From pro-choice, pro-abortion (in her own words) feminist Carolyn Hax:
Admitting that convenience is a common justification for abortion makes some people squeamish …. It is critical that antiabortion zealots not be allowed to elevate the argument about abortion to one of life and death, with nothing in between. Why? Because what lies between are most abortions, which are seldom a matter of life and death….
We came of age as women in the eye of the abortion storm, a relative calm of acceptance during which millions of women learned to take abortion for granted, as a means to a lifestyle that would allow them to view sex as a pleasure and being single as a way of life – a lifestyle that allowed room for irresponsibility.
Even another friend of mine who balked at the thought of defending “abortions of convenience” admitted to having had unprotected sex, more than once, and taken it lightly. Spontaneous sex, brought to you by the safety net of abortion – shall I upgrade convenience to luxury? Other perks of abortion on demand include extended travel, higher education, unbroken career paths, choosing a different father, limiting family size…
To judge by the life choices we make, then, there are dozens of reasons for women to be pro-abortion…
None of this is to say my generation is of one mind or devoid of conscience on the subject. For all you know, I find abortion reprehensible under any circumstances – but even then, I’d be all for it. Because I don’t care if you are in high school or the fetus is unhealthy or it’s a boy and you want a girl. If you don’t want your baby, I don’t want your baby.
dismembered foot of a baby aborted at nine weeks
Carolyn Hax, “No Birth, no Pangs; for Many Young Women, Abortion is a Given.” The Washington Post Mar 21 1993
Pro-abortion feminist Sarah Mirk went undercover to a pro-life crisis pregnancy center that helps pregnant women. Mirk says:
“The consultation went differently than I thought it would. The counselor wasn’t a Bible beating hell raiser. She didn’t snipe or snarl as she asked me a list of questions about my religious preference and relationship status. Instead, she seemed like a regular woman, a compassionate just past middle-aged woman from a different background than me, dressed a little conservatively.
Maybe, if I’d been born 40 years earlier, to different parents, in a different state, I would’ve wound up in her chair trying to be honest and conservative, rather than critical and liberal.
I told her I didn’t think I was ready to bear my imaginary child, and she nodded kindly.
“This is a major decision,” she said. “The choice is permanent.”
I wasn’t expecting such a balanced response from an organization whose stated mission is “making a life-changing difference in the lives of our unborn.”
At the end of our 10 minute conversation, the counselor wished me well and handed me a fat stack of pamphlets …. Sorting through the glossy flyers and booklets was horrifying. They were antiabortion propaganda… chock full of gory fetus pictures, anguished stories about women who got abortions, and praising, heroic tales of women who decided to keep their children.”
Sarah Mirk “Lucky Breaks and Little Miracles” in Kim Wyatt, Sari Botton Get Out Of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (South Lake Tahoe, California: Cherry Bomb Books, 2012) Kindle edition
If the “gory” fetus pictures (like these) and stories (like these) are true, is it really “horrifying” to share them? Shouldn’t women be able to learn the truth before they submit to surgery? Does she really think she will get a thorough and unbiased material from abortion clinics? If you think so, go here.
“Robert Livingston, a retired doctor who used to perform illegal abortions in the 1960s, recently told a New Jersey newspaper that he “would be afraid” to work today.
“The atmosphere is so ominous now,” he said.
It is an atmosphere fueled by a strategic, steady stream of misinformation.”
“Retired Abortion Doctor says Stigma Is Greater Now Than Pre-Roe Vs. Wade” Think Progress Health, September 9, 2012
Quoted in Tara Murtha “Ripple Effect”
Kim Wyatt, Sari Botton Get Out Of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (South Lake Tahoe, California: Cherry Bomb Books, 2012) Kindle edition
From post-abortive pro-choice feminist Sari Botton:
“For years I told myself I’d withheld [talking about her abortion] because it wasn’t anybody’s business, and maybe it wasn’t.
Later I told myself it was because the topic of abortion was unpleasant and difficult, and nobody wants to talk about it. That’s my husband’s take on it too. He was party to an abortion when he was 40, and although he is very happy it got him out of co-parenting with someone he didn’t want in his life any longer, he remains deeply conflicted about having gone through with it. Even to the staunchest of pro-choicers, the reality of abortion, the termination of something – someone? – that had gotten a start, is unfortunate and sad. It’s still so, so crucial to have an option.”
Sari Botton “Confessions of a Good Girl” Kim Wyatt, Sari Botton Get Out Of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (South Lake Tahoe, California: Cherry Bomb Books, 2012) Kindle edition
“In the race to see who can punish women the most for daring to make these choices, Texas has outdone itself, going so far as to require women to receive multiple sonograms, to be told about all the services available to encourage them to be pregnant, and most diabolically, to listen to the doctor narrate the sonogram.
This legislation designed to control reproductive freedom is so craven as to make you question humanity. It is repulsive.”
Laws requiring women to get sonograms in fact make abortion safer for women because they are the most accurate way to date pregnancies (determining which abortion instruments can be used safely) and detect tubal/ectopic pregnancies (which can be fatal if not detected and allowed to rupture) before an abortion, and the most accurate way to find retained bits of tissue that can cause an infection after an abortion
And being forced to learn about the unborn baby on a sonogram makes Gay “question humanity”, is “craven”, and “repulsive” but the abortion depicted below is fine? Which is more repulsive- learning facts about fetal development of doing this to a preborn baby?
is this repulsive?
Doing this to a baby at this age is legal in most states thanks to the efforts of people like Gay. And to be fair, in case I’m accused of only showing rare late term abortions, here is an abortion at 8 weeks, a time when most abortions are performed
8 weeks
More from Gay:
“Waiting periods, counseling, ultrasounds, transvaginal ultrasounds, sonogram storytelling: all of these legislative moves are invasive, insulting, and condescending because they are deeply misguided attempts to pressure women into changing their minds, to pressure women into not terminating their pregnancies, as if women are so easily swayed that such petty and cruel stall tactics will work. These politicians do not understand that once a woman has made up her mind about terminating the pregnancy, very little will sway her. It is not a decision taken lightly, and if a woman does the decision lately, that is her right.”
Roxane Gay “The Alienable Rights of Women” in Kim Wyatt, Sari Botton Get Out Of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (South Lake Tahoe, California: Cherry Bomb Books, 2012) Kindle edition
This has led to a bizarre bifurcation in the way we who are prochoice tend to think about wanted as opposed to unwanted fetuses: the unwanted ones are still seen in schematic black-and-white drawings while the wanted ones have metamorphosed into vivid and moving color. Even while Elders spoke of our need to “get over” our love affair with the unwelcome fetus, in entire growth industry—Mozart for your belly; framed sonogram photos; home fetal-heartbeat stethoscopes—is devoted to sparking fetal love affairs in other circumstances, and aimed especially at the hearts of over-scheduled yuppies. If we avidly cultivate love for the ones we bring to term, and “get over” our love for the ones we don’t, do we not risk developing a hydroponic view of babies—and turn them into a product we can cull for our convenience?
17 week 3d sonogram
Any happy couple with a wanted pregnancy and a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting can see the cute, detailed drawings of the fetus whom the book’s owner presumably is not going to abort, and can read the excited descriptions of what that fetus can do and feel, month by month. Anyone who has had a sonogram during pregnancy knows perfectly well that the 4-month-old fetus responds to outside stimulus—“Let’s get him to look this way,” the technician will say, poking gently at the belly of a delighted mother-to-be. The Well Baby Book, the kind of whole-grain holistic guide to pregnancy and childbirth that would find its audience among the very demographic that is most solidly prochoice reminds us that: “Increasing knowledge is increasing the awe and respect we have for the unborn baby and is causing us to regard the unborn baby as a real person long before birth….”
22-24 weeks
So, what will it be: Wanted fetuses are charming, complex REM-dreaming little beings whose profile on the sonogram looks just like Daddy, but unwanted ones are mere “uterine material”? How can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for prolifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that the truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy.
Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” New Republic, 16 October 1995,
Peter Singer, abortion and infanticide advocate, admits human life begins at conception:
“It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.”
Peter Singer, Practical Ethics,2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 2008), 85-86.
“Our view is, abortion is nothing special. Abortion is right up there with having a baby or getting the care for whatever other medical needs you have.”
Dr. Anne Davis of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center
Lawrence Lader, who founded NARAL and was pivotal in legalizing abortion in New York, said the right to abortion was a moral cause on par with the abolition of slavery in the 1800s:
“Both involved fundamental moral and religious positions that collided with the entrenched interests of their time.… [And both] had been created by laws which were blatantly in conflict with basic rights seemingly protected by the Constitution…”
Lawrence Lader Abortion II: Making the Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974) ix
First trimester ultrasond
How is killing a baby like this one equal to freeing a slave?
