Recent feminist movements have increasingly advocated for the right to have ownership over their own bodies. This has been achieved under the law. However, these feminist movements have now achieved, not only the right to determine their own bodies but also, the legal right to terminate the life of another human being under the view termed; “right to privacy”. This gender parity has now evolved into a state of gender superiority on this issue to the level in which women not only get to determine the bodies of other people (maintaining a child’s lack of a right to privacy) but also the right to eliminate and terminate a child’s right to life as a matter of convenience. This social parity revolution, which has led to disparity both in the father’s right to determine his child’s future and the child’s right to life, is now having serious consequences towards the existence of those individuals who are the innocent result of social pains and pleasures.
Now, it is an unfortunate consequence of third wave feminism that has allowed us to be under the illusion that the issue of abortion, in relation to reproductive rights, is to be highlighted as a right of privacy and, thus, a right that overalls a potential right to life. When historically approached, this contemporary privacy is an exception to a more common rule surrounding feminists regarding the, more important, right to life. To return to the definition used early, which is dispelled as having been mostly abandoned by third wave feminism, feminism is a brand of social philosophy that advocates for all human beings, irrespective of social, political and religious ideology, to obtain basic rights. Thus, feminism has rejected the use of force to control and eliminate anyone who is defined under personhood, which I maintain should be applied to an unborn foetus.
Founded by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792, there is an organisation, based around this specific issue, called “Feminists for Life”, that has campaigned for the rights of an unborn child for over 200 years. Wollstonecraft did not condone those who “either destroy the embryo in the womb or cast it off when born” and further went on to say that “nature in everything deserves respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity”. It would be dishonorable not to mention that Mary Wollstonecraft died from complications following the birth of her second baby girl, who was subsequently and named Mary in respect to her mother. Younger Mary would later become a great writer, producing one of the greatest novels to ever address to issue of violating nature; Frankenstein (written by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley).
Writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley inspired many women to speak up on issues of politics and civil rights. 50 years after the publication of Frankenstein, two inspired American women, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady, traveled to England to fight against the slave trade and campaign for its abolition. Having been disgustingly barred to speak, due to issues regarding their gender, both Mott and Cady were determined to start their own conventions in order to aid in the advancement of the rights of women. Around this time in America women were denied suffrage or the ability to legally own property, manage their own income, sit on juries and testify on their own behalf. Nevertheless, despite facing a situation and an environment similar to those of developing countries today, the early American feminists were opposed to the belief that one has a right to terminate a pregnancy and those who cite the right to privacy as a reason. They maintained worth in all human lives. Abortion was nevertheless quite popular in America at the time and leading feminists such as Sarah Norton, who successfully argued for Women to be admitted to Cornell University, wrote in 1870, rather aggressively it must be said, that “Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned” and that “perhaps there will come a day when……the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with”.
in 1868, Eleanor Kirk made the comparison between the fight for women’s suffrage and the fight to maintain the rights of the unborn child. It was often used in arguments against the right for women’s suffrage that women do not need the vote because she and her husband are one. Kirk made the link and asked what would become of children if husbands refused to provide for them. She asked “what will become of the babies and you? Can you not see that the idea is to educate women that they may be self-reliant, self-sustaining and self-respected? The wheel is a big one, and needs a strong push, and a push all together, giving to it an impulse that will keep it constantly revolving, and the first revolution must be female suffrage”.
With no known exceptions, early feminists refuse to condone abortion with early feminist media representing this viewpoint consistently. In the feminist newspaper, “The Revolution”, founder Susan B Anthony refused to publish any advertisement or publication in favour of, what she called, “foeticides and Infanticides”. Anthony wrote that those women who sought, and successfully obtained, such a medical procedure were responsible for their actions but also highlighted that the main reason they sought such a procedure was because they lacked the appropriate and necessary financial and emotional support to have their child. She asked, in her pieces on abortion, if women were “guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the women is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!” The first woman to run for president (in 1872), Victoria Woodhull, wrote that “the rights of children, then, as individuals, begin while they yet remain the foetus”. She further went on to say that “pregnancy is not a disease, but a beautiful office of nature”.
Considering that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that leads to the contradiction of the view that feminists must be pro choice, there is an excuse, often used, that these women base their opinions on Victorian attitudes towards sex. This is disingenuous at best. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is not someone who aptly fitted this attitude towards sex as she was well known to have paraded around in public visibly showing her bump whilst pregnant. She very much celebrated womanhood and pregnancy in a very public manner not a taste that would be likely to have been encouraged in Victorian Britain.
So how has feminism divorced itself from its pro-life roots? One will find that it has not been in an entirely generous or genuine manner. The two founders of the National Association to Repeal Abortion Laws are mostly responsible. Larry Lader felt that abortion was a necessary tactic for population control and his cofounder, Dr Bernard Nathanson, witnessed an abortion that was botched in Chicago and thus felt that if abortion was legalised then it would be safer for those who undergo the procedure not an entirely unreasonable point of view I must add however it would also be reasonable to add that, later in his life, Nathanson became a pro-life campaigner. Nevertheless, in the 1970s, these two men were the leading spokespeople for the pro-choice cause, however they failed to persuade legislators of their point of view.
It was at this point that the two men saw an opportunity to exploit the feminist movement. According to Nathanson, Lader approached the women’s movement, arguing that if women wish to have equal treatment in education and employment then they should not expect educators and employers to make assurances for pregnancy. This point was picked up in 1973 by Sarah Weddington (the attorney involved in the Roe vs Wade case that outlined that women have a constitutional right to an abortion) who detailed the prejudices faced by women who are pregnant. However, she did not focus her argument on the situations in which women are being discriminated against or those who are doing the discrimination (which seems to be an evasion of the problem) but instead she argued that women have the right to submit to such injustices and prejudices by terminating a pregnancy. Is it unreasonable to wonder what the consequences would have been if Weddington had focussed her expertise and opportunity to attack the institution that placed women under this discriminatory language? Through the acceptance of such generalisations in the workplace and educational environments there is a similar acceptance of widespread idleness when it came to supporting women with their pregnancies. Thus the Roe vs Wade court ruling undermined the support that women needed to deal with their pregnancies.
beyond the Edge of reason 