I can’t let my daughters watch that

Background: I am a woman. I have birthed three daughters. I am choosing to raise them in the church.

I turned on General Conference this afternoon. Elder Andersen (a man who has never been pregnant) stood and spoke about abortion to me and my three daughters.

His talk centered around stories of privileged women who considered having an abortion but ultimately decided not to and they were happy with that decision. Okay, great. Glad for them! 

But what about:

The women without the parental support?
The women without the financial support?
The women without the physical capabilities to care for their child?
The women without the mental capacity to care for their child?
The women who just can’t?

My thirteen year old rolled her eyes and said, “Mom, can we please turn this off?” I said, “Let’s talk about it instead.” We chatted: What nuances was his talk missing? What was he forgetting about? I let the TV continue to roll. The abortion debate is giant and I realize there are a million different opinions on it, but I can let my daughters learn various views about abortion. It’s probably good for them to hear this considering they are growing up in a very liberal bubble where everyone they know from school/extra-curricular activities is pro-choice. 

HOWEVER

Then we got to the story Elder Andersen shared about the married man who had an affair and impregnated a single woman. Given the woman’s lack of means/ability to care for the child, she decided to get an abortion. The man decided he didn’t want that, so he begged the woman to birth the child and then he made his wife raise the baby. 

I turned to my husband, “Just so you know, I hate this so much. If you ever impregnate some other woman, I will not raise the baby.” 

Maybe it worked well for that family. But that’s not a reason to talk about it in General Conference. Telling this story over the pulpit is adding fuel to the fire of abusive relationships. Awful men will use this talk to verbally abuse their wives and force their wives to continue living in subservience.

Think of all the verbally abusive men who will watch this talk and say to their wives things like: “Elder Andersen said we can easily get past this” or “The woman Elder Andersen talked about had to raise someone else’s kid. I’m not making you do that, so it’s no big deal” or “Elder Andersen’s talk really hit home. You can forgive me!”

While forgiveness is wonderful, having prophetic words from a man telling men what they should expect from their wives just fuels structures of abuse. 

I turned off the TV. I can’t let my daughters watch this. I’ve been taught to stand in holy places and stand up for what I believe in. 

I don’t believe in making my daughters internalize structures of abuse.

The arrow points to me and two of my daughters swimming out to that little islet in the distance. I want my daughters to know they are strong and have power.