The Legal Characterization of Pregnancy and Mothering Does Mother Know Best?

The most obvious distinction between women and men is a woman's ability to become pregnant and to grow a new person within her body. This is also the female attribute that has been used to justify unequal and discriminatory treatment of women right up to the last decade of the twentieth century. ' Of course, law does recognize the physical reality of pregnancy and provides for it. We have employment standards and labour code maternity leave provisions that explicitly address the need to accommodate the childbearing work of women.2 At its best, the law in Canada recognizes the autonomy of the woman who is pregnant, upholding her right not to have her bodily integrity interfered with in the name of the foetus. At its worst, a pregnant woman is treated as a capricious creature who is a threat to the foetus and who needs to be mandated by law to undertake a particular course of action for the benefit of the foetus. But even at its best, the law does not fully comprehend the reality of pregnancy for most women. The Supreme Court of Canada held that "those who bear children an