I came across this sentence the other day and I had to reread it several times. “Conservatives viewed the anti-abortion movement as a way to keep women in their place.” It was such an inflammatory statement in an otherwise rather dry treatment of the history of the abortion debate that it seemed out of place. The prime mover in the anti-abortion movement has always been the Catholic Church. Their position came about almost accidentally, but I don’t want to spend any time today going over that history. I guess I should stop here and express my view on the abortion topic. As many of you know, I lost my first wife and our daughter in childbirth. I believe there is the potential for life before birth, but like the majority of the world has believed down through history and in all cultures, I believe life begins with a successful birth.
As you know, I’ve always been interested in the hows and whys of people believes and actions. It is the reason I write. I began to research conservative doctrine here in the United States online. I began online looking at articles in conservative sources such as the National Review. It goes back to the 1950s when William F. Buckley founded the magazine. The magazine has been archived by organizations such as EBSCO. EBSCO provides databases to libraries for research purposes. Using a service like that is much easier than going to the library and being forced to look through microfilms of old copies of magazines and journals. Back to the research on the conservative movement and abortion – as you would suspect from an organization with the conservative viewpoint, the magazine does not like change. I found this definition of conservative online, “holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.” As you might expect, there were many articles and comments about the changing world in a negative manner. One example of that would be women moving outside the home to work. However, there was never any mention of being against birth control and abortion to help keep women in their place. It would just be a consequence of their conservative position. I don’t believe the majority of conservatives ever felt their position on abortion was meant to keep women “barefoot and pregnant.” That is not to say there might’ve been some that felt that way, but I was unable to find it expressed in mainstream conservative thought.
I want to turn back to being a writer as I end this blog. One of the things I like to write about are the unintentional consequences of people’s beliefs and actions. What I have been talking about here are the unintentional consequences of conservative beliefs. Conservatives would be against abortion as it would be one more thing that would change the fabric of life. There is a current saying going around “words matter.” I think you will agree with the statement that “believes matter” too.
2 Responses
This gave me much to think about “I believe life begins with a successful birth” there was no for or against. Should your post be reading beliefs or is it american to write believes?
There is an interesting mixture of beliefs about when life begins. The majority of cultures believed it begins with a successful birth but there are extremes. There was a culture that believed life began with the baby’s first birthday. They had a very high death rate among infants and that seemed to have influenced their belief. The other extreme is that life begins at the moment of conception. This came about because of a religious belief having nothing to do with birth or the start of life. It is a concept of Purgatory. If you are not baptized, you are doomed to Purgatory. A question arose about miscarriages and when should the miscarriage be baptized to avoid Purgatory? The easiest answer the church could come up with was baptized every miscarriage. That automatically was interpreted as life begins at the moment of conception.