Did Susan B. Anthony Have a Chip on Her Shoulder? Ask the Susan B. Anthony List

The Susan B. Anthony List is a US organization whose professed goal is to increase the ranks of prolife women politicians. It links itself to the prolife stance of early feminists, including its namesake, Susan B. Anthony.

However..among other problems...the organization's blog, suzyb.org, does not appear to be a place where cries for justice for anyone but the unborn and their conservative white female defenders are well-received. Indeed, on at least three different recent occasions, such expressions of valid anger were dismissed as gratuitous, ridiculous, mere products of a "chip on the shoulder."

--The blog effuses uncritically over Sarah Palin's profession of advocacy for the disabled. But when I questioned what that meant for the lives of disabled Americans generally, and pointed out that the ideology of "government waste" often amounted to treating us as disposable humans (hint, hint, like the unborn), I was told by a commenter, "Gee, Marysia, I think you need to knock that chip off your shoulder".

--The blog mocks National Organization for Women members for being "angry" and "spiteful" feminists and wearing it on their t shirts...no mention of what might be behind that purportedly gratuitous rage. You know, stuff like, oh, violence against women, and unequal pay for equal work.

--The blog exults in Michelle Obama's recent lack of public visibility in her husband's campaign. A commenter says outright what the post does not in so many words: "Voters have recognized that she is a woman with a 'black' chip on her shoulder, and her harshness was not going over well. I think they're hiding her!" Was this commenter perhaps the same Anonymous who told me to get the chip off my shoulder? Whether it was the same person or not...same diminishing and silencing technique applied to "troublemakers."

But such dismissive stereotyping of people who challenge the powers that be is nothing new. Indeed, it can be found in the very same herstory that the Susan B. Anthony List lays claim to in its very own choice of name.

As Lynn Sherr documents in her wonderfully eye-opening Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, Susan B. Anthony was routinely dismissed as a "vinegar-visaged virago," "stiff," "cold," "aggressive," "constantly howling," "laboring under strong feelings of hatred towards men.” Yet, as Sherr points out abundantly, Anthony was actually "selfless, diplomatic, elegant, charming, generous, friendly, determined, polite, curious, open, amusing, self-possessed, and, once again, selfless."

I don't know if Anthony's era actually talked in so many words of chips on shoulder, but it's clear that they had the concept, and deployed it for the same minimizing purposes. The book behind Nonviolent Choice, ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition, substantially documents the awfully familiar-sounding stereotypes levelled against early feminists in general...as well as Anthony's own stance against abortion.

I would like to ask the SBA List and its supporters: did Anthony and her peers have chips on their shoulders?

Trying to Address the Charge of Prolife Hypocrisy

I welcome conversation with people who identify as prochoice on abortion. I especially welcome opportunities for cooperative action to reduce abortions and unintended pregnancies and pursue any other areas of reproductive justice where there is agreement.

Of course not every prochoice person poses it, but over the years and decades I have repeatedly bumped up against--or run smack into--a particular question that saddens and frustrates me every time. Because the energy put into dealing with this question--on both "sides" of it--would be much better spent on, say, passing out condoms or lobbying politicians on family leave together.

Frequently I try to answer it, and the ante gets upped, and upped, and upped, till I don't know what to do.

The question is this: "You say you're prolife, but what are you doing for people *after* they're born?"

And that's a fair enough question. I agree, prolife needs to encompass *every* life. And it is woefully inadequate to just sit around believing that. Prolife in the sense of *every* life is an endless, endless call to ever-expanding responsibilities, because as the slogan goes, "no one is free till everyone is free."

But what bothers me about the question is the way it's often asked. With preemptive, gotcha! scorn, as if it were of course a rhetorical question whose only possible answers could be "Absolutely nothing" or "Not only absolutely nothing, I am all about undermining and killing the already-born!"

I often try to answer "Why, I am personally engaged in doing ABCD to affirm already-born lives, and have been for decades." (I really hate being backed into this position. If I don't say anything, I am complicit with a misrepresentation. If I say something, it sounds like I'm trying to make myself look good to puff up my big fat antichoice ego...Sigh....)

Sometimes the "what are you doing" question opens up an opportunity for real conversation, engagement, and reciprocal understanding. And more power to those moments.

But sometimes, this is what happens instead.

Any one (or more) of the following responses:
--"No you haven't, you're a liar as well as a hypocrite."
--"So what if you've done ABC, you haven't done XYZ."
--"Well, then, you're the only one."

If I try to explain that I'm telling the truth, and divulge more evidence to that end, then because I have been decided beforehand, by definition to be a liar as well as a hypocrite, no evidence I produce will be admitted to the questioner's scrutiny.

If I say that in fact I have done XYZ as well as ABC, I am scrutinized over whether I have done GHIJ. GHIJ tends to be a demand absurdly beyond any reasonably striving person's sheer capacities.

Or it amounts to a demand that I violate the integrity of the beliefs I hold about abortion, as if my deeds ABC or XYZ cannot possibly count towards caring for the already-born unless and until I am in complete and full agreement with my questioner. (Sheesh...I would never tell a prochoice person that their work on preventing child abuse or promoting sex education doesn't mean a flip because we disagree on abortion--that would be really unfair.)

If I try to explain that I'm not some bizarre exception, that in fact I have lots of company, like so and so, and such and such, and this and that and the other...then somehow my evidence is found wanting, and wanting, and wanting. And the more I produce that evidence, the more inadequate it is judged to be.

I don't mean to imply that only prochoicers have such rigid, unbending attitudes towards their purported "enemies." I'm sure prochoicers are subjected to similar dynamics sometimes when they are trying to respond to charges like "antilife," "antiGod," and "antifamily." I'm not denying that--I'm just speaking of what I know in my own personal experience.

But I do want to ask both "camps": why do we do this to one another? And why don't we stop it? What have we got to lose?

We're Not the Only Pro Contraceptive Prolifers

Turn the Clock Forward rounds up a Pro Contraception, Pro Life blogswarm.

LAMom's contributions link to that poll we all like a lot, the one showing that 80% of US prolifers are prochoice on contraception. There are many others like us, and probably more in other nations.

In short: we're not alone.
And this: kindly please do not dismiss us.

responses from sluts4choice

...can be found in the comments here.

We Are Prolife and Pro-Contraception

Turn the Clock Forward is calling for a prolife, pro-contraception blogswarm on May 31. Since I probably won't have much computer access on that day, I will chime in early.

I want to underscore the many ways that the Nonviolent Choice Directory helps to secure and protect the human rights to freedom of conscience in pregnancy prevention and to strong social support for all voluntary prevention options. Contraception, of course, is included under these rights, as are rape and incest prevention and treatment, abstinence, fertility awareness/natural family planning, outercourse, and same-sex relations.

Nonviolent Choice:

• Offers global resources on Sexual/Reproductive Health Education of the comprehensive (contraception-inclusive, as opposed to abstinence-only) variety and all of the above methods of Pregnancy Prevention, most surely and at great length including contraception--including "male methods," consonant with our focus on Male Responsibility as a means of reducing abortion.

• With Turn the Clock Forward, cosponsors Pro Every Life, Pro Nonviolent Choice, Pro Reproductive Justice for All: A Manifesto, which endorses freedom of choice in and social support for pregnancy prevention methods--and how can that not include contraception?!
  
• Sells nonprescription family planning and safer sex items through our website.

• Regularly features action alerts that defend voluntary contraception (see the lefthand sidebar of this blog, "Current Action Alerts").

• Archives my debate/dialogue with an anti-contraception, anti-abortion visitor. This may be helpful to other pro-contraceptive prolifers engaged in similar debates/dialogues, especially the scientific references on whether hormonal contraceptives are abortifacient and whether contraception reduces abortion.

• If you are both prolife and pro-contraception, Nonviolent Choice shows that you have company, and that there are opportunities for political and civic engagement that express your beliefs!

Accusations from sluts4choice

The LiveJournal group sluts4choice have levelled a number of charges against the manifesto Pro Every Life, Pro Nonviolent Choice, Pro Reproductive Justice for All and its authors/sponsors, Turn the Clock Forward and the Nonviolent Choice Directory. Examples:

• we hate women, especially women who seek sexual pleasure;
• we believe women are stupid and incapable of conducting their own lives;
• we believe in mandatory motherhood;
• we destructively romanticize childbirth and motherhood;
• we oppose contraception.
  
  None of this is stated or even insinuated in the manifesto itself--quite the opposite. And none of this explains why, for example, the Nonviolent Choice Directory:

• Advocates for comprehensive sex education and contraception, outercourse & oral sex, & LGBT sexuality as well as abstinence and fertility awareness/natural family planning methods. See also this blog's sidebar for current action alerts on these matters.
• Sells nonprescription family planning and safer sex items through the website.
• Has a page on Other Ways to Give Life that covers childfree/childless/nonparental lifestyles and supports the right to pursue them.
• Lists a number of resources about a wide range of serious real-life problems that face mothers before, during, and after birth, including global maternal mortality, postpartum depression, and poverty. If we romanticized childbirth and motherhood, we would have no idea of what these problems are and what resources could possibly address them.

sluts4choice are reiterating dogmatic, by-definition stereotypes against anyone who opposes abortion. More importantly, they are cutting off all possibility of cooperative action on those large areas of reproductive justice where genuine agreement exists. There is so much work to be done, and these stereotypes really get in the way.

The group complains profusely about prolifers who do not support abortion-reducing measures. Although sluts4choice do not make it in a particularly respectful, constructive fashion--that's a fair challenge. Prolife does have to be during and after as well as before birth, or what good is it?

Yet what is their response to prolifers who *do* support abortion-reducing measures, and avidly, comprehensively so? Why, we can't possibly be for real!

Sigh.

ps I know that some feminists are trying to reclaim the word "slut" as a way to overcome its bigotry-enforcing history, and in fact I heartily endorse the goal of destigmatizing and affirming women's right to seek and enjoy sexual pleasure. But for some reason feminists calling themselves "sluts" sounds to me like the young African Americans in my neighborhood who refer to themselves and one another by the n-word--not particularly self-respecting, and wasn't the NAACP onto something when it gave said term a funeral?

A CPC Director In Her Own Words

Prolife CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers) often face sharp, unmitigated criticism from prochoicers that they have no public chance to answer or explain who they are and what they do on their own terms.

Nonviolent Choice does not necessarily agree with every aspect of every CPC. Among other differences, we are a secular/nonsectarian/interfaith initiative, and many CPCs are run by Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant concerns. But we do recognize that many CPCs actually do make positive differences in the lives of women and children.

Nonviolent Choice talked with Angie Weszely, president of Chicago's Caris Pregnancy Clinics since May 2006. She joined Caris as development director in 2005. She has 11 years experience working with nonprofits, including a year outside the US, as well as a background in corporate training and sales.

As a mother in the paid workforce, Angie empathizes with women who struggle to both rear children and work their jobs, especially if they are single mothers. She brings this consciousnsess into her work with women facing difficult pregnancies.

MARYSIA: Please explain what Caris does.

ANGIE: Caris is a faith-based, nonprofit organization providing hope and support to womenf acing unplanned pregnancies. We have three program areas: Prevention, Intervention, and Connection.

Prevention involves reducing unplanned pregnancies through abstinence education and support groups. Intervention involves providing abortion alternatives to women through free services at our three clinics. Connection involves networking women to support and resources in the community – through social agencies, churches and individuals.

MARYSIA: Just to clarify, the particular faith basis of Caris is evangelical Christian. And today as well as historically, many evangelical Christians support women's rights. Although as with most groups of humans, there are others who still have a lot to learn and a long way to go, to say the least!

Now, CPC workers are widely stereotyped as hostile to the interests and wellbeing of women. Yet you not only object to that stereotype--you define yourself as a feminist. How did you arrive at your feminism?

ANGIE: Because “feminism” can be so controversial and is defined differently by many people, I define myself as a feminist only when I can clarify the definition.

I believe that women should be respected and accepted as women, and I believe in equality and nonviolence for all people. I don’t align with any strain of feminism that endorses the marginalization of any groups of people (unborn children, for example), legitimizes tasteless expression of sexuality, or would ask women to act like men.

For me, it was a gradual journey to feminism. I think it came from being shut out of opportunities because I was a woman, and realizing that all isn’t as equal as we would like to think it is.

I also became increasingly aware of and sensitive to the exploitation of women through pornography, sexual abuse, and abortion. Then when I had a daughter, I had an increasing desire to fight for a world where she would be protected, not asked to grow up too soon, and able to achieve her potential and dreams as a woman.

MARYSIA: How do your values and concerns as a feminist motivate and relate to your work as a CPC director?

ANGIE: At Caris, we hear women all the time say things like: “I don’t want to have an abortion, but I have to. I have no resources or support – I have no other choice.” How is that congruent with feminism?

If we aren’t offering women with unplanned pregnancies the emotional support and practical resources they need but instead offer them abortion as their only option, they really don’t have much of a choice. I believe that women don’t like abortion and don’t want to be in a place where they feel they have to make that choice.

So why settle for it? Why not work to build a society where women have access to everything they need to continue their pregnancy? To me, that is a feminist vision for the world.

MARYSIA: What do you feel feminism has to offer the CPC movement as a whole?

ANGIE: I think CPCs are doing a work that is very empowering to women, and that should continue to be our focus. I don’t think we should allow ourselves to be associated with other prolife efforts that can sometimes be insensitive to the pressures a pregnant woman can face.

At Caris, we advocate a “third voice” in the abortion debate – one that takes into account the best interest of the woman and the child.

MARYSIA: What stereotypes about CPCs concern you the most? If you had a chance to sit down and actually talk with prochoicers who level these criticisms, what would you say to them?

ANGIE: I’m concerned when I read articles describing CPCs as “fake clinics” out to deceive and manipulate women. It is my passion for women that drives me to provide them with real options other than abortion.

I would like the pro-choice community to acknowledge that not every choice for abortion is made from a place of also having access to other options. We exist for the women who don’t really want to have an abortion, but feel pressured to make that choice because of outside factors.

Many women tell us the father of the baby or their parents don’t support them continuing the pregnancy, or they don’t feel they have the practical resources for a child. Women in these situations aren’t really able to exercise a free choice without centers like Caris informing them and connecting them to all the support and resources that are available to them. What pro-choice advocate wouldn’t want women having real choices?

MARYSIA: Thank you, Angie.

Exposed! What a "Rightwing Chreeshtain Fundamentalist" This Blogger Is!

The work of the Nonviolent Choice Directory has been dismissed more than once as a clever-evil, fake-compassionate front and shill operation for the misogynist forces of ultra rightwing crazy-Chreeshtain zealots. Whew. So that's why, is it, that we have resources for people of all faiths and none on contraception, comprehensive sex education, male responsibility, women's equality, and [you name it]?

Not to challenge anyone's infallible dogmas...but...in response, out of curiosity, I have resorted to two popular online self-assessments of one's beliefs, the Political Compass Test and the Belief-O-Matic.

So you want to find out what kind of a person would blog for this kind of an outfit? I promise I didn't cheat or lie to get these results. That would be against just about anybody's spiritual/religious or nontheist beliefs, including mine...although I wouldn't put it past a politician...which thankfully I am not..)

And I hope that if you own results would differ, or in fact they already do, you would stick around and not be scared off by our religious and/or political divergences. The Nonviolent Choice Directory is here for people from all religious/spiritual and political persuasions. Even as I find it necessary to challenge stereotypes, I wish that to be clear with our visitors.

Anyway--the Political Compass scored me at way out in leftist-libertarian field, way beyond the reaches of the political system of the US, wherein I reside:

Economic Left/Right: -9.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.56

The Belief-O-Matic said that my spiritual beliefs most closely resembled those of Liberal Quakers (100%), followed by:

2. Mahayana Buddhism (99%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (92%)
4. Theravada Buddhism (88%)
5. Neo-Pagan (88%)
6. Jainism (87%)
7. New Age (86%)
8. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (79%)
9. Sikhism (79%)
10. Reform Judaism (76%)
11. Bahá'í Faith (75%)
12. Hinduism (71%)
13. Orthodox Quaker (68%)
14. Taoism (68%)
15. New Thought (63%)
16. Orthodox Judaism (54%)
17. Secular Humanism (52%)
18. Scientology (49%)
19. Islam (47%)
20. Seventh Day Adventist (36%)
21. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
22. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (31%)
23. Nontheist (31%)
24. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (30%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (23%)
26. Roman Catholic (23%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (21%)


I stand by these results.

So...what was that about what kind of suspect outfit I most comfortably work for?

Word to my Nonviolent Choice-advocating friends: why not put yourselves to the test, and see what happens with you?

Reflection on Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday Part Two

There is no telling what King would have thought of a consistent life ethic (CLE). But the feminist CLE is (dare I say) borne of the same impulse to embrace all, nonviolently.

In addition to expressing frank racism against him, some antiabortionists deride King as a "liar" and a womanizer who had extramarital affairs, even for hiring white prostitutes and beating them. Snopes.com does a good job of sifting through such criticisms and pointing out the high level of scurrilous urban legend in them. Especially the myth about hiring and beating white prostitutes--that sounds like a white segregationist's fantasy towards black women flipped around for the purpose of discrediting a black man!

Such antiabortionists, like P. Leslie Riley in his "Myths of Martin Luther King", excoriate the civil rights martyr for receiving the 1966 Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood. Riley overlooks certain facts here.

--In his acceptance speech, King advocated family planning. Voluntary family planning is quite distinct from abortion and in fact is an actual human right and a nifty tool for preventing abortion. He said nothing here about advocating abortion.

--In 1966, Planned Parenthood itself was divided on abortion and still held an official public stance against abortion. It did so until the early 1970s.

--As documented in the book ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition, Margaret Sanger was not exactly the all-out babykiller of antiabortionist stereotype. She regarded abortion as a taking of unborn life caused by such atrocities as the denial of sex education and contraception to women. She want to prevent, not promote abortions, and therein lay her passion for family planning.

--Of course she--like many privileged or social-climbing whites of her day--held deplorable racist, ableist, and classist prejudices that contaminated her good work for family planning. King may not have known about these; in 1966 these were, as far as I know, were not a matter yet of widescale public knowedlege and scrutiny. And an article from the Fall 2001 issue of the Margaret Sanger Papers Projects Newsletter presents the complex and not entirely Sanger-damning evidence regarding the charge that she was out to exterminate the black race.

Fortunately prolifers, those inclined to expand their concern beyond the fetus, regard King as an ever-fresh source of inspiration and wish to build on his legacy. Even a group like Priests for Life, which is not keen on contraception, reprints his Letter From Birmingham Jail. Although King took an assiduously interfaith, inclusive perspective, the Letter recalls the example of Christians in early Rome who challenged the powers that be and "by their effort and example...brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests."

Clearly King can be termed prolife on the matters of infanticide and killing for public entertainment, just as he was obviously prolife on so much else. His position on family planning was, I believe, prolife, too. But he is not here any more to ask "What precisely did you mean by infanticide? Did you mean taking the lives of children before birth, too?" The term "infanticide" once had that double meaning, and in ancient Rome, Christians--like Jews, incidentally--were quite countercultural in rejecting abortion as well, as I discuss in the new anthology book Consistently Opposing Killing.

Aside from this, we have no evidence today of what King might have thought about abortion. But I feel it is a respectful building upon his legacy to affirm all lives, including the lives of vulnerable unborn children--and of course their mothers.

More From the Annals of They Know My Motives and I Don't Have a *Clue*

Amanda Marcotte is not the only one who knows my deepest darkest motives that I don't have a clue about, then won't engage when I try to offer my side of it. Ironically, she joins with some "antichoicers" in this.

Not quite the common ground that I personally would aspire to...

I tried sending out descriptions of the Nonviolent Choice Directory and invitations to visit and participate to some groups that describe themselves as prolife. The email bore the header "new prolife feminist, abortion-reducing website." The results mostly remain to be seen, but already they are as discouraging as Amanda Marcotte's evidently unyielding stereotypes.

One ultraconservative group just flatout deleted the announcement. Maybe they don't want to bothered with the fact that it doesn't fit into their particular box? Who knows? I'd like to ask why it was not worthy to be read, but they're not talking.

Another group immediately raged against me for advocating abortion (?) and calling it a nonviolent choice and a human right (?), then asked to be removed from any mailing list. Talk about jumping to conclusions, and then cutting out any possibility to reverse the jump...

Now, granted, this is a small sample size. But it's all too illustrative of what's happened many times before, and what, I'm afraid, is all too likely to happen again.

So, what is someone like me supposed to do? If I try to reduce abortion through nonviolent means, one camp claims it's in bad faith, by definition sexist, "antichoice," anti-women's pleasure. And the other claims that I am by definition "antilife." That is, if anyone expresses a reaction at all.

Meanwhile women suffer, and their children die, sometimes the women die with them. That's who matters most, that's who I should keep most at heart--not who I do or don't--mostly don't, it seems--please with the nonviolent choice approach to the problems of women and children, unborn and born.

On the other hand, I wouldn't spurn any offers of engagement or encouragement, especially right now...

News Flash! Amanda Marcotte Knows My True Motives and I Don't Have a Clue!!

At RH Reality Check, blogger Amanda Marcotte asks what for her is apparently a rhetorical question, with the preset answer a big giant "Hell, No!":

Do Anti-Choicers Really Care About the Abortion Rate?

Well, then, if I (for one, among many) were truly antichoice and did not give a flyin flip about reducing the abortion rate: what precisely am I doing here with the Nonviolent Choice Directory?

You tell me, Amanda Marcotte. For although you probably don't know me from Adam, you just know oh so much about my REAL motives and my deepest darkest self-- and I haven't a clue.

She characterizes people who adopt the approach taken here, and elsewhere, as "naive," as "sexist" buyers into "the anti-choice assumption that women are, by their nature, too damn stupid to know what abortion is and that the abortion rate reflects widespread female stupidity" and into "the misinformed notion that antichoicers are primarily motivated by a desire to save fetuses rather than a desire to control sexual expression, especially female sexual expression."

I (for one, among many) take the approach I do on abortion for reasons quite other than being naive, sexist, believing that women are too stupid to know what an abortion is, or complicit with people who use unborn children's lives as a smokescreen for their lust to punish people, especially women, for enjoying sex.

Although someone else could of course have parallel experiences and form a different conclusion...I am talking here about me, specifically, and why I feel, think, and do what I do.

I take this approach in part because I know, in my own flesh, what it is like to find yourself pregnant when you don't want to be, yet recoil from the thought of abortion. I experienced family planning failure--yes, I did and still do believe passionately in birth control--in a situation of poverty, ill health, detoured schooling and career plans, and heavy stigma placed on me at this evidence I'd had nonmarital sex. And against all the pressures to abort my daughter, I bore and raised her and fought very hard to give her a life of more dignity and safety--in short, freedom from sexism and abuse--than I personally ever knew as a child.

I did not have her to punish myself for having nonmarital sex. No, it wasn't about self-punishment, or submission to Almighty Ovarian Destiny. I had my daughter because I revered both our lives. I felt we were both important, we both had the rights to live and flourish, like all human beings.

And somehow, with the loving help of others, I found the wherewithal to sustain both of us and raise her into the bighearted, whipsmart, astounding young woman she is today. Even as I am outraged about how we were denied essential social benefits--human rights--that would have eased our interconnected passages, and about how billions of people are still denied these benefits, and much else.

I have also over the decades borne witness to the sacred crisis pregnancy stories of many, many women from all walks of life--some of whom define themselves as prolife, some as prochoice, some as apolitical. I have listened to these stories, whatever their outcomes, with the deepest respect for the wisdom and intelligence of the women who bear them. To me, feminism is about listening to women, especially the most silenced and unheard.

And from listening to all these women--and from reading the emergent body of scientific literature on why women have abortions...I believe that abortion so often happens not because women are stupid, but because they are denied the means and the power to plan pregnancy, or forego it altogether. Because they are denied the means and the power to bear and raise, or-- if it is their own choice place for adoption-- their children with the utmost support that human beings, whether born or unborn, need and fully deserve.

And it's not enough to be merely conscious of this; one must take action, and take action, and take action, to ensure that all women and children, born and unborn, can live and thrive to the fullest.

But to hear Amanda Marcotte, everything I've just said is either a lie, or is at best a massive, naive self-delusion.

That's the thing about these ad hominem arguments...they leave you with the sinking feeling that no amount of talk and action to the contrary will ever make a difference, that you will just be baited and provoked to produce more and more and more and none of it will ever be any good enough and credible enough to be admissible as evidence.

Because--consider the source, the bad, bad source--you are that vile-hypocrite thing, an "antichoicer."

I remember hearing a long time ago about a couple who, because they were prolife, thought they should adopt hard-to-place children. So they adopted a dozen of them. Some prochoicers people would come up to them and ask them, "Why don't you prolifer antiabortion people ever care about kids who are already born? Why don't you go and adopt those unwanted children?" When the couple explained that in fact they had adopted a dozen such children, they were confronted with, "Well, why haven't you people adopted ANY MORE?"

If prolifers who adopted a dozen hard-to-place kids couldn't "win"...I surely never will.

Note: None of this is to deny that sometimes prolifers impose their own ad hominem arguments on prochoicers...And for the record, I don't think that's fair, either. When prochoicers tell me that they aren't about "wanton baby killing," "destroying the family," "hating on G-d," or any of those things...I take them at their word. After all, they know their motives from the inside, and I do not.

From the Annals of "Fools Step in Where..."

Earlier this year, I tried to start a regular diary called "Reduce Abortion: Take Positive Steps" on the US-liberal, predominantly but not exclusively prochoice blogging community Daily Kos. So many prochoicers and prolifers alike are talking now about the need for cooperation to reduce abortion...why not seize the day and help people on both "sides" work together to actually get something done?

So I thought that regularly posting action alerts on potentially common-ground matters like family planning funding, health care access, and the like would be something that might work in this context. I did not trumpet forth my vantage point on abortion all over the place, nor did I cover it up. My concern in this diary was not to expound on my views of abortion, to burden and derail the whole enterprise with them...but to present practical actions one could easily take, whatever one's persuasion, to help bring about the often-shared goal of reducing abortion.

So what happened next?

Though I risk exposing what a spineless, idiotic, (your favorite ephitet here) I am....You can read for yourself if you like. Maybe I'm a bit touchy, but to me it felt like getting knocked into the piranha pit! With apologies to the actual fish--at least they don't construct righteous rationales to justify their objectionable behaviors! I was assiduously "exposed" as someone I am decidedly not--some sort of rightwing, misogynist, contraceptive-denying, twistedly passive-aggressive operative or "shill."

So what did I learn from this experience?


Dunno...but...I went over to the blog of Judie Brown, longtime president of the conservative antiabortion group American Life League, and initiated a discussion with her about how people who question abortion actually have more diverse views on matters like contraception, LGBT rights, and nonmarital sexuality than one might gather from the organizations like hers that monopolize the rubric of prolife.

Again, if you like, you can read for yourself what ensued. She actually replied, twice, and at some length. I'm not sure we understood each other, or to what extent, but I suspect we were both fumbling towards some kind of respect. Although...to take one example, she called me "a sister in Christ."

Was she assuming that because I take a particular stance on abortion, I must be a Christian? Not that I have anything against Jesus. He was quite the Qur'anic prophet, incarnation of Vishnu, heterodox rabbi, bodhisattva, and speaking-truth-to-power teacher of revolutionary secular/interfaith/nonsectarian ethical values...Meant as a compliment, I'm sure. If it means a sister in trying to protect and practice the values of respect for life and justice that Jesus embodied, fine, that's a really nice thing to say. But.I have the feeling it is packed in assumptions/presumptions that don't pertain...

Sigh. No matter how one tries to dialogue on these matters, the stereotypes and misunderstandings seem to arise....

These two different encounters and outcomes, however, should not be taken as some kind of blanket statement on the lines of "Look at those liberals, they preach tolerance but they sure don't practice it; it's really the conservatives who are tolerant." As an aspirant to the Buddhist dharma, I believe that all sentient beings have at least the seeds of lovingkindness and wisdom in them, and none of us has a monopoly on the truth. That's precisely why we need to apire to talking and working together--not to mention that this is the only way, practically speaking, to get enormous human problems resolved...Just ask the United Nations about it...

There are wise and skillful ways of pursuing that aspiration; there are foolish and unskillful ways. Maybe one of these lifetimes, I'll learn, and master, the difference....

Wow, A Thumbs Up

The EatonWeb Blog Directory offers these kind words about Nonviolent Choice. (No, we did not pay them to say this, nor to list us.)

• "Thought-provoking and opinionated, this blog takes a relatively unorthodox approach to the controversial issue of abortion. Whatever your position, this blog is worth your time for its thoughtful approach."

Well, gosh. Thank you.

Answering Some Objections to "Artificial" Contraception

ben d. has, in comments on a much earlier post, raised some extended arguments against contraception and its abortion-reducing value. He expresses the concerns that "artificial" methods might lead to increased abortion and male exploitation of women.

I have tried to explain why and how I most vigorously disagree. The conflation of abortion and "artificial" prevention methods by prolifers and prochoicers alike is a great sticking point in the abortion debate. It is long past time for alternative takes on the issue.

Prolife, But Not for Dogs?

A story on the current uproar over illegal dogfighting discusses an effort in the US Congress to pass a federal ban on the practice. It includes a revelation of the "please, don't be such a self-defeating stereotype" variety. To wit:

Most of the bill's opponents say they aren't fans of dogfighting but are conservative, pro-life Republicans. Iowa Rep. Steve King from Iowa says it's wrong for the federal government to criminalize pit bull trafficking while allowing legal abortion.

"My vote says that human life needs to be elevated and stay above animal life. And I think it devalues all human life, when you set the life of an animal up above that of a human," King says.

Even if one sets aside the thorny question, too large for a single blog post, on the respective values of human and animal lives...(And by the way, I'm a vegetarian who's adopted three animals from shelters, who writes politicians all the time about animal & environmental concerns, *in concert* with actively opposing abortion....)

Is this not the sort of "either-or," "us-vs.-them," zero-sum approach that turns public deliberation over abortion into the woman-v.-fetus war that derails all efforts to relieve abortion's root causes?

Surely there is a better way to counter abortion than condemning dogs--living, sentient beings, just like any human--to abuse and violent deaths.

This kind of "either-or" thinking obscures a very important reality that need to be addressed in stopping many forms of violence against human beings. Namely, as organizations like American Humane stress, acts of violence towards animals and towards human beings are profoundly interconnected.

Instead of saying "let's not protect dogs, because our government doesn't protect unborn babies," legislators like King could instead say, "let's protect dogs, and maybe that will as well as protecting the dogs, encourage the public to look again at what is done to very small humans."

What's Messed Up About the Abortion Debate: A Little Case Study

From the annals of why the abortion debate seldom moves towards practical resolution...And I hope I have the good grace to avoid ad hominem attacks and dissing anybody's spirituality myself while I'm at it... I'm trying, please forgive me if I don't quite pull it off...

Theologically and politically conservative US Catholic Matt Abbott complains "Pro-abortion nun still active." He is referring to Beth Rindler, and faulting her for the 2004 National Catholic Reporter letter she wrote with two other leftist-feminist Catholic nuns, Donna Quinn and Jeannine Gramick, entitled "Pro-choice isn't pro-abortion."

This letter asks why Catholic Church leaders don't listen to women more about the reasons why they might seek abortions, and poses a question further: "If war can be understood as acceptable in some circumstances, why cannot abortion be at least similarly understood?"

Abbott's assessment of this ethical analysis? A dismissive "Good grief." The end.

Not!

Good grief indeed...But not for the reasons he uttered these same words...Where to begin?

How about with Abbott's basic failure--refusal?-- to respect that Rindler and the other nuns define themselves as prochoice rather than proabortion? No one likes to be told who they are or what they are really about, as if they did not have the head, heart, or conscience, let alone jurisdiction, to determine that for themselves.

For example...prolifers generally don't cotton to having the term "antichoicers" or "woman-haters" imposed on them...And no fair protesting, "But we're the ones who are RIGHT! THEY monstrously decidedly aren't, so THEY don't get to define THEMselves like we do!" An outcry, by the way, I've also heard from prochoicers re: prolifers.

(If there's any route around the abovementioned tautologies, I'd love to see the map!)

Of course Abbott has the right to disagree with the nuns' position on abortion. It would even be valid for him to ask (albeit with utmost respect and commitment to listening deeply) whether their position on abortion is the one that best serves their aspiration to secure women's freedoms. He could inquire into the parallel they draw between war and abortion and whether and what sense(s) it might be warranted.

But that's not what he does with the disagreement. No, he immediately casts doubt on the nuns' good intentions, their good faith, so to speak--and that in the absence of any evidence that they are, for instance, all about forcing other women to have abortions because abortions are such great things to have!

His "evidence" against Rindler and her cohorts appears to be (or so I gather from a reading of his other writings re: other instances of women who question or challenge certain points of Catholic officialdom on sexuality and reproduction) that they are women-out-of-order, and therefore suspect, even "bad," by definition.

Now, I definitely don't want to get involved here with the intra-Catholic question of "Who's a real, faithful Catholic?"! For one, a big one, it's the wrong frame for the issue of abortion. Abortion is not just a turf war between two camps within this one religion...a big, ancient, and influential religion, yes, but, by the way, it's not the only one on the planet. And not every person belongs to a religion, for that matter.

Abortion is a universal human rights issue for people of all faiths and none. It is a matter where every day the lives and well-being of real, live flesh-and-blood human beings, female as well as male, born as well as unborn, are under threat.

The sooner it gets massively recast as such, the sooner (dare I hope?) the burning practical issues of our shared human responsibility to care for women and children, born and unborn, in need can be effectively engaged.

However...Abbott's thing re: women-out-of-order is one that immediately arouses my suspicions...because it is the same old same old argument that has been levelled for how many centuries of patriarchy, in contexts Catholic and other-than-Catholic alike, against any woman who dares challenge the treatment she and other women receive at the hands of men. The same old same old way of (however consciously or unconsciously) deflecting the justice that may actually (!) inhere in those very voices of protest.

One of feminism's founding mothers, Mary Wollstonecraft, was excoriated as "a hyena in petticoats" bent on "unsexing" herself and other women. The "evidence"? Why, of course--analogus to being an "uppity" nun, she had intercourse and became a mother without being a legal wife. That "evidence" prevented many otherwise potentially sympathetic souls from recognizing and respecting her deep passion for justice, her eloquent and deeply intelligent sense of what it was and wasn't, and how to bring the world closer to it.

Abbott gives no hint here that he has seriously considered whether the nuns may actually be asking fair questions, out of real insight and passion for justice. But their questions are eminently fair....

People in positions of authority have a responsibility to listen to and respond to the very human beings their actions most affect. If male Catholic leaders--or any other men--are going to say to women, "Abortion is wrong, don't have an abortion"--then they are...OBLIGATED (1) to find out why women consider it and resort to it in the first place and (2) to personally devote themselves to alleviating the root causes of abortion.

And certainly it is right on the mark to ask, as these three nuns do, why male Catholic leaders, or anyone else, would empathize with (generally, historically) men's dilemmas over war but not with women's dilemmas over abortion. Can anyone say, Double Standard?

The selfsame Double Standard that directly causes many an abortion! I am talking about the setup whereby men don't have to take any responsibility for sex, family planning, pregnancy care, or parenting--but woe be unto the woman who conceives and bears a child in "unauthorized" circumstances--she'll just have to go it all by herself and suffer in every possible way!

I do have to admit, I am troubled by the parallel the nuns draw between war and abortion. It's apt in that both are deeply institutionalized forms of violence and lifetaking with all manner of complex and disturbing repercussions. And in that sense, I think it's valid to encompass both issues under a nonsectarian/interfaith/secular "consistent life ethic."

However, if the comparison is valid, the following needs to be made clear in it: Decisions over if, whether, and when when war is justifiable tend to be made by men in positions of power...and women facing problematic pregnancies tend to be in situations of deep disempowerment. Women facing such pregnancies are often more akin to soldiers who have been drafted and face heavy, heavy penalties if they refuse to commit violence, or who joined the army because a racist, poverty-making culture left them no other way to get an education and make a living.

Also, I am not sure whether the nuns are arguing this: "If war is sometimes OK, then abortion must be sometimes OK, too." If they are...that's unfortunate. Because (especially in this fifth year of the atrocious war in Iraq, in this time of social-program slashing that rips up women's and children's already tenuous safety nets) we need less violence. And more relief of the causes of violence.

More moving of both men and women towards the care for life that has been traditionally considered the province of the female, but really belongs to us all.

'Nuff said. For now. My head spins, my hands hurt.

Are Feminists for Life Really Feminists? Part Two

On Feminists for Life (FFL) and its invocation of suffragists on abortion:

In her Mother Jones article, Emily Bazelon is right on the mark that early feminists saw abortion as a sign and symptom of women's socially mandated powerlessness. They also saw it as an unjust violence against unborn children's lives.

Although some people today certainly oppose abortion for despicable, hypocritical, decidedly not "prolife" reasons of wanting to control women: some of us oppose it for an updated, evolving version of this pioneering analysis.

The founders of the Nonviolent Choice Directory & Blog have thoroughly researched and documented this early feminist history and its continuing relevance in the book ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition, and elsewhere.

And for the most part, FFL's invocation of suffragists is grounded in this research. Contrary to Bazelon's assertions, it is not "context-free" nor irrelevant to present-day issues.

And what is the source of Bazelon's belief that early feminists opposed abortion because they "feared it would blur the line between a 'fallen woman' and a 'lady'"?

Contrary to the stereotype that they were prudes, early feminists of diverse kinds were determined not merely to blur but dismantle that line. They thoroughly exposed and challenged the sexual double standard that harmed and stunted all women (and still does!) by harshly separating out the purportedly "good" from the purportedly "bad" women and covering over the complicity and responsibility of social institutions in women's unjust, preventable sufferings.

This resistance to the double standard figured enoromously and continuously in their words and deeds of resistance to abortion. As the book also documents, in reprints of their own profuse writings.

We Welcome The Welcome

Ms. Turn the Clock Forward has graciously welcomed Nonviolent Choice to the blogosphere--and not only that, has encouraged helpful, feedback-giving visitors.

Now how can we argue with a jot or tittle of that?

Not only has at least one person out there noticed us, it's her. She is kewel, check her out. Ms. TCF bravely and diligently started and ran for many the late great email discussion group & website LeftOut: A Haven for Progressive Prolifers.

(and yes, we exist, no, we are not carefully contrived PR smokescreens over rank stealth misogynist-fascist authoritarian-religious agendas let alone the hapless dupes of said agendas, and no, we are not figments of our own purportedly unreality-based imaginations)

And now that blogs are The Thing, she has started a blog that among other virtues unequivocally advocates freedom of choice in family planning, LBGT rights, and comprehensive sex education. How can we not like her?

Hope our other (if any) readers will, too.