The Real Wonder Woman

Excerpts from the Daily Local News - Story By Nate Heckenberger - PHOENIXVILLE >> 

It’s a Tuesday late in April and Melissa Gormley sits in a recliner, cherishing the bumps and kicks from her baby, growing inside her womb.

As minutes crawl into hours, the sign of life is a welcomed distraction from the taxol and carboplatin streaming through her veins.

Melissa, 31, is not alone, surrounded by other patients in a room full of recliners and IVs, as she sits through her first chemotherapy session. The cancerous tumor on her cervix threatens to deny her a full motherhood experience, and even though her first pregnancy was not planned nor expected, Gormley’s motherly instincts are already sharpened and she is prepared to fight.

“There are definitely times where I break down crying,” Melissa said. “It’s scary thinking about all the what ifs. Like, what if it doesn’t work? What if something happens during delivery? All of those thoughts go through your head. She’s moving a lot now, so every time we have that I just think, we’re doing all this so she’s healthy, so I’m healthy, so I can be there for her. That kind of helps me get through it.”

Melissa Gormley met Dave Good 13 months ago, while training for their serving jobs at World of Beer in Exton, PA. 

An unassuming beginning led to a spontaneous six-hour first date which led to a relationship. “She was so shy and she had this nervous laugh,” Dave recalls. 

Just after New Year’s, the couple received the most life-changing of all surprises: Melissa was pregnant.

“We were both kind of like, ‘what?!,’” she said. Shock transformed into excitement, and at 14 weeks the pair found out they’d be having a girl.

That same night, Melissa experienced some light bleeding, which prompted a trip to the doctor, and eventually a biopsy.

Every day that passed, every time the phone rang, tension and urgency built, magnified by the little life inside.

“We were so excited and were finally over the shock of ‘we’re pregnant,’” David said. “We were starting to be like, ‘This is awesome, we’re going to be able to start our life together’ and then we get this news and we wondered, what does that mean for our new life? Did it mean it couldn’t happen anymore? Can we still have the baby? Is Melissa going to be OK?”

When Melissa finally got a voicemail from their doctor's personal cell phone, she didn’t want to call back. There was little that could soften the blow of the news: cervical cancer.

“I was in shock at that point,” Melissa said. “I kind of mentally prepared myself that I might not get the news I wanted, but it was still very hard hearing that.”

The process to recovery began, but Gormley’s case was not only rare, but a bit more challenging, timeline-wise. 

Had Melissa been early into her pregnancy, terminating it may have been a recommended route. Discovery in the third trimester could have allowed for some wiggle room on the start of treatment.

Melissa was smack-dab in the middle of her pregnancy, leaving her with really only one choice.

“Ending the pregnancy was not an option for me,” she said. “I knew that right from the beginning. Even if they were like ‘we can’t do anything for you,’ I would’ve waited. I was really just concerned for her.”

Friends and family searched for the right response in an avalanche of unknown.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Sharon Good, Dave’s mother. “To go from such a high of knowing I was going to be a grandmother to hearing she has cancer, it broke my heart. Whoever thought a pregnant woman could have chemo, but when I heard that I said, ‘OK, we’re gonna fight this.’ There’s nothing else to do.”

With more and more information out there, chemotherapy while pregnant is a viable option. Melissa will have her second chemo session Tuesday and another three weeks after. Following that, she’ll undergo another MRI to check the progress. If the tumor has been reduced, Gormley will go for a fourth session. If progress is minimal, the plan is to deliver the baby through caesarean section around 30 weeks and then surgically remove the tumor.

Needless to say, when baby Olivia makes her arrival to the world, she will be a beacon of joy and of hope and of gratefulness.

“Dave kept saying 'I don’t ever want to call her princess, I want to call her our superhero.'

Like mother, like daughter.

Here at NWF we've been blown away by Melissa, Dave, and baby Olivia's story of strength. If you'd like to help them cover some of their unexpected medical expenses, 
here are the following ways to donate:

PayPal: davemelissaOMG@gmail.com

Venmo: Mike-Strawbridge

Or message us at NewWaveFeminists@gmail.com 

for their home address if you'd like to send a check.

Can you imagine a world without abortion?

What would it look like? Pro-choicers want us to believe it would be filled with hemorrhaging women, self-aborting and dying in the streets, but I'm not buying that. 

When I imagine what the world would look like if our fertility were treated as the super power it is, and the life of the unborn human given the respect it deserves, I see a place that's a whole hell of a lot more pro-woman than what we have now. 

Think about it. Currently when a low-income woman gets pregnant (or a young woman, or a single woman, or really any woman who doesn't have a life deemed “suitable” by society to bring children into) she is met with all types of hostility. Simply for having the audacity to, ya know, actually have the kid that clearly already exists inside her womb.

She basically has to make her case for why she should be able to STAY pregnant and how she plans on supporting said child with the least amount of inconvenience to society as possible. 

Her partner resents her; her boss resents her; her community resents her. She and her child--whose life is considered "a choice" (and because she CHOSE to keep the baby this is all her responsibility of course)--are now a burden to others. An inconvenience. This makes the fertile female person a liability to employers and partners. 

But what if we lived in a world that realized that once a new life had come into existence, the time for "choosing" whether or not it existed, was over? What if we lived in a world where that woman, no matter her age, income, or status, was accommodated rather than resented? 

Because more than 50 million unborn children have been aborted over the last 43-years, we can't know how society would have accommodated women if such a high number had continued with their pregnancies. 

Had the unborn person not been viewed as disposable, the world would've had to adjust.

Our culture and our corporations would have had to accept that--guess what!--women sometimes grow new people in their bodies and it's freakin' amazing. And not only should we respect the hell out of that, but we as a society might want to help a sister out a little bit more because without happy healthy women, society screeches to a halt. 

Unfortunately, we don't live in that world though. We live in a world where if you experience an unplanned pregnancy you are expected to work twice as hard to make up for you fertility. That child is not a blessing, it's a burden. It's not a person, it's a problem. 

Because abortion is an option, when a woman doesn't "choose" to terminate her pregnancy, by default she's choosing to burden her employer, her partner, her community. 

And we hate her for it. 

Abortion creates a world that is undeniably anti-woman. 

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Post by Destiny

Amanda Marcotte Just Makes Shit Up

So evidently this is how modern day online journalism works now. You decide you hate someone and then go and cobble out the villain you want them to be from work that they're only distantly connected to. 

Exhibit A:

Like literally she just removed the word "not" so that it would have to opposite meaning and then slapped it by my name. Are you effing kidding me, Salon?

Marcotte then goes on to attributed someone else's words from a blog post (which she actually links to in her "article," y'all… showing the other person's attribution and all) and claims it was MY story about giving up contraceptive. {Note to self: Let husband know about this update in our sex life.}

So basically this is how internet "news" works these days. Good to know. NWF *official* response:

*all of those words were in her article or articles people she knows have written before 

so I put them together in a sentence I liked better. 

Why abortion is about race...

So I have kick-ass friends. One of them, who out of respect for her will be anonymous, posted the following status update on Facebook. She herself is a woman of color, so when she speaks on this issue, I make sure to listen.

I was happy to see that she listed Planned Parenthood amongst her list of social injustices that black people face. 

I've been a fan of Ta-Nehisi Coats for a few years now, and while he addresses many of the other issues my friend listed, he often neglects to mention how abortion disproportionately impacts his female counterparts.

Out of curiously I decided to read the comments under my friends post. NEVER READ THE COMMENTS, I know, I know...

There always has to be that one guy. I decide to engage him because having just walked in the house from a camping trip with four children, I had nothing but time to argue on the internet. Surely, the filthy, stinky, lake water laden laundry would do itself. Ha.

Anyway, the following conversation took place, and I thought it was worth sharing. I barely noticed what this gentleman was saying until I had stepped away from the conversation for a bit, and then it hit me. See if you can spot it before I did:

Representation Matters

Recently I had a gut-wrenching response to the casting of Zoe Saldana to play Nina Simone. My reaction surprised me and threw me into a state of uncontrollable sadness.

It hit me personally because being a dark-skinned black woman with a wide nose, big lips, and kinky hair is still apparently not good enough. I know, I know, where am I going with this? You see, representation matters.

Instead of getting an actress that best fits the physical description of this incredible woman, they choose someone who looks NOTHING like her, paint her skin, and add a prosthetic nose and wig. These are the lengths they had to go to create this non-fiction character instead of getting someone who naturally fits the mold. For those who don't quite understand, just do some research. Colorism is real and many women are still discriminated against because of the shade of their skin. Many women still struggle with major self-hatred and insecurities because society has built a standard for what true beauty is.

Just Google “beautiful women” or “beautiful hair” and see if you can find anyone who looks remotely like me without scrolling until your finger hurts. Yes, I am not ignorant to the fact that many women of all shapes and sizes will be omitted from this list, but stick with me here. Representation matters in more ways than you or I can count.

And that’s easy to say, but what does that really mean?

Last month I saw a meme that had a little black girl looking up at a black female character from Star Trek that said just that: “Representation Matters.” It then went on to quote Whoopi Goldberg. 

“When I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, Mom, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”  — Whoopi Goldberg

THIS… All of this.

(In this moment I’m holding my newborn son tightly as tears stream down my face and I whisper to him, “I want a better world for you”.)

When women of color see that they can do something, they can be somebody, it makes a world of difference. We are so much more vulnerable to oppression when we think we we’re not good enough, or we can’t be anything we want to be.

Later that week Destiny tagged me in a post on Facebook that stated, “Black women have almost 40 percent of total U.S. abortions each year, despite Blacks being only 12 percent of the population.”

I already knew this; it hurts my heart every time I read it. Why aren’t people talking about it? Why does the black community treat abortion as though it’s a necessary evil, as though without it black women will never be able to succeed?

Destiny went on to say:

“College groups across the country - made up mostly of white young adults - ARE talking about it, but all that is doing is infuriating people of color. It comes off as a white savior complex. This is something that is impacting the black community so enormously but yet people within that community remain silent. That has to change, and it has to be black men and women leading the charge.”

She is absolutely correct. The question remained… where is the representation? Why the silence? Where are the people of color fighting for these unborn children who are dying at alarming rates?

My heart aches. The deepest part of me is in anguish because we still have a long way to go. Buzz words such as White Privilege, White Savior Complex, Institutional Racism, Infant and Maternal Mortality, Pre-school to Prison Pipeline…Abortion. These words inflame an uncomfortable response in me. A response that - especially when filled with birth hormones – turns me into a weeping mess drenching my infant’s head with tears.

Why?

Because all of these words provide a very sad commentary on the value of black life today. We have come a very long way but we still have a ways to go. This is the very reason why in order for anything to change we must first start where life begins and that is within the womb. If we cannot value the least and most innocent of us then it certainly should not matter who plays whom on the cinema screens. By WE, I mean African Americans, Blacks, People of Color, however you like to be recognized. WE must take a stand against injustice and be the change we wish to see. We cannot just sit and watch as others who are not directly affected by our plight take the reins and lead.

Representation Matters.

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Post By Cessilye Smith

I didn't have an abortion, and it saved my life...

This week we've been bombarded with stories from celebrities, CEO's, and all around successful women who claim their abortion(s) saved them. They talk about how they wouldn't have been able to be successful and still fulfill their dreams without sacrificing the lives of their children.

I don't know about you, but "I couldn't have" is not a phrase fit for feminism. The beliefs we have as women needs to be built on, "I can" and "I did," because therein lies a message of strength and resilience that all women should hear. They need to know they are capable of facing an unplanned pregnancy and persevering. They need to see that there is a way for them to pursue their dreams without sacrificing such a powerful part of themselves along with the life of their child. They need to know they are not alone.

True feminism surrounds those women with support, encouragement, and resources... not a violent "choice" she might live the rest of her life regretting. 

With that said, I decided to dust off this short essay from our facebook about my own "I can and I did" moment. Because we as women and we are capable of anything. We're done sacrificing either our dreams or our children... when we know we're strong enough to have both.

"The panic is temporary. The fear is temporary. The crisis is temporary. The days when you wake up thinking “how did I make such a huge mistake” are so few in retrospect.

You have nine months for all that, but then it gets good. Still difficult, don’t get me wrong, but so, so good…

My “crisis pregnancy” turned 15 today. He’s just a year shy of the age I was when I became pregnant with him (a thought that absolutely terrifies me, trust). However, he’s anything but a mistake.

He’s the other half to all my inside jokes. He’s the best person I’ve ever known. He’s the one who binge watches Doctor Who with me and teaches me about robots and video games. He’s the reason I started New Wave Feminists. He’s the owner of a pure heart, swiper of my favorite CDs, and contributor of copious amounts of laundry. He’s the kid who still has me hanging around skateparks a decade and a half later. He’s often my (much needed) filter, because he’s a stereotypical naturally mature firstborn, and the last one to ever let me down. He’s the kid that I didn’t really raise at all, but instead grew up alongside. He’s my heart and soul.

I didn’t know it at the time, but choosing life for him would give me a life that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

See, you don’t realize how temporary the “crisis” is when it’s consuming your every waking moment, but as soon as you get beyond that… Such beauty can be born from that which we never planned.

Fear is temporary, but the courage you gain facing it lasts forever. Panic subsides, but the strength you find in the midst of the crisis endures. Perhaps the most amazing thing though is how the love you feel for this new life, whether it was intended or not, suddenly turns a “mistake” into a miracle.

I didn’t save my son by “choosing life.”

He saved me."

Abortion Slacktivism And The White Savior Complex

The documentary film After Tiller is a fascinating look at the abortion industry, but it's also a fascinating piece of propaganda. It delves into the issue of late term abortions, a topic too grisly for most people to consider. 

The film focuses on a few of the few - the tiny percentage of abortionists who will do the procedure all the way into the third trimester of pregnancy. Only four doctors to be exact.

Dr. Hern is one of them. Most days he commits late term abortions in Boulder, Colorado. However, when reminiscing about how he got his start in After Tiller, he talks about his peace corp days in Brazil... 

What most people will conveniently overlook as he pulls at our heartstrings, is that he was looking at this community through a lucky set of eyes. A very lucky set of eyes. He chose to go to this impoverished country. He was not born there and forced to live there, like these women do day in and day out. He chose to tend to these underprivileged children for a set amount of time. He was not forced to conceive and care for them his entire life like the women of this village who he claims he was simply attempting to help. He chose to offer "safer" abortions as the "solution" to these women's problems, because he doesn't have to live with the fallout of the many more unplanned pregnancies and subsequent terminations that will continue to plague these mothers, sisters, and daughters since the real problem was never actually addressed at all. Meanwhile, he has flown back to the comforts of his American life and now uses their circumstances to justify his living extinguishing other human lives.

The pregnancies are only a symptom of - and abortion merely a BandAid for - the real problem: that women in many communities the world over live in a deeply patriarchal society where they have zero power, autonomy, freedom, or opportunity. We hear phrases like "baby machines" bandied about in the U.S., but here it might actually apply. Most of these women are going to grow up, be impregnated, and bear child after child, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Reproductive rights mean nothing if you ignore the fact that these women have no control over whether or not they will reproduce in the first place. And rather than addressing the true oppression these women are facing, Dr. Hern simply offers them an abortion after their rights have already been sufficiently trampled on. 

That is lazy activism from a privileged man who wants to pat himself on the back when really he's only compounding the problem.

I wish this were a unique story, but unfortunately this is how the west tends to treat most people not lucky enough to be born here in America (and of course those unlucky ones here who had the audacity to be born poor). Here's some pills, if they don't work, we'll kill your children for you. It's not that we don't care, it's just that we think these sorry excuses for "help" are the answer, when the real answer is to encourage economic health and self-sufficiency. "Give a man a fish..." We all know the saying.

Meanwhile, when we discuss abortion, we often hear the argument "But what about a woman's choice?" The response is pretty simple: "We are all for a woman's choice, but by the time there is an innocent human life inside her, the choice has already been made."

But what about the truly poor women of the third world, who don't get to choose whether or not they get pregnant, or raped by their husbands for that matter? Can your magical Western pills stop that from happening? I didn't think so...

It's difficult to see clips of a poor Brazilian woman, sitting outside a hut, no running water, no electricity, only the food she can grow or kill, with seven children playing around her in the dirt, and no say whatsoever in whether or not she has more. The ones she has are already hungry. Who on earth would say it's a good idea for her to keep having child after child she can't feed?

To the slacktivists, the answer is, of course, is birth control and abortion: send a (probably male) doctor over there to pat her on the head and scramble her baby up in her womb and suck it out and dispose of it and send her back to her life with a few hormone altering packets of class 1 carcinogens, where she will continue to have no power or control or real choice. Then if she gets pregnant again, and he'll go suck her next baby out, and so on and so forth. She'll still be poor and helpless, and he'll be a savior... to some. But certainly not to her. 

That is a sorry excuse for a solution. 

The answer, of course, is to advocate globally for women's rights, and for economic opportunity, which is the only way women will be able to access those rights. A world in which every girl can decide for herself what kind of life she's going to have; every woman can choose to marry or not marry, be a mom or not be a mom; every woman can wake up in the morning and have power and autonomy over her own body and her own life, from the moment it first exists.

Maybe it's just a dream, but that's the kind of world we are working toward.

These "saviors" in After Tiller do nothing but perpetuate the victimhood of women. They don't actually solve any problems. They just help keep a repulsive system running by propping up a patriarchy that preys on poor women.

After Tiller is absorbing, fascinating, and seductive. But it's propaganda. Don't let it fool you. Women - all women, everywhere - deserve much better than the desperate, wounding abomination of abortion. They deserve true liberation. 

Raising An Activist

Last week in DC my daughter Eiffel had a mini breakdown. It wasn't totally unexpected as I was fully prepared for her to be overwhelmed by the amount of abortion talk she'd overhear during the March for Life and surrounding events.

There are giant blown-up pictures of abortion victims along the march route that I knew she'd see. Plus, I figured the counter-demonstration we'd face in front of the Supreme Court with women and men in bloody pants screaming "God does not exist!" would be a new experience for my 9-year-old as well, and I was fully prepared for all of these talks. What caught me off guard however was what ultimately caught her off guard.

She handled the march like a champ, but that night back at our hotel, all hunkered down for the blizzard, we decided to hang out with some friends from Ireland in the lobby whom we'd had dinner with the previous evening. They're a jolly bunch. They drink too much and smoke too much, but also they say "feck" a lot.  According to them this is a word that's less offensive in Ireland than "crap." It's NOT the f-word although it sounds similar, and for us it's probably akin to "freaking." To Eiffel though it was a BAD WORD.

As we were headed down to hang out with them she stopped me. She grabbed my arm and when I looked back I noticed her eyes were filled with tears. She'd been such a trooper the whole trip that this surprised me but I figured something from earlier in the day must've finally gotten to her. I asked her what was wrong and that's when she told me, "I don't want to hang out with them because they're always cussing."

I love her heart. I love her heart so much.

To her their words were inappropriate and offensive. She's always been bothered by swear words in movies and songs, even when her siblings weren't, because she's my rule follower... only I never made a rule against “cuss words.”

I know most good moms do, but to me they're just dumb words. It's a sequence of sounds coming out of someone’s face and most of the time they mean nothing on their own and are only added for extra emphasis. I tried to explain this to her, but she just kept telling me that these words made her feel bad; that they hurt her.

I totally got what she was saying, but at the same time I felt the need to challenge that.

They're words. They're not sticks and stones. Words should never be able to have that much power over us. At least not arbitrary words like "feck" or hell, even "f*ck." As a nation we've become far too comfortable with taking offense at sounds coming out of people's faces. We claim that words hurt us, but I'm sorry, that's simply not true. Every word that supposedly "offends" us we've heard before... which is how we know it's offensive in the first place. It's not a new combination of sounds being introduced to the airwaves that is somehow magically able to assault our eardrums like no word before it.

And if any word should ever really *hurt* us, it should be "abortion." I asked Eiffel when was the last time that THAT word made her cry.

She kept trying to tell me that the other words she heard bothered her more even though she didn't know why and I said that while I understood, the meaning behind words is what really matters... and that's when she finally asked me.

She asked me what abortion really was.

She'd seen the pictures and grasped the general concept, but being the daughter of a prolife activist she'd somehow missed out on the nitty gritty.

We sat on the hotel room floor and I told her. I walked her through the procedures and I explained the different techniques used for different gestational ages. I told her how so many women who choose abortion simply feel that they have no other choice and that is why I, personally, am prolife.

The tears returned to her eyes but this time she couldn't blink them away. As they streamed down her face she looked up and asked me, "How can they let this happen?" And in that moment we had the same heart, because that's a question I ask myself every day.

She finally understood the difference between bad words and bad actions, and the fact that sometimes you can even put pretty words with bad actions. You can kill a child and call it "reproductive justice." You can force a woman into an abortion clinic while saying it's a "woman's right" and "liberating." You can stop someone else's heart from beating while somehow claiming it's still just a part of your body.

Last week my daughter learned a lesson that so many of us are constantly trying to teach our children: Actions speak louder than words.

Last week my daughter became an activist.

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Post By Destiny

(Photo By Robin Marty)

The March for Life 2016 changed everything.

On January 22, 2016, for the first time in the history of the March for Life, a chanting blockade of counter-protesters from pro-abortion group Stop Patriarchy met the first wave of pro-life marchers, and those marchers were holding signs reading: “I AM A PROLIFE FEMINIST.”

However it happened, whether it was fate or luck, the very first people the Stop Patriarchy counter-protesters saw were not old men, not blue-haired ladies with Bibles, not priests or nuns, not frat boys or politicians or church leaders. They were young women, carrying signs declaring themselves feminists.

It was a moment I will never forget as long as I live.

And not only was it a badass moment for those of us who were there, it was also symbolic of what is happening in the pro-life world. Young women are getting out in front of a movement that has, in some ways, stopped moving. For many major pro-life groups and individuals, the approach hasn’t changed much in the past 43 years. There are still those who cling to their bullhorns, huge photographs of dismembered fetuses, and a one-size-fits-all overtly religious approach. There are still people getting arrested on purpose – as if that’s going to help any mothers or babies – and seeming more concerned with name recognition and speaking fees than changing the culture.

Overall, the movement as a whole is still taking a somber, deadly-earnest approach to being pro-life. This has to stop. We will never convince the culture to come over to our side when our side looks like a total drag.

Photo by Robin Marty

It was anything but a drag that frigid morning in D.C. A legit blizzard was going to start any minute when New Wave Feminists came over the crest of a hill in front of the Supreme Court and saw Stop Patriarchy’s familiar orange signs and blood-spattered pants. There was no one between us and them but the police.

Surge of adrenaline. We sped up almost to a jog, so they would see our signs first: “I AM A PROLIFE FEMINIST.”

We didn’t slow down until we were directly in front of them. We blocked their signs with our own signs and banner. They were chanting “WE ARE THE LIBERATION GENERATION!” So we started chanting it with them. Because, um, we are.

When the police told them to leave the street, they eventually did. (As opposed to last year, when several of them got arrested.) They started their own small rally, replete with P.A. system, just off the street. They did their best to drown out the testimonies of the women of Silent No More, who were on the steps of the Supreme Court building sharing stories of how abortion destroyed their lives and bodies. Meanwhile, our friends at Stop Patriarchy chanted ridiculous sing-songs about how babies aren’t real until they come out of a vagina, as if a woman’s birth canal is an enchanted doorway. (They also read us “science lessons” about this fact. “A FETUS IS NOT A BABY!” was screamed repeatedly.)

Definitely their most convincing argument was when one of the women screamed “F—k God!” at the top of her lungs.

The New Wave Feminist response was to be there, be living proof of how wrong they are, and show them there is joy when you let go of the lie that your womb has to be invaded by death in order for you to be a liberated woman.

We also had a lot of fun appropriating their chants. “EVERY GENERATION HAS AN OBLIGATION TO WOMEN’S LIBERATION!” Sure, we’ll chant that right along with you. “THEY ARE KILLING WOMEN!” Yeah, we’ll chant that, too, and remember the many women who have died from “safe, legal, and rare” abortions.

But you know what? We were having fun. That’s supposed to be a bad word, I know. You’re not supposed to have fun being pro-life. You’re supposed to be somber and on the verge of tears for all the missing children and wounded women. But I have long been firmly convinced that the appropriate response to tragedy is joy – joy in spite of everything.

And joy was the word of the day. Destiny and I couldn’t stop laughing. I mean, the situation in front of the Supreme Court was so absurd it was funny. We were all grown women. Couldn’t we have a conversation? Instead the Stop Patriarchy people wouldn’t even look us in the eye. They looked through us, and kept chanting and screaming. It was surreal to stand a few feet from someone, to be having a vocal disagreement with them, and yet have no conversation whatsoever. Just chants and signs and, most of all, shrieking. Next year I’m bringing them lozenges.

The only time anyone made eye contact with us was when a girl who looked like Zooey Deschanel shouted “YOU’RE NOT A FEMINIST!” at our faces. It was the closest thing to a conversation we had with Stop Patriarchy. Our response was to smile and say “Yet here we are!”

It’s important to remember that Stop Patriarchy is not the voice of the entire pro-choice movement. They are extremists, and a lot of people who believe in abortion rights find them gross and ineffective.

But these are the ones who braved the blizzard and came out. These are the true believers. We have at least that much in common with them. In fact, we probably have more in common with them than we think.

I’ll never forget looking up and seeing that barrier made up of women with their signs: “ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY.” I’ll never forget the anger I felt – not at them, but at the lie. They believe it. They really do. They believe abortion is their liberation. They believe they can be released from oppression only by the deaths of their innocent children. They believe it so strongly they can’t even let themselves admit those children were once alive.

It’s crushing, it’s horrifying, and it’s gone on too long. 

We aren’t fighting them. We’re fighting for them. We’re fighting the lie that has twisted their hearts, invaded their wombs, and killed their children: that abortion is liberation.

Abortion is not liberation. Abortion is misogyny in action. 

On paper, the theme of this year’s March was “Pro-Woman, Pro-Life.” It didn’t really feel like that in reality – the majority of speakers at all the major events were still men - but New Wave Feminists and our allies are working toward a future when we don’t need to designate that theme, when the pro-life movement is truly a woman-centered and woman-led movement.

For me, the theme this year was Joy.

Joy was what separated us from the wounded and enraged women (and men) of Stop Patriarchy. Joy is what draws people to New Wave Feminists. 

Joy – just being happy to be alive – should be a cornerstone of the pro-life movement. 

We are here not just to defend, but to celebrate Life. If it’s not worth celebrating, then why are we fighting so hard for it?

 ____________________________

Post by K-Hatt

Maybe some women don't heal through shouting...

I know we're supposed to see these women using the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag and feel one of two ways- either proud of their boldness or angry at their callousness.

But I don't feel either of those things.

I just kinda want to take them all out for coffee and let them know that if they need to "shout it" and surround themselves with other women who are saying abortion is okay, then I totally understand that. Reading through these tweets, I don't get the sense that most of these stories are coming from a place of pride. I think a lot of these women have probably been holding onto their abortions for awhile now not really knowing how to feel about them. The world tells us abortion's no big deal, but very few women actually choose to abort lightly, so somewhere deep down most of us know it is… something. We don't think twice about getting a root canal or removing our appendix, but a majority of women lament at least a little bit about whether or not to choose abortion.

And when you come out on the other side of that choice, having made a decision that cannot be undone… well, I guess I'd probably be doing the same exact thing. I'd want to find a community of women who also aborted and think it's okay and more importantly who would reassure me that what I did was okay. And I probably wouldn't want to have it festering inside me either. I'd want to 'shout it out' as well.

But if you've done all this tweeting and shouting, and still find that you're struggling with your abortion, please know that I love you. I truly, genuinely care about your happiness and wellbeing. As a feminist I don't want to see a woman living under any type of oppression, whether it's societally inflicted or emotional and self-induced. So if you do struggle with a past abortion, and have yet to make peace with it, please please please reach out to me. I'd love nothing more that to help you find healing so you can live a life free from that bondage.

And if that's not you, if you're someone who chose abortion and think it's the best decision you ever made, I want you to know that I Iove you too. This isn't about guilting or shaming anyone, it's just about letting women who don't handle things in the same way know that there are other options when it comes to processing a past abortion. Pro-choice can't just apply to ending a pregnancy. Women need to know there are also alternative ways to deal with the emotions left after they've terminated.

Why do pro lifers hate science so hard?

Why Are So Many Black Babies Dying?

There aren't many things in life that really upset me. 

Ever since the doctors said that my husband and I would never have children naturally - you know, old school, the way we've been making babies since Adam and Eve - and I proceeded to get pregnant naturally (yep, intercourse) six months later. Ever since then I have been on this crazy road of learning more about women, childbirth, and babies in general. 

Before having my son I dove headfirst into researching my options about birth. Since then I have become a doula and childbirth educator. But it wasn't until spring of 2014 at the Southwest Birth Roundup when my path took a major turn. I listened intently to the incredible midwife Jennie Joseph toss out matter-of-fact statistics on infant and maternal mortality rates among African-Americans. These statistics brought me to a place of great grief. No longer was I just a doula and childbirth educator. In that moment I became an advocate. I wanted to shout from the mountaintops how completely wrong this was. And is.

Then I came home and I looked up more information about these phenomena that I had no clue about. I ended up falling down a rabbit hole of information that truly infuriated me.

This is some of what I learned (see footnotes for sources):

African-American women are three to four times more likely to be harmed or die during birth.

African-American babies are two to three times more likely to be born too soon, too small, or too sick to survive.

The African-American population in the USA is 13.2% (as of 2014). The white population in the USA 77.7%.

However, the African-American abortion percentage is 37%. The white abortion percentage is 34%.

The infant mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) is 12.2 for African-Americans, and 5.3 for non-Hispanic whites, and 5.4 for Hispanics.

Get more info by clicking this link, and see that the rates stay basically the same across all states in the U.S.

The maternal mortality rate is similarly disproportionate. Looking at deaths per 100,000 live births, the number of African-Americans in the U.S. is 42.8, for whites 12.5, and for other races 17.3.

My reaction to this is: what in the actual hell? Why is there not national outrage over these figures and why did I not know this? I haven't even begun writing about Planned Parenthood. Are you ready?

Planned Parenthood was founded by proud racist and eugenicist Margaret Sanger. If you look her up, you'll find it pretty incredible what she was capable of doing while others bowed at her feet like she was God. She even had black ministers involved to back up her "service," but it was all based in pure deceit. If the devil could dress up like someone and fool people to believe that what he was doing were good, he would dress up like Margaret Sanger.

Here is a nice little quote from Ms. Sanger. "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Planned Parenthood does many good things but... (Yes, there will always be a big ol' "BUT: when it comes to PP.)

But... they kill babies. Not only do they kill babies or "clumps of tissue" or "products of conception" (as they would like to put it), they strategically set up shop in lower economic communities, all in the name of providing "services" for those in need.

The major problem with this is that although African-American women make up a small percentage of the population of the U.S, these women make up nearly the largest percentage of women getting abortions. I had someone argue that African-American women make up the largest percentage of abortions because they are the minority. Please someone enlighten me, educate me on how this makes a lick of sense.

In 2011 there were 76,251 abortions in NYC. Of these aborted babies, 9,950 were white, which is 12.5% of the total. A whopping 35,188 were black babies, which is 46.1% of the total. 

Did you know that in 2012 there were more black babies aborted in NYC than born? There were 31,328 babies aborted in the city that year, versus 24,758 allowed to live.

I write this not as a black woman with an agenda against the evil white man. Please, if anyone knows me, I am the furthest thing from a racist, and if you think that I'm racist because I'm writing about the disparities experienced by black women and babies you might want to look at yourself for a second. This is not about you. This is about life. When it comes to the right to life there should be no color divide - but obviously there is.

I am writing this because to me the facts are so obviously sickening that this needs to be a topic of discussion amongst everyone. 

Something needs to be done. I'm tired of not seeing many faces of color in support of life... LIFE! I'm tired of these statistics being brushed off as if they are unimportant. Most do not know them. I did not know most of this until last year.

I'm also very tired of the whole argument: "Well, they had a choice!" As if black women have so very little regard for the life of their children that there could not possibly be any other factors that contribute to it. Let us not forget that I included statistics of infant and MATERNAL mortality rates here. 

Something bigger is going on and it is going to take more than a handful of white people standing up for life. It is going to take people opening their eyes to the immorality that has overtaken hearts and blinded us to this mass genocide. It is going to take more than a couple of black people writing a blog. It is going to take people of color speaking out and standing up for what is right!

I want people to start asking questions and taking action. I want people to stop with their Facebook posts about how abortion is so bad and start actually doing something. Give your money to organizations that provide free or low-cost care to women, that do not support abortion. Adopt! 

Please, please consider adopting. Volunteer to help support teen moms and moms that are going at motherhood alone, counsel women who are struggling with the decision whether to abort or not. Get involved on the sidewalks in front of these clinics, offering women life affirming, non-violent choices.

We need compassionate, empathetic people to get out from behind their computer screens and actually do something.

We especially need to start empowering each other in this fight for life. Planned Parenthood has not empowered women. They have stripped from millions of women a natural power we as women are only capable of possessing and that is carrying and caring for our children. 

I was asked to pour out my heart and that is what I've done. Now, let's all do something together.

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The following are sources for information contained in this blog post. New Wave Feminists always encourages readers to read and research further.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation - Infant Mortality Rate (Deaths per 1,000 Live Births) by Race/Ethnicity

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Pregnancy-Related Death

United States Census - Population Quick Facts

Bureau of Vital Statistics New York City - Pregnancy Outcomes 2012

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Post by Cessilye Smith