A Feminist View

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Registered: 07-11-2006
A Feminist View
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Wed, 09-24-2008 - 6:43pm

http://www.salemnews.com/puopinion/local_story_266231148.html

>>My View: This feminist won't be voting for McCain/Palin
by Kathy L. Abbott, Salem Evening News, September 23, 2008

It's hard these days to figure out what a feminist looks like.
A hundred years ago any woman asking for the right to vote was deemed a feminist. Today it's not just going to the voting booth that makes you a feminist, but who you vote for once you're inside.

Fifty years ago demanding the right to work made you a feminist. (Even I remember the pain of hearing my high-school English teacher tell us that it made no sense to hire women. They were just going to get married, get pregnant, and quit anyway, so why not give the job to a man in the first place.) Today women are not only expected to work, they are also expected to pull double duty and raise their children at the same time.

Forty years ago asking for the right to choose an abortion automatically made you a feminist. Today abortion is often seen as a religious decision rather than a woman's issue.

Thirty years ago a woman had to fight to keep her maiden name. Today my lesbian niece fights to have the same last name as her legally married partner.

What does a feminist look like today? All my life I've been an active feminist. But these days when I advise women to breast-feed their babies for at least two years, people often think that my advice implies that I don't value a woman's right to work. (I'm a professional lactation consultant. Two years is the recommendation from the World Health Organization.)

When I was young I worked hard for a woman's right to work and to push through all those glass ceilings. Now that I've been a mother for 11 years, I find myself working equally hard for the right to stay home and do what only a woman can do — mother her own babies.

I find it scandalous that the United States is one of only three countries in the world that does not legally guarantee a woman's right to maternity leave (paid or unpaid).
For me, becoming a mother radically changed my outlook on what a feminist should look like. Because only women can get pregnant, give birth, or breast-feed, I now see the issues surrounding these events as not only women's issues, but as feminist issues. When women are discriminated against for choosing the "mommy track" or for demanding a decent six months off for maternity leave, or fighting for the right to pump their breasts at work (nurses and teachers have to fight the hardest for this one!), I feel compelled to raise my voice in solidarity. For me, accommodating the realities of motherhood is the greatest feminist issue we face today!

As for abortion, getting pregnant made me rethink that as well. Because I was 38 when I got pregnant I was at a high risk for Down syndrome. Before conceiving, my husband and I talked about terminating if tests showed a high probability of risk.

But then I actually got pregnant. Despite my husband's wishes I refused to even take the test. I was ready and wanted this baby, normal or not.

It shocked me that I would feel so strongly about this. But the bottom line was it was my choice, not my husband's, not my government's, but mine alone. It was a choice only I could make. I intend to fight for my daughter's right to choose as well.

So what does a feminist look like today?

On the surface Sarah Palin does look like a feminist. She's a working mom who not only votes but who has risen high in political office. But what I see is a politician who has taken a very strong stand against a woman's right to choose an abortion. What I see is the mother of a 4-month-old baby with Down syndrome who is not only working as the governor of a large state, but is now running for vice president.

Here I am fighting to give women the right to stay at home with their newborns for at least six months, and Palin is out there using her 4-month-old infant for photo-ops in a run for the White House.

Today a feminist looks very different to me than when I was in my 20s. Today, in my mind at least, a feminist is a person, male or female, who fights for equal rights for women, who fights for a woman's right to determine what happens to her body, and who fights for her right to actively mother her own children.

Times change, the things we fight for change, the face of feminism changes. Thirty years ago I would have been overjoyed to see a woman on the GOP ticket. I would have automatically assumed that she was a feminist and that we shared the same values.

But today it is clear that Palin and I do not share the same values. For 30 years I have let my feminist values determine which lever I will pull when I step into the voting booth, and this year will be no different.

So please tell Sen. McCain that even though I think it was a gutsy move to put a woman on his ticket, the woman he chose does not in my mind represent today's feminists. And because he chose Sarah Palin, Sen. McCain will not be getting my vote this year. <<

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Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: nisupulla
Fri, 09-26-2008 - 10:12pm

Pro-life doesn't mean women can't think whatever they want, it just means women can't DO whatever they want in the instance when it involves taking away another human being's right to life.

And where a woman gets to choose to sacrifice the life of another for her own personal purposes and objectives, that suddenly isn't about equal rights for women, but it has become about claiming superior rights of women over others--especially others less able to defend themselves and their right to life.

The pro-choice feminism IS about limiting a woman's right to think and believe freely--thus your original question to me: how can I be pro-life and pro-woman at the same time? Feminism would limit my thoughts and beliefs to their own, or stamp my forehead with the Sexist Bigot stamp. That's not a feminism of unity, of openness, of diversity, of tolerance. That is a feminism of only its own choices, values and beliefs--and is a closed clique, open only to the ones who fall in step with the pro-choice movement.

Feminism is a cute name for Women For Abortion Rights. As a woman, you can support almost any cause. But be pro life? That's where the tolerance of feminism for women's values and choices draws their line.

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Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: nisupulla
Fri, 09-26-2008 - 10:12pm

Isn't is so strange that every single issue that NOW puts into the category of "reproductive rights" actually relates to the rights of women to STOP the process of reproduction.

Why don't they just drop the euphemism and just call it what it is...abortion rights? Or doesn't that sound as pretty?

http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/roe30/timeline.html

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siggy1
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Registered: 07-11-2006
In reply to: nisupulla
Fri, 09-26-2008 - 10:34pm

>>Pro-life doesn't mean women can't think whatever they want, it just means women can't DO...<<

Oops, I see you slipping back into that dichotomous thinking again. What is it that the pro-choice insists that all women DO?

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Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: nisupulla
Fri, 09-26-2008 - 10:56pm

Once again, you seem to have missed the point that there is no right or guarantee in our society to the unfettered right or freedom to choose what we want to do, especially when it violates the rights of others. My actual right to swing my arm from side to side is curtailed by the government: my right to swing my arm ends where your body begins. At that point, it shifts from freedom to move my arm to assault. For me, freedom to choose what to do with your body shifts to murder when it involves death to another human being.

Pro-lifers are exactly like people who are anti-child abuse (that's not anti-parent), pro-rape laws (which are not anti-male, or anti-sex), pro-homicide laws (which are not anti-self defense). Pro life is pro-baby, not anti-woman. And it's about the boundaries of our rights. You have the right to be free from pregnancy? What right is that, and where is it located? You say keep the laws off your body? I say there need to be laws in place to make sure that people keep their choices off the body of another human being--even if it's too young to make its desire to live known.

It's not an unheard of concept in our law to have laws that limit our physical rights and freedoms to allow for the free exercise of the rights of another person to live--in fact, it's a basic part of what keeps us a civilized society, and not one that allows murders, rapes, child labor, arson, and assaults. It is laws that restrict what one might do with their body that will prevent us from becoming a nation known for the unique practice of delivering the head of a full term infant, stabbing it in the head with a scissors, and sucking its brain out into a storm drain. Oh, wait, I think that already happened.

I won't associate with a group of women who see that as an accomplishment. And I think feminists ought to drop the charade that they are for women as a whole, and be straight that they are ONLY concerned for women who want abortion as a cultural institution, government funded, and a nationally subsidized practice for medical, health, or birthcontrol purposes--and they should publicly announce the slogan "Abortion: for any reason or no reason", because that's ALL they really care about.

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siggy1
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Registered: 07-11-2006
In reply to: nisupulla
Sat, 09-27-2008 - 4:17am

>>For me, freedom to choose what to do with your body shifts to murder when it involves death to another human being. <<

Right. You believe that you have a right to impose that belief on me and any other woman. That's been my point.

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Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: nisupulla
Sat, 09-27-2008 - 11:02am

It's not a belief--it's applying what is actually already a law to an unborn baby. The law made an exception to the murder laws for unborn babies before a certain date of gestation. Prior to Roe v. Wade, there were state laws criminalizing abortion for precisely that reason. Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion at a federal level. The Constitution, in my narrow reading, doesn't grant that power to the federal government. It's no more my beliefs dictating what you can do with your body than a murder statute is someone else forcing their beliefs on your body.

It isn't my belief that an embryo is a human being, it's a scientific fact: it has human DNA, it has a gender. Extending that fact, I believe it's a person as well. That isn't religious, it's a direct and narrow reading of the Constitution's plain language. And it's just as much your BELIEF that a unborn baby is not deserving of rights as is my BELIEF that it is. And you are stripping another human being of a right to live, just as much as I am stripping another person of the "right" not to be pregnant--however, the right to live is a Constitutional guarantee, and there actually isn't a right not to be pregnant.

So, in fact, the way I see it, because there is not a right not to be pregnant, but there IS a right to life, the embryo has the only actual federal right that can be legally protected.

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siggy1
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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-11-2006
In reply to: nisupulla
Sat, 09-27-2008 - 12:21pm

>>It isn't my belief that an embryo is a human being, it's a scientific fact:<<

Agreed, but whether or not it's human is not the question. The question is when is it a person?

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Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: nisupulla
Sat, 09-27-2008 - 12:29pm

And I believe it's a person at conception, and you believe it's a person at some arbitrary date or time period that makes it more convenient for women to dispose of it.

And your position is just as much a belief as mine.

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siggy1
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Registered: 10-26-2003
In reply to: nisupulla
Sat, 09-27-2008 - 1:18pm

<>

true those are two beliefs, but it appears you have characterized one of them as less valid than the other - implying selfishness for a choice that is "convenient". while i know that is your perception, i would describe the position as "some time period that ... in your belief system signals the beginning of viable life." i do have a problem with late-term abortion and even mid-term abortion. but i don't have a problem with the right to a termination up to 8 weeks. (and i'm not advocating that as a method of birth control, because i know someone will try to take it there; i'm leaving it as a matter of choice.)

but if you believe it's person at conception, then how do you deal with the harvesting of embryos for future reproduction? not stem cell research, but use of multiple embryos for the purpose of producing a child for infertile couples?

http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_inco.htm

Bea

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