The announcement by the chairman of the Democrat Party’s congressional campaign committee that the party will support pro-life candidates has led to a radical feminist meltdown.
Feminists are bludgeoning the idea of diversifying the Democrat Party, through the inclusion of pro-life candidates, primarily using the arguments that a woman’s “ownership” of her body – even if it means ending the life of the vulnerable unborn – is sacrosanct, and that women cannot possibly contribute to the economy without having immediate access to abortion:
Democrat Party congressional campaign committee chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján’s (D-NM) recent announcement that “there is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates” on abortion rights comes as the party is struggling to win elections and is seeking to appeal to mainstream Americans and thereby take back control of Congress in 2018.
“As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America,” Luján said, according to the Hill.
Writing in an op-ed at the New York Times, feminist Lindy West acknowledges her party is “desperate and afraid” since Hillary Clinton’s presidential race debacle:
I am prepared to make leviathan compromises to pull us back from that brink. But there is no recognizable version of the Democratic Party that does not fight unequivocally against half its constituents’ being stripped of ownership of their own bodies and lives. This issue represents everything Democrats purport to stand for.
On Twitter, comedian Rosie O’Donnell encouraged women to form their own party if Democrats offer financial support to pro-life candidates.
Both O’Donnell and West affirm the view of Robert David Sullivan, who observed at Jesuit magazine America, “Abortion is proving that the Democratic Party can outdo Republicans in self-destruction.”
“Abortion is now the single issue defining the Democrats, and Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is the de facto head of the party,” Sullivan continued. “This gives the Republicans a major advantage in holding off electoral losses if the Trump administration continues to founder”:
Nevertheless, West continues:
To legislatively oppose abortion is to be, at best, indifferent to the disenfranchisement, suffering and possibly even the death of women. At worst it is to revel in those things, to believe them fundamental to the natural order. Where, exactly, on that spectrum is Luján comfortable placing his party?
“[T]o be anti-choice on a policy level is absolutely indefensible from an economic justice, racial justice, gender justice and human rights standpoint,” she adds. “And if the Democratic Party does not stand for any of those things, then what on earth is it?”
Much of the outpouring of feminist rage over the issue seems directed at establishment Democrat politicians, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
At Cosmopolitan, Amy Irvin, who helps provide financial assistance to women in New Orleans who want abortions, reprimands these three progressive parental congressional figures, insisting they “have dismissed the critical importance of abortion access, seemingly without a thought for what that means for the women who need it.”
Irvin continues the narrative that abortion keeps women from being at “risk,” and argues the proof is that, in her state of Louisiana – where many Democrats are pro-life – Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards “signed into law seven new abortion restrictions that shame and punish women for personal health care decisions.”
Among the restrictions signed into law by Bel Edwards that Irvin claims put women “at risk” is a measure that prohibits abortion for fetal genetic abnormalities, one that ensures only qualified physicians perform abortions and one that bans abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy.
Irvin attempts to make the “economics” argument that has become popular among feminists:
If a woman is able to access an abortion, she is likely to be able to continue employment, continue earning an income. If a woman can’t access employment, she might not be able to afford raising a child and therefore seek an abortion. To ignore abortion in the debate about economic security and freedom ignores these cyclical realities and will only diminish Democratic enthusiasm among the party’s biggest voting bloc.
The economic burdens of not having access to abortion can negatively impact women’s economic trajectory for a lifetime and affect generations down the road. Studies show women who are denied an abortion are three times more likely to wind up in poverty after two years, compared to women in comparable financial situations who were able to get one. These long-lasting economic burdens placed on women cannot be overstated.
Similarly, at Romper, Keiko Zoll writes that “you cannot be progressive and anti-abortion.” Zoll asserts:
Every human being deserves bodily autonomy and freedom over their own reproductive rights: Anti-choice policies strip away these basic human rights. Anti-choice candidates represent values — and real-world consequences — at odds with the progressive movement.
“Ultimately, reproductive rights are fundamentally about gender equity,” she continues. “Women with access to safe, legal abortions are happier, healthier, and empowered. … When women can’t safely and legally access abortions, it effects [sic] their earning potential, their educational opportunities, and their ability to fully thrive as human beings.”
However, in an op-ed at the New York Times, Lori Szala, the national director of client services at the pro-life Human Coalition, writes that the attempt to link abortion to economic success comes with “enormous baggage”:
Above all, it’s a profoundly dehumanizing argument. It reduces mothers and their children to mere economic objects, and amounts to saying we are justified in killing those who impede our economic progress. Parenting presents undeniable challenges, but no one argues that those challenges give parents the right to kill their children.
It’s also patronizing, and patently dishonest. Of course unplanned pregnancy presents challenges. But it doesn’t have to lead to economic failure. Abortion is society’s easy way out — its way of avoiding grappling with the fundamental injustices driving women to abortion clinics.
Szala – who went through an unplanned teen pregnancy herself – argues that abortion is not the economic salvation radical feminists want women to believe it is. Equally important, she suggests that community and private commitment to assist women in unplanned pregnancies are better solutions.
“Progressives cannot continue to claim every effort to reduce abortion is anti-woman and will lead to ruin and disaster,” Szala asserts. “And conservatives must do more than tell abortion-seeking women to ‘go in peace and keep warm and well fed’; they must sacrifice their time and treasure to serve women in need.”