I think this is a laudable invitation to new readers - I admire your courage of convictions and that you don't play hide the ball with your audience.
Just want to make a plug for new readers to stick around! The water's great, the content here is consistently interesting, and while Leah pulls zero punches, the vibe here is welcoming and tolerant of a lot of different viewpoints.
Even if your conception of self includes "I'm definitely not the kind of person who would read pro-life content", purely as a thought experiment, stick around for a few months and see how a slight modification to your media diet updates your beliefs - if at all!
I am especially interested in content that talks about how we can support those moms and babies once the kids are on the ground! There is not enough talk about that in pro-life circles.
Part of my day job is expanding family supports, including the Child Tax Credit, and making the case for a baby bonus (an immediate post-partum payment)
Can we get something for the first 12 or so years, maybe expanding the dependent care FSA? I realize the Big Beautiful Bill expanded it to $7,500 from $5,000, but that was the first expansion since 1986, and the amount needs to be much higher. After all, this is just me using a tax break on my own earnings to pay for child care or summer camps. We live in a low cost of living area, and $15,000 would start to move the needle!
Hi! I'm one of the new people who found you after the Douthat/Andrews podcast. I've long been the kind of feminist who basically believed we are petite men who can get pregnant, but of course the ability to get pregnant is in fact an enormous difference with many long lasting consequences. I work in a male-dominated field, and in some aspects it's a good fit for me, but in other areas I have to do a lot of contortion to meet the unspoken expectations.
Lately I've been questioning my view of feminism for various reasons, but I am, quite reasonably I think, put off by people saying that women are uniquely bad at existing in the world of economic productivity. I do think that is what Helen was saying (herself exempted of course), and you pushed back admirably and with great composure. I found myself unexpectedly agreeing with several things you said. I found your perspective that women are more noticeably entangled in webs of dependence to be an insightful statement, especially because it's true that men are also not autonomous islands, but women are the ones directly confronted with that reality for a large portion of our lives.
Ross introduced you as a conservative, and you commented on your pro-life principles during the interview, so it's not like that comes as a surprise. Also Ross himself is a conservative pro-life Catholic, so presumably those frightened off by his views wouldn't be listening to the podcast in the first place!
I agree with you that both sides of the abortion debate are in good faith. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to resolve the fundamental disagreement objectively. Many seem to think they are advancing an objective truth, but their lack of curiosity and respect for others makes it impossible to genuinely engage with them. I like discussing areas of disagreement, but it's hard to find discussion partners who can disagree respectfully. I think I see respect here. My views are mostly not dogmatic on either side, FWIW. I sense a moral problem with abortion but I can't prove it objectively, and that makes it difficult for me to advocate any particular policy. I do think the mother's personhood is undeniable, so I am against policies that unnecessarily risk mothers' lives.
All that to say, I am looking specifically for fresh perspectives on feminism, its philosophy, and its goals. I think the overwhelming focus on abortion, as well as allowing other "intersectional" interests to take precedence over and above women's concerns, have both been bad for feminism. I hope to find a new and different path forward.
"I sense a moral problem with abortion but I can't prove it objectively, and that makes it difficult for me to advocate any particular policy. I do think the mother's personhood is undeniable, so I am against policies that unnecessarily risk mothers' lives."
I ran a conversation between people on different sides of the abortion divide, and one guy said that he was a vegan "because when a being might be suffering, we should err on the side of assuming it's suffering" but recognized he wasn't taking that approach to abortion. He felt a lot more comfortable making a sacrifice himself than asking women to make a sacrifice that couldn't be asked of him.
I think the overwhelming focus on abortion is an effect of white feminism, not intersectional feminism. For decades, women of color pushed to expand reproductive issues to encompass such things as forced sterilization.
I encourage you to keep engaging with Leah’s content. There is a lot on YouTube. You will consistently find respect for other views and interesting ideas that will make you think more deeply about your own views. I also highly recommend her books, especially the latest:
As a man, asymmetries between men and women is something I don't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Certainly, I find the stereotypical Victorian / 1950's ideal flies in the face of both my experience and moral intuition--my best bosses have almost without exception been women, I find gender-segregating communities grate on the soul, and so on. I certainly would not have had the patience you did in that debate.
And yet, the idea that a "human" should not be imagined as a detached male (either single or with a wife who is required to take care of the kids) strikes me as both profound and very common-sensical. People talk a lot about how American wealth is built on our "realistic" or "free" treatment of employees as interchangeable individuals without any social expectations or support. To my eyes, though, liquid capital destroys community among those forced to endlessly move, and warps what should be a naturally-supported act of creating new life into a luxury good (or at least, this is how it is imagined in the upper classes.) The idea that there should be a fundamental right to paid maternity (and paternity!) leave, that this is the cost of employing a human being, for instance, seems common-sensical. And so on and so forth.
So I'm very interested in your project in general, even if I'm very suspicious of the idea of distinctly "male" or "female" virtues or vices.
I loved your book and read it at exactly the time in my life that I really needed it - coming out of a season of dependence only to fall smack into a new one. As recovery/etc progresses, I keep finding myself saying "I'm starting to feel human again!" and then I catch myself, because you and neuhaus would disagree with that framing, because migraines and such are part of being human. I disagree with it too but I don't have vocabulary for what else I would say. I've been playing with "it's nice to be a functional adult capable of taking on responsibilities" but that seems to have demeaning implications for people who are in seasons of dependence.
What do you say in these situations? What words or phrases do you use to indicate seasons of less dependence? Because there is a legitimately good feeling when you are newly able to walk around and take on responsibilities after a season of greater dependence, and I don't have words for it.
I'm reminded of my very difficult postpartum year with my firstborn. When I started to emerge from that time and process it, the descriptive language that felt natural was very metaphorical: "I feel like I'm getting my head above water again."
what touched me about your comments with Ross Douthat and Helen Andrews was your core humanity....that moderates strident rhetoric and feminist purity tests. So I will never embrace your Catholicism and pro life politics, but still think you are an interesting voice to hear.
I appreciated your presence in the Interesting Times debate, and I look forward to reading your newsletter. In another time/place/generation I probably would have called myself a pro-life democrat. As it is, I'm an urban millennial progressive who, as such, basically doesn't ever talk about how nuanced my feelings about abortion are. Part of what makes it very difficult to approach this subject in my social circle is the fact that I know that many friends and acquaintances of mine have had abortions, and felt that they were necessary. Suggesting that life in utero has inherent value (not merely potential value) runs the risk of tacitly leveling a pretty grievous allegation against people I care about. So I tend to just leave the subject alone. As it is, I personally land on believing that early abortions should be safe and accessible because, when they are not, the burden falls especially hard on poor women with limited options. Consider the fact that the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the US is murder. Obviously that's not a great status quo, but it is the world we live in, and it's part of the reason I support abortion access. That said, I personally feel like limiting access to the first trimester (outside of certain medical edge cases) isn't unreasonable. But again, I'm not bringing any of this up at parties.
What I find most interesting, and what I think I see you pointing towards, are the ways that assumptions about abortion hurt women. When society broadly views abortion as a simple medical procedure without any moral weight, it becomes the obvious answer for any inconvenient pregnancy, and I think the social harms from that are both massive and also largely unacknowledged.
I’m pro-choice, and yet I still agree with your final point about the harm to women of seeing abortion as “a simple medical procedure” that can be neutrally recommended to any woman whose pregnancy seems undesirable. I wouldn’t say that a fetus is a person, morally speaking, in those early stages, but I think you can still love it, even then, and I think that love is essentially a good thing. I hate that the abortion debate is sometimes used to guilt women into not acknowledging those feelings. (How dare you suggest there’s anything cruel about telling a woman to get an abortion! Are you saying there’s something wrong with abortion?)
I tried to follow up on the claim about the number one cause of death for pregnant women being murder, and I can’t verify it. I intend the below investigation with the greatest respect and care for the question; I got into it not, I hope, out of pride but because the claim looked suspicious and it denigrates the memory of real victims of these crimes to imagine thousands of nonexistent ones.
It seems to trace back to a paywalled BMJ article which only claims that such murders are *a* leading such cause, more common than medical complications. But that’s not surprising, medical complications are happily really rare now and murder and suicide are sadly much more common causes of death than anything else but accidental injury for all young American adults. It goes without saying that any woman experiencing violence due to pregnancy is a specially intense kind of tragedy, but the homicide rate for pregnant women would have to be elevated more than fivefold relative to their age group to exceed accidental deaths, and I’m praying I’m seeing correctly that that’s not actually the case.
I found some numbers: in 2021 about 70000 25-34 year old Americans died, of which 7521 homicides and 8862 suicides, coverjng almost a quarter all deaths in this age group. But men die by homicide and suicide at 3-4 times the rate of women, so while I don’t have gender segregated data, probably 5-10% of women’s deaths in that age group.
The study I link below found 20000 deaths of pregnant and early postpartum women 2005-2022, of which, 1407 homicides and 887 suicides. These aren’t directly comparable numbers but it looks like the total death rate due to homicide and suicide is around the same for pregnant women as for all women 25-34, around a tenth of deaths. There’s no way this can outpace accidental injuries, which cause half of deaths in this age group. So it’s certainly not true that homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant American women. But these rough numbers do seem to reveal an increase in homicide risk and decrease in suicide risk among pregnant women, amounting to dozens of such murders a year likely attributable to pregnancy, which is truly horrifying.
Yes, that’s the first link you get when you Google the phrase, but it does not support your claim. The headline could be read that way but if you look at the body they clearly mean to write “a” leading cause of death, not “the” leading, as with the title of the reported editorial and the other two linked articles.
Somebody with more time and expertise than I have should parse the numbers. Perhaps accidental deaths aren't considered because they are unrelated to pregnancy, whereas most murders of women in that age range are due to partner violence, so pregnancy is likely to be a relevant factor. This recent article looks at rates of suicide and homicide for pregnant and postpartum women: https://www.smfm.org/news/new-national-study-finds-homicide-and-suicide-is-the-1-cause-of-maternal-death-in-the-us
It would be interesting to compare it to rates of suicide and homicide for non-pregnant women in the same age range.
Thanks, Alice. Yeah, that SMFM article is where I got the numbers in my top comment trying to compare, though I can’t find any publication of the research it discusses. But, yeah, I don’t have precise breakdowns by age, gender, and pregnancy status so I could only guess that it looks plausible that pregnancy increases homicides by, say, 50% (which would of course be a horrifying disaster if accurate!) while decreasing suicides correspondingly, with huge error bars. Would love to see a more expert answer, but thought it was worth the back of the envelope work given that one isn’t readily available online. I think that saying “murder is the leading cause of death among pregnant women” really can’t be read to exclude accidental deaths, which is why most sources don’t make that claim. In SMFM the headline, again, seems to make it but the body makes clear that they’re only comparing to medical causes.
Whether accidental deaths are included or not, still, having been a pregnant woman twice now, each time I spent 40 long weeks worrying about risks like preeclampsia, hemorrhage, and other birth complications. You read about real women dying from these things. Yes, we are very lucky that modern medicine has reduced that risk significantly. Still, the fact that you're more likely to be murdered than to die from any pregnancy complication is notable! I believe in accuracy and I think it's worth looking at the numbers to be clear about whether murder the *THE* leading cause or merely *A* leading cause of death in pregnancy. But let's not miss the forest for the trees. Women, already vulnerable to intimate partner violence, are at risk of being murdered *because* they are pregnant.
Absolutely, you're completely right that the actually risk of pregnant women being murdered is on a whole different metaphysical level of significance than my nitpicking, and I almost didn't pick the nit at all for exactly that reason, because it's hard to do without suggesting that you don't recognize the horror for what it is. I do recognize it, both theoretically and personally: my family was wracked by just such a tragedy and we still mourn my cousin and her unborn son. My defense is only that (1) I have nothing to offer the world except annoying persnicketiness about numbers and (2) I think we can recognize the horror of these women that have died *more* honestly if we have a clearer idea of how many there are.
Elizabeth Bruenig wrote movingly about how a post-Roe America would be a much better and safer world for pregnant women, no matter what situation they are in in. I don’t think that’s been realized, and I’d like to see more discussion of what needs to happen. Also, a lot of difficult and heartbreaking things can happen during pregnancy. I am bringing this up because it’s something you’ve specifically discussed on Twitter.
So happy to be here! I’ve known about your work for some time, but have been too focused on other areas to read more of it.
My story is a bit the opposite of yours.
I’ve been pro-life all my life - at least, that is, since I first learned about abortion from a friend in high school. She had brought pictures of abortions to school. I could never get those images out of my mind. From the start, it was always clearly not an either/or but a both/and situation for me - both mother and baby needed protection.
I’ve never considered myself a feminist, growing up as the only girl surrounded by brothers and boy cousins. I knew they had it hard, too (the physical bullying that men endure!). I was also never discouraged to pursue anything because I was a girl. Indeed, my father pushed me more academically because he saw I had more self-discipline at a younger age than my brothers.
It wasn’t until I had my own daughters that I began to realize how tailored the world really is towards men - and how even feminists accept the male paradigm unquestionably.
It really hit home when I started to realize that the way we use the term “feminized” reveals how feminism has not fully succeeded. The word almost always carries with it highly negative connotations (weak, irrational, overly emotional, anti-intellectual, etc.). Even women still use the term in this way - feminists, too! It’s especially bad in the church.
I’ve found myself on a little crusade to challenge followers of Christ in how they employ the term and the harm it does to women - especially young women such as my daughters. Many do it unthinkingly - certainly not on purpose.
I am also reading Invisible Women and enjoy her analysis of the reason women's restrooms need more stalls-- helping children, menstruation, etc!
Until I became a mother at 35, I was a women=weaker men who can have babies feminist. Now I see the ways in which society fails to accommodate women and children (as well as other oppressed groups) much more clearly. Nothing is more disheartening than pro-life conservative politicians (mostly men) with their utter lack of solutions for helping moms stay in the workforce as economic participants. Consider, for example, the asinine proposal several years ago to finance childbirth leave by drawing on one's own (already meager) Social Security benefit.
Our family is pretty well off and we have moved heaven and earth to give our kids proper child care, schooling, community, and parenting. Most people could not afford this.
Waitlists for child care support across my state of Texas are months long. The Austin-area guide to the government sponsored child care waitlist is seven pages long.
That “Rob Peter to pay Paul” pitch on Social Security ticked me off so much.
I’d love to see us adopt caregiver credits a la France where years spent caring for small children or aging parents get credited as though waged and paying in.
Re: the world failing to accommodate children, here's one I think about everyday. Why do parking lots not have wider spaces for parents with strollers, like they have for wheelchairs? I'm a mom of a one year old and a three year old living in Los Angeles, and every single day I struggle with unloading my children into their double stroller while worrying that some reckless or distracted driver is going to hit them. It just seems so obviously dangerous to me, but I can't imagine anything ever being done about it. I don't need the spots to be close, I just need a safe buffer to get my babies in and out of the stroller.
Interestingly, I was raised on the opposite side of the abortion debate. Having worked in international health ministry for 25 years, I now see abortion (and many issues like it) with a great deal of nuance because I have witnessed the complexity. What I wish pro-lifers would understand is that the legal route to decrease abortion is not only insufficient, it misses the larger picture of the inherent value and dignity of women and children.
I, like you, am a Catholic mom who works outside of the home. It's been challenging for me to find sisters in that club. And the backlash against women by the conservative "Christian" right is demoralizing and sad. Plus, I've got two little daughters to raise. Happy to have your voice in the mix trying to help us navigate all of this honestly and well!
I'm really glad to have discovered your substack! You're writing a lot about things I think about all the time -- and we agree on much, I believe, except I reject the identifying as a feminist as all just because I find it too politically charged. In many ways I'm very old-fashioned and "trad", however I was raised this way so I'm not trying to conform to any memed idea of a tradwife. I think a lot of people fail to realize that the original trad woman was far from oppressed or demure. She was a matriarch, queen of her world. She didn't need "feminism" or anyone advocating for her because she was greatly empowered through the work of her own hands and by making sure men stayed out of her territory. This is how I live and think.
I'm greatly interested in woke hippies because I've spent a lot of time with them and feel some kinship with them. Christians and wokes share so many values (the good ones and the bad ones!) and this fascinates me, and I write a lot about this and want to write more. I wish that this would be more readily recognized, but it's impossible mostly because of the abortion issue. I do predict a future though where woke hippies and liberals eventually come to a place where they value the unborn life more while general conservative Christians find excuses not to protect life. I feel we're already seeing signs of this happening. I would love to see the two groups learn from each other -- but there's a status game at play, as well as a intense hatred for "the other side" that makes it the bridge impassable despite all the common ground that might be shared.
I tried to order your book last night, but I kept getting an error message every time I tried to process the payment. Perhaps the code is no good, or the website is having issues. I tried last again this morning with the same results.
It's cliché, but it really was like waking up from the Matrix. Growing up and living and breathing an ideology that dismissed the old as irrelevant superstition, that believed we were the most advanced and most enlightened culture to ever exist. I was nearly forty before I understood that feminism had impoverished me, not empowered me.
If I were talking to the other side of the abortion debate I would try to make them understand that we both want happiness and wellbeing for women. We're just coming from very different understandings of what that looks like. The pro-choice position is deeply rooted in fear. They're individualists who cling to autonomy as their route to earnings, security and happiness; who have few or no strong-ties in this world that they can depend on. Anything that imposes on this freedom threatens to throw them into the abyss.
Edit: Karen's comment below (which may have been satire I'm too dim to appreciate?) is a perfect example:
I have been interested in and engaging intellectually with ‘social issues’ most of my adult life, and as a Christian man, feminism was something I followed fairly closely. More recently (over the last decade) I began reading Catholic writings by women such as Mary Eberstadt, Abigail Favale, and you. (Getting to meet you and Professor Favale at the True Genius conference earlier this year was a great pleasure.) So reading Other Feminisms is to be expected.
How do you think about asymmetries between men and women?
As a medical scientist and physician, these asymmetries have always been obvious and necessary for my work. I certainly do continue to learn more about these asymmetries in a social context as time goes by. Clearly, our asymmetries are important and, when encountered as God intended, good. Our conflicts engendered by our asymmetries are a consequence of our ‘fallen’ natures.
Where (it’s allowed!) would you push back on my extension of Criado Perez’s airbag story?
Engineering an airbag system that could calibrate itself to different bodies is likely possible, but I imagine it would be very expensive. Short of this (no pun intended), I don’t see how the trade offs required by the current approach can be much improved.
What do you wish you could do together with people on the opposite side of the abortion divide?
Of course we must find ways to compromise on many issues by way of debate and acceptance of trade offs. But I see very little space for compromise with respect to ‘elective pregnancy termination’ (elective abortion) when it is used primarily to kill healthy babies…!
First the asymetry: as mostly a feminist, I realized when my husband and I bought a farm that I, strong as I was for a woman, was no physical match for my unathletic husband.
Second, I am a pro-life Dem for the reason you state: both mom and baby, pro-life for the whole life.
I want to be respected AS a woman, and not as either gender-less or equal to a man. Both men and women are dependent on each other, and this is good.
I think this is a laudable invitation to new readers - I admire your courage of convictions and that you don't play hide the ball with your audience.
Just want to make a plug for new readers to stick around! The water's great, the content here is consistently interesting, and while Leah pulls zero punches, the vibe here is welcoming and tolerant of a lot of different viewpoints.
Even if your conception of self includes "I'm definitely not the kind of person who would read pro-life content", purely as a thought experiment, stick around for a few months and see how a slight modification to your media diet updates your beliefs - if at all!
I am especially interested in content that talks about how we can support those moms and babies once the kids are on the ground! There is not enough talk about that in pro-life circles.
Part of my day job is expanding family supports, including the Child Tax Credit, and making the case for a baby bonus (an immediate post-partum payment)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/newborn-needs-the-case-for-an-american-baby-bonus/
Can we get something for the first 12 or so years, maybe expanding the dependent care FSA? I realize the Big Beautiful Bill expanded it to $7,500 from $5,000, but that was the first expansion since 1986, and the amount needs to be much higher. After all, this is just me using a tax break on my own earnings to pay for child care or summer camps. We live in a low cost of living area, and $15,000 would start to move the needle!
Hi! I'm one of the new people who found you after the Douthat/Andrews podcast. I've long been the kind of feminist who basically believed we are petite men who can get pregnant, but of course the ability to get pregnant is in fact an enormous difference with many long lasting consequences. I work in a male-dominated field, and in some aspects it's a good fit for me, but in other areas I have to do a lot of contortion to meet the unspoken expectations.
Lately I've been questioning my view of feminism for various reasons, but I am, quite reasonably I think, put off by people saying that women are uniquely bad at existing in the world of economic productivity. I do think that is what Helen was saying (herself exempted of course), and you pushed back admirably and with great composure. I found myself unexpectedly agreeing with several things you said. I found your perspective that women are more noticeably entangled in webs of dependence to be an insightful statement, especially because it's true that men are also not autonomous islands, but women are the ones directly confronted with that reality for a large portion of our lives.
Ross introduced you as a conservative, and you commented on your pro-life principles during the interview, so it's not like that comes as a surprise. Also Ross himself is a conservative pro-life Catholic, so presumably those frightened off by his views wouldn't be listening to the podcast in the first place!
I agree with you that both sides of the abortion debate are in good faith. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to resolve the fundamental disagreement objectively. Many seem to think they are advancing an objective truth, but their lack of curiosity and respect for others makes it impossible to genuinely engage with them. I like discussing areas of disagreement, but it's hard to find discussion partners who can disagree respectfully. I think I see respect here. My views are mostly not dogmatic on either side, FWIW. I sense a moral problem with abortion but I can't prove it objectively, and that makes it difficult for me to advocate any particular policy. I do think the mother's personhood is undeniable, so I am against policies that unnecessarily risk mothers' lives.
All that to say, I am looking specifically for fresh perspectives on feminism, its philosophy, and its goals. I think the overwhelming focus on abortion, as well as allowing other "intersectional" interests to take precedence over and above women's concerns, have both been bad for feminism. I hope to find a new and different path forward.
I think a lot of people are in your boat here:
"I sense a moral problem with abortion but I can't prove it objectively, and that makes it difficult for me to advocate any particular policy. I do think the mother's personhood is undeniable, so I am against policies that unnecessarily risk mothers' lives."
I ran a conversation between people on different sides of the abortion divide, and one guy said that he was a vegan "because when a being might be suffering, we should err on the side of assuming it's suffering" but recognized he wasn't taking that approach to abortion. He felt a lot more comfortable making a sacrifice himself than asking women to make a sacrifice that couldn't be asked of him.
I think the overwhelming focus on abortion is an effect of white feminism, not intersectional feminism. For decades, women of color pushed to expand reproductive issues to encompass such things as forced sterilization.
I encourage you to keep engaging with Leah’s content. There is a lot on YouTube. You will consistently find respect for other views and interesting ideas that will make you think more deeply about your own views. I also highly recommend her books, especially the latest:
As a man, asymmetries between men and women is something I don't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Certainly, I find the stereotypical Victorian / 1950's ideal flies in the face of both my experience and moral intuition--my best bosses have almost without exception been women, I find gender-segregating communities grate on the soul, and so on. I certainly would not have had the patience you did in that debate.
And yet, the idea that a "human" should not be imagined as a detached male (either single or with a wife who is required to take care of the kids) strikes me as both profound and very common-sensical. People talk a lot about how American wealth is built on our "realistic" or "free" treatment of employees as interchangeable individuals without any social expectations or support. To my eyes, though, liquid capital destroys community among those forced to endlessly move, and warps what should be a naturally-supported act of creating new life into a luxury good (or at least, this is how it is imagined in the upper classes.) The idea that there should be a fundamental right to paid maternity (and paternity!) leave, that this is the cost of employing a human being, for instance, seems common-sensical. And so on and so forth.
So I'm very interested in your project in general, even if I'm very suspicious of the idea of distinctly "male" or "female" virtues or vices.
One of the places where I think men are particularly shortchanged by treating people as generically human vs responding to asymmetries is school, btw.
A very quiet, still room is harder on little boys than little girls (it’s overlapping bell curves, so there will be exceptions on both sides).
Limited recess is hard on all the kids, but it goes wrong for boys (on average) sooner and more dramatically.
I loved your book and read it at exactly the time in my life that I really needed it - coming out of a season of dependence only to fall smack into a new one. As recovery/etc progresses, I keep finding myself saying "I'm starting to feel human again!" and then I catch myself, because you and neuhaus would disagree with that framing, because migraines and such are part of being human. I disagree with it too but I don't have vocabulary for what else I would say. I've been playing with "it's nice to be a functional adult capable of taking on responsibilities" but that seems to have demeaning implications for people who are in seasons of dependence.
What do you say in these situations? What words or phrases do you use to indicate seasons of less dependence? Because there is a legitimately good feeling when you are newly able to walk around and take on responsibilities after a season of greater dependence, and I don't have words for it.
"I missed getting to do X, I love when I'm able to take it on!"
(I have also fallen into the "I barely existed while [sick/etc]" error, even while working on my own book rebuking this mindset!)
This is good! And X can be vague, too: "I missed being able to do my usual things, and it's good to be back at them."
I'm reminded of my very difficult postpartum year with my firstborn. When I started to emerge from that time and process it, the descriptive language that felt natural was very metaphorical: "I feel like I'm getting my head above water again."
what touched me about your comments with Ross Douthat and Helen Andrews was your core humanity....that moderates strident rhetoric and feminist purity tests. So I will never embrace your Catholicism and pro life politics, but still think you are an interesting voice to hear.
I appreciated your presence in the Interesting Times debate, and I look forward to reading your newsletter. In another time/place/generation I probably would have called myself a pro-life democrat. As it is, I'm an urban millennial progressive who, as such, basically doesn't ever talk about how nuanced my feelings about abortion are. Part of what makes it very difficult to approach this subject in my social circle is the fact that I know that many friends and acquaintances of mine have had abortions, and felt that they were necessary. Suggesting that life in utero has inherent value (not merely potential value) runs the risk of tacitly leveling a pretty grievous allegation against people I care about. So I tend to just leave the subject alone. As it is, I personally land on believing that early abortions should be safe and accessible because, when they are not, the burden falls especially hard on poor women with limited options. Consider the fact that the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the US is murder. Obviously that's not a great status quo, but it is the world we live in, and it's part of the reason I support abortion access. That said, I personally feel like limiting access to the first trimester (outside of certain medical edge cases) isn't unreasonable. But again, I'm not bringing any of this up at parties.
What I find most interesting, and what I think I see you pointing towards, are the ways that assumptions about abortion hurt women. When society broadly views abortion as a simple medical procedure without any moral weight, it becomes the obvious answer for any inconvenient pregnancy, and I think the social harms from that are both massive and also largely unacknowledged.
I look forward to reading more!
I’m pro-choice, and yet I still agree with your final point about the harm to women of seeing abortion as “a simple medical procedure” that can be neutrally recommended to any woman whose pregnancy seems undesirable. I wouldn’t say that a fetus is a person, morally speaking, in those early stages, but I think you can still love it, even then, and I think that love is essentially a good thing. I hate that the abortion debate is sometimes used to guilt women into not acknowledging those feelings. (How dare you suggest there’s anything cruel about telling a woman to get an abortion! Are you saying there’s something wrong with abortion?)
I tried to follow up on the claim about the number one cause of death for pregnant women being murder, and I can’t verify it. I intend the below investigation with the greatest respect and care for the question; I got into it not, I hope, out of pride but because the claim looked suspicious and it denigrates the memory of real victims of these crimes to imagine thousands of nonexistent ones.
It seems to trace back to a paywalled BMJ article which only claims that such murders are *a* leading such cause, more common than medical complications. But that’s not surprising, medical complications are happily really rare now and murder and suicide are sadly much more common causes of death than anything else but accidental injury for all young American adults. It goes without saying that any woman experiencing violence due to pregnancy is a specially intense kind of tragedy, but the homicide rate for pregnant women would have to be elevated more than fivefold relative to their age group to exceed accidental deaths, and I’m praying I’m seeing correctly that that’s not actually the case.
I found some numbers: in 2021 about 70000 25-34 year old Americans died, of which 7521 homicides and 8862 suicides, coverjng almost a quarter all deaths in this age group. But men die by homicide and suicide at 3-4 times the rate of women, so while I don’t have gender segregated data, probably 5-10% of women’s deaths in that age group.
The study I link below found 20000 deaths of pregnant and early postpartum women 2005-2022, of which, 1407 homicides and 887 suicides. These aren’t directly comparable numbers but it looks like the total death rate due to homicide and suicide is around the same for pregnant women as for all women 25-34, around a tenth of deaths. There’s no way this can outpace accidental injuries, which cause half of deaths in this age group. So it’s certainly not true that homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant American women. But these rough numbers do seem to reveal an increase in homicide risk and decrease in suicide risk among pregnant women, amounting to dozens of such murders a year likely attributable to pregnancy, which is truly horrifying.
If I’m missing some better numbers, please do share. https://www.smfm.org/news/new-national-study-finds-homicide-and-suicide-is-the-1-cause-of-maternal-death-in-the-us
Homicide leading cause of death for pregnant women in U.S.
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/homicide-leading-cause-of-death-for-pregnant-women-in-u-s/
Yes, that’s the first link you get when you Google the phrase, but it does not support your claim. The headline could be read that way but if you look at the body they clearly mean to write “a” leading cause of death, not “the” leading, as with the title of the reported editorial and the other two linked articles.
Somebody with more time and expertise than I have should parse the numbers. Perhaps accidental deaths aren't considered because they are unrelated to pregnancy, whereas most murders of women in that age range are due to partner violence, so pregnancy is likely to be a relevant factor. This recent article looks at rates of suicide and homicide for pregnant and postpartum women: https://www.smfm.org/news/new-national-study-finds-homicide-and-suicide-is-the-1-cause-of-maternal-death-in-the-us
It would be interesting to compare it to rates of suicide and homicide for non-pregnant women in the same age range.
Thanks, Alice. Yeah, that SMFM article is where I got the numbers in my top comment trying to compare, though I can’t find any publication of the research it discusses. But, yeah, I don’t have precise breakdowns by age, gender, and pregnancy status so I could only guess that it looks plausible that pregnancy increases homicides by, say, 50% (which would of course be a horrifying disaster if accurate!) while decreasing suicides correspondingly, with huge error bars. Would love to see a more expert answer, but thought it was worth the back of the envelope work given that one isn’t readily available online. I think that saying “murder is the leading cause of death among pregnant women” really can’t be read to exclude accidental deaths, which is why most sources don’t make that claim. In SMFM the headline, again, seems to make it but the body makes clear that they’re only comparing to medical causes.
Whether accidental deaths are included or not, still, having been a pregnant woman twice now, each time I spent 40 long weeks worrying about risks like preeclampsia, hemorrhage, and other birth complications. You read about real women dying from these things. Yes, we are very lucky that modern medicine has reduced that risk significantly. Still, the fact that you're more likely to be murdered than to die from any pregnancy complication is notable! I believe in accuracy and I think it's worth looking at the numbers to be clear about whether murder the *THE* leading cause or merely *A* leading cause of death in pregnancy. But let's not miss the forest for the trees. Women, already vulnerable to intimate partner violence, are at risk of being murdered *because* they are pregnant.
Absolutely, you're completely right that the actually risk of pregnant women being murdered is on a whole different metaphysical level of significance than my nitpicking, and I almost didn't pick the nit at all for exactly that reason, because it's hard to do without suggesting that you don't recognize the horror for what it is. I do recognize it, both theoretically and personally: my family was wracked by just such a tragedy and we still mourn my cousin and her unborn son. My defense is only that (1) I have nothing to offer the world except annoying persnicketiness about numbers and (2) I think we can recognize the horror of these women that have died *more* honestly if we have a clearer idea of how many there are.
Elizabeth Bruenig wrote movingly about how a post-Roe America would be a much better and safer world for pregnant women, no matter what situation they are in in. I don’t think that’s been realized, and I’d like to see more discussion of what needs to happen. Also, a lot of difficult and heartbreaking things can happen during pregnancy. I am bringing this up because it’s something you’ve specifically discussed on Twitter.
So happy to be here! I’ve known about your work for some time, but have been too focused on other areas to read more of it.
My story is a bit the opposite of yours.
I’ve been pro-life all my life - at least, that is, since I first learned about abortion from a friend in high school. She had brought pictures of abortions to school. I could never get those images out of my mind. From the start, it was always clearly not an either/or but a both/and situation for me - both mother and baby needed protection.
I’ve never considered myself a feminist, growing up as the only girl surrounded by brothers and boy cousins. I knew they had it hard, too (the physical bullying that men endure!). I was also never discouraged to pursue anything because I was a girl. Indeed, my father pushed me more academically because he saw I had more self-discipline at a younger age than my brothers.
It wasn’t until I had my own daughters that I began to realize how tailored the world really is towards men - and how even feminists accept the male paradigm unquestionably.
It really hit home when I started to realize that the way we use the term “feminized” reveals how feminism has not fully succeeded. The word almost always carries with it highly negative connotations (weak, irrational, overly emotional, anti-intellectual, etc.). Even women still use the term in this way - feminists, too! It’s especially bad in the church.
I’ve found myself on a little crusade to challenge followers of Christ in how they employ the term and the harm it does to women - especially young women such as my daughters. Many do it unthinkingly - certainly not on purpose.
I look forward to learning from you. God bless!
I am also reading Invisible Women and enjoy her analysis of the reason women's restrooms need more stalls-- helping children, menstruation, etc!
Until I became a mother at 35, I was a women=weaker men who can have babies feminist. Now I see the ways in which society fails to accommodate women and children (as well as other oppressed groups) much more clearly. Nothing is more disheartening than pro-life conservative politicians (mostly men) with their utter lack of solutions for helping moms stay in the workforce as economic participants. Consider, for example, the asinine proposal several years ago to finance childbirth leave by drawing on one's own (already meager) Social Security benefit.
Our family is pretty well off and we have moved heaven and earth to give our kids proper child care, schooling, community, and parenting. Most people could not afford this.
Waitlists for child care support across my state of Texas are months long. The Austin-area guide to the government sponsored child care waitlist is seven pages long.
That “Rob Peter to pay Paul” pitch on Social Security ticked me off so much.
I’d love to see us adopt caregiver credits a la France where years spent caring for small children or aging parents get credited as though waged and paying in.
Re: the world failing to accommodate children, here's one I think about everyday. Why do parking lots not have wider spaces for parents with strollers, like they have for wheelchairs? I'm a mom of a one year old and a three year old living in Los Angeles, and every single day I struggle with unloading my children into their double stroller while worrying that some reckless or distracted driver is going to hit them. It just seems so obviously dangerous to me, but I can't imagine anything ever being done about it. I don't need the spots to be close, I just need a safe buffer to get my babies in and out of the stroller.
This is a great accommodation proposal!
I have a big cargo bike, and I'm usually unloading my kids on the sidewalk in a place of greater safety.
Interestingly, I was raised on the opposite side of the abortion debate. Having worked in international health ministry for 25 years, I now see abortion (and many issues like it) with a great deal of nuance because I have witnessed the complexity. What I wish pro-lifers would understand is that the legal route to decrease abortion is not only insufficient, it misses the larger picture of the inherent value and dignity of women and children.
I, like you, am a Catholic mom who works outside of the home. It's been challenging for me to find sisters in that club. And the backlash against women by the conservative "Christian" right is demoralizing and sad. Plus, I've got two little daughters to raise. Happy to have your voice in the mix trying to help us navigate all of this honestly and well!
I'm really glad to have discovered your substack! You're writing a lot about things I think about all the time -- and we agree on much, I believe, except I reject the identifying as a feminist as all just because I find it too politically charged. In many ways I'm very old-fashioned and "trad", however I was raised this way so I'm not trying to conform to any memed idea of a tradwife. I think a lot of people fail to realize that the original trad woman was far from oppressed or demure. She was a matriarch, queen of her world. She didn't need "feminism" or anyone advocating for her because she was greatly empowered through the work of her own hands and by making sure men stayed out of her territory. This is how I live and think.
I'm greatly interested in woke hippies because I've spent a lot of time with them and feel some kinship with them. Christians and wokes share so many values (the good ones and the bad ones!) and this fascinates me, and I write a lot about this and want to write more. I wish that this would be more readily recognized, but it's impossible mostly because of the abortion issue. I do predict a future though where woke hippies and liberals eventually come to a place where they value the unborn life more while general conservative Christians find excuses not to protect life. I feel we're already seeing signs of this happening. I would love to see the two groups learn from each other -- but there's a status game at play, as well as a intense hatred for "the other side" that makes it the bridge impassable despite all the common ground that might be shared.
I tried to order your book last night, but I kept getting an error message every time I tried to process the payment. Perhaps the code is no good, or the website is having issues. I tried last again this morning with the same results.
Can you email me a screenshot of the error you’re getting? I’m Leah.libresco at gmail
It's cliché, but it really was like waking up from the Matrix. Growing up and living and breathing an ideology that dismissed the old as irrelevant superstition, that believed we were the most advanced and most enlightened culture to ever exist. I was nearly forty before I understood that feminism had impoverished me, not empowered me.
If I were talking to the other side of the abortion debate I would try to make them understand that we both want happiness and wellbeing for women. We're just coming from very different understandings of what that looks like. The pro-choice position is deeply rooted in fear. They're individualists who cling to autonomy as their route to earnings, security and happiness; who have few or no strong-ties in this world that they can depend on. Anything that imposes on this freedom threatens to throw them into the abyss.
Edit: Karen's comment below (which may have been satire I'm too dim to appreciate?) is a perfect example:
https://www.otherfeminisms.com/p/so-what-kind-of-a-feminist-are-you/comment/176433241
What led you to subscribe to Other Feminisms?
I have been interested in and engaging intellectually with ‘social issues’ most of my adult life, and as a Christian man, feminism was something I followed fairly closely. More recently (over the last decade) I began reading Catholic writings by women such as Mary Eberstadt, Abigail Favale, and you. (Getting to meet you and Professor Favale at the True Genius conference earlier this year was a great pleasure.) So reading Other Feminisms is to be expected.
How do you think about asymmetries between men and women?
As a medical scientist and physician, these asymmetries have always been obvious and necessary for my work. I certainly do continue to learn more about these asymmetries in a social context as time goes by. Clearly, our asymmetries are important and, when encountered as God intended, good. Our conflicts engendered by our asymmetries are a consequence of our ‘fallen’ natures.
Where (it’s allowed!) would you push back on my extension of Criado Perez’s airbag story?
Engineering an airbag system that could calibrate itself to different bodies is likely possible, but I imagine it would be very expensive. Short of this (no pun intended), I don’t see how the trade offs required by the current approach can be much improved.
What do you wish you could do together with people on the opposite side of the abortion divide?
Of course we must find ways to compromise on many issues by way of debate and acceptance of trade offs. But I see very little space for compromise with respect to ‘elective pregnancy termination’ (elective abortion) when it is used primarily to kill healthy babies…!
I just ordered a copy of The Dignity of Dependence and am so excited for it to arrive! Thank you for the code!
Yay!
First the asymetry: as mostly a feminist, I realized when my husband and I bought a farm that I, strong as I was for a woman, was no physical match for my unathletic husband.
Second, I am a pro-life Dem for the reason you state: both mom and baby, pro-life for the whole life.
I want to be respected AS a woman, and not as either gender-less or equal to a man. Both men and women are dependent on each other, and this is good.
I like your message!