I have been warning the pro-life movement that their ideological opponents–forced into a defensive crouch by the clear scientific truth that abortion takes a human life–are now changing their advocacy, from “pro-choice” to definitively pro-abortion.
I have also warned that this advocacy could lead to a reversal of Roe v Wade–but from the other direction creating a fundamental constitutional right to abortion through the ninth month based on women’s equality (as opposed to privacy).
Now, in the New York Times, a pro-abortionist defends the Planned Parenthood ugliness from a pro-abortion direction. From, “How to Really Defend Planned Parenthood,” by Katha Pollitt:
We need to say that women have sex, have abortions, are at peace with the decision and move on with their lives. We need to say that is their right, and, moreover, it’s good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary. When we gloss over these truths we unintentionally promote the very stigma we’re trying to combat. What, you didn’t agonize? You forgot your pill? You just didn’t want to have a baby now? You should be ashamed of yourself.
When I was in the Netherlands researching my anti-euthanasia book, Forced Exit, I spoke to a physician who mentioned that the abortion rate in the country is very low. The reason? She told me that sexuality was seen as a responsibility as well as a right. Thus, if one chooses to be active, there is social pressure on both men and women not to create a pregnancy unless they want to.
I don’t see why that shouldn’t be our own social expectation–regardless of what one thinks about the legality of abortion.
Back to the pro-abortionism:
The second reason we’re stuck in a defensive mode is that too many pro choice people are way too quiet. According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly one in three women will have had at least one abortion by the time she reaches menopause. I suspect most of those women had someone who helped them, too — a husband or boyfriend, a friend, a parent.
Where are those people? The couple who decided two kids were enough, the grad student who didn’t want to be tied for life to an exboyfriend, the woman barely getting by on a fastfood job? Why don’t we hear more from them? It’s not that they think they did something wrong:
A recent study published in the journal Psychological Medicine finds that more than 95 percent of women felt the abortion was the right decision, both immediately after the procedure and three years later. They’ve been shamed into silence by stigma.
But a human life has been snuffed. If that doesn’t have a profound moral element to it, what does? And once the deed is done, it can’t be taken back.
And then the focus-grouped sound-bite name calling:
But the implications of the video sting, and the congressional scrutiny Planned Parenthood now faces, are even bigger. They’re about whether Americans will let antiabortion extremists control the discourse and dictate the agenda around reproductive rights, medicine and scientific research.
Who exactly are the real “extremists”–those who believe in protecting the most vulnerable human beings and are exposing the moral cost of abortion at any time for any reason for all to see? Or,those who are just fine with killing fetuses as a matter of life style, and even, doing so in a manipulated way to derive “intact” fetal cadavers to be dissected?
I guess it depends on how you define the term.
#defund