How Abortion Divides Us
By Hillary Taft - Friday, April 3rd, 2009
The New Agenda reports that the US is one of the few holdouts to ratifying the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) into law. As we hear on the news horrifying stories of teenage girls getting beaten by the Taliban, you have to wonder why it is taking so long for women to achieve not just “true equality” but some semblance of true progress worldwide.
Here in America, we feminists have wasted far too much time, brains and energy on the abortion issue. I’m sorry NARAL and Planned Parenthood, but we need to move past this.
I have a simple solution to the abortion problem: USE SOME DAMN BIRTH CONTROL!
Meanwhile, we women just keep on fighting each other over this one issue, while so many other more important women’s issues are left unresolved.
As Sheryl Robinson of the New Agenda writes:
So…what if a bunch of us elected to put the abortion issue aside -– not giving up our personal positions, but choosing to work together on other fronts, fighting any number of other fights for women? What if we decided that getting more women elected and addressing violence against women and equal pay for women and sexism in the media were issues that could be tackled by women from both the left and the right, while we refused to play with the political football that the abortion issue has become?
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mean to trivialize reproductive rights, but let’s consider the lesson learned from CEDAW, which is that the issue of choice separates women and drains away our power.
Our government is comprised of 83% men. The status quo will naturally keep giving men a disproportionate degree of power, and choice is a convenient way to keep women divided and block any meaningful progress that we can make on the 80% of issues that impact all women — the issues that, if resolved, would give us more seats at the table, and shift the balance of power in our favor.
April 4th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
We wouldn’t need to worry so much about abortion if people would keep their pants on. I get that our government wants the separation of church and state (which, by the way, does NOT mean anti-God) but why do they/we throw the good morals of Judaism, Christianity and even Mormonism which include keepin the damn pants on?! People want this live-loose lifestyle and then want the government to pay for their mistakes i.e. abortion or welfare. What you do in your house to your body is none of my business but when abortion is gov’t subsidize, it becomes my business.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am
The abortion issue not only divides women it divides the entire country.
As long as we all keep fighting with each other, we get nothing done. In fact, how can a politician do anything when 50% of the country will fight against him/her. No wonder special interest get their way, politicians couldn’t listen to us if they wanted to.