How Dare Pro-Lifers Call Themselves Feminists!

My earliest altercation with Amanda Marcotte was over a series of posts she did decrying Feminists for Life for having the audacity to say they are feminists who--gasp!--don't believe in abortion. At the time, I hadn't a clue that linking to Amanda's screed would garner so many nasty comments from women (it was a deluge), but it was quite informative to witness first hand the callous attitude such "women" have for life in general and the lives of both women and babies in particular.

It's nearly four years later, and Feminists for Life is still causing consternation among the pro-abort feminists. This time, Echidne of the Snakes has her rattles in a twist because this organization of obviously not feminists thinks that supporting women in "refusing to choose" abortion is a bad thing. The most peculiar thing about Echidne's arguments is something basically every feminist does: they assume women must have sex and that anything that doesn't prevent the typical consequence of sex (i.e., pregnancy) is actually oppression.

This has always seemed like such a strange argument to me, considering the same women usually rush on to explain how economically burdensome children are and that being forced to actually live with and raise the offspring one casually produced is just downright unfair. What makes this argument so peculiar is that we usually aren't talking about the hard cases--rape, incest, life of the mother--but rather, sex that the woman chose to engage in.

Most girls get the birds and bees talk around the age of 10, and are fully informed about contraception by 14 or 15. During that five years, girls have been exposed to so many pro-sex images, from pictures to text, that if they don't think having sex with whoever is normal, then they must really be sick.

But what if we didn't spend all that time and money convincing 14-year-olds that having sex with their 17-year-old boyfriends was normal and nothing to be ashamed of? What if we spent the time telling them that as children, they probably shouldn't be engaging in risky, life-changing behavior that could end them up with unintended pregnancies for which killing the children is really, really not a good thing to do? My guess would be that we could have fewer children f*cking if we spend at least the same amount of time explaining to the 14-year-olds about the lifetime consequences of having sex with someone just for fun as we do teaching them the joys of fisting, for example. But then, I guess, that would be "slut shaming," as feminists call it, and we certainly don't want girls to feel bad about having sex with guys that they love or like or just met. Because, you know, sex is fun and pregnancies can be terminated and you'll never, ever, ever feel bad about that 20 minute procedure.

This is the world feminists want us to live in, a world where having sex is a meaningless activity and pregnancy is a really weird coincidence, not a consequence. In this world, thinking girls and boys and men and women should refrain from having sex unless they are prepared to be tied to that person forever means you "hate sex," and loving sex means that you don't think it's any more significant than farting. But mostly, in this world, feminists can't tolerate the idea that some women would think equality is a cool thing for women after birth...and before. That's just anti-feminism. Or something.