My Dear Pro-Life: A Satirical Critique of the Current Pro-Life Strategy
My dear Pro-Life leaders,
I recently attended the pro-life prayer rally for the unborn and wanted to say thank you. I have never taken part in a pro-life event before, and as a liberal realist and champion for the oppressed I thought I would be diametrically opposed - and how wrong I was! I was impressed with the depth of understanding of the oppressive plight of women. Though I have heard criticisms of the Left regarding the reality of intersectionality when applied to racial diversity, equity and inclusion, it was gratifying to see the Right apply it so effectively and directly to the plight of women suffering under the patriarchy.
You are indeed correct when you say “Women are as much a victim as a baby” in the healthcare of abortion (though we know that “babies” is such a loose term as to be meaningless - fetus is far more accurate). In fact I say, women are MORE the victim - not because of their decision to terminate, but because years of tyranny under the patriarchy mean they are vulnerable and victimized by their very bodies!
I was especially encouraged to see how many Christians took part in your event. As you know, Christians are some of the most difficult of the populous to please. How often I have heard their rhetoric of a creator “God” out there somewhere who imprints its image on each conception and fetus. They hold to this in an infuriating way, and with those arguments have even shamed to silence some liberal pro-choice leaders. But I am glad to see how you have side-stepped their death grip on that argument and won them to your cause. With the orthodox Christian allergy to intersectionality and critical theory (thanks to their obnoxious exaltation of a dusty religious book written by oppressive white men), your efforts to win them over to your position are noteworthy. As a skilled activist myself, I’d encourage you to continue 3 things:
Play on their sympathies to the oppressed women's experience, even and particularly how “bad” some women feel about it. As long as Christians’ eyes are held to the god of their bible, you will make no movement in keeping them quiet. So ensure you stress long and hard the suffering of the woman who exercises her rights over her body and chooses to terminate a pregnancy.
Related to this is your use of “the Victimhood of the women” who chooses termination. Master stroke! You have and can continue to move the Christians to blind pity, and thus paralyze their grating call to honor this invisible “God”. In this way you can more effectively help them avoid their own doctrinal teaching on the mandate of complete justice for the fetus.
Emphasize the need to move slowly - or as some say, incrementally. It would be dangerously easy in nearly every state to apply existing homicide law to cover pregnancies, and your position, as you’re aware, is tenuous. Moving slowly is especially helpful, because it responds to any objections by pointing to work supposedly in progress, and, in the unlikely case of a legislator having a conscience prick, takes the wind from the sails, so to speak. This is especially true if you can get stalwarts to be labeled as “abolitionists.” That way any legislators who may be sympathetic to their cause will instead be anxious of losing political merit with their party and your lobbyists, and perhaps even begin to criticize those who support applying murder law to fetuses by focusing on disagreements with their “tactics.” An additional bonus of moving slowly is the aggravation of your opponents; hopefully they become hasty and even more agitated. When they do,
Divert as much attention as you can to any strong or impulsive language they use instead of to the substance of the arguments they are making. If you can ensure pro-life leaders are appropriately offended by their conduct alone, you will win the sympathy of many of the uncertain, including a broad number of their Christian pastors. Internal disagreements, weariness, and silence will then follow in their midst, and you can keep urging “bills that restrict abortion” to maintain political momentum and financial support as you please.
Lastly, I consider myself an honest person, so must say that I am not completely in favor of how politically strong your pro-life advocacy makes the Republican party. However I do trust that your legislators will never risk losing the party’s capital by implementing actual laws that limit abortion. That aversion, at least, is helpful to us on the Left by quieting down Christians with the illusion of rescuing fetuses. Thus even with my dislike of most tenets of the Republican platform, I must say again I am truly grateful for your pro-life/pro-choice work and look forward to your next rally.
Thank you for staying awake to the rights of women,
Your Liberal Friend,
They/Them
