Feminist Camille Paglia: why “pro-choice” is a “cowardly euphemism”

Last updated on: May 17, 2016 at 4:42 pm by Nancy French

Feminist Camille Paglia: why “pro-choice” is a “cowardly euphemism” 2016-05-17T16:42:05-05:00 Nancy French

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Famed feminist Camille Paglia recently took to the pages of Salon to attack her fellow feminists for having it all wrong about abortion, defending pro-life advocates in the process.

Let there be no doubt – Paglia is pro-abortion and proudly so. But she’s had enough with many of her peers.

Referring to the so-called “war on women” as “a tired cliché that is as substance-less as a druggy mirage,” Paglia goes on to detail how she has become “disturbed and repelled for decades by the way reproductive rights have become an ideological tool ruthlessly exploited by my own party, the Democrats, to inflame passions, raise money, and drive voting.” She even says she stopped contributing to Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest abortion provider – when she realized “how it had become a covert arm of the Democratic party.

She leaves no progressive talking point left unturned, detailing how pro-life Supreme Court nominees were treated horribly, including casting her skepticism towards the tale of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, one that HBO and Kerry Washington are preparing to bring back to the surface with a TV movie.

But the best part of her essay is when she admits that the pro-life viewpoint has the moral high ground.

Despite my pro-abortion stance (I call the term pro-choice “a cowardly euphemism”), I profoundly respect the pro-life viewpoint, which I think has the moral high ground. I wrote in “No Law in the Arena”: “We career women are arguing from expedience: it is personally and professionally inconvenient or onerous to bear an unwanted child. The pro-life movement, in contrast, is arguing that every conception is sacred and that society has a responsibility to protect the defenseless.” The silence from second-wave feminists about the ethical ambiguities in their pro-choice belief system has been deafening.

She then publishes a letter she received from a self-proclaimed gay liberal woman in Canada:

Many women like myself (a gay liberal) are deeply upset over the abortion issue. Ultrasound technology has allowed us to see into the womb like never before, and the obvious face of humanity is clear. I totally respected your take on abortion precisely because you never tried to dehumanize the preborn vulnerable. You were clearly pro-choice but made the harsh reality of the decision very clear.

I was thrilled when they took down Gloria Steinem’s interview on Lands’ End. To me, she is someone who tried to normalize abortion, and I despise her for it. The Democrats have become callous and extreme on the issue, and I feel completely shut out. And obviously, I am no right-winger. I have listened to the testimony of phenomenal women who have survived abortion attempts and were left to die (were saved only because some took their Hippocratic oath seriously).

I am tired of being bullied by women who equate women’s equality with abortion on demand. I know some women who use abortion as a method of sex selection and it rattles me to my core. If you ever decide to write a piece on silenced women like myself, I would be entirely grateful.

And Paglia even understands the core question – who is the real victim of abortion and why does the pro-abortion community (normally worried about victims in all other circumstances including endangered animal species) refuse to acknowledge this truth?

I totally agree with Carlson that pro-choice Democrats have become “callous and extreme” about abortion. There is a moral hollowness at the core of Western careerist feminism, a bourgeois secular code that sees children as an obstruction to self-realization or as a management problem to be farmed out to working-class nannies.

Liberals routinely delude themselves with shrill propaganda about the motivation of “anti-woman” pro-life supporters. Hillary deals in those smears as her stock in trade: for example, while campaigning last week, she said in the context of Trump’s comments on abortion, “Women’s health is under assault in America”—as if difficulty in obtaining an abortion is more of an assault than the grisly intervention required for surgical termination of a pregnancy. Who is the real victim here?

I love when progressives are honest. Even though Paglia and I disagree on most things, it’s always refreshing to hear them admit the truth.

Abortion kills innocent and vulnerable lives. Any attempts to ignore that fact either lack intelligence or compassion, if not both.

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