Feminism, abortion (was Comcast rejects antiwar ad)

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Thu Jan 30 09:23:48 PST 2003


DP writes:
>The modern women's, or feminist, movement, at least when it comes to
>organizations in the political sphere, has pretty much narrowed its main
>issue down to abortion. "Pro choice" is the one thing women apparently
>demand from a Dem candidate above all else.

Just as the Women's Rights Movement ended up simply a suffrage movement. For similar reasons: for women, the right to vote and the right to determine whether we bear children are the rights 'with which we secure all the others.' And if you don't think so, look at how the birth dearth in Europe and Japan has helped maintain funding that helps parents.

This narrowing has not been the choice of the feminists (except some pandering Democrats) but the single-issue focus has weakened us in both cases, not because the position is not a fundamentally important one, but because single-issue movements eventually lose the point of a movement. In the case of abortion it has been made a defensive battle, rather than simply a part of a new way we want to live--which includes a lot better contraceptives (free, of course, along with all other health care), men who wear condoms and don't whine about it (or 'forget'), morning after pill over the counter, sex education that actually teaches about sex, etc. etc.

I don't think you can blame feminists primarily for this defensive focus--it's hard to be wholesided and continue to give good answers while they're shooting at you. Sometimes you just feel like letting 'em have all six. But I think it's worth noting that force, ultimately, is always required to prevent women from having abortions, once we know that they're possible. And even before, if the conditions are bad enough; women enslaved in the Caribbean killed their babies on birth rather than see them enslaved.


>>A venerable feminist slogan is useful here, "If you're against
> > abortion, DON'T HAVE ONE."

No, it goes: Against abortion? Get a vasectomy.


>The are probably occasions where war is justified -- revolutionary and
>liberation struggles, perhaps a few others.

Women are engaged in a struggle to be while we're also those who create other beings--the conditions of creation are in the hands of the workers themselves, whether we think that's proper or whether we think the 'violence' of liberation struggles or abortion happens to be justified. I do.

Jenny Brown



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