Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Surely They Don't Know: the Ugly Truth of Abortion

Unless you have just returned from a hermitage, you have heard of the recent and ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal.  A group of pro-life activists called the Center for Medical Progress(CMP) has begun releasing a series of undercover videos which demonstrate Planned Parenthood employees haggling over prices for the body parts of aborted children.  This, of course, has thrown fuel onto the fire of the abortion debate which has been raging since Roe vs. Wade.  Abortion supporters are tripping over themselves, offering everything from excuses to flat out denial.  But whether they are sticking their heads in the sand or reasoning that the babies are going to be aborted anyway so we might as well make good use of the scraps, it all misses the point by a mile.  The only people shocked by the revelation that Planned Parenthood sells the dismembered remains of the babies it kills are people who were convinced until now that abortion didn't actually kill babies.  Before being forced to look at a lab technician sifting through a bloody pile of arms, legs, liver, and brain some could snuggle up to the euphemism of "terminating a pregnancy" and continue parroting the nonsensical verbiage Planned Parenthood relies on for its existence.  Those of us in the pro-life camp have been busy dragging the truth out into the light of day while hoping and praying America will wake up from its coma.  The fact that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts is merely an opportunity to help people snap out of it.  Yes abortion is legal, and no, selling body parts is not, but again, this is not the point.  If anyone has broken the law, and anyone thinking clearly can see they have, they should be brought to justice of course.  But, the response to this scandal is not, "Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of the babies it aborts?  That's wrong!  Abortion is one thing, but selling the products of it is just going too far!"  No, America.  The response is, "Dear God!  Abortion is the murder of innocent children, and we have to stop it!"  So if you are one of the people waking up from your long slumber, I invite you to rub your eyes and read on before you start feeling sleepy again.  It's not going to be pretty, but it will be the truth.



Revelation of Truth


The first step in recovering from the comatose state of being pro-choice is to realize that unborn children are, in fact, human beings.  This statement may seem obvious, but it is apparently necessary and must be fully accepted before moving on.  You see, for decades Americans had their consciences lulled to sleep by the constant repetition of such utter nonsense as "It's not a baby, it's just a blob of tissue(clump of cells, etc)."  Quite often the pro-life camp is accused of being a bunch of anti-science, superstitious wackos.  If you want to see anti-science, you can watch this video of a Planned Parenthood representative telling a group of college students to ignore science, and calling scientific facts opinions.  Pardon me, but we have known for many, many years now that it is not a clump of cells.  Pick up any text book about fetal development and you will learn that by the time a woman even knows she is pregnant, the baby's heart is already beating.  Take a look at this video from The Endowment for Human Development.  Follow this link to the video if it does not work below.  
Note that it is taken at 4 weeks and 4 days gestation, a few days before the average woman has even missed her period:








Blobs of tissue do not have beating hearts, folks.  Many people rationalize abortion by saying that the majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester(up to the thirteenth week of pregnancy).  Here is what a baby looks like at eight weeks:







In an effort to seem reasonable, many pro-choice people I speak to will tell me that while they think it's wrong to abort a baby at eight months, eight weeks is perfectly acceptable.  Look at that image.  You see eyes, ears, arms, legs, even tiny ribs.  This is not an amorphous blob, it is clearly a human being.  Now, if you truly have the strength of your convictions, follow this link to an image of the remains of a baby aborted at eight weeks.  Note there is even a medical authentication.  Still think this is okay?

The science is clear, unborn babies are human beings.  It is sad that I even have to offer proof and an argument for that, but there you go.  Abortion takes the life of a human being, and that is murder.



Justifying Murder


Fewer and fewer are those who try to claim babies are not actually people.  They are gradually being replaced by people who acknowledge the humanity unborn, but say it is okay to kill them.  I'm still not certain if I prefer this brazen honesty to delusion or not.  Lesser of evils aside, let's look at some of the justifications used and why they are pure fallacious nonsense.



"It's my body!"



No, no it's not.  That baby growing inside you is a completely separate body.  This really should go without saying.  To make it simple:




Image credit: http://genfringe.com/2014/02/body-choice/





Got it?  Good, let's move on.


"Better Off Dead"


Next is what I call the "better off dead" argument, when people appeal to despair.  They site  hypothetical abuse, neglect and suffering as reasons to kill unborn children.  There are several issues with this argument.  The first is that nobody can predict with certainty that a mother will abuse her children.  When we think of this, we imagine some haggard, poor, miserable sot living in the ghetto and spending her money on drugs instead of formula and diapers.  Do we really think every mother in a difficult circumstance is going to abuse her child?  Do we really think every mother in comfortable circumstances won't?  Which is more anti-woman:  encouraging a woman in her struggles and lifting her up or telling her she can't possibly manage and her child is better off dead?  What we are striving for here seems altruistic.  We can't bear the thought of children abused and suffering.  Tell me, are only lives without suffering worth living?  I surely hope not because there is no such life.  Just because a child is born into poor circumstances does not mean his life will be hopeless or meaningless.  Just because a child is born into ideal circumstances is not a guarantee of no suffering.  Do we really think we can look around at one another and say whose life is worth living and whose isn't?  Surely we must see what folly that is.


Am I saying that I don't care about child abuse and the suffering of children?  Certainly not.  Think about it, when a person is already born, we consider there no greater abuse than to murder them.  Before they are born somehow abuse is worse than murder?  Imagine if we applied this logic elsewhere.  "Sir, I'm sorry, but you have cancer and we don't expect you to make it.  We don't want you to suffer so we're going to take you to the operating room and dismember you now."  Imagine a social worker showing up to remove children from an abusive home.  "I'm sorry your mom isn't very nice, Timmy.  We're going to rip your limbs off now so you don't have to suffer anymore.  Don't worry, there are fates worse than death."  Here it seems like madness, and madness it is.  But tell me, what is the difference?  I'll tell you.  When we kill unborn children, we don't have to look at them until they're already dead.  So long as there is life, there is hope, and either we all have a right to life or none of us do.



"They'll Do It Anyway": the Coathanger Defense



This is another ridiculous one.  People attempt to justify abortion being legal because if we make it illegal women will still get abortions.  It should go without saying that no matter the law, someone will break it.  If we used that as our go-to logic for lawmaking, everything would be legal.  People are going to do any number of terrible things they shouldn't.  The point is that we, as a society, declare certain actions unacceptable.


This defense is ridiculous for another reason.  The whole back-alley abortion myth is just that: a myth.  While I'm certain there were some cases of less-than-qualified individuals performing abortions in the days before it was legalized(as there are plenty of now too), the idea that this was pervasive is false.  The majority of illegal abortions were performed by doctors.  Take a look at this article.  But what is more important than dissolving the myth of the coathanger abortion, is opening eyes to the fact that legal abortion is no safer than illegal.  There are countless cases of filthy clinics with expired medication, dirty equipment or improper sterilization, unsafe conditions such as faulty elevators that delay emergency medical care, and patient neglect such as leaving a woman to hemorrhage for five hours before calling 911.  I could write a book, and in fact people have, about the horrific conditions found in abortion clinics.  None in recent history were quite so horrific of the case of Kermit Gosnell.  A movie is in the works about his "House of Horrors" as it has come to be called.  What is more disturbing than the facts of his case is knowing there are more out there like him who have yet to be caught.


Yet Planned Parenthood and their supporters are constantly fighting the adoption of regulations that would keep women safe, such as physicians being required to have admitting privileges at hospitals and banning webcam abortions or keeping their buildings up to code.  So who is really waging a war on women here?


Finally, we should adapt "They'll do it anyway" to "They'll do it anyway, and if they don't want to, we'll make them."  See, abortion is supposed to be all about choice.  Yet Planned Parenthood only offers their patients one choice: abortion.  As per the 2013/14 fiscal year report, Planned Parenthood performed 327,653 abortions and referred 1,880 women for adoptions.  This video has a lovely graphic of a non-pregnant uterus to illustrate the abortion procedure.  Planned Parenthood fights ultrasound laws that would require women to actually see their babies before they choose to kill them.  Heaven forbid we tell women the truth and let them actually choose.  This link contains many quotes from both patients and abortion providers on how women are given deceptive counseling and pressured to have abortions.  And here's another link to Planned Parenthood's website where they inform children that they may be able to circumvent parental consent laws:




In some states, you can be excused from involving a parent without going to a judge if you are the victim of abuse or neglect and you or your doctor report this to the appropriate authorities.  If you are facing a medical emergency and require an immediate abortion, most states will not impose their parental involvement requirements.

We wouldn't want those pesky parents getting involved!  After all, a child knows best right?  I imagine they have all sorts of "medical emergencies" that justify bypassing these laws.  Just as long as you don't have an actual emergency after or during your abortion or you might end up like Tonya Reeves, Jennifer Morbelli, Maria Santiago, Lakisha Wilson, Laura Hope Smith, or Alexandra Nunez.  All of those are cases from 2007 on, and specifically cases of negligence.  Where is the outcry for the deaths of these women?  Not a single news network covered their cases.  Where are the feminists screaming that this is not the safe abortion they fought for?  The silence is deafening.



Rape Exceptions and Life of the Mother



This is considered the silver bullet of the pro-choice argument.  This is the point no pro-lifer is supposed to be able to counter.  Along the lines of the "better off dead" argument, this again appeals to despair.  Nobody wants to think about the horrific crime of a woman being raped or the tragedy of something going terribly wrong during pregnancy.  But since when do we consider heaping more horror or more tragedy onto a problem, a solution?  In the case of rape, for what other crime do we execute a child for the crimes of his father?  Does killing a child un-rape a woman?  Abortion or rape taken by themselves are traumatizing, do we really thinking helping a woman kill her innocent child is going to maker her feel better?  Women who have been raped are violated and made to feel helpless and powerless.  Women who turn to abortion do so because they too feel helpless and powerless.  So how will abortion help a woman who has been raped recover her life?  It doesn't.  All of this is in addition to the fact that children conceived in rape are no less human than any other child.  When people want to support pro-life legislation with rape exceptions, they need to consider the following question:  would you support legislation that made exceptions for black babies?  That's discrimination you say?  Indeed it is, and rape exceptions are no different.

A final point to be made about abortion and rape is this.  People think abortion offers a solution to rape, but it doesn't.  Abortion enables rapists and sex traffickers.  Most people think of rape as a one-time, random offense.  That is not always the case.  Rape can often be an on-going case of abuse which is covered up thanks to abortion.  Here is a list of cases in which sexual predators used abortion to cover up their crimes.  Abortion clinics seem all too happy to assist in covering up these crimes; I suppose it's good for business.  See this case in Colorado, and this undercover investigation by Live Action which revealed eight Planned Parenthood clinics in five different states covering up sexual abuse.  There's also this investigation detailing seven clinics in four different states assisting child sex traffickers with confidential birth control, STD testing, and secret abortions for their victims.  Of course sometimes the abuser is the abortionist himself, as was the case here with a convicted sex offender running eight abortion clinics in New Jersey.  And naturally, Planned Parenthood fights legislation that would require all of its employees to report sexual abuse.

Lastly, the point needs to be made that abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.  Even as recently as the GOP debate, the question was raised as to whether a pro-life candidate would rather risk a mother's life than allow her to have an abortion.  People rarely seem to know how to respond to this, and it is astonishing how few people realize that abortion is completely unnecessary.  Partly, no doubt, this is because "life of the mother" must remain a talking point for abortion lobbyists.  For the rest of us, it is mere ignorance.  In the case of ectopic pregnancy(when the baby has implanted somewhere other than the uterus, most commonly the fallopian tube) the baby must be surgically removed.  This is not the same as an abortion.  If a woman is diagnosed with a disease such as cancer during her pregnancy, a doctor will not deny her treatment.  In fact, there is a growing list of chemotherapy drugs which do not cross the placenta so there isn't even a risk to the baby.  Plus, this study found that babies with in utero exposure to chemotherapy drugs are not at an increased risk for birth defects.  In any kind of emergent condition, doctors can induce labor or deliver via Cesarean section.  Is the baby guaranteed to live?  No, but it's better than a guaranteed death via dismemberment as with abortion.   


Remember Savita Halappanavar?  Of course you don't.  She was the woman whose death was used by the media to spur mass hysteria and draw a world-wide attack on Ireland's abortion laws.  Reporters falsely claimed that she requested an abortion, was denied, and died as a result.  In reality, Savita never requested an abortion, nor would one have saved her life.  The final report, which no one was actually interested in, showed that hospital staff failed to follow protocol and as a result missed a fatal infection.  Nobody cares about that now, and certainly the media never came out and apologized for acting like a bunch of blood-thirsty lunatics.  They got what they wanted: abortion in Ireland.  Ironically enough, when Ireland was abortion-free, they were the safest nation in the world in which to have a baby.  It seems the standards are raised when doctors do what they are supposed to: preserve life.


"But we NEED Planned Parenthood!"


One thing is certain, we DO NOT need Planned Parenthood.  First of all, here is a map of Federally qualified health centers:






You can see there's a few to choose from.  All of these centers offer the same services as Planned Parenthood, minus abortion.  Just imagine what we could do if we added to them the more than $500,000 in tax dollars that goes to Planned Parenthood every year.  

Now, the other point to be made is this.  Planned Parenthood likes to go on about how abortion only accounts for 3% of their services.  This is an absolute lie, but completely misses the point anyway.  Think about it.  Let's say I run a medical clinic and thousands of people come to me for medication, cancer screenings, and various other important services.  Now let's say I run this clinic with money paid to me by parents who have me kill their unwanted children.  Parents bring me their children, pay a fee, and I take them in a back room and kill them.  Am I still an asset to the community?  Are you still on CNN proclaiming that this country NEEDS me?  Dear God, I certainly hope not.  But this is exactly the reasoning we are using when we justify the existence of Planned Parenthood.  They make obscene amounts of money in profit every year killing unwanted children and we proclaim that the world would stop turning if we got rid of them.  "But, but...abortion is different!"  Really, how?  Mothers go in with unwanted children and Planned Parenthood kills them.  The bodies are smaller, the act is the same.  Conveniently, the murderers at Planned Parenthood don't have to look at their victims until they're already dead.



Final Thoughts



There's no mistaking we have lost our moral compass in America.  We no longer search for truth, but rather look for ways to justify what we want.  This reveals itself with astounding clarity with abortion.  We know abortion is murder - the intentional taking of an innocent human life.  We know this, and we know it is wrong, but it's what we want so we look for ways to justify it.  We make excuse after excuse, and resist every effort made at revealing the painful truth.  When I had my conversion, one of the first issues I had to reconsider was abortion.  I actually took the time to form an opinion rather than parroting the party lines I had learned so well.  When I looked abortion in the face, when I acknowledged what it truly is and looked at the bloody remains of what was once a tiny human being, I cried.  I cried for days and weeks, and felt a near constant pain in my heart for months on end.  "Surely they don't know!", I told myself.  I never stopped to think about abortion and what it really is before, and I thought that many others were probably the same.  We've been taught that women have a right to choose and that abortion is a necessary evil.  This is nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves to relieve ourselves of any obligation to actually dealing with responsibility, consequences of our actions, or facing tragic and painful situations.  But it is a two-fold lie because not only is abortion not necessary, it's not even a solution to any of these things.  If, as a society, we declare the killing of children a solution to anything then, my God, what are we?


I pray that this post will open the eyes of any abortion supporter who reads it.  I pray we will stop hiding from the painful truth of abortion.  I pray for the day the unborn are no longer considered a subclass of humanity.  Fight the temptation to go back to sleep.  Stay awake and fight for the defenseless, for the voiceless, for the least of these.  Until next time, may God bless you.


Resources

Want to learn more?  Below is a list a resources to learn more about the ugly truth of abortion, ways to take action, and programs for healing after abortion.



Silent No More(silentnomoreawareness.org):  a group that raises awareness about abortion through the testimonies of men and women who have lost children through abortion, as well as former abortion providers.  They also have information on healing programs for post abortive men and women.


Priests for Life(www.priestsforlife.org):  find ways to take action against abortion, see images and videos of actual abortions, and links to healing programs

Abby Johnson(www.abbyjohnson.org): a former abortion clinic manager turned pro-life advocate

And Then There Were None(abortionworker.com): an outreach run by Abby Johnson to help abortion workers leave the industry with everything from financial assistance to legal representation

Rachael's Vineyard(www.rachelsvineyard.org):  offers healing retreats for post abortive men and women

The Endowment for Human Development(www.ehd.org):  an astounding collection of in utero images and videos throughout all nine months of pregnancy








2 comments:

  1. Thank you for this, Jennifer. I agree with you 100%! Keep on writing, please. I enjoy your posts very much.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I will keep on writing so long as the Spirit keeps on moving me.

      Delete