Fatal Feminism: A Woman’s Right to Excuse

By Jessica Greer

The Women's March on Washington was an unprecedented backlash to a presidential inauguration, if only for the sheer numbers that were organized into global protests.

It was publicly declared not an Anti-Trump rally, but rather a pro-thousands-of-subcultures-against-the-Trump-presidency “unity.”

These women stood on the platform of pro-choice to carry their supposed torch of freedom for political identities of every stripe.

Leaders of the current feminist renaissance are mobilizing to promote solidarity among all “marginalized” groups, subcultures, sub-subcultures... the multicultural divisions are endless.

From the gay community to LGBT, and now to LGBTQIA... and they have 19 letters in the alphabet yet to explore.

The list of the alleged victims of micro-aggressions and overt bigotry presented on the Women's March website is in itself divisive.

Former President Obama’s most schismatic strategy was to introduce identity politics on the executive stage.

Suddenly, to be a progressive, democratic citizen, you had to accept leftist litany or be labelled a backward cynic.

After all, lest we forget, middle-class Americans “cling to their guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them.”

The incongruity of identity politics is that it reduces individuals and ethnic minorities to the lowest common denominator while requiring a democratic celebration of their diversity.

“The issue of sin is a matter of the heart, and there does not exist a policy effective enough to eliminate it.
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In theory, identity politics is the ideal that demands equal respect for every person. In reality, it is an exclusive club where each sub-schism demands respect for their label of choice and condemns as bigotry any attack on their version of truth.

This makes it easy to wrap leftist ideas around any protected identity and accuse the opposition of attacking an entire people group.

The demand that both government and citizenry cater to the social demands of each group actually impedes the pluralism they are paid to scream about every Saturday for the next four years.

Regardless of President Trump's outrageous presentations, it seems unlikely that he could single-handedly take credit for a divided America.

Then there is the ultimate declared goal and alleged right of the women's movement: abortion.

As it claws its way back into mainstream pop culture, the movement demands a following of collective thinkers who embrace abortion, because it is this that is foundational to all else.

In her podcast Women of the Hour, Lena Dunham praised women who have abortions as such courageous heroes that she felt regret at not having had an abortion of her own.

Other celebrities like Chelsea Handler brag about their multiple abortions as if they were medals decorating a feminist uniform.

It is interesting to note that the Women's March on Washington excluded the pro-life feminist group called The New Wave Feminists, declaring: “The Women’s March platform is pro-choice and that has been our stance from day one…The anti-choice organization in question is not a partner of the Women’s March on Washington.”

When, exactly, was Day One for this supposedly grassroots movement?

The illegitimacy of this movement is based on the delusion that they are the modern extension of the original women’s rights movement of the late 19th century.

The Women’s March activists may have felt empowered carrying a bold, pink Planned Parenthood banner while walking hand in hand with the Black Lives Matter protestors.

However, a little historical connection would afford them a bit of that irony that millennials seem to value so much.

There is a haunting history connected to birth control via the abortion and sterilization of marginalized people, especially within the Black community.

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and champion of second wave feminism, was a believer in eugenics, a debunked science based on racial superiority.

Sanger wrote that birth control “is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives.”

She advocated the sterilization of those populations considered inferior.

  Juxtapose this history with that of the birth of the first women’s movement in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a fervent abolitionist.

 In 1840, she and many other anti-slavery activists attended the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London alongside their husbands.

But once there, these women who had been instrumental as leaders of the movement in the United States were prevented from participating or speaking. This exclusion was based solely on their gender.

A new struggle began as they realized that women must have the right to vote and must be given full social equality if they were going to be effective citizens in a working democracy.

Various strategies were implemented as different women led the charge of the suffragettes, but one constant remained: not one of them embraced abortion as a reproductive right.

Alice Paul, perhaps the most radical suffragist of her time, asked: “How can one protect and help women by killing them as babies?” and concluded, “Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”

Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president in 1872 said, “Wives deliberately permit themselves to become pregnant … then, as deliberately murder their babies while yet in their wombs. Can there be a more demoralized condition?... They fully realize the enormity of their crime.”

Thesematriarchs of the women's rights movement became a national moral conscience.

The causes they championed were founded upon a solid base of morality, respect for the sanctity of life, and such a passion for all people to be free that the institution of slavery was challenged as sin against God.

The struggle for women’s equality in our democratic society did not end when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.

Many women still remain disenfranchised from policy making and economic mobility, and it is this group that is being used for political currency in the new intersectional wave of fatal feminism.

The question is, what are the pro-life, abortion-scorning Christians doing to shift this paradigm?

As the new administration takes a hard line stance on abortion, many Evangelicals feel encouraged to repeal Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy – but we would be remiss if we overlook the historical effects of trying to legislate morality.

Consider the 18th Amendment.

Temperance was another moral cause taken up by women in an attempt to cure the social ills caused by alcohol.

At this time women did not have a vote, marital protection, custody laws, or economic equality.

If a husband was an angry, raging alcoholic, his wife and children were subject to violence, lack of income, and even death.

But the decent society envisioned by the Prohibition Law drafters was a far cry from reality.

From theratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919 to its repeal in 1933, the underbelly of American culture grew even darker and more deviant.

San Francisco was the first city to open underground topless bars to accommodate clandestine clients.

Chicago became the capital of organized crime, bootleg alcohol, and ruthless criminals like Al Capone; Sin City, Nevada, on the Las Vegas strip added yet another addiction.

Trying to legislate morality is like trying to add legalism to your theology. The result is greater depravity as human nature resorts to the shadows to get its fix.

The issue of sin is a matter of the heart, and there does not exist a policy effective enough to eliminate it.

Matthew 15:19 says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” 

Man's law can't offer true freedom if it is in direct opposition to God’s law. Such is the case with the legalization of abortion and murder.

Historically, Christians have played a crucial role in reaching out to the hopeless.

Morality is most effective when it is expressed through love.

In 1869, women's activist Mattie Brinkerhoff wrote: “When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society; so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.”

Balancing this with the belief in choice and a free will to sin, there is a message here that pro-life women’s rights circles aim to acknowledge.

It is not only about exposing the hypocrisy and fatal consequences of the pro-choice platform that the current wave of feminism stands on, but also about reminding pro-life advocates that the argument does not stop at “murder is wrong.”

As Sister Joan Chittister put it, “Your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth.”

Matthew 25:39-40 says, “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcome You, or naked and clothe You? And when did we see You sick or in prison and visit You?”

Meeting the needs of women in our sin-stained society does not translate into making Lena Dunham’s wish come true with a taxpayer abortion. On the contrary, we must challenge ourselves to acknowledge that all lives have purpose.

And because they have purpose, we must force ourselves to face our own responsibility to the many children who we believe deserve to be born instead terminated.