Category: Pro-Choice Movement

Two abortion doulas who provided comfort f0r women having abortions claimed that people in the mainstream pro-choice didn’t want to acknowledge that abortion was often painful to women, not “empowering.”

In their book about being abortion doulas, the authors say:

“There were more traditional pro-choice groups and activists who would express concern about our acknowledgement of the emotion that accompanies an abortion. We had been fed narratives through our activist work that many people felt “empowered” by their abortions. But our very presence in the procedure room undermined that message by hinting that abortion might be physically painful or people might have complicated feelings about it. Mostly, what we saw from people having abortions was a nuanced mix of mourning and relief. We would rarely hear that our clients regretted their procedures, nor would be hear them speak of it in empowering terms. But when we talked about all of this, it often wasn’t received by the pro-choice community the way we expected it to be.”

Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People (New York: Feminist Press, 2016) 18

Jewels Green, former abortion clinic worker turned pro-lifer, wrote about the way other clinic workers talked about the people in the pro-life movement:

I was told that pro-lifers cared nothing about women or families or children—only babies, and only unborn babies at that. I was told story after story about how this pro-life group or that crisis pregnancy center lied to women to “trick” them into staying pregnant and then would abandon them…. The most vivid (tall) tale I remember was of some unnamed group who extended financial assistance, prenatal care, and even drove a young mother to the hospital while she was in labor only to drop off a box of diapers the next day and refuse to return her calls after that….This is pro-abortion propaganda.

Since coming over to the side of life, I have been thrilled to confirm that these stories are baseless lies… the pro-abortion side continues to propagate these blatant untruths in spite of real evidence to the contrary…..

Many crisis pregnancy centers don’t just do pregnancy tests but also offer relationship counseling, parenting workshops, family counseling, babysitting co-ops, post-abortion support, and much more—for FREE—and without hundreds of millions of dollars from American taxpayers.

Jewels Green “Pro-Abortion Propaganda” Live Action News August 14, 2011

One reporter says:

I’ve …noticed that supporters of legal abortion are having a difficult time engaging the current generation of young adults. A recent Rasmussen poll confirms that impression, finding that voters under 40 were less likely than other age demographics to find the abortion issue “very important” while voting and more likely to find the issue “not at all important.” Moreover, there is plenty of survey data which finds that the current generation of young adults is more skeptical about abortion than previous generations. The General Social Survey (GSS) has been collecting opinion data on abortion using the same battery of questions since the 1970s. During the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 were the least sympathetic toward the pro-life position. Yet since 2000, the GSS has consistently found that young adults are actually more comfortable limiting abortion in certain circumstances than are older Americans.

Other polling data shows that young adults are more likely than other demographic groups to support a 20-week abortion ban and are fairly comfortable with a range of incremental pro-life laws.

MICHAEL J. NEW “Of Course Pro-Choicers Are Trying to Rebrand — They’re Losing Among Young Adults” National Review August 6, 2014

From an African American writer on the pro-abortion movement:

“Black women are treated as invited guests in the reproductive rights movement – outsiders to someone else’s event… It all just makes us want to leave and never come back.”

Toni Bond “Barriers between Black Women and the Reproductive Rights Movement” Political Environments 8 (Winter/Spring 2001): 3

Serena Cruz, a pro-abortion activist in Boca Raton, FL, explains why she thinks most young people don’t join the pro-choice movement or fight for legal abortion:

“People of my generation are very consumed with self-interest. [Many people in their 20s] don’t read the newspaper or watch decent news on TV. They don’t know who represents them. They’re really materialistic and into consumerism. It’s not a conscious thing, but it’s out there.”

Victor Green “NOW Aims to Revitalize Energize Movement in S. Florida” Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service April 5, 2002