I did not want to comment on this Camille Paglia piece until I read it in full. I’m glad I did. On top of being splendid prose, this piece is a boon to the pro-life movement.
Let’s get straight to the part that has raised the ire of pro-lifers. Paglia says abortion is murder and then adds she fully accepts abortion. Is this shocking? Perhaps. But every woman who has had an abortion is grappling with that very sentiment. This is the essence of the debate and why pro-lifers care at all in the first place. Never to curtail anyone’s choices–but rather to identify that a person is a person, even in the womb (was tempted to say no matter how small, with apologies to Dr. Seuss) and therefore elimination is not a choice. Paglia has put on the page what every strident pro-abortion activist accepts and knows. They simply don’t say it.
Paglia speaks of “the uneasy conscience of feminism…” and I know that well. It’s that silence that descends most every time the “A word” comes up. I like to think it’s the sound of people’s conscience contorting, writhing around what they know to be true and what they’ve been told they must say. Most women will never accept that murder is their special privilege.
Abortion is “the extermination of the powerless by the powerful,” again, Paglia’s words, which I will be sure to repeat. (If you don’t think abortion is the extermination of the powerless by the powerful, you’ve not watched one in progress, and you should.) Pro-abortion types fare better in the public square if they conceal, conceal, conceal. This is why Bill C-484 had to go. Because it would have started women and men thinking, thinking, slowing realizing–what are we doing? And that is the frightening consistency of pro-abortion types: keep abortion out of the public mind, because free thought is out of bounds.
I’ll take Paglia’s words one step further: the extermination of the powerless by the powerful begins with conniving and devious so-called supporters of women’s rights–those who lie about what abortion is and then convince everyone that access to abortion is a right–hey! this isn’t evil! It’s empowering! They know what Paglia knows–and cloak the act in comfy euphemisms. They meet women in their personal deserts and offer a refreshing drink of cyanide. Only they call it Sprite and add ice and one of those fun paper umbrellas.
Though Paglia’s conclusion is repugnant to me, she is not coercing anyone to her view. She hardly could–it’s not a very good slogan–“Murdering millions–in particular those who have done absolutely nothing wrong and can’t defend themselves! Join today!”
She says:
It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.
Bottom line: this kind of disquieting article does the pro-life movement a great service.
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Véronique adds: I doubt that Camille Paglia is a closet pro-lifer. Or that she would be delighted by our endorsement. That being said, I want to say how much I liked reading her article. She takes a strong position and she defends it to its logical end without rhetoric or slogans. This is someone I feel like I could have an intelligent conversation with. On the pro-choice side. That in itself gives me hope. Not so much that I could convince her because I don’t think I could. But it gives me hope that we can engage in these issues instead of avoiding them.
by 
Thanks Andrea, for bringing this article to light. Camille Paglia is the first pro-abortion supporter I have heard who blatantly admits the truth of the unborn’s personhood and humanity. That she then discounts those facts and says the mother should still have the right to murder the unborn child, is completely abhorrent. Nevertheless, it is somewhat refreshing (and at the same time, disconcerting) to know that there are pro-choice proponents who know and admit the truth.
If more pro-choicers would make this admission, we could at least debate with them, without their vehement denials that the unborn have any human status. Once that argument is finally off the table, they would be forced to face the issue that having an abortion therefore – in truth and actuality – amounts to murder and is a selfish act. “Their rights superseding the rights of an innocent victim, simply because they are bigger and stronger.”
Pro-choicers often like to portray the women who get abortions as “poor little victims” themselves, making a ‘difficult’ choice, but ultimately they say, the right one. Pro-choice proponents would be horrified to have to *admit* that the choice was solely and completely based in selfishness. They do not see themselves as selfish. But Paglia has written the truth in black and white and there is no erasing it now.
Repugnant though her view of abortion may be, Paglia wrote an excellent article. And for once, I did not have to take exception to the half-truths and blatant lies that usually abound in such a piece.
Is anyone else concerned that perhaps hell is about to freeze over?!…….
Go, Paglia, go!
(Could she be a covert pro-lifer?)
She’s a women’s women alright.
Kidding aside, Paglia has for me personified what true Feminism is and she has waged a battle royal against the radfems at NOW for years. She is also a wonderful writer, art historian and English prof.
I highly recommend her great work “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson” as a primer on her view of the meaning of gender. Please do not get squeamish about the title and pre-judge the subject matter (more offensive material is in your morning newspaper). In this book she explores what I would call the “Chiaroscuro” in nature and sexuality through the great works of visual art and written prose. It is – I believe – a work of towering intellect and I can not thank her more for the insights it bore to me.
This cheeky piece in Salon shows that she is as cogent a political observer as she is an Art Historian.