I was going to make this into a post that tackled a lot of different issues raised by a pro-abortionist who hangs out at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). If Planned Parenthood is America’s abortion chain and the Guttmacher Institute its source of statistics, then UCSF has long been the nation’s abortion training academy.
Instead I chose to focus largely on one comment–not because it happened to be directed specifically at something I’d written–but because of what it says about how pro- and anti-life forces see the world.
She was commenting on a special episode of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, entitled “No Easy Decision.” The young couple, which had carried one baby to term, was explaining/rationalizing why they’d subsequently aborted a second baby.
Our academic was unsettled by the real-time tweeting prompted by the website 16andloved. While almost all the tweets she chose as representative affirmed the decision, “From my perspective, demands for viewers to express love and support run a dangerous risk of welcoming the observer into the couple’s abortion decision.”
So it’s okay (even good) for women to “talk” about their decision and they “do need to feel loved and supported by their friends and family,” she tells us. But the general public “should have no opinion about women’s individual decisions.” It’s her private choice, etc., etc., etc.
Part of that general public, I guess, was me. I wrote a column about the show.
This show was unique because (at the time) it represented the first time a teenage mother had aborted on the show. “So this is “new ground’ pro-abortionists are so eager to see represented on television,” I wrote. “They fervently believe the more abortions are talked about and completed, the more ‘normalized’ taking the life of an innocent unborn child will become. I don’t think that’s necessarily true at all, and have never thought so.”
The exchanges back and forth between Markai and James (she was very upset when James calls their baby a “thing”) tell us a lot. My point was we could perhaps learn a great deal about how to be helpful to women in general, young girls in particular by watching the show.
Our pro-abortion academic picked up on my very last sentence
If we are going to be better advocates when women have crisis pregnancies–and better shoulders to cry on if they make a tragically wrong decision–we need to hear them in their own voices.
To which she added
This is also a form of love, but I don’t think it is the kind of love that leads to support for legal abortion.
No, it doesn’t. Here’s why.
“Love” that counsels, abets, encourages, or facilitates the death of an innocent unborn child makes a mockery of the word. A life-affirming helping hand is genuinely an act of love, an expression of empathy and compassion extended to both mother and child.
Pro-abortionists privatize the decision to end a child’s life. It’s as if there is nobody else involved, or, if it’s conceded that there are other actors, they are restricted to expressing only one sentiment: support for death.
Pro-lifers attempt to help women and girls understand the social dimensions–beginning with the unborn child but also the siblings and cousins and uncle and aunts and grandparents and–dare I say it?–the baby’s father. There are, if you will, stakeholders, and to deny them their rightful input is wrong and unjust.
Support for life is not “a form of love.” It is love, expressed in its noblest form.
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Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
