Ru 486 Misconceptions Myths and Morals - ressourcesfeministes

Conclusion‘a whole net of relations in which [women] are (at present)inescapably gendered…’ and in which ‘…the struggle forreproductive freedom has never included a woman’s rightto refuse sex…’ (MacKinnon, 1987:98).Instead the focus has been on RU 486/PG as a woman’schoice and as part of her right to privacy. The emphasishere is on access for women to any kind of abortion,unaccompanied by any analysis of women’s access to anindependent sexuality freed from male definition, male accessto women’s bodies, and risk to women’s health and wellbeing.‘I wonder if a woman can be presumed to controlaccess to her sexuality if she feels unable to interruptintercourse to insert a diaphragm; or worse, cannot evenwant to, aware that she risks a pregnancy she knows shedoes not want… Abortion policy has never been explicitlyapproached in the context of how women get pregnant…’(MacKinnon, 1987:96).Feminists cannot advocate for reproductive freedomwithout advocating that women control their sexuality. Criticsof abortion restrictions, for example, cannot ignore whywomen need abortions to begin with: because they cannotrefuse sex; because they have sex forced on them; becausethey are raped; because they are prostituted; because theyare young girls made pregnant by fathers, brothers or malerelatives who use them sexually; because they are teenagerswho have sex but don’t know why; because they are womenwho accidentally or unintentionally become pregnant;because contraception fails, because they lack not only basicsex education but basic sexual freedom; and because of allthe other conditions present in a context of women’soppression.The issues surrounding RU 486/PG are not only part ofthe ‘politics of reproduction’ but of ‘sexual politics’ as well.As with other issues of sexual politics, here, too, we mustaddress access to women and the abuse of women’s bodies—for medical research and experimentation, for clinical121