When I first began university, I was not surprised to see that the in-class dialogue about the issue of abortion was disproportionately pro-abortion. I expected that. What I was surprised about was that, despite my years of experience being embroiled in the abortion debate, some of my professors actually surpassed my expectations.
Not only was the ideology of abortion-on-demand pushed with a vehement fervor, but the pro-life perspective was also misrepresented in the most un-academic ways imaginable. This phenomenon of misrepresentation was perfectly captured in my feminism course, where a pro-abortion guest lecturer claimed that pro-lifers were manipulative liars who held deeply rooted xenophobic and racist beliefs.
(Note: this is a paraphrase. While she used the words “manipulative”, “xenophobic”, and “racist”, she didn’t call us pro-life activists “pro-life”. She used the term “anti-choicers”. After all, no abortion activist would be caught dead calling the movement that is actively working to save the lives of women and their unborn children “pro-life”.)
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I would actually like to thank that guest lecturer, despite her offensive remarks. Her presentation, which discussed the need to increase abortion access internationally, was one of the best demonstrations of an issue that I have increasingly seen in pro-abortion rhetoric.
Let me set the stage with a hypothetical scenario. A 16 year-old girl is trapped in an abusive relationship. She is without family support and, as a result, cannot financially support herself or find a place to live. According to radical pro-abortion feminists like the one who presented in my class last week, abortion access will solve all her problems. This is what I call the cure-all abortion theory.
Here is the issue with this theory: it assumes that the 16 year-old girl would want an abortion if the systems of poverty and homelessness were eliminated. While offering this 16 year-old girl an abortion may seem compassionate, there are often no active measures taken by abortion supporters to combat the various factors that are causing a crisis in this woman’s life. In fact, this cure-all abortion perspective completely ignores the fact that the young woman in my example would likely not be unexpectedly pregnant if it weren’t for her abusive boyfriend and lack of family support. This is one of my biggest issues with the abortion-on-demand society we live in.
According to science, abortion ends the life of an individual, living, human entity: one that is separate from the mother and has a unique DNA. In other words, abortion ends the life of a child. Never in our society do we recognize that abortion does nothing to help women. Never in our society do we acknowledge that unexpected pregnancies only become crisis pregnancies when there are different crisis-inducing factors at play in a woman’s life.
Abortion does nothing to change a woman’s life situation. All it does is end the life of her unborn child. So why do we act as if abortion is the cure-all solution we’ve been looking for since the beginning of time?
Abortion does not end poverty, so why do we offer it as a solution to low-income women?
Abortion does not end illness, so why do we offer it as a solution to terminally-ill women?
Abortion does not end abuse, so why do we offer it as a solution to women who are victims of abuse?
Please try to understand: I am not saying that having a baby will solve these problems. But what I am saying is that these women would often not be seeking abortion if it were not for the systems of oppression that are at work in their lives. This is what the “cure-all abortion theory” ignores.
Moreover, until the negative forces are removed from a woman’s life, she is not actually making a true choice. Rather, she is making a choice that she feels is her only option. In other words, she feels she has no other choice. How is that possibly empowering to women in crisis pregnancies?
The tragic irony is that it is these women that pro-abortion activists claim to be fighting for. As my post-abortive friends would say, in the name of choice, women have lost true choice.
Abortion activists have long considered themselves the defenders of women and women’s rights. They have subsequently deemed every “anti-choicer”, such as myself, “anti-woman”. Apparently, only pro-abortion activists understand the depths of a woman’s heart – every other woman’s heart, that is. Mine, it would seem, doesn’t count. Not only is this mentality incredibly ironic, but it also overestimates the value of pro-abortion activism.
If abortion advocates were truly pro-woman, they would be concerned about the way in which abortion is being used to oppress women through sex-selection. If abortion advocates were truly pro-woman, they would be troubled by the numerous testimonies of women in Canada who have been badgered, harassed, and coerced into having abortions. If abortion advocates were truly pro-woman, they would acknowledge that abortion physically and psychologically damages women.
And perhaps the most poignant issue of all, if abortion advocates were truly pro-woman, they would be as enraged as I am that abortion is being used as a cure-all solution to women’s problems and that government resources are being poured into only this cure when it does nothing to end the cycles of poverty and abuse that many women in crisis pregnancies face.
So to the radical pro-abortion activist I say: end poverty. Combat homelessness. Fight abuse.
When it comes to supporting a pregnant woman, maybe it is only the “crisis” that we need to end in her crisis pregnancy situation.
LifeNews Note: Lia Mills is a student pro-life activist who is the founder and director of True Choice.
