“Nodding to the Opposition”: the Rights of Women and Motion 312

On day number one of a “boring” first-year essay writing class, the professor I’m working for asked the students to name a controversial issue from which he could develop an example of what it means to “nod to the opposition.” “Abortion,” a student called from the back of the room.

My boss didn’t back down from the challenge. Unfortunately, on September 26, 2012, two-thirds of the Canadian parliamentarians who voted on Motion 312 could not, or would not, nod to the opposition. Why is Canada afraid to open up discussion on a section of the criminal code that is so old it is not even scientifically sound? In short, it is because the question of when a fetus becomes a “human being” is directly related to debates about its personhood. And discussions about its personhood threaten what many Canadians perceive to be the reproductive rights of women.

The rights that are threatened can be formulated as follows: all women should have control over what goes on in their own bodies. If a woman experiences an unintended pregnancy, she should have the right to choose whether or not to continue with that pregnancy. She should have access to a full range of options, including access to clean and safe abortion services. This female autonomy should be protected and supported through official governmental structures. As the Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose said back in 2005, “working women want to make their own choices. We don’t want old white guys telling us what to do.”

Many Canadians were shocked to see Ambrose stand up in favour of Motion 312 on September 26. Even more shocking, perhaps, is the fact she was not being inconsistent in doing so.

Working women are not the only ones who breathe a sigh of relief when the abortion debate is firmly closed. Both men and women like the pleasure and emotional intimacy of sex without the responsibility of fatherhood and motherhood. Mother Teresa once said that “it is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” She pointed to the fact that abortion is actually a symptom of the western world’s focus on self-gratification, a focus which includes a very patriarchal selfishness that is affecting our relationships. Many men like sex but don’t want a woman’s reproductive system, because its consequences mean commitment. To maintain the lack of abortion regulation in Canada today is to contribute to the image of woman as an object, or at the very least to contribute to an incomplete picture of a woman. The rhetoric of women’s rights, in fact, comes in part from a bunch of men telling women what to do. Women believe that it is their right to give themselves sexually to any man they please, and that it is their right to be able to do this while denying the biological end of sex, and that it’s all absolutely fine. But believe you me, there are men who very much like the fact that these beliefs have been normalized.*

Am I, as pro-life, concerned about women’s rights? You bet I am. I believe in every woman’s right to shirk a performance of her sexuality that denies a fundamental part of herself. I believe in a woman’s right to sex that is about her holistic acceptance and about a commitment to her person: body, soul, and emotions.  

I have yet to meet a vocally pro-choice woman, with or without an experience of abortion, who exudes the inner glow of full emancipation. In fact, most of the women I meet, and these days many of them have had an abortion or know someone who has, give off a strong sense of being let down, a sense of bitterness, woundedness, and even fear. There are hundreds of women who describe their abortions as being the most invasive, mortifying, terrifying and traumatic experiences they have ever been through (see the stories at the Rachel’s Vineyard website for a sampling of these stories). The rhetoric of choice, freedom, rights and emancipation causes many women to bury their abortions under overwhelming feelings of shame and grief. Women who have come out to talk about their experiences speak of their desire to hide “secret sin”: these feelings cannot necessarily come from their social formation. Right now our official governmental structures, our education and counseling systems, and a large bulk of the media output about abortion, predict a woman’s good when she makes the choice for abortion. It is only fair for those who champion abortion for the sake of women’s rights to acknowledge the fact that post-abortion stress syndrome (http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/emotions/symptoms.htm) not only exists, but that it consistently wreaks havoc in the lives of the women who have been through this procedure.

Of course, as a pro-life Canadian citizen, I believe that much of this trauma can be traced back to the fact that women, no matter what they’ve been told, inherently know the fetus is both a human being and a person. But even further, abortion contributes to a culture in which women are dehumanized. Some of the humiliating feelings of shame and grief that are experienced by post-abortive women are from a society which asks them to leave a vital biological and emotional part of themselves at the door of the bedroom. Abortion is the final, violent manifestation of the rejection of the full, relational existence of women, even as it is also the rejection of human life.

I am absolutely sick of hearing a women’s rights rhetoric that focuses on the woman's choice, but that ignores abortion’s causes and abortion’s fall-out. A mere nod to the opposition is not enough: Canada, we need to take the blinders off.

Our women will thank us for it later.

* I’m not trying to brand all men as selfish pigs. I framed this piece around women’s rights, which explains the focus here; but really, this self-gratification-before-responsibility thing is a pervasive social problem. The selfish state has become so commonplace that we do not even question it. Philosophically speaking, we’ve sacrificed human ontology and teleology for what we want in the moment. It’s kind of like a twisted Kantian ethics model: the act in the moment is all that matters, but there is only one rule. Do what you want, when you want, and always put convenience first. But now I’m venturing out of my subject field and theme, and into another blog post. To be dealt with another time perhaps.

The Feast of the Presentation: Blessing God in Receiving Him

“Lift up your heads, O gates; rise up, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may enter!” Psalm 24

Happy Feast of the Presentation of the Lord! I had an “aha!” moment today at mass, a revelation to which I should very much like to put words. But something tells me it will be a tough job.

I was (am) blessed with a mom who taught me how to pray the rosary at a very young age. And she even tried to make it interesting for us, if that is all possible for kids. I remember praying the scriptural rosary together with my siblings, the drill as follows: one kid says the scripture, and then another leads the Hail Mary, and the rest of the family replies. On one occasion, a moment that will be forever burned in my memory, my little brother was leading the scriptures on the Fourth Joyful Mystery, the Presentation of the Lord Jesus in the Temple. He came to the moment in today’s Gospel reading from Luke: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the holy Spirit was upon him” (Lk 2:25), but he read it, “Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Cinnamon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the constellation of Israel…” This same little bro is getting married this spring, and I can hardly believe it. He’s grown into such a good man.

But this was SORT OF an aside: I really wanted to talk about another childhood impression of this decade of Our Lady’s rosary. Because the scriptural rosary cut up the story into small pieces, one of the verses that remains with me is, “He took the child into his arms and blessed God,” but it cuts off right before “and said,” and so I often heard this verse out of its (very) immediate context. In my R. C. way, I pictured Simeon like a Catholic priest, taking the little Lord Jesus into his arms, and making the sign of the cross on the Lord’s little forehead (although I even knew that they were, of course, Jewish, and that no sign of the cross had really been invented yet). I would often meditate on that phrase, “and blessed God,” seeing in my head Simeon’s actual blessing Jesus, who is fully God and fully man. Simeon, to me, was aware he had God in his arms.

A few weeks ago, when I walked into Holy Rosary, my home away from home in Ottawa, I sensed the Lord saying from the tabernacle, “Prepare yourself! It’s coming!” My immediate response (ie: human response) was negative. Oh no! What was coming? But the Lord’s tone was actually one of JOY and exaltation! “Why do you assume the negative?” he said. For the last few weeks, I have been waiting in expectation for him to show up. And today he came.

My moment of shock and awe, then, was this: we bless God. He has no need of my praise, blessing, or exaltation, but he asks it of me, and when I give it, he is blessed. And what is blessing, anyhow? According to my good friend the CCC, blessing is the acceptance of the gift of grace: “In blessing, God’s gift and man’s acceptance of it are united in dialogue with each other. The prayer of blessing is man’s response to God’s gifts” (CCC 2626). So what is blessing? To bless God, we receive the little Lord Jesus into our arms: we say fiat with the Blessed Mother. Needless to say, my Holy Communion today took on a different perspective; furthermore, the mass is “the divine blessing fully revealed and communicated” (CCC 1082). We bless God by receiving him, individually, and as the Church.

It sounds so simple, but it is a profound mystery. How is it that I, a fallen human being, can bless this almighty King of Glory? And “merely” by receiving him? Even that act, the act of the will to say yes to him, is surrounded by grace. And yet, today, I sensed his pleasure and fatherly pride as I tried, in my human way, to really receive him, to really hold him. And now, like the prophetess Anna, I wish to “[speak] of him to all that [look] for the redemption of Israel” (Lk 2:38). I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for redemption. Tomorrow I shall receive that Redemption again, I choose him: his name is Jesus.