reprinted from the Body Politic Net News (A Woman-Oriented E-zine)
Copyright © 1997 by the Body Politic Inc.'s Home Page
Copyright © 1971 & 1996 by Ed Howdershelt - My Wiccan Home Page
The following article was submitted by a visitor to our site, who makes valid criticism of how power has been abused by some in the religious community. As editor of the Body Politic I know that faith in God is a driving force in many who support reproductive rights. We print the following in the interest of history and free speech, not as an attack on people of faith.
The witch-hunting craze in Europe and America was a direct result of the publication in 1486 of Malleus Maleficarum. Written by Dominican friars Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger and endorsed wholeheartedly by Pope Innocent VIII's papal bull (official authorization and seal), it became the reference tool by which women have been subjugated and terrorized by law and official church doctrines for centuries. In it, "woman" and "witch" seem to mean approximately the same thing, with only the degree of guilt at question.
"All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman...It is not good to marry: What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, and an evil of nature, painted with fair colors."
My first inclination was to ask: Didn't these idiots have mothers? Why were such rantings taken so seriously by organized religion that they became fundamental to the laws of the time and church doctrines ever since? Why would any woman be a member of such a religion?
Well, now... The church was the unquestionable, total authority and power and had been for years, and was somewhat riddled with corruption. You could kill someone and pay varying sums to the church (or local representative) to avoid punishment. You could be put to death for knowing how to read if you weren't of noble rank. Imprisoned without charges and held indefinitely. Burned at the stake by the accusations of a cleric that you spoke against the church or acted against nature by trying to heal the sick and injured.
Read that last line again. Helping to heal was a crime, unless performed by church-sanctioned practitioners in church-sanctioned methods, which mostly boiled down to bleeding the victim and prayers. If he lived, it was god's will. If he died he didn't have enough faith. Women have been the collective repository of healing arts and knowledge since the cave days. Every tribe and village had a medicine woman or midwife to assist with injuries, births, and illnesses. Many were spiritual advisors in various ways. Each of these women was a danger to the local power of the church every time prayers and bleeding failed to save a loved one.
On a grander level of thinking, the church wanted to control the source of future membership, labor, money, and power, all of which require large numbers of people willing to do and be as the church wants. In a world largely decimated by plagues and wars, helping a woman avoid or stop pregnancy became a death-penalty crime. Control of women has been a cornerstone of religion, law, and society for centuries, but that is about to change dramatically.
Think about it. Only recently were women able to break into the medical professions in any serious numbers, medical professions that began hundreds of years ago in Europe's dominated world and remain tightly-controlled to this day. Only recently have the courts had either the power or inclination to open those, and other, doors to women.
On the picket lines, men and women rant against abortion and contraception in the name of god. I'm sure the rank and file believe what they scream at the rest of us. I'm also sure that they're being used; the real issue is still membership numbers, whether by births or by polarizing public sentiment, and the money and power that comes with those numbers. As they see it, any woman who isn't a broodmare and domestic servant is evil. A woman who wants to determine her own path in life is evil. A thinking woman is still considered a witch.
By the year 2000, close to 60% of the population of the Western world will be female, literate, working for a living, and VOTING. To further complicate matters, over 50% of the population is expected to be over age 50, which puts a large number of women outside the reproductive stage of life. A religion or government which denigrates women is doomed to a minor role in our future.