Paris Hilton recently revealed she has 20 sons frozen in their embryonic stage of life, has completed an eighth round of IVF in hopes of creating daughters, and had an abortion in her early 20s. The Hilton Hotel heiress also released “Paris: The Memoir” this week, and Time has shared a portion of that book, which discusses more of these personal details.
The abortion
Hilton, and her entire generation, grew up in a time when the notion of self-focused living and the ‘you do you’ attitude were taking over the American culture. America’s sex-obsessed society is laser-focused on self-fulfillment and has turned children into both hindrances and commodities that can be killed and suctioned from a mother’s womb when she determines she isn’t “ready” to be a parent, or frozen in cold storage until (and if) the parents decide they are “wanted.”
Hilton announced that she had an abortion in her 20s because that baby “would have jeopardized the forever family I hoped to have in the future…”
Women who have abortions “don’t owe anyone an explanation,” she said. “When there is no right way — all that’s left is what is. What you know you have to do. And you do it, even though it breaks your heart.”
The pro-abortion mentality of the American media has wrongly held up such statements as examples of bravery and self-sacrifice. But killing a child involves neither of those virtues. To say there is “no right way” is a deception. The right way to assert one’s own right to autonomy could never be to kill an innocent human being. The right way would be for the adults in the situation to spend the next months preparing, and building the best possible situation for their baby once he or she is born.
To claim that her first child had the power to ‘jeopardize’ the family she envisioned for her future self is the misplacement of blame put on an innocent child for an adult’s own mistakes. It was Hilton’s own actions that put her future plans in jeopardy. To blame an innocent child is to treat that child — who came into existence from an act of Hilton’s own free will — as though that child is an oppressor who is working to hold her back. Children are not responsible for whether or not their parents’ lives turn out as they envisioned.
Abortion regret
Despite her obvious support for abortion, including calling it “reproductive destiny,” Hilton also said abortion is “an intensely private agony that’s impossible to explain.” She called her continued sorrow over the abortion “melodrama” instead of what it truly is: the obvious heartbreak that comes with the knowledge that you ended the life of your child.
Research has found that after one abortion women are 115% more likely to develop suicidal behavior, 110% more likely to abuse alcohol, and 34% more likely to develop anxiety disorders. If Hilton is emotionally struggling with her abortion, she’s certainly not alone.
But in order to justify the abortion, Hilton attempts to predict the future, stating that “there was no happy little family at stake.” It’s likely a coping mechanism she uses to convince herself that abortion was the right choice. It’s a refusal to even consider that perhaps she could have created a “happy little family” if she had chosen to work things out with the baby’s father, model Jason Shaw, whom she said had purchased a home for them. If not, then she and her baby could have been their own “happy little family.”
A child does not deserve to die for her parents’ weaknesses, past traumas, and self-centeredness. Stifling the pain of abortion in order to hide the shame and “agony” is a disservice to Hilton, her baby, and the millions of young women who look up to her.
