New Feminist Campaign to Defend Abortion Features Half-Naked Women Writing on Their Bodies

Opinion   |   Liberty Pike   |   Aug 14, 2015   |   6:13PM   |   Washington, DC

One thing abortion rights advocates are really, really good at is using emotional argumentation. Emotional appeal is truly the only thing that can help them. Actual facts are not flattering to their movement.

A recent Huff Post story was no different. It featured the work of photographer Liora K. Her series, aptly titled, “Feminism,” features half-naked women who have written various things on their bodies. If one clicks through to see all of Liora’s photos in the series (which we don’t suggest), one will see countless photos featuring coat hangers and pro-abortion phrases.

One woman’s body “art” reads, “Pseudoscience kills women,” apparently referring to the (inconvenient) scientific research supporting fetal pain beginning at 20 weeks (read about it here) and post-abortive stress syndrome (read about that here). Another woman has written: “You can’t stop abortion” with a coat hanger pointing ominously at her vagina. Another woman holds a coat hanger and her “art” reads “5,000 dead.” One woman’s reads, “I have a heartbeat too.” Others are:

  • “What about my right to life?”
  • “Pro-woman. Pro-child. Pro-choice.”
  • “Keep your laws off my body.”
  • “[Blank] your ‘conscience clause.’” (This one refers to a clause the GOP tried to insert into Obamacare to allow employers to deny funding health services, like abortion, that they morally disagreed with.)

Every last one of those is an emotional argument. Facts reveal a much different reality.

“Back alley” and coat hanger abortions and subsequent deaths have been resoundingly proven to be mythical, but the myth just won’t die. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the former abortionist and founder of NARAL, admitted to falsifying statistics about them after he became pro-life. He said, “It was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason which had to be done was permissible.” (1)

Planned Parenthood’s own Alan Guttmacher said this about “back alley” abortionists: “The technique of the well-accredited criminal abortionist is usually good. They have to be good to stay in business, since otherwise they would be extremely vulnerable to police action.” (2)

The truth is that 15 years before Roe v. Wade, 85% of illegal abortions were performed by physicians. (3) Planned Parenthood even admitted in 1960 that “90% of all illegal abortions are presently done by physicians.” (4) Research confirms that the actual number of abortion deaths in the 25 years prior to 1973 averaged 250 a year. (5) In I966, before the first state legalized abortion, 120 died from abortion. (6) By 1972 abortion was still illegal in 80 percent of the country, but the use of antibiotics had greatly reduced the risk. Hence, the number dropped to 39 maternal deaths from abortion that year. (7) Dr. Christopher Tietze, a prominent statistician associated with Planned Parenthood, maintained that these are accurate figures, with a margin of error no greater than 10 percent. (8)

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

Another purely emotional statement featured in the series is: “Keep your laws off my body.” This one just doesn’t make sense! Literally the moment someone gets in the car, they strap a law across their body in the form of a seatbelt. When motorcyclists in states with helmet laws get on their bikes, they fasten a law over their heads. When someone carries an insurance card in their wallet, thanks to Obamacare’s requirement of being insured, they are literally carrying a law around in their pockets. Our bodies are affected by laws all the time. In fact, what law doesn’t affect our bodies? You’d probably be sitting in front of your computer for a long time trying to think of one. Laws exist for the precise reason of keeping people from hurting themselves or other people. In the case of abortion, pro-lifers are trying to pass laws that keep women from killing their babies. Pro-choicers are trying to pass laws to strengthen their right to kill babies. Both sides’ laws affect real people’s bodies.

The rest of the statements are sad attempts (and by sad, we mean heartbreaking) to justify a selfish decision. The abortion rights issue circles around one battle: which is greater, the right to live as you choose or the right to live at all? Liora’s photo-essay documents one thing accurately: there are far too many women in America who have absorbed the emotional draw of “my body, my choice” and think that responsibility for one’s actions is an archaic, misogynistic thing of the past. In today’s culture, where people riot when they feel they aren’t getting paid enough, or given enough tax-funded welfare, this sentiment is all-too-common.

Thankfully, more and more people are realizing that little children shouldn’t be sacrificed for convenience. We have a feeling that a pro-life version of Liora’s essay would feature thousands standing for babies, not dozen standing for themselves. (In fact, one already does.)

Sources (Because pro-lifers aren’t scared of facts):

  • Bernard Nathanson, Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 193.
  • Alan Guttmacher, Babies by Choice or by Chance (Avon Books, 1961)
  • Alfred Kinsey, cited by John Willke, Abortion Questions and Answers (Cincinnati, Ohio: Hayes Publishing Co, 1988), 169.
  • Mary Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem,” American Journal of Health 50 (July I960): 949.
  • Bernard Nathanson, Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 42.
  • S. Bureau of Vital Statistics.
  • Germain Grisez, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New York: Corpus Books, 1972), 70. U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics.

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