Writer and cook Linda Tirado’s story begins in 2013 when a column about her experiences with poverty and parenting went viral.
While many people supported her after the Huffington Post published her piece, others began attacking her for, among other things, not aborting her daughters. Horribly, a few even threatened her and her family with violence.
“They seemed split on whether I should have aborted them or whether I should merely never have conceived, depending on their personal politics,” Tirado wrote in a new column for The Daily Beast. “For every few notes full of support or questions, there was one suggesting me harm somehow.”
In her latest column for The Daily Beast, Tirado lashes out against the hate-filled attacks on her and her family – but in an unfortunate way. She blames pro-lifers for trying to influence her decisions in life, especially her “choice” to abort her unborn baby.
Soon after publishing her first column, Tirado wrote that she discovered she was pregnant again. She described it as a “high-risk pregnancy” but didn’t give details.
After reading the hateful comments and fearing for the welfare of her family, Tirado said she wondered how much more she could bear between struggling with poverty, caring for her daughters, working two jobs and attending school.
Tragically, she decided to have an abortion. She wrote:
I could not welcome a child into the world with joy, and I didn’t know when the people who hated what they thought I represented would decide that my children were more important than their chance to score a point on the Internet. I made a decision, then a phone call.
I didn’t know where to go. I knew that every minute counted, that at some point I would have waited too long, and this little potentiality inside me would be stuck with whatever damage I had done it when I didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep well, couldn’t stop panicking.
Mommy would be called unfit.
Tirado wrote that she considered going to Mexico to abort her baby because she wanted to avoid pro-life sidewalk counselors – who she called “terrorists.” But a friend helped her to get an abortion in Ohio under a false name instead.
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Fear seems to have governed Tirado’s unfortunate decision to abort her unborn child. Though she seems to care about providing for and protecting her daughters, she failed to extend that care and protection to her child in the womb. She attempted to justify her abortion by saying it was “a pro-life decision” and “my constitutionally guaranteed rights to take care of my family.”
In her new column, she also lashed out against pro-lifers – just as internet commenters wrongly attacked her in 2013.
She implied that alleged Colorado Springs shooter Robert L. Dear who gunned down 12 people and killed three around a Planned Parenthood abortion facility last Friday was pro-life, though there is very little evidence that he had any association with the pro-life movement. His motives remain unclear.
“This absolute cretin, this man who killed and took people in a medical clinic hostage in Colorado Springs—he’s a terrorist,” she wrote. “So is every cowardly ‘activist’ whose work is to instill fear and panic in women who are trying to access basic medical services.”
However, Tirado hit close to the truth in her conclusion when she wrote, “None of those people are pro-life.” The alleged shooter was not pro-life, nor are those who commit violence against other human beings. Violence and hatred are things that pro-lifers continuously condemn, because they are antithetical to the movement.
But Tirado wrongly associated violent criminals with the peaceful pro-lifers who work every day to end the violence of abortion against unborn babies and their mothers.
Tirado ended her column by claiming, “I am pro-life, and I stand firmly with Planned Parenthood.”
Sadly, Tirado appears to have missed her own point: You can’t both approve of violence and be pro-life.