In late November 2020, Meghan Markle caused quite the stir after she opened up about her recent miscarriage in a New York Times op-ed. While the Duchess of Sussex was widely commended for her piece, especially by celebrities like Chrissy Teigan (who is herself recovering from a recent miscarriage), there were those who rudely dismissed it as a plea for attention. In early 2020, Golden Globe winning actress Michelle Williams made use of her acceptance speech to talk about the importance of reproductive rights. Williams’ pro-choice speech was met with considerable criticism from anti-abortionist netizens, some of it accompanied by ludicrous memes. These seemingly antithetical incidents have a common takeaway: anything that deviates from the rosy picture of motherhood that the society likes to romanticize, is shamed and scorned or suppressed completely.
It has been argued that procreation is a unique privilege as well as a unique burden for women. However, the latter is often wilfully ignored in social and legislative spheres. Despite the advancements in reproductive healthcare, these services continue to be dictated by a problematic philosophy based in essentialist feminine ideals. Women are viewed as a means to a procreational end, rather than as ends themselves.
Biological essentialism maintains that males and females are essentially different from each other, the former being dominant providers and the latter, submissive nurturers. While it is often used synonymously with biological determinism, essentialism focuses on the aforementioned essential differences while determinism focuses on the biological causes of said differences. However, both ideologies are rooted in a shared core belief: biology is destiny. Essentialists hold the view that gender and sexual expression are determined by anatomy and physiology, that individuals are driven by pre-ordained biological norms to fulfil their heterosexual reproductive destinies. Naturally, women get the short end of the stick, as essentialism is used as a pseudoscientific tool to justify gender discrimination. Women’s sexuality is associated with childbearing, rather than arousal and pleasure; their reproductive capabilities are used to confine them to domestic and caregiving roles of a wife and a mother. When women are seen as unable or unwilling to follow these pre-ordained biological norms, they're stigmatized and met with social exclusion. This stigma is not limited to abortion and miscarriage either; it also includes use of contraceptives, voluntary childlessness, infertility, assisted births and so on.
Statistics show that approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriages and 2.6 million infant lives are lost as a result of stillbirths. Fertility rates decline with advancing maternal age, whereas the risk of miscarriage and other pregnancy complications rises. With an overall delay in childbearing age, the prevalence of miscarriages has been increasing. Despite its commonality, the shame and guilt surrounding infant loss can make it an isolating experience. Moreover, the lack of awareness and inadequate data on miscarriages leads women to blame themselves. A combination of these factors perpetuates a cycle of solitary mourning, to borrow Markle’s words.
When it comes to infertility, most societies assign a disproportionate burden of blame on women, regardless of demonstrable medical causes. Assisted reproduction industries thrive off the social pressure to birth a biologically related offspring that so many families face. The stigma of infertility, something that is seen as a personal shortcoming, also prevents women from speaking out about the long list of health risks associated with assisted reproductive techniques. These risks include painful procedures and fertility drugs with mild to severe side-effects, all of which, women suffer in silence.
When a woman’s identity is intimately linked to motherhood, any ‘failure’ to bear children is considered a cause for shame. Furthermore, the situation is worse for those who choose not to bear children.
Abortion stigma stems from the stereotypical perception of womanhood as functionally confined to childbearing and domesticity. When a woman seeks to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, she threatens at least three essentialist feminine ideals: the relegation of female sexuality solely for the purpose of procreation, inevitability of motherhood and instinctual nurturance. In order to deal with this threat, women who abort tend to be condemned as heartless, murderous, deviant from the norm. Similarly, voluntarily childless individuals tend to be perceived as socially undesirable, selfish, lonely and unfulfilled.
Stigma in reproductive healthcare is also evident from the treatment women receive at the hands of their service providers. Women report being denied requests for abortions or other health care procedures unless approved by husbands or other male elders. Unmarried, childless women requesting contraceptives or sterilization are met with judgemental attitudes and paternalistic treatment. Too often, women are infantilized, deemed incapable of making morally painful decisions, much less live with their consequences. In countries like India where premarital sex is still a taboo, unmarried women’s access to sexual and reproductive heath services is further restricted because gynaecology clinics tend to be viewed as spaces for married women or women who have been ‘dishonourable’ and ‘irresponsible.’ Thus, women may put themselves at risk by virtue of their reluctance to access sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.
In order to make sexual and reproductive healthcare more woman-friendly, multi-level change needs to occur all the way from legislation and policy making to ground-level service delivery as well as the social context in which these services are delivered. It is about time we started seeing the woman behind the mother.
To paraphrase Jo March from Little Women:
Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that motherhood is just all a woman is fit for.
Isha Puntambekar
