I recently had the good fortune to visit Sandpoint, Idaho, in support of the folks there who are working to return some sanity to reproductive healthcare in their state. Currently, abortion restrictions in Idaho have created a minefield of destructive policies that make informed and humane reproductive care a practical impossibility. The value of Idaho women has been demoted below that of their uterine contents, an attitude I might refer to as a Dark-Ages mentality, except that folks in the Dark Ages, though lacking the benefits modern medicine, still had the good sense to recognize that reproduction was a tricky proposition and that it made far more sense to prioritize living women over their potential and desperately dependent offspring. I wish that I could herald the steady march of social progress in the intervening one-thousand years, but it appears that much of humanity’s hard-won intellectual and experiential knowledge of reproduction, accumulated over centuries of observation and study, is being lost.
Reproduction brings us all – plants, animals, and humans – into being on this planet. Reproductive processes are varied and marvelous things. They are also complex and at times risky. A sow invests caloric riches in gestation, poppies spend an entire growing season engaged in the work of seed production, and the pregnant human facilitates the creation of fetal neurology, brain development, and skeletal structure.
The earliest of human cultures honored the power of reproduction through fertility ceremonies; ancient humans diligently worked to manage conception and gestation for health and survival. Eons before the routinization of surgical abortion, humans used plant medicines to end pregnancies, to restore menstrual cycles, and to enhance fertility. They also harnessed the generative power of plants and trees, and guided the reproductive cycles of mammals, birds, and mollusks. Employing an intimate knowledge of reproduction has been a characteristic of Homo Sapiens stretching back into antiquity.
Humans have long valued, studied, and managed reproduction, but in recent years, average Americans have come to rely on industrial production for most of what they eat. It’s no surprise, then, that knowledge surrounding reproductive processes in plants, animals, and humans has simultaneously plummeted. We know so little about our food, and those in power so carelessly legislate our reproduction.
Pull carrots from the dirt and crunch? No, we grab ours from the bag, thank you. Hold an egg, still warm and moist, fresh from the hen’s vent? That’s a bit too personal. We’ll take the dated carton, please. Hungry for a Double Classic Smash Burger? Serve it up and dig in, but don’t consider that it began as a calf, wet with afterbirth.
Contemporary bloviators – disproportionately white and male, of course – make healthcare decisions for women. Instead of deferring to those with knowledge about reproduction and a respect for the intricacies of the process, many of those in positions of power are acting from a place of remarkable reproductive ignorance, like suggesting that an ectopic pregnancy could be relocated to the uterus, or that a camera could be swallowed as a way of getting a picture of a developing fetus, two recent examples from Idaho. When those with political power are so ignorant as to be simultaneously doltish and dangerous, a healthy dose of societal shunning is in order.
The efforts of groups like the Pro-Voice Project of Sandpoint deserve support and praise. Outright rage at legislators whose inhumane overreach into fields in which they are functionally incompetent is justified. But my reasons for writing this piece extend far beyond our current political moment. The biological idiocy on display by contemporary policy makers has tremendous relevance for the human experiment in the larger ecosystem, and the implications of devaluing the life-begetting process is worthy of wider examination.
We fuel the human digestive system with the fruits of reproduction. Whatever our dietary restrictions might be, everything we put into our mouths is the result of reproduction. This is obvious for the meat-eaters among us, as pigs and cattle, for example, emerge from a mammalian womb just months before being fattened, killed, and ingested as pork chops and prime rib. The breakfast egg is a calorie-dense packet of reproductive vitality if ever there was one, the primary ingredient in such gustatory delights as hollandaise sauce and omelets.
Beyond these obvious manifestations of reproductive bounty, consider the world of vegetables and fruits. They, too, are evidence of plant reproduction, the offspring by which species continue into the future:
Swollen ovaries of plants which we consume in delectable soups and stir-fry’s, courtesy of acorn and butternut squash.
Seed-speckled flesh of strawberries, tasty vehicles that disseminate genetic material, which we pop into our mouths whole or chase with a delectable shot of cream.
Leaves of kale and collards, photosynthetic wizards that harvest sun energy, delicious steamed with garlic.
Pod packets of peas and beans, rich uterine caches of flavor suitable for munching straight off the plant.
Even the radish bulb, a globular tumescence just at ground level, serves as a storehouse of energy in the plant’s attempt to mature and spread.
We don’t typically think of food as sex made visible, but the whole hoary system of nutrient production is but one grand reproductive feast. From fertilization to propagation, from fragmentation to rhizomatic spread, human engagement with the varied processes of reproduction has delivered a bounty of foodstuffs and animal proteins. Over millennia, humans studied the processes of reproduction, managed the context of human procreation, and produced a flavorful profusion that sustains human life.
Our species has thrived by valuing the complexity of life – its propulsive processes as well as its quirks and hiccups. The delusional hubris of the moment, the desire to condense reproductive processes into pest-free mono-cropped fields and obedient uteruses alike, is a radical shift in human behavior.
Dictating the kinds of medical treatments women can and cannot access violates human rights and bankrupts any notion of care. Using fossil-fuel based agricultural practices to mass produce and market foodstuffs deleterious to human health damages the very ecosystems that humans have so long depended on. Denigration of complex reproductive processes is ragingly stupid, and distinctly out of step with human history.
We should not forget that reproduction in all its forms – human, animal, and vegetal – is beautiful, complex, and vital to the survival of life.
______________
The Pro-Voice Project website can be found at https://www.theprovoiceproject.com. Please visit and support the important work they are doing.
Comments