ABORTION THE FEMINIST SELL-OUT
1 Self-Rejection
The clamour for abortion on demand is a clear symptom of group self hatred and total rejection. not of the sex role to which a male dominated society consigns women, but of sex identity.
The womb is not the be-aft and end-aft of a woman's existence But it is the physical centre of her sexual identity. and her sexual identity is an important aspect of her self-image and personality. To reject the wombs function, or to regard it as a handicap, a danger or a nuisance, is to reject a vital part of her own personhood. Every woman need not be a mother, but unless every woman can identify with the potential motherhood of all women, no equality is possible American Negroes gained nothing by straightening their hair and aping the white middle-classes Equality began to become a possibility only when they insisted on the acceptance of their different qualities ''Black is beautiful'.
Women will begin to gain their rights only when they stand up and demand recognition of the fact that they are people who become pregnant and give birth — and not always at infallibly convenient times and that pregnant people have exactly the same rights as others.
To argue that in order to be equal with men it must be possible for a pregnant woman to become unpregnant at will . is to ague that being a woman precludes her from being a fully functioning person. It concedes the argument of those who claim that women who want equality really want to be imitation men.
If women must submit to abortion to preserve their life style or career their education their economic or social status they are pandering to a system devised and run by men tor male convenience. Women who submit to abortion are perpetuating the politics of sexism by accommodating and surrendering to the expedient social structures and sexist values that decree that pregnancy is incompatible with other activities and that children are the sole responsibility of their mothers.
2 Identification with the Dominant Group
The demand for abortion is a sell-out to male values and a capitulation to male life-styles rather than a radical attempt to renegotiate the terms with which women and men can live in this world as people with equal rights and equal opportunities. Women who campaign tor abortion are the 'Uncle Toms'' of the feminist movement — they proclaim their own liberation while tailing to recognise that they have merely adopted the standards of the oppressor and fashioned themselves in his image.
3 Displacement, or the selection of Scapegoats
Oppressed groups have traditionally turned their frustrated anger on those even weaker than themselves. Hence the unborn child is the natural scapegoat for the repressed anger and hostility of women, which is denied any out-let in traditional male-female relationships, and ridiculed when it manifests itself in feminist protest Even while proclaiming ''her'' rights over the foetus, much women's liberation rhetoric identities pregnancy with male chauvinist ''ownership'' The inference is that by implanting ''his' seed the man has established some claim over a woman s body ''keeping her barefoot and pregnant''. Abortion is almost consciously seen as 'getting back at'' the male The truth may well be that the liberationist subconsciously sees the foetus. not as part of her body, but as pad of his.
What escapes most liberationist writers is that legal abortion is neither a remedy nor an atonement for male exploitation of women. It is merely another way in which women are manipulated and degraded for male convenience and male profit. This becomes blatantly obvious in the private abortion industry in both Great Britain and America and from the support given to the pro-abortion lobby by such exploitative corporations as the Playboy Empire.
Of all the things which are done to women in order to fit them in to a society dominated by men, abortion is the most bloody, violent and degrading invasion of their physical and psychic integrity. It is a tar deeper and more destructive assault upon womanhood than rape. lt is the culminating act of womb-envy and woman-hatred by the jealous male who resents the creative power of women.
Just as the rapist claims to be "giving women what they want" so the abortionist affirms his right to provide a service for which there is a feminine demand.
Offered the quick expediency of an abortion, instead of community support to allow her to experience pregnancy, birth and parenthood with dignity and without surrendering a single iota of her rights as a person, the woman is once again the victim, and tragically once again a willing participant in her own destruction and oppression.
The Way to True Equality
The way to equality is not to force women into moulds designed for men, but to re-examine our basic assumptions about families and society, and to design new and more flexible modes of living Accepting expedient short term solutions like abortion only delays the implementation at real reforms like decent maternity and paternity leave, job protection, high quality child care, community responsibility for dependent people of alt ages, and recognition of the personal, social and economic value of those who give up paid employment for the care of their children and of the economic contribution of child minders. Agitation for the imaginative use of flexi-time. shared jobs. shorter working weeks, good creche facilities, part time education and job training, is more constructive and liberating for women - and men -torn between careers and children than agitation for abortion.
The Women's Liberation Movement has taken a Wrong Turning
Today's women's liberation movement remains rooted in19th Century thinking, blindly accepting male dominated systems as though they rested on some immutable natural law; processing women through abortion factories to manufacture instant imitation men who win fit into a society made for and by wombless people. To accept the necessity of abortion is to accept that pregnant women and mothers are unable to function fully as persons in this society. It indicates a willingness to accept the status qua, a willingness to acquiesce in repression which is a betrayal of the feminist cause, a loss of the revolutionary vision of a world fit for people to live in.
The feminist movement has never perceived the total contradiction between its views of sexual oppression, its aspirations to a new social order, and its attitudes to abortion The accepted women's liberation prophets of the new age have never brought to bear on this question the intellectual and analytical powers that they display in other directions Typically the subject is dismissed in a paragraph or two the right' to abortion merely assumed, without evidence or argument.
Within the feminist movement, doctors and other men whose attitudes are glaringly chauvinistic are hailed as white knights if they espouse abortion on demand, white sisters who oppose it are ridiculed, shouted down, and subjected to witch hunts that would teach a thing or two to a McCarthy.
Why did the Women's Liberation Movement Lose Its Way?
The reason for the abortion issue moving to a central position in liberation ideology is quite simple. It is much easier to fight a specific law than to overcome social attitudes. Just as the suffragette movement became cohesive and powerful by focusing attention on the single issue of the vote, the new women's liberationists gain cohesion and momentum when all their resources were thrown into overturning abortion law.
But the drive to Iegalise abortion on demand is not only a red-herring, ills a tragic mistake Which will perpetuate the politics of male power and delay equality of rights for decades and even longer. Human rights are neither exclusive nor devisable. Any claim to a superior or exceptional right inevitably infringes on the rights of someone else. To ignore the rights of others, the rights of the unborn child, in an effort to assert ones own rights does not reduce injustice, it compounds injustice.
THE WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT SUFFERS THREE WELL KNOWN DEFENCE MECHANISMS WHICH ARE COMMON IN MINORTY AND OPPRESSED GROUPS
1 Self-rejection
2 Identification with the dominant group
3 Displacement, or the selection of scapegoats
Ms. Daphne de Jong, national president of a New Zealand Feminist organisation, argues that advocates of abortion on demand are selling out to the male values in society.
Protect the Unborn!
RIGHT TO LIFE ASSOCIATION
(Western Australia)
P.O. Box 6087, Hay Street
East Perth, WA, 6001
Tel 362 1514
A/H 271 6361