Note: Graphic images included.
The abortion movement is on a crusade to get women to tell stories about their own abortions. The crusade aims to normalize abortion – even when it’s performed for reasons of convenience, done late-term, or used as birth control.
The abortion movement’s message? Basically this: women shouldn’t have to justify their decisions to end their children’s lives; women should be able to just share their stories among friends.
One abortion activist gives her opinion on why women should talk about their abortions:
[T]he next time someone says the word ‘abortion,’ the hope is that…person you told won’t think about the proverbial bloody fetus, they instead will think about you: a person who they love and respect and made this decision.
And while the “bloody fetus” may indeed be proverbial (meaning well-known), that’s because it’s also true.
Often, the world does not change positions on issues of social justice until it sees the problem for itself. It may not be socially acceptable to show pictures of “bloody fetuses,” but if we showed them constantly – if they were on the news every night – do we really think that abortion would continue for much longer?
Behind every womanly face that speaks of a past abortion, there is a bloody, dead, and often dismembered human being – who can’t speak about her experience. It’s easy for the living to talk about what’s happened; it’s impossible for the dead.
Civil rights became much more of a real, living issue when Emmett Till’s mother publicly displayed his broken, battered, and dead body. People saw the injustice for themselves, and their hearts were changed.
And, do we really think that no one loved the men who murdered Emmett Till? Did they have no wives, mothers, or friends? What about Hitler’s S.S. or the Gestapo? Were they similarly unloved? No family members or friends who respected or cherished them? We could talk of Andrea Yates or Susan Smith who murdered their children? Did no one love them?
Obviously, these people were loved, and in many cases, respected, too. In the same way, women who have had abortions are loved and respected by many. Yet this does absolutely nothing to change the fact that abortion is the murder of innocent children. Just because we love and respect someone, it does not make their choices acceptable or right.
Many murderers have mothers in the courtrooms during their trials, weeping over them with love. How much we love and respect someone has nothing at all to do with condoning their choices.
We can love a woman, hear her abortion story, and ache with the wrongness of it all. We can help her find healing. We can love a woman, hear she is considering abortion, and do everything peaceful within our power to stop her. Love does not gloss over others who should also be loved. Is it so impossible to love the woman and her child?
I think not.
So, even if you hear the stories of women you love who have had abortions, it doesn’t have to tell you that abortion is right or okay. Does it let you know that normal, everyday people make tragically wrong choices? Yes, absolutely.
But it is not loving to a woman – to a mother – for us to forget her child. For the sakes of the children, created in the wombs of these women that we love, we must continue to fight against abortion; to end it.
Our goal, too, is simple: the ending of murder. No innocent child deserves to die. No woman deserves for her body to become a killing ground. And no family deserves to cope with the lifelong tragedy that is abortion.
For more stories from women who have had abortions:
- Personal Stories of Abortion (from women and men)
- CNN: Special report features hundreds of women
- Teen Breaks
For healing for those who have participated in an abortion:
For those considering abortion:
- Option Line
- Teen Mother Choices International
- Stand Up Girl
- Stand Up Guy
- Embrace Grace
- Abortion and men: What’s a father to do? (For anyone in a woman’s life who can help her choose against abortion.)
- Ten reasons not to have an abortion
- What to do if your boyfriend wants you to get an abortion