There is a serious need to teach pro-life feminism. As we approach potentially profound changes in abortion laws and the inevitable cultural upheaval, we need to correct the misconceptions about what helps women achieve equality.
One way to answer this need is to develop a college-level course (or courses) in pro-life feminism. Perhaps if we create courses in pro-life feminist history, women’s bodies, political activism, and related studies, there could be a minor in pro-life feminism.
A college course would reach young women and men at that pivotal time when they explore many social, cultural and political choices. It would counter the pro-abortion thread running through all the courses in women’s studies programs.
Pro-Abortion Women’s Studies
There are over 370 women’s studies programs in colleges/universities across the country. I doubt few, if any, of them even consider the possibility of a feminist being pro-life.
Students have reported being threatened with failure, having their papers torn up and suffering other harsh reactions when they dared to assert that early feminist leaders were pro-life or that there is any validity to the pro-life argument.
I get notifications from the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke College in consortium with Amherst, Hampshire, Smith and UMass Amherst.
The Center says that it “initiates and supports projects dedicated to engaged, critical feminist scholarship from diverse perspectives” but not diverse enough to include anything pro-life. It is telling that its offices are down the hall from the offices of Collective Power for Reproductive Justice.
Thus, there is an army of people in this country who have been taught pro-abortion feminism as a well-established, majority position so mainstream that it is not questioned. So, we have to insert questions into the discussion.
Catholic colleges are best suited to this task, I believe. While it would feed into the stereotype that abortion is a religious matter for Catholic colleges to take the lead on this endeavor, they have a mission well-suited to the job, and many pro-life feminist leaders are Catholic.
Pro-Life Feminist Writers
In fact, my choices for a reading list for this course would include the following Catholic feminists.
Erika Bachiochi, editor of The Cost of Choice: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion and Women, Sex and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching and the author of The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision.
Bachiochi is a Catholic pro-life legal scholar, a fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the director of The Wollstonecraft Project at the Abigail Adams Institute.
Sue Ellen Browder, author of Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement and Sex and the Catholic Feminist.
Browder, who wrote for Cosmopolitan magazine for twenty years, is a widely published journalist and a post-abortive Catholic convert.
Leah Becker Jacobson, author of Wholistic Feminism: Healing the Identity Crisis Caused by the Women’s Movement.
Jacobson is the Catholic founder and CEO of The Guiding Star Project. See my blog on her work at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/musingsfromthepew/2022/01/womens-bodies-empowered-not-impeded/
Fiorella Nash, author of The Abolition of Woman: How Radical Feminism is Betraying Women.
Nash is a Catholic, award-winning novelist, writer and radio broadcaster in England. She is a researcher and writer for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and the author of the Father Gabriel mysteries (as Fiorella De Maria).
Leah Libresco Sargeant, publisher of Other Feminisms, a digital subscription newsletter. Sargeant is a Catholic convert and well-known freelance writer.
Claire Swinarski, author of girl, arise!: a Catholic Feminist’s Invitation to Live Boldly, Love Your Faith, and Change the World.
Swinarski is the founder of The Catholic Feminist podcast (no longer broadcasting) and publisher of Letters from a Feminist, a digital subscription newsletter.
Although not Catholic-related, a very important book to consider as well is ProLife Feminism: Yesterday and Today, edited by Mary Krane Derr, Rachel MacNair and Linda Naranjo-Huebl.
This book is a compilation of writings by feminist leaders from the 18th century to modern times. The editors themselves have been leaders in pro-life feminism, and MacNair serves on the board of the Consistent Life Network. https://www.consistentlifenetwork.org/
Creating a Pro-Life Feminist Curriculum
There are other learned pro-life feminists who could contribute significantly to a curriculum in pro-life women’s studies, I’m sure, such as Helen Alvare, an endowed chair in Law and Liberty at Antonin Scalia Law School, writer, and Catholic advocate.
A few professors and colleges have expressed interest in this idea as I have sent out feelers. If anyone reading this blog has further recommendations or would like to participate, please contact me on Facebook or Linkedin.
To dispel the abortion mentality and combat the culture of death, we must educate people about the true nature of feminism. We have ample scholarly evidence to make our case in the halls of academia.
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