Start Date: January 25, 2024
Everything from lust, youthful indiscretion, and perhaps imbibing of substances, has led to unplanned pregnancy. So there have also always been efforts to end them. Not all were effective and many are very dangerous.
In the late 20th century medical abortions became standardized and were federally legalized in 1973. Generally the patient would be a young girl who was a week or so “late” and terrified. Perhaps she might be kicked out by her parents and abandoned by the guy. She might have had to quit college or lose her job. She certainly wasn’t getting maternity leave.
In the 1990’s President Clinton committed to maintaining available abortions wanting them to be “safe” and “legal”. He also said they should be “RARE”. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation. The cause of pregnancy has been known for a very long time now. Also, at the same time abortion was becoming legal, a wide array of contraceptive methods became available in the United States. In theory they would make abortion obsolete, or at least negligible. There were reductions. So it would be nice if the incidence of unplanned pregnancies could become truly rare and a marginal issue in social discourse.
Well, as to “rare”, according to PBS, in 2020 one in five pregnancies was terminated [1]. From the Guttmacher institute, 24% (~1 / 4) women have an abortion by the age of 45 [2]. I imagined that part of the assumption of abortion being “rare” must have been that no one would want to go through such emotional trauma more than once. Yet roughly half of abortions are obtained by women who have had abortions previously [3]. That is a tremendous failure rate. If, in my youth I was ever pregnant, under circumstances not of my choosing, I might have taken my life and the child with it. So I don’t say “never”. But I would like to think it would be a once in a lifetime.
For much of history women had little control over their sex lives. Pregnancy, not infrequently, resulted in the mother dying in childbirth. Now the mortal consequence is the death of the unborn. It seems that transferring the burden from the participants to the one that truly has no choice has made for less responsibility for the supposed adults in the room. Abortion was meant to be an emergency measure of last resort. If only for selfish reasons, it is better to spare your body unnecessary invasive procedures.
Abortion has also been considered a discreet matter. Great care was given to keep records of such procedures confidential. While there have long been some avenues for young girls to give birth and have their babies adopted, what was not possible was to maintain the privacy that biology affords the father. For the girl, people would speculate about the circumstances and judge her whether she kept or gave up the baby. A world of people carried the most intimate traumatic experience of her life forever. So if you wished to keep your pregnancy a secret, the abortion would need to be as well. Those who have supported reproductive choice have had to explain that they were not PRO-abortion. No one could imagine wanting that experience or wishing it on your worst enemy. Most took it to their grave with only a few close friends aware of it. Even if they were’t ashamed, it just wasn’t something to be looked back on with anything but hurt.
All of this seems in conflict with present day women who boast and brag and speak of abortion in a celebratory manner. Cosmopolitan magazine had an article about Satanic abortion rituals. [4]. People are filming abortions, even teens, and putting them on TikTok [5], [6]. Perhaps that will help promote contraception, but so much for preserving your privacy, a fundamental premise of the 1973 legal decision.
The other term that seems to be getting lost is “Choice”. The Pro-Choice movement was meant to support women making choices. For some the choice is to carry on with the pregnancy. Now in the 2020’s the western world is seeing attacks on centers that support girls who choose to pursue their pregnancy. You made your choice. They are making theirs. You don’t get to be the victim of someone else’s pregnancy [7].
But what I find even more stunning is the change in the parameters of what is eligible for termination of pregnancy. Given that adoption and “safe surrender” programs allow women to turn over babies they cannot raise, the remaining reasons for ending pregnancy are to not experience the health challenges, and as previously noted, to evade people knowing that you are pregnant.
Yet now there seems to be a wave of support, perhaps a minority, for killing babies at or near birth, known as partial birth or full term abortion. This can only be a form of sadomasochism.
Why, why, oh why, would anyone choose to be pregnant for full term, with the back pain, the bladder pressure, the endless urinating, the indigestion, the lack of sleep, not being able to tie your shoes, or see your feet, risk developing gestational diabetes or preeclampsia, only to then murder a fully developed healthy baby. What is the point? There is nothing left to be gained. Why go through the health risks of pregnancy only to double down and have some late stage procedure with its own risks? [8]
That is masochism. It almost qualifies as “Munchausen by proxy”, a mental disorder where someone makes themselves ill for attention.
Then the sadism. You spent roughly 9 months being pregnant, go into some form of labor and then murder a baby. Not an embryo. Not a fetus. A baby [9], [10].
Yet in the full scale insanity of the recent years it is now referred to as a basic human right. Recently a medical student in Wisconsin testified that she would leave the state if not allowed to perform full term abortions. I would assume she is an obstetrician by specialty. They are the ones with offices filled with baby pictures. I cannot reconcile that with partially removing a baby from the womb and then suctioning its brain [11]. The hippocratic oath says “First, do no harm.”
Why, why?
REFERENCES
[1] “U.S. abortions rose in 2020 with about 1 in 5 pregnancies terminate”, PBS News Hour, June 15, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-abortions-rose-in-2020-with-about-1-in-5-pregnancies-terminated
[2] “Abortion Is a Common Experience for U.S. Women, Despite Dramatic Declines in Rates” Guttmacher Institute, October 19, 2017, https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/abortion-common-experience-us-women-despite-dramatic-declines-rates
[3] Cohen, Susan, “Repeat Abortion, Repeat Unintended Pregnancy, Repeated and Misguided Government Policies”, Guttmacher Policy Review, Volume 10, Issue 2, May17, 2007 https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2007/05/repeat-abortion-repeat-unintended-pregnancy-repeated-and-misguided-government-policies
[4] Giatti, Ian M., “Cosmopolitan defends abortion as satanic ‘religious ritual,’ calls satanism a ‘nontheistic faith’”, The Christian Post, December 5, 2023, https://www.christianpost.com/news/cosmopolitan-defends-abortion-as-satanic-religious-ritual.html
[5] https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-abortion-viraldebate-twitter-conservatives-2020-2
[6] Cranley, Ellen, “A TikTok of a teen getting an abortion went viral and sparked a massive debate”, Business Insider, February 29, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/mom-films-home-abortion-destigmatize-termination-1820505
[7] Singh, Arjun, “FBI Investigating Attacks on Pregnancy Centers”, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-investigating-attacks-on-pregnancy-centers/
[8] “ABORTION CARE AFTER 26 WEEKS”, DuPont Clinic, https://dupontclinic.com/services/abortion-after-26-weeks/
[9] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:18%20section:1531%20edition:prelim)
[10] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/what-is-a-partialbirth-abortion-11029
[11] CRNET, “What is a Partial-Birth Abortion?” https://www.foxnews.com/media/wisconsin-medical-student-admits-support-full-term-abortion-leave-state-training-banned