I did not vote for President-Elect Donald Trump and continue to question his fitness to serve. Thus I am unsurprised that hundreds of thousands of women would want to protest his election this coming Saturday, the day after the inauguration. I am surprised, however, that the leaders of the Women’s March on Washington—and most feminists today—are so unwilling to listen to an alternative feminist perspective, one with deep roots in feminist history and a good deal to offer to women today.
As a pro-choice activist who helped lead my college’s Women’s Center in the 1990s, and now, decades later, as a pro-life feminist, I too have looked forward to the day when a strong and accomplished woman would lead our nation. But however strong and accomplished, Secretary Clinton was not the woman for me. To me she represents all the contradictions of abortion rights feminism, contradictions also conspicuous in the guiding principles of the Women’s March. In my view, an authentic women’s movement—one that properly extols human dignity, care, and non-violence—must be unabashedly pro-life.
With both Trump’s inauguration and the 44th anniversary of Roe v Wade decision fast approaching, I have been concerned that Donald Trump the man—as president of the United States—would actually strengthen in the American imagination the popular feminist fallacy that abortion is necessary to women’s equality. After all, Donald Trump as “pro-life candidate” fit perfectly the pro-choice caricature of an abortion opponent: degrading to and disrespectful of women. If I could say just one thing to those at the Women’s March, it would be this: the constitutional right to abortion has only made men like Trump worse.
Contraception fails. It just does. But constitutionalizing the right to abortion as Roe did in January 1973 hasn’t relieved women of the consequences of sex or the vulnerabilities of pregnancy. Rather it has detached men even further from sex’s procreative potential and, for the poor in particular, increased the vulnerability of both women and children. That is, easy abortion empowers the male illusion that sex can finally be completely consequence-free. For men, anyway.
Read more at CNN.
Louisiana voters approve Amendment 1 to exclude ‘right to abortion’ from state constitution 
Election Results Are In: Christ Still On His Throne 
Election will be meaningless if we don’t change our ways