Michael Medved interviews Katherine Spillar who is part of the I had an abortion campaign by Ms. Magazine to have women agree to have their names appear in the magazine.
…On the air, she compared the procedure to "having your tonsils removed" except she insisted that abortion is an even safer, more minor procedure than tonsilectomy.
No one, however, feels ashamed of tonsilectomies, or tries to dodge questions about whether your tonsils are still in your throat. Ms. Spillar, however, left me startled and amazed when she refused to answer the obvious question raised by her new project. At the conclusion of our conversation, I asked her on the air whether she planned to sign her own peitition– in other words, had she herself had an abortion?
In response, she said she had thought about this question before going on my radio show, and had considered how she might answer if I confronted her. She decided that whatever answer she gave might be used against her, so in a truly breathtaking display of world class hypocrisy, she refused to answer herself the same question she expects millions of women to answer in the pages of her magazine! Under the circumstances, I think her refusal to answer counts as more shameful than either a "yes" or a "no." If she’s right that abortion is no more significant than tonsilectomy, why shouldn’t she talk about her own experience with this procedure? If she had asked me about my tonsils, I would have admitted with no hestitation at all that I had them removed (and consumed prodigious quantities of ice cream during my recovery) as a little boy.
Either Ms. Spillar is embarrassed because she had an abortion (in which case she’s ashamed of the same experience she wants less prominent women to admit), or else she’s embarrassed to say that she DIDN’T have an abortion — an indication of even more depraved and twisted thinking. If she had never participated in ending life in her own womb, it’s bizarre to think that she’d feel reluctant to admit her own lack of guilt.
However you consider her insistence on dodging the same question she’s posing to the rest of America, one thing became very clear in our interchange. The "Pro Choice" label to describe Ms. Spillar and her comradettes is misleading. These ladies, despite reluctance to disclose their personal history, count unequivocally as "Pro Abortion" regarding the rest of America. Their strident voices demonstrate their isolation from an American mainstream and a growing consensus that government indeed has a proper, inevitable role in discouraging abortion and encouraging respect for human life.
Consistency in logic is not exactly a hallmark of the pro-abortion movement. A true choice movement would also request that women who decided not to have an abortion could also get there name listed. After all by their logic both decisions have the same moral weight so it would make no sense to only give credit to one half of the choice equation. Of course those that came to regret their abortions are anathema and will have no voice in any future issue of Ms. magazine. So much for women’s equality when it is more like the equality in Animal Farm "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
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An excellent article.
I highly recommend the comments after the original posting also.
I think it was before Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, when the fight was in state legislatures that a petition ad appeared in the New York Times saying, in effect, “We have had abortions, therefore abortion should be legal.” My reaction was that that was like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, Ma Barker, and Bonnie and Clyde signing an ad saying, “We have robbed banks, therefore bank robbery should be legal.”
I hereby admit, and I am not ashamed to do so, that I have never had an abortion.
(Signed) Maria Horvath
Marty, you got that right! I remember in the ’70’s debating the morality of abortion with other women, and the argument was always terminated (aborted?) when one member of the bull session would announce, “Well, I/my sister/my best friend/whoever had an abortion.” The implication being that the rest of us, who hadn’t, had no business talking about it because we hadn’t “been there.” And we were too intimidated by the announcer’s “experience” to carry on the discussion. Instead, we usually ended up justifying the particular abortion mentioned. (E.g., “Oh, well, if her boyfriend lied to her and told her he was sterile, I guess that’s different . . . Who are we to judge?”)
It was only with the acquisition of age and wisdom (I hope!) that I realized what a complete non-argument this was. I hope that young people will realize that the correct answer to such a statement is, “Oh, I am sorry. I will pray for you and your baby, and for the baby’s father. Now, as I was saying, abortion is a grave sin because . . .”
I think what gives that argument its rhetorical power is that it has a hidden syllogism in there:
So and so is a good person.
Good people don’t do very bad things.
Therefore whatever so and so did isn’t a very bad thing.
Hence in order to continue arguing that abortion is wrong, you have to at least implicitly argue that whoever was mentioned that had an abortion isn’t a good person, which most people instinctively don’t want to do out of a sense of politeness.
The truth is that both premises are false. Even defining “good person” in a very attenuated way, far fewer of us are “good people” than we’d like to admit. Also, good people are capable of doing very bad things. Everyone in this vale of tears is subject to temptation and all too often it is fear of negative consequences that keeps us from doing really terrible things and not virtue.
Mother Teresa: Abortion Destroys Peace !
by Chris Dickson
Thirty-three years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion on demand, people from across America plan to gather in the nation’s capital on Monday, January 23rd to show their opposition to the ruling. The annual March for Life is expected to draw tens of thousands of people of all ages, faiths, and nationalities.
Given the enormity of the situation, I couldn’t help but imagine waking up in the morning to the newspapers headlines, “Nine American cities completely wiped out! No one left alive in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Philladelphia, Detroit, St. Louis or Atlanta.”
We saw America’s reaction to 9/11 and its aftermath. It’s hard to imagine how angry American’s would be if these headlines were true. Men, women and children would be lining up to join the armed forces to strike back at the enemy. What enemy is that? Is it China, Afghanistan, or Iraq? What massive firepower must the enemy have employed to inflict such destruction, atomic bombs, biological warfare or perhaps nerve agents? It was none of these. It was abortion.
As of 1996, Americans had slaughtered 32 million innocents, the equivalent of nine major U.S. cities.
Mother Teresa said that If we can accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people that killing is wrong? After all, any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people love, but to use whatever violence necessary to get what they want.
Sure, everyone’s concerned for the children of Indiana and Africa, where thousands of children are dying of hunger and disease every day. Many people are concerned with the violence in our streets and classrooms as well. These concerns are good, but all too often these same people aren’t the least bit concerned by those being killed by the deliberate decisions of their own mothers. This is the greatest destroyer of peace today – abortion – which brings people to such blindness.
Does abortion destroy peace and cause blindness toward the sick, the hungry and the naked? Of course it does, when life is regarded so lightly and its disposal becomes so trivial, so clinical, so easy. After all, why should people or nations regard human life as noble or dignified if abortion flourishes? Why agonize over indiscriminate deaths in Bosnia when babies are being killed far more efficiently and out of sight of TV cameras?
Just imagine, the populations of all those major cities combined – all dead….who is left to cry?
I tried reading the comments in the original article but the page is not loading for some reason.
If this is a radio interview, would there perhaps be a file out there in Inter-mo-net Land that I could download and listen to maybe??
Beware of the latest “mercy-killing” abortion plea! I saw a new book in the library last week (I wish I could remember its name) detailing the sorrowful, irreparable lives of adopted children as if adoption were inherently cruel. Just in case we were considering adoption as an answer…
Gee, my daughter was found at 22 weeks gestation to have no brain and no hope of survival. I guess I’ve “been there.”
But I didn’t have an abortion. I carried my daughter to term because she was my daughter, birth defect and all, and she lived in our arms for two hours after birth. We had her baptized and confirmed, and now she awaits us in Heaven.
I’ve never had even a moment’s shame in telling people that story. I’ve had to defend our “choice” to the ignorant who believed Emily wasn’t worthy to live, but I’ve never been ashamed to say no, we didn’t abort.
So having “been there,” does that mean I can pass judgment on all my fellow women?!? Or is being judgmental still bad? I can never seem to remember…
Thank you, Jane. I lost my baby four days after Easter last year. While I was in the process of miscarrying, I had a few people still saying aghast to me, “ANOTHER baby?! At YOUR age?!! Better you than me!” etc., etc. (I’m 41 and I have three children).
I didn’t think anything lovely could come from losing a baby. Nothing.
But, when the baby was gone, my husband sat down with our three boys and told them that he and I were so proud of all of them. They accepted with joy a new family member, even though it meant less money, less space and attention to them. They were kind to each other and us when Mommy was losing the baby. This was a great comfort to us to know that they will be good fathers one day.
I do not know how a mother reconciles, after having aborted a baby, the protection and care she takes in subsequent pregnancies of her WANTED child.
If Katherine Spillar had an abortion she may not be able to answer her own question because inside herself there is a little voice that sounds like a crying child.
Teresa, you wonder “how a mother reconciles, after having aborted a baby, the protection and care she takes in subsequent pregnancies of her WANTED child.”
She can’t until she reconciles herself with Christ in repenting her abortion. His forgiveness is the only hope for her wanted children.
If you know a friend, or a friend of a friend, whose sister, mother, daughter, aunt, has had an abortion, pray for the repose of the soul of the baby who lost his/her life. Then pray for the broken soul of the woman who had the abortion, that she will come to repentance.
Oh, Teresa, I’m so sorry for your loss. Your husband and sons sound like pillars of strength.
People do get so obnoxious when they think other families have “had enough” children.
On the anencephaly boards that support both going to term and termination, the moms who terminated say they view their deceased child as a protective spirit, hovering over the new one. I don’t know how they reconcile it, except that they know those babies would have died anyhow. When a mom aborts a perfectly healthy baby because of inconvenient timing, I’m not sure how she faces her surviving children–pre- or post-abortive–and doesn’t consider the missing one.
A woman once stopped me in McDonalds and told me the story of her abortion. She had two other kids; that other kid would have been in the middle. I had tears in my eyes along with her; she told me she still had nightmares about it. I encouraged her to contact Project Rachael. I didn’t know what else to do for her then, but somehow, I don’t think signing her name to a petition would have promoted healing for her.
Any mom who lost a baby prior to birth can enroll her child in the Book Of Life over at http://www.innocents.com/
On the left is a link to the shrine for the unborn, and that will lead you to a form.
They specifically say it is fine to enroll aborted babies.
The mom or dad will then receive a certificate via email with the child’s name on it. They were very good to me and never, to the best of my knowledge, sold my name to anyone nor attempted to contact me I enrolled my miscarried baby.
i never bought ms magazine, but I am interested in the 1972 list of prominent women who have had abortions.I can’t seem to locate it anywhere. I’d like to view the celebrities that wore their abortions like badges. They probably don’t brag as much now. I can’t help but feel how different their lives would have been had that child lived. I know a woman who’s grandmother forced her daughter to have an abortion, and she often speaks of the older brother she was supposed to have. I have read of the story of joni mitchell who was reunited with a daughter she put up for adoption and how happy she is to now be a grandmother. unfortunately, I read that judy collins did have an abortion, not only has she lost that child, but also her only son to suicide. one can only imagine how that second child could have impacted both their lives. I’m sure there’s too many more examples. I would be very appreciative if someone could find that list.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008802
Petitioning for Life
“I had an abortion,” Ms. Magazine urges its readers to declare. How about “I wasn’t aborted”?
BY JULIA GORIN
Thursday, August 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Web site of Ms. Magazine–yes, it still exists–is calling on readers to sign a petition: “I have had an abortion. I publicly join the millions of women in the United States who have had an abortion in demanding a repeal of laws that restrict women’s reproductive freedom.”
Well, so much for the right to privacy. If Ms. readers hadn’t had so many abortions, there might be more Ms. readers. As for the rest of us, here’s a petition we could all sign: “I wasn’t aborted.”
Having narrowly escaped being aborted, I’d be the first in line.
Like most Soviet-era fetuses conceived in Russia by couples who were already parents, I was scheduled for abortion as a matter of course. In a society where abortion was the only form of birth control, it wasn’t uncommon to meet women who had double-digit abortion counts. Often a couple would schedule the appointment before they even stopped to remember that they wanted a second child….
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