Pro-abortion stories are teeming with claims that abortions are beneficial to women’s lives. Women speak of how abortions helped them to build their careers, graduate from college, or create the families they wanted. They say their lives wouldn’t be so beautiful or joyful had they not had an abortion. Yet they have no way to know what could have been had they chosen life, and each of their stories ignores a principal person at the center of it all — the one whose life was stolen.
Abortion stories
In an essay for Today’s Parent, Kerry Clare states that without abortion, she wouldn’t have met and married her husband, or had his babies. “Because of my abortion, I was able to have my children when I was ready, financially and emotionally stable, and in a partnership with someone I look forward to spending the rest of my life with — a fantastic and loving dad,” she wrote. “If not for abortion, I would never have met him, let alone married him; neither of our children would exist, and there would be absolutely nothing of this gorgeous, precious life we’ve made together. And I refuse to apologize for that. In fact, I bow down to it…”
She explained to her born daughter — while omitting the fact that she had a previous abortion — that when she was pregnant with her “she was everything.” She added, “But she was only everything because we loved her and wanted her so much” (emphasis added). In other words, Clare did not believe her preborn daughter had intrinsic value simply by virtue of being human; instead, her value was determined by her ‘wantedness’.
Likewise, actress Alyssa Milano once said that she was not sorry for her two abortions, because they led to the life she has now. “I would not have my children — my beautiful, perfect, loving, kind and inquisitive children — who have a mother who was so very, very ready for them,” she said. “I would not have my career. I would not have the ability or platform I use to fight against oppression with all my heart. I would never have met my amazing husband David, whose steadfast and immeasurable love for me sustains me through these terrifying times. Fifteen years after that first love fizzled, my life would be completely lacking all its great joys.”
Milano doesn’t just thank her abortions for her family, but for her career too. She’s not the only one to make such a discriminatory claim. Actresses Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps each claimed they would have missed out on their careers had they not had abortions. Philipps claimed she wouldn’t “be driving my hybrid car to my beautiful f***ing home, to kiss my two beautiful and healthy children and my husband who had taken the year off to parent so I could focus on my career.”
In an essay for Shape, Amanda Chatel wrote, “It’s hard to even imagine the alternative path my life would have taken” if she hadn’t had an abortion. She shared how she was sleeping with a bartender in order to score free drinks when she became pregnant. The choice to abort was “easy,” she said.
“If I didn’t have the option to abort, I would have moved back to my parents’ house. The guy in question, I imagine, would be long gone by now. I probably would have gotten a job at the one bagel place in town because it was close to my parents’ house. I was so new to New York when I got pregnant, I would have missed out on many amazing friendships, great love affairs, career opportunities, and endless experiences that shaped who I am, how I believe, and what I want to do next in this life of mine.
I don’t know if — while sitting at mom and dad’s, pregnant against my will — I would have cried as often as I probably should have, because I’d never truly know exactly what I missed out on… which probably would have been for the best.”
These stories have two things in common: 1) the assumption the women make that their lives wouldn’t be joyful or successful without abortion, and 2) they completely ignore what happened to their babies and what their babies missed out on.
Missed opportunities
Chatel wrote about all of the experiences she would have missed out on, but she, and each of these women, failed to realize that they did miss out. By aborting their children, they missed out on the friendships, love, opportunities, and experiences that they would have had if they had chosen life.
Clare said her life is “gorgeous, precious” after abortion, and she ignored the fact that her life could have been a different kind of gorgeous and precious if she had chosen life. Milano said her two born children are “beautiful, perfect, loving, kind and inquisitive” — as if the children she aborted would not have also fit these descriptions.
None of them could predict what their lives would have been like if they didn’t abort their children. Each only allowed for one scenario to play out. The only life they allowed themselves to see if they had chosen life is one of sadness, missed opportunities, failing careers, and lack of love. It’s a delusion that allows them to justify their abortions, and keeps them from recognizing what they chose when they chose abortion — death for an innocent human being who was inconvenient at the time.
Their sad scenario is also one that promotes the idea that mothers can’t find happiness or success in their careers — that only mothers who are “ready” make good mothers, and only babies who are “planned” can be loved. It’s as though Milano is surviving off of the assumption that her first two children — whom she aborted — wouldn’t have brought her joy, when it’s likely that they, too, might have been the loves of her life… just as her two living children are.
Stolen lives
These women claimed abortion saved them from a life they didn’t want, that abortion allowed them to live out a sort of fairy-tale existence. Their lives today may be very happy and successful, and their children are likely beautiful and loving, but that doesn’t mean it was ethical, moral, or necessary to kill their other children.
In order to live the “experiences” that Chatel said she lived, or have the “fantastic” husband that Clare has, or the careers, families, and lives that Williams, Philipps, and Milano have today, they wrongly believe they had to take away someone else’s experiences, someone else’s chances at love, and someone else’s life completely.
They climbed their chosen path to their chosen type of success on the bodies of their babies. They stepped on their children’s very lives, believing it would help them succeed. They sacrificed their babies. They stole their children’s lives in order to live the lives they wanted.
Through abortion, they deprived their children of the chance to be held in their mother’s arms, be kissed by their parents, to laugh at their father’s silly expressions, get tossed in the air by their dad, or be pushed on a swing. Their children never got to learn to swim, have a first day of school, get a part in a play, graduate, dream, accomplish a goal, win an award, fall in love, get married, or have children of their own.
They deprived their children of every single life experience because they were afraid of missing out on some experiences and they believed unplanned motherhood would weigh them down.
What happened to the babies
Chatel said she walked out of the abortion clinic “crampy,” and “bled heavily” with “an insatiable craving for Odessa disco fries.” Her baby, meanwhile, was flushed down a drain or wheeled out of the abortion facility in a medical waste bin.
Perhaps in private, these women have stopped to consider what happened to their aborted babies while they dealt with cramping and bleeding. Their babies, if aborted in the first trimester, were likely killed through a dilation and curettage (D&C), or suction, abortion, which would have torn the tiny, fragile babies to pieces — as described by a former abortionist Dr. Beverly McMillan in the video below.
If they took the abortion pill regimen, their babies were deprived of nutrients and oxygen by the first drug (mifepristone) and then expelled from the uterus by the second drug (misoprostol).
If any of the abortions were carried out in the second trimester, it is likely that these children were killed by a dilation and extraction (D&E), or dismemberment, abortion. This type of abortion is typically committed upon living children who have been capable of pain since the first trimester, and it tears the baby’s extremities from his or her body before the skull is crushed.
None of these women speak of these horrors. Not one of them writes of what they forced their children to suffer — the brutal ways in which their children died. Not one of them speaks about where their children’s bodies are. Instead, abortion is propped up as freedom, and as necessary based on the lie that motherhood was going to stand in their way — and that their children’s lives were nothing more than an expendable sacrifice so they could live the “beautiful” lives they wanted.
