In addition to believing church and state should become one, WIN’s women consider themselves “the strongest example of American women,” i.e., “those who choose our careers as mom and wife as our first priority.” That may be the case, but that doesn’t mean they swear off political activity, albeit from a more domestic space.

Giroux explains that her group, which boasts about 20,000 members, focuses on communicating directly with legislatures, thus making it easy for homebound women to participate:

[WIN] was to create the ability for moms at home to join the political process and be heard while also engaging in our primary full-time careers as wife and mother … This was a wonderful way for the traditional American woman to participate in the political process and to show that we are both the majority and pro-life in America. Although the liberal media may not always report it as so, it is the reality.

The most important aspect of their work, says Giroux, comes through prayer.

Yes, Giroux and Dannenfelser have divergent approaches, but their end goals both hark back to those attributed to Susan B. Anthony.

In the aforementioned essay, the author, “A,” argues that men and women must come to a mutual understanding and, in some ways, equality. “Let every wife dare to be honest, let her open her heart freely to her husband, and I know there are few whose better natures would not be touched, few who would not be awakened to a nobler life, to a more exalted view of marriage.” And therein lies a core argument within the pro-life feminist movement: something Dannenfelser refers to as “the complementarity” of men and women.

“Complementarity means that there are two completely equal parts that fit together beautifully and don’t conflict; that one person’s freedom does not undermine and eliminate the other … Men and women uplift each other and complement each other, in our distinctness and our differences.”

Dannenfelser goes on to say that the relations between men and women are “a point of light and joy.” Giroux concurs, but takes the argument one step forward when she highlights another pivotal posture found in pro-life feminism: maternalism. To them, feminism has more to do with fecundity than female equality.

Reproduction as Political Action

Preferring to call herself “feminine” rather than a “feminist,” Giroux explains that she and her peers hope to save the nation by “encouraging women to again have more children.” A mother of nine who’s also a registered nurse, Giroux feels American women were duped into thinking they could find happiness at the workplace, thereby leading many to choose to stop reproducing after a couple of offspring. WIN’s website describes the phenomenon as a “China mentality,” and states, “Mothers today carry an enormous burden. We live in a world where it is now a luxury if one is able to stay home full-time with her children. Yet we truly believe that ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’.”

When asked whether it’s irresponsible to advocate having more children, especially in these hard times, Giroux doesn’t hesitate: “Difficult times in the economy will come and go, but one thing stays the same: There is no greater gift you can give to a child than more brothers and sisters.”

She and her allies, says Giroux, are intent on undoing “the severe damage that has been done to women through contraception and abortion by the pro-abortion feminist movement.” And that damage can be repaired through reproduction, an assertion at odds with many “mainstream” feminist activists.

Like Ellen Malcolm, Taylor Marsh, a blogger who describes herself not as “pro-choice” but as “pro-civil rights,” also described “pro-life feminism” as an “oxymoron,” but goes one step further:

[The pro-life feminist] platform is a pro-selective life, because if they really were pro-life then these individuals that want to curtail a woman’s civil rights would also be for preventing pregnancy, they’d be for contraception … And then we could get into the stem-cell debate and what that does for quality of life and pro-life. Their argument is morally bankrupt.