• Article Tools
• Print
• RSS

Ending Abortion and Gendercide: Try Authentic Feminism

by Gerard M. Nadal, Ph.D.

There seems to be no end to the jokes about evil genies arising from a lantern and granting a wish, which carries with it an evil twist. The twist always leaves the individual disadvantaged.

So it has been with the wishes of the radical feminists. Desiring real goods for women such as education, economic and legal equality, and their attendant dignity and respect, they embraced sexual licentiousness and abortion as means toward their noble ends. The results have been nothing short of catastrophic for women. Of the many unintended consequences of contraception and abortion’s embrace has been a war declared on women – because they are women – with over 200 million girls aborted worldwide through gender selection in what has become known as “gendercide.”

The reasons for gender-selective abortions vary with national policy and local culture. Underlying them all is the great success of radical feminism in convincing governments that large families are detrimental to the good of nations, both ecologically and economically. Foreign aid to third-world nations almost always carries with it the requirement to adopt contraception and “abortion rights,” especially aid from Europe.

In nations such as China, the one child policy has heightened the desire for sons for a number of cultural reasons. In some provinces male birth rates exceed female birth rates by as much as 130 male births for every 100 female births. A number of demographic analyses project that China will soon have 70 million more young men than young women. That many rootless young men spells trouble on a global scale as China is priming itself for a century of military adventurism.

In other nations such as India, only males can perform the funerary rights for parents. Daughters require large dowries for marriage. A common slogan to entice parents to take advantage of a clinic’s ultrasound scans (and, depending on the gender, abort their child) is “pay 5,000 rupees today ($110), and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow” (the cost of a dowry). In still other cultures, only males may inherit family property. In many cultures the women become part of the husband’s family and are not available to care for their parents in old age.

Having thus convinced or compelled nations to embrace smaller families through contraception and abortion, unexpected fault lines have emerged with women themselves being the most disadvantaged, especially as the dearth of young women has fueled an exploding sex-trafficking and slavery industry. Feminism’s twin mantras of “equal protection for women,” and “every child a wanted child” have backfired, and badly.

I attended a United Nations conference this week, which coincided with International Women’s Day. In celebrating women’s achievements, many women came from across the African continent out of concern for the pressure to bring “abortion rights” to their people. They see what is happening across the globe and are desperate to prevent the same fate from befalling their people. Many recognize that in some of these regions, legislative initiatives are in order that will necessarily require cultural modifications.

Interestingly, these modifications are authentically feminist in their nature:

•The inequities of marriage dowries will need to be changed along with inheritance laws.

•Laws mandating the education of girls through the secondary level and prohibiting child labor are essential.

•The selective targeting of women through gendercide will need to be ended with legislation such as India’s 1994 Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, which admittedly has gone largely unenforced until recent years. The enforcement has been modest, but seems to be picking up.

•Severe sanctions will need to be employed against hospitals with skewed birth rates.

•Women and men must demand that their nations reject foreign aid offers that come bundled with requirements for accepting contraception and abortion, calling down international shame on all who would engage in this modern form of colonialism.

Radical feminism has failed women dramatically. It is up to the faithful to craft a new feminism, an authentic and activist feminism cast in the mold of Pope John Paul II’s personalistic norm as expressed in his Apostolic Letter on the dignity of women, Mulieris Dignitatem:

In God’s eternal plan, woman is the one in whom the order of love in the created world of persons takes first root…

Unless we refer to this order and primacy we cannot give a complete and adequate answer to the question about women’s dignity and vocation. When we say that the woman is the one who receives love in order to love in return, this refers not only or above all to the specific spousal relationship of marriage. It means something more universal, based on the very fact of her being a woman within all the interpersonal relationships which, in the most varied ways, shape society and structure the interaction between all persons – men and women. In this broad and diversified context, a woman represents a particular value by the fact that she is a human person, and, at the same time, this particular person, by the fact of her femininity. This concerns each and every woman, independently of the cultural context in which she lives, and independently of her spiritual, psychological and physical characteristics, as for example, age, education, health, work, and whether she is married or single.

Dr. Nadal holds a Ph.D. in molecular microbiology. In addition to teaching for 16 years, he's spent seven years working with homeless teens at Covenant House in Times Square, New York. He is currently pursuing an M.A. in theology through Franciscan University of Steubenville and blogs at http://gerardnadal.com.

---

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.