How giving birth made me a feminist

"I need feminism because I love." Laura Forest/Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0

Fourteen hours in, and my contractions finally turned from intermediate pain to near-constant pressure. Every sinew in my body screamed "Push!" while my breathing grew more jagged. It wasn't as easy now to huff my way through the intervals, not as easy to concentrate on the paradigm-shifting end game of meeting my child. Sweaty, sore, worn out from watching the too-large hospital wall clock plod along in 20-minute increments, I turned to my mother and said through gritted teeth, "If this experience doesn't turn someone into a feminist, I don't know what will."

After I spent four years at an all-girls' Catholic high school, I would have sworn up and down the Bible that I was a feminist. After I absorbed, aghast, the blatant misogyny laid bare in the 2016 election, I would have sworn up and down my ballot that I was a feminist. After I watched the #MeToo movement unfold with uneven and often dispiriting results, I would have sworn up and down the newspaper that I was a feminist.

Then I gave birth, one of the rawest, most intense experiences a woman can have. It was then that I finally understood on a visceral and corporeal level the power of having chosen this course for myself, and it was then that I questioned if I had ever understood feminism in the first place.

Feminism, as a reminder, is broadly defined as a belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. I stand by an even broader definition: that feminism -- and indeed, a commitment to equality everywhere, on all bases -- is about empowering individuals to make the life choices that are right for them.

For me, giving birth sat at the intersection of my personal privilege, individual choice, and access to systems such as decent healthcare, paid parental leave, job security, and flexible work policies. My privileges -- being a white, educated, upper-middle-class employed person -- statistically pointed me toward a safer healthcare experience and greater financial security. As for individual choice, I do not want or need everyone to choose what I chose. What I want, and what I believe society needs to aim for, is the third item I listed -- to develop and promote systems that allow anyone and everyone to make the healthiest, wisest choices for their given situation, without impediment, prejudice, or judgement.

In providing such systems, we acknowledge each person as a human being with inherent worth, and we grant them the dignity of autonomy. This to me is the fundamental promise of feminism -- the desire to stand with and for all people, to see them as fellow cells within the Body of Christ, and to lavish love on them accordingly.

I saw this promise personally fulfilled in my safe and joyful birth experience, and I experience it again every time I adapt a workday to spend time with my little one. I want everybody to feel this empowered, rich with such abundant and varied options that they are always able to pursue the courses of action that lie closest to their hearts. In this way we will help people realize God's vision for them and for our world as a whole.


Prayer #333: Midwife to the World

Mother God,

Make me just. Make me angry. Make me humble. Make me bold. Make me prophetic. Make me warm. Make me clear-eyed. Make me creative. Make me loving. Make me steadfast ... all so I may midwife Your idyllic vision and help deliver the world You long to see.

Amen.