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.
Murdering a child IS NOT caring for them no matter how you look at it.
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To a con artist, lying, deception, stealing, all of it is “normal” behavior.
**“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. **
Says it all in a couple of sentences.
It is hardly “part of being a mother.” It is refusing to be a mother.
Sound like Newspeak. This definitely ungood.
Yeah, I’d disagree. I’d say it is exactly the opposite of “being a mother”. In fact I would call it anit-being a mother.
“Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights”
Reclaiming? Um, isn’t killing babies already legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy? So what is this cow saying, she wants to kill them after 22 weeks? All the way to 9 months?
I was going to ask “do these people even hear what they’re saying?”... but then I realized that they know all too well what they’re saying.
They are trying - constantly - to come up with some sort of twisted manner to justify their actions to absolve the guilt felt in their souls. They are desperately trying to bury that feeling. In the case of the activists, it’s an attempt to spread the guilt among the many.
Katha, you will have a lot of time to discuss being a good ‘mother’ when you dwell with the ‘father’ of all lies in Hell.
Being a non-mother is part of being a mother.
Ina similar vein:
Being a prostitute is part of being a virgin.
Being wet is part of being dry.
Being a thief is part of being an honorable man.
Killing is part of demonstrating respect for life.
What’s so hard to understand about that?
Killing my baby is normal and part of motherhood?????
Excuse the language, but.....
Bullshit.
Abortion is normal and natural if you are a rabbit and resorb your pregnancy.
If you’re a materialist, then it’s a normal, natural part of survival/reproduction strategy.
But so are rape and murder.
Doubleplusungood newspeak announced by the Ministry of Plenty of Children.
this woman’s mind is useless.
her conscience is beyond seared...it’s been nuked
The author attempts to justify her point by going back in history 4,000 years. How much do our lives today resemble those of our ancestors who lived so long ago, or even just 100 years ago?
Medical advances alone have affected our lives in ways that were at best only imagined 100 years ago. We now know much more about reproduction, and know without a doubt that pregnant women are indeed carrying babies because we can see their images through ultrasound. Because of the dedication of parents and doctors, those babies are able to be born and survive despite being premature, and that is only going to get better with time.
The author is fairly typical of the pro-abortion crowd. She has closed her eyes and heart to all of the inconsistencies of her beliefs.
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