack of support for mothers, especially for mothers who are carers – everyone will agree with you, none more so than reluctant, far-from-saintly carers such as myself. Far harder to accept that a woman who decides not to continue with a pregnancy has to be allowed to make judgements about the path of her own life, and doesn’t owe anyone else, for whatever reason, the right to exist. And this certainly isn’t me “asking to take the blame for a whole population screening and termination programme”; however, if people are required to defend those who make genuinely difficult decisions about their own lives and bodies, and the lives of those around them, then I for one am willing to risk being (wrongly and glibly) accused of being a eugenicist.

Posted on 08 March 2010 at 10:43 PM