Pro-lifers & Feminists – can we co-exist?
by Jane Instance

The more feminist literature I read, the more profound becomes my conviction that women will never enjoy their unique dignity and equality as long as feminism exists.

Wait a minute! That’s a pretty strong statement to make. Surely we can keep a little bit of feminism? Just keep the good parts which talk about equality and women’s rights and education and all that. Must we throw out the baby with the bath water?

That’s a fair question. As pro-lifers we tend to be against throwing out babies. But when I look closely at this particular infant, whose mummy calls it ‘equality for women’, I start to see that it’s not quite what I’d expected.

Everyone likes equality. It’s a great word. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that, “Man and woman have been created… in perfect equality as human persons” (CCC # 369). Brilliant! So we agree with the feminists (or rather, they agree with us, since we were here first).

Some people would call themselves feminists on this basis alone—“I agree with equality for women, therefore I’m a feminist.” But feminism isn’t just about supporting equal rights for women. Feminism (like any ism) is about accepting a certain ideology as it is found set out by key writers and as it has evolved in our social and political culture.

Can we accept feminist terms without accepting all the baggage that goes along with them? Can we keep the baby clean while it’s sitting in the murky water of ‘reproductive rights’, affirmative action, anti-family policies and lesbianism?

Sometimes it’s not even easy to see where the bath water ends and the baby begins! We’ve named the baby ‘equality for women’ but we’re naive if we think that when feminists say ‘equality’ they mean the same thing pro-lifers do. What could be more clever than to take a word everyone loves and twist it to mean something it was never intended to mean—equal participation in the workforce, equal achievements, and equal rewards.

In her book, The Dialectic of Sex, early feminist writer Shulamith Firestone states that the final goal of the feminist agenda must be “not just the elimination of the male privilege but of the sex distinction itself; genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.” [p.11] 1

The false assumption which underlies feminism’s idea of equality is that in order to be equal, we have to be the same. In their view, women will never be equal to men so long as men are stronger, so long as husbands make money to support their wives, and so long as men run the government, the churches and the army. Women are not truly equal until they are policemen, high court judges and military leaders. Put simply, feminism sees equality only where it sees women doing the same work as men.

Pro-life advocates would see here an insult to the unique nature and role of women. Those who devote themselves to giving life, education, care and stability to their children fulfill one of the most essential and least recognised roles in society. Celebrating motherhood in no way diminishes the many other accomplishments and talents of women, or slights the work of women who are not biological mothers, but to denigrate the vocation of mothering threatens the life-giving capacity of every woman (and in turn, every man). It generates a society in which human life itself, previously safeguarded by women in the sanctity of the home, loses its value.

What makes women unique if we can do exactly the same things as men? And why is it we have never had equal participation in the almighty workforce?

Feminism argues that it is because of male oppression and cultural conditioning. Feminists base their ideology on the assumption that men enjoy running the world and in order to maintain their place at its head have kept women subservient in the home. Furthermore, women have only remained in the home because they are culturally conditioned to believe they belong there.

In the postmodern, deconstructionist feminist world, the reality of natural roles for men or women can be easily dismissed. All you have to do is claim that a word like ‘natural’ has been used by one class of people (men) to gain power over another class of people (women). Once you’ve said this, you can discredit the word (and the reality it signifies) as an artificial construction used by the ruling class to oppress everybody else. This is rather convenient because it requires no evidence whatsoever.

In the introduction to Women, Gender and World Politics, Peter Beckman and Francine D’Amico suggest that the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are themselves artificial and the cause of inequalities. They write:

“To label individuals as ‘women’ (or ‘men’) is the exercise of power, for the label creates for human beings a set of expectations about who they are, who they are not, and what range of choice is available to them. Gender-as-power argues that women and men are made, not born. They are created by those labels—labels that open some doors and close others.” [p.7] 2

Almost every kindergarten and school library today contains books which show men and women in ‘non-traditional gender roles’—women as firemen, men as homemakers, etc. Is this just a mild attempt at showing boys and girls they are ‘equal’ or is it a concerted attack on natural sex differences?

Gender feminists, like Nancy Chodorow, see the father-working/mother-at-home family as the cause of sex roles. In this environment, she argues, children are raised to believe that men and women are different. In her book, The Reproduction of Mothering, Chodorow writes:

“If our goal is to overcome the sexual division of labor in which women mother, we need to understand the mechanisms which reproduce it in the first place. My account points precisely to where intervention should take place. Any strategy for change… must take account of the need for a fundamental reorganisation of parenting, so that primary parenting is shared between men and women.” [p.215] 3

It is not enough for feminists that some women work outside the home. Their ideology requires every woman to spend time in the workforce and every man to spend time mothering. Families organised in a more natural way are a threat because they ‘transmit’ sex differences to the next generation.

In spite of feminism’s desire to indoctrinate children into a ‘genderless’ world, sex differences will continue to exist. God’s plan for mankind cannot be overcome by human evil or madness, and children will suffer because of the lies they’ve been told. According to Dale O’Leary, pro-family author of The Gender Agenda, “Whatever real injustices may have been inflicted upon women in the past, they will not be rectified by denying women’s specific originality or unique feminine nature. Ignoring the differences between the sexes or, worse, seeing them as obstacles, declares war on human nature—woman’s nature as well as man’s.” [p.163] 4

Any ideology which pits men against women cannot benefit the human race. This is possibly the greatest danger posed by feminism—if we accept its diagnosis of the problem, we are a step closer to accepting its solutions. Mother Teresa saw this clearly. Pro-family lobbyists translated her statement on the subject into five languages and distributed it at the Beijing Conference on Women. She writes:

“I do not understand why some people are saying that men and women are exactly the same, and are denying the beautiful differences between men and women. All God’s gifts are good, but they are not all the same… No jobs, no plans, no possessions, no idea of ‘freedom’ can take the place of love. So anything that destroys God’s gift of motherhood destroys His most precious gift to women—the ability to love as a woman… I have often said, abortion is the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today, and those who want to make women and men the same are all in favour of abortion.” 5

Feminists must support abortion because a women’s ability to bear children is the first and most obvious difference between her and a man. Since they can’t make men bear children, women must be ‘freed’ from this as well. Even those feminists who dislike abortion on the grounds that it harms women, will not speak out against contraception because they still see a woman’s fertility as something which needs to be ‘controlled’. Unfortunately for their viewpoint, contraception leads inexorably back to abortion.

These ideologues need also to be exposed as ultimately anti-woman. Feminists must not be allowed to pretend to be pro-woman and pro-family while at the same time they try to tear down everything which supports the woman in her home.

According to Dale O’Leary, the feminist agenda will not be defeated “until people are willing to stand up and say, ‘No more inclusive language, no more politically correct speech.’…. Those who are offended by reality and human nature will just have to live with it.” [p.213] 6

Such sentiments should teach us to be brave as we empty the murky bath water of feminism and hurl it’s hollow plastic baby down the drain. Until this is done, we will be severely hampered in our attempts to refill the bath with the undiluted water of Truth.

[Note: this article owes much to the work of Dale O’Leary, in her excellent book The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a concise documentation and refutation of feminist theory. It is available from HLI for a suggested donation of $20].

1. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, New York, Bantam Books, 1972.
2. Peter Beckman & Francine D’Amico, Women, Gender and World Politics, Westport, Bergin & Garvey, 1994.
3. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978.
4. Dale O’Leary, The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality, Louisiana, Vital Issues Press, 1997.
5. Mother Teresa at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, quoted by Dale O’Leary, ibid.
6. Dale O’Leary, ibid. (Home…)