Pro-lifers: With the evidence against them, they return to their roots

Years ago, I read parts of Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women for a paper I wrote in a high school history class. The roots of the pro-life movement are rooted not just in religion, but in a feminist backlash. Several leading pro-life groups in the 80s had great disdain for pro-choice sentiment because it implied that women have a right to make to reproductive decisions without consulting their boyfriends or husbands. A pro-choice sentiment gives women more control over their lives as autonomous sexual beings, than a pro-life one that demands that a woman’s freedoms are secondary to the fetus that has taken hold inside her.

Throughout the 90s, abortion clinic attacks became the focus of the most extreme pro-lifers. Accordingly, the pro-life movement defined itself as a cause meant to prevent baby murder.

Seems as though PREVENTING unwanted pregnancy would be a great way to bridge the gap between the pro-choice and pro-life crowd. If both sides worked to ensure women had access to adequate birth control, there would be fewer abortions. The Pro-choice side wants women to have control over their own family planning, and since abortion is that last stop on the unwanted baby train, it would seem access to birth control would be a logical point of cooperation.

But the American Life League is upping the ante this summer and on June 7th, it would like you join them in protesting the birth control pill because it kills babies. Yes, making it more difficult for a sperm and egg to collide, as well as preventing a zygote from attaching to the uterine wall, is now also deemed murder. Preventing a pregnancy that could end in abortion is now equally wrong. My favorite parts of their talking points (I italize points of interests for my own emphasis):

Q: How does the pill work?
A: The birth control pill and similar birth control products work in a woman’s body in one of three ways: It can prevent ovulation and it can obstruct sperm from reaching the egg (prevent fertilization) by thickening the cervical mucus. However, if both of these methods fail and a new human person is created, the pill and other contraceptives can stop a tiny child’s implantation in his/her mother’s womb because the pill irritates the lining of the uterus so that the tiny baby boy or baby girl cannot attach to the lining of the uterus and the newly formed human person is aborted and dies.

Here’s what that “tiny person” looks like. It’s actually zygote, not remotely like a fetus, which would grow to resemble a “tiny person.”

But the real mission of this new campaign is left bare.

Q: Isn’t it better to be on the pill when you
are sexually active?
A: Better for whom? The pill does not prevent you from getting a sexually transmitted disease . . . Moreover, sexual activity outside of marriage is seriously wrong.

Q: I’m for reducing the number of abortions, but isn’t using the birth control pill the only way to do that?
A: . . .If you’re single, abstinence is always your best choice. It isn’t always easy, but it always works. By abstaining from sex, you eliminate the possibility of pregnancy and catching a sexually transmitted disease.

At least the ALL is being honest about judging women for having active sex lives, even if it is completely unrealistic. Though a late 1990s survey showing that 1 in 3 thinks sex should be confined to marriage, about 95% of Americans have/had premarital sex, including those born all the way back in the 1940s. Another study found that 93 percent of men and 79 percent of women report having premarital sex.

Women are consistently demonized in the media for so-called immoral behavior. Despite women’s lib and 5 years of Samantha Jones getting laid like a man on Sex & the City, women are not on equal societal footing when it comes to embracing their sexuality. For some reason, a segment of American cannot accept a woman as a sentient, sexual being.

Case in point. Consider the trial of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the DC Madam who committed suicide to avoid her prison sentence. Of the 15000 clients she had amassed in her prostitution ring, just three men were outed. On the other hand, 15 of Palrey’s 100+ sex workers were put on the stand and asked to describe in painstaking detail what acts they engaged in with their unnamed johns. The prosecutor is adamant that the names of all 132 women involved be released.

From the audience, it appears that prosecutors have presented a solid case that the alleged Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, did indeed run a prostitution ring. A better question, however, is why they bothered. Prosecutors say the prostitution ring generated all of $2 million over 13 years — small potatoes for a federal racketeering and money-laundering case that could ruin the lives of 132 women.

It’s a question that evidently has occurred to the judge. Yesterday, prosecutors unpacked eight binders full of money-order receipts that reveal the identity of most, if not all, of the Madam’s escorts. “You want to make public the names of all the employees?” Robertson asked prosecutor Catherine Connelly. “Is there no limit to the collateral damage?”

Evidently not. Connelly said the names had to be released. “Unfortunately.”

(Note to whoever has custody of that little black book: wikileaks.org would be a prime place to upload a pdf copy of Palfrey’s client list, especially in an election year).

15,000 men and none face legal consequences for their repetitive, illegal actions, while the women are targets of what Vanessa at Feministing dubbed a “slut-shaming witch hunt“.

The American Life League is going to continue encouraging the sexual witch hunt this summer. Because unless you’re ready to birth babies, sex shouldn’t be an optional activity.

Pissed off? Me too. NARAL Pro-Choice America is taking donations.

PS. I do acknowledge that for some, religious and ethical boundaries are the reason for their pro-life stance. I respect an individual’s religious choices, though I disagree with those that expect the government to extend one’s religious beliefs to an entire nation regardless of every other citizen’s personal religious and ethical proclivities.

PPS. While we’re talking about the sexuality police, let’s also consider those die-hard, abstinence-only education supporters. Study after study is showing that abstinence-only education is ineffective and pales in comparison to comprehensive sex education. This week author Cristina Page took the time to cross reference teen pregnancy and sexual activity rates with the type sex education available in each state. Her findings?

Turns out pro-life states, those that are prone to tell kids that abstinence is the only proven contraception, and discourage use of actual contraception, then wag their finger at the less “morally superior” states, are where high schoolers are:

· more sexually active

· more likely to have had sex before the age of 13

· more likely to have four or more sexual partners.

Turns out that to be “pro-life” is to be pro-your-young-teen-having-a-risky-sex-life. In addition, the states that are witnessing the most dramatic drop in teen pregnancies are the most solidly pro-choice ones (CA, VT, HI, AK) while the ones where teen pregnancy rates are declining most slowly are anti-choice (NE, MS, WY, OK).