Again, the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., has tried and failed to equate abortion with suffrage. The annual march, held first in 2017 as a counter to former President Donald Trump’s inauguration, showed heightened tension a few days ahead of an even more tense Election Day.
Abortion has been framed as a human right for some time now, including in the bulk of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential platform, so there is no surprise at seeing it as the animating issue of the Women’s March. But for marchers to campaign, essentially, on abortion only weakens their platform of gender equality.
Whereas the Women’s March might once have represented some strain of civil rights spurred on by sexist or disrespectful sentiment that the public associated with Trump, its vision now is purely about “promoting feminist economies, reimagining democracy, and ending white supremacy.” In other words, the march concerns itself with abortion and with a feeling of underlying insult. The goal is not to fill out the existing structure but “to build a multi-racial feminist future.”
Neither are very tangible issues. Abortion is no longer a question of federal legality, rather federalism, and microaggressions are a fiction. It is just the possibility of society not meeting their exact needs that stokes fear in these activists.
However, abortion is modern-day suffrage for many women. “Equality” and “fears their work is being undone” sums up the general motivation for attendees. It is a message more palatable than the various signs that color the march, but it is untrue. Cries for “freedom of choice” and to “trust women” indicate that it all comes down to a “my body, my choice” argument.
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The fight for abortion is not a fight for equal participation in the political system but the opposite. Women who support abortion want to be the sole voice on the matter. Any argument that does not touch on bodily autonomy is of no worth to them. Children and their fathers make up at least half of the matter and have no weight on it. Meanwhile, men who support abortion do so either having bought into the idea that their opinions do not matter or to ensure they have as little responsibility as possible.
While suffragists and abortion advocates have methodological likenesses, that is where the similarities stop. The Women’s March is not shooting for real returns but a contrived sense of solidarity and indignation, and it pushes its coalition further from political reality with each go.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
