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Palin's feminist right to choose
Q: Can you be a feminist and oppose abortion in all circumstances? Can you be a person of faith and support abortion in some circumstances?
I have to admit that when I saw Sarah Palin on TV recently, standing in front of a backdrop emblazoned with the name of Susan B. Anthony, going on about her usual "gun, guts, and glory" topics, I thought, "What is that humming noise I hear? Could it be Susan B. turning in her grave?!"
After all, this is the same Susan B. Anthony who was a staunch Quaker pacifist! A tee-total Quaker pacifist, at that. No "knocking back a brewsky with the boys after a fun day on the shooting range" with Susie! Moreover, this is the same Susan B. Anthony who practiced civil disobedience; opposed capital punishment, and was so opposed to conventional religion that she eventually found a home among Unitarians. I'm not picturing her and Sarah Palin hanging out together.
But on second thought, this is also the Susan B. Anthony who promoted a woman's right to vote, to own property, to be an equal partner in marriage, to make her own decisions. She is one of the women Margaret Hope Bacon lists among her "mothers of feminism." And what does Sarah Palin represent if not the end product of the long struggle for women to enter fully into the political, social, religious, and economic mainstream of society? Furthermore, if one of the goals of feminism is to celebrate a woman's "right to choose," to hold her own opinions and make her own decisions, then Sarah Palin may well be the pin-up poster for the movement! G-d forbid! But the logic seems almost inexorable. Aren't feminists supposed to get "all mavericky" on us, after all?
That's the easy part. Weighing in on the abortion issue, however, is a minefield. I may not have much experience with the real thing (either abortion or minefields!), but I know explosive issues when I see them. As is appropriate in such situations, I would be wise simply to walk around it! Instead, I'm going to wade in...knowing full well I'm likely to have the thing blow up in my face.
Let me first state, though, that I don't believe a person can be "pure" on this topic - short of being an absolute saint. We are all inconsistent; we all "fall short of the glory of G-d." Sarah Palin is "pro-life" yet supports capital punishment, blowing the dickens out of our "enemies," and sending any human being that G-d didn't create with a U.S. passport packing back to their g-dawful situation. What's so "pro-life" about that?
And here I am a convinced conscientious objector, opposed to the death penalty, believe in "that of G-d in everyone," soft on immigration, and yet provided the money needed by a friend back in college to travel to New York to get an abortion when she experienced the after-effects of waking up after a drunken night in the bed of a drugged out stranger.
Sounds like Sarah and I are both "pro-choice." You make the best choices you can out of the information you have within the circumstances that confront you. And we are both "pro-life." I admire her choice not to seek an abortion when she learned that her child had Down's Syndrome. I, too, believe that we shouldn't be casual about ending a life - no matter when it started, where it started, or how long ago it started.
I believe one can be a feminist and be opposed to abortion. Feminism, at least in part, is about the freedom to make ones own decisions. When one starts making decisions for other people, though, we're on a different playing field.
I believe one can be a person of faith and support abortion. If one can be a person of faith like Sarah Palin and claim that G-d blesses troops in their destruction of other human lives, then a person can be faithful and hold that in certain circumstances a difficult decision must be made between one life and another.
None of these decisions is easy. We fumble our way forward with the best lights we have. I gave the money to that first-year in college friend of mine to get an abortion, believing it was the right thing to do, given the information I had at the time. Would I make the same decision now? I honestly don't know. Am I glad there is a law that allows me to make that decision after careful discernment? Yes.
So, WWSBD? (What Would Susan B. Do?) I have no idea. Her beliefs changed over the course of her life - a testament to her dictum of freedom of choice and the right to decide for oneself. She would probably struggle on the horns of a dilemma, just like the rest of us. That women as well as men are engaged in the struggle to determine the meaning in their lives, however, is also a testament to her contributions to feminism.
By
Max Carter
|
May 17, 2010; 3:49 PM ET
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Posted by: PSolus | May 21, 2010 5:48 PM
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Thanks, Rachel; good commentary. Right-on, as usual, even back in Earlham days!
As for the person asking about "G-d," that's my own way of honoring the Jewish tradition (not my own) of not writing the Divine Name. Picked it up in graduate school and like the idea of avoiding "idolizing" the Divine.
Posted by: mcarter1 | May 21, 2010 1:52 PM
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Max, you show well why it is that people who oppose abortion hurt their cause by supporting other forms of violence such as war and executions. But doesn't it work both ways? I know many people who won't take peace activists seriously on similar reasoning. How can people say they oppose killing people for heinous crimes but then acquiese to killing tiny babies? Such people will only listen to those of us peace advocates who are also pro-life on abortion. And as a Quaker pacifist myself, I do believe it's quite possible to be consistent across the board. The common term for that is the consistent life ethic.
As for the views of Susan B. Anthony, you can see an article she wrote on the subject at www.prolifequakers.org/susanb.htm. Here you see that her opposition to what she calls infanticide is strong, but also strong about getting to the roots, which she identifies as the fact that a woman doesn't have the right to control her own body -- her husband does. While we've improved on that somewhat, we unfortunatelyy still have plenty of men who see themselves as lords of the sexual relationship, and ready access to abortion serves the interests of male irresponsibility and self-righteousness about avoiding child support payments.
If war involves killing, and executions involve killing, and abortion involves killing, then in all cases, we can find that there are similar reactions -- killing is traumatic to those who do it, so they come up with PTSD symptoms -- and similar reasoning is used to justify the killing by dehumanizing the victims. Violence promises a quick fix, but it's deceptive, because its results haunt us. Nonviolence takes more time and effort, but we end up better off in the long run.
Posted by: drmacnair | May 19, 2010 1:47 PM
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I agree that calling Sarah Palin or the Susan B. Anthony List prolife is narrowing the scope of life to a single issue. The SBA List, unlike the SBA Birthplace in Massachusetts, is using Susan's name in vain. On the other hand, both Sarah Palin and the SBA List are correct in asserting that Susan was prolife on abortion. From www.womenshistory.about.com: "In her writings, Susan B. Anthony occasionally mentioned abortion. Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion which at the time was an unsafe medical procedure for women, endangering their health and life. She blamed men, laws and the 'double standard' for driving women to abortion because they had no other options. ('When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged.' 1869) She believed, as did many of the feminists of her era, that only the achievement of women's equality and freedom would end the need for abortion. Anthony used her anti-abortion writings as yet another argument for women's rights." Ken Maher
Posted by: kerwinru12 | May 19, 2010 11:49 AM
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Max,
What's up with the upper-case "G", followed by a hyphen, and then a lower-case "d"?
Posted by: PSolus | May 18, 2010 2:49 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
"As for the person asking about "G-d," that's my own way of honoring the Jewish tradition (not my own) of not writing the Divine Name."
Have you honored any other (ouch) Jewish (Ouch) traditions (OUCH!)?
"Picked it up in graduate school and like the idea of avoiding "idolizing" the Divine."
What's the difference between "idolizing" the Divine, and idolizing the Divine?
Is the Divine incapable of figuring out that "G-d" really means "God"?
Did I "idolize" or idolize the divine in the sentence above?
If I claim that the "God" in that sentence is picture of Mohammad, wearing a yarmulke, magic underwear, and drinking a beer, have I performed a blasphemous hat trick?
If I told you that it is the tradition of my belief system that wearing a straw hats is tantamount to "idolizing" the Divine, would you stop wearing it?