It’s been hard to miss the abortion issue in the news lately. Pro-life protections have been introduced and, in some cases, passed in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and here in Pennsylvania, too.
All the media attention to these new bills and laws has people discussing abortion again. Talk is a good thing, but misleading and incorrect information is not.
Here are some misleading or incorrect things I’ve read recently online in reference to the debates:
A commenter on PolicyMic.com wrote: “None of this will stop until a case makes its way back to SCOTUS. Given the current court the most likely outcome will be to reaffirm Roe v. Wade leaving it to the states.”
Our country’s education about this infamous Supreme Court decision is poor at best. Polls show it, and this comment demonstrates it.
Roe v. Wade actually did the opposite of what the commenter says. It took the abortion decision out of states’ hands by striking down laws – both those protecting life and those allowing abortion – in all 50 states. The ruling of seven men overrode the states’ interests. In their overarching power, the judges set a new rule in place: abortion for any reason up to birth.
Thankfully, since Roe, states have been fighting to reclaim their roles in protecting life by passing legislation to help preborn babies and their mothers.
The “brochoice” campaign attempts to recruit more young men to the pro-abortion side. A headline reads, “Bro-Choice: How #HB2 Hurts Texas Men Who Like Women.”
One of the key points in the article claims that men will lose their freedom to make decisions about their family if abortion becomes more regulated. The truth is that men lost most of that freedom in Roe v. Wade. The decision denied the man’s freedom to help make choices about his preborn child by saying that abortion should be a private decision between a woman and her doctor.
Just recently I heard from a man who was desperately seeking help because his girlfriend wanted to abort their baby and he didn’t. He wanted to know what he could do to protect his child. My heart broke when I had to tell him that legally he can’t do much of anything to protect his child’s life before he/she is born.
(A side note: Our laws do make it illegal for a man (or anyone else) to force a woman to kill their child in the womb.)
“Women’s health” – Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates are using fear-mongering tactics by making women’s health synonymous with abortion. They claim that pro-lifers are trying to sabotage “women’s health” when what they really mean is end abortion.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg pointed this out in a recent column: “But it is bizarre to suggest that women’s health and abortion rights are interchangeable. The biggest killer of women is heart disease, followed by cancer, then stroke. … And yet President Barack Obama — and nearly every other abortion-rights supporter — blithely accuses Republicans of wanting to make women’s ‘health care choices’ for them.”
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
A procedure that kills one human life and often damages another is not health care. And, as Goldberg says, it’s disrespectful – sexist, even – to narrow the term “women’s health care” to mean sexual reproduction “as if women were nothing more than breeders.” Women are so much more than that.
We have truth on our side. Pro-lifers don’t have to resort to manipulative word-play to sway people, but we do need to equip ourselves with the truth about Roe v. Wade, abortion, and life in the womb.
LifeNews Note: Micaiah Bilger is the Education Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.
