Feminists for Life Brings Unique Perspective to Abortion Debate

[Socrates]

From: The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Subject: Feminists for Life Brings Unique Perspective to Abortion Debate
Source: ZENIT; May 5, 2003

Feminists for Life Brings Unique Perspective to Abortion Debate

Washington, DC -- To change the abortion culture in the United States and around the world, the debate may have to be reframed and redirected with a focus on both the mother and unborn child [although compare The Vanishing Pro-Life Apologist–Soc.]

Recently, Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life of America, shared her thoughts on pro-life feminism and on trends in the abortion controversy. Her lecture, "The Feminist Case Against Abortion," was included in a 2001 book entitled, "Women's Rights."

Q: Your name, Feminists for Life, strikes some as contradictory. What do you see as the connection between feminism and being pro-life?

Foster: We are often asked: "How dare you call yourself a feminist?" We proudly continue a legacy of pro-life feminism born more than 200 years ago when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." After decrying the sexual exploitation of women, Wollstonecraft condemned those who would "either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born." Shortly thereafter, abortion became illegal in Great Britain.

The now-revered feminists of the 19th century were also strongly opposed to abortion because of their belief in the worth of all humans. Like many women in developing countries today, the early American feminists opposed abortion.

The early feminists understood that, much like today, women resorted to abortion because they were abandoned or pressured by boyfriends, husbands and parents, and lacked financial resources to have the baby on their own. They knew that women had virtually no rights within the family or the political sphere. But they did not believe abortion was the answer.

Abortion was commonplace in the 1800s. Sarah Norton, the first woman to successfully argue admission to Cornell University in New York state, wrote, "Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned. Perhaps there will come a time when an unmarried woman will not be despised because of her motherhood, and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with."

Without known exception, the early American feminists condemned abortion in the strongest possible terms. In Susan B. Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution, abortion was described as "child murder," "infanticide" and "foeticide."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 organized the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, classified abortion as a form of infanticide and said, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." Stanton would raise a flag in front of her home announcing the birth of her children. Women should celebrate their life-giving capacity.

Anti-abortion laws enacted in America during the latter half of the 19th century were the result of advocacy efforts by feminists who worked in an uneasy alliance with the male-dominated medical profession and the mainstream media. Ironically, the anti-abortion laws that early feminists worked so hard to enact to protect women and children were the very ones destroyed by the Roe v. Wade decision 100 years later.

Q: How has feminism, in the wide sense of the word, changed over the years?

Foster: The goals of the 1970s women's movement, led by the National Organization for Women [NOW], with respect to abortion, would have outraged the early feminists.

What Elizabeth Cady Stanton had called a "disgusting and degrading crime" has been heralded by Eleanor Smeal, former president of NOW and current president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority, as a "most fundamental right." NOW hailed the legalization of abortion as the "emancipation of women."

Betty Friedan, credited with reawakening feminism in the 1960s with her landmark book, "The Feminine Mystique," did not even mention abortion in the book's early edition. It was not until 1966 that NOW included abortion in its list of goals. Even then abortion was a low priority.

It was a man, abortion proponent Larry Lader, who credits himself with guiding a reluctant Friedan, the first president of NOW, to make abortion a serious issue for the organization. Lader had been working to repeal the abortion laws based on population-growth concerns, but state legislators were horrified by his ideas. Immigration and improved longevity were fueling America's population growth -- not reproduction, which in fact had declined dramatically.

Lader teamed up with a gynecologist, Bernard Nathanson, to co-found the National Alliance to Repeal Abortion Laws, the forerunner of today's National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League [NARAL]. Lader suggested to the NOW leadership that all feminist demands -- equal education, jobs, pay, etc. -- hinged on a woman's ability to control both her own body and procreation.

After all, Lader argued, employers did not want to pay for maternity benefits or lose productivity when a mother took time off to care for a newborn or sick child. Lader successfully convinced the NOW leadership that legalized abortion was the key to equality in the workplace.

Dr. Nathanson, who later became a pro-life activist, states in his 1979 book, "Aborting America," that the two were able to convince Friedan that abortion was a civil rights issue, and claimed that tens of thousands of women died each year from abortion. Nathanson later admitted that in order to gain Friedan's support, they had simply made up the numbers -- a major point in their argument.

Lader's and Nathanson's strategy was highly effective. NOW has made the preservation of legal abortion its No. 1 priority. Its literature repeatedly states that access to abortion is "the most fundamental right of women, without which all other rights are meaningless." With this drastic change, a highly visible faction of the women's movement abandoned the vision of the early feminists: a world where women would be accepted and respected as women.

Q: Where do you fit in with the bulk of feminists today?

Foster: While we agree on many things -- fighting sexual assault, domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, etc. -- we are at odds with those who believe that abortion is a "right" or "necessary evil" to achieve equality in the workplace.

The basic tenets of feminism are nonviolence, nondiscrimination and justice for all. Abortion violates all three. Abortion is discrimination based on age, size, location, and sometimes gender, disability or parentage. As pro-life feminists, our values are woman-centered and inclusive of both parents and child.

Abortion has hurt women in that it has diverted feminist attention from other issues, particularly those that help mothers, such as affordable child care, comprehensive health care and a living wage.

Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women. Women deserve better than abortion.

We support nonviolent choices, practical resources and support for pregnant and parenting women.

Abortion advocates pit women against our own children. Babies are not obstacles to success! We should refuse to choose between giving up our education and career plans and sacrificing our children. Feminists for Life is committed to finding holistic solutions that address the root causes that contribute to abortion. FFL believes that women have a right to be women in the workplace and school. Women shouldn't have to pass as men.

As FFL's honorary chair, two-time Emmy winner and New York Times best-selling author Patricia Heaton has said, "Women facing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy."

--
We make it easy for you to contribute to the Pro-Life Infonet using
your credit card. Point your web browser to
https://secure.entango.com/donate/pE6bLWyec4s to make a donation online.
To make a contribution via PayPal, email news@prolifeinfo.org for details.

[themuzicman]

It's amazing that women will blind themselves to how far the right to kill has enslaved them.

Michael

[Ryokan]

a small clarification. Infanticide, not abortion, was the method primarily used to deal with unwanted pregnancies in the 1800s. It was actually some womens profession to kill infants, and the rates of death were higher than they are today with abortion. So much for the "good old days" and that old time christian morality.

[Epoetker]

Stats? This, along with the slavery angle, is an old-time issue I'm rather interested in. Like how it got started, what its relationship to slavery was (was it practiced more on slaves) whether it was legally recognized, that sort of thing.

[Socrates]

Ryokan:

• So much for the "good old days" and that old time christian morality.

The only reason to think that there were "good old days" is a bad old memory. Fact is, social morality seems to be cyclic, and sin is always lurking. It's just that in some periods, a general Christian ethos keeps it in check. But there were many periods in the 9th century where this was not widely held in places even like New York, as per the recent movie.

However, it's not just my imagination that at least in Australia, decades ago it was safe to walk the street at night and leave the house and car unlocked.

[Socrates]

From: The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Subject: Risk of Psychiatric Hospitalization Rises After Abortion
Source: Pro-Life Infonet; May 12, 2003

Risk of Psychiatric Hospitalization Rises After Abortion

Springfield, IL - Is abortion a benign experience for women? Or can it cause or contribute to emotional problems, even severe ones?

The American Psychological Association (APA), which has consistently lobbied in favor of abortion rights, has frequently insisted that abortion is a benign experience that predominately brings relief to most women. Some APA members, such as Nancy Adler and Brenda Major of the University of California, have even charged that those who say abortion can cause emotional problems are guilty of misleading the public. To support this view, Adler has argued that abortion is so common that if it did cause
emotional problems, the nation's psychiatric wards would be filled with the evidence.

Now, a new study published in the latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) shows that such evidence does exist. A review of the medical records of 56,741 California Medicaid patients revealed that women who had abortions were 160 percent more likely than delivering women to be hospitalized for psychiatric treatment in the first 90 days following abortion or delivery. Rates of psychiatric treatment remained significantly higher for at least four years. A previously published study by the same authors revealed that women who had abortions were also more likely to require subsequent outpatient mental health care. Depressive psychosis was the most common diagnosis.

According to the CMAJ study's lead author, David Reardon, Ph.D., a common complaint among participants in post-abortion recovery programs is that when they raised the issue of their past abortions while seeking mental health care, their therapists dismissed abortion as irrelevant.

"Therapists who fixate on the 'abortion is benign' theory, either out of ignorance or allegiance to defensive political views on abortion, are doing a great disservice to women who need understanding and support," said Reardon, who recently co-authored a book, Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of abortion. "This study, based on objective medical records, validates the claims of tens of thousands of women in post-abortion recovery programs."

In an invited commentary on the study appearing in the same issue of the CMAJ, Brenda Major, charged that the implication that abortion can cause psychiatric problems is misleading. She aargued other factors, such as marital status or prior psychological problems, may offer better explanations for the fact that psychiatric problems are more common among aborting women.

Reardon concedes that these other factors may also contribute to psychiatric illness but insists that abortion can both aggravate pre-existing problems and trigger new ones.

Reardon called Major's commentary a product of "the abortion distortion effect." He particularly questioned Major's choice to omit from her comments any mention her own study recently published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. That study revealed that 1.4 percent of the women interviewed two years after their abortions suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder solely attributable to their abortions.

Even such a low percentage, projected on the 1.3 million American women undergoing abortions each year, Reardon said, would result in 18,200 cases of PTSD each year, or over a half million cases since 1973. Including other types of negative reactions, he said, would increase the overall complication rate by twenty times or more.

This is the seventh study Reardon and his colleagues have published on abortion complications in the last eighteen months. Among the other studies, also published in major peer reviewed journals, one revealed that among women with an unintended first pregnancy, those who had abortions were at significantly higher risk of clinical depression an average of eight years later compared to similar women who carried their unintended first pregnancies to term. Higher rates of suicide and substance abuse
among women who had abortions were also revealed in the other studies published by the research team.

--
Attention nursing students: The National Association of Pro-life Nurses is now offering their annual $500 scholarship to a pro-life student nurse. To qualify, a recipient must submit the application, be enrolled in a school of nursing, submit a pro-life essay, and have a letter of recommendation from a nursing instructor. The application and details can be obtained on the NAPN Website, http://www.nursesforlife.org.

[Jimmy Higgins]

05-08-2003 @ 12:30 AM post located here
Socrates:
However, it's not just my imagination that at least in Australia, decades ago it was safe to walk the street at night and leave the house and car unlocked.

I'll say red herring. Back in the 70's and 80's, you'd dare not be standing around in Times Square at 1:00 AM. When I went to school in New York, I was in the heart of New York, riding subways well past midnight and was never assaulted, robbed, or even scared.

I don't need to lock my door, I don't at home. Haven't had a problem once. There was no good ole times. Its all hidden in the blindness of ignorance, that things had to have been better. They haven't. This is life.

[themuzicman]

05-07-2003 @ 08:58 PM post located here
Epoetker:



Stats? This, along with the slavery angle, is an old-time issue I'm rather interested in. Like how it got started, what its relationship to slavery was (was it practiced more on slaves) whether it was legally recognized, that sort of thing.

Both deal with whether a human being has rights. Both failed to really deal with the obvious issue at hand.

REad the Dred Scot and Roe v. Wade rulings back to back, sometime. It's chilling how similar they are.

Michael

[Satori]

I assume you folks who are anti-abortion are also opposed to the death penalty. If you aren't, then you are a truly hypocrites.

Imagine, giving more regard to a clump of cells (which doesn't even have the ability to think) than to a living breathing adult who is unable to follow the rules of a given society. No wonder you are so confused.

Satori

[Satori]

Hey Mike, your sig gave me a little chuckle:

"If everything that happens is fixed, who caused it?"

2 things:

1) the idea that everything that happens is fixed in a perception and nothing more. It is no more "real" than the colour green or the sound of a bell, it's just an idea originating from mind, just a speculation, and that's all it is. The map is not a perfect representation of the territory, as much as you would probably like to believe that it is.

2) who caused it? Oh dear. Why is it so fashionable to jump to the conclusion that everything has a cause, and that that "cause" must be an intelligent entity of sort sort? It's simply short-sighted at best, but I think it's actually absurd and unreasonable. As you can now hopefully see, the question makes several quantum leaps of logic and assumes way too much to even be worthy of consideration.

Given this, I thought it was a little comical that you would have it as your sig, and I felt that it should be pointed out in case it was never brought to your attention up until this point.

best wishes,

Satori

[Piebald]

I assume you folks who are anti-abortion are also opposed to the death penalty. If you aren't, then you are a truly hypocrites.

I support the death penalty for any fetus convicted of homicide.

Oh, wait a minute ...

/hide Actually I don't support the death penalty at all.

[Prunesquallor]

Yesterday @ 09:43 PM post located here
Satori:

I assume you folks who are anti-abortion are also opposed to the death penalty. If you aren't, then you are a truly hypocrites.

Imagine, giving more regard to a clump of cells (which doesn't even have the ability to think) than to a living breathing adult who is unable to follow the rules of a given society. No wonder you are so confused.

Satori

Unable or unwilling- the fact is you don't make the distinction. Anyone who commits a crime (excepting the severly mentally ill) always has a choice whether or not to do this, or that- to feed the cat or kill the neighbor. By the logic that you use in this post, we should punish nobody for anything- after all, we all are "unable" to follow the laws. The bottom line is that this has no relation to the argument whatsoever- it is a technique of distraction to keep the discussion away from the real debate- which you seem to be scared you will lose- why else are you misdirecting us? I would appreciate if you would please stay on topic using rational arguments rather than mindless rambling like this.

[themuzicman]

Yesterday @ 04:50 PM post located here
Satori:

Hey Mike, your sig gave me a little chuckle:

&quot;If everything that happens is fixed, who caused it?&quot;

2 things:

1) the idea that everything that happens is fixed in a perception and nothing more. It is no more &quot;real&quot; than the colour green or the sound of a bell, it's just an idea originating from mind, just a speculation, and that's all it is. The map is not a perfect representation of the territory, as much as you would probably like to believe that it is.

2) who caused it? Oh dear. Why is it so fashionable to jump to the conclusion that everything has a cause, and that that &quot;cause&quot; must be an intelligent entity of sort sort? It's simply short-sighted at best, but I think it's actually absurd and unreasonable. As you can now hopefully see, the question makes several quantum leaps of logic and assumes way too much to even be worthy of consideration.

Given this, I thought it was a little comical that you would have it as your sig, and I felt that it should be pointed out in case it was never brought to your attention up until this point.

best wishes,

Satori

1) It's a question, not a proof.

2) This belongs in Theology 101, not Poli Sci.

Michael

[Socrates]

Yet another reason the UN should be junked.

From: The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Subject: Abortion Axis of Evil: North Korea, China, and UNFPA Support
Source: Pro-Life Infonet; May 19, 2003

Abortion Axis of Evil: North Korea, China, and UNFPA Support
By Steven W. Mosher

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Steven Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute.]

During recent visits to P'yongyang, the capitol of North Korea, Population Research Institute associates inquired into the inhumane population policies of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. They found that North Korea considers pregnancy to be a crime under some circumstances, and routinely aborts women prisoners.

Pregnant women are seen as unsightly, and women who become pregnant are banished from the capital city. Triplets are regarded as inauspicious, and are separated at birth from their parents and sent to a special orphanage which specializes in neglect.

Kim Jong-il rules by terror. According to the U.S. Department of State, "Citizens do not have the right peacefully to change their government.

There continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings and disappearances. Citizens are detained arbitrarily, and many are held as political prisoners; prison conditions are harsh."

"There are no restrictions on the ability of the Government to detain and imprison persons at will."

Millions of prisoners languish in concentration camps. Kim Jong-il's population program extends into these camps, where women are brutally and forcibly aborted and newborns are routinely murdered.

The following atrocities in detention camps in North Korea were conveyed from eye-witness testimonies:

"While I was there, it was commonly known that pregnant women were taken to a hospital outside the camp for forced abortion and that babies born alive were killed. One day when we came back from our work outside the camp, prisoners told us that a police doctor had inspected the female prisoners in the morning and had found out that two of them were pregnant. Both were ordered to run around the camp yard with a heavily loaded stretcher. The first women had [a] miscarriage and collapsed. Then, two prisoners were ordered to kick the swollen belly of Kim Son-hi. She miscarried about one or two hours later."

"There was a 19-year-old pregnant woman prisoner in the camp [who] gave birth to a baby with the help of an elderly woman prisoner. The guard immediately ordered us to kill the just-born infant. The eldest woman had to cover the infant with a blanket as instructed and to kill him."

"A woman was screaming as she went into labor. They threatened to take her out for running if she did not stop screaming. When the baby was delivered after suffering a terrible ordeal, it was left on the floor to die. The mother wept to get the baby in her arms. Her eyes were swollen with grief but the guards hurled all sorts of invectives at her.

"A woman lost her mind in this dire process. It was just too much to witness so many baby killings. During the month that I spent in detention here, two adults, one four-year-old child and seven newborn babies were killed."

The chief international supporter of North Korea's population control program is the United Nations Population Fund, which since 1985 has provided tens of millions of dollars in demographic and technical support.

UNFPA runs its North Korea country program from its office in Beijing. Although North Korea has signed onto the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and other U.N. programs, the UNFPA has refused to condemn the government of North Korea.

Instead, as UNFPA admits, it has "engaged in close consultation with the Government" of Kim Jong-il.

Since UNFPA has no office in North Korea, and is far away from the
atrocities it supports, it will likely claim it does not know about them.

But ignorance is no defense. The UNFPA is supporting and axis of evil in Asia, as regimes from North Korea and China in the north, to Vietnam in the south, depend on its largesse to operate inhumane population control programs.

Despite UNFPA's checkered record, some in Congress continue efforts to refund this renegade group. Pro-abortion lawmakers want to gut the Kemp-Kasten amendment. Only if UNFPA bureaucrats were caught actually performing forced abortions would they lose U.S. funds.

But no one believes that these bureaucrats dirty their own hands. Rather, they give money, encouragement and an international stamp of approval to regimes that do.

--
We make it easy for you to contribute to the Pro-Life Infonet using
your credit card. Point your web browser to https://secure.entango.com/donate/pE6bLWyec4s to make a donation online.
To make a contribution via PayPal, email news@prolifeinfo.org for details.

[Socrates]

--------------------
From: The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Subject: UNFPA Upset By Ads Exposing Forced Abortion,
Sterilization
Source: Pro-Life Infonet; May 25, 2003

UNFPA Upset By Ads Exposing Forced Abortion, Sterilization

Washington, DC -- Congressional Quarterly Denies UNFPA's Demand to Retract Critical Ads

The UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) latest attempt to sully its critics has failed. Last month a global coalition of pro-life and pro-family groups sponsored advertisements in CQ Today detailing UNFPA involvement in coercive population control programs in the developing world. In a letter to CQ Today, Congressional Quarterly's daily news brief, UNFPA challenged the claims in the ads, and called on CQ to print a retraction. Congressional Quarterly refused.

CQ Today contacted the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), which had written the ads, seeking documentation that the allegations against UNFPA were true. C-FAM gave CQ Today a memo citing multiple sources for each charge. On the basis of the memo, CQ's legal advisors determined that the charges were sufficiently substantiated, and that no retraction was needed. "UNFPA was wrong" one CQ executive told the Friday Fax.

The text of the ad in question said, "Here's the truth about UNFPA. UNFPA has been complicit in coercing poor women into sterilizations and abortions in at least two countries, Peru and China. US and Peruvian Congressional committees confirmed Peruvian coercion, and US and British investigators confirmed Chinese coercion. UNFPA set up the brutal one-child policy in China. This was confirmed in US Federal Court. UNFPA set up the one-child policy in part with American money. UNFPA personnel to this day continue to praise the coercive one-child policy."

With regard to Peru, the C-FAM memo cited articles in the New York Times and the Miami Herald that described coercive sterilizations. C-FAM also cited a Peruvian Congressional report that concluded, "The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), known for its support of population control in developing countries, took charge. For that end, the United Nations Population Fund act[ed] as Technical Secretary" of the sterilization campaign.

C-FAM quoted the president of the Peruvian Foundation for the Prevention of AIDS, who said, "When even USAID [the US Agency for International Development] was distancing itself from [President] Fujimori's obviously brutal population control program, UNFPA was sticking close, providing funds and even praising Fujimori for his resolve."

With regard to China, C-FAM quoted Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said, "UNFPA is helping to improve the administration of the local family planning officesthat are effectively coercing women to have abortions." UNFPA "participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion." C-FAM also cited UNFPA praise for China. In 2001, UNFPA's Executive Director said, China "has scored remarkable achievements in population control."

UNFPA's response was typical for the beleaguered agency, which employs a large public relations staff that tries to respond to every press criticism the world over. UNFPA's denials of these types of charges are generally taken at face value and repeated by the mainstream media. UNFPA's demand for the retraction of an ad is highly unusual. Still this may be the first time that these types of demands by UNFPA have been denied. It should be noted that CQ Today did not necessarily agree with the ad's charges, rather they determined the charges were sufficiently documented so as to require no retraction.

--
We help more than 25,000 people each week find pregnancy help and information. Every month, women choose life because of Pregnancy Centers Online. Please consider a link to us on your web site at http://www.pregnancycenters.org