Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018 | Page 18

Conflicting Values Shaping Perceptions of Community Security and Women’s Health Security
and around the Lake Atitlan region, a ladino coming from the city may be as or
more distant to them than an Australian NGO director who has been providing
services for many years.
Because of its focus on women’s health, Wings did not share the same advantage
of having provided other, less-controversial services to the community
for years. That is why it is so crucial that their message is delivered by indigenous
community members. Interestingly, in many instances, the message that they
deliver is not explicitly about independence or personal choice, but is framed in
terms of better care for their children. For instance, in one meeting shown in the
video Blessed Fruit of the Womb, the organizer says to the gathered women, “my
poor kids are all dirty, working polishing shoes. Children are working instead of
going to school. If I plan my family, I will be able to give them food, love, shelter,
health for the mother and children” (Music 2013). Their message to the community
is that the focus is on the wellbeing of women and families and not just one of
female choice and independence. While the second may come from the first, that
idea is frequently ignored.
The Quiverfull Movement in the United States
The resistance to women’s efforts to expand their health security and particularly
the use of birth control is more extreme in some ways among the
Quiverfull movement in the United States. Quiverfull members do not live
in any particular area in the United States or share any one denomination; however,
they can be considered a community. Exact numbers are hard to determine,
but they are believed to number in the thousands, possibly as many as 10,000
(Joyce 2006). As Harrison and Rowley (2011) point out, Benedict Anderson’s idea
of imagined communities fits very well with members of the Quiverfull community.
Anderson asserts that nations are “imagined because even the smallest nation
will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of
them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (2006, 6). This
speaks to the Quiverfull belief that they are a community of true Christians pushing
back against an unstable secular society. Their sense of identity is framed by
this feeling that they must protect America from feminism and secular culture. As
Freiman (2011) notes, it is a “backlash movement; its founders reacted against societal
norms that allow for sex education in the schools, choice and birth control.”
Freiman (2011) has framed her examination of the Quiverfull movement through
the lens of “collective identity and oppositional consciousness” (4), explaining how
through oppositional consciousness one’s identity is formed in direct contrast to
an identity considered immoral or inferior, drawing a clear line between oneself
and one’s group and the “other.”
The name Quiverfull is derived from Psalm 127:3–5 which states:
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