Non-Choice

Many women get abortions, not because they have a choice, but because they feel like they have no choice. So it's a rarity when stories like this one come up.

A fourteen-year-old girl from Texas is pregnant. And she wants to have her baby. Her parents do not.

This girl has been all over the pro-life news lately because her parents are trying to force her to get an abortion. Luckily, she sued them, and the court has given her parents a temporary restraining order. There will be a hearing this Thursday, January 19, to decide whether her parents can force her to have the abortion or not. You can see the details here.

Apparently, the parents say that the girl is mentally unable to make the decision in her best interests. Her family in fact was so concerned about her welfare that they physically assaulted her to try to make her get the abortion. (Yes, this is me being sarcastic.)

First-off, I want to say kudos to the true pro-choicers out there who are horrified about this. Good for you, and thank you!

But that being said, where is all the pro-"choice" concern? You can bet that if parents were trying to force this same 14-year-old to not have an abortion that horror and anger would explode all over the internet and pro-abortion blogs.

But where are they? Why the silence? If they were truly concerned only about choice (and not "choose abortion"), they would lobby for this girl as perfectly capable of deciding "whether or not to have a child" (of course, she already has a child, but I digress). They fight so adamently against parental consent laws for abortion, why aren't they furious about this parental concent for having a baby? Not even necessarily *keeping* the baby, but just allowing the child to LIVE? Why?

The nauseating magazine "Jezebel" (yes, I think it is named after the Biblical Jezebel), which is self-described as "gossip, culture, fashion, and sex for the contemporary woman" (aka, leftist feminist and pro-abortion) wrote an article on this, but instead of focusing on the girl, it mostly talked about how pro-life groups were using this particular story to make "pro-choicers look like hypocrites".

"Why would this narrative be so appealing to an anti-choice group? Because it makes pro-choicers look like hypocrites."

Yep. We are, Jezebel, and you just proved our point. You showed no concern for this girl. You talked about her plight, and then complained about the pro-lifers...not the people who are infringing on this girl's "right to choose".

"Continuing her pregnancy may well be what the girl wants, but it's a little disturbing that the TCDL's narrative is the only one out there. Her family doesn't have legal representation, so it's been difficult to get their point of view."

Yeah. I'm sure this girl would go through the trouble of suing her own family just for kicks.

"As of now, I've been unable to confirm from any outside source that the girl's family is actually trying to force her to have an abortion — the only source for this story is the TCDL, which has an obvious vested interest in painting itself as the defender of a mother and her baby against an abortion-hungry family."

Thanks, Jezebel, for your touching concern.

One more thing.

"Really, no responsible pro-choicer should support a family's right to force a teenager to get an abortion. It might not be especially comfortable to think about a 14-year-old making a decision that will affect the rest of her life...But taking that decision away from her is way more upsetting..."

Which do you think would be more upsetting: carrying a baby unwillingly to term, perhaps with shame, some health problems, and some angry family members, or a forced abortion which leaves you with the haunting trauma of having murdered your child (whether or not the fetus is a "child" or not isn't the debate here--to the woman who was forced into the abortion, that child was her child.)

I'm sorry if this post is a little sarcasm-heavy, but I'm so infuriated about the complete dismissal of this girl's situation in the pro-abortion camp that I can't bear to write a calm, logical, "you're wrong" post like I normally try for.

Please pray for this girl and for all the girls out there who think they have no choice.

Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

It's About to Get Real

I just sent in a volunteer application to my local crisis pregnancy center. This makes me a little giddy. I have never volunteered at a CPC before, but I have wanted to for several years. At the same time, it's a little surreal.

I hear about abortion from blogs, websites, news stories, books, testimonies, pro-life booths at fairs and conferences, talks, fundraising events, YouTube, Life Chain,and once a Bound 4 Life protest. But I've never really...encountered it. Not for real. I haven't seen any "major" protests; none of the really big, hundreds-of-people marches, not even a protest standing outside an abortion clinic. I haven't met any obviously post-abortive women or abortion workers (though, considering about 1 out of 3 women get abortions, I've probably met several). What's it going to be like, working in a place that deals with abortion so closely? A place that is saving lives? The closest brush I've had with abortion happened like this:

I was going to participate in my first Life Chain. At this particular Life Chain, there was also going to be a diaper drive. Come to the Life Chain, drop off diapers, and stand for an hour or so with a sign. When I got to the Life Chain, there was a small pro-abortion group doing a counter-protest on a corner, along with their own personal food drive to give to the charity group Harvesters. Their idea was "let's go take a stand for women and do some REAL good by getting food for REAL people". (Yes, they were complaining about our diaper drive. Uh...yeah. I couldn't make it make sense either.) That was the idea. Now, I like Harvesters, and I played with the idea of walking over with my pro-life sign and giving them some. I ended up just donating food to my then-local crisis pregnancy center instead. 

Anyway. Before the Life Chain, I took some money and drove to Wal-Mart (it was my first solo drive :)) to buy a bunch of diapers. In line at the cash register, the following conversation ensued:

Cash register lady: Wow, what are you doing with all these diapers?
Me: *explain*
CRL: *few seconds of silence* *good-naturedly* I hate you, by the way.
Me: *laugh* Uh...okay...that's fine with me.
CRL: *still good-naturedly* 'Cause, I don't know if you have kids or not, but they're expensive. I have three.
Me: Um, yeah, that's why I'm buying the diapers...? I'm [my age], actually, and I have seven siblings, so yeah.
CRL: Well, get married and don't have kids! *laugh*
Me: Awww, but I like kids!
CRL: Well, adoption, then.
Me: I've thought about that, actually. I think I'd like to adopt. But we'll see.
CRL: *weird semi-long monologue about how her kids like her to pretend she adopted them* *finish check-out* Have a nice day!
Me: You too!

Yes, that was interesting. Looking back, I would have said some things differently, but considering I wasn't really expecting that, I think I did okay. But I really don't know what to expect going into the battle zone like this. It may be very anti-climatic since I doubt I'll get a very exciting job, but who knows. Thank God for sidewalk counselors, CPCs, pro-life lawmakers, Abort73, LifeNews.com, Tim Tebow, Justin Bieber, and the rest.

Soon, I hope this is me:

*Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Unborn Angels

I'm normally not a fan of rap. In my opinion, it hardly counts as music, with a very few exceptions ("Jesus Freak" by dc Talk being one of them). However, I came across this song the other day. Is it great music? No, probably not, technically speaking. But the lyrics were what got me (that, and the beautiful piano).

It reminded me how desperately prayer is needed for everybody dealing with abortion. Abortion, by now, hurts every single person in the world, and they may not even know it.

We need to pray for the abortionists and abortion workers, that they can be touched, and realize how wrong abortion is. They live in such darkness. The ones there that truly care about women need their eyes to open so they can see that they're hurting these women, and so they can see how to truly help them.

We need to pray for the pro-life activists, so they can stay emotionally strong.

We need to pray for politicians, that they will pass laws against abortion.

We need to pray for all the brother-and-sister-less people in the world, whose siblings have been aborted.

We need to pray for all the friend-less people in the world, whose best friends have been aborted.

We need to pray for all the men and women, whose spouses have been aborted.

We need to pray the countries and causes whose leaders have been aborted.

We need to pray for the fathers whose children have been aborted.

We need to pray for the mothers whose children have been aborted.

We need to pray for the children, asking God to send his guardian angels to comfort them as they are being aborted.

Image found via Google Images. Video from YouTube. No copyright infringement intended.

How bad can it get?

Hello. We're from Planned Parenthood. We're here to help.

It's no secret that I do my best not to make assumptions. It can be pretty embarassing if you're proven false. What's worse, you can spread false rumors. I may not post about a topic flying around larger, more prominent pro-life blogs if I see a good indicator that it may not be completely true. So here I am, deciding to make a significant claim:

Planned Parenthood is not pro-choice.

I'm not saying that all of the people working at PP aren't pro-choice. But as a whole, PP is not pro-choice. It's pro-abortion, anti-family, possibly racist, and pro-profit. I'm even having a hard time believeing that the PP "biggies", like Cecile Richards, blindly believe themselves to be pro-choice.

Some stories have begun coming out about PP experiences that were very much non-pro-choice.

"Addison's" story:

“Do you want to have an abortion if you’re pregnant?” When Addison told her no, the woman said:  

“Well, you are only seventeen. You really need to make sure you’re ready for parenting and consider abortion."

But Addison was opposed to abortion, and it had ever even occurred to her to consider abortion.

When they called later to confirm she was pregnant, they said, “We know you said you didn't want an abortion in your visit today, but we wanted to make sure that is still the case?"

“I said I did not want an abortion and hung up.” Addison says. But she called back for help. "The same day I called them and told them that I had a blood test and it confirmed pregnancy, and I needed to see if I could see a doctor about prenatal care and what I could and couldn't do, and what would keep the baby healthy. They then told me that unless I had a sexually transmitted disease or wanted an abortion that they could no longer help me. I said so y'all do not help pregnant women? They told me no that they didn't have doctors for pregnant women."

What??

Alisha's story:

[T]he nurse asked her if she wanted to keep “it” if she was pregnant. When Alisha insisted she did, the nurse pushed:

We Can Do It?

“You can be honest with me, are being forced to keep it against your will?” I said, “Absolutely not. I wasn’t expecting to get pregnant so quickly, but if I am pregnant I want to keep my baby” and again she asked “So your husband or mom are not forcing you to keep it if you are?” I said, more aggressively and upset, “NO!”

Alisha notes:

When she was asking me if I was forced to keep the baby she looked like she was reading from a script. I remember her saying that if I kept ” it,” it would be very expensive and life changing. She was poking at the fact that I didn’t seem like I could afford to have a baby. She also asked if I was scared to say that I wanted an abortion, and that if I had any questions I could talk to someone that can ease my nerves. She never really said baby she said “it” a lot. She also mentioned that if I was pregnant depending how far a long I was that there might not even be a heartbeat.

Go here for even more stories.

Have you noticed that women are smart enough to make their own choices UNLESS they decide to keep their baby? How interesting. If an organization only supports pregnant women wanting abortions and then dumps them if the women want to keep their babies, they don't support planned parenthood: they support termination of unplanned parenthood. Guess what? Termination of unplanned parenthood is where the money is.

It doesn't end there. In 1969, the government asked Planned Parenthood for suggestions on how to deal with overpopulation (which, by the way, does not exist). Well, they gave it. Here is the memo in its entirety. Please read it. It is one page long. It will not be boring. Why? Because it is SCARY. Not because Planned Parenthood suggested these things. But because these things are happening. These things are becoming everyday life. Their suggestions include both economic changes and changes to our society as a whole. For example: "encourage women to work", "abortion and contraception on demand", and "tax married more than single". And guess what comes next: "compulsory sterilization of all who have two children except for a few who would be allowed to have three".

Oh great. I don't want to live in China.2, Planned Parenthood, thank you very much.

Fetal Murder: Abortion Contradiction

I feel rather proud of my new state this week. I saw an article in the newspaper this morning about a law, passed earlier this year, that comes into effect today. Be careful. Now, if you kill a pregnant woman in North Carolina, you can be prosecuted for two murders. Or, if you assault a pregnant woman and the unborn child dies because of it, you can be charged with the murder of the child.

This law has many good aspects to it.
1. It will help protect pregnant women from assault. Many pregnant women are abused by their partners if the women refuse to abort. This law will make their abusers think twice before hurting the mother.
2. The woman's friends and family can get justice not only for the death of their sister or daughter, but also for the death of their niece/newphew or daughter/son. Or if it's just the child that dies, the mother can get justice.
3. This law promotes a culture of life.

Abortion advocates rabidly protest laws like these. It puts them in an awkward position, and they don't like that.

1. They're against violence against women, women should have the right to choose whatever they want and nobody should stop them. Okay, granted. Nothing wrong here.

2. This is more sticky. I have heard abortion advocates say repeatedly that it's all about the choice of the mother. While they don't like to dwell on it, in general they say that the choice of the mother is what gives personhood to the child. If a three-week-old fetus is unwanted, it's a parasite. If a three-week-old fetus is wanted, it's a baby. They have to believe that, or be correctly labled as pro-abortion, not pro-choice. But they'd rather not remind people of this strange situation. This law brings it out into the open.

3. Here's the killer. "We're supportive of a law that would actually help women who are victims," said Carey Pope, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina. "But this particular law that passed in no way addresses the violence against women. The only thing it does is to establish personhood rights." Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Red alert! Personhood rights for unborn children?!? ABSOLUTE PRO-ABORTION NO-NO.

Because this law does do that, indirectly. While it makes the exception of abortion, it offers a glaring contradiction: if you kill a baby that the mother wants, you're a murderer. If you kill a baby that the mother doesn't want, you're a hero.

Huh?

Eventually people have to blink and realize that, wait a minute, the fetus didn't change at all. The only thing that changed was the mother's way of thinking.

Hmmmmm.







This law doesn't even contradict what most abortion advocates claim to believe: that it's the mother's choice that defines personhood. All this law does is make people look that contradiction in the face. That's why abortion advocates are scared of this law. If abortion advocates believe it's wrong (and criminally prosecutable) to force a woman to have an abortion, how is it any different when someone (indirectly as it may be) kills a woman's unborn child? Wait...there isn't a difference.

As I stated above, that this law actually does help women. If I was going to kill or hurt somebody, I'd think twice about it if I realized I could be punished doubly for it. This law also helps protect the women who survive the assault, but their baby doesn't. Punishing the offender won't bring their child back, but it's better than the hurtful alternative: "I'm sorry ma'am, I realize that you feel this man killed your child, but legally your child was a mere fetus, and therefore not a person, and therefore we cannot prosecute this man for the fetus's harm." Oh, thanks. Somebody killed my child and you're going to let him get away with it.

Planned Parenthood also opposes this legislation. So at least two huge pro-"choice" groups here in NC don't like this law: and why? Not because it doesn't protect women (because it does), not because it harms choice (because it doesn't), but because it illustrates how their beliefs make little sense.

(By the way, kudos to North Carolina's House Speaker Pro Tem Dale Folwell for sponsoring, speaking for, and advocating this law! Many thanks, Representative Folwell!)

Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

The Much Disputed Abortion-Breast Cancer Controversy

I'm not going to bother to cite studies saying that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, because there are probably an equal amount of studies saying that it doesn’t. There is a reason that I love logic: when all else fails, there’s nothing like some good old deductive reasoning.

Earlier this week a prominent surgeon, professor,  and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, published a paper in the medical journal Linacre Quarterly about this link. I read her report, and decided to give a simplified version of it on here. She doesn’t cite any specific studies, but her logic is irrefutable.

It’s an undisputed fact that a woman who goes to term with a pregnancy reduces her risk of breast cancer. Before she’s pregnant, her breasts aren’t fully developed, and thus cancer vulnerable. When a woman becomes pregnant, the amounts of the hormones estrogen and progesterone increase radically, stimulating breast growth in the mother. The number of underdeveloped cancer-vulnerable breast cells multiply dramatically during the pregnancy, and it isn’t until the 32^nd week or so that the new breast cells actually mature and become cancer-resistant. About 85% of all the breast cells (both old and new) become cancer-resistant after the first full pregnancy. More and more cells become cancer-resistant with each subsequent full pregnancies, even further reducing the chances of developing breast cancer.

When a woman gets an abortion, however, she ends the pregnancy before her breast cells finish developing, and the body stops sending the hormones that would eventually “finish” the breasts. This leaves many more underdeveloped cancer-vulnerable breast cells than the woman would have had if she hadn’t gotten pregnant at all.

Abortion still increases the risk of breast cancer even after a mother has had a full pregnancy. The breasts change every pregnancy. Also, an abortion increases the risk of having a miscarriage and/or a premature birth, if the cervix or another part of the woman’s body is damaged. A natural miscarriage occurs because of insufficient amounts of progesterone and estrogen, and a woman’s breasts won’t develop with insufficient amounts anyway, while abortion-caused miscarriages can occur for other reasons. A premature birth, if it occurs before 32 weeks, increases the risk of breast cancer because the breast cells are not finished developing.

If you have the time (or even if you don’t), I urge you to read at least in part Dr. Lancranchi’s paper. It contains much more scientific, specific information than I put in here, and she explains it much more thoroughly. She also explains a link between breast cancer and some types of birth control.

A few side notes:

1. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

2. I decided to change my posting days to Tuesdays and Fridays, so that I can have a more equal amount of time to prepare each post.

3. I intend to be picking up pretty much where I left off: finishing my “ultimate pro-choice argument” rebuttal and a summary of our presidential candidates.

4. I now have an email address, grace.prolife@gmail.com, to which you can email me about anything related to this blog.

5. Thank you so much for your patience. I’m eager to get back to work!

Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

The Deadly Dangers of Childbirth

Those are the dangers pro-abortioners like to point out. It isn’t uncommon for pro-abortion organizations to claim that abortion is many times safer (sometimes they claim up to twelve times safer) than childbirth. This has always sounded odd to me, since pregnancy and childbirth is flowing with what comes naturally to the female body, and induced abortion disrupts that flow. Unlike other surgeries, abortion gives absolutely no benefit to the body—it doesn’t improve your heart or help your knees or hips or any such thing. So the question is: what does abortion do to the body, what dangers does it pose, and is it really safer than childbirth?

The short answer is no. Common sense should tell us this. It isn’t safer than childbirth. And abortion isn’t an extraordinarily safe insignificant surgery. For one thing, it’s a blind surgery. The abortionist can’t see what he’s doing, unless he does an ultrasound-guided abortion, which doesn’t happen often because it takes five to ten minutes longer. (Longer abortions = fewer abortions = less money.)

As I said in another post, when death certificates are made out, the cause of death is rarely listed as abortion, unless the woman dies on the operating table, or perhaps in an emergency room immediately following the abortion—and not always then. Instead, the direct cause of death (infection, bleeding, etc.) is listed. Abortion is the indirect cause of death, and in most cases it is not mandatory to list abortion as an indirect cause of death (Here is an excellent article by Physicians for Life that gives more details on how abortion deaths vs. other maternal deaths statistics are warped.)

There have also been studies that research a randomly selected group of women who died within a year of their last pregnancy (whether it ended in birth, miscarriage, or induced abortion), compared to women dying with no recent pregnancy. The study I link to here includes not just physical-complication-deaths, but also suicides and motor vehicle accidents and such things, and then explains possible reasons for why (in this particular study, anyway) women who have had abortions always (except in natural death, where non-recent-pregnancy women were the highest) have the higher death rate.

It is also likely abortion causes (or helps cause) even more indirect causes of death. For example, I ran across this recent report the other day. It stated that the United States ranks 41^st in maternal deaths, with 1 death for every 4,800 births. First on the list was Ireland with 1 death for every 47,600 births. On a whim and a hunch, I looked up Ireland’s abortion laws. Turns out that abortion is illegal in Ireland, except when the life of the mother is in danger, and perhaps for severe physical complications; there is quite a bit of conflict in Ireland over its abortion laws, so I’m not positive how restrictive its laws currently are, but it is obviously more restrictive than, say…the US. I’m not saying that abortion is the sole cause of this, but the US isn’t exactly lacking in medical advances. There has to be other reasons: perhaps men and women in Ireland tend to live healthier lifestyles than we tend to live in the US. And/or perhaps abortion raises the risk of childbirth, which raises the childbirth death statistics, which in turn gives abortion advocates their “proof” that childbirth is more dangerous than abortion…even though abortion advances those risks in the first place.

In any case, abortion is more dangerous than the official statistics and abortion advocates say. How much more remains to be seen, but it can’t be ignored.

The Deadly Coat-hanger

The picture you see there is one of the symbols of the pro-abortion movement. Here is the basis of their claim:

1. Before abortion was legalized in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, thousands and thousands of women got unsafe, illegal abortions, approximately 200,000 to 1.2 million every year. (Thus the coat-hanger image. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.)

2. Because abortion was so dangerous, 5,000-10,000 women died from abortions every year.

3. When abortion was legalized, there was no need to go to money-grubbing back-alley butchers for abortions: women could now go to licensed medical professionals under safe, sanitary conditions.

4. Thus, thousands of women’s lives were/are saved (because they didn’t die from unsafe abortions).

5. If abortion were made illegal, women would begin dying off like flies again.

6. Conclusion: abortion must remain legal.

In reality, there is little basis for this claim. First, the numbers*:

Women perhaps got 1.2 million illegal abortions every year? Really? Then why, the first year after abortion was made legal, were there only 744,600 abortions performed? Legal abortion doesn’t make women decide to be much more careful about getting pregnant. It makes the opposite occur. And this caused the deaths of 5,000-10,000 women? Actually, in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade, there were only 39 deaths from illegal abortions. (They were higher in earlier decades, in the hundreds, but the numbers declined dramatically after antibiotics became widely used.)

It’s disturbing how widespread these false figures are. Planned Parenthood uses them. So does NARAL Pro-Choice America. Prominent pro-abortion organizations. And these figures are false. And it’s likely that a good deal of these people know they are false.

‘“In NARAL (the acronym for the then-National Association for the Reform of Abortion Laws) we generally emphasize the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always 5,000 to 10,000 deaths each year'. I confess that I knew the figures were totally false...But in the `morality' of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?" Said Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL and once the director of the busiest abortion clinic in the Western world. (From Aborting

America, Doubleday, 1979.)’ [Quoted from here.]

Now that we have those fake figures out of the way, let’s do some math. This argument above shouldn’t affect pro-lifers at all. Did women die from unsafe abortions? Yes. (Women actually still die from abortions today.)It is terribly sad, but it isn’t the trump card. Pro-lifers care about life. For both the women and their children.

Assume that 10,000 women would die every year from unsafe abortions if abortion was made illegal again. Assume that the number of illegal abortions would be about the same as it was the first year abortion was legalized: 744,600.

Abortion Illegal: 10,000 + 744,600 = 754,600 deaths.

Abortion Legal: [unknown]** + 1,200,000 = >1,200,000 deaths.

I’ll take the former, please.

*Information gathered from several different websites, trusing that their sources were correct, as I can't look up everything first-hand myself.
**This number is uncertain because usually death causes aren't listed as abortion itself, but the specific thing that killed the woman: the type of infection (that was caused by abortion, though abortion isn't mentioned), for example. I am working on another post that discusses deaths related to abortion.

Here is a short list of websites I gathered information from, since I couldn't link to just one when I had a fact.
WEBSITES:
Georgia Right to Life
Why Can't We Love Them Both?
Physicians For Life
Abort 73

Prominent pro-abortion websites that use the fake figures (I don't like to link to them, but here are easy Google searches that will probably make them come up on top):
Our Bodies Ourselves: The Impact of Illegal Abortion
Lessons From Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?
Before and After Roe National Organization for Women
Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet November 2009 Roe v. Wade Did Not Invent Abortion

Image found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

How Not to Protest

My last post was a review of Abby Johnson’s book Unplanned. There’s a reason I decided to do that review, besides just introducing you to a fabulous pro-life resource. The other reason is today’s post.

I actually have only been to one abortion clinic protest. I’ll say that right up front. I have wanted to go to them regularly ever since I started studying the abortion debate at the ripe old age of thirteen. The one protest I did attend was a Bound4Life prayer vigil, where I stood for one hour with other protestors, all lined up on the sidewalk beside an abortion clinic, praying, with the word “LIFE” written on red duct tape over our mouths. (I assure you, my attendance at such protests will rise drastically as soon as possible.)

What I’m about to say here then is, obviously, not taken from my own experience. Most of it is taken from the powerful experience of Abby Johnson—a Planned Parenthood director for eight years, turned pro-life advocate—and from other pro-life people, as well as current abortion advocates. I’m blogging about a subject I don’t have much first-hand experience on because I think it’s extremely important.

I posted about generalizing groups of people a few weeks ago. There is a reason that pro-lifers are often painted as reckless, harassing extremists (besides that opponents love to paint each other black). Because there really are reckless, harassing extremist pro-lifers.

Clinic Escorts

Abortion clinics often have “escorts” that go out and walk clients into the clinic. They have these escorts because of the pro-life protestors that try to convince the woman to not go in.

Note those last seven words. “Convince the woman to not go in.” Ultimately, that’s what protestors outside abortion clinics are trying to do. In most, if not all, cases, the woman going in for the abortion is scared, hurt, and often alone. She may or may not be absolutely dedicated to getting the abortion, but she wants—or feels that she needs—to go in. Which do you think will convince her to stay out? Screaming people waving signs with pictures of aborted babies? That only encourages her to flee—inside, where it’s quiet and safe. Or will it be the peaceful, prayer for people, saying gently to her, “You don’t have to do this. We’re here to help. We can help you, for free. You don’t need to go through with this today.”

Are you going to convince her to stay out and talk to you when you’re screaming at her?

Of course, from what I’ve seen and read, pro-abortioners will label any type of protest as harassment. Just because they say its harassment doesn’t mean it is. Peaceful, gentle protests are effective.

From Unplanned:

"'Uh-oh. They got one,' my trainer said. 'I wish they'd leave these poor women alone. Do they have to harass them over such a personal decision?'...

"I watched as the pro-lifer handed our client some literature--she didn't look like she felt harassed to me. Clearly, she'd chosen to talk to the pro-lifer...If we are pro-choice, I thought, ...why do we feel we need to protect clients from conversatoiins about their choices?"

Strong, loud, violent opposition (abortionist shooters, I’m looking at you) only strengthens the other side. There’s nothing like opposition that solidifies the troops. (From Unplanned, after the murder of George Tiller, an infamous late-term abortionist: "Dr. Tiller's death...solidified our ause...rallied our sense of being the despised yet brave advocates for women's health and well being...")

Peaceful prayer and counseling, on the other hand, create quite a different feeling. (From Unplanned, about the 40 Days for Life campaign: "Forty days and forty nights--those are biblical proportions! That's a long time to be surrounded nonstop by a large group of people who disagree with you but are so persistently...well...nice about it. It created an atmosphere I couldn't quite articulate.")

 I could go on with more quotes, but for sake of conciseness, I won’t.

Also, I’m not saying there’s never a time for pictures of abortion and chanting pro-life slogans. There are. I only became dedicated to the pro-life cause when I saw pictures of abortion. I already knew what abortion did, but the pictures “hit it home”, so to speak. As for chanting pro-life slogans…let’s save that for the Walk for Life or to counter a PP lobby day. Not when trying this exact time and place to save lives.

Pro-abortioners claim that sidewalk counselors or other peaceful protestors change nothing, therefore we are useless, therefore go home and keep your mouth shut. Don’t listen to them. If I spent my whole life volunteering at sidewalk counseling or a crisis pregnancy center and only helped save one baby from abortion, it’d be worth it. It’s always worth it.

Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

To Punish?

Something that has been on my mind lately is where the responsibility of the abortion lies. In the mother, for instigating it? In the abortionist for actually doing it? In the abortion advocates for deceiving the mother?

Pro-abortioners like to make fun of pro-lifers for enthusiastically saying that abortion should be illegal and then fumbling around with no real answer to the next question: should women who get abortions be punished?

Now, if abortion was made illegal tomorrow, should the women who had abortions today be punished? No, of course not. That’s not fair, and is actually unconstitutional. (“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto [translates to “after the fact”] Law shall be passed.” Article 1, Section 9, paragraph 3.) (This isn’t to say the woman isn’t guilty. She is. Just not in the eyes of the law.)

But in the hypothetical situation of abortion being illegal, the answer is yes. They should. Is the woman a victim of propaganda and lies and sometimes a victim of pressure and threats? Yes, she is. But the last decision is up to her, unless she’s being physically forced. Just because somebody was threatening to kick you out of the house unless you kill, say, your hateful brother, doesn’t make killing your brother okay. If abortion is made illegal (except in cases of the mother’s life being at stake, or perhaps severe (emphasis on “severe”) physical harm), then the woman obtaining the abortion would be fully knowledgeable that having an abortion is against the law, and against the law because an abortion is murder.

The abortionist is also guilty, obviously, sometimes maybe even more than the mother. The doctor doesn’t instigate abortions. However, he is willing to do it. Paid assassins don’t get off the hook by protesting, “but somebody else told me to do it!” What’s more, the abortionist knows exactly what they’re doing. They can’t hide behind “those pictures are faked” and “fetuses feeling pain at any less than 22 weeks is propaganda” because they’re living with it whenever they do an abortion. They can’t not know what a six-week-old baby looks like, unless they do abortions with their eyes closed. And let me assure you, an abortion doesn’t look like a blood clot.

What about abortion advocates? Yes, they’re guilty too. Obviously, in the hypothetical case of abortion being illegal, they’d be harder to catch and convict. Somebody referring somebody else to the drug dealer is harder to find than the drug dealer herself. Somebody helping plan the assassination is harder to find than the assassin himself.

In short, if abortion were illegal, it would have to be handled just like any other murder case. It doesn’t make any difference that the victim is a baby instead of a public official or rape victim. I’m not saying all women should get the exact same sentence. There’s a reason we have different classifications of murder: first-degree, second-degree, third-degree, manslaughter. They (meaning the woman, the abortionist, the nurses, the secretary, and anyone else involved) would have to be convicted separately of any other case and individually from each other, but they would still need to be convicted.

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