Here is the blogpost of a feminist who speaks in favour of an unborn victims of crime bill. And, in case you're wondering about her credentials-- she's had a late-term abortion. This is not some "pro-life" feminist. She is adamantly in favour of legalized abortion. But she has lost unborn children, and defends the notion that a wanted unborn child is different.
She writes:
M. E. is a famous constitutional lawyer up here, so she can of course speak to the legality until the cows come home, and I'll shut up.
What bothered me was her insistence that any bereaved woman would be satisfied with a longer sentence for the attacker, because it wasn't like they had lost a real child. Even though she had never even asked any bereaved moms, or any organization who dealt with bereaved moms. I thought feminism was about consulting with others and not trying to speak for them?
Apparently Liberal and NDP MP's who defend SOW don't think so! They think they speak for me!
"Ms. E., it is one thing to speak for LEAF or speak to the law as it is, or even to the potential legal implications of this bill, but you do not speak for me or any other bereaved parent. Frankly I was deeply disappointed that you would try to speak on my behalf when you said that a good sentence would satisfy me, or bereaved families’ like mine. You may not have intended it, but you minimized other women’s grief.
Exactly right....the feminists who spoke out against C-291 do not care about that. All they care about is their sacrosanct right to abortion...at all costs.
I know this is a private member’s bill, and it probably won’t pass, but in the future please know that there are women out there who are pro-choice and completely disagree with your statements. I have had a late medical termination to save my life, so I don’t want to see a law banning abortion, but there are other ways to write a law that will get justice for pregnant women whose reproductive rights are violated.
At least she's more even-handed when it comes to "reproductive rights".
...It could provide for a separate charge specific to a criminal action, and possibly a consecutive sentence. This would publicly acknowledge that a separate loss had occurred to the victim and their family, not just the original assault. And that separate public acknowledgement is critically important to the emotional and mental state of the women who lose wanted pregnancies.
(...)
Worst of all, the idea that the loss of a wanted pregnancy is “nothing” has again been printed in the newspaper and repeated by credible experts like yourself. One in four women in Ontario will experience miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death in their lifetime. That’s more than breast cancer and scores of other diseases, but it’s not even on the radar for government or the medical community in this country. I know, because after years and years of educating government on this issue, I’ve had little success. No one cares if women are bereaved after they lose a pregnancy, and comments like yours, however well-intentioned, don’t help. "
See, this is the thing I really hate about feminism...it pretends to be for women, to be open-minded, to draw from women's experiences...
What a load of CRAP.
This woman, a bona fide feminist, with real grief, would not get a hearing from them in government if she made her statements. This is precisely why SOW has to go-- that whole mentality of "it's not feminist orthodoxy, we won't listen!"
Which makes me not a very good feminist, in the eyes of some, I guess, and definitely not perfect, but for me, I think I am a "good enough" feminist for now.
I strongly disagree with this woman on many things. But her orthodoxy as a feminist should be NO REASON why she should not get a hearing.
That is my problem with SOW and feminism.
This is one of the many reasons why I abandoned feminism. No matter how good a feminist you are in every other aspect, if you have one or two areas where you do not toe the line, you're not considered a "real feminist", you're branded, and no one wants you.
But in a way, that was providential for me.
UPDATE: Aurelia C. from No Matter How Small wrote to say I had not given proper attribution. So there you go, all the quotations listed here are from her blog.
She writes:
And when I described myself as not a very good feminist, that was meant ironically. No person has ever described me, either to my face, or behind my back to my knowledge, as anything less than a good feminist.
So noted.
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