“One of the reasons women’s lives have changed is that they have been able to control their fertility, it is an important issue.“ — Cherie Blair (source: The Press Association)
It’s sad when things come down to this mentality: women, to be free women in society, need contraceptives. However, given the way society has developed, it’s quite understandable why people think in this fashion: because they want a good (freedom) but they do not truly understand what that good actually is. Freedom in the modern world is misunderstood; people think that it means to be able to do whatever one wants without any limits, without any restrictions. Whatever will make it impossible for us to fulfill any of our most outrageous desires must, by definition, be anti-freedom, even if it is our very own bodies. Radical feminism, following such a vision of freedom, ends up with self-hatred, following the errors of gnosticism (hatred of femininity, hatred of the body, hatred of the material universe because of its restrictions to freedom, hatred towards reproduction and children because of the burdens they become on the “free” spirit); true, Christian feminism, as espoused by St Elizabeth Feodorovna, St Edith Stein, Pope John Paul II, and many, many others, realizes the value and worth of both genders. It insists we raise women up without lowering or destroying masculinity. These feminists, not to be confused by the radicals, remind us that our body is not just an accidental appendage to be overcome, but truly represents something about who and what we actually are. If the soul forms the body to represent one’s true self, then the body must not be thrown aside; it should be seen as an important, integral part of what it means for us to be ourselves.
True freedom is not about lack of responsibility, lack of order, or lack of rules; it is about personal integrity and the ability to be in the world the person we are meant to be. And, since we are created in the image and likeness of God, in the image and likeness of the Trinity, that is in the image and likeness of love, true freedom is manifesting that love in and through the world, personally to others, and sharing all of who we are in that act of love. To do this, we must overcome all false concepts of the self, overcome our individualism, and become true to ourselves: we must accept ourselves for who we are, including, and especially, our bodily existence with its gender. We will then realize our personal action and reaction to others will be, must be, engendered. When we live in a society without the full and proper expression of both genders in the world, in both public and private spheres, with the proper appreciation of those expressions, is there any wonder why people are becoming more and more alienated with themselves, and are incapable of forming any true, lasting bonds with one another? When society sees a child as an obstacle against freedom instead of the beautiful fruit of true freedom, of love, is there any way such a society can continue long without splintering apart into individuals warring against one another?
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