Quote from Jill Burchill: "The fact is that we are all, as humans, far more
than our biology - and in the case of women, we have become what we are by
conquering our biological selves. This is why our lives amount to something
more than having a child a year between the ages of 14 and 40 then dying,
exhausted, at 45. If a woman is happy to live as little more than a cow, she
is free to do so. But she should not attempt to entrap her more modern
sisters into her musty web. If feminism is about anything, it is about the
fact that what suits one woman may not suit another."

Julie Burchill is entitled to her opinion, but I wish she had got her facts
straight.  It's the women who bottle fed or breastfed only briefly that had a
baby every year from 14 to 40.  And I find her characterization of the
breastfeeding woman as "little more than a cow" lacking in respect.  Look at
the sexual habits of monkeys and apes.  When a female is in season, there's
lots of copulation.  Does that make a woman who enjoys sex "little more than
a monkey"?

I guess what bothers me in her quote is the attitude that "if it's difficult,
women should not be made to feel guilty about not doing it."  My view is that
1) today's reproductive technology has brought more choices to women, and
that's good; 2) many of the non-tech or low-tech choices are still better
overall than the high-tech choices; 3) every woman should be able to make
informed and supported choices; 4) only the woman herself can weigh the value
of the pros and cons of her choices for her own life. In my experience it's
often doing the difficult things that makes us feel the best about ourselves.
 ("No pain, no gain," say the athletes.)

Examples of reproductive technology choices: whether to use family planning,
and what type; whether to use assistance for infertility; whether to do
prenatal testing; how to conduct labor and birth; whether to breastfeed a
baby, and if not, what kind of replacement feeding to use.

All of these are important decisions, and they all involve other people, not
just the woman. The first two involve a male partner. (Well, actually with
donor insemination, treating infertility no longer requires a male partner to
be present or actively involved.)  The others involve the fetus or baby.  So
in making these choices, women are having to act in another person's interest
as well as their own, and that makes the choice even more difficult.  It's a
real set-up for guilt, this business of having to weigh pros and cons in a
decision that will affect yourself, your baby, and yourself again as the
person who will be caring for that child for years.

My list of reproductive technology choices originally included how much to
intervene with a baby at risk.  That's a whole set of choices actually, and
it involves lots of people, whoever defines themselves as "family"---at
minimum the mother and baby; the father if he's involved with the family---or
other partner; siblings; and the extended family.  Read the article "Miracle
Kid" by Lucinda Franks in the May 17 New Yorker, a story about Max, who was
so severely deformed at birth (Fraser syndrome) that there was strong
pressure on the parents to institutionalize him. Instead they chose to treat
his condition aggressively.  By the end of the story he's in first grade,
learning to read.

These reproductive technology choices are similar in some ways, different in
others.  To me, the choice about feeding seems like the easiest, because once
the baby is here, why wouldn't a mother choose to provide the best nutrition
that's within her means.  But the feeding choice potentially will take the
biggest investment of time and effort---it could be two hours a day for the
next 2-3 years…or longer.  And if you read the history of infant feeding, you
see that privileged women have been choosing not to breastfeed as far back as
the written and pictorial records go.  They just fobbed the work off onto wet
nurses, since the replacement infant feeding technology was so lethal.

I thought feminism was about recognizing women as humans with equal rights,
and overcoming the legacy of ages of discrimination and disempowerment.  I
think feminism needs to acknowledge that women's biology is different from
men's, and celebrate it.  Think of how oxytocin can change a nursing mother's
personality traits.  That's power!  And that's why I don't want to see
breastfeeding marginalized into a non-essential, unimportant mothering
option.

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