“Can it be that women know something very deep inside, even deeper than fear and shame? Can it be that women know it is their responsibility to decide when to bring new life into this world? Women are not the enemies of our children–even those we decide not to bring into the world.”
– Quoted in “Good Women have Abortions,” which appeared on the pro-abortion site www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/21883.
I readily concede the obvious—that I am not the target audience for stories at rhrealitycheck.org—at the same time I’ve been reluctant to grant what has become more and more apparent: I am dumbfounded by many of the arguments made in defense of abortion.
We are told that the author, Beverly McPhail, “is a long time feminist and writer and academic.” More interesting in light of this curious piece is we are also informed that she “was recently credited in a Salon article by Irin Carmon for being the first published piece to make the claim that these new mandatory sonogram laws constitute rape by the state.”
You remember that hysteria. The state of Virginia proposed to require what virtually all abortionists were already doing: perform an ultrasound prior to an abortion. But in the hands of a Wordmeister like McPhail, the ultrasound probe becomes “rape,” “rape by the state,” or “rape by instrument.” In other words, McPhail is to clear thinking and measured language what Planned Parenthood is to parenthood: never the twain shall meet.
As McPhail picks up speed, her linguistic malapropisms multiply like Topsy. Specifically, the narrative is that pro-lifers traffic in “stigma and shame”– employing “harsh rhetoric”–and it is up to women who have aborted (who have been “silenced”) to speak up.
This is such boilerplate you’re tempted to just move on to something else (anything else). But you plow through because this is in service of one of the major pro-abortion initiatives: convince women to “claim” or “own” their “abortion experience” so as to “de-stigmatize” taking the lives of their own children.
McPhail cites the work of two women who are leading the charge for a new “conversation” about abortion. Their task is to convince women that “deep in your heart,” they know that the decision to take their child’s life was made “out of a place of goodness.”
God, as we would expect, is commandeered into the service of the abortion agenda. None of this God-as-Judge malarkey. “[Rev. Rebecca Turner’s] alternative, and much more compassionate, view is that God is a friend, there is freedom and grace for all, nothing can separate one from the love of God, and the belief that women are moral and sexual beings,” McPhail writes.
Talk about mix and match. Of course, God forgives and of course grace is available and for sure nothing can separate us from His love. But the truth that God forgives me when I come contritely confessing my failures and asking for forgiveness is not a blank check to go ahead and do what I want, and then check the box for my consequence-free mulligan.
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Let’s take the quote that began this essay, borrowed from “Good Women have Abortions,” and change the words a bit:
“Can it be that men know something very deep inside, even deeper than responsibility and obligation? Can it be that when the time is not right, men know it is their task to demand that a woman abort an unborn child? Men are not the enemies of their children–even those they decide not to allow to enter this world.”
When the unborn child has no rights or privileges, no protection under the law, the only question is who gets first dibs—the mother or the father–in deciding whether or not to kill her.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in his Natioanl Right to Life News Today.
