Annie Dillard discusses a variety of big questions throughout her analysis of the horrors of “fecundity” in Chapter 10 - “Is there a value of life?” and “What if God has the same affectionate disregard for us that we have for barnacles?” are two I have found. Dillard analyzes the “value” by contemplating the grotesque nature of fecundity, writing, “I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives” First, Dillard argues that nature proves life is cheap by using supporting evidence like that of aphids, who may
Chapter 4, “Better Dead than Pregnant:” The Colonization of Native Womens’ Reproductive Health, discusses women's bodies being utilized as an experimental ground for reproduction and medical testing. Smith argues that racism plays a key role in the common anxieties about a rise in the global population. Even though population control organizations may claim to want to reduce the size of every ethnic and racial group, in the end, they often work to reduce populations of color. This reality leads to Smith’s argument of reproductive rights, which she views as a thinly veiled effort to destroy and control Native American communities. An illustration of this direct violation of women's reproductive rights was when the "Indian Health
Motherhood was an expected part of the wife’s life. Woman would have a large number of babies right after each other although some babies would not survive. “High mortality rates must have overshadowed the experience of motherhood in ways difficult to
In the excerpt, Death of a Moth, by Annie Dillard, she attempts to overcome her writer's block by getting away from it all and taking a trip into the Mountains of Virginia. While taking time off, she intends to spiritually find her true self again and get back on a successful track. Only by using concrete imagery, drawing a strong parallel, and meticulously selecting a certain word choice to create points of clarity, is she able to effectively convey her inner struggle.
Although gender is a socially constructed idea, it is often suggested to be a natural phenomenon. Society plays an important role in reinforcing gender roles in a way that disguises itself as natural, and is thus accepted without question. The United States’ gender system emphasizes gender hierarchy and a binary system that forces individuals to conform. In order to progress gender equality, it is important to denaturalize these social constructions of gender.
In society reproduction is one of the most important things that keeps our world's population growing. In these three short dystopian stories there are different approaches on ideas on what reproduction should be like and how it should be approached. Reproduction rights have an immensely big impact on each of these stories in different circumstances but are very much alike. These three different stories have different rules for the way they run their reproduction systems in their communities. Ten with a Flag the way the society has to do with reproduction is by a ranking system. In this case the people in the story find out how great their child is by ranking, so if the child is a ten it's perfect and if the baby has a perfect ten with a flag, the flag means that the baby might have something troubled or wrong about its persona. Amaryllis is about keeping society to a minimum. Auspicious Eggs is about the Catholic Church and its involvement the reproductive system. All of these stories have harsh endings if an individual can't do something to meet society's specifications about reproduction rules.
The early twentieth century was a turning point in American history-especially in regards to the acquisition of women's rights. While the era was considered to be prosperous and later thought to be a happy-go-lucky time, in actuality, it was a time of grave social conflict and human suffering (Parish, 110). Among those who endured much suffering were women. As Margaret Sanger found out, women, especially those who were poor, had no choice regarding pregnancy. The only way not to get pregnant was by not having sex- a choice that was almost always the husband's. This was even more true in the case of lower-class men for whom, 'sex was the poor man's only luxury' (Douglas, 31). As a nurse who assisted in delivering
This was a good way of explaining what values (two different options) because it appeals to both sides of the argument by stating that it is the woman’s body, but also that there is life forming inside of her.
This essay will demonstrate that Marquis’ assessment of abortion is not morally plausible because he fails to define what constitutes a valuable future. This permits room for many interpretations as to what constitutes a valuable future. While Marquis states what a valuable future is not – experiences that would be so unpleasant or painful that the fetus would benefit from being deprived of those experiences, he neglects to state what a valuable one actually entails. As such, a reasonable individual could conclude that disagreement over what constitutes a valuable future would result. Such
Marry Anne Warren and Don Marquis present arguments in favor of and in opposition to the moral permissibility of aborting a pregnancy. Both raise important points, but I am not fully convinced by either argument. Warren proposes a justification for allowing abortion based on the idea of a moral community. According to this view, moral agents have an exclusive or at least preferential obligation to those entities that meet the criteria for membership in the moral community, and their rights should never be violated for the sake of an entity that is not a member. The criterion Warren chooses is personhood, which entails one or more of the characteristics of sentience, communication, reason, emotion, and so on. The essential point of Warren’s
The paper, “The Immorality of Having Children”, by Stuart Rachels provides insight as to why it is wrong to raise children by supporting the Famine Relief Argument. Rachels argues that the cost of raising a child today, over two-hundred thousand, is so staggering that it would be better spent on donations towards famine relief projects. Throughout the paper, Rachels provides substantial arguments that emphasize the point that having children is the biggest decision that someone will ever make in their life rather than what to believe or whether to get married, and the decision should not be taken lightly. All the arguments presented are persuasive, but the argument is flawed overall because it never takes into account the importance of
The present-day discussion surrounding abortion has been framed, in most instances, as an issue of morality and the preservation of life. Opponents of abortion, often using religion to bolster their claims, assert that abortion is akin to infanticide and that it is not permissible, while those who support it argue that women should be given the autonomy to choose what should be done with their own bodies. This was not, however, always the case, and although religion undoubtedly plays a role in the shaping of the idea of abortion and contraception as a morally objectionable act, there are other less obvious factors at work; creating a role for women’s bodies and dictating the ways in which they can and cannot use them. The role of
In the context of classical Marxism, the moral permissibility of surrogate motherhood is forcefully negated. Marxism condemns the practice of surrogacy as an exemplification of commodity fetishism in capitalist society, viewing surrogacy arrangements as a commercialization of the female womb. The term, “commodification of the womb,” thus arises to describe the process by which services carried out by the female womb are sold and purchased on the market. Through such transactions, the surrogate’s body and the infant it produces are transformed from subjects to objects that have both exchange value and use value in their commodified state.
In the article “Egg Heads”, the writer Kathryn Lopez addresses the controversial topic of in-vitro fertilization. Lopez created this article to argue her stance that IVF is dangerous to a woman’s health, families, and damaging to societal views on human life. Her first goal is to educate readers of all the things that donors have to go through in order to donate their eggs. Her second goal is to explain the dangers of IVF on a woman’s body, family, and society. Kathryn Lopez achieves these goals through her successful use of logos and pathos.
“The methods used to obtain eggs have put egg donation in the spotlight, especially the issue of compensating women for their eggs.” (Chapter Preface)
"Contraception could, simultaneously, unleash female sexuality from repression, uplift sexual experience into mystical communion, and rid humanity of poverty and deformity." (Woloch 363)