Are Mothers Persons?

Note to tutor: Please only usr the assigned reading! I don’t want any other outside sources!

Part I: read: Susan Bordo: Unbearable Weight “Are Mothers Persons? Reproductive Rights and the Politics of Subjectivity”

1. According to Bordo, some groups have been accorded subject status and its protections and others have been regularly been denied. To whom is she referring and what exactly does she mean?
2. Please discuss the McFall v. Shimp (1979) case.
3. Please discuss the metaphor of vampirism that Bordo illuminates.
4. Please discuss the history of involuntary sterilization and then sterilization today, Norplant, women on welfare, and the inability to care model.
5. Please discuss the judge’s choice of words in the Madyun Case
6. Please discuss the archetype of the cold, selfish mother.
7. How are pregnant women treated as fetal incubators?
8. Bordo states, “Only the pregnant woman, apparently, has the ‘duty of care’.” What does this mean? What is she trying say with this statement?
9. Bordo says “by the fetal-rights arguments, that a two-year old child has fewer rights than a six month old fetus”. What does she mean?
10. What does Bordo say about the “father’s right issue”
    1. The notion of couples being pregnant
    2. In order to view pregnancy in a mechanistic way what must it be divested of?
    3. Is the following statement problematic why or why not, “she wants control of her body but what about me? Am I not allowed to have control of my body?”