Another View Of Sarah Palin.
The case for Sarah Palin
By Helen Alvare
Sarah Palin looks like what a lot of women aspire to be on their best day.
She clearly takes real pleasure and real strength from her family. Communicates pride as a son deploys to a war zone. Stands publicly by a pregnant teenage daughter. Uncomplainingly accepts a disabled child. Successful in her profession. Funny. Supremely confident.
Governor Palin is also pro-life.
She is the walking, talking, one-liner-delivering embodiment of the worldview that pro-life feminist women have labored to communicate for the last 35 years.
This worldview includes the idea that it is not only generous, but wise, to see children as "gifts," not "threats." It holds that women are capable of strength, not only when they assume roles formerly restricted to men, but when they rise to the challenge of protecting life -- even to the point of suffering and sacrificing on behalf of others. In this way, pro-life feminism sharply distinguishes itself from "your mother's feminism" which for the last several decades has personified women as "victims," because of their capacity to bear children.
Palin also embodies another idea that may pose an even more fundamental threat to late 20th Century feminism. This is the idea that women don't need to be told what to think about marriage and childbearing by largely well-educated, well-heeled "feminist leadership." Real women don't need to be told what freedom and happiness look like for the female half of the race. They can figure it out for themselves, thank you very much.
Women are too diverse today, too experienced both at home and at work, to buy the notion that happiness always takes the form of a full-time career alongside a minimalist domestic life. Today, as ever, the vast majority of women still marry, still hope for, and still eventually bear, children whom they love. Our mother's feminism made almost no room for these basic desires, for the cooperation with men they require, or for the questions about "ordering priorities" they provoke.
It's no wonder that self-ordained feminist leadership is reacting so virulently against Palin. She is a threat to their ability to dominate the airwaves every time the subject turns to the question of "what do women really want?" Because if the answer isn't "legal abortion," the aging feminist leaders really don't have much to say.
When abortion is the question on the table, Palin's whole career challenges the premise that caused older feminism to put abortion at the top of the list. I refer to the premise that women's ability to bear children and desire to care for them are intrinsic weaknesses.
That premise is false -- which Palin's life and experience fairly shout. And so nothing is left of the "feminist abortion rights" argument.
Pro-abortion feminists no longer use the argument that an embryo or fetus growing in a human mother is not a human life. How could they at this point in the development of genetic science? They can't honestly use the argument that abortion is necessary to safeguard women's medical health. How could they in light of the decades of abortion statistics testifying to the non-medical rationales for the vast majority of U.S. abortions?
As a result, nothing is left of abortion rights -- and maybe nothing is left of the feminism that made abortion its centerpiece -- when the argument that "women's freedom equals legal abortion" is gone.
Palin, as a governor and as a mother, represents what a lot of people want to be on their best day. For this reason, whether or not Palin is on the winning ticket in November, her public presence has already won a deep and long-lasting victory for a new and pro-life feminism in the United States.
Professor Helen Alvaré is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia. She is part of Team Sarah PAC, a coalition of diverse women dedicated to advancing and defending Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential candidacy and motivating grassroots women to actively support the McCain-Palin ticket.
By Helen Alvare
Sarah Palin looks like what a lot of women aspire to be on their best day.
She clearly takes real pleasure and real strength from her family. Communicates pride as a son deploys to a war zone. Stands publicly by a pregnant teenage daughter. Uncomplainingly accepts a disabled child. Successful in her profession. Funny. Supremely confident.
Governor Palin is also pro-life.
She is the walking, talking, one-liner-delivering embodiment of the worldview that pro-life feminist women have labored to communicate for the last 35 years.
This worldview includes the idea that it is not only generous, but wise, to see children as "gifts," not "threats." It holds that women are capable of strength, not only when they assume roles formerly restricted to men, but when they rise to the challenge of protecting life -- even to the point of suffering and sacrificing on behalf of others. In this way, pro-life feminism sharply distinguishes itself from "your mother's feminism" which for the last several decades has personified women as "victims," because of their capacity to bear children.
Palin also embodies another idea that may pose an even more fundamental threat to late 20th Century feminism. This is the idea that women don't need to be told what to think about marriage and childbearing by largely well-educated, well-heeled "feminist leadership." Real women don't need to be told what freedom and happiness look like for the female half of the race. They can figure it out for themselves, thank you very much.
Women are too diverse today, too experienced both at home and at work, to buy the notion that happiness always takes the form of a full-time career alongside a minimalist domestic life. Today, as ever, the vast majority of women still marry, still hope for, and still eventually bear, children whom they love. Our mother's feminism made almost no room for these basic desires, for the cooperation with men they require, or for the questions about "ordering priorities" they provoke.
It's no wonder that self-ordained feminist leadership is reacting so virulently against Palin. She is a threat to their ability to dominate the airwaves every time the subject turns to the question of "what do women really want?" Because if the answer isn't "legal abortion," the aging feminist leaders really don't have much to say.
When abortion is the question on the table, Palin's whole career challenges the premise that caused older feminism to put abortion at the top of the list. I refer to the premise that women's ability to bear children and desire to care for them are intrinsic weaknesses.
That premise is false -- which Palin's life and experience fairly shout. And so nothing is left of the "feminist abortion rights" argument.
Pro-abortion feminists no longer use the argument that an embryo or fetus growing in a human mother is not a human life. How could they at this point in the development of genetic science? They can't honestly use the argument that abortion is necessary to safeguard women's medical health. How could they in light of the decades of abortion statistics testifying to the non-medical rationales for the vast majority of U.S. abortions?
As a result, nothing is left of abortion rights -- and maybe nothing is left of the feminism that made abortion its centerpiece -- when the argument that "women's freedom equals legal abortion" is gone.
Palin, as a governor and as a mother, represents what a lot of people want to be on their best day. For this reason, whether or not Palin is on the winning ticket in November, her public presence has already won a deep and long-lasting victory for a new and pro-life feminism in the United States.
Professor Helen Alvaré is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia. She is part of Team Sarah PAC, a coalition of diverse women dedicated to advancing and defending Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential candidacy and motivating grassroots women to actively support the McCain-Palin ticket.
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