Jessica Valenti Quotes
As indicated by the increase in maternal mortality in 2010, right now it's more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia. Amnesty International reports that women in [the United States] have a higher risk of dying due to pregnancy complications than women in forty-nine other countries (black women are almost four times as likely to die as white women). The United States spends more than any other country on maternal health care, yet our risk of dying or coming close to death during pregnancy or in childbirth remains unreasonably high.
Valenti, Jessica. Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness. New Harvest, 2012, p. 54.
Pregnancy and childbirth is a health risk to the mother. In some third world countries, the maternal mortality rate is so high that contraception is not just a family planning methodology but a life saving technique where little or no child spacing causes serious additional risk.
She was calling for universal legalization of abortion and addressing Catholic and Muslim representatives who were concerned about the morality of abortion.
This is a brilliant example of political sarcasm to make an important political point. In an effort to evade the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision giving women the right to have an abortion, Virginia and several other very conservative states began to pass laws that put impediments in the way of women wanting abortions and/or increasing the cost and hassle of abortion. Virginia passed legislation requiring physicians who might do aboutions to first council the woman in all the risks and negatives of abortion. The “purpose of the act” was supposedly to protect the woman and her rights. However there was no requirement of a physician to communicate the risks of childbirth and so Virginia by this quotation is exposed by only caring about a woman considering abortion being informed of risk, but not worrying about protecting the pregnant woman who is contemplating birth. Charo takes the Virginia statute and rewrites it to apply to women expecting to give birth and requiring the physicians to describe those risks. In the process of creating a parallel law for women interested in giving birth, Charo then is able to show that with the state of medicine at the early 21st century, it was much more risky to give birth than to have an abortion. Anti-abortion believers rarely say (and many do not even know) that the mother to be risks a higher rate of maternal mortality than the woman who chooses abortion. Abortion foes emphasize the mental health implications of having an abortion, yet there was no scientific evidence that it did. There were MANY research studies, however, that mental health problems are a very real risk of childbirth. (Post Partum depression is quite common when the female hormones radically change during pregnancy and childbirth. And ironically Charo would have the obstetrician warn about the economic and social risks of giving birth, just as the Virginia statute required warnings about abortion.
Jessica Valenti is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of five books: Full Frontal Feminism (2007), He's a Stud, She's a Slut (2008), The Purity Myth (2009), Why Have Kids? (2012), and Sex Object: A Memoir (2016). She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (2008), and Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World (2020). Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She is currently a columnist for Medium.
