Chelleology

Despite what you may believe, I am certainly not opposed to listening to differing point of views.  So, when I saw the signs on the local college campus advertising a lecture by Feminists for life, I was intrigued.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am pro-life.  What made me uncomfortable was the term ‘feminists’. 

There’s no doubt that if I were alive in the 50s and 60s, I would have been a complete feminist.  Back then it was about burning bras in the name of women’s liberation.  It was about getting out of the kitchen and entering the work force.  It was about women being more than just baby makers and caretakers of their husbands.  But now feminism has evolved into making men the enemy or discarding them altogether. 

You could argue that feminism is about equal pay for equal work but I don’t necessarily buy that argument either.  If you could find two people who are identical in everyway (same personality, same work ethic, same temperament, same degrees from the same school, same age, etc) but one has a penis and one does not, then I might be able to buy that women are getting the short end of the stick.  The problem is that unfair pay between the sexes is difficult to prove.  Then you have to account for the mothering factor.  After a woman comes back from maternity leave she’s already 6 to 12 weeks behind those without children.  Then there are absences.  Most of the time, it’s the woman who takes the day off to care for a sick child.  Granted, it may not be fair that these factors hamper a woman’s chances of moving up the ladder or getting paid as much as her counter part but let’s look at it another way.  I am childless by choice (granted if I found myself in the family way, I would have the child).  Is it fair that another woman get paid as much as I do if she has missed 6 weeks plus several days here and there during the year and I have impeccable attendance with few absences?  It’s the same thing for men.  It is not only unfair to pay a woman as much as a man when he’s at work all the time and she misses work due to motherly responsibilities, nor is it fair to punish those that don’t have children.  It’s also unfair for employers to be stuck in a situation where they have to tip the scales to assist the woman for fear of a lawsuit.  Frankly, I have always been of the opinion that if you don’t like how much you’re getting paid or you don’t like your benefits, you need to find another job. 

This is what I thought about on my drive to the lecture.  I feared I would get a lecture about how life is unfair for women and that men are the source of their frustration. But because it was a pro-life lecture, I tried to put aside my preconceived notions about what feminism is and listened with an open mind.

Karen Shablin was a card-carrying member of NARAL and a policy expert and acting director of NJ’s Medicaid agency and also a woman who had an abortion in her 20s.  She made the argument that Roe v. Wade didn’t empower women but instead hurt women.  Women in their 20s are the most likely the have an abortion and women in college are even more likely to have an abortion than someone who is not in college.  Why is that?  Mrs. Shablin offered up an explanation.  Colleges are not exactly pregnancy friendly.  Look at the desks.  They do not allow for an ever increasing stomach.  Many colleges do not have changing tables or day care.  When you look at student insurance, you’ll find that their policies cover for abortions but do not cover prenatal care.  What does this tell our college women?  It tells them that you cannot have a college career and a baby.  They find that their only choice is to abort or drop out.  FFL says that we need to start talking about options and show our women that there is another choice and that it is possible to go to college and have a baby.  It won’t be easy and sacrifices have to be made but it is possible. 

I know what you’re asking and I asked myself the same question.  As a fiscal conservative, I worried about my tax dollars paying to make our colleges more pregnancy and baby friendly.  How do we pay for this?  It didn’t take long before my creative problem solving skills kicked in.  Let’s start with day care.  There are students on campus majoring in child psychology and education.  Why not have them work at the day care on campus for college credit?  The desks are easy.  Desks are already funded at our public institutions.  Let’s make some of those desks a little larger.  Donations by pro-life organizations can help pay to install changing tables in bathrooms on campus.  When we start working on making these accommodations to our women, the stigma that goes along with being a pregnant college student begins to fade away. 

I slowly started to come to grips with the feminism term and maybe a small part of me wanted to identify with that term.  But what’s more important is that I became even more prolife as I found more and more reasons to stand my ground on my stance.

First off, Roe v. Wade, completely discards men.  Roe v. Wade made it possible for women to make a choice whether to keep their babies or abort them.  They did not need the man’s input.  I understand that the woman is the one that has to carry the baby for nine months but that child is also a part of the man and he should have a choice too.  In my discussions with women who disagree with me, many of them clam up when I ask them whether or not the man needs to help pay for the abortion.  Since the woman doesn’t need a man’s input to abort the child, obviously she doesn’t need money or assistance from the man to get the abortion.  When you make the choice entirely the woman’s decision, you are sending the message to our young men that they don’t matter and they are going to have the attitude that it’s all up to the woman to deal with it. 

Second, Roe v. Wade made it okay to abort a child so that it doesn’t get in the way of their life style or their opportunity to succeed.  What has happened to our society where our life style or our desires to succeed take precedence over another life?  Arguably you can say that there are just too many kids that are in foster care.  I find that a little strange that we can send millions of dollars to
Africa to assist women in getting abortions and the likes of Madonna and Angelina Jolie go to other countries to adopt children.  Frankly, I would rather we pay for children in foster care and make adoption easier than to subsidize abortions.  You could claim that children in foster care suck up our tax dollars but so does illegal immigration.  Get tough on illegal immigration and let’s take care of our children.  It isn’t the child’s fault so let’s get our priorities straight.

Third, we have now allowed women to decide to abort for what has to be the most offensive reason.  Their bodies!  On more than one occasion, I have found myself arguing with a pro-choice woman who states that women should not be forced to carry the baby for nine months and put their bodies through ‘all that’.  What has our society become when we place more value on how we look or feel over a life?  Pregnancy is a beautiful thing and treating it as a horrible disease is a disservice to women and our society as a whole.