Check out the photo on the front page of today’s (3/3) New York Times, above the article about the arguments before the Supreme Court concerning Texas’s law restricting the operation of abortion clinics. What caught my attention was the signage. A sign in back said “Life Counts,” with a beguiling picture of what looks to me like a full-term infant, certainly closer to a full-term infant than a zygote, which the so-called pro-life contingent protects with equal fervor. I read intentional deceptiveness in the sign: the full-term infant’s picture is purposely deceptive, with the emotional response that a full-term baby evokes although anti-abortion groups are necessarily much more concerned with protecting non-emotion-evoking zygotes than adorable full-term babies. Worse, the picture covertly makes the accusation, “Abortion providers murder babies” – a canard as guilt-inducing as it is knowingly false. And because this untruth is expressed pictorially, it is hard to controvert it verbally. For a group that claims to hold the moral high ground, this multiple violation of the commandment against bearing false witness ought to be problematic, but apparently is not.

But the sign borne by the woman in front is even more troublesome: “I AM A PRO-LIFE FEMINIST.” Can you be a pro-life feminist? What do you have to be, and believe, to be a “feminist,” who can answer that question, and why? Continue reading →