Intimidation & hate-crime at Ealing

For the past 22 years a quiet pro-life vigil has taken place outside the Marie Stopes abortion clinic in Ealing, a vigil which, until the past couple of years went unnoticed. The police have been aware of the vigil since its inception and in 22 years there has not been a single arrest or charge laid against any of those attending.

What happens at this vigil is the usual type of thing – pro-life groups stand on the other side of the green, across the pavement from the clinic, praying for all inside, the pregnant women, their unborn children along with the staff themselves.

Pro-choice feminist protesters largely ignored what was going on in the quiet suburbs of Ealing largely because of its location. Ealing isn’t as easy to travel to as Bedford Square in central London, where up until 2013, BPAS operated a clinic which was previously the flashpoint in the abortion culture wars.

In fact the location of the Ealing clinic is fairly typical. Like the Marie Stopes facility in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, it is on the outskirts of London, in a picturesque converted suburban building with a discreet plaque, designed to look very attractive from the outside, blend in with the local community and distract from the horror within. Here’s a video of 40 Days for Life director Robert Colquhoun outlining the Christian history of the building.

Abortion Ambulance 5 EMS 09 03 2013 — An ambulance attending a medical emergency at Marie Stopes Ealing, a common sight

When I look back on my own experience of abortion, one of the many surreal moments was sitting in a beautiful high-ceiling room complete with ornate coving, elegant light-fittings and all-round exquisite decor while partaking of a selection of delicious sandwiches from a local delicatessan, laid on for women who had just taken the first of two doses of pills to bring about an abortion. It felt bizarre sitting there with a group of women all of whom were studiously avoiding eye-contact with each other or alternatively making superficial conversation like a scene from a period drama, while we were all there for the same reason. It’s one of the aspects which still haunts me. I sat there, in terribly salubrious surroundings, stuffing my face with cucumber sandwiches to alleviate the boredom and unease during the prescribed waiting time, while inside me the child was being slowly poisoned to death.

Marie Stopes had warned us in the literature that protestors may be outside both the central London clinic that I attended for the initial consultation and also the one in Buckhurst Hill, but there wasn’t a protestor to be seen, much to my chagrin. I’ve written about this before, but inside, I was aching for a fight and for someone, somewhere, to challenge me.

Despite the fact that the Good Counsel Network have been conducting vigil clinics for 20 years in the UK, (and other groups for longer) it was only since the arrival of 40DaysforLife in the UK, in 2011, that suddenly clinic vigils became an issue and burst into public consciousness, because clearly the abortion clinics don’t like them very much and they are able to swiftly harness and tap into the support of both pro-choice MPs and mainstream media.

The tactics of those who attend the vigils have never altered. Contrary to popular myth, they do not block the entrances of clinics, they do not follow women down the street, they don’t video women and they certainly don’t shout abuse at them. They stand quietly, a respectful distance away, carrying signs with offers of help and praying. One counselor stands slightly nearer offering passers-by a leaflet.

Ealing pro-lifers — Standing a respectful distance away from the Ealing, no blocking of entrances and no banners, just prayer

Groups such as the Good Counsel Network and 40 Days for Life often get conflated with Abort 67, who display large banners of aborted foetuses outside clinics. Abort 67’s focus is not about prayer, but educating the public to the realities of abortion and they don’t just stand outside clinics but also in other public places, such as Speakers Corner in Hyde Park or outside the Department of Health.

In the age where smartphones are ubiquitous and where the abortion clinics have stationed cameras outside their facilities, not a shred of pictorial or video evidence has ever emerged to support the smears of harassment or intimidation by pro-life groups that do the rounds on social media. Andy Stephenson, the leader of Abort 67 was prosecuted, but the case collapsed. What Abort 67 do have, is cameras around their necks, strapped to their chests, to protect themselves against allegations of harassment and intimidation. So far the only footage to emerge is of members of the public challenging and threatening them, to the great acclaim of the public.

So anyway, back to Ealing where the pro-life vigil has taken place without incident for the past 22 years. The pro-lifers turn up every day, pray, give out leaflets, offer support and go home. Enraged by this, a group of pro-choice women calling themselves Sister Supporter have decided to pitch up every Saturday and put in a counter protest. They have been joined on occasion by Rupa Huq, the local MP for Ealing, who has decided to join this feminist cause celebre.

rupa huq pro-choice demo — Ealing MP Rupa Huq participating in a pro-choice demo in Ealing

Pro-Lifers, including Ms Huq’s own constituents have invited her many times to engage with the women, many of whom are immigrants or from ethnic minorities and who, as a result of the help and support given by the pro-life groups, have chosen not to abort their babies. These are pregnant women who approached the pro-lifers wary of their claims that they would really be able to help and found themselves given significant financial and other practical assistance for as long they needed it. Women who did not qualify for any assistance or who would be presented by a bill by the NHS if they approached them for maternity care. In fact the only ‘choice’ that they were being given, was that of a free abortion. These are women are of all faiths and none who feel so empowered by the help that they were offered that they now join in the vigils, complete with infants in puschairs in an attempt to persuade others that there is another way. Ms Huq, has to date, refused to engage.

Pro-lifers accept that they cannot have it both ways. A free and democratic society which affords them the right to ‘protest’ (although they would dispute that their prayer vigils and offers of assistance are in any way a protest), also confers identical rights to those on the pro-choice side of the debate.

But at what stage does this cross a line? Yesterday, a local group, calling themselves “Sister Supporter” posted triumphantly on their Facebook page, that they had disrupted pro-life activities at the nearby Ealing Abbey. The logic behind this being that many of those who attend the pro-life vigils attend Mass at Ealing Abbey. So in the twisted minds of Sister Supporter, this makes everyone who attends church there, accountable and a potential target for punitive action. The old guilt by association fallacy.

Sister Supporter gleefully reported that they stood on the doorstep of Ealing Abbey, with the deliberate intent of intimidating church-goers, in order that they might experience how it feels. Despite the fact that those on a pro-life vigil, stand on the other side of the green across the pavement and do not block the doorway of the abortion clinic or obstruct anyone from entering or leaving. They then attacked church attenders for ‘sneakily’ using the rear entrance in order to avoid them.

Screen Shot 2017-04-10 at 00.52.01

Not content with their acknowledged intimidation of people attending church, Sister Supporter said that they weren’t going to let the people leave ‘without a fight’. A religious pro-life procession was leaving the church, so this group ‘sprinted in front of them’, blocking the huge icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary being peacefully processed around the streets, with aggressive pro-choice and anti-Catholic inflammatory placards.

Sister Supporter blocking parade — Sister Supporter’s photo on their public Facebook page, blocking the religious parade, conducted by members of Ealing Abbey (see monk in the background)

Judging from the photos, only a handful of protestors were present at this stage, compared to those who blockaded the church and later stood outside the clinic adjacent to the pro-life vigil, but here we have a group of people who, by their own admission were out to ‘intimidate’ religious believers by way of ‘retribution’. Firstly the aim of those on pro-life vigils is never to intimidate, but secondly, didn’t anyone ever teach these people that two wrongs don’t make a right? One of the pro-life counsellors on the vigil said that last week a ‘Sister Supporter’ tried jumping up and down in front of her, when she was handing a leaflet to a woman, admitting that her conduct amounted to harassment. “Yes, it is harassment” she cried, “now you know what it feels like!”

anti harassment — Except when it comes to Catholics trying to have a peaceful religious procession.

Also, how is expressly setting out to intimidate and blockade a group of people on account of their religious beliefs, not a hate crime or at the very least, a breach of the Public Order Act? How is this any different to those who would nail a slice of bacon to a mosque door? The procession which took place is purely religious procession and organisers tell me that there are no pro-life placards or slogans on display. I do hope that the Metropolitan police take note. Apparently last week, these women screamed Lily Allen’s “F*** You very very much” while people were praying stations of the cross.

pro-life 'march' — Here’s what the procession usually looks like, minus the ladies in high-vis pink jackets. It is an overtly religious, not political one. Note the presence of a monk and lack of any pro-life slogans.

Other points to note. Sister Supporter claim to have been set up by a ‘concerned local’ in many of their posts and back-stories, however when I attempted to comment on their post, my comments were instantaneously removed, accompanied by the comments that I am a ‘known homophobe who has upset one too many of my friends to be able to be given a platform here’. Which would indicate pro-choice activists, the same ones who organized outside Bedford Square a few years ago and who were befriended by the usual motley gang of trolls, as opposed to an impromptu group of concerned local residents. They are also snowflakes if they can’t cope with a couple of perfectly civil questions or observations.

Screen Shot 2017-04-10 at 01.32.34 — Bless their little cotton socks.

One of the questions I asked was why the comments in the thread used photographs of clinic protests that took place in America, not the UK, to justify their actions. Photographs which were subsequently removed, along with every comment which questioned their protest. Every single photograph I have seen of the Ealing protest depicts people standing a decent and respectable distance away. The imagery which is displayed is not that of aborted foetuses, but consists of 6 A4 laminated posters with images of unborn babies, which Sister Supporter has referred to as being ‘distressing and gross’.

Abortion Ambulance 6 EMS 14 03 2013 — Here’s another photo of an ambulance called out to attend to a medical emergency at Marie Stopes. The A4 laminated photos are in the foreground. The location of the vigil, some distance away (the clinic is behind the ambulance) is also apparent.

Other posts mocked the attire of the pro-life women for wearing ‘long skirts and anoraks’. Shaming women for what they wear doesn’t seem to be very feminist. Unlike the recent anti-Trump demonstrations in which children were actively invited to participate, being exposed to foul language and filthy imagery, Sister Supporter ask that women do not bring their children along to their clinic protests. They don’t want to upset the clients inside. Although one might ask what the presence of children is related to a ‘non-human blob of tissue’ which is supposedly part of a woman’s body? A cynic might note that clients at Marie Stopes are far more likely to be irritated by a group of middle-class women belting out eighties music at the top of their lungs while they are having an abortion, than a few toddlers and children. One regular choice is “Give me all your money, all your hugs and kisses too” . Gallows humour suggests that this is grimly appropriate for a clinic charging about £700 for each woman’s baby they abort.

A regular pro-life attendee at Ealing chuckles recounting that “one Saturday they were supporting women by singing, or rather ‘singing’ half-remembered lyrics of ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘If you like Pina Colada’. The latter was mostly ‘Yes I like Pina Colada, and getting caught in the rain. Yes I like making love at midnight…mumble mumble giggle’. While Dancing Queen was rendered ‘Dancing Queen, young and sweet only 17, ooo yeah, before tapering off into a slightly awkward ‘la la la”. There was also the woman who kept barking ‘she’ll be respecting women when she comes’, to the tune of ‘Coming Round the Mountain’. It’s like watching a drunk uncle do karaoke at a funeral.” Quite. Don’t woman deserve better. It’s no surprise that it’s actually this pink pantomime deterring women from attending Marie Stopes Ealing, (whose staff members egg on and encourage the pro-choice contingent) and why they want pro-lifers banned. Fewer women having an abortion can not be allowed to continue.

Another regular attendee at Ealing reports this. “I have spoken to many ‘Sister Supporters’ outside the clinic. I asked them how they feel about those women for whom abortion is a matter of “no choice”

Some of them refused to believe that such women exist.

One openly mocked the story I told her of two women I know who had not wanted to have the abortion they were seeking and were helped to keep their babies by the GCN and who are mothers of lovely daughters now. She repeated in a sing song voice “and they all lived happily ever after…not”

So much for “pro choice”.

Another one kept interjecting when I was talking to three young Sister Supporters, repeatedly saying “Don’t talk to her, she’s a plant”.

Neither Sister Supporter, nor the clinics appear to be reaching out to women who feel so pressurised that they have no other choice than to abort. Women with no employment rights, no rights to benefits and no rights to obstetric care. These are women who are facing destitution if they have a baby, but whose plight Sister Supporter prefers to ignore and pretend they are invisible.

No doubt these women will be outraged to learn that so far during Lent, 17 (hopefully soon to be 18) woman have decided not to abort their babies and will mutter about manipulation. Women being persuaded to keep their babies rather than aborting them? That’s not the kind of choice which interests them, nor it would seem the general public, who prefer fake news when it comes to persecuted women.

More notes on a scandal

The white-hot incandescent anger induced by the case of the mother whose baby was removed from her by two men, has been replaced by an overwhelming grief and sadness.

Reflecting on the matter further, there are other disturbing factors which have come to light which ought to be brought to wider attention. Unfortunately, the mother is gagged from being able to talk about which is in itself a worrying development. She ought to be able to tell her story, given this is a matter of enormous public interest, without facing jail. Lib Dem candidate for Birmingham Yardley John Hemming, a campaigner for openness in the courts, said:

‘How will it benefit the child to gag the mother? It benefits the court because it stops her from criticising the court.

‘For people to understand and trust the workings of the courts they need to know what is going on.’

Similarly the Tory candidate and former MP for Esher has said that it is a cardinal principle of British justice that it is not just done, but also seen to be done.

One of the many disturbing factors of this case is that the mother was criticised by judge Allison Russell, for her conduct in court. It wasn’t only the need for interruptions to express milk (obviously the judge has never experienced the unpleasantness and pain of spontaneous erruption, full breasts can be extremely painful – talking or thinking about a loved child can often stimulate an embarrassing and uncontrolled reaction) but what piqued the judge was that the mother interrupted the proceedings to make comments or question statements or representations far more often than the men, whose behaviour was cool, controlled and utterly reasonable.

Firstly there seems to be an issue of misogyny in that the mother was attacked for being ‘emotional’, which is hardly surprising when one considers what was at stake for her here. What leapt off the page for me when reading the judgement, was her utter desperation not to be separated from her vulnerable young baby. It was like a mother polar bear attempting to defend and protect her cubs and ward off any attackers, a typical mammalian reaction.

Secondly, unlike the two men, the mother had no lawyer or legal counsel and was representing herself. Had she been properly represented, she would no doubt have been briefed and advised of how to conduct herself and present her case before the judge, to be honest she seems like a client whom the lawyer would advise to keep as quiet as possible, but the judge doesn’t seem to have taken this inequality into account when critiquing the mother. And because the woman represented herself in the family court, the judge noted that she seemed articulate, passionate, engaged, able to account for herself and not therefore any sort of victim.

The law firm representing the two men was Natalie Gamble Associates. The leading experts in the field when it comes to family law, drawing up surrogacy agreements and self-described champions of assisted reproduction and fertility law. Every time a similar surrogacy mess rears its head in the mainstream media, up pops Natalie Gamble claiming how this is proof that commercial surrogacy needs to be ‘regulated’, i.e. legalised in the UK. Unsurprising coming from a firm whose sole source of revenue and profit is derived from surrogacy or fertility issues, but one can hardly claim she’s impartial on the matter.

So here we have a legally unrepresented mother fighting not to lose custody of her child, versus a firm of hot-shot lawyers and the judge negatively contrasts her demeanour with that of the two men in her conclusions about the woman’s character and passes an order banning the woman from ever being able to talk about it.

I am not defending all of the mother’s actions, from what has been reported it seems as though she did her best to frustrate contact with the baby’s biological father, which is unacceptable. If indeed she did tell lies about the male couple, this is not to be commended, however these were the painfully transparent actions of a mother who was desperate and therefore fighting tooth and nail, not to lose her baby daughter.

One of the things that she was attacked for was unnecessary visits to the hospital and doctor when her child did not require treatment. The judge concluded that this was to smear the men, but on one occasion the child was diagnosed as having a viral infection; on another, the baby was found to be fine, but the mother was worried that she may have dehydration, just having come back from an overnight visit, where of course she would have been unable to have been breastfed.

One might draw one’s own reasonable conclusions as to whether these visits were wise or even necessary, but then again, how many of us have taken our children to the GP or even to the hospital because of an urgent niggle, only to be reassured that everything is fine? I know I certainly have and have always been told by the professionals to trust instinct and that’s better to be safe than sorry.

Another issue is that she posted numerous threads on Mumsnet in which she repeatedly changed her story on several occasions, which had then to be removed when the administrators realised that she was going through the courts and the story might hit the press. She had alleged history with regards to telling untruths about her ex-husband in order to frustrate his contact with their children.

So the woman is clearly not a saint; she needs some sort of external involvment, not least counselling in order to ensure that her children are not deprived of the opportunity to build a strong relationship with their father. The same goes with the father of her baby, clearly some sort of intervention needed to be had to ensure that a relationship could develop.

As to whether or not she is guilty of the greatest thought crime of the twenty-first century ‘homophobia’, I’d say this is unlikely given her original friendship with a gay man and agreement to enter into a surrogacy arrangement. It’s difficult to ascertain precisely what happened, but it seems as though initially she had contributed a large sum of her own money into the deposit on a house where all three of them were going to live together and she would take a role in the raising of the child. There were even emails about the baby sleeping in the mother’s room with her in a cot. But then something happened and the relationship, especially with the father’s partner, soured.

It does then cast the judge’s decision that the baby should go the the male couple, because that is where she was always intended to be, her ‘natural family’, into doubt.

The mother’s registering of the birth, choosing a name for the baby and baptising the child are all things which she was legally entitled to do as the baby’s mother.

The male couple obviously had their legal options lined up, claiming that they were being utterly reasonable and had been forced into taking action, despite the fact the mother had broken no laws. Another horrific facet of this sorry tale is how the mother was forced to have regular meetings with a lactation midwife in order to plan how she could stop breastfeeding by the time the baby had reached 9 months, with the aim that the baby could commence overnight visits.

The problem with this, as any breastfeeding mother knows, is that with demand-led feeding it goes on for as long as both the baby asks it and the mother is content to feed. Breastfeeding is entirely between mother and child; though the child is non-verbal they are still able to communicate their need for the breast to their mother. It is absolutely not for anyone, let alone state agents to determine how long a mother ought to be feeding, in order that her baby may be prepared for handover and get used to sleeping alone in strange unfamiliar surroundings without the scent or comforting presence of their mother.

I was reminded of the dreadful cases of pregnant women in Nigeria or other Islamic countries, sentenced to death for alleged adultery with the execution stayed until the child has been weaned from the breast. No wonder the mother was as keen to delay taking the child off the breast for as long as possible; I know I would too, and equally I would not let my children stay overnight at anyone else’s house until they were at least beyond the age of 3. This is exactly what is advocated by child psychologists; to split their time between two houses and sets of parents is confusing and unsettling for children.

What leaps off the page is, is a mother desperate enough to go to silly lengths to keep her baby and whose fear of having her child removed led her to some rash actions, which ultimately counted against her.

The story seems to have touched several personal nerves for me, perhaps because I adopt similar parenting styles so critiqued by the judge and used as justification for removal of the child. I breastfeed, I wear my babies in a sling, I co-sleep, I am predominantly a stay-at-home mother. Over the years I too have been accused of being an unfit parent on the grounds of projected moral deficiency, I’ve had trolls and stalkers attempt to tell me that I am not fit to raise my children and am causing them harm, either by neglect (thanks to being able to type quickly and turn out long considered blogposts ) or thanks to my religious and social beliefs. I too, have been branded harmful and the welfare of my children been called into question by random internet strangers. It isn’t too hard to envisage a socially conservative woman finding herself at the centre of similar proceedings, with her children deemed to be ‘at risk’ from homophobia or indoctrination, if her parents do not hold liberal conformist views.

And there’s one final and as yet undiscussed aspect to this whole sorry mess. We are constantly informed that women need more representation in politics, in business and on the judiciary. Here we see a female judge who has chosen to pursue a career instead of a family attacking and unnecessarily removing the child from the care of a woman, because she is completely unable to empathise with another woman, or understand the rationale behind her mothering. She has imposed her own vision of what motherhood ought to look like (one completely devoid of evidence) onto another woman and punished her and her child, for falling short. Is this really the sort of female representation that we should be aspiring towards?

It is clear that no harm was being caused to the baby. It was arbitrarily decided that the baby girl would fare better in the care of two men based on the subjective negative impression that the judge formed of the woman, for being ‘emotional’, too involved, too ‘homophobic’ and that the baby would have a better, healthier and more balanced future with two men.

It’s an awful mess and while I want to scream at the injustice of it all, I also want to weep for a little child, removed from the comfort, warmth and welcome of her mother’s breast and bed and instead placed into, no doubt a beautifully attractive and immaculate wooden cot, in a room all of her own, in a house without a woman.

Feminists wake up

I’ve written about this case at length on a piece pending publication on Conservative Woman, so I’ll keep my comments here brief. Basically a woman who conceived her own child on behalf of two gay men, one of whom was her friend, reneged on the agreement and decided to keep her own child.

The child has now been removed from the mother at around the age of 15 months and handed into the care of the two men to raise. The judge, a dour childless old boot by the name of Allison Russell, has displayed zero insight into the benefits for mother and baby alike, along with a complete lack of understanding of the logistics and difficulties of expressing milk.

She has decided that the mother’s desire to breastfeed was manipulative. designed to keep the baby away from their father and thus ‘harmful’ and attacked the mother in the judgement for wearing a baby in a sling, for co-sleeping and crucially for having no plans to return to work.

A fifteen month infant is not capable of speech, may not even be walking, cannot feed itself without help and yet, the judge has decided, it needs to learn to be independent and not solely reliant on the comfort of its mother. Wake up baby, it’s time to face the big wide world, you need to learn your place is to fulfil the needs and demands of adults and develop at a timetable to suit them, not your own. 15 months? It’s time you were spending 40 hours a week in a noisy room full of strange children and busy adults instead of enjoying the reassuring comfort and routine of home. Your mother has no business indulging you. She ought to be ought working to pay for your upkeep.

Over the weekend, in a moment that melted the world’s hearts, Prince William took the 21 month old baby George to visit his newborn sister, and setting down the child to walk on the pavement, George instantly signalled his displeasure and reached up his pudgy arms for his dad to give him a carry. According to Judge Russell, His Royal Highness is doing it all wrong, a child’s need for closeness with a parent is all about the fact that the parent has enmeshed the child in an inward looking environment which is all about serving the adult’s needs. If the judge is to be believed, breastfeeding, baby-carrying, co-sleeping, hey all that shebang is mere parental selfishness, designed to serve their neediness, requiring absolutely no self-sacrifice and of being no possible benefit to the child, whatever the evidence to the contrary.

Let’s be clear here. A woman has been attacked and vilified for fulfilling innate maternal desires. No good will has been imputed towards her, it is claimed that her breastfeeding is nothing but self-interested manipulation and the way she was raising her child does not meet with the approval of a childless judge. Even her need to take frequent breaks for expressing milk was attacked, the judge not understanding that the human female is not the equivalent of a dairy cow. Expressing even the tiniest bit of milk can take a long time for many women, and it is recommended that in order to stimulate production a woman is calm, comfortable and relaxed, i.e. not clock-watching under pressure in the lavatory of public courtroom, where the fate of one’s child is in the balance. Neither did the judge understand that the woman’s inability to express milk when her child was solely breastfeeding, was outside of her control. The milk didn’t suddenly ‘magically’ appear when the child began weaning, the mother was not withholding her ability, but simply that she had excess supply. Child starts solid food, takes less milk, the body takes time to catch up and will therefore produce a surplus. It’s not rocket science.

Whatever the behaviour of the woman, which might well have left a lot to be desired, it seems clear that she was prepared to go to desperate measures to keep her baby. Of course the child had a right to contact with her father, however, as leading child psychologist Penelope Leach notes, under the age of 4, children ought not to have sleepovers away from their main care-giver, the constant to-ing and fro-ing is bad for their psychological development, causing instability and anxiety. Of course a baby who has been exclusively breastfed and is used to sleeping with the comfort of her mother is going to be distressed by a night away in the solitary confinement of a cot in the house of two strange, if benign men.

This woman has had her child removed (and one cannot begin to image the turmoil, trauma and anxiety experienced by the baby) because she refused to parent her in order to facilitate the desires and needs of two men.

This is case which cries out to high heaven for justice. The feminists ought to be all over this like a cheap suit. Where is this woman’s autonomy, why is her mothering under attack when its acknowledged that the child is at no risk of harm? Heck, even heroin-addicted mothers are allowed to parent their babies under supervision. Since when does breastfeeding and if the judge is to believed, casting aspersions about the father’s behaviour in attempt to keep the child, justify the removal. When you look at the allegations made by the mother, though unpleasant, they aren’t homophobic, rather they raise questions about the nature of the relationship between the two men and whether it was a suitable environment for a child. It seems to have been the judge who drew the correlation between what the woman was alleging about this couple and deciding it implicitly applied to every gay couple.

Removing a child for the supposed moral deficiency of the mother, is precisely the outdated attitude displayed by the mother-and-baby institutions of yesteryear. Catholics continue to be attacked by those supporting same-sex parenting for the way some religious sisters behaved in giving away their babies to richer, more stable couples and not allowing the child to bond with the mother, which caused years of heartbreak for so many and yet this is exactly what is being advocated here. “How dare you bond with a baby which doesn’t belong to you and which you have no right to parent, even if you have given birth to her.”

Commercial surrogacy is still illegal in the UK – why on earth are the courts attempting to accommodate this. Surely a better message would have been to allow the mother to keep her child, which would have been in both of their best interests, with frequent contact, ordered for the father?

When are the feminists going to wake up to the fact that just because men are gay, it doesn’t make them any the less capable of using women as exploitable objects to serve their own gratification, than straight ones. The exploitation may not be sexual, but expecting women to be passive breeders, grateful for the cash they receive in return for relinquishing their bodily autonomy and motherhood and attacking them if they do not fulfil the demands of the contract to the letter, is every bit as abusive and harmful. This is the inevitable consequence of gender blurring and claiming that the roles of mother and father are interchangeable. Women and babies are hurt, treated as consumer goods to be traded for the whims of men and backed up by the highest court in the land.

Stop Gendercide in the UK

In 2012, an investigation by the Telegraph uncovered several abortion clinics where doctors were prepared to carry out abortions for women who had discovered that they were carrying a baby girl.

Opinion appears to be divided on whether or not this practice is actually illegal in the UK, back in February the health minister Lord Howe, said guidance would be sent to all abortion clinics warning them that the practice of sex-selective abortion is illegal, however both the BMA and BPAS (the UK’s leading abortion provider) dispute this interpretation of the law, the BMA claiming that there could be mental health grounds and BPAS believing that the law is silent on the matter. This is a view backed up by Neil Addison, Catholic barrister and director of the Thomas More Legal Centre.

In order to clarify the situation, a cross-party group of MPs, led by Fiona Bruce, are putting forward a Ten Minute Rule Bill on 4 November. The Abortion (Sex-Selective Bill) would not only remove all doubt about the legality of gender-selective abortion, but would also allow the Government to find a way to offer help to women who are seeking gender-selective abortions.

As the interview above demonstrates (click on the picture for the link) gender-selective abortion is an issue faced by many women in the UK, which is often under-reported. It is by no means a callous decision, women feel that they have little other choice when faced by cultural pressure and often domestic violence. Criminalising the practice would send a firm signal that discrimination and violence against women and girls is not to be tolerated. The anonymous interviewee, “Asher” still shows signs of trauma; she clearly isn’t reconciled with her allegedly free choice, 18 years later. This is not the empowered decision sold by the feminists, but a woman accepting and validating patriarchal attitudes, having witnessed first-hand how much worse life is for girls in some communities. Women, especially feminists ought to be rolling up their sleeves and fighting the injustice that demands baby girls are treated as lesser human beings. Not only that, but most women who undergo sex-selective abortion are forced to endure an additional horror of a late-stage abortion entailing giving birth to a deceased baby, as scan techniques identifying the gender are not effective until around 16 weeks at the earliest.

When defending late-stage abortions feminists claim that the nature of them means that it is only the very desperate who seek them. Expecting a child of a particular sex should not put one in a desperate situation in any progressive society.

A recent investigation commissioned by the Independent in January 2014, estimated that as many as 4,700 girls could be missing from the 2011 Census data, but according to Rani Bilkhu, spokeswoman for the Stop Gendercide campaign and founder of women’s rights organisation Jeena International, this figure is conservative.

I’d love to see white feminists and outspoken proponents of abortion right up til birth, Kate Smurthwaite and Sarah Ditum attempt to defend this situation, telling Asian women that it’s quite alright for them to abort their baby girls to satisfy cultural and familial male expectations.

Every woman should be allowed to have a daughter. While this is predominantly a problem which affects a minority culture in this country (hence the silence) gender selective abortion is not confined to Asian communities. Anecdotally I’ve come across a few white women who have aborted children in order to achieve family ‘balance’.

I am currently 19 weeks and 6 days pregnant with our fifth child, being mother to 4 beautiful girls. Over the last week the baby has begun to really make their presence felt, I regularly feel the baby moving about inside, kicking or reacting strongly to certain stimuli.

On Tuesday I have the 20 week scan in which we definitely intend to discover the sex of the baby. Many many people have asked or assumed that we have deliberately conceived this baby in order to ‘try for a boy’. This must be our last child, for a whole host of reasons. Many people have throughout the course of my pregnancies expressed disappointment on behalf of my husband that I am yet to produce a male. I even had a parishioner once reduce me to tears when I hobbled into the Easter vigil a few hours post hospital discharge with a newborn 4 day old girl who said “oh no, how disappointing, not another girl, you’ll have to try again and give him his boy”!

If I were to discover this baby is a girl, legally I’d have another 4 weeks in which to abort the baby with no questions asked. Is this what it means to be an unborn child in 21st Century Britain? In order to survive and be awarded basic human rights, you must be, amongst other things, of the correct gender?

To support the bill please lobby your MP, via stop gendercide and spread the word on FaceBook and social media.

Female infallibility

One example of female decision making in pregnancy — One example of female decision-making in pregnancy

Imagine if I rocked up to the doctor and said look “I’m really unhappy with the fact that after having four babies, I’ve got a few flabby bits, my breasts have lost some of their youthful perkiness and so I need you to refer me to a cosmetic surgeon as soon as possible as I just can’t cope with the body that I’ve got”.

Their response would register somewhere on the scale between amusement and exasperation, and even if I professed a suicidal intent or poor quality of life due to dissatisfaction with my post-childbirth figure, most likely they would advise other measures such as diet and exercise alongside psychological counselling to get to the root of the problem. The same would apply in the case of serious body or gender dysmorphia; no doctor would refer a patient for an amputation as an instant salve for a distorted body image or would straightaway prescribe hormonal treatment for a woman who believed she should have been born a male.

But what if in any of these cases the woman wailed “but I’m a woman, it’s my body and I know my body and healthcare needs better than you and your years of medical training. I know that I need this procedure now and the NHS needs to provide me with it”? The answer would still be a resounding no, although patient intuition, rationale and desires should never be excluded when forming a clinical judgement, the role of the doctor or medic should be to objectively examine the facts of the case and use their medical expertise and experience to determine the appropriate outcome, which will at times be at odds with what the patient was hoping for.

Factors such as gender, sexuality or race are only ever considerations, never the determining factor. You can’t just go to the doctor with a set of expectations which you believe should be met on the basis of your sex.

Yet this is precisely what BPAS, one of the UK’s largest abortion providers are aiming for with their ‘trust women’ campaign, expounded here by Clare Murphy one of their directors, which has the express purpose of formally liberalising the abortion law. When a decision involves fertility and reproduction, then the woman’s gender should take precedence in the decision, regardless of whether or not she may be misinformed in some way, or whether or not her decision is a sensible or even moral one.

The argument is slickly framed in the usual compassionate terms about women getting the care that they need and deserve and is superficially reasonable and appealing – a woman should be able to decide the course of action that is right for her, but the massive elephant in the room, is the unborn baby who as ever, is conspicuous by their absence.

If the decisions about reproduction didn’t involve an unborn child, no reasonable person would attempt to dictate to a woman what she should do with her body (although they could make a reasonable case as to whether or not the NHS ought to fund such decisions), but there is not simply one body involved in the case of pregnancy.

The simple fact of the matter is that an unborn child is not a part of the woman’s body, it has an entirely separate genetic code, often a separate blood type or race and crucially it is possible for a foetus to die while a mother lives and vice versa. This would not be possible if the mother and baby were one and the same. Even the late atheist Christopher Hitchens who was himself an abortion advocate admitted that embryology conceded morality, stating that an ‘uborn child, even when used in a politicized manner, is a material reality’.

The existence of an unborn child undermines the entire crux of this argument which is wholly centred around a woman’s body. ‘Trust me to make the decision as to whether or not to kill my unborn baby, because I’m a woman.’

I’d love to see how a similar campaign waged by males would play out. “Trust me as to whether or not I want to pay child support, or form a relationship with my child, I’m a male and therefore best placed to know whether or not I want to be a father. Only men can determine the extent to which they should be involved in their children’s lives”.

Perhaps the most disingenuous and ironic aspect of the campaign is the attempt to conflate decisions about childbirth with abortion when the aims and outcomes of both procedures are in direct contravention of each other. Murphy convincingly argues that “women should have access to unbiased, evidenced-based information about all their options, delivered in a way that seeks to inform, but not persuade a woman with all modes of delivery on the table”.

It sounds all very wonderful and idealistic, but the reality is that childbirth is a messy, unpredictable business with the potential for things to go disastrously wrong and therefore while women should be informed of their options, there are instances where certain scenarios should be off the table, especially when we are talking about a taxpayer-funded health care system and taking into account that there are two lives at stake.

When it comes to giving birth, it is important that a woman is in as comfortable and stress-free environment as possible, but the choice of surroundings or pain relief should never endanger her safety or that of her unborn baby. Unusually perhaps for a woman who has never managed to give birth without direct medical intervention, I am a big advocate of home births and natural births where at all possible and wary of the over-medicalisation of childbirth, which in my case has led to a cascade of cesarean sections.

But when, as in my case, a midwifery supervisor tells you that if you were to give birth at home, it’s likely that you would bleed to death due to a previous history of hemorrhage, and that she cannot sanction it, is that unbiased and not persuasive? Does that really leave all options on the table? What about when an obstetrician informs you that your baby is presenting in a transverse or oblique position and cannot therefore be born naturally without killing you both?

As every mother knows, you can do all the reading you like, be as informed as possible, but when it comes to childbirth you need to be flexible enough to rip up that treasured dream of floating in a pool of candlelit water and do whatever is necessary to get the child out as safely as possible.

If abortion is to be compared with birth, then the doctor’s assessment of best interests is paramount. The idea that a woman’s gender makes her judgement and decisions unimpeachable is infantalising dangerous baloney, which does women no favours whatsoever. Since when did being a women render one’s medical and moral judgement infallible? Where is the evidence demonstrating that being in possession of specific set of reproductive organs improves one’s critical thinking or decision making skills?

If it’s true that we might not always like or approve of certain reproductive decisions, whether childbirth or abortion related, then it is certainly legitimate to question whether or not the NHS funded by the taxpayer, ought to encourage and endorse them. We know for example, that all other things being equal, that a cesarean section is a much riskier, more complicated and costlier method of delivery than normal childbirth. An elective c-section ought not to be offered as a standard choice for women, unless there are compelling medical reasons which would make a natural delivery unsafe. Equally it is not the general public who should challenge a woman’s decision to home-deliver a complicated pregnancy, as Clare Murphy suggests, but rather her medical team.

The same goes with abortions. In a staggering admission, this director of BPAS says that there are women who might have abortions for reasons which are not quite good enough, but those decisions must still be respected, because it is the woman who has to bear the consequences of those choices. So it’s alright to stand on the sidelines and watch a woman take a disastrous decision because any negative repercussions and resulting suffering is hers alone? She’ll have to cope with it if it all goes wrong and we should make no attempt to interfere, in the same way that presumably we should not attempt to dissuade people from setting off on other destructive courses of actions. All that matters in life is that people have come to their own decisions about their bodies, even if they are bad ones?

In short then, a woman can abort a perfectly healthy baby until 24 weeks on whatever grounds she likes. such as the gender of the baby, or that she’s had an unexpected holiday invite, she wants to appear on the television or even because to continue with the pregnancy puts her at fear of violence or reprisals from her partner or family. A woman’s decision must always be trusted, supported, encouraged and paid for, even if it is born of dubious motives or self-interest. A woman aborting her healthy twins at 23 weeks whom she’d previously decided to keep, because of family pressures, is the price we have to pay?

Even if the decision is blatantly flawed, unjust and terminates the life of another for no good reason (not that there ever can be a good reason to kill), society must turn a blind eye for the greater good of the (female) cause. Now where else have we seen this logic employed? It all sounds eerily familiar.

Can you be a good Catholic working mum?

I’ve written a lot about the government’s treatment of stay-at-home mothers of late. This weekend’s Universe column blasted George Osborne’s budget for not treating single-income families equally and I have also attacked the attitude of feminists such as Cherie Blair along with her hypocrisy.

The attitude displayed towards stay-at-home mothers by society as a whole is damaging and toxic. Patricia Hewitt’s Women and Equality Unit stated in 2004 that there was a real problem with mothers who stayed at home to bring up their children. One of the attitudes that I frequently face is being dismissed as a “Catholic housewife” meaning that my employment status renders me an unsophisticated ignoramus with no relevant life-experience and unable to exercise any sort of critical thinking and judgement, despite the fact that I formerly enjoyed a professional career within investment banking and private equity. When I returned to work (out of sheer necessity as I couldn’t’ afford to pay back my maternity bonus and due to responsibilities such as a mortgage) when my daughter was small, I was still a higher-rate tax payer.

But frankly this is irrelevant. Women should not be treated like lesser human beings, intellectually, socially and most certainly not financially for choosing to stay home and raise their children themselves, regardless of what they did in their former careers.

True equality lies in recognising that by virtue of their sex, women face a different set of choices to men and should be free to choose what is right for them and their family without being penalised in any way. At present women are being shoe-horned into purely masculine way of working which treats children as though they are a barrier to worldly success and happiness which is defined purely in terms of career status, consumer possessions and a certain lifestyle.

Political parties of every flavour are calling for more subsidised and/or available childcare, despite the fact that this is not what women want. When 6 out of 10 working women are saying that even they were able to use childcare more, they still would not want to and in fact want to cut down their hours, this should tell us something, as should the statistic that 37% of mothers, do not actually want to be working at all. According to a recent survey the higher qualified and better paid the woman, the more anxious she is likely to be about not spending time with her children.

And yet family policies are all about putting children in institutional daycare, making it cheaper and more available than before, at huge cost to the taxpayer, when this is in fact not what women want, nor should we desire that women work full-time long hours if they have family commitments. The evidence demonstrates that children who are put in full-time childcare, can in fact be damaged by this.

With all this in mind, for a multitude of reasons (none of which I need to publicly justify), I am currently considering the prospect of returning to work. Does that make me a hypocrite or worse still a bad Catholic mother – modelling a potentially deleterious example?

I’d argue no, because like most families, my choice about whether or not to work is not made purely in a vacuum and neither is it concerned with the ubiquitous second car or foreign holiday. While there may be well some families whose wife chooses to work for what others may perceive to be frivolous lifestyle reasons, to be honest, I see this reflected more in decisions about numbers of children a family choose to have, as opposed to the decision as to whether or not a woman should work.

I posted this at the weekend, which has generated quite a bit of controversy, which posits that whatever option a Catholic mother choses, it does not make her a lesser mother or a worse Catholic. There is an online tendency amongst Catholics to live in our little Catholic bubble where the wife doesn’t work, home-educates her children, all of which are fantastic choices and perhaps look disparagingly or with pity upon those who have made different decisions. There is more than one way to be a good Catholic mother.

There is a sentiment that mothers who work should be pitied because that is sub-optimal and potentially damaging for their children. A choice to work needs empirical evidence to substantiate that it is a good. The problem is that no empirical evidence exists as to the positives and negatives of working mothers, because of the wide spectrum of families and circumstances out there.

We shouldn’t assume that mothers who work, whether part-time or full-time are in some way damaging their families or are doing so for less than virtuous reasons. While one can argue that families should downsize their expectations and living standards, for so many this is simply not possible. It is not about the second car or the holiday or even the nice postcode but keeping a roof over their heads.

If a mother decides to continue working so that she doesn’t need to move her family to a sink estate, into a cramped flat or even a caravan to enable her to look after them full-time, that does not mean her decision is without sacrifice. If a family will be made unhappy by difficult surroundings, whether that be lack of space or living in fear in an area of high crime, one can easily see how it would be better for her to work. Equally if a husband feels psychologically over-burdened by the responsibility of being the only wage earner, and every single month is a desperate struggle, only ever being one unexpected bill away from financial disaster or the bailiffs, then perhaps it might be better were the mother to do some work and give them some wiggle room.

In those sorts of circumstances, work can be a definite good and not even necessarily a least worst option. With housing prices and rents at historically high levels, predicated around two income families, something which is now supported by government policy, I would argue that most families do have little choice. Our family, for example, would have no hope of being able to afford anything more than a 1 bedroom flat in Brighton and Hove. Where do you start if you are living on a low or minimum wage?

But what if you are married to an uber-rich banker or some-such, technically a stay at home mother and spend all day at the local tennis club and put your children in their creche facility while you swim and chat with your friends, or pay a nanny or au-pair to do the lion’s share of looking after them while you pursue your own interests? Does that automatically make you a better, holier or more Catholic mother, than someone who works, because you stay at home with them?

What about if you don’t need to work, but choose to do so nonetheless, even if your work is unpaid for a charity in order to keep your grey matter going and help other people and give you a few hours break? Is arranging care for your children two days a week so you can do a stint in the local St Vincent de Paul shop, or do a bit of parish admin or go and visit the sick or elderly, or any sort of charitable work, less than desirable?

What if you are a GP or midwife and want to keep your professional qualification current, to give you the option to continue to work when the children are back at school? Or because you enjoy your job and find it fulfilling to continue on a part-time basis. Isn’t it better that you do this rather than stay at home with gritted teeth building up a fat wedge of resentment and chip on your shoulder which could also affect your family life and relationships, not to mention your spiritual life?

Also, while we can acknowledge that full-time daycare can be harmful, that is an entirely different proposition to saying that working mothers are bad, harmful or un-Catholic. Not everybody uses nurseries, while there is a disturbing push to get all daycare formalised and state-regulated, actually many forms of unregulated care, such as that provided by grandparents, is not necessarily bad or harmful.

I’ll declare an interest here. When I was working full-time my parents did a lot of childcare, which was excellent. My daughter had a combination of nursery and informal care. By the time she started school at the age of 4, she had the reading age of a 6 year old. Her personal development was in no way stunted and we enjoy a close loving relationship, as we always have.

All my children have been breastfed for over a year which I would argue is key in terms of securing an attachment, yet when two of them were babies they were in a nursery part-time from the age of 10 months whilst I attempted to study for a degree. I used to pop in several times a day between lectures to play with them and breastfeed. Only my youngest child has not experienced any form of childcare. We tend to think of childcare consisting of putting young babies in nurseries, but there are many other beneficial permutations. Childcare can encompass everything from your grandmother picking up your children from school or your friend looking after your children with theirs as a favour during the holidays on a quid pro quo basis. I know a couple who both work full time without any of their young children needing formalised state childcare, basically they work in shifts.

The point I am making here is that general statements about the merits of putting children in formal daycare, for long hours 5 days a week, do not apply to all working mothers and all situations. Sometimes a mixture of care can be every bit as beneficial for children and it certainly was for mine, especially when I was heavily pregnant with my third child in 3 years, lived in a small maisonette with an unusable garden in an extremely isolated area with the nearest playground or green space entailing a difficult walk with a double buggy. Going to nursery gave them an opportunity to have structured and or messy play as well as socialise with other children, and use play equipment and facilities that were not on offer at home. They thrived on it and I appreciated having two days where I could get some housework and admin done, as well as my paid writing work, without interruption.

We all wish to baptise and justify our own choices and experiences – we choose to do what we believe is right. Sometimes it’s a passionate, positive choice like home-educating our children, other times it’s simply a case of doing what we need to, to keep our heads above water. Sometimes it’s a case of balancing personal well-being with our wider family needs and working out whether the work we choose to do is of wider benefit to society as a whole.

But we need to move away from this model that the best, holiest and most Catholic way to parent is to be at home 24/7 with the children, offering up the daily drudge and sacrifice, if at times the experience is less than fulfilling. We do have to weigh up the responsibilities of parenthood, just as staying at home can be a holy noble and worthy sacrifice, so can working away from your children and missing out on some of the pleasure and joy of raising them.

Who do we look to in our model of perfect motherhood? Mary. We don’t know much about St Joseph, but it’s fair to assume that in common with other women from that culture she took care of the home and her infant son, while Joseph was the provider. When discussing bible historicity and culture, I always note that God chose that particular place, time and culture for a reason, so we can’t necessarily disregard the fact that it is highly probable that Our Lady did not undertake paid employment which meant that she had to put Christ in someone else’s care for the majority of the time. Was she with him 24/7 or did she occasionally leave him with a neighbour or relative to mind on a regular basis so that she could concentrate on other responsibilities? With the breakdown of extended families and communities, being a stay at home mother is far more lonely and isolated than in previous generations. There frequently isn’t the fallback of the nearby family member or obliging neighbour.

But we do know that Mary was called to make sacrifices by virtue of being the mother of God. Motherhood will invariably entail sacrifices, not least that of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the responsibility of looking after and nurturing children to the best of your ability. The vast majority of women overwhelmingly love their children, they want to spent at least part if not most of the time with them and do what is best.

While supporting stay at home mothers and families, we shouldn’t impose our vision of the ideal upon other families and determine for them what their ideal should be, or the precise nature of their personal sacrifice. There is too much baptising of our own personal choices going on all sides.

Juggling her work as GP together with the demands of her family, did not disqualify St Gianna Molla from sainthood – working did not preclude her from making the ultimate sacrifice or being any less of a mother.

If I decide to work, it will be a positive choice, one based on an appraisal of my family circumstances and no doubt the nature of the role with have a large part to play. The choice whatever that may be, will be a proud, unapologetic one, taken in the best interests of my family and not one that I should be made to feel defensive of or slightly embarrassed by, regardless of whether or not it fits into others’ expectations.

The issue of whether or not women work is not the same as that of abortion, lives are not at stake, although arguably children’s welfare is. If we don’t want the state to encroach into our family lives then we should lead by example and not attempt to interfere in others’ family lives by overt judging or adding another layer of guilt and responsibility upon a woman or family who are prayerfully attempting to discern the best way forward.

If we care about Catholicism shaking off its image as being a religion for misogynists and sexists, seeking to control every aspect of womens’ lives and choices, then we can start by trusting that women who are working are doing the right thing by themselves and their families and save our pity for far more pressing causes.

Escaping the ‘choice feminist’ honey trap

One of the concepts that I have often struggled with when expounding on the subject of pornography is whether or not the female stars are themselves victims. Recently there has been a lot of discourse regarding the topic of sex workers in mainstream media, Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 recently had an illuminating discussion, in which one sex worker passionately, articulately and convincingly argued that she was no victim.

The problem is that mainstream soft-porn such as the ubiquitous 50 shades of grey, and Belle de Jour’s Diary of a Call Girl, has brought the taboo into the mainstream, giving practices which are often seedy, grim, painful and unpleasant, an alluring and glamourous appeal. It is not sufficient to be well-educated or cultured, or professionally successful, ideally we should all be sexual gourmands willing and able to indulge in and expand the flavours of our sexual palate, if we are to be considered true sophisticates.

Catholic culture and theology will naturally eschew and reject such worldly thinking, nonetheless this narrative of women involved in pornography as victims, is a difficult one to unpick when discussing on a secular level. One doesn’t need the reams of emerging data on the dangers of pornography and of porn addiction to believe that pornography is essentially the misuse of another human person, whether that’s the person involved in the making of it, or the person viewing it. Pornography is not only damaging to the individuals associated with it or who choose to use it, but to society as a whole.

Which is why this piece, written by a mainstream feminist is an essential read, as it rejects the entire frame of sexual empowerment, expressing sympathy with someone who is the target of abuse as a result of their sexual activities does not mean that one has to embrace their choices as valid. It rejects the frame of pornography as being an issue of individual choice and validates critique of pornography as being about the manufacture and commodification of sexual desire.

By asking “how does porn – its material production, its normativity, its wide availability, and its ubiquity in pop culture – affect our desires and our capacity for intimacy?” feminists can offer a critique of porn without falling into the honey trap.

Summing up, the author asks

“The issue isn’t whether porn is liberating for her. The issue is: is porn liberating for us?”

Now that’s my kind of feminism and of course it will give fuel to those who would wish to despairingly equate feminism and/or Catholicism with Puritanism, whereas actually both Catholics and feminists would agree that sex is a good and pleasurable thing which should be enjoyed by women and men alike, but we would differ on the appropriate context. The default Catholic position is one of sex positivity, so long as the parameters of sex were described as being heterosexual and within marriage. It’s not that sex per se is harmful, dirty or bad, we accept the sheer power of the thing, which is why we wish to harness the power as a force for good, namely reinforcing intimacy between a married couple and procreation.

But what really struck me about this intelligent piece was that it, perhaps subconsciously rejected individualism and moral relativism and the popular feminist mantra that woman’s choices must automatically be celebrated by virtue of her gender. Female solidarity does not mean that we have to applaud, ostracise, shun or pity women who choose the lucrative career of working in one of Hugh Heffner or Peter Stringfellow’s establishments, but rather that we ask deeper questions about the nature of female flourishing and freedoms and use reason to explain, persuade and convince others of our point of view.

The technique is similar to Catholic humanist apologetics however, feminists will be at an advantage in that they may not have to face the ‘you are an irrational believer in the sky fairy’ schtick, but that they will invariably have to fend off some critique of their appearance, sexual appeal and perceived lack of desire (such as the shameful treatment of Clare Short) demonstrates that sexism is still alive and well. This isn’t the fruits of patriarchy however but the consequences of the sexual revolution which held that every women had not only to be constantly ‘up for it’ but must also conform her appearance to a sexualised male gaze.

For all its coherence nonetheless, I couldn’t help but be frustrated, particularly when I noted that it had been picked up and tweeted, naturally enough, by pro-choice feminist and writer Sarah Ditum. If feminists are able to see the illogical and harmful stance of choice feminism, recognising and accepting that certain individual choices can contribute to and propagate wider harms, why can they not apply this principle to abortion. If they are able to identify the key issue about pornography, what it actually constitutes and signifies, then why are they quite so blind to the nature of abortion? If Naomi Wolfe, a key pro-choice feminist can state that abortion rights activists ought to acknowledge a death involved, then why is mainstream feminism unable to engage with and unpick the harms done to mother and child by abortion. And why are those of us who have been hurt by abortion, or who attempt to highlight the damage caused to womankind as a whole, rejected by the mainstream movement?

Put the Sex Back in Sex Ed

It’s rare I re-blog, but YES YES YES!! Finally a feminist who speaks my language and ‘gets it’.

I give you the divine Camille…

Feminine game changers

BBC Woman’s Hour have launched the 2014 Power List, to identify the top ten women who are changing the way that power operates in today’s society.

No doubt the list will be replete with high achieving professional women and the feminist twitter crusaders, such as Caroline Criado-Perez who successfully campaigned to have the face of Jane Austen put on a banknote and then faced an online backlash of hatred. I’m yet to be convinced that having a woman on a banknote or banishing pink lego is anything more than superficial tinkering, it does nothing to change sexual exploitation of women, for example.

Alice Feinsten, the programme’s editor has said that she is really looking forward to hearing whether our judges think the high-profile whistleblowers and Twitter crusaders that have made the headlines over the past year are forging new rules of engagement in the circles of power.

Emma Barnett, chair of the judging panel has noted that the age of social media means that women no longer need to be successful purely in the boardroom or their professional sphere, basically making enough noise on the internet means that one can become a major game-changer regardless of whether you are a grandmother in your seventies or a politically interested teenager.

In many ways this is great news, it certainly contextualises and explains much of the unprecedented amount of online trolling, personal attack and stalking that comes my way, especially from certain LGBT and pro-choice lobbies, who obviously do perceive me to be something of a threat or potential power-changer and therefore feel the need to neutralise or undermine the challenge with personal smears. Catholics on the internet are making their presence felt and being included in mainstream media as a result. Nonetheless awards such as these, leave me banging my head against the desk in frustration because they are everything that is wrong with modern feminism and far from recognising and celebrating authentic, genuine womanhood, are reinforcing the culture that seeks to undermine femininity.

One of the biggest mistakes that feminism has ever made in its desire to achieve women’s equality, is to judge female success by what women do, or achieve, particularly in the wider world of work, culture and politics, as opposed to who they are. In this quest for secular achievement, motherhood has been denigrated or cast aside as being oppressive as it seemingly prevents women from being in the public sphere where all the important decisions are made.

In terms of vital game-changers, no-one is more important in a young baby and child’s life than their mother and this is one of the reasons why media feminism is arguing itself into irrelevancy because it seeks to sideline the lives and concerns of ordinary women up and down the country, whether or not they are staying at home with the children or juggling a fairly-low grade job with childcare and instead engages in naval-gazing academic discussions of ‘intersectionality’ and labelling other women who haven’t got to grips with the politically-correct terminology or media-speak as ‘transphobes’ or generally ignorant bigots. I asked my sister, a highly intelligent, forty-something, successful director of her own AIM-floated company and mother of four children whether or not she knew what the term ‘cis’ meant or what ‘intersectionality’ was all about. She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language, and noted that most people haven’t got the time to be dealing with such pretentious nonsense. While no-one is suggesting that the needs of the transgender community should be ignored, neither are the specific concerns of a woman who was born a man, top of the list of priorties of your average woman, whether she is a housewife, working woman, someone surviving on benefits or a combination of all the above.

That is not to say that a woman can not be a true woman unless she embraces physical motherhood, the emergence into Catholic consciousness of the phrase ‘feminine genius’ the term first coined by Blessed John Paul II in his groundbreaking apostolic letter, Mulieris Dignitatem about the dignity and vocation of women, 25 years ago, has led to a tendency by some to idealise motherhood as being the principle way of fulfilling Catholic femininity.

If we are wishing to call women to fulfil their potential as created beings of God, then just as not every man is called to marriage or the cloister, neither is every women. Working women are every bit as able to fulfil their vocation to authentic femininity as their housewife sisters or those who by choice or necessity straddle the dual worlds of work and home. The key is in whether or not they harness their ‘feminine genius’ which is predominantly about giving, sharing and serving.

Nonetheless it is a huge mistake for Catholic women to buy into mainstream feminist thinking about smashing the glass ceiling, or being power-changers in the wider world, as promoted by the likes of Woman’s Hour, because this inherently undermines the achievements of women on an individual level. Raising children and changing nappies may not win any accolades or been seen as a worthy achievement, but it is still vital because the world needs healthy and emotionally well-adjusted adults who thanks to a stable upbringing will be able to take their place in the world and contribute to the common good.

Most women cannot identify with the movers and shakers, because while they may present aspiration and ambition, for most, a high-powered career is unachievable, together with the demands of children. Moreover it is not what many of us want – middle class mothers are deserting the workplace in droves. I was privileged to be selected as one of the BBC’s 100 women, nonetheless throughout the day of networking and discussion, I could not stop thinking how far removed, sitting in a break-out session with Helen Clark, former prime-minister of New Zealand and Cherie Blair, was from the lives of millions of ordinary women, whose main concerns would be how to put food on the table, keep safe from the elements or protect themselves and their families from either militia or a totalitarian state.

It’s difficult to distill the essence of feminine genius into one distinct quality, it isn’t purely about raising children, nor achieving career and worldly success, it isn’t an agenda, a career plan or ‘to do list’. It should not be obsessed with accomplishments or eliminating feminine characteristics in order to make us more like men. It’s a rather more ethereal and elusive prospect, being a woman is really about ‘essence’; a set of traits unique to womankind, wholly distinct from men. Whether or not they achieve physical motherhood, the general ability of women to procreate means that we have the power and potential to inject love into the world. Essence is being, not doing. If we understand who we are then we are able to transmit that whole truth the world before we have even opened our mouths. This is why faith should not be considered irrelevant or supplementary to the feminist cause which should address deeper philosophical questions such as ‘who am I’, ‘what is woman’ and consider those things which are vital to female flourishing.

Feminine gifts are counter-cultural and intangible and involve the ability to go beyond appearance, to understand and intuit things on a visceral level and pick up underlying and unspoken issues. The potential to become mothers imbues us with the gift of nurture, to nourish human love and then give that back to the whole world in whatever sphere we choose. If women seem more concerned with human relationships than men, it’s because motherhood equips us with the ability to accept, nurture and heal. It’s no coincidence that most young babies come to know and love their mother first, because women are equipped to foster the intimate bond first formed in utero.

‘Feminine genius’ then, requires women to be a sanctuary for the human person. It is the ability of a woman to be at peace with herself and radiate the gift of love, of fostering and nurturing relationships to the world at large. To use the vernacular, it requires women to be a ‘true girlfriend’, not competitive, not obsessed with material accomplishments and secular achievements, but to put our talents at the service of others, to couch it in Christian terms, to become an icon of the Church, in order to find true fulfilment.

Being included on female power-lists, smashing glass ceilings and setting out to become lone women secular pioneers, places limitations on the scope of feminine genius. I always know when I am in the presence of a successful gracious, dignified, noble and powerful woman, not because of what she wears, or what I have read about her in the press, or what I know about her personal circumstances but because of how she makes me feel in our relationship, whether that be one of familial bonds, friendship, or professional association.

This is what women are best at, the feminine genius lies in creating and nurturing relationships based in love. As far as feminism is concerned, if you eschew material and professional success in favour of a more spiritual approach, attempting to attain the things that matter and respond to the desires of the heart and soul, then you are not doing everything you can to become a fully-fledged modern woman and do not deserve to be a part of the club.

Women can only be game changers when they give love for no other reason than it is no less than every single soul deserves. We are called to build a civilisation of love, brick by brick, and restore the culture of life. Authentic feminine beauty lies in abandoning self-focus, rising up and bringing an elegance to virtue, socially selfless and sensual, bringing out the true beauty of other souls.

If we use this criteria then there are far more worthy women I can name, than those who have ruthlessly pursued goals of self-fulfilment and secular success or who have managed some superficial achievement by earnestly bashing out diatribes on their keyboards. The irony is that their goals transcend the temporal heights of BBC plaudits and they would therefore be wholly uninterested.

Rotten fruit

A younger friend of mine introduced me to a bizarre tautology in conversation about her romantic life, complaining that her male friend did not enjoy ‘PIV sex’.

I’m going to regret asking this, I thought to myself as I asked her the inevitable question, imagining all kinds of peculiar practices involving animals, vegetables and minerals. It transpired that PIV is merely an acronym, for normal heterosexual intercourse, namely taking the first letters of the male and female sex organs and their relation to each other in the act of lovemaking.

It struck me how distorted cultural notions of sexuality have become that straightforward common or garden sex between a man and a woman needs to be explicitly defined as though it is some kind of niche practice with its own specialist term. While it would be absurd to portray myself as some sort of wide-eyed innocent ingenue, I’m obviously aware of other acts of a sexual nature, to me the term ‘sex’ in the context of a relationship between a man and a woman referred to ‘PIV’ intercourse. If someone tells me that they are having sex with someone else, perhaps naively, a situation involving ‘PIV’ (urgh still sounds awful, horribly clinical in its stark description) would be what I would imagine, hence the tautology, the term PIV being superfluous.

It turns out the phrase is in common parlance which is concrete evidence of the damage that pornography has inflicted on the sexual psyche of the nation, when you have self-identifying heterosexual males expressing a distaste for sex in the natural order of things, something that is designed to be pleasurable in order to secure the continuation of the species. It brought to mind shades of Prufrock, will this be the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper as our minds get turned away from good old-fashioned traditional sexual intimacy, in favour of clinical, sterilised, empty self-pleasure that we can only administer to ourselves or on our own, unable to experience the sexual joy of the other and requiring specific external stimuli as essential to sexual fulfilment?

Quite understandably, my young friend wondered whether or not her male squeeze may have homosexual inclinations. In the course of advising her and guiding her (i.e. do a runner and find a man who values you for who you are rather than what niche and frankly stomach-churning sexual services you can perform for him, sex should never feel like hard work or a performance) it turned out that the guy had a prediliction for pornography which he believed to be ‘harmless’ and that his entire peer group seemed to share his preferences. Good taste and charity prevents me from outlining what they were in explicit detail, but they certainly wouldn’t figure in the repertoire of most men and woman I know and I can hardly claim to have led a sheltered existence – years as long haul cabin crew, not indulging in, but witnessing some sexually louche lifestyles, certainly opened my eyes! My advice was that this group behaviour of individuals, who were admittedly all perfectly well mannered, charming, respectable, professionally successful and well-educated people, should not be considered the norm and that they were all reinforcing each other in their deviancy.

The spread of internet pornography has enabled people not only to seek out material pertaining to acts and practices that would previously be considered taboo and removed the resulting stigma or shame as people have realised that they are not alone in fancying next door’s pet cat, or wanting to dress up like a Roman centurion to use deliberately surreal examples and thus their behaviour or inclinations have been validated and online communities formed, defining themselves purely by their sexual interests. Not only does the internet reinforce unusual inclinations, but it also provides suggestions of new potentially exciting and exotic ways of seeking out sexual stimulation and like a narcotic, research demonstrates that online sex surfers eventually seek out stronger and stronger stimuli, as the old images dull and lose their power to excite. Yourbrainonporn is an excellent resource for further scientific research, articles and information on this phenomenon.

The ethic of personal autonomy doesn’t cut it morally: when men and women are eschewing traditional sexual activity in favour of a manufactured sexual hit at the expense of the other and potentially the procreation of the species, this is clearly contrary to human flourishing. We should not be aiming for a scenario of sexual pleasure like the one depicted in the popular science fiction film Demolition Man and this increasing phenomenon is an inevitable consequence of what happens when you divorce sex from procreational purposes.

Married couples should be enjoying penetrative sex with each other on a regular basis, rather than treating it as a duty or obligation for the purposes of procreation. As those of us in healthy relationships will testify, when we go through periods of abstinence for one reason or another, it is a privation, one of spiritual and physical benefit, but a privation nonetheless! Anything which leads to a lessening of natural God-given sexual intimacy between man and woman should be decried as a tragedy. I wanted to bang the aforementioned gentleman’s head against a wall, as indeed I do with many people and say “look, when you avoid PIV with your long-term committed (i.e married) partner you really don’t know what you are missing”. Sex is a God-given gift and as your relationship deepens and strengthens with your spouse over the course of a shared lifetime, it really does get better and better!

To put the cherry on the cake, I chanced across this piece, currently trending on the internet, so much so that the author has had to close comments, in which she, a radical feminist, claims that regardless of consent “PIV” sex is always rape. Sadly it is not a parody and one can only surmise that the writer has experienced some trauma which has led to various neuroses – this is an unhealthy and harmful way of thinking about sex and from a female point of view, I strongly object to many of the offensive assertions made, not least the audaciously unscientific “Penetration of the penis into the vagina is completely unnecessary for conception.”

Thought like this demonstrates the theory that the feminism which is rapidly being adopted as the new cultural religion of the media is becoming the New Puritanism in spirit that seeks to banish sex as a repugnant act. Feminism should be about encouraging female flourishing, it is difficult to see how rallying women to see a mutually enjoyable sexual act that enhances relationships, strengthens intimacy and pair-bonding as an act of violence, is conducive to happiness.

While ever wary of CS Lewis’ famous admonishment about the equal and opposite errors in thinking about the devil, one cannot help to see diabolical fingerprints all over contemporary thinking and ideas such as these about sex. God has given us something that is infinitely good and wants us to enjoy his gifts with thanks for our pleasure, for human success and His Glory. Who else would want us to convince ourselves that this fruit is thoroughly spoiled, rotten and harmful and we should instead search elsewhere for a replacement?

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