PARTTHREE:ARIGHTTOCHOICE

Alexepshtein

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 biovalue and monetary reward. This makes women more likely to turn towards 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 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