Pro-abortion advocates are no strangers to using propaganda and even lies in order to promote their cause. Erin Matson, a pro-abortion, self-described feminist and former editor-at-large at RH Reality Check and vice president of NOW Action, became a recent example of this. Matson founded a direct action group called Reproaction, and attacked pro-lifers last month in a webinar titled “Why ‘Pro-Life Feminism’ Is Just Not Possible.”
At one point during the hour-long webinar, Matson tried to dispel the notion that women regret their abortions, even claiming that women don’t “deserve better than” abortion — they simply deserve abortion…
So, one example of a myth is, as Feminists for Life have stated, women deserve better than abortion. The fact is that women don’t deserve better than abortion. Abortion is a safe medical procedure. Access to abortion affirms autonomy for each woman in this country. Access to abortion puts women in control of their reproductive futures. Lila Rose from Live Action has said that the only true feminist is a pro-life feminist. But the fact is the true feminists recognizes that abortion is an empowering act, that women are capable of making their own choices, and that actively stripping people of decision-making powers is violent. And I want to dig in to that, um, that the — and just remind people that 95% of women do not, uh, report — in fact, they, they report relief about their abortions. So this idea that women regret their abortions is a total myth and a lie.
Here’s the problem with this argument: you can’t just repeat something over and over again and magically make it true. Are there some women who don’t regret their abortions? Without a doubt. But to say that post-abortion syndrome doesn’t exist, or that the idea of women regretting their abortions is just a myth and a lie, is in and of itself a lie.
It’s an actual fact that abortion carries with it psychological risks. One needs only to look at the medical literature on the subject to find the truth, where 29 out of 30 studies showed a high risk of psychological trauma after an abortion. The study that Matson cites, which found that 95% of women did not regret their abortions, was the only study to come up with such a result. That study was also poorly done: it only tracked women over three years, and a large number of the participants were not only pro-abortion advocates, but were also surrounded by people who likewise were pro-abortion. Many of the women had also undergone multiple previous abortions. It was clearly not a representative sample of the average American woman — and this was made clear by the fact that no other study found a similar result.
Rather than looking at the bulk of scientific literature on the subject, Matson and her fellow pro-abortion activists singled out one poorly-done study because it told them what they wanted to hear. Whether or not women suffer psychological trauma after an abortion does not appear to matter to them.
What is known is that women who have abortions are at a higher risk for mental health disorders, ranging from depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and most tragically, suicidal behavior. Indeed, many women have chosen to commit suicide after abortion. That in and of itself is horrible, but Matson and her acolytes in the abortion lobby make it even worse. Their attitude toward women who regret their abortions seems to say that they want these women — their lives, their heartbreaks, their tragic deaths — to be buried forever. They appear to want to deny the existence of these women. With her comments, Matson attempts to hide the reality of these women’s lives, women like Jade Rees and Ashli Blake, because it’s not convenient to the pro-abortion cause. The abortion industry doesn’t just kill preborn babies; it destroys women, too, and then pretends that the carnage doesn’t exist.
Susan B. Anthony, despite what Matson would like to claim, did not envision a world where women could be “liberated” from their children through abortion. To the contrary, Anthony condemned those who would drive a woman to abortion:
Guilty? Yes no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.
To say that women deserve nothing better than a society that offers abortion as the only solution to their problems is a failure. Treating pregnancy like an illness or a disease that needs to be destroyed is not feminist. It allows men to use women, to exploit them for their own sexual gratification, while placing the burden of any consequences onto women. Men don’t have to worry about losing their jobs or dropping out of school because of an unexpected pregnancy, and they don’t have to shoulder the risks that come with abortion, either. Women do. And instead of demanding more, demanding better, so-called “feminists” like Matson instead ignore all of this and treat abortion at the solution to cure all ills.
It’s not pro-life feminism that’s impossible. It’s pro-abortion feminism.
