But many prominent pro-choice advocates were confused and outraged by the news about New Wave Feminists. They demanded to know why the march organizers could take such an uncompromising stance for full reproductive rights, and then turn around and partner with organizations that are devoted to the exact opposite goal. Plse reconsider - inclusivity is not about bolstering those who harm us. It was quietly removed soon after that. To be fair, though, the march was a massive event that was pulled together by volunteers on short notice, and the organizing process was often chaotic.
Either way, it was a bit of a public-relations mess, and caused a lot of consternation especially in conservative circles. JessicaValenti so a woman can't be a feminist if she's pro-life? The idea of showing compassion for women who seek abortion has become much more common in the pro-life movement over the past few decades than fire-and-brimstone rhetoric. Many pro-lifers repeat false claims that abortion is more dangerous than it is, or that it causes breast cancer , to argue that abortion harms women.
New Wave Feminists, the group whose temporary partnership status caused controversy to begin with, tends to take this latter approach. On certain issues, there really is common ground to be found between pro-life and pro-choice feminists. Students for Life organizes at more than 1, high school and college campuses, Hernandez said, and they work with pro-choice student groups on some of their projects.
For instance, a program called Pregnant on Campus lobbies schools to provide better resources for pregnant students, like lactation rooms, diaper decks, and reasonable accommodations for things like housing arrangements and course responsibilities. Pro-choice feminists also do a lot of work to fight discrimination based on pregnancy status, and to promote family-friendly work policies like paid leave for new parents.
And they fight rape on college campuses using the same Title IX law against gender discrimination that Students for Life members use to promote the rights of pregnant students. Early Catholic activists were often joined by a handful of non-Catholics, usually Protestants, Mormons, or Orthodox Christians. The Roe vs. Wade decision, legalizing abortion in all fifty states, changed everything and nothing.
In the s the anti-abortion movement remained heavily Catholic, and they continued to pitch their issue as a rights issue rather than a religious one.
But in other essential ways the movement changed. Before Roe , the anti-abortion movement was very small, geographically disperse, and focused on individual state legislatures. After activists and state legislators alike worried that Roe prescribed a one-size-fits-all abortion law that could only be addressed at the national level.
Thus, in the s, activists promoted the Hyde Amendment which successfully prohibited federal funding of abortions through Medicaid and pushed, unsuccessfully, a constitutional amendment banning abortion. After the direction of pro-life activism changed, even as its demographics and core political arguments remained the same. While antiabortion activists retained their focus on individual fetal rights, they began to develop new ways to convey that message to the public that focused on the fetus and excised the woman.
The four pictures they put in their book, collected from sympathetic doctors and pathologists, were quickly reproduced and used in all parts of the movement. Their work built on a longer, medical history of viewing and personifying the fetus. After World War II, new medical technologies allowed doctors to view and treat fetuses in new ways, while others examined fetal development for the cures to persistent human problems, ultimately personifying and individualizing the fetus.
They became sure that images helped people to understand a fetus, legally and culturally, as a baby. Thus the movement continued to develop new tools and technologies to this end: pictures of fetuses, in utero and aborted, fetal models, and fetuses in jars in the s; fetal pins, dolls, jewelry, and clothes in addition to a proliferation of pro-life movies in the s; and ultrasound visuals of fetuses in the s and s.
Using these images, activists made a political pitch and moved fetal bodies squarely into American political culture. As activists moved the fetus into the political spotlight, they tried to keep the pregnant woman behind the curtain. Increasingly in the s, they attempted to link their campaign to civil rights and human rights work, which led to increasingly heated rhetoric.
Some activists said legal abortion was worse than the Jewish Holocaust. Others argued that the Roe decision was akin to the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that black people—slave or free—were not U. While not actually working on civil rights and human rights issues, pro-life activists used those causes to make the fetus a sympathetic victim and pro-life activists into modern day abolitionists.
But activists avoided discussing what would happen to American women if abortion became illegal. They tried to silence those in their midst who voiced the old argument that pregnancy punished women for promiscuity. All too often, the root causes underlying these statistics are shame and fear generated about pregnancy by the attitudes of parents, friends and the fathers of children.
Fatherhood has been diminished. Children are disconnected from their fathers, who have rights as well as responsibilities. And millions of women have paid the price. Women, many impoverished because of the billions owed to mothers for child support, are struggling in school and the workplace without societal support.
Abortion solves nothing. Almost four decades after Roe, we mourn the loss of 57 million American children that we will never meet. We will never know what they might have contributed to this world. But we must also remember the hundreds of women and teens who have lost their lives to legal but lethal abortion because they did not want to inconvenience us with their pregnancies.
We mourn with the husband of Karnamaya Mongar, a poor immigrant who died as a result of her abortion at the hands of the convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell. Talking about abortion brings out raw emotions. Nothing is more divisive than talk about pregnancy and rape, and nothing challenges pro-life beliefs more than this heated issue. Just as we have challenged thinking about special-needs babies and their parents, we must help women who have conceived during rape and welcome children conceived in violence.
Today we stand in solidarity with women coerced into abortion because they felt they had no choice. We stand with women who were vulnerable because they were young, or poor, or in schools or workplaces that would not accommodate their needs as mothers.
We stand in solidarity with women who have been betrayed by those they count on the most, with women who have underestimated their own strength, with women who have experienced abortion and are silent no more, with young men and women who mourn their missing siblings. In all its forms, abortion has masked—rather than solved—the problems women face.
Abortion is a failed experiment on women. Why celebrate failure? We should start by addressing the needs of women—for family housing, child care, maternity coverage, for the ability to telecommute to school or work, to job-share, to make a living wage and to find practical resources. As pro-life employers and educators, we must examine our own policies and practices in our own communities, workplaces, colleges and universities.
With woman-centered problem solving, we can set the example for the nation and the world. We must ramp up efforts to systemically address the unmet needs of struggling parents, birthparents and victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. And Feminists for Life advocates unconditional support for women who lovingly place their babies into the arms of adoptive couples.
We must focus our efforts on collegians who have never known a day without legal abortion. Forty-three percent of all abortions are performed on college-age women, women who will become our future leaders and educators in every field. In addition to teaching the rich, pro-life feminist history that we have uncovered, we have been moderating FFL Pregnancy Resource Forums at campuses across the country.
The first such panel discussion was at Georgetown University in Administrators, community leaders and students came together in a nonconfrontational setting to identify available resources on and off campus and to set priorities for new policies, resources and ways to communicate nonviolent options. The Hoya Kids Learning Center was established. Students created volunteer babysitting services. And every year, Georgetown hosts a Pregnancy Resource Forum to take another look at ways they can improve.
The first Georgetown forum started with the story of a woman who had an abortion because she did not know where to go for help. At the 14th annual forum, babies played on the floor. Because of our early efforts at Georgetown, Villanova and Notre Dame, this is the first year that babies born with the support of administrators are now likely entering college themselves.
Other colleges have also expanded their support for student parents. A donor recently stepped forward to fund a housing scholarship. Pregnant women and new mothers can now have their babies and continue with school. Pro-life and pro-choice students came together at Wellesley College to hold a rummage sale benefitting a pregnant student who lost her financial aid for housing.
The young woman had her baby and graduated. A University of Virginia student started a babysitting club. Berkeley Students for Life held bake sales to pay for diaper decks. Students for Life at St. Louis University started a scholarship fund for child care. There are many other examples like this as the ideas of Feminists for Life members and supporters go viral.
Abortion betrays the basic feminist principles of nonviolence, nondiscrimination and justice for all. Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women—and that women have settled for less.
Women deserve better. Forty years after Sarah Weddington capitulated to inherently unfair practices against pregnant and parenting women, we say no to the status quo. We refuse to choose between women and children. We continue their fight in the spirit of Mattie Brinkerhoff, who wrote in in The Revolution:.
When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we can safely assume that there is something wrong in society—so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged. Feminism was born of abolition. All people are equal. Not all choices are equal. We envision a better day, a day when womanhood is celebrated, mothers are supported, fatherhood is honored and every child is cherished.
If you refuse to choose between women and children, if you work to systematically eliminate the root causes that drive women to abortion, then you already follow in the footsteps of Susan B.
Anthony and our other feminist foremothers, whether you call yourself a feminist or not. Serrin M. For example, in the article the author states. She is showing the historical realities behind feminism as it started out as an organization of women that were determined to be a non violence, non discrimination and equal justice for all organization. By showing that the original feminists did not feel that abortion was a good thing and that they respected life greatly helps to support her purpose by showing that the ideals of abortion have only snuck their way in because abortion is the easy way out for the women who do not want to take responsibility for their actions.
In addition, she later in the article quotes Susan B. By integrating this quote into the article the author greatly supports her purpose by giving the historical evidence that even one of the best known women's rights activists was against abortion. She develops a cohesive argument by giving credit to the work that she is doing and thus clearly is able to convey her purpose. Serrin Foster supports her purpose in the article very well through the historical evidence she conveys.
Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. Faith January , issue. Foster January 07, Elizabeth Cady Stanton with Susan B.
US public domain image. Hard Cases, Exceptional Choices Talking about abortion brings out raw emotions. I think most women want to see a culture that respects and honors women not only for the myriad talents we bring as individuals to our professions, our communities and our country. Women also want to live in a society that, at the very same time, cherishes our shared, and indeed, wondrous capacity to bear new human life.
We want to be respected for the work we do as mothers. What about a culture where women's childbearing capacity is recognized not as an impediment to our social status and certainly not as the be-all and end-all of women's capacities as it once was, but as that which calls upon all persons in society to show a bit of gratitude?
Rather than structure society around the wombless, unencumbered male, ought not society be structured around those who, in addition to being able to do all that men can do, can also bear new human life? Anti-abortion activists retool message Such a cultural restructuring in support of caregiving — one that pro-life feminists seek — would benefit this generation's fathers as well.
Many men today would prefer to dedicate far more time and attention to their children than fathers of prior generations did, or could. Pro-woman, pro-child, pro-family policies would enable just that. Not all women become mothers, but those who do so depend upon a cultural esteeming of both pregnancy and motherhood for their social and professional support.
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