From empowerment to patients

What I found interesting in the Mamo article was the transition of Esther from self-empowered to a patient. It was a different approach to women being empowered or dis-empowered in relation to their fertility. Most of what we hear is the right to control our reproductive system through birth control and abortion and feeling empowered through being able to use those methods. In Esther's story, her self-empowerment dissipated when she was unable to conceive. What this meant to me is that women are empowered in their ability to either bring life or not bring life into the world. With Esther, she was transformed into a patient and couldn't conceive a child in her own home by herself. She had turned to the clinics and was willing to be turned into a patient because she was desperate to bear a child. She left the conceiving up to the doctors and lost her empowerment. This brought to mind the idea that when women are left with little to no option for birth control, they are essentially becoming patients like Esther, only they are patients of the state. The state limits the methods of birth control and thus forces women into the designation of patient. I had never thought about reproductive rights in this respect before. I had not given much thought to the idea that women who could not have children would feel less empowered when turning to doctors to make them pregnant.