{"id":24179,"date":"2016-05-24T05:40:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T09:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=24179"},"modified":"2016-05-23T21:59:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T01:59:36","slug":"how-feminism-was-hijacked-by-the-pro-abortionists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2016\/05\/how-feminism-was-hijacked-by-the-pro-abortionists\/","title":{"rendered":"How feminism was hijacked by the pro-abortionists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Feminism at first was not pro-abortion. \u00a0Not only were the 19th century Suffragettes pro-life, pioneering 20th century feminists like Betty Friedan were at most\u00a0ambivalent about abortion. \u00a0The fact is, the early pro-abortion movement was led by men. \u00a0In 1967, though, the pro-abortionist leader Larry Lader gained the endorsement of the National Organization for Women and abortion became a feminist cause.<\/p>\n

This story is told by an early activist, Sue Ellen Browder, who later converted to Catholicism in her book Subverted: \u00a0How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women\u2019s Movement.\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 Abigail Rine Favale reviews the book for\u00a0First Things,\u00a0<\/em>excerpted and linked after the jump.<\/p>\n

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From Abigail Rine Favale,\u00a0<\/span>A Movement, Hijacked |<\/a>\u00a0 First Things:<\/em><\/p>\n

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Subverted<\/i> recounts the untold history of how the feminist and pro-abortion movements became allied. Part expos\u00e9, part conversion memoir, Browder\u2019s book defies easy categorization, but by the end, I understood her approach. Browder\u2019s honest account of her personal life\u2014including her choice to have an abortion, despite being in a loving marriage\u2014highlights the contradictions between reality and the flashy fantasy of the sexually liberated woman that she fabricated and peddled as a writer for Cosmopolitan <\/i>during the heyday of the sexual revolution.<\/i><\/p>\n

A particularly fascinating thread in the book is Browder\u2019s nuanced profile of Betty Friedan. She was initially ambivalent about legalizing abortion; the issue of \u201creproductive rights\u201d was conspicuously absent from the first edition of The Feminine Mystique<\/i>. By the 1980s, she was blaming the \u201cfailure\u201d of the women\u2019s movement on \u201cour blind spot about the family.\u201d As Browder reveals, the pro-abortion movement\u2014led by Larry Lader, the central villain of the book\u2014was decidedly male until successfully wooing the National Organization for Women in 1967.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n