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Feminists for Life: Who Are We?
It is the eternal query: Is Feminists for Life a feminist group or a pro-life group? What should our emphasis be? Eliminating abortion or enhancing the status of women?
In this case, the most glib answer happens to be the correct one: Feminists for Life is both--profoundly pro-life and forthrightly feminist! Feminists for Life seeks to eliminate abortion, but we believe that the best way to do so is by enhancing the status of women.
A wonderful idea--unique, insightful, profound, brilliant--but not original with us. This analysis--that the perceived necessity of abortion arises from the inferior status of women--is as old as feminism itself. It was in fact, a basic tenet of the philosophy of the first American feminists who rose to influence in the second half of the 19th century.
These feminists frequently cited the rather widespread incidence of abortion in their times as proof that women were an oppressed class. A woman would commit such a "disgusting and degrading crime" only under the most compelling circumstances. As Victoria Woodhull said in 1875: "Every woman knows that if she were truly free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, or think of murdering one before its birth." Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared in 1868 that the remedy for the "crying evil" of abortion was "the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women."
The foundresses of feminism saw abortion as a symptom of the many problems imposed upon women; it is excruciatingly ironic that modern pro-abortion feminists see abortion as a solution to those problems.
We happen upon a woman in the act of smothering her baby. She is distraught; she explains that she doesn't want to kill her baby, but she must; the baby's father refuses to help support it; she can't find a decent job; daycare is too expensive; the workplace refuses to accommodate mothering women. She simply cannot care for her baby under thses circumstances. What is the appropriate response to her desperation?
The pro-life response: How awful! But don't kill your baby! We can help you!
The pro-abortion response: How awful! But we'll help you kill your baby!
The pro-life feminist response: How awful! But don't kill your baby; we'll help you and work to change society!
For this reason, Feminists for Life must speak to all issues that bear upon the well-being of women and children. We are actively involved in debates regarding family leave, violence against women, welfare reform, and health care reform. It is essential that we continue to provide a pro-woman, pro-life worldview in all matters of public policy affecting women and children.
Pro-abortionists are correct when they claim that abortion will not end as long as there is a demand for it. Pro-life feminists hope to eliminate that demand by helping to create a world in which abortion is unnecessary and unthinkable: a world that welcomes us all.
Rosemary Oelrich Bottcher
Reprinted from The American Feminist, Fall 1994
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