Notable Quote

"We refuse to choose [between] women and children. We refuse to choose between sacrificing our education and our careers for our family…Our focus is to systematically eliminate the reasons that drive women to abortion."

--Serrin Foster

Feminists for Life

www.feministsforlife.org

feminism

Pro-Life Feminists Return to Feminist Roots

By Melissa Charbonneau
White House Correspondent

CBN.com –WASHINGTON - The surprise rash of press coverage on the pro-life group Feminists for Life (FFL) is raising questions about how a group opposing abortion can be for women's rights.

Serrin Foster, the group's president, said she considers herself both pro-life and a feminist: "Absolutely, and I always did. In college I felt all alone, because I identified with so many goals of feminism."

FFL began in 1972, one year before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade.

The group's founders had been kicked out of a National Organization for Women meeting for distributing anti-abortion pamphlets. "They felt the abortion advocates were hi-jacking the feminist movement," Foster said.

Seventies-era feminists advocated abortion as the ticket to workplace equality. But Foster says that flies in the face of the nation's first feminists, who opposed abortion as an abuse against women.

"Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, called abortion the ultimate exploitation of women,” Foster said. “And Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton championed the rights of women to vote, of slaves to be free, and of our right to life. So if they understand their rich feminist history, they'd understand abortion is a betrayal of feminism."

In a return to the movement's roots, FFL launched its flagship outreach program. From Harvard and Berkley, to Georgetown University, they take the feminist case "against" abortion to the college campus.

Foster's message is that women deserve better, that they can keep their babies and their jobs.

"We refuse to choose [between] women and children,” she said. “We refuse to choose between sacrificing our education and our careers for our family…Our focus is to systematically eliminate the reasons that drive women to abortion."

Coleen O’Boyle, a former college member of FFL, remarked, "This isn't your daddy's case against abortion. This is new and makes sense."

The message of alternatives to abortion is one that resonates with O’Boyle. As president of her college pro-life group, she invited FFL to the Villanova campus.

"I watched my peers, and some professors that I knew were pro-choice look at things in a different light,” stated O’Boyle. “Their faces lit up when Serrin said, ‘I'm proud to be a feminist pro-lifer because I follow in the steps of my feminist foremothers.’"

O’Boyle added, "What Feminists for Life is doing, is bridging the gap and opening a discourse between pro-life people and pro-choice people, saying, regardless of what you think about the unborn child, we both know we care about women. So, let's come together and provide resources for them so they can carry their pregnancies to term."

FFL says that if feminists are serious about the right to choose, they would petition schools to support pregnant women on campus.

Wendy Wright, of the conservative Concerned Women for America, declared, "As it is now, the only things these universities offer is abortion, and what the women really need is child care, or pre-natal care -- things the pro-life [side] has been supplying, but not directly on the college campuses."

The National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL, did not respond to requests for interviews, but Wright says that FFL’s' non-sectarian message breaks new ground.

"We've been stereotyped - because of that, the media will say you're just trying to impose your morality on everyone else,” Wright said. “Well, the Feminists for Life don't bring up biblical arguments or faith arguments. They focus solely on the women. So it's a bit harder for the media to dismiss them or for the abortion crowd to dismiss them, because they're talking on the same level as the abortion crowd talks, the rights of women. And it's gained them a platform, or a hearing that many of us in the pro-life community have not had."

It is also a platform for pro-life celebrities like Margaret Colin of "Independence Day” and "Everybody Loves Raymond's" Patricia Heaton, FFL's honorary chair.

Heaton was invited to the White House to support the President's stance against human cloning. "This research also raises serious ethical questions about the exploitation of women,” Heaton said, “especially in regard to the demand for eggs and the cloning of human embryos."

On Capitol Hill, FFL personalities promote women's issues, from Laci's Law and the Family Medical Leave Act, to the Violence against Women Act.

Whether it is building a celebrity powerhouse or storming the Ivy League gates, FFL is lending new credibility to those who voice their pro-life beliefs.

Foster commented, "No one is comfortable with abortion and they've been looking for someone they don't see as extreme on either side, somewhere they can find a home. So we're going to be creating a better home for them as we advance our message out in Los Angeles and [across] California."

"Feminists for Life has made me proud to be pro-life, proud to talk about, and proud to tell people why they should be, too," O’Boyle explained. "It's absolutely giving pro-life students ammunition to fight the pro-life cause."

As FFL challenges social stigmas linked to feminist and pro-life views, the group refuses to label itself liberal or conservative. They prefer instead to stay on message to help women, as well as the unborn.

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