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August
21, 2002, 9:00 a.m. By Sara Butler & Shonda Werry |
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very
summer, thousands of college-aged women descend on our nation's capital
to jumpstart their careers with an internship in government or public
policy. They flood the food court at Union Station for lunch, give a boost
to district bars at night, and occasionally end up national scandals.
This summer, we are two of them.
As rising college juniors and pro-life conservative women, we came to D.C. to get a taste of possible career paths, gain some good experience and, in some small way, help advance our causes. Naturally, when given the opportunity arose to attend the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing for Priscilla Owen, President Bush's nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, we were thrilled. What an exciting chance for us to see our government in action and support a woman we respect and admire!
Talk about harsh reality. "The sky's the limit," our parents had always told us. Well, not quite, it turns out. We realized that day that we have the same problem Justice Owen has: the wrong ideology. As women, it's a particularly hated affliction. In politics, like Owen, we're bound to fan the flames of feminists who care less about empowering women than "fighting the Right" — especially the female Right.
The hearing room was packed. We found seats among dozens of interns from the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority, National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), and Planned Parenthood, who had come with Ralph Neas (People for the American Way) to reveal Justice Owen's anti-woman agenda. Although we were sitting among our college peers, we felt no connection with them. They didn't understand how we could "betray" our own gender and support a "woman-hater." We couldn't understand why their bond of sisterhood didn't extend to Priscilla Owen, but included Sen. Chuck Schumer and Ralph Neas. Perhaps the sisterhood has awarded each of these two men an honorary estrogen pack since their politics are so obviously feminine.
After all, for feminists, ideology trumps biology, and Sen. Schumer and Neas oppose Priscilla Owen for the same reason the feminists seated around us hated her: She upholds the Texas law requiring parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion. Radical feminists panic whenever they encounter laws that mildly or reasonably restrict, delay, or in any way regulate a woman's access to an abortion. In their eyes, anyone supporting this law — as 80 percent of Americans do — or even merely enforcing it, as Justice Owen does, certainly cannot be deemed a feminist and really isn't much of a woman either.
And so feminists attack a woman who ought to be held up as a role model. When Justice Owen graduated from law school in 1977, women made up only 28 percent of American law students (today, we're 49 percent). A trailblazer, she earned the highest score that year on the Texas bar exam and was a successful commercial litigator for 17 years. In 1994, she was elected to the Texas supreme court and reelected by a landslide in 2000. She is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Judicature Society, the American Bar Association, and a fellow of the American and Houston Bar Foundations. In addition to her professional success, Owen is a woman of character and compassion. She advocates judicial election reform. She teaches Sunday School at her home church in Austin, is the head of the altar guild, and serves on the board of Texas Hearing and Service Dogs. Even one of the feminist puppets on the committee, Sen. Schumer, paused his interrogation long enough to admit that there is "…no doubt about the excellence in terms of quality of your legal knowledge and your intelligence, your articulateness, et cetera." But professional excellence was hardly the issue.
Sen. Schumer found one more quality worthy of praise: Justice Owen's gender. "But, obviously, in terms of gender diversity, you get an A-plus," he explained, and we waited expectantly for the feminists to start hissing. No woman wants her life's achievements nullified by a New York senator who lauds biological circumstances, while summarizing her numerous accomplishments with a careless "et cetera." Figuratively patting Justice Owen on the head and awarding a high grade for something wholly outside her control diminishes the significance of what Owen intentionally brings to the bench — her astute legal mind sharpened through years of experience. Surely this is just as offensive — and sexist — as demeaning someone solely because of her gender. But the feminists remained silent, waiting for their sick idea of fun to begin.
It was impossible for us not to feel compassion for the victim in this situation.
Sitting alone at her table, Priscilla Owen faced a long panel of outraged men and two rabidly pro-choice women. Feminists not only remained silent, but watched gleefully as four powerful men took turns verbally assaulting a woman. Schumer hounded Owen with a series of questions, refusing to let her answer. At one point, an exasperated Senator Orrin Hatch came to her rescue. "Senator Schumer," he exploded, "let the lady answer the question." What if the tables had been turned, and a crowd of conservative women looked on eagerly as a lonely woman, suspected of being pro-choice, faced a predominantly male panel of outspoken pro-lifers who wouldn't let her speak at her own hearing? Feminist activists would have declared that the poor woman had been psychologically gang-raped.
Although Owen has never expressed her position on abortion, the feminists have deemed her guilty by nomination. She is, after all, part of President Bush's scheme to stack the courts with Right-wing extremists. The feminists' loyalty to an ideology, rather than to the woman in the hot seat being harassed by angry men, again proves that the feminist movement is worthless for American women. And for ambitious pro-life women, feminism is worse than worthless; it's maliciously ruinous. "I'm afraid that the main reason Justice Owen is being opposed," Sen. Hatch said in his statement, "is…because she is a woman in public life who is believed to have personal views that some maintain should be unacceptable for a woman in public life to have. Such penalization is a matter of the greatest concern to me, because it represents, in my opinion, a new glass ceiling for women jurists."
The political lynching that we witnessed that day left us wondering what chance we have of succeeding in the public arena. If feminists will ardently attack a woman based merely on the assumption that she's pro-life, what will happen to those of us women who are more vocal and visible in the pro-life movement now? A movement that was once admirable, opening many new doors to women, has now degenerated into one weary choice — to be, or not to be, pro-abortion. The message to young women is clear: The wrong answer to the abortion question will damn you and your ambitions to an invisible glass cage. If feminists had their way, we are two young women who would stay barefoot and pregnant.
— Shonda Werry and Sara Butler are both students at the University of Chicago.