And while I noted that Western thought has been laden with sexist, racist, classist baggage, and admitted the impossibility of escaping that, you’ll also see that I didn’t actually use Margaret Sanger (that was something of a strawman up above). I instead was looking at much more recent work, that I think goes far in correcting for her many mistakes (as many fields tend to do). We inevitably draw on that canon of thought, but I think there are strategic ways to do so, remembering the cultural and historical forces that shaped people’s thoughts. So while I might see Mary Lyon as very progressive in her views on women’s education, I might also choose to see some of her other ideas as something I would not want to perpetuate. It’s much like MHC’s desire to play up the “physical education” component, while ignoring the fact that Lyon would likely be appalled at our secular, pants-wearing, all sexualities welcome campus. That’s why I don’t see Stanton and Anthony as the go-to women for thinking of feminism today, because I think there are many points at which they couldn’t/ didn’t go beyond their cultural moment.

And after having many talks in class about “monolithic motherhood” or womanhood, I still disagree. Many women don’t feel that connection, and that shouldn’t be considered some biological lack on their part, or an emotional shortcoming. Some women don’t feel depressed after abortions, others do. Pregnancy is a profoundly individual experience, even as it’s simultaneously collective. (To define women by their reproductive potential has also been challenged repeatedly (especially thinking of Butler here, and of a continuum rather than a binary of sex/gender)).

I also feel like the abandoment issue is important, and I trust that you’re right that Roe has had some influence on people’s attitudes toward unplanned pregnancies. I’m wondering though, if the bargaining power of pregnancy is really something that women should want to have. It seems much more to the point to not have unplanned pregnancies in the first place. This is completely random, but I once read this science fiction novel, Engine Summer… it has the most interesting birth control method, as women seem to have a “virus” or something that prevents pregnancy until they actually take a pill that restores fertility. I thought that was so interesting! I wish that men and women could so easily plan for a pregnancy these days.

That being said, I think it would be difficult to trace men’s abandonment rates solely to Roe v. Wade. One could just as easily attribute it to other factors in a society that has become increasingly accustomed to divorce and serial marriages, common law marriages, and “shacking up” (as I remember Dr. Laura used to so eloquently call it). I’m also curious because I actually have never seen any studies on the subject, so I’m not even aware of what the percent increase in abandonment might be.

And the first meaning of the word “incubator,” according to the OED, is actually “a bird which incubates or sits on eggs.” I also used the word because I know many women who would see themselves as incubators (in the more medical sense) if “forced” to carry out a pregnancy. I think it’s dangerous to characterize all women’s relationship to the unborn in a monolithic fashion. While many women embrace the experience of creating life, others see it as an invasion of their bodily integrity. If NARAL is at all guilty of dissociating women from the unborn, then the cult of motherhood is thrice guilty of imposing an idealized vision of the experience of pregnancy, which has been very damaging to those women who do not see the experience as a blessing or a joy. Some women are incredibly nurturing and enjoy that role, while others do not fit into our stereotypes of what a mother is (much as some men are more connected with their children than others).

Whatever you think of Margaret Sanger, that doesn’t nullify the fact that she did do some good in bringing forth birth control rights, and that her grandson is not attempting to further any eugenicist claims. Further, if we decided to reject every thinker’s/activist’s/politician’s work on the basis of their misguided beliefs, we would also have to reject nearly the entire canon of Western thought. Aristotle believed that women of Athens (at least upper class women) should never leave the house. It has been persuasively argued persuasively that the Bible contains much sexist baggage from the cultural context it emerged from. Italians in the 16th century debated as to whether women even had souls. Many early presidents owned slaves. I’m not sure what you are trying to prove by pointing out the problems with Sanger’s views. Further, I didn’t quote Margaret Sanger or rely upon her views in any way.

And if you read my posts, you would see that the term ‘incubator” was being borrowed from what many feminists have called the symbolic result of strict anti-abortion stances. You will see similar characterizations emerging from the famous but disputed violinist analogy, that is basically comparing pregnant women to dialysis machines in order to point out that the state is requiring a similar role from women. Obviously not every woman feels that way about her pregnancy/potential to be pregnant — but other women do, and it would be blatant essentialism to expect every woman to embrace an unwanted pregnancy on the basis of her being female. Feminists see women as having equal rights to men in deciding whether their bodily and emotional resources will be used to support or develop another life.

Again, considering the great number of brilliant feminist theorists that have thought and written on the abortion issue, I cannot take the claim that abortion has furthered the patriarchy at face value. Men have been abandoning women and leaving pregnancies as ‘their problem” for the extent of known history. I’m an English lit person, so I’ll just point out that you can see this in any number of historical texts. I just read The Merchant of Venice for a course I’m taking, and there’s a single mention of a woman — a Moor — who has been impregnated by Lancelot the Clown. That’s the only mention of her, and Lancelot certainly isn’t running off to take care of the results of his actions. Has society really changed so much now that women can decide to terminate a pregnancy if they are in such a situation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

Also, let us not forget that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist. She was not about liberating black women from the bonds of debt and financial insecurity so much as elminating their offspring.

Abortion has not been handed down to our generation with a clean agenda, and has indeed been the vision by which many racists have hoped to achieve their aims. Surprisingly they are achieving those goals as blacks are disproprtionately lining up to suck their children out of their womb, so callously referred as the “incubator.”

Clearly, not all women see or feel the same relation to the unborn that they carry, or might potentially carry. But what I find problematic is trying to force one of these views on an entire population. Most people in this country believe in abortion rights at least for the first trimester — when the vast majority of abortions are performed.

I’ve actually heard it said that, whenever women have asserted their rights as citizens/humans, conservative movements have attempted to limit their access to reproductive control.

Here are a few quotes that I think are useful for thinking of abortion and the feminist movement:

From Rosalind Pollack Petchesky’s The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom:

“Historically, the concept of privacy for American conservatives has included not only “free enterprise” and “property rights” but also the rights of the white male property owner to control his wife and his wife’s body, his children and their bodies, his slaves and their bodies. It is an ideology that is patriarchal and racist as well as capitalist.” (248)

“At first sight, a policy that restricts abortion access for poor women seems in direct contradiction to a decade-long policy of state-sponsored population control among the poor, as a means of diminishing welfare dependency. But neoconservative and New Right thinking about welfare cutbacks and abortion does not represent a pronatalist doctrine so much as a formula for restoring the traditional patriarchal family and the authority of men within it, among the poor as among the middle class.” (250-1)

And from Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century (by Margaret Sanger’s grandson, Alexander Sanger):

“The concept of reproductive freedom has been recognized to some extent throughout human history. Greek and Roman secular law and Jewish and Christian theology all recognized that there were times and circumstances where birth control and abortion were acceptable. At the time when the United States was founded, under English law, birth control and abortion were mostly legal, acceptable, and used.” (21)

I think you may be overestimating the government’s ability to persuade people that the politicians’ “why” coincides with their own beliefs. Prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking alcohol, and the illegality of marijuana certainly hasn’t put a stop to smoking. To assume that our culture will suddenly become “a culture of life” because of a ban on abortion seems naive to me at best, and dangerously blind at worst. I’m in complete sympmathy with wanting to lower our abortion rates — no one wants women to be in a position to make such choices in the first place. I think Carmine touches on a point that is important in thinking about this: are we trying to stop people from having sex, or from having unwanted pregnancies? If the former, good luck. People have been having sex for reasons other than procreation for thousands of years, and I doubt that is going to change. If the latter, then why is the president not taking sex education more seriously? Or efforts to help women find and afford birth control? There was a great news story recently about young women who couldn’t afford birth control even at Planned Parenthood. Absistence-till-marriage programs have been shown to have limited results (I’ve talked about this on my own blog). Basically, it seems that teens wait an average of 18 months longer to lose their virginity. That’s great, but people will eventually have sex, so we should equip them with as much knowledge as possible. Furthermore, during those 18 months teens turn to other sexual behaviors, such as oral or anal sex, believing that they are still virgins (technically).

I am still not convinced that passing this law is the way toward creating a culture of life. It will still mean that women are having pregnancies that they do not want — how are they suddenly going to see a 7th child as a blessing when they can’t afford the 6 they already have? Or come to see an unintentional pregnancy during college as a blessing?

However, although it’s just been hinted at here, abortion is one of the most fundamental choices a society faces (and pro-choicers understand this better than we do). Birth control, contraception, and especially abortion transform sex from a sacred, life creating act into a form of entertainment. The prevalence of consequence free sex is a defining characteristic of the modern West — and I would argue goes a long way towards explaining the demographic decline in Western populations highlighted on this blog, Smash Left Wing Scum, and many other places.

Now, from an individualistic standpoint, there are obvious selfish benefits we get from living at the peak of imperial decadence. However, if we are serious about rebuilding our people and our civilization, we each have to embrace a life-affirming morality and wage a true Counter-Revolution. While there are many ways of accomplishing this, I still think one of the strongest forces (potentially) for Western renewal is the same institution that gave Western Civilization its birth — the Catholic Church.

Now if only I could change the bishops’ minds on illegal immigration…