systems in areas with high sex work, such as Peru and Brazil. Solutions could involve training women in interviews, placing them in housing, or offering them other job opportunities where they can generate a viable income without needing to turn to body exploitation for a feasible income. Lucy Van de Wiel compared other ways women and their bodies are and can be exploited, like when women donate their eggs. With the commodification of the body comes bio-value, a monetary value assigned to body parts, deeming some more commercially viable than others. For example, women’s eggs are finite and rarer compared to sperm, as women are born with all the eggs they would ever have, which begets a higher bio-value and monetary reward. This makes women more likely to turn to wards reproductive labour as a source of income, which reinforces stereotypes of women taking the role of care-givers, mothers, and family builders as they believe that is their only option. While it is necessary for reproductive labour to be compensated monetarily, the problem lies with it being a woman’s only option for income in an economy that prioritises them. Companies need to ensure they are making room for women in the labour market, somewhere other than merely the reproductive sector. This could start socially, through encouraging familial duties to be shared with male counterparts, where funding for paternity leave should be provided alongside maternity leave. This would expand a woman’s agency, giving them more financial freedom and relieving 24 | 11 SECONDS MAGAZINE
them from some of their reproductive duties. In other words, they need to have more financial options. More choices. In a focus group, Rebecca Blaylock, a researcher working with the British Pregnancy Advisory service to make abortion services more accessible and equitable, discussed different legislation surrounding reproductive rights worldwide. Rebecca explained that ‘all health is inherently political’, including women’s reproductive health. She went on to express that within the last ten years, further catalysed by the pandemic, public eproductive health laws have been “completely decimated” as funding has been funneled out of the reproductive health sector. In the UK, the at-home abortion pill was legalized, permitting women the autonomy to have an abortion or terminate a pregnancy if necessary, without having to leave their homes. The pill was introduced as a response to rising domestic violence rates and an increase in financial instability which prevented families from having children during this time; the convenience of the at-home option kept women safe. However, not long after the pandemic, abortion past a certain gestational period was out-lawed in most US states and the abortion pill was revoked just this past April. Women can no longer terminate pregnancies in most states without facing legal action. Their freedom to choose to have a child has been taken away. While the number of abortions has not gone down, the number of unsafe
