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Feminism, rape culture, and the pro-life movement

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In my previous post, I mentioned that I had recently finished reading Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape. Well, I am back to discuss another one of the incredibly problematic accusations that was made in this book. And yes, we are going to be focusing once again on Jill Filipovic’s essay “Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms that Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can Fight Back.” (Prepare yourselves.)

In addition to misquoting religious texts and accusing “anti-choicers” of trying to “give a fetus rights that no born person even has” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 19), Filipovic also decided to draw illogical comparisons between sexual assault and abortion. This is what she said:

“Sexual assault is not only a crime of violence and power, but also one of entitlement. So long as men feel entitled to dominate and control women’s bodies, sexual assault will continue. While issues like reproductive justice may initially seem unrelated to sexual assault, they are a crucial aspect of women’s bodily autonomy and integrity – legally forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy for nine months and give birth against her will and without her consent, or coercing certain kinds of ‘unfit’ women into not reproducing, are deeply troubling uses of women’s bodies to serve the needs, ideologies, and desires of others” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 26).

Filipovic then went on to claim that “anti-choicers” were actively supporting rape culture:

“We need to situate sexual assault within the greater cultural battles over women’s bodies, and recognize that anti-rape activism cannot be separated from action for reproductive freedom, anti-racism, LGBT rights, and broader equality; and that the opponents of those movements are the same people who have an interest in maintaining rape culture” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 27).

Now, there are many, many things that could be said in response to these claims. For example, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that pro-lifers are “legally forcing a women to carry a pregnancy for nine months and give birth against her will and without her consent”. As a pro-life woman, I have no interest in forcing women to give birth. However, I am interested in ensuring that the state does not sanction abortion, which allows doctors to systematically dismember an unborn human fetus/being/child. This has nothing to do with “forcing” women to give birth and everything to do with “forcing” men, women, and physicians to abstain from participating in the destruction of human beings.

But Filipovic’s accusation goes much deeper than this. The real claim that Filipovic is making is this: by opposing a woman’s bodily autonomy, “anti-choicers” are supporting rape culture. So let’s examine this claim.

As a pro-life woman, I would like to clearly state, once and for all, that I believe in, support, and advocate for a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. I mean, let’s be serious. I am a woman. I love women. I believe in women’s rights. I studied feminism. I am a traditional feminist. I am thankful for my bodily autonomy. I support the bodily autonomy of other women. Capiche?

However, there is a massive difference between supporting a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and supporting a woman’s right to exercise autonomy over the body of another human being (ie. the human fetus). This is where pro-life and pro-abortion advocates diverge.

You see, pro-abortion advocates believe that a woman not only has the right to control her own body, but that she also has the right to control the body inside her body (ie. the body of the human fetus). (Side note: This is why the “My body, my choice” slogan should really be “Our bodies, my choice.”).

However, as a pro-life advocate, I reject this belief. I reject the idea that another individual has the right to assert control over, perpetuate violence against, and threaten the existence of another individual. And do you want to know a secret? This is perfectly in alignment with my stance as a traditional feminist who combats rape culture!

When a man rapes a woman*, he is asserting control over and perpetuating violence against another autonomous individual. In simplified terms, he is violating the woman’s bodily autonomy.

As a pro-life woman, it is my belief in bodily autonomy (among other things) that fuels my opposition to sexual assault. And it is also my belief in bodily autonomy (among other things) that fuels my opposition to abortion.

Now, before people begin to freak out and make all sorts of unfounded accusations against me, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: I am not suggesting that abortion and sexual assault are similar. However, what I am saying is that Jill Filipovic’s claim is absolutely false.

Do “anti-choicers” actively support and maintain rape culture by “opposing” a woman’s bodily autonomy? Absolutely not. As I demonstrated, the pro-life worldview is premised on the equal distribution of human rights and bodily autonomy to all human beings, born and unborn. This is what fuels our opposition to abortion. This is what fuels our opposition to human trafficking. And this is what fuels our opposition to rape culture.

One final point: The connection between rape culture, abortion services, and businesses like Planned Parenthood is a lot more problematic than you might think. I would recommend that you watch this video and this video. The reality is that, through our activism, pro-life people have been actively combatting rape culture. And realistically, if you truly want to combat rape culture, you too must oppose the insidious way that abortion is used by Planned Parenthood to cover-up sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation.

 

*Note: I recognize that rape and sexual assault do not always follow this construction. However, in light of the fact that the vast majority of sexual assault is perpetrated by men against women, this is the construction that I have chosen to use.

The special rights of abortion providers

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I recently finished reading the book Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape. It is a collection of short essays written by more than 25 different feminists about rape culture. Being a self-identified pro-life feminist myself, there were many arguments that I agreed with wholeheartedly. However, there were also many, many parts of the book that I found quite problematic. I’ll limit myself to writing about just one. (For now.)

The first essay was by Jill Filipovic, and it was entitled “Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms that Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can Fight Back.” I found myself cringing repeatedly throughout Filipovic’s essay, scribbling notes in the margins until eventually I started running out of space. So many claims she made were either ludicrous or blatantly untrue.

For example, when referring to the biblical account of the Fall in Genesis 1-3, Filipovic claims that “[w]omen are simultaneously thought of as living in inherently tempting bodies, and using those bodies to cause men to fall.” For anyone who has even a cursory understanding of the Bible, you will know that Eve’s sexuality neither tempted Adam nor caused the Fall. And of course, while I do not expect every feminist to understand the complicated theological themes in the Bible, the willingness of feminists to twist and distort religious texts to support their own misguided ideological claims is legitimately concerning. But I digress…

The claim that I found most fascinating was when Filipovic stated that “the anti-choice right promotes policies that would give a fetus rights that no born person even has” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 19).

I’ve heard this argument before. To flesh it out a bit more, it goes something like this:

“No born individual has the right to abduct someone, hook themselves up to the kidnapped individual, and then live off of their body for nine months. So how can you claim that a parasitic fetus should get these rights, rights that ‘no born person even has’?”

(A more complex form of this argument is known as the “Violinist Argument.” For more information about the argument and the subsequent pro-life response, you can start here and here.)

This claim is nothing spectacular. And yet, it is spectacular in that it reveals just how short-sighted and hypocritical radical pro-abortion activists have become. Consider this: In no other area of society do we justify torturing, dismembering, and decapitating human beings. In Canada, these are all crimes when committed against a born human being. When we see these gruesome crimes take place repeatedly, we call it genocide. On the international stage, there are conventions that prohibit these types of violence, such as the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Even in times of war, these actions are not justified.

So I would suggest that we are asking the wrong question. The question is not: Why should we promote policies that give the fetus rights that no born person even has? The real question is: Why are radical pro-abortion advocates promoting policies that would give abortion providers like Planned Parenthood “rights” that no born person has: namely, the ability to torture, dismember, and decapitate other human beings?

Also, as a final side note, I would just like to point out that every born human being has the right to life. So really, pro-lifers aren’t asking for much. We’re just advocating for the oh-so-radical idea that all human beings deserve the right to life, whether 1 minute before birth or 1 minute after birth. Why? Because there’s nothing magical about the birth canal. Just saying.

Victoria’s March for Life and Mommy forums

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I had the pleasure of participating in the March for Life here in Victoria last Thursday. I’ve heard that the numbers were close to 2000, the largest turnout yet. I also noticed that there were fewer counter-protestors than previous years (and they were less effective as well).

The most interesting result I saw from the March, however, wasn’t out and about. It was afterwards when I got home, logged into Facebook, and looked in one of my “mommy” groups. One of the women in the group had posted a bit of a rant about how angry it made her, and many other women had jumped on board. There was just one woman defending the pro-life cause all by herself. What strikes me is that here in Canada, we’re told that the debate over abortion is over, however, the debate in this forum has been going on for literally four days now. Even the most dramatic posts rarely last more than a day, so this is what I might describe as (am I really using this word?) . . . epic.

As time as moves on, more women have come out and thrown in their two cents, but other pro-lifers have also come out of the woodwork, which has been encouraging (and surprisingly civil). The best part is that people are actually talking about it, and people who wouldn’t usually listen to the pro-life side are, in a sense, being forced to listen. I don’t know if any hearts are being changed, but I hope that at least a few seeds have been planted. (It has also been helpful for dispelling a lot of misinformation about the March.) The debate is not over (still).

So, back to the subject of the March for Life, here are some of my photos from the event:

 

More photos can be found at the Victoria March for Life website or facebook page (both pages contain the same photos).

Some politicians are of course pro-life

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With MPs and Ministers tripping all over themselves to “out” themselves as pro-choice Conservatives, I thought I would remind you all that there are pro-life politicians on Parliament Hill. Full disclosure: I work for one of them. And no, I am not paid to blog (unfortunately. Can you make a living pro-life bloggging? Because I’d be interested.) In my office, I have pictures of my boss denouncing the Morgentaler Order of Canada, visiting pro-life organizations, attending the National March for Life and addressing the crowds on Parliament Hill.

If you live in a riding represented by the NDP, the Liberals, the Bloc or any socially-liberal-Conservative, you may feel unrepresented in Parliament. If you have ever written to your MP about pro-life or pro-family issues and received a boiler-plate reply about social consensus and Canadian values blah-blah, you may feel misunderstood and silenced. But you are not. It may not be your MP but some MPs are working hard — and getting flack — making sure that your voice is heard.

Musing over election politics after the fact

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Can’t tell you how many people I meet who are fiscally and politically left–and pro-life. So the question is, how many swing votes would a party win if they added the life issue to the roster? Parties only ever consider who they might lose–but done carefully, I think there are many votes to gain. Too late, I know, but it’s a conversation I had this past weekend.

Saturday morning coffee

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Read this morning over coffee:

This feature from the Globe & Mail. I will go on the record saying that the stigmatization, guilt and shaming of women who have abortions is wrong. It doesn’t make abortion right however. This quote caused me to reflect:

Twenty-four years later, Ms. McDonnell says, little has changed: “When the characters in a hip contemporary comedy like Knocked Up can’t even bring themselves to say the word ‘abortion,’ something’s still very wrong.”

Uh… could that be abortion??

On that topic, it seems that the writers of Knocked Up are not the only ones suffering from that affliction. See Fr. Raymond de Souza’s excellent commentary on Morgentaler’s nomination to the Order of Canada.

And on a lighter note, I never thought I would be linking to this guy — and for his defense, as a former Liberal speechwriter, he will probably be mortified at being linked to by a pro-life blog — but this article made me laugh out loud.

Have a great weekend.

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Andrea adds: Pro-lifers never have to shame or guilt women who have abortions. They do it to themselves. Apparently, because the

abortion involves a web of complex physical and psychological processes that themselves pull us in two directions at once. It involves our bodies, our emotions and our spirits in a way that engages us on many levels simultaneously, and that ensures that our response will be anything but simple.”

And now in severely non-academic language, because you are killing your own offspring, which certainly would engage those emotions on many, many levels, indeed. Yeeesh. I’ll go on the record saying I’m glad for the stigma. It’s not that I have ever, ever, treated anyone who had an abortion with anything other than respect, and to be frank, in the same manner as I treat everyone. It’s that what the “stigma” here is, is our conscience: that guilt that kicks in when you’ve done something terrible, and you know it. No need for me to look down on someone who has had an abortion, I’ve experienced this terrible feeling for other reasons, at other times.  And if we “eradicate that stigma”–we would be paving over our consciences. People have been known to do it. But distancing your actions from your conscience so entirely is not generally a good thing.

Spring rant

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It must be spring. Calls for nominations of women of influence for various awards seem to be blooming in all my ladies’ magazines. Calls for applications for various fellowships and other Gold Medals awarded to “outstanding graduating students” are raining down at McGill. I seem to stumble on “most influential woman under 30” and “young person of the year” awards everywhere. Maybe this is just a reflection of my own insecurities. Maybe this is one of the reasons women are delaying childbirth and having fewer children: Our society burns the fuel of external recognition and motherhood provides very little of that. At this point, I’m not quite sure which of the two needs fixing: my insecurities or the world. Likely both.

At the risk of being offered some cheese with my whine, seeing a beautiful, single, 30-year-old career woman receive an achievement award makes me in equal part depressed, envious and somewhat bitter. All the more if she fits in size four pants, but I digress. This is in no small part due to the fact that I am a married, 34-year-old mother of five who will never again fit into size four designer pants unless I get morbidly sick.

Newly minted with a Master’s degree, I am looking for a job with a resume that is, well, very similar to what it was when I graduated from high school in 1992. Odd jobs, volunteer work, you know what I mean? I resent the fact that I have to remind myself that the subtext of my threadbare resume is “five children.” I have to remind myself that getting a Master’s degree while caring for a household of seven is worth a Gold Medal even though I will never get one. I have to remind myself that my utter lack of professional experience and connections is the cost of committing the last 12 years of my life to carrying, delivering and raising five little persons. And finally, I have to remind myself that if I never get an achievement award but if my children grow into “competent, responsible, considerate, and generous men and women who are committed to live by principles of integrity” (to quote writer James Stenson ) , I will have been successful beyond measure.

But today, I resent having to remind myself. Because it should be obvious and it is not. I don’t think that putting professional aspirations on hold while children are very young is a bad thing. However, women should be able to reintegrate into the workplace post-bambino without feeling like 5, 10, 15 years of their lives have gone the way of the dodo. If we want women to go forth and reproduce, we have our work cut out convincing them that they will not just disappear under a pile of housework. That’s just one of the ways in which being pro-life starts by being pro-woman.

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Andrea adds some spring flowers to accompany the spring rant, a very fine rant, Véronique, and I do agree–it ought to be obvious that what you are doing is worthy of a gold medal. In the interim, before attitudes change, some flowers.

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Tanya adds: A woman has such a peculiar role to attempt to fill in today’s western society. Stay-at-home mothers are sacrificing their dreams and financial security for the sake of family. (Oh! what noble martyrs we are.) Career women sacrifice their families for their own personal goals. (Images of a briefcase wielding woman who missed her child’s soccer game come to mind?) For the most part we are either pitied or scorned by others (and sometimes ourselves). I suppose we should start by fixing our own insecurities if we want the world to view us any differently. (We can’t fix the world if we’re broken.) I’d say we need to reasonably adopt the mantra, “If mom is happy, then everyone’s happy.”

I object!

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I received this link from a good friend who is, incidentally, a pro-life physician.

I am always puzzled by statements that uphold freedom of conscience while denying the ability to act upon it. What worries me is not that our freedoms and liberties would be limited, but the absence of discussion as to why this particular freedom (conscience) should be limited and how.

In the case of pro-life physicians, they think that abortion is wrong and this thought is expressed by their refusal to have anything to do with it. This is socially relevant because abortion is legal in Canada and women are free to request one.

Many pro-life physicians don’t only believe that abortion is wrong for them but wrong period. Morally wrong, yes. But also medically wrong and this is where the issue gets really sticky: Physicians are never forced to perform procedures that would go against their patient’s best medical interest. If I suffer from arthritis and want my arm amputated and my physician thinks it can be controlled with acetaminophen, she is under no obligation to cut my arm off. If I want to treat my clinical depression with high doses of morphine, no physician has to give it to me. Yet, amputation and morphine are legal in Canada, and women are free to request them until the burly men in white come to escort them out of the building.

Now, what if a physician thought abortion was not in the best medical interest of a woman? The more I reflect on this question, the more the ACOG’s position starts looking like a pro-life doctor witch hunt. If you oppose abortion on medical grounds and are pro-choice, you are acting within the parameters of ethical medical practice. But if you oppose abortion on medical grounds and are pro-life, we will get your license. Troubling.

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Rebecca adds:

Quite right. Roy Eappen at torydrroy.blogspot.com frequently writes on abortion, freedom of conscience, and doctors and has discussed this in the past.

Look, the whole point of doctors is to evaluate what treatments are medically necessary or appropriate. One reason antibiotics aren’t sold OTC is that most laymen without access to a lab don’t know if they actually need them. If you walk into a doctor’s office with a cold, whether or not you want antibiotics, the doctor shouldn’t give them to you. And if birth control pills, which are ethically and medically much less problematic than abortion, are subject to a doctor’s prescription to ensure that they’re medically appropriate for the woman who wants them, how on earth can abortion not be?

Or, we can dispense with the fiction that abortion on demand has anything to do with medical necessity. Even if terminating a pregnancy had the same moral status as getting breast implants or a nose job, we would have no business forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for it. Since it is on a different moral plane, to all but the most die-hard Pete Singer types, it is increasingly barmy that we ask medical professionals and taxpayers to treat abortion as if it were as neutral and necessary as a tonsilectomy.

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Tanya is reminded: Dr. Chris Kempling has been on this bandwagon for several years. He’s quite adamant that the Canada Health Act is violated when abortion is covered by our tax dollars.

“The Canada Health Act says that to qualify for public funding, a health procedure must

1) be medically necessary,

2) be beneficial,

3) have benefits that outweigh the risks, and

4) be the result of informed consent.

Abortion, as it is currently practiced in Canada, meets none of the four requirements of the Canada Health Act. http://www.chp.ca/forum/Kempling/Abortion.htm

I rather tend to agree.

A Saturday morning contemplation

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Sometimes I have time to sit and think. That happened this morning.

I was thinking about what it means to be pro-woman and pro-life, and how others view this.

There is a stigma attached to being pro-woman. Recently, I chatted with a man who was taken aback when I referred to myself as a feminist. The only self-proclaimed feminist he’d ever met was yelling, “We won’t go back!” and striking him in the head with a hanger. I assured him I was not that sort of feminist.

Being pro-life comes with its fair share of negative connotations as well. Here is the kind of pro-lifer I am not. But separating these people out from other pro-lifers in people’s perceptions is not easy.

ProWomanProLife comes across as an oxymoron to some.  That means it is challenging some preconceived notions on what it means to be both pro-woman and pro-life.  And maybe, just maybe, it will prompt some people to re-evaluate their own stance on issues of life and feminism.

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Andrea adds: I personally avoid use of the word “feminist” altogether. Why? Because it means many different things to many different people, and is entirely meaningless to many more. This group is therefore not called “feminists for life” for a reason. It’s those 1960s feminists who are responsible for abortion on demand, claiming it is good for women. Early feminists, those fighting for the vote, recognized and knew abortion was bad for women, bad for the child, and would never have called sacrificing the unborn a victory in any way. So I stay away from the term altogether. After all, those 1960s feminists have done a lot of damage; damage we must all work to undo. I will say this for them: They were very successful: Just look at how “the right to choose” is accepted dogma. Time to re-evaluate, indeed.

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Véronique adds: To me, being a feminist — and I don’t shy away from the word, how else can I redeem it? — is not so much a way of “doing” as a way of “thinking.”

Generally, I try to avoid equating feminism with certain principled conclusions such as “abortion is a human right” or “men are pigs.” It’s a little like “if you are pro-life, you must be a Conservative.” What does being pro-life has to do with it? Or if you believe in climate change, you’re a Liberal, if you don’t, you’re a Conservative. What does climatology has to do with political ideology? Same with feminism. What feminism is about is power struggles, inherent sexism, patterns of sex-based discrimination. You can advocate in favor of gender equity without ever mentioning abortion… in theory. In practice however, feminism is now associated with abortion as right. But I can point to power struggles, inherent sexism and patterns of sex-based discrimination in the abortion industry or abortion rhetoric any day of the week.

I’m proud to be a feminist. I’m just not sure feminists are proud to have me…

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Andrea adds: Well right here we have what ProWomanProLife is all about. Different pro-life women expressing their views, unplugged. The words “I’m proud to be a feminist” have never–and will never–pass my lips. Because the way feminism looks to me, I’d rather, um, be a chauvenist.

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Rebecca adds: I find it easier not to identify myself as a feminist, because for most people today it carries baggage I don’t want and connotations I actively reject. Lots of women I respect feel differently. I also generally subscribe to Christina Hoff Sommers’ distinction between “equity feminism” (which she considers to have realized its goals) that demands equality (same pay scales for men and women, women not needing their husbands’ permission to open a bank account, the franchise, etc) and “gender feminism”, which characterizes such lunacy as insisting that women be firefighters even if they can’t carry an average sized person, that women make up 50% of engineering students even if they don’t want to be engineers as much as men do, and getting Lawrence Summers publicly barbecued. Hoff Sommers also wrote the very important The War Against Boys, which all parents and teachers (of boys or girls) should read.

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