Where are the Women?

One fundamental problem with complaining about the Catholic and conservative evangelical Christian club is that it is a boy's club. In my last post I expressed, as gently as possible, my disappointment with the movie Bella. While sharing my opinion about the movie with some of my female counterparts, I came to realize what I was most frustrated by was that it was yet another man who was writing and telling the story about a woman. In my class we have discussed how women are often viewed as lacking adequate moral agency to make certain personal decisions, like having an abortion or not. Without proper matured morality, like that of a man, we remain children and in need of a parent to make decisions for us. The female character in the movie was portrayed as not capable of making her own informed decision so the compassionate male hero stepped in to "aid" her in her decision making about having her baby.

Similarly, I read in an article today by the Associated Press, that Pope Benedict XVI expressed "that pharmacists have a right to use conscientious objection to avoid dispensing emergency contraception or euthanasia drugs - and told them they should also inform patients of the ethical implications of using such drugs." How can a man be so clear about what is right and wrong concerning the goings-on in a uterus?! How can he claim authority over a woman's body? Millions of women suffer greatly because of pregnancy. How can it be the morally right thing to do if pregnancy means more poverty, more domestic abuse, more fear, less freedom to create a safer and peaceful life? I had bad pregnancies with each of my three children. I had an abscess with the first which made a cesarean section necessary and the other two had their own complications. Pregnancy was not kind to my body. I suffered through most of it. My children are precious to me but my body could not handle another physical challenge like that. Are women to literally sacrifice their lives (for sex!) to bear a child? That appears to be the message these men have for us. They do not take into consideration that contraception may be one of the only ways we can save a piece of ourselves. Since sex is considered a right of the male, when and where they want it, how is a woman to protect herself, especially if violence is threatened?

Where are the conservative evangelical women's voices? The empresses of morality? What do Catholic women have to say about their Pope denying them (and the rest of us) contraception? They must exist. Perhaps the media does not find their messages relevant or of interest. We talk about broadcasting a progressive Christian agenda but what really needs to happen is women in this country, this world, need to begin speaking up for themselves. We will define our world, our rights, our futures.

Amen.