History is destined to repeat itself this week in Detroit. This January, the Women’s March banned pro-life women from partnering in their “women’s march.” This week, their convention will feature no pro-life or conservative speakers. That’s a shame, because many of the topics on the agenda would benefit from a pro-life perspective… the perspective that most American women hold. Yet, despite its name, the “Women’s” March doesn’t care about what’s important to most American women.
Conversations on domestic violence will likely be devoid of facts on how abortion is used as a tool of the patriarchy. There will likely be no mention of how men (i.e. Rep. Tim Murphy) coerce women into abortion to escape responsibility for their actions. One study reported that 53 percent of women felt “forced” by someone to have an abortion while 65 percent felt “forced” by their circumstances. Meanwhile more than 80 percent of the women said they would have chosen life for their pre-born child with someone’s encouragement or help.
Conversations on anti-violence will likely not discuss the violent nature of abortion, of which fifty percent of victims are female. Or the fact that abortion is too often used to target preborn girls. It will not discuss how Planned Parenthood lies to women about the fetal body parts that they have been caught selling, sometimes without the woman’s knowledge or consent.
Will the convention discuss the racist history of Planned Parenthood? How Planned Parenthood’s founder was a eugenicist who promoted birth control in order to keep down the black population? Or how white researchers used poor and immigrant women as guinea pigs (some of whom died) to determine the effects of the Pill and what dosage should be sold to white women? Doubtful.
But that’s okay. The pro-life generation will be outside the convention to have these conversations with attendees, the media, and the public. Our student leaders know about the violent, racist, and anti-women ideology that underpins the abortion industry. They intend to debunk the great lie of the Feminist Left that women cannot have both a career and a family. They know that, abortion is the ultimate tool of the patriarchy.
Today’s empowered women know that they can multitask for achievement. It’s ironic that Victorian patriarchs told women they could not be successful at work and at home … so they should stay home, and leave the voting and economic issues to the men. Now feminist leaders tell women they cannot be successful at home and a work … so they should just stay a work and leave behind their dreams for meaningful relationships and children. Either way, women are sold short.
Women have incredible freedoms in the U.S. — freedoms that women in other nations can scarcely hope to attain in the future. In the United States, women can be successful and achieve their dreams no matter what their background or circumstances. By and large, American women live without the fear of female genital mutilation, becoming the child brides of violent abusers, or being robbed of their basic human rights.
But the glaring contradiction in America’s otherwise shining record of female empowerment is abortion. Abortion undermines every achievement we make as women by reminding us that American culture has failed to assure women that the cost of their own success is never the blood of their own children. Abortion is an affront to the dignity of women just as it is an affront to the lives of millions of preborn males and females who become the collateral damage of a failed second-wave feminist ideology. Women deserve the opportunity to thrive in every endeavor — a home and a work and wherever their dreams will take them. Women deserve better than the lies of the mainstream feminism movement.
Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) is president of Students for Life of America.
Perspectives expressed in op-eds are not those of The Daily Caller.