{"id":5855,"date":"2017-01-18T20:51:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T02:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=5855"},"modified":"2017-01-19T08:46:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T14:46:06","slug":"can-pro-life-feminist-warning-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/01\/can-pro-life-feminist-warning-rant.html","title":{"rendered":"Can you be a “pro-life feminist”? (warning: rant)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The folks at Feminists for Life<\/a> certainly believe so. \u00a0A group calling itself the New Pro-life Movement (which seems to exist only as a Facebook page<\/a> and a loose collection of like-minded people, rather than as a formal organization) pairs pro-life-ism with traditionally \u201cfeminist\u201d and progressive causes. \u00a0And a group called New Wave Feminists<\/a> sought to be a part of the anti-Trump Washington march because of their alignment on these issues.<\/p>\n

They were, unfortunately but not surprisingly, rejected by the organizers because, they said, \u201cIf you want to come to the march you are coming with the understanding that you respect a woman\u2019s right to choose,\u201d according to a New York Times quote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, they reject the idea that you can support the cause of equality for women without also supporting abortion. \u00a0What\u2019s more, in recent years a vocal faction\u00a0has moved from rhetoric of \u201cabortion is a difficult choice\u201d to \u201cabortion is a medical procedure of no moral significance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why does it matter? \u00a0Is it just a question of whether NOW holds the trademark to the term \u201cfeminist\u201d?<\/p>\n

The problem is that this marginalizes women \u2014 or individuals, generally \u2014 who oppose abortion and simultaneously believe that the government should provide such social welfare benefits as are necessary for women to maintain a decent quality of life even in the face of an unplanned pregnancy, or, in general, so as to be able to have a family even if trapped in minimum wage jobs.<\/p>\n

If you believe in both of these things, and look to the Democrats, you\u2019re told that unless you sign on to their abortion platform, you want to enslave women. \u00a0And the Republicans? \u00a0Well, they\u2019ll welcome you, but it\u2019ll feel pretty useless to join forces with them when you only share with them the one common issue of opposing abortion.<\/p>\n

Me? \u00a0Quite honestly, I\u2019ve given up on the idea that we can reduce abortions by providing a more generous welfare state. \u00a0It\u2019s simply too discouraging to read all the voices celebrating abortion as the proper remedy to any unplanned pregnancy, whether it\u2019s a question of health concerns or career disruption or inconvenience of whatever kind. \u00a0What good does it do to talk about providing better childcare subsidies so that women don\u2019t feel forced into abortion, if that\u2019s not at all why they\u2019re getting abortions, and if wealthy women actually have a higher abortion rate<\/a> (as percentage of pregnancies) than poor women? \u00a0(Yes, we can talk about childcare subsidies or other actions meant to help the poor as the right or wrong policy choice without bringing abortion into it, but that\u2019s another blog post.)<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the deal:<\/p>\n

To be prolife is to say, of an unborn child, \u201cthis, too, is a human life, and it is wrong to kill human lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be prochoice is, fundamentally, to say, that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing, in a blanket, general way, that our laws and morals are all a matter of ensuring proper functioning of society, not some grand principles from a Creator God, and that society functions just fine if we allow for certain exceptions to a general rule of \u201cno killing.\u201d \u00a0Or maybe that the \u201cgeneral moral principle\u201d is \u201cno killing anyone who doesn\u2019t want to be killed \u2014 and unborn babies aren\u2019t capable of forming the thought, \u2018I want to live\u2019, so they can\u2019t be said to have this desire to stay alive.\u201d \u00a0Or whatever it is, it\u2019s a morality that says that\u00a0there are plenty of good reasons for killing as long as \u2014 whatever, the fetus doesn\u2019t look human enough yet, or might have a birth defect, or simply doesn\u2019t have any rights because we haven\u2019t seen fit to deem the fetus morally worthy until after birth.<\/p>\n

(Added, to clarify: \u00a0now, I\u2019m not saying that prochoicers are evil. \u00a0Fundamentally they simply don\u2019t see killing as a bright-line, a \u201cnever\u201d action, and that plays out in a number of ways, among others assisted suicide and euthansia.)<\/p>\n

So I get that prochoicers have a different set of moral beliefs than I do. \u00a0But their refusal to try in any way to understand the prolife perspective, their continued insistence that you\u2019re a bad person if you believe that it\u2019s wrong to kill unborn children \u2014 I\u2019m sick of it. \u00a0I\u2019m sick of this insistence that if you\u2019re prolife, you want women to be enslaved and forced to bear one child after the next. \u00a0I\u2019m sick of the demand that the only way to show your support for equality is to believe that abortion should be legal without restriction, and that it\u2019s the \u201cright\u201d answer to an inconvenient pregnancy.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of anger among prolife people who support \u201cprogressive\u201d policies that pro-lifers largely voted for Trump (reminder: \u00a0I didn\u2019t). \u00a0But what choice is there? \u00a0If doing so could give a big middle-finger to every pundit, every politician, every organization, every blogger that comes across my facebook feed and says, \u201cto be prolife is to enslave women,\u201d well, I\u2019d be pretty tempted.<\/p>\n

So you know what? \u00a0[Obscenity] you, \u201cfeminists\u201d who say that I want to enslave women because I reject abortion as back-up birth control, as an answer to an unwanted pregnancy. \u00a0[Obscenity] you, Democrats who say that a woman has the right to what\u2019s really euthanasia of a late-term unborn child if she feels unable to raise a disabled child. \u00a0(And double-[obscenity] you, everyone who says that it\u2019s best for society to eliminate down syndrome people.)<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the thing: \u00a0why the [obscenity] should I care about the marginalized, the poor, those who face racial discrimination? \u00a0What if my moral principles say \u201c[obscenity] them, it inconveniences me to care about their well-being, and I\u2019m better off if I can use my white middle-class privilege to trample on them\u201d? \u00a0How can you preach to me about what\u2019s morally right, if your own morals dictate that you can kill tiny humans if they get in the way?<\/p>\n

As you can tell, I\u2019m fed up with this.<\/p>\n

image: \u00a0sorry, no image today.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folks at Feminists for Life certainly believe so. \u00a0A group calling itself the New Pro-life Movement (which seems to exist only as a Facebook page and a loose collection of like-minded people, rather than as a formal organization) pairs pro-life-ism with traditionally \u201cfeminist\u201d and progressive causes. \u00a0And a group called New Wave Feminists sought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198,530,529],"class_list":["post-5855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-feminists","tag-pro-life"],"yoast_head":"\nCan you be a "pro-life feminist"? 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