“Some Sadducees came” to Jesus and made a harmful patriarchal assumption about women, also children, “If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.” The harmful patriarchal assumption is that women are controlled by men as property.
Under patriarchy, women are denied human rights and treated as property. Dehumanization of women is routine and includes rape and abortion. Within patriarchy, abortion rights are promoted as human rights and a “moral imperative” for women (California, Kansas). From the perspective of feminists, including Sidney Callahan, who, like her early feminist sisters is Pro-Life, and whose ideas are shared in this essay, we can see that abortion rights are derived from and promote patriarchy. For example, patriarchy is based on granting rights only when that life – woman, slave, laborer – is wanted, by the patriarch. Patriarchs operate by routinely classifying ‘other’ life – women, slaves, laborers – as unwanted. Such patriarchal classification exempts patriarchs from moral responsibility, for example, as men have done since Roe v. Wade in matters of partnership and fatherhood. Patriarchy controls the criteria for personhood, for life, primarily for the purpose of denying it. So too in this patriarchal culture, which promotes abortion rights for women, it is patriarchy that controls the criteria for personhood, for life, for those unborn. Thus, within patriarchy, IF the unborn child has rights – akin to a woman, slave, laborer – they have them only if wanted by their owner, in this case, the pregnant woman. When patriarchs claim a woman’s treatment of her unborn child is a woman’s own private business it is in keeping with patriarchs always claiming their treatment of their women, slaves, laborers was their own private business. Feminists have historically rejected the patriarchal value system of judging the value of life and the dehumanized treatment of that life. Feminists have instead historically promoted a Pro-Life morality. All life, certainly their own and that of children, is of “intrinsic value” in a web of relationships. Pro-Life feminists promote a powerful woman centered morality, including as it regards sex and childbearing. This differs from patriarchs who dehumanize women as sex objects and denigrate childbearing as debilitating. Patriarchs assert that it is an injustice that women have to have babies. But of course, “it is an injustice that men cannot.” The unique, life-giving sexual power and pleasure of a woman, her pregnancy, and her childbearing is rarely appreciated and instead oppressed, abused, and violated under patriarchy. The intimate communion women feel with their sex partner, their baby in their womb and at their breast is at least diminished while patriarchy idolizes the male experience which is only orgasm. Orgasm only sexual behavior is also touted when done in masculine, detached and non-committed, instances which more women are mimicking. Patriarchs promoting uncommitted sexual intercourse with a variety of partners lacks benefit for women as it has always lacked benefit for men, who do their best to remain free of the value. Such sexual behavior produces anxiety and harm for women but it produces a lucrative business opportunity for patriarchs, especially their Planned Parenthood Federation. Descended from KKK and Nazi affiliated founders, specifically Margaret Sanger, Patriarchy’s Planned Parenthood originated in the harmful patriarchal assumption that women’s sexuality and bodies are the problem that must be overcome; oppressively, abusively, and violently so. Planned Parenthood has thus always targeted women with its birth ‘control’ propaganda. Patriarchy pushes its harmful contraceptives and abortions on women from their early teens onward and is responsible for doing great harm to women’s bodies, self-image, and self-respect. It was not in Planned Parenthood’s mind-set, nor values, and thus not in its mission to offer vasectomies nor was it ever a priority of its advertising campaign to ensure every male teen gets one. Though they are easier, safer, and reversible. Pro-Choice women and their Planned Parenthood Federation helped craft this patriarchal world with its patriarchal birth control methods that remain different only in degree from patriarchy’s coat hanger as they poison women’s wombs, harm their bodies, and destroy unborn life, including unborn women’s lives. The assumption of patriarchy’s inherent and certain harm shows women remain as property to be violated and not human beings to be respected. Pro-Choice women have joined in patriarchy’s routine moral travesty that is women’s dehumanization.
Pro-Choice women are like the men questioning Jesus in the Gospel story. They assume women are the property of patriarchs to be harmed as needed. We can be free from patriarchy’s harmful birth ‘control.’ Included in its harm is diminishing vasectomy and natural contraceptives decisions, neither of which are respected and thus not fully researched within patriarchy. Women and men are called to co-create a full web of committed social relationship, specifically with and for women. Women have the right to be free – from dehumanization, rape, and abortion – and free for healthy social, financial, and medical systems that respect their sexuality, their wombs, their childbearing, their full health, and their life interests. Pro-Choice women might consider not demanding abortion rights in a patriarchy and instead start co-creating a society that promotes women’s pro-creative power, including full sexual power..
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, inspire us for life.
Question: How shall we ever be free of patriarchy if we keep mimicking it?
November 06, 2022 Gospel Luke 20:27-38 Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time