Feminism Is For Everyone

Mar 14, 2008,12:48 PM

excuse me?

Every single time I read the Cav Daily, I regret it. For a while I had quit only to be brought back by the promise of an upcoming article by someone I know. Unfortunately I wasn't told when exactly that will be happening and so I skim every day's opinion section--BAD IDEA.

Today we've got an interesting specimen. One Ross Lawrence, who claims in his article that he is pro-choice, also posits that, if we are really interested in "gender equality", then we should allow men certain rights such as the right to override a woman's choice to have an abortion. But you know, he cares about women, so only men who promise to take care of the child would be allowed to claim this right. And by take care of the child I mean after a woman who doesn't want it was forced to carry it in her womb and be pregnant for 9 months.

My take on being pro-choice is that women have a right to BODILY INTEGRITY (ie. no unwanted parasites on/in them) and that an individual woman (AND HER ALONE) may make decisions on that front. What Mr. Lawrence is suggesting, in this case, is FORCED surrogacy and makes women slaves to both their own bodies AND to the will of whatever man is the father of her child. I wonder if Mr. Lawrence would support such a right in cases of rape or incest? (Besides, a fetus resulting from an incestual father-daughter relationship is technically more than 50% the man's DNA, so perhaps he should have SUPER veto power over abortions)

At the end of the article, Mr. Lawrence makes a half-assed attempt to appeal to a "middle ground" in which fathers are offered a bigger role in the process. Many feminists, single mothers, and people who wish they had more involved fathers would probably be in favor of such changes, but it seems a little problematic that the only way we can bring men into the child-rearing process is to offer them power over women.