If Roe v. Wade is overturned, will the anti-abortion movement split?
Deseret News just published an excellent article: If Roe v. Wade is overturned, will the anti-abortion movement split?.
The subtitle for the article is, “Some anti-abortion activists feel politically homeless because they lean left on every issue but abortion,”—which pretty much describes me perfectly.
The whole article is great. I have a lot of respect for both of the people they interviewed, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa of New Wave Feminists and Gloria Purvis, and their analysis here resonates with my own.
The article briefly explains the Catholic Democrat civil rights history of the anti-abortion movement and ponders what the future of the movement may be if Roe V. Wade is struck down.
Here’s a section, but again, please read the whole thing:
“Abortion upholds systems of oppression,” said Gloria Purvis, a women’s rights advocate who hosts “The Gloria Purvis Podcast.” Purvis added that the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion allows corporate America to shirk its duty to come up with policies that truly support working mothers and families.
“It’s a smokescreen for women to say, ‘Hey, you’re liberated to be like men.’ Instead we need to build an economy, a society ... that is conducive to women as we are — not to us being faux male but female,” she said.
But Purvis, Herndon-De La Rosa and others are critical of the political right, too. They believe that conservatives’ support for life begins at conception but ends at birth.
If Republicans truly respected life, they would take a holistic approach that includes tackling the topic of racial injustice, Purvis said.
“I think the mistake really that we’ve made in talking about pro-life is that it’s detached from the core issue which is really human dignity … from the moment of conception until natural death,” she said.
Dignity for the unborn can and should be addressed, said Purvis, “while also at the same time understanding we have an obligation to uphold the dignity of everyone else outside the womb, particularly in the realm of race.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, Purvis added, the silence from those who claim to be “pro-life” was “indicative of the (political) problem” that plagues the anti-abortion movement.
The Republican Party, Purvis continued, publicly “lauds” marriage and family but at the same time “penalizes women who have made these difficult decisions,” portraying those who need state benefits to survive as freeloaders.