Say Anything Blog

Apparently it’s time for an “abortion pride” movement according to “bioethicist” and author Jacob M Appel.

Everybody is proud these days. While “pride” as a collective concept may have originated with the Gay Rights movement of the 1970s, now marchers in the St. Patrick’s Day parade are as likely to sport pins boasting “Proud to be Irish” and my Jewish friends are as proud to be Jewish as my Muslim friends are proud to be Muslim—although I always wonder if they wouldn’t be equally proud if they had been born into the opposite faiths. Recently, I even spotted a bumper sticker on a jalopy that declared: “Proud to be humble.” While the Book of Proverbs may warn us that “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” the political and social reality today is that pride is a necessary prerequisite for acceptance and equality. That is why the moment is ripe—more than ripe—for an Abortion Pride Movement.

The anti-abortion movement already has its own pride movement. If one reads about reproductive issues in the conservative media—which I often do—one is bombarded with tales of mothers who have sacrificed personal and professional opportunities to bring fetuses to term. The implication is that while bearing a child when one is ready is a blessing, bearing a child when one is not prepared garners one extra moral credit in the cosmos. Similarly, while having a healthy baby is a cause for joy, some opponents of abortion profess that having a baby with a devastating or even fatal birth defect is proof of the mother’s fortitude and character. If one believes that human life begins at conception, this is logically the case. However, if one believes that life begins after conception—as do a wide majority of Americans, if polls on such issues as embryonic stem cell research are to believed—then the suffering caused by transforming an unwanted embryo into a living baby, who will either endure debilitating disease or will enter a deeply inhospitable home environment, is not at all a cause for pride. It more is akin to deciding that the world is flat and then boasting of not falling off the edge.

In contrast to women who have foregone abortion, women who have chosen to terminate their pregnancies are rarely encouraged to take pride in their decisions. That is unfortunate. In the current political climate, deciding not to bring a fetus to term, if a woman is unready to parent, or if that fetus is likely to lead a life of great physical suffering, is a courageous and noble moral choice. Recognizing that thirteen or fourteen years old is rarely a wise age to embark on the process of parenting takes personal insight—but it also requires wisdom, at that young age, to terminate a pregnancy and so spare a child from growing up with another child for a parent. In short, women should not merely have the right to end unwanted pregnancies, they should have the right to be proud of having done so. Surely, there is enough suffering in this world already without adding infants with Tay-Sachs disease and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome to the mix. Women who step up to the ethical plate and have the strength to say, “This is the wrong time,” or “This is the wrong fetus,” should hold their heads high in the streets.

What this nonsense is predicated upon is the idea that death is better than life for children with disabilities such as Downs Syndrome.  Which is stupid.

What’s also stupid is this notion that abortions are somehow saving these children from lives of hardship when, in reality, most abortions are basically just birth control exercised by women too lazy or careless to either live their sexual lives responsible or face up to the consequences of their irresponsible actions.  The pro-abortion crowd loves to emotionalize this issue with stories about women who allegedly would have died in pregnancy were it not for abortion, or babies who would be born with awful birth defects, but the truth is that the occurrence of these cases in overall abortion cases is so low as to be inconsequential.

There is no pride in abortion.  Killing your unborn child because you are ashamed of it or too lazy to cope with it is nothing to be proud of.