Truth, Power, Feminism, and Mother’s Day:

Is Something Wrong with this Picture?
(c) 2014, Davd

With three days until Mother’s Day, CBC Radio News reports that the Liberal Party, under Justin Trudeau’s command, has joined the NDP in requiring that all candidates be “pro choice”. (The first announcement about the Liberals was yesterday; today CBC emphasized that the NDP has required all candidates to support abortion for some time already.) It is obvious to those who know recent Canadian history, who has the choice, and it’s not fathers, not sires, not the unborn.

In a totally Feminist world, methinks, there would be two Mother’s Days each year: The second Sunday in May, and the anniversary of the day you were born, On the anniversaire, as the French call it, you would thank your mother, profusely, that she did not have an abortion.

As a Christian, I cannot in good conscience vote Liberal nor NDP. I know enough biology to realize that:
‣ a foetus is alive {that’s part of the definition of foetus};
‣ a foetus belongs to the human species;
‣ a foetus is genetically and anatomically distinct from the woman in whose uterus it temporarily resides.

Therefore, a foetus is a distinct human life—it is a living being, different from its mother, and its species is Homo sapiens. To say abortion is not homicide is to utter a legal fiction. It may be deemed in law, that abortion is not homicide, but that is invalid biologically. I trust biological science more than i trust the vagaries of politics and lobbying… and I cannot, as a Christian, vote in support of killing any human being because some other human being on whom a foetus depends for some months for survival, doesn’t feel like bothering. It is now Liberal as well as NDP policy, from which party candidates are not free to dissent, to persecute Christian churches in regard to abortion.

It’s true, that men don’t get pregnant. It’s also true that women can avoid getting pregnant. There is one sure way to avoid pregnancy—sexual abstinence. And very rare indeed, are the cases where a woman modestly dressed and of sober conduct, determined to keep abstinence, fails to keep it. Those who get pregnant are those who act erotically. Modest women don’t need abortion.1

Distinct from the fact that abortion ends a human life in obedience to the will of a different person—which would be called homicide and crime after birth—is the question of whose will is given this power. Feminism refers to “a woman’s control over her own body,” but does not come out and say candidly “and if some body that is totally dependent on that woman’s uterus for a few months, dies as a result—tough luck!”

The foetus has no say in an abortion decision. Neither has the sire. If a man and woman start a pregnancy—and excepting the story told in Luke 1: 26-38, no woman has got pregnant otherwise2—and if the man will be financially obligated if the woman completes the pregnancy and bears a child; then would it be fairer, to require the sire’s consent to an abortion? If the sire decides not to consent, but to take responsibility for the child at birth or at weaning, he could reasonably take on a financial obligation during the pregnancy.

It’s true, men don’t get pregnant. It’s also true, modesty and self-discipline can protect women from doing so. (The more you display your sexuality, the more you imply an intent to make it active.)

Politics is about power, and very often, about coercive power. There is an old saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Feminism has succeeded in granting women absolute power over the survival of the unborn in most of Canada and in forbidding anyone who wants to become a Liberal or NDP candidate from disagreement with that policy. Women who bear children have been granted a new “guilt trip” with which to abuse their children: They can say “You owe me your very life, on my terms of payment—I could have had an abortion.” It will not be the best women who make the most use of it.

If i have Christian moral revulsions about abortion based on mere choice, and don’t happen to agree with the Conservative party—have i lost my vote?

It’s true, that the human population of the Earth is “too large”—at least twice what it ought to be, and perhaps 3-10 times what it ought to be, for humankind to live from renewable resources. There has been too much motherhood, these past 60-70 years—and as early as 50 years ago, when the US population was maybe half what it is now, two US demographers warned that population was already too many (Day and Day, 1964). There has also been too much STD [formerly, “venereal disease”] during the past few decades. Applying prudence and discipline to our sexual urges3 will deal with both problems—and in a manner that treats men and women as equals, which abortion on one woman’s say-so alone, does not4.

It might be too late to organize them this year, but alternatives to Mother’s Day are in order. The best mothers should indeed be honoured—and not only on the second Sunday in May. But not all mothers are angels; and truth is better than Political Correctness. Many Christians venerate the Mother of Jesus; but those who know the doctrines well, do not worship her—nor St. Peter, nor St. James, St. John, St. Paul, nor Mother Theresa, nor the Bishop, nor their own mothers. As St. Paul wrote and a Council of the Church chose as part of Holy Scripture “all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” Including all mothers.

Motherhood is a mighty responsibility. So is fatherhood, which much of Feminism has sought to negate (Nathanson and Young, 2006, 2012). Motherhood without fatherhood is less effective, as much research has shown. Abortion is a morally false solution to the problems, and abortion based solely on one woman’s say-so is worse still. The power to kill a foetus that could become a healthy baby, will indeed corrupt, and has to some extent done so already. From the vantage point of my prayer garden, the Liberal and NDP parties, perhaps even the Greens, are already corrupted.

If motherhood becomes matriolatry, “Thank You, Mother” could become an ironic imprecation5.

References:

Catton, William R., Jr. 1980 Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Urbana, London, and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Paperback 1982

Day, Lincoln, and Alice T. Day 1964. Too many Americans. New York: Dell

Lewis, C.S. 1952. Mere Christianity. NYC: MacMillan paperback.

Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press.

Nathanson, Paul and Katherine K. Young, 2012. “Misandry and Emptiness: Masculine Identity in a Toxic Cultural Environment” New Male Studies v. 1 Issue 1: 4-18

Schneider, Stephen and Lynne Mesirow 1976. The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival. New York and London: Plenum. This book predates the “Global Warming” issues, and focuses on the unusual stability of climate in the first three quarters of the 20th Cantury. It is cited here as more evidence in support of population reduction.

 

Notes:

1. When abortion was generally illegal, exceptions were made for forcible rape [which is very, very different from blaming the man when two drunken or ‘stoned’ people have intercourse, very different even from seduction] and situations where the woman’s life was endangered by continuation of a pregnancy.

2. “AI” and “IVF” still use sperm produced by the body of a man.

3. Dan Aykroyd may not have said it best, but perhaps he said it funniest, in the comedy remake of Dragnet: “Two things distinguish human beings from monkeys. We use cutlery, and we can control our sexual urges.”

4. Before Jesus’ time there were the Eleusynian Mysteries, and Persephone, legend has it, said “A man is nothing. The belly carries the child.” (in Mary Renault’s novel The King Must Die.)

5. .. as “Yas’m Boss” and “Yassuh, Boss” seem to have been when the races were not equal in the USA?

About Davd

Davd (PhD, 1966) has been a professor, a single father keeping a small commercial herb garden so as to have flexible time for his sons, and editor of _Ecoforestry_. He is a practicing Christian, and in particular an advocate of ecoforestry, self-sufficiency horticulture, and men of all faiths living together "in peace and brotherhood" for the fellowship, the efficiency, and the goodwill that sharing work so often brings.
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