8. The power of sovereignty
Who owns your body? Who decides what it looks like, what you do with it? Who believes they can tell you how to dress, how to move, where to go, whether or not you’re going to be sexual and with whom, whether or whom you will marry, whether or not you’re going to get pregnant or give birth to a child?
Women’s bodies are contested territory. While to many of us in the United States it might seem a given that we each own and are in charge of our bodies, this is not universally agreed upon, even in the United States.
Until too recently women were considered the property of fathers and husbands. In many countries, a woman is still not allowed to marry without the consent of her father and not allowed to divorce a husband who is abusive to her. Until 1975, men in the United States could enforce nonconsensual sex with their wives (today we call it marital rape) without fear of legal consequences. Regardless of the law, this still happens in practice.
Before 1973, it was illegal for a U.S. woman to terminate a pregnancy; in 1973, the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision made abortion an accessible option up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, but in 2022, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, leaving it up to individual states. Today, lawmakers and some religious leaders seek to give states the ultimate say in what a woman can or cannot do with her…
