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Thoughts of a Pro-Life Feminist
| Article
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19638 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
7,251 Words |
| Author
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Camille S. Williams
Camille S. Williams has taught philosophy at Brigham Young
University and writes on family-related issues. |
"Can you imagine a woman who does not feel as you feel?" My questioner was a representative of Planned Parenthood who met with our local pro-life group to explore areas of mutual concern. We expected to disagree about abortion, but we all want to improve the lives of women and their families.
"I believe that abortion hurts individual women and the status of women in general," I'd told her.
Her kindly asked, obvious question is one I'm still trying to answer. Her implicit question is a painful one: What if you're wrong?
I've worked in nickel and dime pro-life groups for more than ten years--maybe someone belongs to a rich, powerful pro-life lobby, but my work in three stages has been on the grassroots level, where work subsists on monies from bake sales and small donations from individuals. Volunteers pay for newsletter printing and mailing, gather maternity and infant clothes for poor women, purchase and donate books and educational materials to students and libraries. Pro-life work has been an expensive, sometimes frustrating avocation.
If I am wrong, if abortion does not hurt any of us, then I have wasted time, money, and effort trying to cure a problem that does not exist; worse, I may have hurt women by my misguided attempts to "help" them.
"Your view of children, of the family, is the views of the bourgeoisie," my British friend commented. "I am certain that if abortion had been safe earlier, people would have gone for it."
"Abortion doesn't have to be violent," my friend the writer told me. Our grandmothers knew of herbal abortifacients, she pointed out. Once aborting moves from a surgical procedure to a self-administered chemical process, she expects my revulsion toward abortion will decrease.
"The point is this," my friend, a professor of political science, tells me, "you value human life; you think the unborn child is from the beginning human life, so abortion bothers you. But you can't universalize your feelings. Not every woman believes the fetus is alive, so abortion doesn't have the same meaning for them that it has for you." I listened to her tick off the problems with my position. "Besides," she told me parenthetically, "I think you're in conflict about this--you want women to have a choice, but you don't like abortion. That's what
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