October
19, 2006
American Prospect Online
Untruth in Advertising
The anti-choice group Feminists for Life is
clever. Dangerously so. by Adele M. Stan The leaves are falling, the
daylight waning, and the air has that bracing snap to it; 'tis the season of
deceptive political advertising. Weeks before congressional elections, this
usually this takes the form of negative television ads placed by the
supporters of one candidate or another. But, on the Web, at least one
issue-oriented group is offering a clever and upbeat form of the classic
deceptive ad: Feminists for Life, a group that seeks to outlaw all abortions,
no exceptions. Now, perhaps, as the Feminists for
Life literature says, it is possible to oppose all forms of legal abortion --
even those that would save the life of the pregnant woman -- and still be a
feminist. But if one were to take such a stance and consider oneself a
feminist, one would certainly believe that women should have access to
contraception, right? Apparently not if one is a member of Feminists for
Life, an organization that refuses
to take a stand on whether or not contraception should be legal. (Note that
few, if any, Protestant denominations take issue with the use of any kind of
contraception, although some religious-right anti-abortion organizations
regard the morning-after pill as an abortifacient.)
When Feminists for Life has chosen to address the issue of contraception, it
has invariably been to point out the health hazards posed in particular forms
of birth control. So, despite its self-description
as a "non-sectarian" organization, Feminists for Life may as well
be an office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which,
together with the Knights of Columbus (a fraternal Catholic lay
organization), co-sponsored
the Feminists for Life's 2003/2004 advertising campaign. (Deirdre McQuaid, hired earlier this year by the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops as the church's new "pro-life spokesperson," according
to a Catholic Web site, came to the post from her staff position at Feminists
for Life.) You've got to hand it to the
organization; its ads are always appealing, the best-known of them featuring
an attractive young woman of indeterminate race, and the tagline: "Women
Deserve Better Than Abortion." Hard to argue with that. As Air The latest incarnation of the
Feminists for Life advertising strategy -- which features a message that has
been adopted
by South Dakota supporters of the state's imminent referendum on an all-out
abortion ban -- can be found right here, at The American Prospect Online:
a cycling three-panel click-through window with the beckoning title,
"Pro-Woman Answers" (panel one, which features the same photograph
as in the "Women Deserve Better" campaign) "to Pro-Choice
Questions" (panel 2, featuring a studious-looking young woman with
glasses and a pierced nose). The third panel features a photo of a very glammed-up Patricia Heaton, celebrity spokesperson (late
of the sitcom, "Everybody Loves Raymond"), with the headline,
"FREE! Sign Up!" Right from the get-go, Feminists
for Life is hoping to lure in young women -- obviously from such liberal
venues as the Prospect -- through the artful use of the
all-but-branded term of the reproductive rights movement: pro-choice. Nowhere
in its come-on ad on the Prospect's site will you find the name of the
group -- the "for Life" piece being a dead giveaway of its intent
-- nor will you find the terms "pro-life" or "right to
life," signatures of the anti-feminist, anti-choice movements. Okay, so you're a bright young
woman looking for "pro-woman answers to pro-choice questions," so
you click through for the (FREE!) sign-up, and you find yourself on a page at
the Feminists for Life Web site featuring a letter from Serrin Foster, the organization's president, that
presents Feminists for Life as a group occupying the middle ground in the
abortion debate (as if there could be middle ground in this debate): Since
1973, it's been the same thing. One side of the hotly contested abortion wars
yells, "What about the woman?" The other side yells back,
"What about the baby?" People have been pushed into their
respective corners. It's hard to talk when there is all that distance between
us. But Feminists for Life has been bridging the gap, answering the most
critical questions in the most contentious places -- from Capitol Hill to
college campuses -- with woman-centered solutions. Nowhere
in Foster's missive does she tell her reader that her group opposes all
abortions, even for the life of the mother, though she does hint at that
platform a bit: "Perhaps you've wondered how to answer tough questions
like, 'What about rape?' Perhaps you didn't want to choose sides or tell
someone else what to do or think. Perhaps you just wanted a good answer for
yourself." Now that you've signed up for your "pro-woman answers to
pro-choice questions," you receive, via e-mail, a weekly answer to a
"pro-choice" question. Back in the day, during the John
Roberts Supreme Court nomination hearing, I put my name on the Feminists
for Life e-mail list when it was revealed that Jane Sullivan Roberts, wife of
the since-confirmed chief justice, had served on the organization's board,
and had done pro-bono legal work for the group. Consequently, without
clicking through on anything, I have been receiving Foster's
"pro-woman" wisdom via my ISP. So, what about rape? That was the
latest "pro-choice question" to which Foster provided an answer. In
fact, she rhetorically asked herself how she would respond if her daughter
was raped, and offered this answer: I would
love her and my grandchild unconditionally, and I would do everything in my
power to prosecute the perpetrator to the fullest extent of the law. Out of
our desire to save someone from suffering, it is normal to wish we could
erase a painful memory such as rape. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that as
much as we want to, we can't. Abortion doesn't erase a memory. Think about
it. Could anything ever erase your memory of September 11, 2001? Is there
not a single, oppressive, right-wing issue that 9-11 does not serve? Think
this is untoward? Foster next trots out the stories of women who were
conceived through rape; one woman asks if she "deserve[d] a death
sentence." (A pro-choice question: If you were never born, would you
miss not having existed? Maybe a Jesuit can take that one on.) In positions it takes on other
issues, Feminists for Life is indeed "pro-woman," whether in regard
to its stance on the Violence Against Women Act or support for mothers on
welfare. But it's hard not to wonder if those positions aren't just a beard,
along with the term, "feminist," for the hard-core, misogynist
agenda of the In Foster's closing words on the
"pro-choice" rape question, one finds the essence of what the
church expects a woman -- no, a girlchild -- to
bear : ...a
student...told me that she was raped by her third cousin as a mere
thirteen-year-old and had became pregnant. Her
parents had helped her have the privacy she wanted during her pregnancy, and
then she placed her son with two loving parents. I asked her, why did she make the
decision to have the child -- when she was just a girl who had lived through
what was arguably the worst of circumstances? She said
she would never pass on the violence that was perpetrated against her to her
own unborn child. Now that is the strength of a woman! Sounds a
bit to me like an anti-child answer to a no-choice question -- no choice, at
least, really, for the pregnant child. No wonder Feminists for Life must
resort to deception to pad its rolls of e-mail recipients. The bishops must
be proud. Adele M. Stan is the author of the
weblog, AddieStan.com,
and the book,
Debating Sexual Correctness. * * * If you enjoyed this article,
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2006 by The American Prospect, Inc. |
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