Female Gaze: Is Feminism a Pseudo-Proposition?
In the past few decades, there has been a harsh controversy on the “justice” of abortion. Recently, in the United States, an initial draft majority opinion that vetoed women’s rights to abortion was leaked. Samuel Alito, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, wrote in the draft that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” The landmark case of Roe v. Wade has long guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights since 1973. The repudiation, undoubtedly aroused people’s concern on women’s rights. Thousands of people rallied across US, passing out signs that read “My body, my choice” and “pro-life is a lie, you don’t care if people die”, according to USA Today. The Roe v. Wade case was the fruit of feminist campaigns’ successful intervention in legislation. However, followed by the triumph, cascades of anti-abortion movement constantly challenged the abortion case. From the Hyde Amendment in 1976 to the Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, a variety of restrictions and impediments countered Roe’s support for women’s abortion rights. In 2021, a number of conservative states in the United States enacted the Heartbeat Bill which prohibited women from aborting after six weeks of pregnancy, including cases where the woman was impregnated as a result of rape or incest, in spite of an exception for medical emergencies. In September, the law took effect in Texas, and opened the door for almost any private citizen to sue abortion providers and others, according to the Texas Tribune. Voices of anti-abortion has been following women’s crusade for more rights in the US, while the impetus could be manifold. Firstly, in a country subjected to Catholic culture, women’s longing for participating in social production was considered betrayal of their ideal gender roles, as it has been norms to serve the family, shoulder reproductive responsibility and submit themselves to the rule of men. Women’s extricating from the social dictates would squeeze the space of employment, especially in the 1970s when the economy staggered because of America’s failure in Vietnam and the exhausting confrontation with the Soviet Union.
However, in addition to the worries of women’s threatening the dominance and authority established by men, there are other reasons. Reagan, the author of “When Abortion Was a Crime,” wrote that “Abortions would become criminalized by 1880, except when necessary to save a woman’s life, not at the urging of social or religious conservatives but under pressure from the medical establishment — and the very organization that today speaks out in support of abortion access.” Back to 1857, the American Medical Association was against the abortion law because of “regular physicians’ desire to win professional power, control medical practice, and restrict their competitors,” namely midwives and homeopaths. The abortion laws were recently alleged to have impeded physicians’ freedom “to provide care using their best medical judgment,” according to CNN. But this was also a time, as what Reagan said, in which women were seeking access into Harvard Medical School, “in part so they could pursue work in obstetrics and gynecology.” In the stage where abortion was widely accepted, abortion drugs brought both fame and fortune.
Other concerns emerged as abortion lead to lower birth rate among white women of middle and upper classes, which means immigrants and aliens were to out-populate the country. Storer, an activist of anti-abortion, said that “Shall these regions be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation,” according to Reagan’s research. But in the first place, it was elites who had earlier access to education of superior quality that queried the fairness of the original social division of labor, and were inclined to support abortion for shifting into the political and other arena dominated by men.
Furthermore, women who have achieved little education were opposed to abortion law that would overturn the Special Protection regulation and deny their value in life as a housewife.
Feminists for Life (also known as Pro-life Feminists), an anti-abortion feminism organization found in 1970, believes that “Framing abortion access as essential for equality is an imprimatur on a male normative experience of reproduction and has retarded meaningful accommodation of pregnancy and motherhood in the workplace and other spheres of society,” legal scholars Erika Bachiochi, Helen Alvaré and Teresa Stanton Collett wrote. They decry people’s discrimination against the role of a mother, especially in cases of incest and rape, and calls for better sexual education, healthier and more affordable contraceptive support, and maternity welfare.
Notwithstanding, is the stereotype really easy to get rid of? It could be found in literary works where women are depicted as either tender, sometimes weak, or impetuous. In the Great Gatsby, Myrtle’s affairs with Tom to change her impoverished life condition, Jordan’s cheating in the golf competition to get higher social status, and Daisy’s seeking for free love but reluctantly trapped in a failed marriage, all shows women’s independent consciousness to some extent, but they can not fully release themselves from the oppression of traditional feminine roles either because of their own benightedness, vanity and fear, or doubts from the society on women’s competency, which results in tragedies in their lives. The term “feminism” was coined in contrast to “anti-feminism”, and is defined as women who fight for their own rights. But why women’s rights differ from those of men’s? While women are eager for fairness and the same social status as men, is there an implicit prerequisite that it is better to be a man? Does gender merely reflect genetic difference?
By Jennifer Liu
