The Bitter Truth about Feminism
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By Lorraine V. Murray, The Catholic Thing, July 11, 2018
When I tell people I’m an ex-feminist, some seem shocked and offended, as if I were suggesting the world isn’t round. Others get a look of joy upon their faces, as if they’re thinking, “Oh, how wonderful that someone else feels the same way I do!”
I’m certainly not opposed to women going to college, nor do I think women should be prohibited from pursuing their dreams, whether that means motherhood, medicine, or meteorology. As someone who lived the feminist agenda for many years, however, I can attest that giving women more access to education and careers is the mere tip of the feminist iceberg. If you dig a bit deeper, you find a soul-numbing array of lies.
The first lie took me years to see through. Although I’d been raised in a staid Catholic household, during my junior year in college I abandoned the Faith as well as my moral principles. By the time I was in graduate school, the Women’s Liberation Movement was rumbling through campus, and one of the rallying cries was “free love.” This saying had nothing to do with the reality of the behavior, which involved engaging in loveless sex with strangers, as if it were just another ordinary activity.
As a budding feminist, I bought into the mistaken notion that casual sex caused no harm to men, and thus it should be perfectly fine for women as well. After all, feminists were intent on leveling the male/female playing field, which meant dismantling traditions like marriage and commitment, and, in the process, encouraging women to imitate masculine behavior.
It was emotionally painful becoming intimate with men whom I hardly knew and trying to pretend I didn’t expect a relationship – or even another date – but I assured myself that my emotions would eventually change. Despite the fact that my female friends and I kept getting our hearts broken, we didn’t arrive at the obvious conclusion, which was that feminism had it all wrong.
Women are created by God to connect sex with commitment and love, since we know in the deepest recesses of our hearts that a baby is the obvious purpose of sexual intimacy. Since I was too naïve to see through the lie, I concluded that I had to give the new experiment more time, and I would eventually achieve true “liberation.”
I was also ensnared in the web of the second big lie of feminism, which proceeds directly from the first. Feminists are well aware that casual sex can lead to pregnancy, even when a couple is using contraception. There simply is no device or chemical that can completely guarantee a pregnancy won’t result from sex.
Feminists, however, don’t see this obvious fact as a good reason to avoid pre-marital sex. Instead, in their continued attempt to break the God-ordained tie between sex and babies, they propose another “solution,” one that has led to the deaths of millions of innocents since abortion was legalized.
Tragically, I was one of the women who bought into this deception. I truly thought that a woman’s freedom to pursue education or a career trumped an innocent baby’s right to be born. Thus, when I found myself pregnant but unmarried, I chose what I thought would be a simple solution. In all the feminist articles I pored over – and there were quite a few – no mention was made of the emotional repercussions that so often result when a woman ends a pregnancy.
I made the appointment at a feminist clinic, walked in, and signed the paperwork. In my mind, what was about to happen was as matter of fact as a tooth extraction. What I didn’t realize was that I was about to experience the first chink in my feminist armor, because the “procedure,” as I referred to it, was horrifyingly painful, both physically and emotionally.
In truth, as I left the clinic that day, I felt a rush of relief because the immediate “problem” was over. What I didn’t realize was that I would be facing many years of much more serious problems, as my womanly emotions reacted with horror and regret over what had really happened that day.
I began experiencing flashbacks and nightmares. I would see a baby in a mall and feel tears stinging my eyes. I also felt terribly alone because even my feminist friends, many of whom surely had undergone the same “procedure,” studiously avoided any mention of their own abortions.
As the years passed, I was filled with a bitter, unending regret. No matter what the feminist pundits claimed in the scholarly articles they churned out, the truth of the matter became blatantly clear: I had taken a life and I would never quite get over it.
When I returned to the Catholic Church in my forties, I finally freed myself from feminism’s many deceptions. I saw that it is impossible to claim to be pro-woman while also being anti-baby. I realized that in the feminist game plan, children are the big losers. And it was only through a mature understanding of Catholicism that I discovered what it means to be pro-woman in a sane and beautiful way.
Looking at a figure of Mary gazing with love at the Christ Child in her arms reveals the truth that triumphs, once and for all, over the lies of feminism. There is a deep, abiding connection between mother and child – and taking babies away from their mothers leads to devastating results for both.
I found forgiveness through the sacrament of Confession, and finally experienced emotional healing through a Catholic ministry called Post Abortion Treatment and Healing. The deep scars left from feminism, however, will never be completely gone.
If I could turn back the hands of time, I would let that little baby thrive. Like millions of other women who regret their abortions, I’d give anything to gaze on the little face of my precious baby, who never saw the light of day.
*Image: Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini, 1510 [Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy] This was among Bellini’s last paintings, completed when he was 80.
