The End of Women's Rights?

Fay Voshell argues that women's rights are endangered in America but the threat doesn't come from any of the usual suspects, in fact it comes from quite an unexpected source - radical feminists. Here's the crux of Voshell's column:

The signature achievement of radical feminists agitating during the 1960s and early '70s was 1973's Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, which essentially legitimized abortion on demand throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy.

Since that time, leftist feminists have clung to the absolute right to abortion, tolerating no exceptions to what they consider an inviolable right. The fact is that no argument on behalf of the unborn human being has been deemed a reason to curb abortion rights. Any woman in the U.S. can walk into an abortion clinic and be rid of her unborn baby for any or no reason at all.

How ironic is it, then, that absolutism concerning abortion may prove to be the Achilles heel of the entire leftist feminist movement? That Achilles heel is sex-selective abortion, which is gaining a foothold in Canada and the United States.

According to Adam Cassandra, a Canadian author writing for Life News, a recent study reveals that third-world immigrants from the East, especially those from India and China, are bringing to the West their preference for male babies. Women are using sex-selective abortions to get rid of female babies in order to try again for the male infants they crave.

The widespread gendercide of the East has now immigrated to the West. Little girls in the free West, where equal rights for boys and girls, men and women have largely been achieved after centuries of struggle, are now in jeopardy because of the absolutist interpretation of abortion rights.

The tragedy of female feticide and the inevitable erosion of women's rights is amplified by the noted absence of a megaphone from those who make themselves out to be defenders of women.

As Patrick B. Craine of LifeSiteNews noted in his article entitled "Woman-killing in the name of women's rights," abortion rights activists such as Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada have come out in favor of sex-selective abortions, claiming that restrictions on sex-selective abortions would be a "dangerous road to go down" because "women have the right to decide" even if they want to get rid of a girl-baby.

So there we have it. In the opinion of leftist feminists, it is better to stick to the ideological absolute of abortion on demand -- no matter the consequences -- than it is to rise to the defense of unborn girls in the name of women's rights.... How can any woman claim to be a defender of the female sex in any respect when she advocates choices that exterminate unborn little girls?

Feminists have embraced an ideological construct which declares loudly and clearly that any woman can decide that her unborn little girl is worth less than a little boy. They have gone along with the worst of third-world ethics, declaring female feticide a "choice" they can live with.

There's more to Voshell's argument, but she makes a convincing point in the part I've quoted. Sex-selection abortion essentially discriminates against females and the feminists are just fine with that, but if women can be treated unequally as infants in the womb, what logical argument do the feminists have for opposing other kinds of discriminatory conduct? If the law favors boys in the womb what rationale is there for opposing such favoritism outside the womb? It's a good question.

Thanks to BillT for the link.

Blackout

There's been an eerie silence in the media concerning one of the biggest news stories of the year, a story that is, at least in terms of jurisprudence, historic. Forty three Catholic dioceses and organizations are suing the Obama administration in federal court over the attempt to force religious institutions to provide contraceptive and abortifacients with all of their health insurance.

Despite this unprecedented, massive legal pressure religious institutions are bringing to bear on the Obama administration there's been scarcely a peep about it in the major media. Brent Bozell of Media Research Center compares the blackout to the Chinese communists withholding news for 20 years that the United States landed on the moon because our achievement reflected poorly on their government.

Here's Bozell:

ABC's World News and NBC's Nightly News completely failed to report this historic event! CBS Evening News only dedicated a brief 19 seconds to the story and framed it as a birth control debate. By contrast, ABC led their evening broadcast with the sentencing of the Rutgers student who spied on his gay roommate with a web camera. That story received three minutes and 30 seconds of coverage at the top of the newscast.

This is not a mistake or an editorial oversight by the broadcast networks. This is a deliberate and insidious withholding of national news to protect the 'Chosen One' who ABC, CBS and NBC have worked so hard to elect and are now abusing their journalistic influence to reelect. Even when a network like CBS mentions the suit ever-so-briefly, they botch the issue by framing it as a contraception lawsuit instead of what they know it to be: a religious freedom issue. It's bogus, dishonest ‒ a flat out lie.

The fact is that the Catholic Church has unleashed legal Armageddon on the administration, promising 'we will not comply' with a health law that strips Catholics of their religious liberty. If this isn't 'news' then there's no such thing as news. This should be leading newscasts and the subject of special, in-depth reports. Instead, these networks are sending a clear message to all Americans that the networks will go to any lengths ‒ even censoring from the public an event of this historic magnitude ‒ to prevent the release of any information that will hurt Obama's chances of re-election.

Elizabeth Scalia at The Anchoress largely agrees with Bozell but thinks that the real reason for spiking the story has more to do with fear:

Well, that [Bozell's interpretation] might be the message they are sending. But I think the larger message that perhaps they hadn’t meant to transmit is one of stark terror. Like the kid who hides under the blanket figuring the boogeyman won’t see him, the mainstream media has decided that if they just ignore the 12 lawsuits launched against the Obama administration by 43 Catholic entities, the reality of them will go away; they simply won’t exist, and the Supreme Court won’t see them, either!

Glen Foden also adds his thoughts on the mysterious media silence:

In any case, it's little wonder that no one really trusts the mainstream media to give us an accurate picture of what's going on in the world.