Pro-Life Feminism

Today I was asked how I can be both prolife and a feminist (for the millionth time). This was my answer...

Given that women were treated as property for most of history, it is absolutely abhorrent for us to turn around and do the exact same thing to any other member of the human family. 

We talk about smashing patriarchal constructs because they are the epitome of ‘might makes right.’ When only men held all of the power and status, those that wanted to, were able to control our bodies and use aggressive violence against us whenever they saw fit. In many parts of the world this is still a reality for too many women. This type of mentality MUST be smashed, not imitated.

Yet here we are, doing that exact same thing to our status-less, voiceless, non-consenting unborn children simply because we are bigger and stronger and they are the weak and powerless ones this time.

Abortion takes our newfound liberation and uses it not to protect the weak and vulnerable but instead to perpetuate the very violence we were once oppressed by ourselves.

That is why feminists who want to stand up for the most marginalized and vulnerable should absolutely be fighting against any form of aggression that treats another human being’s body as property. It’s just that simple. It’s the same reason we are against rape, murder, human trafficking, domestic violence, the list goes on.

We must stop passing down oppression in the name of liberation.

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.

The Past, The Present, & The Future Of Feminism

A few weeks ago I went to hang out with a friend of mine who's battling cancer. I decided to pick up some movies on the way, so I rented a serious one that looked really good and a stupid, funny one, in case she needed a laugh. At the time I didn't realize how ironic my choices were: I'd grabbed 'Suffragette' and 'Trainwreck.'

Here we had, in just 2 DVD's, feminism of the past and modern day fauxminism.

We went with Trainwreck, which was just that, but later that night I came home and watched 'Suffragette' with my daughters.

The feminism depicted in Suffergette (which desperately needs reclaiming btw) focuses on what women are capable of accomplishing, despite their gender. While Schumer's brand of feminism is all about what women can get away with, BECAUSE of their gender.

It's nothing more than pussy power fauxminism and it's weak.

"Men are pigs! And look, now women can be pigs too, because equality or something! I can screw a new guy each night and still totally love my existence... Oh wait, until I fall for one of them and then I cannot exist without him! Because MENMENMENMENMENMENMEN!!!!"

Whoops, sorry, I guess should've said spoiler alert first since that's basically the entire plot line of Trainwreck. #soempowering

Here's an idea, maybe the feminism of the future shouldn't focus so hard on gender, but rather what we can all do as human beings to just, be better.

Nobody be a pig. Everybody operate at the highest standard, not based on what's between your legs, but just as human beings. And while we're at it, can we please stop saying men are pigs? I have two sons and that's certainly not the way I'm raising them... or my daughters for that matter. No more excuses for bad behavior or double standards because boys are "just" being boys. That's bullshit. My sons are just as capable as my daughters are at controlling their urges and respecting others. And my daughters are just as capable as my sons are at controlling their emotions and using their brains. I expect them all to be upstanding, respectful, powerful members of society and change the freaking world for the better.

So, moral of the story, if your friend is already dealing with Chemo then for the love of gawd don't make them suffer any more by imposing 2 hours of Amy Schumer on 'em. Btw, my friend's a total warrior and she's gonna be just fine... despite what I put her through.

#commonsensefeminism

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."

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.

______________

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

"Poor, Uninsured Women" Deserve Better

I was that girl, the one everybody is suddenly talking about: the low-income, uninsured woman in need of potentially life-saving healthcare.

My husband worked for a small start-up. He was given a $200 stipend for insurance that covered him and the kids. However, if he also included me and my baby-making organs it immediately shot up to $600 a month. Evidently, I’m one of those parthenogenesis mammals capable of reproducing all on my own, and that's a liability. 

So I went without. As mothers often do.

Then one day I noticed something was "off" with my body. Specifically my lady parts. I was terrified. I needed to see a physician immediately but because it was likely to require blood draws and lab work I knew that was going to be way out of my fledglings family’s price range. We were on a budget where ten bucks could make or break us for the month. 

This was about five years ago and at the time I remember my resources here in Dallas were incredibly limited. There were no federally qualified health centers in the area offering well woman care. Most were merely ear, nose, and throat doctors. Many had been shut down do to lack of funding, so when you called you'd just get a busy signal. I couldn't afford the hundreds of dollars it would cost to go to a family physician. I knew an ER would be even worse. I had a friend who attended a local mosque and said he might be able to get me an appointment with their female physician who came in quarterly, but the entire time there was one obvious solution to my predicament: Planned Parenthood.

For around $75 I could be seen by one of their physicians and further treatment would then be put on a sliding scale based on our income. When I told people this they thought I was crazy for not making an appointment immediately.

There was only one problem. I was… I am... pro-life.

I know a lot of people might scoff at that, but in my book abortion is the taking of a human life. And knowing I would likely have to see a higher-level physician, one who performed that procedure, was incredibly conflicting. I knew I needed help and that not receiving treatment that could potentially catch an issue in its early stages—thereby saving my life—was just that, pro-life. But I still couldn’t bring myself to make the appointment.

I called the mosque instead but when I never heard back I did nothing. Planned Parenthood, ironically, was my only viable option.  

Fellow pro-life activists get mad when I embrace the “talking point” that PP has a monopoly in this country because they think I’m supporting the belief that without Planned Parenthood poor women like myself would have nowhere to go, but the opposite is actually true. I think it’s completely unacceptable that Planned Parenthood is allowed to have a monopoly in this country simply because so much federal funding (around $360 million a year) is funneled straight to them instead of being evenly dispersed among clinics that offer the same well woman care, just minus abortion. 

Over the last few weeks most of us have seen the undercover videos of high ranking Planned Parenthood staff haggling over "tissue" donations from aborted fetuses and whether you view this behavior as admissible or not, I ask you to respect the fact that many of us will never be comfortable receiving care from Planned Parenthood physicians. Ultimately we disagree on what constitutes a human life, at what point it deserves respect, and when it becomes a human being worth protecting. Because of that many of us will choose not to receive medical attention if Planned Parenthood is our only option.

I know we can't all afford the same level of healthcare, but why must poor women be forced to go to doctors who can't even adhere to the most basic medical oath… to do no harm.

Rich women, poor women, all women deserve better choices.

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Post by Destiny

Confessions of a Reformed Baby Saver

I always knew I should've been aborted. No part of my existence made sense. My mother was 19, and abortion had already been legal for ten years. She was living on her own in a liberal college town while attending the University of Texas, and the worst part? My grandparents were ministers.

In order for her to “have me” she would have to drop out of school, move back home to Dallas and—perhaps most horrifyingly—let her parents know she wasn’t a virgin.

She did all of those things. She gave me life and because of that she is and always will be my hero. Because of that I also always felt very close to the unborn. For the first decade and a half of my life I was outspokenly anti-abortion. If you wanted to defend it I’d shove a picture of an aborted fetus in your face without a second thought. To me these were my brother and sisters in crisis pregnancies being slaughtered thanks to an apathetic society. I wanted everyone to feel something, anything, about abortion. If you loved it, then fine. You loved murdering innocent children and I was going to let you know it.

Then, at 16, I became pregnant. I was terrified. I was having a baby in nine months and all I wanted to do was rip my stomach off of my body and die. I had let everyone down. If anybody knew better than to make this mistake it was me. Hadn’t I seen, hell, lived the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy?! It took my mother a decade to finally complete her degree. I watched her fall prey to men she should’ve never been with just to provide some sense of normalcy for me. In between classes, I celebrated my birthday at the restaurants where she waited tables. I. Knew. Better. How had I gotten myself into the very same predicament…?

I returned to school for my junior year with a big swollen belly teetering on my childlike frame. I’d waddle from class to class, deflecting whispers and dirty looks as I went. My now ex boyfriend wanted nothing to do with the whole thing and had transferred schools, so there were now rumors that he wasn’t even the father. I spent most of my lunch periods in the bathroom crying, partially because of hormones, but mostly because teenagers can be so very cruel. When I wasn’t broken I was angry. I walked the halls angry because it was the only defense mechanism I had.

That’s when it happened. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I’d known her since 7^th grade; we’d gone to the same middle school. She got boobs before the rest of us and was always smoking over in the woods behind the school. We weren’t friends really, but once you move to high school those acquaintances become like relatives you have no choice but to accept because there’s that familiarity which breeds camaraderie. I was on my way up the stairs when she stopped me...

“I was pregnant this summer too.”

It caught me off guard.

“Was?” The word rolled around in my head until it finally engaged. “She was pregnant… but she’s not now.”

“I had an abortion…” she continued. She kept talking but there was a rage now taking over my body. I can only describe it as that thing we all saw in cartoons growing up. The information hit my temporal cortex and everything caught on fire. Suddenly smoke was shooting out of my ears and a high-pitched train whistle was drowning out everything she was saying. Could she not tell obviously I was not cool with that option? Did she not see the looks? Hear the whispers? If I was okay with abortion wouldn’t I have had one myself to avoid this hell where I currently dwelt?!

I looked her in the eye and said the following, word for word:

“So you killed your baby? You’re a baby killer… and you’re proud of it?”

She spit a few choice profanities at me and I continued up the stairs, honestly feeling pretty pleased with myself. Funny how that happens when you’re mad. The rage builds up and finds a release valve through your mouth and for one minute you feel relieved. Then you realize what you’ve just done.

I wish I could say my regret came that quickly, but it did not. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I was made aware of the impact of my words.

My mother had just gotten home and I couldn’t wait to recount the day’s events to her. Obviously she would be so proud, since she herself had been on this end of the “crisis”…a hormonal, hot mess.

As soon as I finished telling her what had happened her eyes turned sad. They weren’t full of the pride I’d anticipated. She was so ashamed of me.

“Maybe her next abortion will be in your honor,” she said.

Her words pierced my core and instantaneously transformed me. In that moment, with that one line, I saw so clearly what I’d done. I hadn’t related to her as a fellow female going through an incredibly difficult and heart-wrenching time. I’d attacked her as a former fetus who could’ve just as easily been aborted. The “baby saver” I was in that moment would guarantee the “woman in crisis” she was would never confide in me again.

My mother’s words that day softened my heart. I shed the anger and let it take its more vulnerable root form: fear. I decided to show others how scared I was, but let them know it was still possible to choose life amidst all the uncertainties because we females are so much stronger than we realize. I accepted my new identity as a girl who was in the shoes of every girl who was walking through the doors of that abortion clinic, and not the child in their womb. I was clearly on the other side now. I just had the support and information they didn’t. That’s all that separated us.

The universe has a funny way of giving us second chances and I’m almost always too lazy to be prepared when they come along. The very next day an almost identical situation happened. Another girl who I’d known for years but was never particularly close to came up to me in the lunchroom.

I was sitting at a long empty table reading a book by myself. It took me a moment to notice her standing there, but as I lowered my book the same words left her lips…

“I was pregnant this summer too… sucks.”

“Was… was… she used the same word…” my brain told me. Unfortunately I hadn’t given much thought to how I would handle this situation if it ever presented itself, but I knew my silence was coming off as a form of judgment of its own.

“Oh yeah,” I asked, “how far a long were you?”

She stared off for a minute, pretending to do the imaginary math. “Like, 12 weeks or something…”

“Twelve weeks… twelve weeks…” my head was buzzing with both appropriate and inappropriate responses and all I wanted to do was say something non-emotional, non-condemning. Facts maybe? But what facts did I have? Only those dumb babycenter.com fetal development ones I was getting emailed to me every other day.

“Twelve weeks… so that’s like eye lashes and fingernails, right?”

The second it exited the buzzing in my head and flew out of my mouth I realized what I’d just done.

I watched it sting her.

This conversation ended almost identical to the one the day prior, however there was a major change in me. I was not talking to her as a baby saver condemning her choice. I was speaking to her as a woman who had also been in that situation (was currently in that situation) and had vital information made available to me. There was no anger, only facts.

In years since I have tried to go beyond that. I don’t just want to offer women what I had as far as fetal development information… knowledge of which all women should have before they make a decision as significant as abortion. But I want to offer them the resources I was lucky enough to have as well.

There was never a fear of being kicked out of my home when I found out I was pregnant. My family was able to afford basic medical care for me and my child, and there would be diapers and nursery equipment in subsequent months if I chose to parent rather than place him for adoption.

So many women do not have these things. Basic facts and practical needs are what keep them from choosing life, but so is compassion.

They expect us to yell. They want us to, believe it or not.

I did.

I wanted someone to berate me… to tell me what a fool I was for ruining my life and dragging an innocent child into this mess. If someone would’ve tried to “baby save” my fetus while treating me like crap I would’ve been all over that because trust me, there’s not a name they could’ve thrown at me that I hadn’t already called myself.

But no one did. Instead they cried with me… not for me. They offered kindness and support and let me know I was still loved even when I felt so unlovable.

That’s when I went from a baby saver to an advocate for women, which often times saves them both.

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Post by Destiny