In the 2012 presidential election cycle one of the parties (need I name names?) continues to accuse the other of waging a war on women. I recently came across an unbelievably insightful letter written by the superior of a community of Catholic religious sisters wherein the author, Sr. Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT, discusses the real war on women. The real war on women is not the one described by the Democratic Party: the “war on women” in which the “right” of women to kill their babies is under attack and the “war on women” wherein the “antagonist” wants to withhold federal funding for contraceptives and sterilization.
Sr. Anne Marie writes movingly of the gift that women are to our culture and she describes the real war on women:
“There’s another country where women have been victimized by a powerful propaganda that has brought them to be ashamed of their bodies and the meaning of their bodies. Because of this propaganda, they have sterilized themselves in great numbers and had 50 million of their babies killed in the last 40 years.”
This country is the United States of America, a country wherein a dangerously high number of citizens are coming to believe the lie “that women cannot have control of their destiny unless they can get rid of actually what makes them women.”
“The current propaganda has been just as lethal to women and children in the US as anything that goes on in any country in Asia or Africa or Latin America. Any man (or woman) who encourages a woman to think that access to sterilization and abortion will make her equal to men, has rejected her womanhood, and therefore has rejected her as a real person.”
Sr. Anne Marie’s letter is full of hope and optimism and serves as a call to women and men to take heart and work to rid our culture of the deceptions perpetrated against women so that “the feminine genius can then be unleashed for the building up of a true civilization of life and love.”
Please read Sr. Ann Marie’s full letter here. I have most assuredly not adequately conveyed the importance and wisdom of her words.