THE
P RTAL
December 2018
Page 22
The Abolition of Woman
A review of the book by Fiorella Nash
T his is
a most useful and timely book. Over recent years, too many pro-life campaigners in Britain
have spent rather too much time talking about the Church, and have been distracted from tackling the
cultural debates over women, abortion, feminism, and the ghastliness of so many babies being killed in the
womb. Meanwhile, in the wider culture, abortion has become more and more acceptable – and, especially, it is
seen as being part of a general feminist outlook which is historically inevitable and on the whole praiseworthy.
The Abolition of Woman tackles,
with wisdom and commonsense,
this whole topic of abortion
and women. Why is it that
campaigners for abortion link it
with women’s rights? Abortion is
ghastly for women – for the girl
babies killed in the womb, for the
mothers forced by partners into
this horrendous thing, for women
whose physical and mental health
is damaged or wrecked, for girls
who are assumed to be sexually
available because an inconvenient
pregnancy can be destroyed
later…and more.
And it is not just about
abortion. The book examines the
topic of Assisted Reproductive
Technology and its profoundly
unethical approach. Fiorella
Nash is forthright: “ART promotes (unwittingly
perhaps) the idea that the female body is in some ways
independent of a woman’s identity and can be said
to be pitted against her either by refusing to produce
offspring at the desired time (or at all) or by insisting
upon remaining fecund in defiance of a woman’s
lifestyle choices.”
the great social justice campaign
of our day, and there is no better
movement to fight it than a pro-
life feminist movement which
embraces and celebrates the
dignity of women.”
She expresses gratitude for
the rights that campaigners
over time gained for women,
and mentions those women
who worked to get her the
opportunity to vote in elections
“and indeed the millions of men
who died for my continued right
to do so.”
We do need a strong and
healthy discussion about what
is really meant by feminism, and
what the currently fashionable
ideas on sex, marriage,
parenthood, and linked topics are really doing to
us all. The idea of a strongly pro-life feminism is an
important contribution to this discussion. I am not
sure I go along with all the stances taken in this book,
but the general argument is a good one.
I would have liked an index, and a bibliography
for further reading would be useful too. But as an
She highlights the horrors of the surrogacy industry energising read, with good material from a range of
in India where poor women are exploited and their people who have been part of the cultural battles of
bodies used – and abused - for this outsourcing of recent years, it is both useful and challenging.
reproduction by rich people from the West.
The specific message that emerges is that a woman’s
Nash also looks at the grim reality of the pornography fertility is a gift to be valued, not a nuisance, that
industry and of prostitution – which some claiming to human rights matter, and that the future of the pro-life
be feminists say is “empowering” for young women. movement lies in exploring all of this. Nash quotes a
The grim lives of drug-dependent girls, treated saying that she remembers being taught as a teenager
violently by their pimps, are highlighted.
“Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people
walking it.”
Nash is herself a keen activist for human rights, and
The Abolition of Woman
sees the pro-life movement in this light: “The battle to
Fiorella Nash
protect and respect human life at its most vulnerable is
Ignatius Press £14.99p