By Dave Andrusko
Abortion , Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion , Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, (and did I mention abortion?). As you may have already guessed, this post is about one of those monumentally idiotic stories the Washington Post trots out periodically that shouts, screams, nay begs to be ridiculed. I will do my best to treat it on its merits.
I take that back. If I do, I will be forced to ridicule Jill Filipovic’s “How a new generation of activists is trying to make abortion normal.” Instead let’s address it for what it is: the gazillionth fuselage launched by the fringier elements of the Abortion Movement in its war on reason, common decency, and the unborn child.
Here’s the gist of the 1,565-word-long piece. Enough of this “pro-choice” nonsense. We wear our abortion proudly. Indeed, the accompanying graphic is women bearing the letter “A” on their blouses.
Not the “A” of The Scarlet Letter but the insignia of “a younger generation of activists, who cut their teeth in LGBT work and online feminist spaces,” Filipovic informs us. “Advocating ‘choice’ didn’t stop the recent wave of losses for reproductive rights. Today, activists are realizing that the only way to erase the stigma is to talk about it.”
Really?
As we’ve talked about before, the impact of the these younger activists has been to drag the old guard (first kicking and screaming and now resigned to their fate) into the era of “telling your story.” Even PPFA’s Cecile Richards has gotten (in my opinion unconvincingly) into the act.
Why was the Abortion Establishment reluctant to embrace the New Tastelessness? Part of it was obviously generational; perhaps it’s discomfort with younger activists who “are shaping the dialogue, taking cues from the Internet, where conversational norms reward unabashed honesty about the female experience — sometimes to maximal shock value.”
If you think shocking people is the way to bring them around, well then “unabashed honesty,” which includes profanity that would embarrass a sailor and vulgarity that would make Hugh Hefner blush, is obviously the ticket.
But to Filipovic this is “putting a human face” on the debate (which oughtn’t to be a debate, of course). She cites a few of the usual examples–including Richards and loser-by-a-mile Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis–and then concludes with “clinic counselor Emily Letts [who] filmed her own procedure.”
“Procedure”? You mean her “abortion”? You mean Letts, the woman so comfortable with her procedure that she would upload a video on YouTube showing her baby’s last few minutes? The woman who treats the whole thing like a joke, an exercise in female bonding with the abortion clinic staff?
But I’m sure if she thought more deeply, Filipovic would disapprove: Letts’s apologists kept reminding us that Lett’s abortion is not shown “in a graphic way.”
Why not? If desensitization is the name of the game, why not show blood, broken bodies, and legs torn from torsos? After a while, won’t people just start yawning as the abortionist liberates the woman from the product of conception before their very eyes?
Filipovic tells us many other illuminating things, but two in particular. Not only are they not going to stick with that stupid/apologetic/loser label of “pro-choice,” enough of that “good abortion” gibberish.
“Most women who terminate pregnancies aren’t facing life-threatening tragedies but rather more mundane ones,” Filipovic correctly tells us. “Activists say playing down that reality — and the importance of abortion services for all women — contributes to the stigma that keeps abortion shameful and politically contentious.”
In English, women will abort for any number of reasons and–it seems clear–the more trivial, inconsequential the motivation, the more it ought to be celebrated.
Who’s to say that pro-abortionists won’t soon be talking about having an abortion to avoid stretch marks just to make a point: it’s none of your business why they dispatch this kid to the great unknown.
If they deliberately get pregnant just so they can feel the power of aborting one baby after the other, what’s it to anyone else? It’s their right.
The sordid logic is inescapable.
The other point is that Filipovic is convinced they are winning the cultural battle. The following is at the heart of the way they think so please pay attention to the implications.
2014 gave us “Obvious Child, a romantic comedy with an honest and decidedly un-tragic portrayal of abortion at the heart of the plot.“
Remember the real moral (a word, I suspect, that would not be one commonly used by the crew that put together Obvious Child). The lead character must be given a pass because she is such a dolt. She is in her mid-20s, but to expect adult behavior is foolish. Why?
Because she is such an Obvious Child. She makes jokes about everything, so why not ha-ha’s about killing her unborn child? What else should–would– you expect from a foul-mouth, part-time comic? Moral maturity?
That is precisely what they avoid like the plague because what accompanies that is, for them, the only true four-letter word: responsibility.
I am not saying for one second that Filipovic and her ilk don’t believe this insanity. They do.
They just couldn’t be more wrong.