Surprising Choices
Prolife Feminism: Yesterday And Today
edited by Mary Krane Derr, Rachel MacNair,
and Linda Naranjo-Huebl
XLibris Corporation, 2006 (2nd ed.)
(474 pages, $24.99, paperback)
reviewed by Jocelyn Mathewes
You see it on bumper stickers: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” The preface to Prolife Feminism: Yesterday and Today quips, “Prolife feminism is the even more radical notion that both women and unborn children are people.”
I agree that women and the unborn are both people, but I have to come clean: Some feminist arguments make sense to me—in college, I agonized over the injustice many women and children suffer—but when I see the word “feminist” in my mind, there is a solid, large, black asterisk standing firmly next to the t. I read this book with some curiosity.
Feminism’s Cracked Wall
Fannie Lou Hamer—granddaughter of slaves and a civil rights activist—minces no words: “I believe that legal abortion is legal murder and the use of pills and rings to prevent God’s will is a great sin.” In Prolife Feminism, the devout Hamer stands incongruously alongside Cecilia Brown, president of the Prolife Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, who says, “I want GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual] people to know that we do not have to sacrifice the unborn and their mothers so that we can receive civil rights.”
And that is what is so astounding about Prolife Feminism, that all 75 women come, preaching pro-life ethics, from such a wide and ragged crack in the wall of feminism. “The use of pills and rings to prevent God’s will is a sin” will shock some feminist ears, while others will find themselves ill at ease to see a vocal gay-rights activist in the pro-life camp.
The essayists range from 1735 to the present day, and include historical activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and contemporary women like the playwright Lorraine Hansberry and activist Mary Meehan. Most writers are American, but several writers from Europe and Africa are included. The writers are radical beyond their mere presence in the book, however. Their arguments shed light into some more shadowy corners of feminist thinking and approaches.
Daphne Clair de Jong, author and founder of the New Zealand chapter of Feminists for Life, argues in “The Feminist Sell-Out” (1978), for example, that women’s rights have not progressed as far as many think they have. Many feminists agree, but she cites the use of abortion as a means to preserve a lifestyle or career as proof of such lack of progress.
In the fight for equality, she says, “Accepting short term solutions like abortion only delays the implementation of real reforms.” Causes that feminists champion, “like decent maternity and paternity leave, job protection, high-quality child-care, community responsibility for dependent people of all ages, and recognition of the economic contribution of child-minders,” cannot advance if abortion is perceived as the easy and preferable way out.
Clair de Jong points to the need for women’s inherent potential to be mothers to be recognized, regardless of whether or not they are mothers. Indeed, if the cycle of conception, pregnancy, birthgiving, and childrearing is a natural course in a woman’s life, why is it that the structure of society does not make room for and support women in those pursuits? When women see their possible motherhood, and the ways society makes that possibility difficult, they realize that they exist in a world made by and for “wombless people.”
Jocelyn Mathewes is a graphic designer for the National Fatherhood Initiative (www.fatherhood.org), and is working on her documentary photography series, Women with Icons, recently shown at the Amalie Rothschild Gallery in Baltimore. She is married and attends Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthicum, Maryland.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on feminism from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on the Consequences of One Birth Before Roe v. Wade by Craig Kellogg Galer
14.6—July/August 2001
Three Bad Ideas for Women & What to Do About Them by Frederica Mathewes-Green
more from the online archives
14.1—January/February 2001
A Sociologist Looks at Fatherlessness & Its Causes by David Blankenhorn
32.2—March/April 2019
Misguided Mercy & Dante's Infernal Purgation by Joshua Hren
28.2—March/April 2015
Why Scientism's Cherished Progress Narrative Fails by Jonathan Witt
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
