Should feminists be pro-life? Should conservatives support more welfare for families? Who is Mary Wollstonecraft? What did RBG get right and wrong? I dug into these questions with my guest today, the legal scholar Erika Bachiochi. Our discussion centers on Erika’s new book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, which argues for a form of feminism that takes into account natural differences between men and women, especially in what she calls “reproductive asymmetry” i.e. that having sex and having children carry different implications for men and women. We talk about her journey from a Bernie Sanders supporting kind of feminist to a Roman Catholic kind of feminist, including a strong pro-life moral basis. Her intellectual heroine is the 18th century thinker Mary Wollstonecraft, who had a feminist vision that was about the equal pursuit of the good, which Erika John Stuart Mill’s feminism based on a perfect equality. 

We talk about what Ruth Bader Ginsburg got right and wrong, whether conservatives should be supporting President Biden’s big pro-family welfare expansions, the Texas abortion law, family-friendly policy, and much more. 

I should say that at the very beginning Erika candidly describes her troubled childhood and early adulthood, which in her darkest hours ever led her to thoughts of suicide.

Erika Bachiochi 

Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar specializing in Equal Protection jurisprudence, feminist legal theory, Catholic social teaching, and sexual ethics. She studied at Middlebury College and got her law degree from Boston University. Erika is now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute, where she directs the Wollstonecraft Project. She lives in Boston with her husband and seven children. 

More Bachiochi 

• Bachiochi’s new book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, is a thoughtful and provocative read. 

Also mentioned 

• Bachiochi quited Mill in On Liberty: “misplaced notions of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being recognized, and legal obligations from being imposed”

The Dialogues Team

Creator: Richard Reeves

Research: Ashleigh Maciolek

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)