Anti-abortion Feminism

“In this crowd, I’m a raging liberal,” said Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa as she merged with the foot traffic of the annual March For Life in Washington D.C. “At the Women’s March, however, I’m a raging conservative!” Herndon-De La Rosa, founder of New Wave Feminists, joined thousands of protestors in Washington at the 49th annual gathering to fight the legalization of abortion on Jan. 21.

A man walked up 14th street, holding a sign that read, “Our Salvation began with an unborn pregnancy.” Marchers rushed by, clinging to graphic photos of bloody fetuses and small limbs and feet in the womb. Other signs read, “Pro-life, Pro-God, Pro-Trump,” “Let God Plan Parenthood,” “Pro-Life for the Whole Life.” The range of messaging was vast — a diverse constituency bound together by only one belief: that the fetus is a human life and therefore has a right to life. And in that diverse crowd was Herndon-De La Rosa.

She held a pink and black sign that read “I am a pro-life feminist.” For her, marching for the unborn child and voting for anti-abortion politicians was not enough. As a feminist, she said she was working to push the anti-abortion movement past “cutting off the supply” of abortions and toward “addressing the demand” for them. “Until we get rid of the societal stigma surrounding single motherhood, [until] we get rid of the lack of resources and [until] we actually support women well…. love them, the demand side is not going to go away,” she said. “So you can make all the laws you want, but women are going to find ways to access abortion.”

Herndon-De La Rosa said she fears that, because the issue has become so politicized, the reversal of Roe v Wade will do more to help politicians than it will women and children. She’s among a growing tide of anti-abortion feminists for whom anti-abortion advocacy means challenging the socially conservative, Republican face of the movement.

Supreme Court ruling looms

It now seems imminent that abortion rights — as defined by the Supreme Court’s historic Roe v Wade decision will be overturned, or heavily dismantled, in the US. Over the last year, states have enacted more abortion restrictions than in any year since the Roe V Wade decision was handed down in 1973 and made abortion legal across the US. This spring, the Supreme Court — now with an anti-abortion majority following Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment in 2020 — is expected by many experts to uphold a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks, which would effectively overturn Roe.

The tension between anti-abortion and abortion rights activists has been building for decades, with feminists largely advocating for abortion rights as part of a larger movement for gender equality and anti-abortion activists often advocating to protect traditional roles of women in the household. But today, anti-abortion activists — who identify as “pro-life feminists” — are telling a different story: that being anti-abortion reflects a more authentic feminism in which abortions have historically been, and continue to be, harmful to women.

“I’m a loving feminist over here, you know, talking about life and the fact that women have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to abortion,” Herndon-De La Rosa said.

The stakes for anti-abortion feminists

At the March for Life, Herndon-De La Rosa and her team joined other groups that identify as both anti-abortion and feminist, including Democrats for Life, Pro-Black Pro-Life, Rehumanize International, and Secular Pro-Life. Aimee Murphy, founder of Rehumanize International, a nonprofit human rights magazine and advocacy organization dedicated to nonviolence, said that she shows up to encourage other anti-abortion protestors to recognize and advocate for the dignity of the human life in every stage. “We want to challenge the pro-life movement to take a more consistent stance and to acknowledge that life is a continuum,” she said. “If you care about the child when they’re in the womb, we should also be caring about them when they’re born.”

Like Herndon-De La Rosa, she said she doesn’t believe that laws alone will stop women from accessing abortions. “We really do need to build a culture beyond abortion, where pregnant people and families are truly empowered to parent confidently….that’s the type reproductive justice that I want to see — a nonviolent and holistic reproductive justice, where we understand that parenting competently, and feeling safe and empowered to raise your child is crucial to choosing life.”

Many anti-abortion feminists said they believe the overturning of Roe will normalize the belief that to truly empower women, society must support the dignity of human life in all of its stages and experiences.

It’s an approach that Herndon-De La Rosa said has not been reflected in the movement since its inception.

“This is the biggest cop out society has ever given [women]. It’s because they don’t want to create equity for us, which is why they are giving us abortion and expecting us to settle for that… It’s bullshit,” she said.

The anti-abortion movement and the Republican Party

The March for Life rally kicked off with a prayer from a Catholic priest, the Rev. Mike Schmitz, and concludeed with a blessing from Cissie Graham Lynch, granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham, a prominent Evangelical Christian televangelist. The bookend speakers represent an ongoing powerful alliance between the Catholic Church and Evangelical Christians that currently dominates the face of the anti-abortion movement and goes back decades.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the anti-abortion movement had been small and almost exclusively Catholic. As states began expanding abortion rights, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops founded the National Right to Life Committee in 1968. It remains the oldest and largest anti-abortion organization today.

“The only reason that we have a pro-life movement in this country is because of the Catholic people and the Catholic Church,” said Bishop James T. McHugh, the movement’s leader, in 1973. Yet the group’s leaders wanted to expand beyond the church. In order to do so, it explicitly split from the Catholic Church and hired a Methodist woman, Marjory Mecklenburg, as its second leader.

Meanwhile, struggling with a Republican Party that had reached its lowest point of popularity in 40 years, conservative political activists began working alongside prominent Christian leaders, including televangelist Jerry Falwell, to unite and mobilize a socially conservative coalition of voters. At the time, a growing wave of social issues, including the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the gay rights movement, threatened the socially conservative views of evangelicals and fundamentalists.

In the abortion issue, conservative activists found their hook: to mobilize the socially conservative Christians around a moral agenda centered on opposing legalized abortion. They brought together a coalition of organizations that activated conservative voters around this agenda, establishing what became known as the “Religious Right.” Although its leaders and members hadn’t seen the legalization of abortion as an issue in the past, they adopted the issue, marketing the legalization of abortion as a liberal, feminist cause that stood in opposition to the the nation’s moral fabric, embodied by the traditional family.

Randall Balmer, a historian of American religion and Episcopal priest, described the abortion issue as “a godsend for the religious right,” because it allowed the movement’s leaders to divert attention from their real goal: to protect segregated schools. But the anti-abortion cause took among evangelicals, Balmer said, because the fetus came to symbolize the evangelical’s “own sense of being victimized in this larger, hostile world” — a world that was challenging the faith, the values, the roles and societal norms they held sacred.

Balmer recalled interviewing the head of Concerned Women for America, one of the most visible groups of women in the anti-abortion movement, at the Iowa Precinct Caucuses in 1988. “She looked at me and she said, ‘the most dangerous place to be these days is inside a mother’s womb,’” he said. “She was very sincere about that and it suggested to me that there’s some sort of visceral identification with the fetus itself. It’s a very powerful symbol for a lot of people, particularly evangelicals.”

Abortion rights and the Democratic Party

Concerned Women for America, which was established as an anti-feminist Christian organization in 1978, became the most visible image of women in the anti-abortion movement throughout the 1980s. But even before they took center stage, anti-feminist leaders were dominating the anti-abortion movement.

After 30 states ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1970s, anti-feminist organizations mobilized in opposition, protesting its supposed threat to the traditional role of the American woman as a housewife and mother. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist, former congressional candidate, radio talk show host and best-selling author, launched a powerful STOP ERA campaign. Her campaign emphasized the inextricable bond between the ERA and abortion rights, framing them as issues belonging to the women’s liberation movement. In 1972, her newsletter published an anti-ERA piece, claiming, “They are promoting abortions instead of families.”

At the same time, reproductive rights were becoming central to the women’s liberation movement. Leading abortion rights groups, including the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood, made alliances with feminist groups, including the National Organization for Women, and began promoting the idea that all anti-abortion activists were anti-feminists.

Early anti-abortion feminists overshadowed

Self-identifying “pro-life feminists” have been around for decades, even if the mainstream narrative has often overlooked them.

American Citizens Concerned for Life, an anti-abortion organization started in 1973, advocated for the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and federal laws funding contraception. Leaders and members of the group worked to establish common ground with abortion rights groups in an effort to help women gain access to contraception so they could avoid needing abortions. At the same time, anti-abortion feminist group Feminists for Life lobbied for laws protecting the rights of married women in addition to the ERA.

In 1984, Rachel MacNair, a sociologist and psychologist, became president of Feminists For Life. MacNair adhered to the Consistent Life Ethic, an ideology that opposes war, the death penalty, and abortion, while also promoting economic and racial justice. Many of today’s anti-abortion feminist groups, including Rehumanize Internationl and New Wave Feminists, follow the ideology.

MacNair remembered attending a anti-abortion demonstration in Omaha, Nebraska, where she and her team held a large sign that read, “Ban the bomb, not the baby.”

“One fella came up to us and said, ‘Okay, now you are pro life, right? Just want to be sure we weren’t counter-demonstrators,’” she said. She assured him that her group was anti-abortion. MacNair described the sign as one that made a splash. “But you know, what got on the news was the hand scribbled sign wanting Phyllis Schlafly for the Supreme Court.” MacNair said that her messaging was too far outside of the mainstream narrative. It didn’t make sense to either side of the abortion debate.

But MacNair kept advocating. In response to the growing influence of Emily’s List, a PAC that works to elect female candidates who support abortion rights to office, MacNair founded the Susan B. Anthony List in 1992. “I saw on 60 Minutes a piece about Emily’s List and I said, okay, there should be a pro-life version of that,” she said.

At this year’s March for Life, Herndon-De La Rosa was bringing MacNair’s message back to life.

The anti-abortion feminist experience

The theme at the March for Life rally was “Equality Begins in the Womb,” but not for Herndon-De La Rosa, who held an alternative rally down the street. “People aren’t talking about equality anymore,” she said. “Now we’re talking about equity. And so our rally is going to be about that equity for women that leads to equality in the womb. We want to talk about the infant maternal mortality rate among women of color and medical, racial bias and these issues that are literally leading women who want to be mothers, the woman who wants her children, to choose abortion,” she said.

After several women spoke, the anti-abortion feminists joined the main rally to march down Constitution Avenue. Among those marching with Herndon-De La Rosa were women of all ages, ethnicities, identities and backgrounds, including atheists, Catholic democrats, scientists and LGBTQIA activists. Monica Snyder, founder of Secular Pro-Life, studied chemical biology and forensics.

Snyder said she knows too many atheist, agnostic and religiously unaffiliated people who are against abortion, but who refuse to get involved in any activist work, due to the divisive nature of the issue. “They’re afraid of being found out professionally and personally, because they’re afraid they’ll be ostracized and vilified.” On the one hand, she said they fear being seen as “the Fox News stereotype” by liberals who support abortion rights and on the other, they feel alienated by what feels like a conservative Christian monopoly over the anti-abortion movement.

Herndon-De La Rosa’s story doesn’t fit into either of these camps, either. She grew up with a single mom, who had her at the age of 19. “It would have made a ton of sense for her to have an abortion.” Her mother was forced to drop out of college and move back to her parent’s home for support. “As a feminist, there was almost some level of guilt, she said. “I’m the one who flipped my mom’s life upside down.” If there had been accommodations in place to support her mother, she believes that her mother could have continued her education and joined the workforce. “But society isn’t set up to support women.”

Herndon-De La Rosa’s mother experienced two failed marriages and several other failed relationships, one of them being abusive. She and her mother lived in and out of poverty.

“By the time I was 13, I had a lot of daddy issues, and I just felt so powerless and so vulnerable.” To regain her power, to be a feminist, and to rebel against all the systems that tore her down, Herndon-De La Rosa felt that she had to act on her so called “sexual freedom.” “So I totally bought into this, like, Cosmo Magazine version of feminism, right, which is like, I’ll just be the sex king. That’s where the power is — it’s in between my legs.” By the age of 16, she was facing her own unplanned pregnancy.

Herndon-De La Rosa’s anti-abortion family encouraged her to continue with her pregnancy. In spite of her feelings of deep regret and humiliation, she did. “And [my family] was really honest….Like, this is not going to be easy. It’s going to be really, really hard, but we’re here for you.” But she said it wasn’t the same for some of her friends and classmates who also got pregnant — she said they were forced or coerced into terminating their pregnancies. “For them, I knew it was not their choice at all. It was their parents saying, like, ‘I’m gonna kick you out of the house,’ ‘You’re not bringing a baby into this home.’ You know, ‘we can’t afford this.’ Or it was the boyfriend saying they were going to dump them.”

Is there room for anti-abortion women in the feminist movement?

Like most contentious political debates in our country, those who take extreme stances overshadow the majority of American people. In a Gallup poll that measured women’s views on abortion, the majority of women do not fit into one side of the debate — most of them believe that abortion should be legal, but only under certain circumstances. “One of the tragedies of the abortion debate is that there is no debate anymore,” said Balmer, the historian.

Herndon-De La Rosa said she represents the “radical middle.” In 2017, she attended the Women’s March and her organization, New Wave Feminists, originally joined organizations like NARAL and NOW as a sponsor of the event. However, the Women’s March removed New Wave Feminists after backlash from abortion-rights advocates. In a statement, organizers of the march said, “the anti-choice organization in question is not a partner of the Women’s March on Washington. We apologize for this error.” Herndon-De La Rosa said that the removal actually turned out to be positive. “It made it a national conversation and familiarized people with the concept of pro-life feminism,” she said.

In 2018, Herndon-De La Rosa first hosted her alternative rally at the March for Life, when then-President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were the keynote speakers. “My sign said ‘It’s the sexual ethics of men like Donald Trump that leads to abortion.’ My other sign said, ‘Taking a human life can never be a human right.’ She said she confused a lot of other protestors. “They’re like, ‘Wait, are you protesting? Like, wait, this doesn’t make sense.’”

This year, the main rally hosted a more politically, racially and socially diverse line-up and as a result, some members of Herndon-De La Rosa’s rally attended both. But Herndon-De La Rosa continues to believe her rally has distinctive value and is gaining momentum.

Yet white supremacist groups are also gaining momentum within the movement, amplifying how politicized it’s become. One of these groups, Patriot Front, a group whose “national struggle” is to assure that the white population is not replaced by minority populations, brought a large cohort, dressed in matching red, white, and blue jackets, many of them holding shields. After videos of the group started circulating on Twitter, March For Life president Jeanne Mancini issued a statement condemning the group’s presence at her organization’s events.

Meanwhile, the Susan B. Anthony List, the group MacNair founded, has spent millions of dollars lobbying for Republican, mostly male, candidates, over the last 3 election cycles through its super PAC. In November 2020, they announced the largest campaign effort in the organization’s history, pledging $52 million dollars to reelect Trump and elect an anti-abortion Senate majority.

MacNair, who’s no longer part of the organization, said that, although she didn’t want to disparage other people’s work, “they went off the deep end.” She founded the organization to help elect anti-abortion women, regarless of their political party. “As soon as they give money to a man, they have undone the whole purpose of the list,” she said.

49 years of marching

The first March for Life was held on Jan. 22, 1974, exactly one year after the Supreme Court passed Roe. Its aim was to show lawmakers that Americans did not accept the ruling and that they would march until the court reversed the decision. When it became clear that the Supreme Court would not be reversing its decision that year, march founder Nellie Gray decided to make the march an annual event until the decision was overturned. This year, marchers said they had more hope than ever before. A leader from Students for Life, Julia Deluce, was passing out a sign that said, “I am the Post-Roe Generation.”

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, it would put abortion rights back in the hands of the states. The ruling would immediately activate “trigger laws,” laws that are unenforceable until a key change occurs. If Roe is overturned, 26 states with trigger laws tied to Roe would be enforced, severely restricting or completely banning abortions.

Many anti-abortion feminists said they believe that overturning Roe will require state governments to do more to support expecting mothers and their babies. But conservative lawmakers have rejected President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which would provide childcare services and tax credits to reduce family poverty. With the exception of US Sen. Mitt Romey’s Family Security Act, conservatives have not presented any plans to help mothers in need of financial support. It’s unclear if his plan, which would provide up to $15,000 in annual cash payments to households with kids, will gain bipartisan support.

Sister Carol Keehan, the former president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, was credited with capturing the “Catholic vote” needed to pass the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That same year, not only was she included in TIME magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential People in the World,” but President Barack Obama said that the ACA would not have been passed if it weren’t for her.

Keehan identifies as being an anti-abortion feminist. When asked what that means for her, she said, “We have to look at what pro-life really means. And getting away from the screaming and, you know, marching around with pictures of fetuses, you know, that are in pieces, and talking about the way people are treated and and how women specifically are treated in this country.”

“The biggest cop out” ever dealt to women

Herndon-De La Rosa’s group was among 240 anti-abortion feminst organizations and advocates that filed an amicus brief in the Dobbs v. Jackson case. “Women’s participation in the labor market and entrepreneurial activities, as well as their educational accomplishments, professional engagement, and political participation,” they wrote, “reveals virtually no consistent correlation with abortion rates or ratios.” Instead, they said that abortion is linked to “the feminization of poverty, and women’s declining levels of happiness.”

For many anti-abortion feminists, better family planning methods are one area that demands more attention from the medical commnunity. Erika Bachiochi, an anti-abortion legal scholar and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said abortion has historically kept the medical community from researching better forms of family planning. “Abortion was there as a backstop,” she said.

Both Bachiochi and MacNair spoke about the lack of research, historically, and even today, into more natural forms of fertility regulation for women. Bachiochi said that society has left men off the hook when it comes to reproductive responsibility. “Instead of allowing men’s often relentless appetites to dictate cultural norms around sex, a new expectation of sexual integrity could take its cue,” Bachiochi wrote.

The birth control movement has feminist roots, according to Linda Gordon, a New York University professor of history who supports abortion rights. “For a long time, male birth control was legal, while women’s wasn’t, because condoms have been available, as we know, for over 100 years,” she said. “And the problem was that women wouldn’t necessarily trust men to be diligent about the use of birth control. And women very, very much felt like they wanted to have that birth control themselves. The reasons are obvious,” she exclaimed. “Men don’t get pregnant, who knows whether the man is going to stay by you and marry you.”

Gordon agreed that there has always been a problematic double standard when it comes to the research on and usage of contraceptives. She said that our society has been more likely to take risks with women’s lives than with men’s lives. “There has been comparatively very little research into what kind of hormonal methods could be used for men, so that they would be able to control whether their partners conceive,” she said. “So I do think that’s a problem.”

Anti-abortion feminists in practice today

But are the words and hopes of anti-abortion feminists enough? Gordon, the historian, said that it’s always a question of priorities. “I am going to be completely respectful of anyone who said that they believe that abortion is taking life. That’s not my view, but I understand that people who believe that very genuinely. What I’m concerned about is why they’re not putting equal time into measures that could reduce abortion, either by making better outcomes for the babies that are born, or providing better health care, better access to contraception.”

While Murphy agreed that marching is not enough, she didn’t want to undermine the significance of her team at Rehumanize International showing up. “Since I became of age to vote, the entire pro-life movement is being dragged slavishly behind the Republican Party. To the extent that I think they’re very commonly compromising the moral standards that they say they have, by supporting people like Donald Trump, for example. But I see in the young people who are taking leadership and responsibility in this movement, being ones who are less tied to political parties and are more tied to the cause of life as a whole.”

Like many abortion rights organizations, several anti-abortion feminist groups are doing work to support pregnant women. Students for Life serves over 1,250 high school and college groups. One of their leading projects, Standing With You, provides resources to pregnant women and new mothers, including diaper decks and lactation spaces on campus, peer-to-peer support groups, and information regarding campus counseling services, healthcare providers, childcare resources and clothing and food assistance providers.

Herb Geraghty, executive director of Rehumanize International, said that in the coming year, the organization plans to build a network of affiliate chapters and partner organizations in the Washington Metropolitan area, including existing student, community and church groups. The chapter representatives will educate communities on the Consistent Life Ethic, he said, and work with them to address the needs of the mothers and children in their community.

For the last few years, Herndon-De La Rosa’s New Wave Feminists have been working to build a women’s shelter in Juarez, Mexico. “There needs to be a pro-life presence at the border helping migrant women and children, especially because they’re extremely vulnerable,” she said. Last summer, the group bought a shelter in Juarez within walking distance from the US border. “We’re planning on making half of it a pregnancy resource center and then the other half being a women’s shelter. We’ll have rooms for sonograms, pelvic exams, et cetera,” she said. “And then the shelter will hold up to 200 people.” Herndon-De La Rosa said she hopes that the center will be a model for centers around the country in a post-Roe world.

MacNair said she dreams of a world in which women recognize the similarities between anti-abortion and abortion rights feminist groups. “I remember, one year, the National Organization for Women and the National Right to Life Committee were having their conventions in Denver on the exact same weekend. And I think that was deliberate,” she said. “But in any event, I went to both, of course.” MacNair wore a button that said, “Every mother is a working mother.” She said that her button was popular in both locations.

For Herndon-De La Rosa, this is only the beginning for anti-abortion feminists. “I think it’ll be the next generation of women that kind of gives it [the anti-abortion view] the legitimacy it needs to be taken as a part of the intersectionality of feminism, you know, and then, maybe, the third generation will be the one that actually makes it into the feminist club.”

POSTSCRIPT

In 2016, I was shocked by the anti-abortion evangelical “single issue voters” who elected Donald Trump. They didn’t reflect the anti-abortion, feminist, social justice leaders in my life. I joined my liberal friends in marching against their position and their vote, in marching against Trump, in marching for women’s rights, and in marching for abortion-rights. But I remained frustrated by the narrative that feminism and abortion rights were inseparable identities. I grew up with anti-abortion feminists.

In 2021, when the reversal of Roe became likely, I was moved to dig deeper into the story behind the polarized abortion debate in our country. I was eager to research the issue, understand how we got to where we are, and tell the story of people and groups who were overlooked by the news.

My personal experience definitely drove my interest in this report. I grew up in a devout Catholic family, but I also grew up in a very progressive and liberal community. When it came to abortion, I often found myself confused both by what these two communities were teaching me and by their perceptions of one another. Despite my own pro-choice position, some of the most hardworking social justice warriors in my life, like my grandmother, who devoted her life to fighting for the rights of people with intellectual disabilities, and the nuns at my church, who devoted their lives to providing shelter and food to those in need, were anti-abortion. They were also pioneering feminists whose dedication to the value of every human life drove their stance on abortion.

In the fall of 2021, I started speaking to women in New York City who identified as anti-abortion feminists. I spoke to nuns from Sisters for Life, a convent whose sole commitment is to the care of single, pregnant women. I spoke to women who protested outside of Planned Parenthood locations around the city. I spoke to female students involved in Students for Life chapters in the city. They all led me back to Washington, where I joined them at the March for Life, and met many of the women in my report.

Herndon-De La Rosa’s story was particularly striking to me, as she represented a view that fell so far outside of the mainstream narrative. Here was a young, loud, liberal feminist, a single mother, who was vocally against abortion. And she was following in the footsteps of women from generations past who believed in social justice, in liberal politics, in women’s rights, and in the rights of the fetus. I followed her story and met others like her. I spoke to historians, doctors, and scholars on both sides of the issue who echoed the same sentiment: that the polarized mainstream narrative is an oversimplification of a profoundly complex issue with room for a diverse range of opinions and beliefs. Through the words, writing, and experiences of all of these sources, I hoped to reflect that sentiment.