Feminist Claims Pro-Lifers are About “Controlling Women and Taking Away Their Decision-Making”

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Oct 2, 2020   |   6:49PM   |   Washington, DC

American Civil Liberties Union leader Denise Maes wants people to believe that pro-lifers do not really care about protecting unborn babies from brutal abortion deaths.

No, pro-life advocates’ real goal is to control women, according to her claims.

Maes, the public policy director of the ACLU in Colorado, wrote a column at Colorado Politics this week defending elective, late-term abortions.

A hugely unpopular stance, Maes skirted around her radical position by criticizing pro-lifers instead.

“Let me be clear: all abortion bans — whether in Alabama or Colorado — are political attacks. They are not about health or medicine. They are about controlling women and taking away decision-making power,” she said.

Maes urged Colorado voters to reject Proposition 115 on the ballot in November. The proposal would prohibit late-term abortions in the state, except when the mother’s life is at risk.

Colorado is one of just a few states that allows unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to birth, and abortion facilities openly advertise abortions in the third trimester. Every year, pro-life leaders estimate, at least 300 viable, late-term babies are aborted in Colorado.

Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!

To Maes, however, the ballot measure is all about women and not the hundreds of babies who are killed in late-term abortions.

“This measure bans abortion later in pregnancy and denies women the ability to make their own personal medical decisions,” she wrote. “The proponents of this initiative are clear — they want to force a woman to continue a pregnancy …”

She claimed pro-lifers show “no compassion” to women in difficult circumstances, but the opposite is true. Pro-lifers simply believe killing an unborn child is not the answer to a woman’s problems, and, in keeping with that belief, they provide physical and emotional support to help both her and her baby. It is abortion activists who push abortion on women, even though it does not solve any problems; abortion just creates more.

Later, Maes tried to stoke fear in moderates’ minds by arguing that the ballot measure is a stepping stone toward banning abortions altogether.

“ … Proposition 115 is being pushed by many of the same politicians and groups who have tried — and failed — to ban abortion altogether in Colorado every year for the last decade,” she wrote. “If Proposition 115 succeeds in Colorado this November, it will embolden the proponents to pursue bans even earlier in pregnancy, with the ultimate goal of restricting all abortion access in Colorado and across the country.”

But this is no secret. Pro-life advocates want to protect every baby’s life, no matter what their stage of development.

The problem is that Colorado is very liberal politically, and pro-life advocates have had a difficult time passing moderate abortion restrictions there. Even fetal homicide laws to punish criminals who kill unborn babies in situations unrelated to abortion have been rejected repeatedly by the state legislature.

Pro-life leaders in Colorado believe a 22-week abortion limit could gain the support of moderate voters who do not think abortions should be outlawed but do support modest restrictions. If it passes, at least some unborn babies’ lives would be saved, and polls consistently show that most Americans oppose late-term abortions after a baby is viable.

Maes gets pro-lifers’ intentions entirely wrong and, perhaps, intentionally so. It is easier, after all, to imagine false motives in a political opponent than it is to defend the killing of unique, irreplaceable, fully-formed unborn babies for any reason without limits.