Sue Lani Madsen: Pro-life women not welcome at protest marches
Protest marches are pointless if not focused. I’ve participated in exactly one, as a cranky, sleep-deprived architecture student. WSU officials had decided to close our branch library. We marched up the hill and barged into a board of regents meeting demanding that our library be saved. It worked.
Last week, there was a women’s protest march in downtown Spokane, and I didn’t attend. Conservative women weren’t welcome.
Friends who did participate assured me the Spokane Women’s March was inclusive. There were no calls to blow up the White House or reports of nasty speech like the “mother of all women’s marches” in Washington, D.C. The weather was decent and the atmosphere festive. This is a community that knows how to gather in the streets without turning it into a riot.
But I still didn’t feel welcome. There were no conservative voices by design.
This was not a grass-roots movement. The domain name was set up four days after the November election results. An ad hoc national organization planted state chapters to coordinate city marches. Their “Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles” statement rambles all over the progressive political map, but there was one point on which there was perfect clarity.
If you are pro-life, then you are not welcome.
Not only did the organizers explicitly disinvite modern pro-life feminists, they had the nerve to say they were standing on the legacy of the original suffragettes and abolitionist movement. If I wasn’t welcome, I was in good company with these strong women:
Susan B. Anthony, abolitionist and foremother of the women’s rights movement, who saw abortion as violence against women.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who refused to carry advertising for abortifacients in her newspaper and denounced abortion as evil.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman M.D. in the United States and a fierce opponent of abortion.
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to earn the Nobel Peace Prize, “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace,” who saw both the woman and her child as victims. “When we allow abortion, we are punishing the women … and we are punishing the children whose life is terminated. … I want us to step back a little bit and say: Why is this woman and this child threatened? Why is this woman threatening to terminate this life? What do we need to do as a society? What are we not doing right now as a society?”
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, lifelong Democrat, advocate for social justice and a supporter of Feminists for Life, an organization facing into the root causes that drive women to abortion.
Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, founding member of the national pro-life movement, who called it “second only to the abolitionist movement in the profound change it has brought about in American thinking.”
The Women’s March movement wasn’t about starting a civil dialogue on how society can better support women and children. There was no sincere desire for unity and inclusiveness from the national organizers, who removed a pro-life feminist group in Texas from their list of local partners.
The Women’s March “exclusive premier sponsor” is Planned Parenthood, joined by a who’s who list of progressive organizations. By stepping under the local Women’s March banner for a day, those who participated are now pawns to be counted for national news releases on crowd size.
We are in the midst of a second Civil War. This time, the dividing line is abortion instead of abolition. The weapons are words. Slavery was justified by calling African-Americans less than fully human. Hiding behind the words “reproductive rights” dehumanizes human life with words to rationalize choosing abortion. It’s no different than plantation masters hiding behind property rights to justify owning their workforce.
There’s another march this weekend, the Walk for Life Northwest at midday Saturday in Riverfront Park. It’s one of a series of gatherings around the country commemorating the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, handed down before ultrasounds and neuroscience established the humanity of babies in the womb. Unlike the Women’s March, everyone at the Walk for Life will know why they are marching.