Pro-life feminism is not an oxymoron: The feminist case against abortion

By NADIA POZO
CS&T Staff Writer

“Every 38 seconds in this rich country, a woman lays her body down for an abortion because of a lack of emotional and financial support,” said Serrin Foster, President of Feminists for Life of America at the last Theology on Tap of the summer. “We stand in solidarity with women who feel they have had an abortion because they had no choice.”
Feminists for Life, a nonprofit organization that champions the rights of women and children in the footsteps of the early feminists, works toward eliminating some fundamental causes of abortion: lack of support and financial resources for pregnant women.
“President Lincoln once said the way to move a nation is to promote a thought,” Foster said to the 200 young adults present. “Once that happens, there will be an avalanche, and it’s coming by the women who have had abortions, siblings that have been left behind, and men who thought they had no choice. Women deserve better, but it’s not going to happen until women stand up and demand better.”
Recalling the history of the feminist movement in the United States, Foster reminded the crowd that 150 years ago, the founders of the movement were staunchly opposed to abortion.
Foster said early feminists believed in the basic human right to life and in respect for human dignity, and saw abortion as one of a number of societal ills that oppressed women, including the lack of education, deprivation of legal and financial rights, and domestic violence.
According to Foster, Susan B. Anthony called abortion “child murder;” Elizabeth Cady Stanton called it “the most degrading and disgusting crime,” and Alice Paul saw it as “the ultimate exploitation of women.”
Quoting Sarah Norton, the first woman to go to Cornell University and a leader of the women’s suffrage movement, Foster said the situation surrounding abortion in the 1800s led Norton to write in the Woodhull’s and Claffin’s Weekly on November 19, 1870:
“Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned. … Is there no remedy for all this ante-natal child murder? … Perhaps there will come a time when … an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her motherhood … and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with.”
Today, the general public sanctions abortion, and the feminist movement has made legalized abortion its leading cause in the movement, calling abortion a basic women’s right, Foster said.
The feminists of the 60’s were lied to by Dr. Bernard Nathanson and the other founders of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), who convinced them that women were dying in great numbers from illegal abortions, she said.
But Foster quoted Nathanson, who later converted to Catholicism, as acknowledging: “‘We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S.’”
In his book, Confessions of an Ex-Abortionist (Regenery Publishers, 1997) Nathanson wrote, “The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law.”
Controlling women’s fertility through abortion was also seen as a way to find equality in the work place, Foster said. As a result of this misinformation and growing careerism, the feminist movement rallied around abortion rights, she said.
Since abortion was legalized 31 years ago in the United States, Foster said, the results have been an increase in child abuse; a total of $90 billion in uncollected child support; overwhelming numbers of fatherless inmates in jail and prison; a disproportionate number of fatherless teens becoming pregnant, increasing post-abortion syndrome in women who have had abortions, an increase in breast cancer linked to abortions; an increase of substance abuse, by women who have had abortions, and numerous other negative effects on women’s health, Foster said.
“Women deserve better,” she said. “We must refuse to choose between our careers and our children. We need to have a new outlook: ‘Is this the best we can do? Is this good for women?’ We need to challenge the status quo. We need to look to see what women need. This is how we can redirect the abortion debate into energy that produces women-centered solutions.”
Foster encouraged the students in her audience, especially those from area universities such as Villanova University and the University of Pennsylvania, to help Feminists for Life’s campus outreach center, which works to provide assistance to pregnant students finishing college while carrying through on their pregnancies.
She encouraged young professionals to give their talents to organizations that do pro-life, pro-women work, such as Feminists for Life, and to volunteer in pregnancy centers, daycare centers and other organizations that help women have their children.
“After 31 years, women have proved that we can make it in a man’s world,” Foster said. “But now we have to prove that we can make it in this world as women.”
To learn more about Feminists for Life or to make a donation visit www.feministsforlife.org, call (202) 737- FFLA or send donation to Feminists for Life of America, Dept 0641, Washington D.C. 20073.

Contact Nadia Pozo at npozo@adphila.org or (215) 965-4614.