 The nullification of women’s selfhood was once explicitly codified in Anglo-European and American law. The legal doctrine of coverture held that a woman’s personhood was absorbed into that of her husband when she married (McDonagh 1996). Assuming her husband’s surname symbolized the denial of the wife’s separate identity. In addition, coverture deprived the wife of her right to bodily integrity, since rape and other forms of physical abuse within marriage were not recognized as crimes. She lost her right to owning property, controlling her own earnings, and making contracts in her own name. Lacking the right to vote or serve on juries, she was a second-class citizen whose enfranchised husband purportedly represented her politically. Although coverture has been rescinded, vestiges of this denial of women’s selfhood can be discerned in recent legal rulings and in contemporary culture. For example, pregnant women remain vulnerable to legally sanctioned violations of their bodily integrity and legal autonomy, especially if they lack race and class privilege (Bordo 1993; Brown 1998). Selflessness remains the pregnant woman’s legal status. Moreover, the stereotype of feminine selflessness still thrives in the popular imagination. Any self-confident, self-assertive woman is out of step with prevalent gender norms, and a mother who is not unstintingly devoted to her children is likely to be perceived as selfish or even a welfare “fraud” and to face severe social censure and deprivation of social services (Sparks, 2015).