Posted on 10/31/2014 9:24:22 AM PDT by wagglebee
Earlier this month, The Huffington Post published an excerpt of Katha Pollitt’s new book, “Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.” The excerpt is titled “The Abortion Conversation We Need to Have” and starts with Pollitt”s statement that abortion “is a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women.”
Theresa Bonopartis, the director of a post-abortion healing program, gives a good rebuttal to this statement, “It [abortion] is not “normal,” regardless of its frequency, and no amount of writing or talking will ever make it so. That is why abortion continues to be such a controversial issue. She tries to justify her position by stating abortions occur worldwide and throughout history. So have rape and murder, but simply because an action is widespread does not make it normal or acceptable.”
Then Pollitt attempts to convince her readers that abortion can be moral. She writes, “We need to see abortion as an urgent practical decision that is just as moral as the decision to have a child — indeed, sometimes more moral.
Pro-choicers often say no one is “pro-abortion,” but what is so virtuous about adding another child to the ones you’re already overwhelmed by? Why do we make young women feel guilty for wanting to feel ready for motherhood before they have a baby? Isn’t it a good thing that women think carefully about what it means to bring a child into this world — what, for example, it means to the children she already has? We tend to think of abortion as anti-child and anti- motherhood.
In media iconography, it’s the fetus versus the coat hanger: that is, abortion kills an “unborn baby,” but banning it makes women injure themselves. Actually, abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it’s not a good idea to bring them into the world. (Emphasis added)
Honestly, there are so many problems in this statement that I don’t even know where to start. But I guess I’ll start with science and reason, since that’s what most people want to discuss when we talk about abortion. Pollitt mockingly states that the media uses terminology like “unborn baby” to describe the child in utero. The last time I checked, everyone describes it that way because science tells us that life begins at conception. An unborn baby has its own heartbeat and unchanging and unrepeatable genetic code. This fact is considered elementary biology and is hardly debatable.
And even some abortion advocates acknowledge that the baby in the womb is a human life.
Salon.com writer, Elizabeth Williams, said, “When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages.
Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.” (Emphasis added)
Pollitt also uses the age-old coat hanger argument to defend abortion but that argument has been refuted countless times. In fact, former abortionist, Dr Bernard Nathanson said there was actually very little illegal abortion prior to Roe. In his book, Aborting America, he said the statistics about these abortions were totally made up.
Additionally, abortion is not natural for women because the maternal instinct of a mother is to care for and protect her children, not to destroy them. And nearly 42 years after Roe we know that abortion hurts women physically and emotionally; and we know that hundreds of women have died from “safe and legal” abortions in the U.S. So Pollitt’s claim that abortion is safe is also false.
Finally, Pollitt’s most upsetting statement is that abortion can be moral. She even believes that it can be more moral than bringing a child into the world. However, killing innocent children is never moral. If that were so, why can’t we kill them after their born? I don’t think our justice system would be too happy if mothers everywhere just started killing their kids because they were inconvenient.
The truth of the matter is most people believe abortion is morally wrong. As LifeNew’s previously reported, only 23% of Americans believe abortion is morally ok. To put it mildly, Pollitt’s views are very extreme; and it’s incredibly tragic that The Huffington Post is giving her pro-abortion book the time of day.
Well, genintal mutilation is a common, even normal, event in the lives of women in some countries.
In many places (past and present) slavery was common, even normal. No one thought anything of it.
So were/are public executions, stonings, etc. Perfectly common and normal in many societies (past and present).
Rape and pillage is/was common, normal, even expected as a consequence of war.
Women and blacks (and most people in fact) not having the right to vote was considered common and normal. It was hardly even questioned. Voting not existing at all as a concept was considered common and normal over much of human history. That was just the way things were.
Lots of things still are, or have been, “common” and “normal”.
So can we use that defense to justify anything we want?
Oh well, it’s just common and normal.
Democrats invented Abortion
Sick and Evil.
Abortion is part of being a mother? That’s a contradiction, like saying that stealing is part of being a Boy Scout, or telling the truth is part of being a democrat.
Unless your uterus is somehow an extra-terrestrial free-standing module.
And if you can't care for the child who is preparing to be born, somebody else would be glad to: and I can guarantee that.
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