Wife's role in women's group now in focus

Boston Globe ^ | 7/22/05 | Nina Easton

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

In 1998, two teenage girls -- one pregnant, one a new mother -- sued a Kentucky school district because officials there, hoping to send teens a message about unwed motherhood, denied them admission to the National Honor Society.

In an affidavit filed in the case, Serrin M. Foster, president of the group Feminists for Life, argued that the school district's policy would ''encourage students to hide their pregnancies and not seek prenatal care... and instead obtain an abortion, or, worst of all, commit neonatal infanticide."

Foster's affidavit was written by a technology attorney named Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr.

As US senators and their interest group allies engage in an intense guessing game over how Bush's first Supreme Court pick would rule in cases involving Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision creating a right to abortion, his wife's role in the Washington-based Feminists for Life is emerging as a point of scrutiny. But the story is a complex one.

Feminists for Life believes ''that women should be protected from abortion," Foster said yesterday. That means outlawing the procedure but, she quickly adds, ''that's not our main thing."

The 33-year-old group, which takes its ''feminist" label seriously and boasts Democrats as well as Republican members, rarely addresses the legality of abortion on its website. Instead, the group's focus is ''to eliminate, through practical solutions, the root causes of driving girls and women to abortion," as Jane Roberts wrote in the 1998 affidavit.

That means pressing colleges to provide affordable housing and healthcare for new parents, fighting family caps in welfare reform, working for expansion of the Violence Against Women Act, and seeking better enforcement on child support....

[rhombus]

Is the National Honor Society about grades or character?

Well I got in, so it must have been about grades. ;-)

[ncountylee]

Shouldn't the NOW types be defending Jane Roberts on grounds that she is only being attacked on the 'sins' of the husband grounds?

[Haru Hara Haruko]

Being an unwed mother shows a lack of character?

There are plenty of worthless childless people.

[clee1]

Being an unwed mother shows a lack of character?

Yes, but not as large a lack as aborting the baby. Also, being the father of an unwed mother's child is also a manifest lack of character. Takes two to tango, as they say, and I don't think the NHS asks guys how many children they have fathered.

There are plenty of worthless childless people.

What's your point?

For the record, I don't think pregnancy should have anything to do with the National Honor Society.

[vaudine]

This is worse than crap---it does not matter, and has never mattered in SC appointments. It suggests that man and wife, two attorneys, think and act in tandem, as one.

Roberts, in the SC, would be responsible for interpreting and upholding the law. Neither his policies nor his wife's should affect that---especially his wife's.

I am just sooooo fed up with feminazis, dems, and libs, or since they are the same--femidemilibis.

vaudine

[AmericanChef]

If it was just about grades, it'd be the National Grades Society, but it ain't.

I'd say being "smart" is also subject to determination. The gal who decided she couldn't wait to have sex with whoever-it-was did NOT exhibit smartness, and definitely not honor. Maybe she's learned something since then, who knows, but she failed to come up to snuff, and didn't deserve the "honor".

[Responsibility1st]

I'm going from being someone who never even heard of FFL, to being a great admirer. I like how they use the term feminist in a powerful and postive manner.

WHY should the cows at NOW and Planned UNParenthood define feminism? There is nothing feminine in hating men and aborting babies.

Check out this great link to more info on FFL:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1446485/posts?page=44#44

and read other great posts on that thread as well. It really opened my eyes to what feminism should be all about.

[Haru Hara Haruko]

That was a question, not a statement. But, I'd say being an unwed mother at 17 shows a lack of something important in a young woman's life. Maybe maturity, maybe support at home, maybe brains ...but, certainly a full time father for her child.

And, despite being an unwed mother, what does the attainment of honors grades show?

[ghitma]

Good one.

[redneckerinBoston]

National Honor Society is as much about character as it is grades. My junior year, a student in the top five percent of his class was denied admittance because he hadn't participated in extracurricular activities or completed enough community service (a requirement by the school). NHS is about being a leader in all areas of life.

[zendari]

That was a question, not a statement. But, I'd say being an unwed mother at 17 shows a lack of something important in a young woman's life. Maybe maturity, maybe support at home, maybe brains ...but, certainly a full time father for her child. I can't agree with the school on this. There are greater character flaws than getting knocked up that the NHS lets slide.