As you would expect from a woman so desperately in search of fame she would threaten to abort her own baby to increase her opportunities for celebrity, each day there is another twist in the utterly sad saga of Josie Cunningham.
For readers who may have missed our story Monday, here’s where the 23-year-old Cunningham stood two days ago. She had told The Sunday Mirror newspaper that prior to becoming pregnant (she is now 18-19 weeks along), Cunningham was on the short list to appear on the “Celebrity Big Brother” reality show.
“Channel 5 were keen to shortlist me, then they found out I was pregnant,” she said. “Then they suddenly turned cold. That was when I started considering an abortion. After the operation I will be going back to them and asking if they will still consider me.”
Cunningham also told The Mirror, “I’m finally on the verge of becoming famous and I’m not going to ruin it now,” adding, “An abortion will further my career. This time next year I won’t have a baby. Instead, I’ll be famous, driving a bright pink Range Rover and buying a big house. Nothing will get in my way.”
But a “source” told The Sun newspaper that “Josie is deluded if she thinks this will improve her chances of signing up, which were slim to non-existent to start with.” The source added, “How can we work with her — or pay her — if she admits having an abortion to achieve that? It would be a minefield.”
What’s next depends on who you read (and she is a tabloid sensation). But the most important “reality” is one that we focus on most. Evidently Cunningham has not aborted her baby, although there are scattered references to her having the “procedure” this week. This is the same baby, an image of which she posted on her Twitter account last month before she vowed/threaten to abort the child.
One account (and the only one of its kind I saw) from Tuesday said she had “postponed” her abortion after receiving a number of ugly threats. Another account, evidently based on Twitter posts from Cunningham, said she had not been eliminated as a candidate on Celebrity Big Brother.
As we talked about Monday, Cunningham has lived life in the fast lane and has done and said enough stupid things for several lifetimes. But pro-abortionists being pro-abortionists, they must defend Cunningham’s “right” to abort. On what grounds (besides that they don’t believe it’s anyone’s business)?
Writing for The Telegraph, Catherine Scott bathes in indignation for a few paragraphs before getting to the nub of her case for defending Cunningham: no true “pro-choicer” would ever, could ever evaluate—let alone “judge”–the reason for an abortion.
For starters, it’s “a totally legal procedure,” Scott reminds her readers. For another to talk (as one television personality did) of Cunningham’s threat to abort being “a new low. Even for her,” shows “that liberalism has its limits.”
By that she means “Ultimately, what these conversations reveal is that we are still nowhere near a point of women being able to freely admit they have had or will have abortions, without the demand that such an admission be accompanied by shame.”
Is it fair to ask Scott if there is any abortion that could/should evoke shame? Cunningham wants to be a star, reason enough (for Scott) for Cunningham to abort a child who is rapidly approaching the half-way point in his or her development. But….
What if Cunningham wanted to abort because the child was the wrong gender? What if Cunningham said she wanted to abort because it gave her a sense of mastery? Of power? Or for no reason other than to show “solidarity” with women “exercising their reproductive choices”? (“Nothing personal, kid.”)
For Scott it’s “hypocritical” to say you are a liberal pro-choicer and judge the reasons a woman aborts. Other pro-abortionists take Scott many steps further, such as Martin Robbins, writing for The Guardian.
The language condemning Cunningham “wouldn’t look out of place in the 1950s,” he writes. It’s “basic snobbery,” Robbins huffs indignantly. and represents “a world of medieval morality I didn’t think still existed in the UK.”
Whenever pro-abortionists are painted into a corner—abortions for reasons only zealots like Robbins can stomach– they reach for the slippery slope in reverse. “If we fail to defend Cunningham, then we accept that only those women who are ‘deserving’ enough should be allowed to have an abortion,” Robbins warns. “And if we accept that, then it’s only a matter of time before others are deemed undeserving as well.”
That’s his final two sentences. In the paragraph before, Robbins writes—obviously without a hint of what he is really saying—that he laments the “sudden backlash” against abortion.
“It comes as the result of another disturbing trend, an increasing acceptance of the idea that only certain people deserve human rights.”
Well, we can agree on that. There has been “an increasing acceptance of the idea that only certain people deserve human rights,” which is why Cunningham can propose to kill her baby so she can appear on television.
Final thought. Both Scott and Robbins are talking about how “fragile” is the right to abortion over there.
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In England, the right to abort is absolutely absolute through 24 weeks for any reason or no reason and right up until the moment of birth if the child has various “disabilities” loosely—very loosely—defined. (That’s why it’s not surprising that based on government documents, a story in the Daily Mail reported that 66 babies survived National Health Service “termination” attempts in one year alone.)
Of course the “right” they say is “fragile” and/or imperiled is not just abortion through the end of pregnancy, and–for some proponents—beyond. It’s the “right” to do so without public resistance, without turning the public’s collective stomach, and most of all without judgment.
People tolerate abortion because they have made an uneasy peace with their consciences–mostly by evasion–a determination at all costs to avert what takes place and to whom.
Cunningham’s threat makes it possible for that still small voice to finally be heard.
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 at National Right to Life News Today.
