Feminists for (Fetal) Life

[atommom]

Can you be a feminist and be against abortion? Feminists for Life claims to be both, and if you listen long enough to its voluble and likable president, Serrin Foster, you might almost think it's true. FFL is on a major publicity roll these days, because Jane Roberts, wife of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, is a pro bono legal adviser, former officer and significant donor (she gave between $1,000 and $2,499 in 2003). When I caught up with Foster at the end of a long day that included an hour on NPR's On Point, she talked a blue and quite amusing streak, and although it can be hard to follow an aria that swoops from Susan B. Anthony to telecommuting to water pollution, while never quite answering the actual question, I'm sure she means every word of it. How can you argue with FFL's contention that America does not give pregnant women and mothers the support they need? Feminists, the prochoice kind, have been saying this for years. So far as I can tell, FFL is the only "prolife" organization that talks about women's rights to work and education and the need to make both more compatible with motherhood. It has helped bring housing for mothers and children to Georgetown University and supports the Violence Against Women Act; Foster reminded me that she and I had been on the same side in the mid-1990s in opposing family caps, the denial of additional benefits to women who had more children while on welfare. Why, she wondered, couldn't we all just work together to "help pregnant women"?

The problem is that FFL doesn't just oppose abortion. FFL wants abortion to be illegal. All abortions, period, including those for rape, incest, health, major fetal defects and, although Foster resisted admitting this, even some abortions most doctors would say were necessary to save the woman's life. (Although FFL is not a Catholic organization, its rejection of therapeutic abortion follows Catholic doctrine.) FFL wants doctors who perform abortions to be punished, possibly with prison terms.

It was extremely difficult to get Foster to say what she thought would happen if abortion was banned. At one point she would not concede that women would continue to have abortions if it was recriminalized; at another she argued that criminalization was no big deal: Instructions on self-abortion were posted on the Internet. I had to work to get her to admit that illegal abortion was common before Roe, and that it was dangerous--numbers on abortion deaths were concocted by pre-Roe legalization advocates, she told me. Yet the FFL website prominently features gory stories of abortion mishaps and discredited claims that abortion causes breast cancer. (Challenged on the cancer connection, Foster says they just want women to have medical information. Asked why they don't then link to the 2004 Lancet article debunking their cancer claims, she says they are not medical experts and have considered taking the cancer pages down.) So legal abortion is dangerous but illegal abortion would be safe? When I pointed out that in countries where the operation is banned, such as Brazil and Peru, rates are sky-high and abortion a major cause of injury and death, she professed ignorance.

I got similarly evasive answers when I asked why FFL didn't promote birth control, and when I asked if FFL considered the pill an "abortifacient." She did tell me that "birth control doesn't work" for swing-shift nurses because they lose track of their body clock--interesting, if true--or for teenagers, which I know to be false. "We just want to focus on meeting the everyday needs of women," she told me. But when I asked how the everyday needs of women with unwanted pregnancies would be served by encouraging them to bear children and place them for adoption, Foster didn't answer. Instead, she extolled the benefits of open adoption.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050829&s=pollitt

[lala_rawraw]

1. short answer is yes....

Pro-choice does not equal pro-abortion, it equals the right to choose, simply put.

[Montauk6]

2. Approaching 2008, do you think * will start calling himself

President For Life?

[Zenlitened]

3. You can be a feminist and be "pro-life," but I don't think it's possible..

... be be ANTI-CHOICE and be a feminist.

From the article:

...The problem is that FFL doesn't just oppose abortion. FFL wants abortion to be illegal. All abortions, period, including those for rape, incest, health, major fetal defects and, although Foster resisted admitting this, even some abortions most doctors would say were necessary to save the woman's life...

[musical_soul]

6. Agreed.

Anti-choice laws hurt women. Unfortunately, there are many definitions of feminism going around.

[FloridaPat]

4. I'm pro-life, but for abortion. The main reason women got abortions

way back when was because her life ended when she got pregnant. He parents disowned her, her friends left her, she was thrown out of work or the armed services, and she was discriminated for life. And the father? He still had a life unless the girls parents shot him.

It's gotten better over the decades. I think a lot of women get abortions as a means of birth control, which is like burning down a house to have a marshmellow roast. It's a big social issue besides just wanting to terminate a pregnancy. And I don't think there are enough clear headed people today to determine what another person should do. A lot of women don't want to be mothers. I would like to see free birth control to all who wants it. I would like to see the self-esteem of women raised because I think society is still trying to make women subservient to men. And as long as women have that mind set, the men will control the situation regarding sex. And I would really like to see our society concerned about the born babies, not the unborn. If your single and have a baby, everyone cares until the child is born, and then you're left on your own. There is hardly any support for married mothers in this country. So until society starts treating women as people who can run their own lives and make their own decision and have a support system for people with children, I am for abortion.

[musical_soul]

5. Thank you for posting this.

I really like how FFL portrays "pro-life feminists" as women who want to help women with things other than abortion rights, as if we didn't.

I have always thought it was funny how anti-choice groups claim that abortion is unsafe (as legal) but yet act like it wasn't all that unsafe before it was illegal. Which is it?