The slogan for this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C. is “Pro-Life is Pro-Woman.” It’s an appropriate label, as anyone who is part of the pro-life movement knows. The movement is dominated and largely run by women, many of them who have had abortions in the past, and half the unborn lives they save are, of course, female.
It’s time for the “pro-choice” movement to update its slogan. I propose this: “Pro-Choice is Pro-Abortion.”
Of course, many pro-choicers will be angered by my suggestion, insisting they’re not pro-abortion. I’ve heard that objection for years, and out of respect, I’ve tried to honor that by going with their preferred label of “pro-choice” rather than “pro-abortion.” Truth be told, I’ve met pro-choice women who reluctantly advocate a “right” to abortion, and who (to their credit) would try to convince a friend considering an abortion to not have one. They support her legal right, but would try to convince her not to kill her unborn child. That’s more pro-choice than pro-abortion.
But such women that I’ve met (some remain longtime friends) are not active participants in the pro-choice movement. The activists and ringleaders are an altogether different breed. And it’s their doings, their choices, that compel me to argue that the modern pro-choice movement needs an updated slogan:
“Pro-Choice is Pro-Abortion.”
I could fill this column with examples to support my case. In fact, this isn’t the first time I’ve written that many pro-choicers are pro-abortion. I’ve been making that case in articles since the 1990s. For this piece, I’ll make it simple, giving examples from just the last few weeks:
Exhibit 1: My first exhibit is a literal exhibit — an art exhibit in New York titled “Abortion is Normal,” with proceeds going to fund (who else?) Planned Parenthood — which, for the record, is utterly and essentially pro-abortion. The organization “Downtown for Democracy” launched the abortion exhibition this month at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery, with proceeds from the sale of the “artwork” going to “voter education on reproductive issues” and to “Planned Parenthood PAC efforts.” From there, the show goes to Arsenal Contemporary Gallery, where it stays until February 1.
As Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel points out, you will not see pictures of aborted babies among the grotesque images at this exhibit, but you will find an assemblage of vials and jars labeled “I want your blood,” paintings of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and (among much more) “Thank God for Abortion” t-shirts.
The latter is an increasingly common perversity in the “pro-choice” movement. Go to the website of the excellent LifeNews.com and survey the endless jaw-dropping examples of female pastors invoking God for their abortions or literally blessing abortion clinics (“God is present in this space”). Planned Parenthood has long had its own chaplain. These macabre ministers believe that God would support their cause. To call this merely blasphemous seems insufficient.
Exhibit 2: Consider a group that openly urges women to not feel guilty or regret their abortion but to be proud of it, to celebrate it, to “shout” it. For several years now it has been listed under the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion, and was even featured in the Style section of the Washington Post.
“Our stories are ours to tell,” insists the organization’s website, with appropriate self-centeredness. “This is not a debate. Abortion is normal.” It adds, “One child for me, thanks.” And insists, “This is your life.”
No one else’s life. Not even the unborn child’s life. Only yours. It’s all about you, you, you.
In keeping with that mentality, singer Amanda Palmer wants women who have had abortions to celebrate them with a party akin to a baby shower for women who choose life. She even wrote a song about it. “We’ll throw you the best abortion shower,” the song cheers.
Exhibit 3: Earlier this month, actress Michelle Williams at the Golden Globes ceremony took time in a two-minute speech celebrating her award to urge women to act in their “own self-interest” and “thank God” for the “right to choose” that she believes made her TV award possible. “I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making, and not just a series of events that happened to me,” says Williams. “And I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose: to choose when to have my children, and with whom.”
Williams coveted her little golden idol, delivered at the expense of the child she aborted, as the crowd of rich and beautiful roared its approval. The spectacle was surreal, sick, tragic. Michaelyn Hein, writing for Crisis Magazine, captured it eloquently:
I watched her acceptance speech. And my heart broke. It broke for Michelle Williams and the unborn baby she seemed to be admitting to having aborted. It broke for the women in the audience who, through smiles and nods of agreement, cried and cheered at her words. Namely, that we women should be grateful to live in a time when we have the lawful right to choose to kill our children for the sake of “successful” moments such as the one Williams was having that night.
Did she realize what she was saying? Did the women who cheered her on realize what they were supporting? I shook my head and knit my brow as I pondered how women — who are given the beautiful ability to co-create with God — could applaud another woman’s choice to murder her baby.
Because that’s exactly what the people in that room in Hollywood last Sunday night were hooting and hollering for. That we should cry tears of joy rather than of sorrow at the admission that a woman had killed her baby for a career, for a role in a television show or film. That roomful of people in Hollywood last Sunday night celebrated a woman who cradled an award instead of her child. Because, apparently, she doesn’t have two arms with which to reach out and grab both.
This is the lie of the abortion industry, the lie that we women are spoon-fed by Planned Parenthood and NARAL and every other abortion-minded organization and politician. That we women are so weak that we cannot possibly accomplish our dreams and have children. That we women are so naturally selfish that we shouldn’t want or need to put anything — especially our own flesh and blood — above our career ambitions.
The same people who shouted their praise on hearing Michelle Williams’s words would, presumably, also shout that women can have it all. That we can do anything we set our minds to — except have a career and a family. This, it seems, is where our superhero status falls flat. This is the point, they say, at which we must choose. Either we kill our child or our career….
This is not female empowerment. Our unique power as women is our ability to nurture, not destroy, life. Yes, we nurture and we do it beautifully. We can grow babies and careers and families and hopes and dreams all at the same time. Anyone who tells us that we can’t — or that we shouldn’t — is no friend of women….
And what of the women who cheer for the choice to murder our children? They deserve our pity, but not our praise.
That’s right, they deserve pity, not praise. Pity for the selfishness that makes them pro-abortion.
Again, so many more examples could be given to suffice to make the point. These are merely from the last month — the month of Roe v. Wade, which has enabled the deaths of over 60 million unborn children in America since January 22, 1973. These “pro-choice” women are “pro-abortion.” They’re not reluctantly supporting abortion; they’re enthusiastically supporting it.
Welcome to the modern “pro-choice” movement. It is selfish, it is ugly, and it is pro-abortion.
And as for pro-choice women who don’t consider themselves pro-abortion, and don’t like what I’ve written here, well, do something about it. These are your self-possessed sisters speaking for your movement. If you don’t like this, then don’t let them hijack your movement. Just as mainstream Democrats allowed their party to be hijacked by left-wing radicals, you’re allowing your pro-choice movement to be hijacked.
If you don’t like it, speak up. Fix it. If you don’t, pro-choice will mean pro-abortion.
