Jenny’s Pennies

Kathryn Joyce of The Nation has written a long article called “Missing: the ‘Right’ Babies” about the so called “demographic winter of Europe” - that the “West” is failing to produce enough babies and is in danger of becoming “out-breeded” by the Muslim immigrants and their purportedly numerous offspring. From the article, a quote by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who quit the republican presidential race in the beginning of February:

“Europe is facing a demographic disaster” due to its modernized, secular culture, particularly its “weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for human life and eroded morality.”

This nativist “pro-family” movement is a mess of sexism and nationalism blended with religious extremism. For them, women’s liberation, contraception, gay rights, divorce, abortion, and secular humanism is to blame for the demise of Europe. The movement is spearheaded by American right-wing Christians, but has the backing of politicians and organizations in Europe. Even Muslims are sometimes allowed into the unholy alliance - when it comes to blocking rights for women and gays at the UN, these people are happy to gang up with Iran and Saudi Arabia. But when it comes to babies, they want the right babies - white babies.

But for this to work, women need to dedicate their lives and their wombs to this demographic warfare. And I have a suspicion that the way they want to do this is not by implementing true family-friendly policies: not by ending work place discrimination against women who have children, not by making life easier for single parents, not by improving child care and education, addressing poverty, and ensuring access to equal and affordable health care.

This quote by Paul Mero and Allan Carlson, writers of The Natural Family Manifesto, says it all:

“Above all, we believe in rights that recognize women’s unique gifts of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.”

If they want to get me behind the idea of preserving “Western culture” they will have to include in their definition of this culture all the progress that we have made in the last decades and that makes me happy to live in Sweden: the possibility for women to have careers outside the home or the schoolteacher/nurse option, the advancement in rights for gays and in how non-heterosexuals are viewed in the society, the right to choose one’s own religion or lack thereof, the ability to chose and control the number of children you have, and so on.

But this is not what they wish to preserve. To them, all the things which I see as good and positive developments, are a threat to “our way of life”. In their logic, by allowing freedom for women and freedom of (or from) religion, we are being overrun by people who treat their women miserably and advocates killing all the infidels. Funny how their world views coincide…

(Update: the article is also reprinted over at Alternet; it’s always interesting to read the comments section there.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Anti-feminism, Europe, Human rights, Migration issues, Politics, Race and ethnicity, Religion, Reproductive rights, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.