The article was published in No. 32-33 of the magazine. Vanity Fair on newsstands until August 15, 2023.
“I feel it, it’s a boy“Gia Tolentino, 34, tells me from her Brooklyn living room. There were only a few days left before the birth of his second child, the gender of which he did not want to know in advance. Since three years ago she became the mother of Paloma, a bright little girl with narrow eyes and pigtails caught in the air, who we see growing up in her mother’s very popular Instagram profile, from which: a few days later, on July 16th, we learn that Marisol was born instead −, signature New Yorker has become particularly sensitive to issues such as maternity, termination of pregnancy, the right to assistance and care work, which should be public and universal, but instead, unfortunately, are not.
While in Italy (but not only) the right to abortion continues to be restricted, e.g. While the Meloni government’s bill, which would make pregnancy a universal crime for others, has passed the House of Representatives – and is likely to pass the Senate as well – we asked you for your thoughts on the state of reproductive rights. In the US, among other things, a few days ago the FDA
(Food and Drug Administration) greenlights marketing Opill, the first birth control pill sold without a prescription. The journalist, the daughter of Filipino parents who immigrated to Canada and grew up in Texas, has also written several highly acclaimed articles on these topics. One in particular War on womencondemned the US Supreme Court’s decision a year ago (with a conservative majority) to overturn Roe v. Wade, thereby depriving millions of women right to abortion: Today, in practice, in the absence of federal law, regulation of abortion is the responsibility of individual states..
Where are we located in the United States?
“One thing that I didn’t expect and that definitely surprised me was that immediately after this ruling, the number of pro-life American citizens increased by 10%. This was evident in the midterm elections and hopefully will be seen in the 2024 presidential election. I believe more and more people are realizing that abortion is an integral part of pregnancy. We have often tried to distinguish them, but we see that if abortion is banned, then the issue of assistance is undermined: with a lack of personnel and clinics, everything collapses.”
Are Democrats working in this direction?
“Not enough. A positive example in this sense is what Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said: We need abortion rights for women’s full economic participation in the workforce, for economic justice and for the positive functioning of our society.”
As he tells in Mirror trick, produced in Italy by NR Edizioni, you received a strict evangelical education. How has this affected your views on abortion?
“Because I had always attended a Southern Baptist church, I had never met anyone who was pro-abortion until college. Even later, when I realized what abortion actually entailed and who the people were who did it, I was stuck in this system for a long time. So I wondered if things would change when I became a mother too.”
And was it so?
“Having experienced first-hand the grandeur, the complexity, the inner bloodiness of reproduction and the way life and death are always intertwined from the moment of conception, through birth and to the very end, I have, if possible, become even more convinced of the fact that every woman should have the opportunity choose whether to become her mother or not. Nobody can force this on him. The fact that I freely chose to have a daughter, to give her my body, and not be forced by the law, all this made me even more militant about everyone’s rights.”
In Italy, the topic of pregnancy is especially relevant to others. What’s your opinion?
“This is a topic that I’m very interested in, one of the areas of reproductive rights with the widest range of variations in the world. I don’t think there is a clear answer: both paid, voluntary, and unpaid create ethical problems. At the same time, I also believe that banning it altogether or declaring it a universal crime would be wrong. I have no idea what the right laws would be to regulate this, but they are necessary because the way it is done now risks being inherently exploitative.”