The nation’s largest pro-life youth organization says though it has been excluded from the so-called “Women’s March” in Washington, D.C. because of its pro-life views, it will attend anyway.
Students for Life of America (SFLA) says it has been trying to become a sponsor of Saturday’s Women’s March since December, but has been excluded because the organization has pro-life views. SLFA president Kristan Hawkins says:
Even though the Women’s March claims inclusivity – as least they did in the beginning – they are excluding the majority of American women who find abortion to be morally wrong and believe in protecting families, defending the marginalized, and achieving social justice. Instead of a march to promote those worthy values and truly be inclusive, the event has turned into a rallying cry for the radical abortion industry to save their own baby: taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.
A New York Times article explains that women who consider themselves to be both “feminists” and “pro-life” are being excluded from the Women’s March, which has its roots in a call by the abortion industry to defy incoming president Donald Trump and his administration’s plan to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding and redirect it to other federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) that do not perform abortions.
According to the Times:
Across the country, women who oppose abortion — including one in six women who supported Hillary Clinton, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center — are demanding to be officially included in Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington. But those requests have been spurned, creating a bitter rift among women’s organizations, and raising thorny questions about what it means to be a feminist in 2017.
“If you want to come to the march you are coming with the understanding that you respect a woman’s right to choose,” Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American Muslim racial justice and civil-rights activist, and a chairwoman of the event, told the Times.
Hawkins, however, states she will be at the march anyway to represent women who have been betrayed by the abortion industry.
“We are looking forward to being a witness to the march attendees to the millions of women betrayed by Planned Parenthood who sell them out every single day – along with their preborn babies – for profit,” she asserts.
SFLA says it plans to be equipped with Go-Pros in case of any violence against them or their students.
The so-called “Women’s March,” which reportedly has registered several hundred thousand participants, has been beset by divisiveness since its beginnings.
Radical feminist Gloria Steinem and Planned Parenthood have partnered for the event, providing it with its decidedly anti-Trump tone.
On her website, Steinem says to her fans:
We have all the powers we had [before Trump was elected] of lobbying and pressuring and making clear that the political consequences are great. We may look up and feel powerless and think there’s nothing we can do, but it’s not true. There are things we can do at each level. And there’s always civil disobedience. Trump is not my president.
Steinem also recently said she would refuse to pay the full amount of her federal income tax if Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funds were eliminated.
While it is the left that generally identifies people according to various classifications and then turns them into political activist groups, Slate reports that Steinem said in a statement, “I am proud to be one of thousands who will come to Washington to make clear that we will keep working for a democracy in which we are linked as human beings, not ranked by race or gender or class or any other label.”
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said about the march:
We will send a strong message to the incoming administration that millions of people across this country are prepared to fight attacks on reproductive health care, abortion services, and access to Planned Parenthood, as they intersect with the rights of young people, people of color, immigrants, and people of all faiths, backgrounds, and incomes.
According to the march’s website, its mission is to “send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights.”
Despite its message of unity among all the left’s political identity groups, the Times previously reported the “Women’s March” has been anything but unified from its inception:
On the march group’s Facebook page, it is easy to see how complicated the idea of the “women’s vote,” an already mythological concept, has become, and how difficult it might be for organizers to fulfill their aim of gathering women who remain fiercely divided on reproductive rights, gun control, same-sex marriage and immigration, among other issues.
Not everyone on the page believes, for instance, that Hillary Clinton would have made a good president, or that Stephen K. Bannon, a chief strategist under Mr. Trump, holds divisive views about minorities. Debates over both have sprung up in recent days. Bob Bland, one of the march organizers, said in an email that organizers in Maryland had to change a Facebook page from public to private to protect the safety of women who want to attend.
Writing at The Week, abortion rights supporter Shikha Dalmia asserts the demonstration has already failed in its mission.
“Demonstrations serve a useful function in a democracy — but only when they have clarity of purpose,” she writes, adding that the march is “shaping up to be a feel-good exercise in search of a cause.”
Dalmia writes some of the “absurdity” related to the event stems from “the fact that they are billing this event as the voice of women when 42 percent of women (and 62 percent of non-college educated white women) actually voted for Trump.”
She also observes “the almost-comical progressive hysteria over the event’s name.” The initial plan by the “three white women” organizers, she says, was to call the event the “Million Women March,” but the women were criticized for “cultural appropriation” for “allegedly poaching the heritage of the 1997 Million Woman March for black women.”
“Feminists are confusing the issue by making Trump’s threat about themselves,” Dalmia concludes. “If they really wanted to help, they would have kept their powder dry for now, rather than embark on this confused and pointless march.”
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