From Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason.com
In a recent interview with Time magazine, feminist icon Gloria Steinem — currently promoting a new travel memoir — says that the biggest threat to reproductive rights today is “patriarchy… the very definition (of which) is that men control women’s bodies in order to control reproduction.” In contrast, Steinem says she believes that “it’s a simple human right for each of us to control our own physical selves.” Luckily, she thinks that “we’re moving toward a principle you might call bodily integrity, that is, the power of the government stops at our skins—for men and women.”
It’s a nice sentiment—but alas, Steinem’s concept of human rights and bodily integrity only applies to certain people. Steinem has been an outspoken proponent against sex workers’ right to bodily integrity.
