Toxic Capitalism

In order to delivery a happy and healthy baby, pregnant women are told they must follow a strict set of guidelines. The mother usually receives the blame if her child is born with any defects or if the pregnancy results in miscarriage, as if she is a machine in a factory that is to blame for molding a deformed doll. She smoked, she drank alcohol, she worked long and strenuous hours, she didn’t eat healthy enough, or she didn’t take her prenatal supplements. We are quick to point fingers at the process by which an abnormal child is brought into the world, and the responsibility of a birth defect weighs heavy on the mother when it may not be her fault at all. 

While we continue to place the blame on a mother’s actions, research has shown possible links of harmful pesticides and chemicals leaked into our environment to an increase in miscarriage and birth defects in certain populations. In her book Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES, Nancy Langston cites multiple instances of miscarriages and birth defects increasing, sometimes doubling, in areas where pregnant women are exposed to trace amounts of harmful manmade pesticides and chemicals. Unlike other substances, these chemicals can accumulate in a woman’s body over time and disrupt hormonal signaling that develops and directs cells during the growth of the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, and eventual fetus. Exposure to minute amounts have also shown aversive effects in studies, which should make these chemicals scary to everyone regardless of race, class status, or proximity to areas that use them.    

Despite this data, we continue a public surveillance on pregnant women and their actions that may affect their pregnancy. Native American women in Washington recently faced a rise in miscarriage, which was blamed on their perceived destructive, drug-involved lives rather than considering pesticides spread over nearby areas that easily permeate through soil and water sources. The prevalence of miscarriages among these tribes may not be exclusive from miscarriages and birth defects occurring in modern, middle class Americans; however, the proximity of the tribes to the areas sprayed with pesticides likely expedited the reproductive consequences we are seeing, and the effects aren’t being researched in non-Native American miscarriages and birth defects. The possible cause for these birth defects being harmful manmade chemicals is being erased because a marginalized group like Native Americans is easy to scapegoat, placing the blame on their perceived individual actions rather than something that, if accepted, would erase all women’s autonomy over their pregnancy as well as have dangerous political and economic consequences.

Ms. Langston uses a similar framework in Toxic Bodies to expose institutional motives as to why they are targeting marginalized groups, resulting in hidden eugenics and attempted genocide. One example she uses is Planned Parenthood’s history of population control over minority groups using harmful contraceptives and immoral medical procedures and how easy it was to do this to groups who have no voice and little political and economic power. We can compare this to pesticides and Native Americans to expose the same framework that allowed for Planned Parenthood to create a rhetoric that blames the individual and her actions if an error occurs in pregnancy. Both instances are clearly blamed on the mother when a miscarriage happens or birth defects plague a child according to information spewed out by the government and medical data. However, the government and medical community have a strong capitalistic motive that can be traced to the continued and wide use of pesticides and manmade chemicals, which is tied into the intention of population control to construct the neoliberalism we are experiencing today.

            Our question now is – why doesn’t the government or chemical industry further investigate the effects of pesticides on human development? The resistance of the government and chemical companies to ban many of these toxic manmade chemicals lies in a perceived absence of data surrounding the effects of the pesticides on pregnancies, but one thing is clear to most researchers: an absence of data does not prove safety, it proves ignorance. It makes perfect sense as to why they refuse to investigate these effects if you consider capitalism and our economy. Let’s say the government funded research that linked millions of birth defects and miscarriages to a list of chemicals used as pesticides around the world. Litigation would likely dismantle major chemical companies in the industry, resulting in an exposed system that has the potential to sink the world economy all while blaming the US government for lighting the fire. It is in their best interest to blame individuals for their actions rather than unearthing the systematic injustices that result from a flawed capitalist government tied to industry.

Individuals born as intersex would be grouped with those having birth defects, and exposing the system that has capitalistic ties will have specific implications for intersex people. If we successfully prove that these toxic pesticides can result in birth defects, it will undercut an intersex person’s rights and citizenship by pinpointing the unnatural origin of their being. Furthermore, it has the power to strengthen the gender binary by linking genders other than male or female to being inhuman. We can see from history that when intersex people are dehumanized and even demonized, the responsibility of the situation always falls on the mother. This is consistent throughout time, and individualized rhetoric surrounding pregnancy, miscarriages, and birth defects has proven to be dangerous for us and profitable for institutions.