Feminists Don't Cry For Benazir Bhutto

Although there has been a remarkable quantity of dumb stuff said since Benazir Bhutto's assassination, did anyone else notice the deafening silence from American feminists ?

Of course, Hillary Clinton called for an international investigation of Musharraf's possible involvement in the hit. But, I did not hear, nor am I able to find, many inspiring sisterly words about the first democratically elected female leader of an Islamic country.

On NOW's website there was nothing. They were much more concerned about Christmas toys which unacceptably promote gender discrimination.

For these women, Bhutto belongs in the long list of female leaders who have been relegated to the feminist ash heap. The former prime minister is in feminist purgatory along with such powerful women as Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Eva Peron and Indira Gandhi.

These powerful women do not meet feminist muster because they were not leftists, and more importantly, not a single one was a proponent of unrestricted abortion on demand.

Although third wave feminism, post-modern, or whatever you want to call it, has broadened the umbrella of acceptability, the correct stance on reproductive freedom is a make or break deal.

No woman will be hired to lecture in any women's studies program in the country (with the exception of wonky places like Jerry Falwell's Liberty University) if they even mildly question the logic and ethical viability of the unrestricted abortion argument. They are always deemed to be unqualified. I know this personally. I have been denied a couple of adjunct lecturing positions, even though both my academic and professional feminist credentials are pretty decent.

Although for the most part they just ignore us, a local chapter of NOW did go to the effort of formally giving me the boot. But usually the only attention we get is dismissive amusement, with a bit of sadness, that we have let ourselves become stooges of the patriarchy.

Hillary Clinton did not bother to mention the good times she shared with Benazir Bhutto at the Fourth International Women's Conference in Beijing, in 1995.

The two Ivy League graduates were on opposite sides. The Harvard alum argued the case for the protection of all life, and the Yalie stood up for the right of privacy , the corollary of which gives women the unconditional right to abort innocent life.

One of the aspects of all this which particularly troubled Bhutto, probably because she came out of one of the world's most misogynistic societies, was the practice of gender selected abortions, which still haunts a world we regard as modern and civilized.

Benazir Bhutto, was an intelligent educated woman, who was a proponent of what John Paul II called the “new feminism.”

In his encyclical, “The Gospel of Life” the pontiff called on women to consider “ a new feminism which rejects the temptation of imitating models of male domination and violence.”

I am not going to go through all the tired arguments on the abortion issue here. However, there is a legitimate rational valid life-affirming position . And those of us who reject the dominant western leftist view of so-called “ reproductive freedom” should be allowed to join the discussion.

But, I don't expect it to happen anytime soon.