Hailed as a hero by some pro-abortion advocates, a University of Texas student is receiving accolades for her efforts to help women, including minors, fund their abortions.
Lenzi Sheible, who was vocal last summer in efforts to protest Texas’ new abortion restrictions, House Bill 2, started an organization to help women fund their abortions. Fund Texas Women has raised over $10,000 to help 35 women have abortions. And some of those women are under the age of 18.
As the Texas Tribune reports:
“Fund Texas Women provides funding for minors seeking abortions and often works with parents who call the hotline seeking financial assistance for travel for their daughters. But Sheible said her organization always speaks to the young women directly to make sure it’s what they want.”
Currently, on the Fund Texas Women website, there is a plea to help a 17-year-old girl, “Tara,” obtain an abortion. Laden with pathos, the plea details Tara’s car accident which delayed her abortion efforts for her baby, which is detailed as being hopeless as the website says:
“[H]er fetus had numerous medical complications, including spina bifida and heart problems, and would likely be born in a vegetative state. The doctors had told her that the infant would not probably not survive for longer than a week after delivery.”
According to the plea, Tara says:
“The only reason I’m having an abortion is because it’s medically necessary. It’s a lot of turmoil. Tell them that. I just need the help.”
An effort like this addresses two larger issues:
First, the life Tara is carrying is not worth less than a healthy baby simply because it might or might not be born with defects. Stories abound of parents with children who were diagnosed in-utero with potentially having these same problems, some of which never came to pass. Others who were born and lived only a short time, yet were given the dignity of life and a natural death.
Life has value, regardless of its imperfections. Unfortunately, the culture of abortion-on-demand has perpetuated the lie that only some lives are worth living, some babies worth carrying. Tara’s baby might be born without problems, or might be born with health problems and still live. Additionally, there are people willing to adopt children with heart problems, spina bifida, and other defects or abnormalities. It is a choice to raise a child versus give the child up for adoption, but it’s problematic that a culture has so devalued a child who is imperfect that we consider it a choice to kill the child.
The second problem is with such funds as this one, as well as the national counterparts, agencies which exists solely to help fund the death of unborn babies. Tara and her mom are correct in saying that they need help; however, Sheible is not providing true help.
Fund Texas Women, and its counterparts, are only patching a perceived problem, rather than giving women true support. Abortion funds are a supersized way of offering handouts rather than solutions. These handouts help create permanent problems, though. Once the baby goes away, the mom is still left with the reality of having taken her child’s life. Sheible is spearheading a separate plea to give $2000 to Tara and her mom to travel 12 hours to have an abortion, but there is no talk of emotional support.
Pathos-laden pleas that issue medical diagnoses and opinions as prophetic fact (“pregnant with a fetus that likely won’t survive delivery”) send only one prevailing message—only some babies are worth a chance to live and we should pay to kill the ones who we think are not.
A society which hails a death fund as heroic has issues that run much deeper than any fund can repair.
Tara, and many others like her, need emotional support, and even financial support to carry the baby to term, obtain medical care, and make an adoption plan. Whether or not a girl has her parents’ consent to have an abortion isn’t even the greatest issue. At 17, few make permanent life decisions with clarity. Abortion funds rush in to patch the problem, not address the actual issues.
Perhaps instead of offering cash to fund death, those who claim to care so much about women in crisis pregnancies could begin to offer true support to fund life.
