APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The
Carillon, September 6, 2018
Shout
Your Abortion?
I have followed the abortion debate
since the 1980s. After investigating the issue, I became pro-life, while
acknowledging that there may be truly difficult circumstances in which an
abortion might be justified (i.e., in the rare case in which the physical life
of a mother is truly threatened by continued pregnancy). My wife and I have
also supported local crisis pregnancy centers.
Over the years I’ve written much about
the logical and factual weaknesses of so-called “pro-choice” arguments, and
won’t rehash them here (see my online articles or my book, if interested).
What strikes me as new and
disconcerting is a twist in today’s “pro-choice” view. Abortion defenders used to argue that
abortion should be legal, safe, and rare—the option of last resort. Now, for
many, abortions have become something to brag about. Enter: Shout Your Abortion.
The Shout Your Abortion (SYA) campaign seeks
to “denounce the stigma surrounding abortion.” SYA co-founder Amelia Bonow
describes abortion as an “incredibly positive experience” with no need for “sadness,
shame or regret.”
The SYA website provides stories of
women who seem to see abortion as the best thing since sliced bread.
Here’s a story by Heather (no last name
provided) titled, “I am 23 and I have had 3 abortions. YES I HAVE!”
Heather describes having her first
abortion at age 16 (fetus's age: 8 weeks, 3 days); her second at age 19 (fetus:
10 weeks, 4 days); and her third, this past May, at age 23 (fetus: 12 weeks, 4
days).
She says she “goofed” in getting
pregnant the first time because she didn’t use a condom. She says she got
pregnant the second time because she had sex with a fellow while out hiking
(and her backpack was apparently too heavy to carry a condom). She says the third
pregnancy occurred (with a new boyfriend) because her pill failed and she simply
couldn’t go through with the pregnancy. Why not? Because she had landed the
“ultimate seasonal job” at a national park.
Heather has “ZERO regrets.” She adds,
“All in all I just wish that people would look at abortion as just another
surgery. No way could I be a mother of three children right now! JUST NOT
POSSIBLE! I am 23, I have a good life, I don’t want to destroy it because of a
bunch of children that I am not ready for.”
And she asks, “Why do people think that
I should have a child because of an accident? Why should I be forced on
changing my life for something that I never wanted?”
Clearly, Heather is using abortion as a
form of birth control, and she is unaware abortion has risks for her own health
(e.g., breast cancer) and the health of future children (e.g., premature birth),
not to mention the health of the three children she aborted (i.e., killed).
There is much that can be said as a
critique of Heather’s thinking (and the SYA campaign generally), but I’ll
simply provide these insightful comments from David MacKenzie, Executive
Director of Evangelical Office of the Public Square.
“Why do people think that I should have
a child because of an accident? Why should I be forced on changing my life for
something that I never wanted?”
David’s response: “Let us ask another
question. Why should I have to experience heat and not just light when I build
a campfire? Why should I be burned when I touch flame?”
“Well, because the two are
fundamentally connected, and yet this generation has been strangely taught to
expect the one without the other.”
“You have divorced heat from light, and
I'll leave it to you to decide whether it is the campfire that is being
unreasonable, delusional, or psychotic—or whether it's you.”
Shout your abortion? No, please don’t.
Instead, think carefully, exercise
self-control, and stop killing children to avoid responsibility for those
children.
Update: At time of my submitting this
column to The Carillon, Heather's
story got deleted from the Shout Your Abortion website. Turns out that the
photo of Heather was not of Heather, but of a pro-life woman named Molly. For
further information about “Heather’s story” see here
and here.
Note
to Apologia readers: Future Apologia columns will appear once monthly (instead
of twice monthly), during the first week of each month.
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