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Camille Paglia on Feminism and The Abortion Debate
While perusing the interwebs for material for my series on on Camille Paglia — earlier installments here and here — I came across her latest column, this one on feminism and the abortion debate, or lack thereof, in the United States. Since Roe v Wade, Paglia argues, feminists have led the political discourse on this subject to the point of hysteria because they realize how precarious their position is. They know their views puts them in a small minority and that what the Supreme Court give, the Supreme Court can take away.
The real issue is that U.S. politics have been entangled and strangled for far too long by the rote histrionics of the abortion wars, which have raged since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that defined abortion as a woman’s constitutional right under the 14th Amendment. While I am firmly pro-choice and support unrestricted access to abortion, I have been disturbed and repelled for decades by the way reproductive rights have become an ideological tool ruthlessly exploited by my own party, the Democrats, to inflame passions, raise money, and drive voting.
Indeed, feminists have elevated abortion to the level of sacrament, which has alienated pro-life women to their cause. That’s why Hillary Clinton may have stepped in it with feminists recently:
Then this week Hillary raised eyebrows when she was asked by conservative co-host Candace Bure on ABC’s The View if she believes someone can be both a feminist and against abortion. “Absolutely,” Hillary replied, possibly not realizing the implications of what she was saying: “Of course you can be a feminist and be pro-life.” Was this an election-year pivot toward conservative women, like Hillary’s fantastical praise of Nancy Reagan as an AIDS activist? If it was rooted in genuine conviction, why have we not heard a word about it before? Hillary is usually wedded cheek-by-jowl with the old-guard feminist establishment.
Hillary is trying to be all things to all people, but may lose her staunchest supporters for that little faux paus. “Abortion on demand without regrets.” Isn’t that the feminist mantra? Also, I thought that any pro-life women is deemed “anti-women” — or not a woman at all! — for holding such heretical views about the Cult of Steinem’s holiest of holies.
I also appreciate Camille’s — I think I can call her Camille at this point — brutal honesty about what the pro-choice and pro-life positions really stand for:
Despite my pro-abortion stance (I call the term pro-choice “a cowardly euphemism”), I profoundly respect the pro-life viewpoint, which I think has the moral high ground. I wrote in “No Law in the Arena”: “We career women are arguing from expedience: it is personally and professionally inconvenient or onerous to bear an unwanted child. The pro-life movement, in contrast, is arguing that every conception is sacred and that society has a responsibility to protect the defenseless.” The silence from second-wave feminists about the ethical ambiguities in their pro-choice belief system has been deafening.
What I like so much about this phrasing — though I don’t think necessarily reflects on all pro-choice folks — is its honesty about the brutal reality of abortion that leftist feminists try to paper-over with terms like “reproductive rights” or “women’s health.” It also explains why they get so angry at the thought of ever humanizing an unborn child. I think they may be suffering from a niggling guilt about the truth of their position; it’s something they don’t want to deal with, though Camille has. I don’t agree with her in the slightest, but I give her credit for understanding the consequences of her position.
And as Camille points out at the end of the piece, this betrays a deep hypocrisy within the modern progressive movement. If you hold militant views on animal rights and will move heaven and Earth to save the spotted owl, what does it say about you that you’re unmoved by the yearly slaughter of millions of unborn humans?
Published in CultureProgressives need to do some soul-searching about their reflex rhetoric in demeaning the pro-life cause. A liberal credo that is variously anti-war, anti-fur, vegan, and committed to environmental protection of endangered species like the sage grouse or spotted owl should not be so stridently withholding its imagination and compassion from the unborn.
Wow, interesting, thanks Mate De.
@ Camille: “Despite my pro-abortion stance (I call the term pro-choice “a cowardly euphemism”), I profoundly respect the pro-life viewpoint, which I think has the moral high ground. I wrote in “No Law in the Arena”: “We career women are arguing from expedience: it is personally and professionally inconvenient or onerous to bear an unwanted child. The pro-life movement, in contrast, is arguing that every conception is sacred and that society has a responsibility to protect the defenseless.” The silence from second-wave feminists about the ethical ambiguities in their pro-choice belief system has been deafening.”
Fascinating.
That’s Camille. Never one to try and be popular. She always said she has more in common with the ladies in a beauty parlor in Bed Sty than the ladies who lunch on the upper west side who read her stuff.
Paglia always ranked near the top of honest leftists.
Hillary actually defined the issue quite well when she said that an unborn child has no constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade. But the status of the unborn is a little more difficult than even that: The unborn are perforce categorized as, or have the status of, property under Roe v. Wade. The unborn are not recognized as being human beings. They have a worse status than did Slaves under Dred Scot in that their status allows termination of their lives willy nilly as inconvenience, a more precarious position than Slaves who had some intrinsic worth economically. Let’s consider the souls of unborn folk. The problem with Roe v. Wade is the categorical denial of any possibility of consideration of rights of the unborn as they are not defined as human. If the humans who are still dependent on the environment of the womb for their continued existence, and, indeed, are being threatened, even after they successfully exit the womb, with termination, will not other humans who are considered of little worth to the society be in line for termination for convenience? Anyone over age 75, for example, in the remonstrations of Zeke Emanuel, head of biomedical ethics at the NIH, no less!? That part about unalienable rights including Life is no longer extant in our society. That is, Natural Right has been utterly rejected by those who rule us. Yet they swear an oath to a Constitution founded directly on the concept of Natural Right. Hypocrisy writ large.
From the article:
Be prepared to hear a lot about this idea in my review. (I expect to finish the book in a few days, but it will take some time to process into something meaningful. As it is, I worry that my attempt to discuss Sexual Personae will be the equivalent of describing Hamlet as “a play about a guy who kills his uncle”.)
Quinn, do not feel any pressure on your synopsis of a super complex book. Just remember 80% of your grade rides on this report. Good luck
Of the remaining 20%, how much is attendance and how much is participation?
Have you tried bribing the teacher?
Great points Kent Lyon, the abortion is quite terrifying if you really dive into the ethics of it, which most people never to
Matede: I just finished he article before reading your post. Knew you would have posted on he subject. :)
Paglia is a unicorn. A pro abortion feminist with a concience. She’s clearly deeply conflicted about – perhaps rebelling against – her gender and nature.
I’ve always lover reading her. Thanks for the thoughtful commentary.
Oh no, am I becoming predictable!! I Kid.
I’ve been on a Camille kick lately and you are right, she is a unicorn I don’t think there is anyone else like her. Which is why I find her fascinating
The unborn child has no rights in America. Everything rests on the position of the mother. If she wants to kill the child, she is empowered to do so, although in the red states there are an increasing array of legal restrictions.
If, however, she wants the child, then there is a tremendous high-tech healthcare system to protect and nurture the child if problems arise, and if any injury comes to the child there can be criminal prosecution of the person who caused the injury.
This is so clearly an immoral state that it is no wonder that abortion is one of our premier culture war issues.
Amen, MJBubba it is sad but true
I disagree. I actually respect her less after reading the quoted passage. For someone to acknowledge the pro-life position, and even concede that they have a point, but still describe herself as “pro-abortion” is borderline psychopathic. She’s basically saying, “Yeah, we are killing thousands of babies a year, but I’m okay with that.”
Brutal but at least a good faith attempt at honesty.
Many good comments, thanks for the series. I’d have to say that she’s one of the few Leftists that I can endure reading and think she has genuinely valuable things to say.
If the Left is ever more respectful/receptive to the social issues – the GOP (or whatever is left of it) will be in even more trouble.
I’ve recently been struggling with the morality of eating meat in a world of factory farming. I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to eat animals, but I do believe their suffering should be minimized and I don’t think the industry as a whole even remotely attempts to do that. Unfortunately, my desire for meat is so high that like many people who feel the same way about the morality I will continue to eat meat, but try to reduce my reliance on factory farming going forward, and hope people in the future won’t look at me as too wicked as they become wealthy enough to make it far easier to treat animals morally.
I have similarly conflicted views about the morality surrounding abortion. I think people should go out of there way to give birth to conceived babies, but doubt it’s morally impermissible to seek a very early abortion. Things get more complicated as the baby gets closer to birth, but even if it’s highly unethical at this point, it becomes difficult to stop someone from ending the life of their child in a morally correct way, especially when it still relies on the mother for life support. Things like partial birth abortion, and really, any active killing of the baby after it becomes viable, seems wrong. But the fact that something is wrong doesn’t always imply the authority to physically stop someone. This is why I think the abortion debate is so messy.
Mike H, I agree with you on the industrial farming bit, I keep telling my lefty friends who go all in on the non GMO, glutton free, Monsanto is evil stuff that the only reason for the industrial farming complex we have in this country Is because of farm subsidies and inheritance taxes all the things they support but they never think about it past what is in front of their face.
What I like about Camille Paglia is that she thinks about the consequences of her position to its end and understands the immorality of it but for some reason can live with it. I don’t get that position but I respect that she thinks about it while way too many people never actually think about the reality of their position like you have in your previous comment. I know that most of feminism is a battle against Mother Nature and not men, but men are the easier scape goat. This is why abortion is so important to them, they think it frees them from the burden of motherhood, which actually it doesn’t, just because the child wasn’t born doesn’t mean it never existed and lives on in the mind of that woman who had the abortion. My biggest problem with feminist is they don’t think about that they never actually think about who or what they are actually battling
I think you’re giving her too much credit. What’s so commendable about being in favor of something even when you know it’s wrong? She reminds me of Daniel Patrick Moynihan who always said things that didn’t sound liberal but who then always voted the liberal line in Congress. Talk is cheap. I think she just likes to stand out, to say things that other people don’t say, to sound nuanced so that she gets invited to cocktail parties. Sort of a Peggy Noonan or David Brooks of the left.
Oh I get what you mean. It’s like Alan Dershowitz I have no idea why he is still on the left with his positions on Israel and free speech and the like. It is likely an emotional attachment that is hard to break but I think it is good for people like Camille and Alan (ha I use their first names like we’re BFFs) who are of the left to help fight the left, which is in need of a reformation.
Talk about schizophrenic, we allow a woman and her doctor to kill her child even AFTER it has been born but when someone murders a pregnant mother, the murderer is charged with a double homicide.
I would love to see a defense lawyer stand up in court and claim that the baby was not murdered because according to federal law it wasn’t a baby. What a stir that would cause.
As I watch this train wreck of a campaign season, I often think about the single-issue pro-abortion voter (so many young women) whose highest priority is having the “right” to murder her offspring. She wouldn’t consider voting for a Republican for a single second, because of the pro-life plank of the party platform.
The pathology of left wing ideology is a horror — completely dehumanizing.
In other words, the right to abortion is the essence of womanhood. Not fertility or the ability to reproduce offspring, which men cannot do, but rather the ability to NOT reproduce, which is the ability to be like men. So the essence of womanhood is the ability to be like men. This fits with the overall feminist liberation worldview: women need to be like men. Very sad.
Which is even worse when you consider what this implies they believe about men: violent, hedonistic, borderline sociopathic…
I think her argument might be better understood if we get the essay “No Law in the Arena” from Tramps and Vamps. I haven’t read it, but the column is more about the state of the debate than the details of her position.
I can see your point, but I secretly hope that the piece is one more step for her toward rejecting abortion.
Way back in the ’70s, I remember that a young woman was reported to have said something to the effect of ‘the most important characteristic of her future husband is that he be pro-choice.’ In other words, in my lifetime, we had gone from general acceptance that protecting his wife and children was one of the most important duties of a man, to proclaiming that (not just an important, but) the most important aspect of a man is to acquiesce in killing their offspring. I am still amazed at the speed of this turnaround.
It has seemed to me that Camille Paglia would today be a conservative if she were to start her intellectual journey over again. She criticizes the left but cannot abandon them, as if her life would have been all for naught if she now switches sides. Take this instance. To criticize the pro-abort crowd for raising money is kind of small potatoes. Everyone raises money. Every side has some hypocrisy. If she considers a fetus a life, then why is she still pro-abortion?
Go ahead, Camille, come over and leave the dark side. ;)