You can't turn back time

I have to start by admitting a weakness to period dramas. I am still mad at Julian Fellowes for killing Matthew on Downton Abbey. I'm inspired by the nuns and nurses of Call the Midwife. Looking at the world of before my parents were born gives me a real respect for my foremothers. They were strong, intelligent creatures who worked so much harder than I've ever had to under societal constraints I can barely imagine. 

In all but the poorest levels of society, an out of wedlock pregnancy really could ruin a woman's life a hundred years ago. Even if the child was placed for adoption, the damage to reputation might close the doors to marriage or even work opportunities. Single mothers were often forced into begging or prostitution. Their children were at the highest risk for disease, abuse and starvation. 

I have never been without sympathy for women who feel forced into abortion by family, lovers or circumstance, but it's not hard to see how a woman in 1900 would have felt that abortion really was her only choice. In a world without anesthesia or antibiotics, who would have considered surgery if they felt they had other options. I'm guessing that most of them knew pretty much exactly what they were doing. Society put them in a corner and there was little or no help for fallen women. So they made a horrible choice and lived with the guilt and pain.

I'm very grateful and proud that between then and now women stood up and demanded to be treated differently by society and the law. We claimed full citizenship and the rights that came with it to vote, own property, pursue careers and reject double standards that allowed men to father children without consequence but condemned women for the same act.  The majority of early feminists were staunchly anti-abortion and most of them didn't​ live to see the vision realized. They started a movement so that their daughters and granddaughters could live in a world where a woman should never feel like she has to choose between her own life and her child's life.

It saddens me so much to see how that dream has been manipulated. Instead of celebrating the power of women to be mothers no matter what the circumstance, today's feminists celebrate the abortion industry and encourage women to kill their offspring for any reason. They point at men and say, "you are horrible because some of you didn't take responsibility for your sons and daughters," and then insist that women have the right to be even more callous towards new life. They write "choice" on their t-shirts and still something like 80% of women who have abortions don't feel like they have any other choice. They shout, "Don't let men tell you what you can do with your body," but when a man threatens to leave his pregnant girlfriend unless she aborts, they are silent.

I hear the women of the millennial generation are starting to wake up to the hypocrisy of their mothers. They were born liberated from the shame of unwed motherhood. They don't let men tell them what to do. They don't see any reason why they can't be mothers and CEO's. I just pray that they can finish the fight for a world where no one tells a woman she has to choose between her own life and the life of her child.