Fr. Frank Pavone's USA Today op ed comparing Helen Gurley Brown and Nellie Gray

An important column and only 11 paragraphs. As Fr. writes, they encapuslate two divergent world views.

Who will be remembered in 100 years?

Two women whose worldviews couldn't have been more divergent died just days apart, each leaving a dramatically different imprint on American society. Both sought to protect women's rights but were on opposite sides of a cultural battle that has shaped the past half-century. In the Civil War, the two sides were symbolized by "The Blue" and "The Gray." The sides in today's "civil war" could be symbolized by "The Brown" and "The Gray."

Helen Gurley Brown, writer of Sex and The Single Girl and for 32 years
the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, was in the vanguard of a movement
that insisted women would only achieve equality through "reproductive rights."
What that meant was that women should be free to sleep with whomever they
desired with the inevitable consequence of aborting unplanned children conceived
along the way.

Nellie Gray, a lawyer who walked away from a successful
career to found the March for Life, had a starkly different view of
women's rights. To Gray, human rights could not be broken down to their
component parts. Everyone enjoyed the same right to life bestowed by the creator
and guaranteed by the Constitution. Abortion both broke her heart and steeled
her resolve.

Both stood for human rights

The difference between "The Brown" and "The Gray," was not,
however, what many would say it was, namely, that "The Brown" stands for the
women and "The Gray" stands for the babies. The real difference is that "The
Brown" thinks you can separate the two and "The Gray" says you can't. Both
claimed they were serving women.

Brown, and the movement she represented, believed that
women are served by more access to "services" such as abortion, which frees them
from the burden of carrying and raising a child.

Gray, and the movement she represented, believed that you
can stand both for women and for the children in their wombs, and that their
destinies are intertwined: Loving and serving either means loving and serving
both.

Hit the link for the complete op ed.

 

Comments

[Eileen Peterson]

May the soul of Nellie Gray rest in peace and may she be welcomed by an army of heavenly angels surrounded by the innocent babies whose very lives she tried to save.