About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


3 Women & Crim. Just. 1 (1992)

handle is hein.journals/wwcj3 and id is 1 raw text is: EDITORIAL Here is the truth, I tell you-see how right I am. The woman you call the mother of the child is not the parent, just a nurse to the seed, the new-sown seed that grows and swells inside her. The man is the source of life -the one who mounts. She, like a stranger for a stranger, keeps the shoot alive unless god hurts the roots. (Aeschylus, The Eumenides.) In The Eumenides, Apollo tells Athena and the Furies that Orestes is not guilty of killing his mother, Clytemnestra, because she is not his blood parent; his father, Agamemnon, is his blood parent, the sole source of Orestes' life. Although The Eumenides was written in the fifth century (before the common era), Apollo's belief about the value and role of woman has persisted and can be found in religious and secular literature, in laws and in court deci- sions. Those who hold these beliefs have little or no respect for women: their autonomy, their privacy, their bodily integrity. They would limit women's constitutional due process guarantees and for- mally and/or informally criminalize women's bodies to insure con- trol over them, especially their reproductive capacities. 0 1992 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 1