Pro-lifers have long argued that abortion is anti-feminist, and a tool for misogynists to use women as they please and then avoid the consequences. So it’s no surprise that Playboy magazine is a big promoter of abortion.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner regularly donates money to Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Playboy even pushes for women to regularly take birth control, and then if that fails, encourage them have an abortion. Hefner himself also helped get Roe v. Wade passed. It’s not surprising, considering that Playboy profits off of misogyny, telling generations of women that their sole worth is as a sex object worthy of nothing more than being used for male pleasure. Hefner even calls himself a “feminist.” What makes it even worse is the just how many women are willing to go along with the charade.
Pro-lifers may be familiar with comedienne Chelsea Handler’s outlook on abortion by now. Handler has spoken openly about her support for abortion, slamming the women on the MTV reality show “16 and Pregnant” for keeping their babies when they could have — and to her mind, should have — had an abortion. She’s mocked people for remaining virgins, and wrote a book detailing her many one-night stands.
In Playboy, Handler wrote a column talking about her decision to have two abortions as a teenager. According to Handler, it was a “thoughtful” decision after she chose to repeatedly have unprotected sex. The first time she got pregnant, she was 16, and she considered keeping the baby.
I was going through a very bad stage in my life. I hated my parents and I was having unprotected sex with my boyfriend, who was not someone I should’ve been having sex with in the first place, never mind unprotected sex. I wasn’t really playing with a full deck of cards, and when I got pregnant I just thought, Why not? I can have a baby. Maybe I’ll have twins and give them rhyming names!
Of course, the idea that I would have a child and raise it by myself at that age, when I couldn’t even find my way home at night, was ridiculous. My parents recognized that, so they acted like parents for one of the very first times in my life and took me to Planned Parenthood. I felt parented, ironically, while I was getting an abortion. And when it was over, I was relieved in every possible way.
How sad that, instead of supporting their daughter and giving her other options than killing her preborn baby, her parents condemned their own grandchild to death, even though Handler seems to have wanted the baby. She got pregnant again later that same year, and had another abortion.
She continues with her column by asserting her belief that Roe v. Wade will never be overturned, writing, “You can’t introduce a black person and be like, ‘Oh, I just got a slave!’ That era is over.”
She continued with her column by comparing pro-life beliefs to racism. The repeated use of slavery and racism to bolster her pro-abortion argument is pretty sickening, considering the inherent racism in the abortion industry. She also apparently believes that her choice to have an abortion is deserving of praise, writing, “Anybody who carefully decides not to become a parent—let alone a bad parent, which is what I would have become—should be applauded for making a smart and sustainable decision.”
What Handler doesn’t seem to understand is just how much her column, and it being published in Playboy, plays into the misogyny of the pro-abortion movement. There’s even a name for it: bro-choice.
Men like Hugh Hefner are all about abortion, because it allows them to use women without having to worry about any consequences. Men don’t have to worry about undergoing an invasive abortion procedure. Men don’t have to worry about the potential health problems. Men don’t have to deal with the emotional fallout— women do.
Abortion allows women to be exploited, which is exactly what Playboy does to women; but what’s sad is women, like Handler, who are eager to encourage more exploitation and to allow themselves to be used. There’s nothing feminist about shilling for abortion in Playboy magazine. In fact, it may be the most misogynistic thing a woman can do.
