Danielle Campoamor had an abortion. Now, she attempts to tell women “10 Things No One Will Tell You About Your Abortion, But I Will.” However, her list ends up being full of half-truths and even complete inaccuracies which mislead women about the truth of abortion. Below are Campoamor’s ten points — and the reasons why she’s wrong.
Lie #1: ‘It’s Normal’
Live Action News reported on the 1 in 3 campaign in 2012, which is a campaign encouraging women to share their abortion stories, to help erase the stigma of abortion. But despite the 1 in 3 statistic being debunked, it is still being promoted as a campaign. Regardless, no percentage should make the intentional killing of anyone, including preborn human beings, “normal” or less wrong.
Lie #2: ‘It’s Not a Debate’
Talk about absolutes. “Your abortion is not and should not be some focal point of a political campaign… It is a right, held up and defended by the constitution of the United States, and it is not a debate,” Campoamor writes. But whether or not abortion is discussed at the political level will not change the fact that people have different and deeply held feelings about it.
To say that abortion is “a right, held up and defended by the constitution of the United States” may be what the U.S. Supreme Court decided with Roe v. Wade, but it’s a stretch of an interpretation. Abortion and privacy are nowhere mentioned in the document, and the decision has not settled the abortion issue.
Even Roe and subsequent Court decisions have acknowledged that there is a state interest in regulating abortion. Attempting to shut down the debate with claims that abortion is solely a “women’s issue” is dishonest and completely overlooks the fact that an abortion kills another human life.
Lie #3: ‘It’s Not Shameful’
Even though women who have had abortions have made the wrong decisions for their own children, they should be shown love, forgiveness and compassion. But that’s not Campoamor’s point. Rather, she denies any wrong decision-making whatsoever, essentially denying that when a woman has an abortion there is another party involved and affected who has no say.
“You don’t have to live for anyone but yourself. You don’t have make decisions with and for your body that will benefit anyone, ever, but you,” she writes. But a woman’s abortion, even if she never tells anyone, always ends the life of a preborn human person. So she’s not just making a decision about her own body.
The father of children also have no rights when it comes to abortion, even though they helped conceive the child. Abortion hurts men too, as well as other relatives of the aborted child, including siblings.
Lie #4: ‘It’s Nothing You Need to Hide’
“Because an abortion is nothing but a common, legal medical procedure, you don’t have to hide the fact that you had one. It isn’t some shameful choice that deserves to be buried in the past,” Campoamor writes.
Here again Campoamor attempts to normalize abortion, but many post-abortive women themselves would say otherwise after suffering from it. Women don’t need to have their abortions “buried in the past,” especially when they have negative feelings associated with their abortions — and pro-life groups want to help them through that, by helping them tell their stories and by hosting retreats for women who are grieving. Women won’t find healing through pro-abortion articles telling them the decision they made to end their children’s lives was “nothing but a common, legal medical procedure.”
And while the pro-abortion crowd may also invite women to share their stories, they dismiss women who have suffered from abortion.
Lie #5: ‘…And It’s Nothing You Need To Talk About (If You Don’t Want To)’
Campoamor also says that women don’t have to feel obligated to tell anyone about their abortions either. Telling a woman who may be silently hurting from her abortion that it’s “nothing” isn’t helpful for her mental health. Why is it that abortion advocates are fine with women ‘shouting’ their abortions as long as they view them positively? Why attempt to silence and ignore women who view theirs negatively?
Those who have viewed their abortions negatively have been helped, and again, with no thanks to the abortion crowd. Many women who turn to Silent No More share the negative effects of their abortions, but also speak out to encourage other post-abortive women (and men) to find such healing.
Lie #6: ‘It’s A Common Medical Procedure’
Here we go again. Let’s recap: Abortion is, says Campoamor, “normal,” “nothing,” “nothing” (again), and “common.”
Campoamor mentions that there were an estimated 730,322 abortions in 2011, which is an astounding loss of life. That’s over 730,000 children who never had the chance to be born, to grow up, to have families, to change the world. And as of January 2016, an estimated 58.5 million children have been aborted since 1973. The numbers are staggering.
But what other ‘common medical procedure’ deliberately destroys living human beings, besides abortion? Many things are “common” and legal, but that doesn’t mean we should necessarily champion those things. For all her hammering, Campoamor still can’t effectively argue that because the procedure is “common,” it’s okay.
Lie #7: ‘It’s Completely and Totally Legal’
Okay, so, sadly, this one isn’t really a lie. But it’s a poor argument. Abortion is legal because it’s “necessary,” Campoamor says, with original emphasis. She reiterates the debunked pro-abortion myth that women were dying before legalized abortions. Planned Parenthood itself admitted that this was a lie.
Even former abortionist (and NARAL founder) turned pro-lifer Bernard Nathanson admitted that the abortion movement made up figures of women dying in order to gin up public support for legalization. Their very calculated efforts worked, as abortion advocates like Campoamor are still touting this lie decades later. Nathanson explained:
We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200 – 250 annually. The figure constantly fed to the media was 10,000.
Unfortunately, women are still being hurt and killed from legal abortions. But Campoamor doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead, she blames pro-life Texas laws, struck down by the Supreme Court, for unsafe abortions. But there’s no logic in this. The Texas laws which required abortionists to have admitting privileges at hospitals and which required abortion facilities to be held to the same standards as outpatient surgery centers, are regarded as unsafe. She cites the the debunked study of self-induced abortions in the state to make her claim of unsafe abortions.
As Nathanson also explained, after abortion’s legalization, the abortion rate increased:
Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalization.
Lie #8: ‘…And, As Such, It’s Your Undeniable Right’
Campoamor says that because the Court recently upheld Roe by striking down the Texas abortion safety laws, this is a right that is “undeniable.”
Just because Campoamor and other abortion advocates agree with the decision it doesn’t mean that the Court got it right. Abortion and privacy are not actually in the Constitution, so what the Court decided had to come from a feeling, or “penumbra.”
And, the abortion issue is far from settled. Clarke D. Forsythe explains how the Court got it wrong in his book, Abuse of Discretion.
Lie #9: ‘No One Can Decide How You Should Feel About It’
If that’s the case, then why are abortion advocates dismissing women who suffer emotionally from their abortions? Campoamor does acknowledge those women, only to then write them off:
No one gets to tell you how you should or shouldn’t feel about your abortion. Many women do feel remorse and sadness directly after their abortion. Many more, however, do not. A 2013 study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco surveyed 843 women procuring abortions in 30 clinics, and found that 90% of those women felt relieved after they had their abortion. More than 80% of the women who felt a negative emotion, still believed they made the right choice.
Abortion advocates frequently mention this abortion study, which laughably asked women how they felt about their abortions one week later. No follow-up. Many, many women don’t deal with their feelings of abortion regret and suffering until years later — so this study is nowhere near an accurate picture of women’s feelings about their abortions.
Lie #10: ‘You Deserve Better’
Well, yes, women absolutely deserve better. But they deserve real solutions, not the rhetoric that currently sells abortion as a ‘quick fix’ to a woman’s problems. The motto for Feminists for Life is “women deserve better than abortion.” Sadly, abortion advocates have denied that women do, showing how they really feel about women.
Roe itself demeans women because it argues that in order to be on an equal playing field with men, women must have the right to end the life of their offspring. That’s not pro-woman, despite what the abortion movement wants you to believe.
Perhaps Campoamor is overcompensating for the pain she herself has suffered from her abortion and isn’t yet ready to admit — or perhaps she truly believes it’s no big deal. As it is for many women, only time will tell.
