On January 21, 2017, the Women’s March took place in cities around the country. Multiple issues were the focus of the March, but two main goals were to protest President Trump and to insist on pushing for abortion. The Women’s March organization has announced that they have more planned: a Day Without a Woman on March 8, which is International Women’s Day. In the FAQs about a Day Without a Woman, the organization urges women to strike even from unpaid child care (i.e., taking care of their own children) if they can, but insists that “reproductive health services” (which, in their view, includes abortion) is an “essential service” that cannot be subject to a strike.
Three questions asked on the Women’s March website are: 1) Do businesses support our communities, or do they drain our communities? 2) Do they strive for gender equity or do they support the policies and leaders that perpetuate oppression? 3) Do they align with a sustainable environment or do they profit off destruction and steal the futures of our children?
Of course, they can be no wondering whether the event will include pro-abortion support and partnership, as the Women’s March did. NARAL Pro-Choice America tweeted that their office would be closed, and Planned Parenthood is displayed as a prominent sponsor and one of only two “premier partners” of the organization. Emily’s List and NARAL are the only named “social justice partners.”
The Women’s March gained notoriety for removing pro-life groups from its list of partners, despite claiming inclusivity and unity. Among its platform of principles, under “Reproductive Rights,” the page mentioned that:
We believe in Reproductive Freedom. We do not accept any federal, state or local rollbacks, cuts or restrictions on our ability to access quality reproductive healthcare services, birth control, HIV/AIDS care and prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education.
From its list of partners, its platform of principles, and its complaints about motherhood listed here, it’s not likely any of the events created by the Women’s March organization will be pro-life or accepting of pro-lifers any time soon. The Day Without A Woman could be a perfect opportunity to highlight how abortion hurts women; it could highlight the benefit to women if abortion clinics were closed for a day — and if they stayed closed permanently.
Standing up and speaking out for women should always include women of all ages, including the preborn baby girls who will never grow up and get a chance to participate because they’ve never been born. It should include women who have been mentally or physically harmed from their abortions, or even killed by them.
Sex-selection abortion is a real crisis facing our world, with an estimated 1.1 million girls lost to gendercide each year in China. The problem is particularly prevalent in China and India, but, as Live Action has found, gendercide occurs even here in the United States.
Recall how one of the three questions is about concern for the environment and not “steal[ing] the futures of our children?” But does anything steal futures more than abortion, which destroys lives and generations to come? Why can’t we care for the environment and allow our children — including our newest girls — a chance to be born? And, when the organizers speak of “profit[ing] off destruction,” Planned Parenthood is a prime example. A former abortionist uses non-graphic medical animation to explain one of the most common abortion procedures used in the second trimester in the U.S.:
The Women’s March organization should support ending the violent destruction of abortion, as the mission statement declares: “We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.” According to this accurate principle, when we defend the most vulnerable, innocent, and discriminated-against human being among us — the preborn child — we defend us all.