By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. On occasion we repost articles that “rang a bell” with our audience. Trust me, this one from a few years back sure did!
I was going to write about this on Tuesday, but it seemed appropriate to offer a few thoughts on “The TikTok Abortion Video Didn’t Actually Show Abortion, but This YouTube Video Did” today—the day the Supreme Court heard its first abortion case during the presidency of pro-life President Donald Trump.
Abortion on demand for 47 years has produced this.
Rewire.news—formerly RH Reality Check—bills itself as “an award-winning, nonprofit daily online publication devoted to evidence-based reporting on reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice, and the intersections of racial, environmental, immigration, and economic justice.”
Translated out of abortionspeak, that means it glories in stories intended to make the revolting and the nauseating the “new normal” in service of what is (to the abortion mind) the holy of secular holies: “destigmatizing abortion.”
Paige Alexandria’s story which ran yesterday does acknowledge its immediate subject matter is a tad questionable.
She begins with “While there are distasteful aspects to the recent TikTok abortion video—such as filming people in the waiting room and ultrasound screen” — only to immediately tell us it served a larger purpose: “as someone who’s had a surgical abortion, I was glad the teen felt comfortable to share her experience with strangers. Abortion is normal, and videos like these remind us that every experience is unique.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I know nothing about TikTok videos which are all the rage with kids nowadays. Moreover I would instantaneously turn my head away if I accidentally ran across “A 20-second TikTok video that surfaced last week follows a teenager into a Planned Parenthood clinic before she has a surgical abortion.”
She’s supported by a friend and fist-pumps while sitting in the waiting area. At the end of the video, the teen is shown in a gown on a medical table next to an ultrasound machine.
But, obviously, I am not the target audience.
I shudder to think who is.
As it turns out, Alexandria tells us, “At no point is any part of the abortion filmed,” but she was criticized anyway, as if not showing bloody arms and legs or a severed head should win this teen the Miss Manners award.
Fortunately for Ms. Alexandria, “But the teen isn’t the first person to offer a digital glimpse into a personal decision like abortion.” She then revels in the story of Emily Letts, who “was an abortion counselor at Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey when, in May 2014, she filmed her own abortion.”
There were good (so to speak) You Tube videos about chemical abortions but nothing to dispel the “myths” about surgical abortions. So Letts volunteered herself—and her unborn baby. (We wrote about Ms. Letts several times.)
And, as you would expect, to Alexandria, Letts is a victim.
Although she received positive feedback for her video, Letts also experienced harassment and criticism from people who oppose and support abortion rights. Abortion advocates challenged her credibility as a “spokesperson” since she wasn’t using birth control, and in an interview with CNN’s Dr. Drew, she was callously asked if she got pregnant on purpose just to film her abortion. “I remember feeling overwhelmed by the amount of criticism by both people who felt negatively towards abortion and people who I thought would have supported me,” she said.
The moral (in a manner of speaking) of the story is that poor Ms. Letts was just educating women about abortion. But she is dragged into this latest disgusting exhibition for a second reason: to remind us (you’ll never guess) not to judge.
After seeing the negative feedback surrounding the recent TikTok video, Letts believes we should reserve judgment on the way teens cope with a deeply stigmatizing experience. “People have different reactions to all types of events in their lives. Who is to say what is the right reaction and what is the wrong reaction?” she said. “It is not for me or you to say if her reaction is good or bad or valid or invalid. It is what it is. The negative reactions to her video are people projecting their own suffering.”
Absolutely, who is to say? What if a woman decides to keep the remains of multiple abortions and then posts a photo showing a line of the corpses of tiny aborted babies? Who is to say?
What if an abortionist hoards the remains of thousands of aborted babies, as did the late Ulrich Klopfer? Dead is dead, right, and the bodies of “fetuses” are nothing more than trash, so who is to say?
What if abortionists and/or big wigs in the Abortion Industry who are trafficking in fetal tissue and whole organs, casually admits, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Who is to say?
A better question might be a “whatever” question. Whatever happened to these people’s humanity?