Motherhood Readings
This week, we finished The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and I am livid. I can not believe it ended with her suicide. It genuinely made me so mad that she could not live any sort of meaningfully life because the people around her chose differently. She tried to make meaning through the people in her life, but because of who she is and what is expected of her, they let her down. They continuously ignored her bids for affection and attention, and in the end, she killed herself. I could not even finish the last couple of pages because I was so angry on her behalf. Edna, my darling, you deserved peace and happiness.
On to a not lighter note, the poems that we had to read for class were beautiful and sad. I put in one of my annotations Anna Akana’s short film about her experience with abortion. It is one of my favorite short films, warning for language. This video and Call the Midwife, were all I could think about during the reading. These poems today reminded me that motherhood is a precious thing.
You are bringing in a whole new life, and it should be done on your terms. The birthing process is one of the most traumatic experiences a body can go through, so it is only right that we, as a society, should support the people who choose to go through this. However, as we have seen with our current healthcare system, there is just not enough support to go around. Birth rates around the world have lowered, and is it any wonder why? Every single day, I turn on the news, and there is panic and pandemonium everywhere. I, myself, would dread bringing a child into this world. These women, less than a century ago, shared my concerns, yet while medical practices improved drastically, there is still a stigma about pregnancy and women’s health.
In these poems, women were talking about how they could not bring a child into this world. In “the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks, she talks about the abortion and how sorry she feels for her unborn child. All I could think about was the fact that she felt she had to perform an abortion. Abortions are such a heavy topic today, but I have always been pro-choice. The women who decide to get them do it because something in their life prevents them from carrying the child to term. I can not fault them because I do not know their circumstances. Videos like Anna Akana’s show that not everyone is in the circumstances to have a baby. She talks about how she would love to be a mother, but not now, because she could barely afford to keep herself and her cats afloat. Shows like Call the Midwife also never look down on the women who get abortions. Despite being set in Britain from the 1950s to the 1970s, they are pretty progressive. They talk about how women who get abortions do so because they are scared, which puts them in unsafe situations. Women should always have access to safe abortions, whether you agree or not with the morality, because everyone deserves to feel safe in their own bodies.
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