Each year in the United States, Women’s Equality Day is celebrated on August 26th in celebration of the day in 1920 that women received the right to vote. When he signed the proclamation in 1973, Richard Nixon wrote, “The struggle for women’s suffrage… was only the first step toward full and equal participation of women in our Nation’s life. In recent years, we have made other giant strides by attacking sex discrimination through our laws and by paving new avenues to equal economic opportunity for women. Today, in virtually every sector of our society, women are making important contributions to the quality of American life. And yet, much still remains to be done.” Since then, every U.S. president has likewise issued a proclamation for Women’s Equality Day, yet little attention is paid to one of the worst injustices women still face in the United States: abortion.
Abortion advocates continue to argue that women need abortion to be equal to men, that the ability to kill preborn children is one of the most sacred rights a woman has. Yet has abortion truly helped women’s equality? Has it improved women’s circumstances? In every way, abortion has only further contributed to the inequality women face, and to the oppression stacked against them.
Gendercide
The targeting of baby girls for abortion is largely thought to be an issue that affects women in countries like China and India. And indeed, these countries have participated in gendercide on perhaps the largest scale on the planet, leading to horrific consequences. Yet gendercide isn’t limited to just China and India; it happens around the world, leading to skewed gender ratios. This has been seen in countries like Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. In Scotland, a midwife even admitted women weren’t being told the sex of their babies over fears that they would choose abortion.
According to the United Nations, there are over 100 million missing girls worldwide due to gendercide. The shortage of women has led to things like an increase in sex trafficking, prostitution, crime, as well as epidemics of loneliness, depression, and suicide, and babies abandoned or killed because they’re the wrong gender.
And when it comes to gendercide, the abortion industry is complicit.
Human Trafficking
Abortion isn’t something often thought of in conjunction with trafficking, but it is a large part of what allows traffickers and their business to flourish. As pointed out in a 2014 Beazley Institute Report which surveyed over 1,000 victims of sex trafficking, the victims were taken to Planned Parenthood facilities more often than any other health care clinic. The report also acknowledged that these visits offered “rare opportunities for victim identification and intervention,” yet there was rarely any intervention. Many of the women were forced to undergo abortions, often with serious complications because there was no follow-up care, with some ending up forced to have hysterectomies or having their fallopian tubes removed. One victim told the study authors that Planned Parenthood was a good place to have an abortion because “they didn’t ask any questions.”
Live Action investigations have shown similar results, finding that Planned Parenthood frequently covers up child sex trafficking, and the sexual abuse of children. They have helped rapists escape justice, and happily aid abusers.
READ: How the push for ‘abortion rights’ splintered the women’s movement
Failing Women
The earliest feminists were pro-life; they innately understood that abortion helped oppression against women to continue. One of the most compelling arguments made was printed in Susan B. Anthony’s newspaper, “The Revolution,” and many believe it was written by Anthony herself.
Guilty? Yes no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.
Society was failing women then, leading them to feel they had no choice but to undergo an abortion — and the same holds true today. A well-known saying is that a woman wants an abortion the way an animal wants to gnaw off their leg to get out of a trap; it’s a decision made out of desperation. Women are frequently coerced into abortions, by significant others and family members alike. Many of them are already victims of domestic abuse, and are threatened with homelessness or violence if they refuse abortion.
Other women face coercion in a less obvious way. Women in high school or college have little to no resources when they are pregnant or parenting, with many students led to believe their choice is to either drop out of school or have abortions. Pregnancy discrimination in the workplace is also not unusual. On top of these scenarios, there are also women facing poverty, drug abuse and addiction, a lack of support and resources… women who are vulnerable and scared, and seeking a way out. Even abortionists have acknowledged that abortion does not solve any of these problems. On the contrary; abortion allows problems to continue. What incentive is there for any of this to change when a woman can be pushed towards an abortion and the “problem” — the pregnancy and the preborn baby — can go away? It’s much easier to pressure women towards abortion than it is to institute widespread societal change that gives women real options and real choices.
So on Women’s Equality Day, look back and show gratitude for how far we’ve come. But the battle for equality isn’t over yet. Women and girls still face discrimination and oppression, and all abortion advocates do is offer abortion as a cheap temporary “fix” under the guise of empowerment and freedom. The truth is, it hasn’t fixed a thing.
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