My Thoughts on Abortion from a Woman-Centered Matriarchal Perspective

December 29, 2022 Sarah Braun

This topic is a really heavy one that most smart people avoid tackling in their businesses and daily lives. But, alas, I am always drawn to hard topics and can’t leave them alone.

So here we are.

For honest transparency on where I’m coming from experientially and philosophically:

I am anchored in a radical autonomy and freebirth perspective on the female body and life. I believe that our bodies were created to do incredible things, as long as outside interference is kept to a minimum. Yes, sometimes things “go wrong,” but when physiology is honored these instances are far more rare than they are currently.

I also believe that our current views on women’s health are rooted in misogynistic, sexist, patriarchal views (and institutionalized structures of practice) of the female body that center pathology and inherently build in distrust of the wisdom of the female body.

Women’s bodies have long been equated with “nature” and a patriarchal society that is obsessed with “overcoming nature” or “the natural man is an enemy to god” is going to try to beat the nature out of women’s bodies (through religion, science, medicine, or whatever means).

I believe that we live in a modern society that is very lost from the true human role on this planet as servants of life. Consumerism, imperialism, racism, ethnocentrism, globalism, modern slavery, humans as products, and other incredibly damaging worldviews have distorted what we consider “normal” and have deluded us into thinking we are either parasites or gods.

I come from a society that is obsessed with black-and-white thinking, and I am deeply in love with complexity and nuance. This means that I fall outside the realm of fitting into a particular dogma or group-think (though, as a human being, I am always vulnerable to my personal biases).

I was very involved in the feminist community personally and academically for many years. I helped to re-enliven the feminist club on our conservative campus, and served as its VP for a year. I volunteered for the women’s center on campus, as well as the local domestic violence shelter. I supported all kinds of conferences on human trafficking, global women’s issues, and other feminist topics. I even was a co-founder of an abortion fund (which will remain nameless). I trained as a birth, postpartum, bereavement, and abortion doula from multiple organizations.

I have had feet both in the more mainstream politically liberal feminist camp AND the more fringe evolutionary wisdom/matriarchal women-centered realm.

But ultimately, my values and beliefs are most tied to the wisdom of women and the wisdom of the body. And the belief that no one gets free until we have restored a mother-baby centered society that honors women as the mirrors of our beautiful Mother Earth, and stops treating women as commodities to be bought, sold, owned, rented, objectified, or mimicked.

Now then. Onto this complex conversation of abortion…

A Historical Context for Abortion

Women have been ending pregnancies and allowing their babies to die throughout time. This is an essential fact to recognize in this conversation. Why did they do that? For various reasons, typically environmental or cultural - nearly always rooted in survival needs.

Sometimes a baby was conceived during a time of plenty, but then arrived during a dangerous time of lack. A mama had to make the devastatingly difficult decision to choose who she was going to feed: her current older children, or this new baby who was just born. Given the opportunity, she would choose to keep her baby alive. But we can’t even fathom the difficult situations that women have found themselves in over the millenia. And to judge them in any way is egotistical of us and shuts down our compassion or ability to understand.

In a patriarchal world like ours (as it has been for thousands of years), baby girls have very little value. And so in many cultures, baby girls have been killed in order to preserve an individual woman’s opportunities in life and sometimes from a perceived merciful perspective, as that girl would have had a very hard life. We are also not allowed to judge these women, as they face/d hardships that come from our worst nightmares. They experience the extreme hardships of patriarchy and class systems. Can we help those who are currently facing these dilemmas? I sure hope so! But to judge a woman in this situation is to hold a mirror up to ourselves - all of us are complicit in cultural practices that lead to a woman being in this situation (the world is interconnected and American/western culture is influential beyond our imagination).

Other cultural and political factors are also often present - for example the insanely unethical One Child Policy that China enacted for many years. This led to millions of forced abortions that were largely female fetuses. For those mothers who escaped the medical establishment’s forced abortion scheme (or whose first babies were female), they would often sell their baby girls to traffickers who would then take these babies to affluent families who would then raise the girl with their son, as an intended future wife. Other girls would be less (?) lucky, and end up as child prostitutes trafficked to other countries where they would become sex slaves or servants and enslaved workers.

Being a girl in our world is a very dangerous thing to be.

Our ancestors knew herbal remedies that would bring on menstrual bleeding in the case of delayed menstruation, effectively creating an environment wherein a potentially fertilized egg wouldn’t be able to implant in the uterine wall and would instead be ushered out with the blood.

With the European witch hunts of the last 1,000-ish years, women who used herbs were often condemned for their use of plant medicine (and this phenomenon was found in many cultures around the world, as would be expected in patriarchal societies no matter their cultural beliefs - this is not just a European phenomenon). For the first time in recorded history, herbal menstruation support was considered a problem and men decided it should be criminalized.

Why?

Because in a patriarchal societal structure, a woman is overtly and/or covertly owned by a man, and his offspring is important to his status in society. For a woman to choose to end a pregnancy is a direct assault on his patrilineal power, and therefore his ability to have power in a society that is built on a strict hierarchy of dominant men. “Dominate or be dominated” is the patriarchal motto interwoven into an entire social structure.

During these witch hunts, birth was still in the dominion of women… and it continued to be until the 1700s and slightly beyond. But all other female reproductive events were now in the dominion of men, and they made it their business to know what women were “up to.”

(You can see a modern version of this in the past decades in Romania, which has upheld an extreme protocol of reproductive control of women’s bodies… including women being required to report their periods to the government, and punishment if they appear to have “done” anything to bring on a miscarriage.)

Why am I explaining all of this history? Because it damn well matters. We don’t live in a vacuum, making choices from pure free will. We live on the foundations of our ancestors, making choices from biases we didn’t invent and often aren’t aware of. And we NEED to be aware of them. We need to honor the pain and anguish of our ancestors so we can know better and choose better.

We learn history because it teaches us where we got our preferences, beliefs, and cultural instincts. And then we learn how to think for ourselves, based on the mistakes our ancestors made.

The Past 100 Years: Feminism is Freedom… or is it?

Women fighting for the rights of women isn’t a new thing. In fact, it’s probably many thousands of years old. With the dawn of civilization came warring patriarchal cultures, the ability to amass wealth, and the inherent social structures of hierarchy and domination that comes with all of these systems of thinking and acting.

Women have been both loudly and quietly fighting for control of their private and public lives from the time they lost their rights to exist as a full human being, many many many moons ago.

These last few waves of feminism brought us some gifts: participation in politics, some version of reproductive autonomy, a recognition of women’s intrinsic wisdom and badassery, conversations around birth autonomy, a lessening of the power of the Good Mother Myth, the ability of a woman to finally own land and have a bank account not attached to her husband or father (yes, seriously), domestic violence shelters and laws to finally protect women who were being abused by their husbands… And on and on.

Feminists have fought hard for the rights of women.

AND ALSO…feminism has believed patriarchal lies at the same time.

What do I mean by this?

Birth control is inherently damaging to the female body. It is the medicalization of our reproductive autonomy. It teaches us lies about our bodies. It dissociates us from our wisdom and knowledge about our bodies. It chemically alters our brains, our senses, and our wellbeing. It trashes our thyroids and livers, leading to chronic health illnesses that appear for “mysterious” reasons.

The very basis of creating chemical, pharmaceutical solutions for “dealing with” women’s fertility is deeply embedded in a social system that believes that women are meant to be controlled through the means of masculine saviorism - AKA the doctor-father who “helps” a woman to get some shred of power, through the means of smoke and mirrors meant to distract from true freedom from patriarchal dominion.

Many feminists believe that birth control was sent from the gods. And I get it. I really, really do. But, they accepted a meager offering and stopped digging, and bought into a pharmacological solution to a much deeper problem. They bought into the patriarchal lies that we aren’t inherently sovereign and able to manage our bodies without the tools of civilization (AKA hyper masculine forces).

During the hippie years, women were turning toward feminine empowerment and consciousness raising circles to re-empower women about their bodies and lives. The descriptions of this time period are quite inspiring.

Until every meeting and rally became almost entirely about abortion.

Suddenly, feminism was wholly fixated on abortion as the solution to all female problems. Mothers were all but abandoned. Obstetrical violence during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum wasn’t that important anymore (because we should just abort babies so we can have career freedom, right?). Viewing the female body as inherently wise and nature as the best teacher transformed into an obsession with legalizing clinical and medical abortion. And they were marginally successful for several decades.

I can applaud feminists for creating traction in a society that is inherently suspicious of women’s bodies. It’s not easy to do.

And I can also critique the narrative that abortion is the highest level of achievement in a movement that claims to focus on autonomy, sovereignty, and the freeing of a woman from her many-thousand-years enslavement to a world that wants to subsume her.

The feminist movement became all about avoiding having children with birth control, free-for-all sex without accountability, and abortion to deal with situations where the god-sent birth control failed.

And so, once again, mothers and babies were abandoned…

Feminism became a mirror of the toxic masculine, with an emerging goal of overcoming the female body to “equal” the masculine body. Most branches of feminism these days = OVERCOMING womanhood.

While there were pockets of feminist-inspired women who were fighting for freedom from obstetrical violence, the very loudest of them all were the ones who called mothers “breeders” with disdain and left them out of the conversation.

Even still, if you attend a feminist conference or abortion rights workshop, the majority of attendees are women who do not have children and never intend to have babies.

This is not a rant meant to say that women who choose not to have children are wrong. The underlying thread here is that women are free to choose ANYTHING THEY WANT. Yet, the dominant narrative almost completely ignores mothers, except when that mother is overwhelmed by her children, has an impoverished class status, and would like an abortion in order to manage her situation. Then they rush in to “save” her.

Why Abortion Isn’t True Freedom

Most feminists want to paint the pro-abortion stance as this happy, joyful, freedom-loving place. They use marketing to promote stories of “happy women” who are thrilled they got an abortion, and skipped off on their merry way. The pro-life crowd uses the exact same tactics, used in the inverse.

Both of these camps are using the same tactics in order to coerce, manipulate, and influence a woman’s decisions. Honestly? They are two sides of the same toxic coin that often ignores the true lived experiences of actual women.

I personally find the pro-life camp’s tactics to be extra incredibly disgusting, especially when they are run by men who clearly are using their perspective as leverage to gain more political and social power (loud pro-life men make me suspicious of their actual intentions - see history above). Absolutely disgusting and not something that is done with integrity or with the goal of releasing women from their cultural binds.

However, the pro-abortion perspective also does not allow for complex conversations full of nuance. Typically, this camp is focused on image management, which means suppressing complicated conversations that challenge the “yay abortion” narrative.

Abortion sucks, full stop. No flowers, no glitter, no rainbows. Let’s call it what it is. A choice that women shouldn’t have to make and then quietly spend their lives grieving over.

These medical clinics are full of burnt out medical providers who are tired of being shit on by society and are grossly overworked. The women that attend these clinics are still walking into the Medical Industrial Complex, just from a different view (and with many extra heavy layers). Clinic workers are typically not compassionate and are also very tired, and they often create the same obstetrical violence for women that results in the PTSD that birth does (perhaps worse due to the situation).

Add to that the inherent moral heaviness that a choice to end the life of an embryo carries… and you’re looking at a woman who is spiritually laden with a deeper hurt than she has perhaps ever experienced in her life. (Of course this isn’t all women… but if you listen to women’s stories, you’ll hear this narrative more often than not.)

When a woman feels the need to choose an abortion, she typically does for survival reasons. Women are economically disadvantaged, they bear the brunt of childrearing despite so-called feminist “advances,” they suffer greatly when the men who father their children leave (physically AND/OR emotionally), and these are the women at the greatest risk of falling into the chasm created by a world that ignores and hates women.

So of course abortion is a tool for a woman who is struggling to survive in a world plotting against her wellbeing.

And despite my critiques of abortion culture, I remain steadfast in my belief that abortion should remain accessible to women everywhere. Because she matters, her wellbeing matters, and her ability to survive matters.

And also…

WOMEN ARE THE SOLE EXPERTS ON THEIR LIVES, THEIR BODIES, AND WHAT IS BEST FOR THEM.

No matter whether we are talking about menstruation, nutrition, birth, motherhood, miscarriage, relationships, or abortion. A woman is NOT a child to control, and no person in society has been gifted from the gods with the power to overtake her power.

But we must also do better. We must fight for better. Women deserve SO MUCH BETTER.

When abortion is needed in a society, it is because that society is very sick and in a perpetual crisis state. It does not center the divine mother-baby dyad, and so widespread policies do not benefit the most vulnerable members of our society. This culture has a toxic obsession with women as a product to consume. It does not nourish women, their babies, and their children (unless there is a profit to be made).

And women know this at a cellular level. We express it in our depression and anxiety “diagnoses.” We carry the burden of it in our PTSD, which reminds us daily that we have been abused over and over again, from every angle of society.

Women are invisible.

Mothers are insignificant “incubators” (the “martyr-mother”).

And girls throughout the world are bought and sold daily, based solely on their biological sex.

Yes, abortion is a tool. And we CAN do abortion better. Gynecological rape in abortion clinics is not the answer.

Space holders who can dance with the nuance of the spiritually and morally heavy situations around abortion are the proper sister guides for this very hard experience.

…Women who can name that abortion is FUCKING HARD. It sucks. It’s laden with intense grief. It’s an experience and story that women carry with them for their entire lives. It’s not something to be chosen lightly.

Women who can sit with other women as they cry, mourn, and grieve for the world that they deserved and will never see. Women who will fight for other women’s autonomy, with love, nonjudgement, grace.

Women who can be deeply vulnerable with other women. Gentle. Honor their beliefs about their bodies (even when they differ).

Women who can hold space for a woman who has strong religious beliefs against abortion, but still wants someone loving to sit with her as she cries and grieves for her challenging future. Someone who will not try to talk her into abortion, but instead honor her very clear choices with love.

Women sitting with women is how we help each other feel our feelings, process our shitty experiences, and create a new world together. One where women are free to live their lives in a state of thriving, instead of merely survival…

Women Deserve Better: a Daydream

In a matriarchal/matrifocal culture, women and their babies are the very center of the community. Women are honored as the human expression of the Divine Mother, who is everything that is - birth, life, and death. Women are NOT a commodity, but are honored for the unique wisdom they bring to the culture group.

Women in these cultures know their bodies very well. They live in a low-stress environment, feed themselves deeply nourishing foods from the land, and their hormones are almost always at a healthy balance. They know how to read their fertility signs and act accordingly. They know how to get pregnant, thrive throughout pregnancy, give birth in power, and rest in nourishing sister care in the postpartum period.

These cultures are based on the tribal mothering model - every adult in the culture group is well known by everyone else, and they are all equally invested in the wellbeing of each baby and child. The child is raised by many mothers (both women and men who are motherly toward the child).

The child may or may not know who their biological father is, but they darn well know whose body they emerged from and they are deeply connected to their most important primal attachment: their mother.

The wisdom of women in these cultures tempers the testosterone-driven men, helping them to redirect their innate gifts toward growth, wellbeing, and healthy masculinity. Men have a powerful role in these cultures that are life-giving, not destructive or life-taking. And it takes the wisdom of women-centered cultures to make this happen.

In these cultures, abortion would be very rare, if entirely non-existent. There would be no need. Women would choose when they get pregnant, and choose the rest of the time to not become pregnant. If they did become pregnant, they would be well cared for and it wouldn’t stress out their bodies or lives.

They would birth fully in their power, without abuse or meddling from others. They would be supported by every other adult in the community, so postpartum would be a joyful breeze. No more postpartum depression/anxiety. No more maternal exhaustion. No more milk supply issues leading to reliance on pharmaceutical “science” to grow our babies (other mothers would happily share their milk to help out).

The very rare time that abortion was chosen, it would be a spiritual ceremony focused on a full range of emotions, deep love, and an understanding that women stand at the liminal edges of both life and death, and have control over both within their bodies. These choices would be honored as the difficult ones that they are, without shame or judgment, with deep wisdom from the community, and with full autonomy on her part.

Yes, this sounds very utopian. And of course any social structure has its fair share of issues. I’m not naive. However, these societies exist (though they are becoming increasingly rare, due to patriarchal/imperial takeover). They are our original human social structures and are how humans evolved for millions of years.

We have a highly developed prefrontal cortex for a reason. Because we can CHOOSE to act better, be better, and design a world based on love and humility.

Pro-abortion culture is not true empowerment. It is a survival tool needed in a world that is violent and dangerous. And women need access to tools, so yes I cautiously support abortion access. Because no government anywhere should tell a woman what to do with her body or her life. That’s just playing into this global story of women as children… Which leads to treating her like a child during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Which leads to criminalization during miscarriage and government surveillance (don’t believe me? Look that shit up.).

WOMEN ARE NOT CHILDREN. And they don’t need patriarchal fathers (including women who embody the patriarchal father trope) to tell them what to do.

If anything, this point in time desperately needs MORE autonomy and showing women that they are inherently free. That they can choose differently. That they don’t have to listen to the Cult of the Experts (who are primarily dominant men and paternalistic “leaders” who want to control women and all that is considered “feminine” more than anyone else).

Women need to see the conspiratorial strategy that’s been in play for thousands of years… the one where we perform in-group fighting, hating and harming each other because we think we’re so different from one another.

This is an intentional strategy deployed by the powerful elite to control the masses. (This is the strategy that was used against slaves and white indentured servants during the 1600s & 1700s when they tried to join forces to escape… NOT a crazy conspiracy - again, look that shit up.)

Women make up half of the world. We are incredibly powerful. If we were to join forces we could change every single society on this planet in a short amount of time.

One day…we will realize this.

Until then, we love on each other. We offer tools that help us get through this transitory cultural time. We don’t judge each other's coping mechanisms, but lovingly support each woman in her unique path of reclaiming her individual power. We fight for the autonomy of women. We work hard to create grassroots communities that provide at least a semblance of tribal mothering life (because we are biologically hardwired for this and need it desperately).

Abortion isn’t a miracle solution. But it is a tool. The grassroots version at home with our sisters can be a gentle alternative that is trauma-informed, embodied, and grief-acknowledging. Along with this, women deserve a re-educating of how their bodies work so they can take over care of their fertility with empowerment and full autonomy, lessening the need for abortion in the first place.

And for those who have been harmed by all the branches of gynecology and obstetrics… I hold the deepest of love for you. I send you prayers of healing…of being able to recognize that you as a human being are not broken, but you have been put into situations that make you feel that way. I send prayers of sisterhood to facilitate healing. You are a powerful being and I acknowledge the depth of your spirit, and I believe that you have done the best you can with the tools you’ve had available. And I stand with you in saying that you deserve better. Much, much better.

Rewild Mothers