Here’s a tip: If your choices affect other people, don’t be surprised if other people have an opinion on them. It’s a simple concept, but there are folks who struggle with it. You can find some at the University of Georgia.
UGA’s Women’s Studies Organization (WSSO) focuses on “bringing the discussion found in Women’s Studies classes outside of the classroom” and welcomes “all gender identities.” Well, unless your gender is male and you want to discuss abortion; you’re not so welcome then…
When it comes to abortion, WSSO wants to silence men. That’s obvious from the Facebook post shown above. Below it, a commenter declared, “NO UTERUS, NO OPINION,” and insisted that being male disqualifies you from discussing the subject. (It seems a hysterectomy will, too.)
This really is an odd standard. After all, it’s normal to discuss choices that impact others–something abortion clearly does:
Your body, someone else’s body
And that’s true even when those discussing the issue aren’t the ones directly affected by it. For example, I’m still going to condemn sex traffickers despite not being one of their likely targets. I’m also going to condemn how the abortion industry enables them. Below, you can hear a trafficking survivor named Nicole describe being forced into two abortions–an experience she calls “the hardest.”
A 2014 study published in Annals of Health found that among the trafficking victims surveyed, fifty five percent were subjected to at least one abortion; some had over a dozen. They reported that staff rarely inquired about whether those abortions were voluntary. One survivor explained, “No one ever asked me anything anytime I ever went to a clinic.” But as Live Action discovered, not everyone in the abortion industry ignores sex traffickers.
Some offer them a hand.
Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Amy Woodruff did. When Live Action investigators visited her facility in 2011 while posing as pimps, Woodruff was willing to arrange abortions for child prostitutes who who “can’t speak English” and “won’t know what’s going on.”
Professional abusers aren’t the only ones Planned Parenthood has been willing to accommodate; amateurs have gotten help too. John Blanks, Jr. discovered that when he brought his teenage daughter there after getting her pregnant. In her lawsuit, she recounted telling staff about the abuse she suffered; rather than call the police, Planned Parenthood performed an abortion and sent her back home.
They did a favor for Edgar Ramirez, performing two abortions on his 13 year-old daughter in less than six months. She was well below the age of consent, but that didn’t prompt staff to notify the authorities. Thanks to America’s largest abortion chain, his crimes stayed hidden.
They did the same for Timothy Smith. While the state of Colorado is concerned when a child under fourteen “becomes pregnant or contracts a venereal disease,” Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains wasn’t worried about Smith’s 13 year-old victim. A staff member later admitted that “being thirteen and pregnant alone is not a red flag” there.
And it goes on: fellow child rapists Gary Cross, Luis Gonzalez-Jose, Andrew King, John Haller, Adam Gault, Grey David Woods, and Kevon Walker were helped as well. Keep in mind, these are just some of the cases that have come to light; we don’t know how many victims are still suffering thanks to cover-up abortions. Since they can’t exactly speak out, it’s up to the rest of us. All of us.
You can demand legislation requiring abortion centers to offer privates room equipped with support information and telephones to contact law enforcement. You can also tell Congress to redirect Planned Parenthood’s half billion in funding to federally qualified health centers (FQHC) and community health centers (CHCs) instead. Not only do FQHCs and and CHCs provide affordable care, they have more to offer: unlike Planned Parenthood, FQHCs and and CHCs perform over five hundred thousand mammograms every year. Forced abortions? Zero.
WSSO is looking forward to when pro-life men “shut up” about abortion and related issues. I hope they like waiting; it’s gonna be a while.
