Pro Life women marched alongside others in the Women’s March Saturday. I personally know pro life women who drove in from around the state to participate in the March for Women here in Oklahoma. I was surprised by how many of them told me they were going, and, frankly, by who they were.
These weren’t women who normally get involved in politics. They also aren’t the sort to go around carrying signs for anything, including pro life. They live their pro life convictions by not having abortions, even when it would be far easier for them to do so.
Several of these women have children that were born out of wedlock. They are raising their children without help of any sort from the baby’s father. Most of them have suffered domestic violence. Several are rape survivors.
All of them work at low-paying jobs and struggle to survive in today’s world. Participating in something like a march requires all sorts of adjustments in their lives, including taking off work and spending money for gasoline to drive across the state.
I was totally astonished when I heard that they were going to the Oklahoma March for Women, and that they were calling their friends and family members — including me — asking them to join up. I told them that I thought the March would be dominated by pro choice people. They told me that they were sure that they’d be welcome there.
I haven’t talked to them since the march, but I guess it all went well.
According to the National Catholic Register, pro life women went to the March for Women in Washington, as well. I can’t tell from the article how many of them there were. I doubt if anyone really knows.
What this means on the national level, I can’t say. But from a more local perspective, I think it’s clear that these Oklahoma women were listening when our president bragged about committing sexual assault and called women pigs and dogs.
I had no idea they paid any attention to it. I don’t talk about things like that with these women. But they heard it.
What that means, I don’t know, except to say (paraphrasing Jaws) that there’s an awfully big fish out there in the water that nobody’s paying attention to.
If pro life women and pro choice women can come together on issues like rape, violence against women, equal pay, and child care, the impact will be something no politician dares ignore.
From the National Catholic Register:
Pro-abortion messages were common Saturday, Jan. 21, as activists inundated the city for the “Women’s March on Washington 2017.”
But pro-life marchers were not hard to find in the mix, including those who took offense to the removal of New Wave Feminists from the official list of event sponsors and the abundance of signs and shirts emphasizing abortion rights.
Pro-lifers interviewed by the Register were there to make clear that feminism should not be about killing the unborn. They were there to emphasize how abortion disproportionately threatens the lives of girls in many cultures around the world.
Corrine Muldoon McKinney, a 70-year-old social worker from Finger Lakes, New York, slowly worked her way to the march with the help of a walker. She last marched in Washington 45 years ago, in opposition to the Vietnam War. She loves fighting for women and social justice. Doing so, she told the Register, includes opposing abortion.
“I just passed a sign back there [on Capitol Hill] that said, ‘We’re killing unborn women.’ You know, that’s exactly true,” she said. “We need to stop killing babies. We need to stop killing girl babies and boy babies.”
McKinney, a parishioner of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Canandaigua, Rhode Island, said she would unapologetically defend babies against abortion, regardless of what other marchers thought about it.
“This is America,” McKinney said. “Why would you disavow any woman or feminist organization for opposing abortion? That is a form of bigotry, and bigotry is what we are supposedly here to oppose. I’m afraid Planned Parenthood has a little too much influence over what is supposed to be a march in favor of women.”
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