Jim Wallis Oozing Patriarchy, Telling Women How To Feel

There are a lot of prominent voices "advising" Democrats to compromise a little on certain key issues and start talking more about religion in order to attract more votes from evangelical Christians. Ultimately, what they want is for the Democrats to look more Republican and push American politics even further to the right. It's almost as if they don't realize that Christians are able to vote for conservative parties elsewhere, like in Europe, which are more liberal than the Democratic Party here in America.

You don't usually have to scratch too far below the surface to find that these pundits tend to reinforce and promote all the same authoritarian assumptions and ideals which secular politics and the Enlightenment were (ideally) supposed to help free us from. Most prominent among these is the assumption of patriarchy: so many "culture war" issues revolve around trying to return women to a subordinate place in society. It's thus no surprise that it's easy to find "advice" about appealing to "moderate" Republicans which requires assuming in some way the inferiority of women and then translating this into concrete government action.

Consider this from Jim Wallis on the abortion divide:

Support for women caught up in difficult situations and tragic choices is a better path than coercion for really reducing the abortion rate. Yes, I agree there is never a "need" for abortion except in the case where the health of the mother is threatened. But until we can reach out to women who "feel" the need for abortion and support them in alternative choices, we will never change the shameful abortion rate that both sides seem content to live with while they just attack each other. It is time to move from symbols to solutions.

Source: Beliefnet

First, notice Jim Wallis' use of scare quotes. If a woman feels that she needs an abortion, that's not a real feeling but a false feeling created by circumstances. No matter how strong the feeling may be, she can't be trusted to recognize that it's not real. Moreover, there is never a need for an abortion except to save the life for a mother — but even that isn't a genuine need for some reason. If saving the lives of women isn't a real need, what it is it — the lesser of two evils? A forced political compromise? How odious.

Second, let's pretend that Jim Wallis describes saving a mother's life as situation where abortion is a genuine need. Now, why is that the only one? Why do we have a man telling all women that none of them are ever in situations where they truly need an abortion unless their lives are in danger? Pastor Dan lists a number of situations where the woman might genuinely feel a need for an abortion but Wallis is telling them that they are wrong — that he knows better than they do what they do and do not need.

Third, it can be admitted that there are surely cases where a woman has an abortion despite not wanting one but, because of circumstances beyond her control, has decided that it's the best of a bad set of options. It is fair to regard that as a bad state of affairs and want to work to provide women with more choices so they can go with something other than the best of a bad lot. Not every woman who has an abortion is in this situation, though, and even some who are might still choose abortion even after being presented with more options (like enough money to make caring for another child easier).

You cannot set yourself up as enhancing women's choices, though, if you are going to insist that they should only choose what you want them to choose. It's not patriarchal to not personally like or approve of abortion, but it is patriarchal to treat women as less than fully autonomous moral agents and their choices as less than fully legitimate when they fail to choose what you think is best. It's the difference between treating people as children and treating them as adults; Wallis is treating women as children by denigrating their positions and dismissing the possibility that they might "feel" and "need" for an abortion which is genuine, legitimate, and moral even if their lives aren't in danger.

Pastor Dan has a good reaction to Jim Wallis' piece, including:

This is everything that's wrong with the argument that Democrats could reach untold numbers of voters if they'd only bend a little on abortion, or "change the conversation" as Wallis and his friends are so fond of saying, distilled down into a single little lump of stupid and arrogance. ...

There is no room here for women to be themselves moral agents, let alone make their own practical decisions. They need to coached to do the right thing according to Jim Wallis and his friends in Washington who will calibrate government policy precisely to "reach out" to their confused selves and bring to them the enlightened truth that they have no need to control their bodies or their destinies short a threat to their lives.

It is painfully obvious that Wallis believes that without a Big Daddy government, women will choose wrongly, and the "shameful abortion rate" will continue. It never seems to occur to him that that rate does not reflect mere convenience or women taking control of their bodies.

I don't want to hear any more crap about how "we're all on the same team." Until Jim Wallis can start his discussion of abortion with the recognition that women are moral agents in their own right and don't need him to guide their decision-making, we're not on the same team at all.

If Jim Wallis wants to "reach out" to women in a manner that implicitly treats them as children, he is free to do so — but he shouldn't advise Democrats to join him and I hope they don't listen to him. Let's leave such patriarchal attitudes to the Republican Party and help Democrats steer a different course where woman are treated as real human beings in their own right. Ironically, this may help any women who do feel forced into an unwanted abortion because they would end up getting better healthcare, better jobs at better pay, and real freedom from religious, familial, and social oppression.

Then again, just as there are surely some women who would not have an abortion if their circumstances were different, there is surely also women who would have an abortion if their circumstances were different. Some would have an abortion if they simply had better access to the procedure; others might need an entirely different set of cultural and social circumstances. So, if women are truly freed from the traditional assumptions which tie their worth to having and raising children, it's possible that we'd see more abortions. That would be their choice because they have final say over what happens inside their own bodies. If anyone doesn't like it, tough. Whatever religious objections someone might have to abortion, they don't get a vote over women's decisions about what does and does not inhabit their uteruses.