Feminism in Prospect, pt. 2

As discussed previously, it is my sense that the tawdry future of feminism will manifest an acceleration of the problems that it has wrought presently. These are not idle concerns, as the problems abetted by feminism have lasting effects that extend beyond the realms of the liberal elites who inflicted them upon the rest of us. It has been shown that feminism has had a deleterious effect on men specifically, and has negatively impacted the interactions between males and the society more generally. In addition, feminism has and will continue to yield its bitter harvest in other areas.

2) Children will be less valued.

To make all of this fair, I will tie a few of my hands behind my back. I will not comment in any detail on matters covered elsewhere, to include feminism's contributions to the sexualization of young females, the superimposing of feminist narratives of male sexual predation onto ordinary interactions between grade schoolers and its singular inability to provide young women the means by which to "negotiate their interactions with the larger society vis-a-vis sex and sexuality." Nor will I go into any great depth on the feminist movement's turning "reproductive choice" into a sacrament of infanticide, except to say that every child that has been murdered in utero - all 42 million of them between 1973 and 2002, with approximately 1.2 million more every year since - represents a concession to the false idol of convenience at the expense of the innocent unborn child.

Instead, let's extend the idea of feminist reproductive convenience to its [il]logical conclusion, and examine the effects of abortion on subsequent child abuse. Doubtless, the very idea that a woman can consider herself "pro-choice" and "pro-child" - as much was one of the arguments for legalized abortion in that abortion would lead to fewer "unwanted" children who might be subject to abuse - stands logic in its head, suggesting that it is better to kill children than beat them. To be sure, available statistics do not support the pro-choice/pro-child nexus; according to the Elliot Institute, there was a 330 percent increase in reported cases of child abuse between 1976 and 1987.

Moreover, mothers remain the greatest threat to their own children vis-a-vis child fatalities due to abuse. Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inform us that for 2005, mothers - acting alone or in concert with the child's father or with another person(s) - were responsible for 59.2 percent of the estimated 1,460 child murders that year. To be sure, the availability of legal abortion has not decreased the rates of abuse.

More significantly, there is a body of data suggesting a strong correlation between abortion and subsequent child abuse. A study entitled "Induced Abortion and Child-Directed Aggression Among Mothers of Maltreated Children," presented in the Internet Journal of Pediatrics and Neonatology suggests that "abortion history was associated with more frequent maternal slapping, hitting, kicking or biting, beating, and use of physical punishment in general."

This is a somewhat intuitive conclusion, in as much as the rates of child fatalities by race closely correlate with the percentages of abortions by race. According to a 2002 study underwritten by the Guttmacher Institute, "[o]f women obtaining abortions, 41% were non-Hispanic white, 32% were non-Hispanic black and 20% were Hispanic." Recent HHS data indicates that in 2005, 44.3 percent of child fatality victims were white, 26.0 percent were African American and 19.3 percent were Hispanic.

More to come...