Feminism for Life

Gratitude Challenge - Week 31 - Core Value

When I tell people I am a pro-life, Catholic feminist, they treat me like an oxymoron. In a way, I am. Many outspoken feminists are decidedly pro-choice, advocating a woman's right to choose. 

I wholeheartedly believe that feminism is about a woman's right to choose. Women should be free to choose careers, motherhood, or both. Women should be free to choose to wear makeup or not. Women should be free to be whoever they want to be, just as men are. This is the essence of equality, presenting all the choices.

But a baby is not your body; a baby's life is not your life. A baby is a new person, a new life. 

In fact, abortion undermines the very equality feminism attempts to protect. By ending pregnancies, society tells women there is something wrong with their bodies, something that makes them inferior.

Frederica Mathewes-Green, a pro-life feminist, writes, "No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a tap, wants to gnaw off its own leg."

She goes on to say, "Essentially, we've agreed to surgically alter women so that they can get along in a man's world."

That being said, I do not think the solution to abortion lies in defunding Planned Parenthood, which diagnoses more cancer and aids more low-income women than it performs abortions. I do not think the solution to abortion lies within sign-holding and protesting, no matter how noble the motives. I do not even think the solution to abortion rests on overturning the multiple Supreme Court cases responsible for this "right", for it is quite obvious that illegal abortions will be obtained.

Abortion will only end when the general public loses the stigma surrounding unplanned pregnancies. When we offer love and care, women will no longer have to make a choice. Being truly pro-life means that we not only fight for the unborn, but we fight for the women, their partners, and the children who are born. If we merely fight for the unborn, pro-life philosophies easily become pro-birth, losing perspective on the thousands of people living in poverty around the world, particularly women and children.

Pro-life means an end to slut-shaming and a start to more love. Pro-life means supporting women not only through pregnancy, but after, when a child's needs increase. When we end the obsessive focus on choices, pro-life becomes pro-woman.