There are so many commentaries for and against abortion these days that we can frequently be lulled into thinking they are all blather and thus can be ignored. But in the case of most writings in the journal Contraception, it would be a huge error to think this way.
I refer to an editorial entitled "You say 'regret' and I say 'relief': a need to break the polemic about abortion".
A polemic could be a sermon, an expression of one’s opinion or a mere comment designed to provoke debate. However, in this case, the word is used to deconstruct the scientific facts behind pro-lifers' message that abortion hurts women. Indeed, this editorial is designed to make one think that the facts about how abortion negatively affects the mother are merely a cheap marketing ploy used by pro-lifers to persuade expectant mothers that it is not in their own best interests to pay an abortionist to kill their child.
It seems that these researchers are primarily concerned with pro-life laws commonly described as “informed consent.” These laws require abortion providers to impart certain information to the expectant mother prior to killing her child. Such laws and proposed laws fall into the “tell her the facts and then kill the baby” category. But that is not how the pro-abortion forces see them at all.
For example, the article tells the reader,
It is also important to look more closely at the laws themselves and ask why they are being promulgated. Forcing health professionals to tell women that they may be psychologically harmed by abortion does not represent informed consent. As noted earlier, there is no basis to assert that an abortion by itself will cause harm. Telling a woman that it may do so perverts the informed consent process; it imparts information that is scientifically inaccurate and forces health care providers to give women [sic] which they know is wrong and with which they do not agree.
Note the use of the words "does not represent informed consent.” The writers of the article refuse to acknowledge that a child is being murdered, as of course they must. This is why they can argue that “there is no basis to assert that an abortion by itself will cause harm.”
Moreover, while pro-aborts deny that abortion kills a child, they also suggest that there is no reason to express concern for the expectant mother because what you are going to tell her about her baby is “scientifically inaccurate.” This is preposterous, of course, but please don’t forget who is in charge of making policy in the United States today … It certainly is not honest pro-life Americans.
So what else does this article tell us about the type of mindset that can condone murder by saying that calling it murder is “scientifically inaccurate"?
Read this:
Women are likely to have complicated feelings about the aspects of their lives that led up to the abortion decision: sex, contraception, partnership status, economic conditions, motherhood potential, etc. In some cases, the unwanted pregnancy may be linked to abuse or violence. The alternative to abortion for women who will receive “informed consent” information is not never having become pregnant in the first place.
You will note that the baby is not in this equation at all. What precisely is “motherhood potential”? It is a denial that she is a mother from the instant her child’s life begins. Yet the writers would have the public believe that they are being objective and scientifically accurate rather than purveying death and destruction.
Near the end of this article we find one statement that, in my opinion, defines precisely what the problem is with such proposed laws and those who oppose them:
A woman should be able to trust that the information she receives from her health care provider is accurate, free of bias and provided in language that promotes health and well-being, not shame.
Wouldn’t anyone with a proper understanding of the English language agree with this statement? The answer is, of course!
But the problem is that, in the United States today, abortion is protected by law, and as some pro-lifers continue insisting that they are satisfied with merely “regulating” abortion and “reducing” abortion numbers, they play directly into the hands of those who, like this article's authors, want to discuss and demonize rather than address the fundamental question underlying all of their deliberately misleading use of the English language:
Who dies during an abortion?
If the answer is that an innocent person dies, then why do we want to regulate the killing, give information to the mother before the killing or otherwise permit the killing, as long as certain steps or statements or health regulations are in place and enforced first?
It is high time that pro-lifers really examined what the proponents of abortion are telling us. Get on with it … personhood now! Anything less simply extends what has already been 35 plus years of suffering, death and dehumanization.
