According to ABC, only women who have positive abortion experiences are worth reporting on. At least, that’s what one would expect after a news segment explored a rising women’s movement to share abortion stories – without one interview from a woman who regretted her abortion.
On Oct. 22, ABC’s Nightline dedicated a full segment the Twitter hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion, which urges women to share their (positive) abortion stories online. Correspondent Aditi Roy reported on the story of the founder, Amelia Bonow, who bragged she had no doubts before getting an abortion, and actress Martha Plimpton, who tried to normalize abortion while making jabs about pro-lifers in the process.
Hope you’ll watch my story on @Nightline about #ShoutYourAbortion , a social media campaign that’s taking the abortion rights war online.
— Aditi Roy (@AditiRoyABC) October 22, 2015
Plimpton couldn’t help but make a jab at pro-lifers while she was it. “These are not the brightest bulbs that we’re dealing with here,” she stated.
But, “[T]hat’s not to say they don’t represent a pretty formidable force that’s, so far, succeeding in limiting our access to exercise our constitutional right,” she warned.
But the Nightline segment didn’t just give voice to a pro-abortion actress. They also profiled the founder of #ShoutYourAbortion. Anchor Rebecca Jarvis introduced 30-year-old Amelia Bonow as the “face” of the “new voice” in the abortion movement; a woman with “no regrets” about her choice to abort her baby last year.
From there, Jarvis turned to Roy who said Bonow was “so confident in her choice.”
During the segment, Bonow gushed about her“incredibly positive experience.” sharing her abortion story “on a whim” on Facebook last month, which launched the #ShoutYourAbortion campaign.
“Like, I was running out the door, I was like, ‘I need to mop my kitchen,’” she recalled, “and I just was like, ‘no, I’m not going to mop the kitchen, I’m just going to tell everyone I had an abortion.’”
Her Facebook post publicizing her abortion at Planned Parenthood read:
“Plenty of people still believe that on some level – if you are a good woman – abortion is a choice which should be accompanied by some level of sadness, shame or regret. But you know what? I have a good heart and having an abortion made me happy in a totally unqualified way. Why wouldn’t I be happy that I was not forced to become a mother?”
Her story went viral when a friend tweeted it out to her 60,000 followers with the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion, reported Roy.
Roy spoke with another one of Bonow’s friends Samie Spring Detzer, who was ecstatic that abortion could be talked about in a positive way.
LifeNews Note: Katie Yoder writes for Newsbusters, where this originally appeared.