USA: Palin calls for conservative, anti-abortion feminism

Sarah Palin, the former governor for Alaska, has provoked a barrange of commentary with her claims that women who oppose abortion rights are responsible for an ‘emerging, conservative, feminist identity’ and have the power to shape politics and elections around the issue. 

Speaking to a breakfast gathering of the Susan B. Anthony List in downtown Washington on 14 May, urged more than 500 audience members to back only those candidates for public office who are uncompromisingly opposed to abortion, the Washington Post reports.

The Susan B. Anthony List, a modest counterpart to the well-funded pro-abortion-rights Emily’s List, was founded in the early 1990s to elect antiabortion candidates, mostly women, to public office. The group is seeking to raise its profile with the passage of the federal health-care bill: Many antiabortion activists opposed the measure because it does not ban federal funding for abortions.

Palin, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, delivered calls to action to an audience dominated by women. ‘The mama grizzlies, they rise up,’ she said. ‘You thought pit bulls are tough. You don’t want to mess with the mama grizzlies. And I think there are a whole lot of those in this room.’

She described learning in 2007, after 12 weeks of pregnancy, that the child she was carrying had Down’s syndrome: ‘I said, “God, I don’t think I can handle this. This wasn’t part of my life’s plan“‘.

Palin went on to describe her now-2-year-old son Trig as her family’s ‘greatest blessing’, saying he was ‘God whispering in my ear, saying, “Are you going to trust me? Are you going to walk the walk or are you going to talk the talk?”’

Palin, whose teenage daughter Bristol is also a mother, criticised abortion rights advocates for delivering the message to young women that they don’t have the strength to go through with pregnancy and motherhood.

‘Our prominent woman sisterhood is telling these young women that they are strong enough to deal with this,’ Palin said. ‘They can give their child life, in addition to pursuing career and education and avocations. Society wants to tell these young women otherwise. These feminist groups want to tell these women that, “No, you’re not capable of doing both” ... It’s very hypocritical.’

In a widely-reproduced commentary on the speech, Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women and the founder of Feministing.com, wrote in the Washington Post:

‘Palin’s sisterly speechifying is part of a larger conservative move to woo women by appropriating feminist language. Just as consumer culture tries to sell “Girls Gone Wild"-style sexism as “empowerment,” conservatives are trying to sell anti-women policies shrouded in pro-women rhetoric.

‘Several years ago, when anti-abortion protesters realized that screaming “Murderer!” at women wasn’t winning hearts and minds, they launched more palatable campaigns claiming that abortion hurts women—their new protest signs read “Women Deserve Better.” (Not surprisingly, this message is much more effective than spitting invective at emotionally vulnerable women)...’

Writing on the website DoubleX, Amanda Marcotte gives ‘A short history of “feminist” anti-feminists’:

‘There’s no real reason to consider Sarah Palin a feminist. She’s just the latest incarnation of a long and noble line of feminist anti-feminists: women who call themselves feminist but also object to the existence of the feminist movement and organize in opposition to it. Feminist anti-feminism has evolved in the shadow of feminism since the days when many women adamantly insisted they didn’t want or need the right to vote. And as feminism has morphed rapidly since the early days of the second wave, so has anti-feminism changed arguments and strategies, going through three distinct phases...’

Palin pushes abortion foes to form ‘conservative, feminist identity’. Washington Post, 15 May 2010