Lauren-Leader Chivee is an "Independent Senior Advisor" at Deloitte and co-founder and CEO of "All In Together." She may have an excuse but not so Carrie Sheffield, who writes
“There’s no one answer to solve this,” said Leader-Chivée, author of Crossing the Thinnest Line, and co-founder and CEO of All In Together, during a recent conversation at Salon Talks. “I do think that one of the lessons of this election and one of the lessons of basically every time liberal feminism in a sense has lost in a big way — and liberal feminism did lose in a big way in this election, and it lost in a big way in the late 70s with the ERA — it is often because we — and I say we because I am one of them — underestimate the power and the passion and the conviction of conservative women who view the feminist agenda as excluding them” added Leader-Chivée. “I think there were a lot of women in this election who were . . . not voting for Donald Trump, but who were voting against Hillary Clinton on the abortion issue as one very core, moral question for them. And does that mean we all are gonna ever agree? No. But I do think the future of a whole bunch of other issues that are not abortion. . .rest on our ability to find some common ground”, she concluded.
One commenter remarked "Why is the left always supposed to cede ground to the right? What, am I in charge or something? My right to choose is the one being systematically decimated in policy. I'm fighting for what I think is right just the same as anyone else. What is the purpose of joining together *as women* if half of the coalition is in favor of removal of basic rights for the group?"
Why, indeed. But although the left is typically expected to be the adult in the room, it is particularly required of pro-choice advocates. Even neoconservative, never Trumper David Frum, in the otherwise persuasive "What Effective Protest Could Look Like," argues "if Planned Parenthood is on the stage, pro-life women should be there, too."
Frum's comment reflects the misunderstanding of Ms. Chivee and Ms. Sheffield that forced-birth advocates are "pro-life." Not only have they rarely supported efforts to help fetuses after birth, but they have increasingly been determined to shut down Planned Parenthood, whose efforts on the part of women's health and contraception have decreased unwanted births, hence abortions, more than the "pro-life" community ever has.
This effort to find "common ground," however, may start a whole new trend. Perhaps we can look forward to supporters of the Affordable Care Act inviting to their protests indivduals upset that people have gained health insurance through Obamacare. Individuals demanding a thorough, independent investigation of alleged ties of the Trump campaign to Russia can welcome people arguing that Barack Obama himself wiretapped Donald Trump. Gay rights advocates can stand side-by-side with folks terrified at the idea of a transsexual who identifies as a woman using the womens' bathroom. Immigrant rights protests might include advocates of mass deportation. And gun-safety demonstrations can include gun-toting Second Amendment absolutists.
There is a little bit of ad hominem to the criticism of Sheffield and Chivee as "upper-class Beltway and Wall Street gals" who "have no clue whatsoever, apparently, what anti-choice people are mostly like" and wnat "a smiling, smarmy, 'nice girl feminism.'" A little. A very little.
"You give yourself away," one comment reads, as "anti-feminist as soon as you use the phrase 'pro-life.'" The anti-choice movement generally gives itself away when it labels abortion as "murder." Oblivious to facts or detail, activists don't claim that abortion is "killing'- a debatable proposition- but that it is murder, which it most assuredly is not.
Anti-choice advocates, employing the loaded, inaccurate term "murder" and disregarding science, will not compromise. Further, denying a basic human right to women, they may be many things, but "feminist" is not among them.
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