An open letter to feminists:

I read the following this Sunday in the Washington Post and it got me thinking. Please read below and hear me out so that we can have a dialogue.
It was only last year that George Sodini opened fire in a gym outside Pittsburgh, killing three women and injuring nine others. Investigators learned from Sodini’s blog that he specifically targeted women.In 2006, a gunman went into an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania; he sent the boys outside and opened fire on almost a dozen girls, killing five. That same year in Colorado, a man sexually assaulted six female students he had taken hostage at a high school before killing one of them.

And it’s not just strangers who are killing women; more than 1,000 women were killed by their partners in 2005, and of all the women murdered in the United States, about a third are killed by a husband or boyfriend. A leading cause of death for pregnant women? Murder by a partner.

In Iraq, women serving in the military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.

Even the government underestimates the crisis American women are in. Last year the Justice Department reported that there were 182,000 sexual assaults committed against women in 2008, which would mean that the rate had decreased by 70 percent since 1993. But a study by the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center showed that the Justice Department’s methodology was flawed. Instead of behaviorally based questions, such as “Has anyone ever forced you to have sex?”, women were asked if they had been subject to “rape, attempted or other type of sexual attack.” Victims often don’t label their experience as “rape,” especially when someone they know attacked them. The center says the actual number of U.S. women raped in 2008 was more than 1 million.

I am pro-life, but care firmly about women’s rights and equality. As a Bible believing Christian, I hold firmly to the belief that men and women are equals and that neither sex deserves rights that the other does not have. As I read the shocking statistics above, the question came to mind “why abortion?” The right that I most often hear feminist fighting for is a woman’s right to abortion. With such high numbers of women in American being raped, sexually assaulted, murdered and abused why is abortion the rallying cry of feminist instead of these causes?

Abortion is not the only issue that feminist stand for, and if you visit the National Organization of Women’s website they list five other issues along with reproductive rights as priority issues. Even though NOW has six priority issues, there are several reasons why I believe it is safe to say that abortion is their rallying cry. NOW has in the past done marches for violence against women, equal pay and abortion, but abortion is the only issue that they have marched for multiple times. Not only is abortion is the only issue that NOW has marched for several times, but it is the issue where NOW has had the most marchers. NOW is also the first national organization to endorse the legalization of abortion in the 60’s.

In the article it states that a leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder by a partner. More often than note the news has a story about a woman who was murdered by her husband or boyfriend because she refused an abortion. Here are a sampling of just a few:

Florida Navy Officer Charged With Killing Pregnant Woman Who Refused Abortion
Slain Pregnant Woman Refused To Have Abortion
Man Charged With Double Murder For Shooting 8 Month Pregnant Girlfriend Who Refused Abortion

The list of stories like this goes on and on. A case could even be made that abortion encourages murder against women.

I would like to have a sincere discussion about this. When there are other prevalent and more damaging issues like rape and murder, why do feminists prominently promote abortion as the right that every woman deserves? Why when I scan the news headlines does it appear that a feminist’s main concern is abortion, and violence and equality are secondary issues?