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Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices

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Forget everything you've read -- this amazing spin on the abortion debate will change the way we all think. Everyone from Ken Kesey ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") to two women from NOW who started a feminist group against abortion (!) show in short articles how abortion can be seen as a civil rights issue. Mostly female authors actually separate it from "womens' rights" by framing it as a violent, dehumanizing force akin to the forces which subjugated women (and minorities) whose value was always determined by "wantedness" or level of "humanity" -- kind of a left-wing adoption of a conservative view. Essays on welfare, post-abortion depression, single-issue politics and healthcare are gems of articulate and thoughtful treatment not found anywhere. Essay format makes it easy to take a short look at your leisure, but you won't stop at just one. I heartily recommend it.

I first read this book just a couple years after it was published. A recent re-reading makes me wish it were re-published with some newer entries - but it is still a powerful volume.

..., the historical essays presented here are presented logically and in context. The pioneering feminists' opposition to abortion in its own right (as opposed to generic opposition to unsanitary surgery) is well-documented here. Robin's criticism actually negates her own contention: if these women opposed abortion simply because it was unsanitary, they would have also opposed appendectomies and tonsillectomies. The fact that they didn't, and that they were blatantly clear that their motivation was defense of unborn human lives, is clearly annoying to some.

Besides the historical references, the essays by more contemporary feminists are compelling as well. They very simply smash the stereotypes that are so necessary to defense of abortion.

In the rush to justify the curtailment of women's autonomy, Grenier Sweet babbles on about how "real" feminist consistency would drop the pro-choice argument, but forgets to examine her evidence in context

The author points out (as do so many other drones) that early feminists supported a ban on abortion because the procedure was risky--without explaining why it was just so deadly.

She does not acknowlledge that any type of surgery was dangerous without modern antiseptic procedures and abortion was singled out because conventional wisdom assumed that women did not have any business controlling their own lives. States could have just as easily decided to ban tonsilectomies and appedectomies, but chose a procedure uniquely experienced by women.

Finally, there is a danger in assuming the words of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were always on the mark. Although both women were ahead of their day for some aspects of women's rights, they were also behind on issues of race, sexuality and class and the interconnected nature of women's oppression.

It is dangerous to assume that any historical figure would have all the answers to current issues, and this "historian" needs to replace starry-eyed fantasy with pragmatic investigation before trying to pass off this work as infalible.