Anna’s Reviews > The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto > Status Update

“It is one thing to protect women (and men) from external impingements on their freedom, whether they come from the actions of the state or from the actions of a neighbor. But when the freedom we enjoy is imagined to be the freedom to ‘control... one's destiny’ rather than to shape it within natural constraints, then the whole outside world becomes women's enemy because it does not bow to our will.”

“A culture that idolizes autonomy can’t value pregnancy. In the world of autonomy, childbearing is an interruption of the human project, rather than the obvious way we are tied to the humans who come after us. If a core part of a woman’s human experience is framed as her body betraying her, then women cannot and will not be treated as equal in dignity to me.”