Abortionist Says It’s Time
to “Make Abortion Great Again”
Opinion Micaiah Bilger Feb 3,
2017 | 12:06PM Washington, DC
In the past four decades, abortion activists have
repeatedly tried and failed to convince the public that abortions are a good
thing for women.
They say it’s just a medical procedure, a woman’s
choice, an important option that can make or break her success depending on if
she has access to it.
Lealah Pollock, a San Francisco abortionist,
recently wrote a
column for the pro-abortion blog Rewire that reiterates these same old
arguments.
“We can’t cow to the notion that abortion is a hard
but necessary option for a few ‘unfortunates,’” Pollock began. “Saying that
abortion is a devastating choice or ‘should be rare’ implies that abortion signals
a personal, moral, or physical failing—and that it’s not the best decision for
many women.”
Pollock has not been shy about her brash support of
abortion on demand. She recently attended the Women’s March on Washington with
a sign that seemed to unsettle a lot of people who saw it.
She continued:
On January 21, I had the joy and privilege of marching in Washington, D.C., alongside half-a-million other people crying out for equal rights for all women. Amid a sea of pointy-eared pink knit hats, I proudly carried a sign that read “MAKE ABORTION GREAT AGAIN.”People pointed and giggled, gave me high fives, or stared in confusion. On social media, my sign received some mixed responses. Even some pro-choice friends said that the sentiment was a counterproductive joke and that abortion was never meant to be great, only necessary.I disagree. My sign and the idea it expressed were not jokes, and I do think abortion is great when it is a safe, legal, and accessible option for all people.
Pollock ended her column with: “Abortion is
great! And a United States where women are forced into unsafe abortions or
unwelcome (or unsafe) childbirth is not great at all.”
But most Americans are not convinced. After 40-plus
years of this kind of rhetoric, many Americans still do not think that
abortions are good. As Pollock’s pro-choice friends told her, abortions are
necessary but not great.
Polls indicate this, too. Most Americans
consistently oppose most abortions. A
Marist University survey in 2016 found about 8 in 10 Americans support
substantial restrictions on abortion (78 percent), and would limit it to, at
most, the first three months of pregnancy. This number includes 62 percent of
those who identify as pro-choice, 85 percent of African-Americans and 84
percent of Latinos.
A
2016 Gallup poll also found that more Americans think abortion is “morally
wrong” (47%) than “morally acceptable” (43%). In 2015, Gallup’s numbers were 48
percent and 42 percent , respectively. A
recent Knights of Columbus survey found 60 percent think abortion is
morally wrong, while 37 percent think it is morally acceptable.
So it is not surprising that Pollock’s sign
received the reaction it did. Most Americans just can’t shake the feeling that
abortions are not good. Whether they admit it to themselves or not, that
feeling comes from the knowledge of what an abortion is – the unnecessary,
intentional killing of a unique human life.
Thanks to modern technology, we now know that an
unborn baby’s life begins at the moment of conception. And because of the
internet, smart phones, social media and more, many people are constantly
seeing evidence of the unborn baby’s humanity – an ultrasound photo, a new
study about how babies can learn in the womb, a report about doctors performing
a life-saving surgery on a baby in utero.
Even in those supposedly difficult, “necessary”
situations, many women are coming to realize that abortion is never the best
choice for their child or themselves. Through the work of pregnancy resource
centers, pro-life educational outreach, sidewalk counselors and many others,
women are finding information, encouragement and support to help them choose
life for their babies even in the most difficult times.
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://www.lifenews.com/2017/02/03/abortionist-says-its-time-to-make-abortion-great-again/
I Mean It When I Say ‘Make
Abortion Great Again’
We can't cow to the notion
that abortion is a hard but necessary option for a few
"unfortunates." Saying that abortion is a devastating choice or
“should be rare” implies that abortion signals a personal, moral, or physical
failing—and that it's not the best decision for many women.
On January 21, I had the joy and privilege of
marching in Washington, D.C., alongside half-a-million other people crying out
for equal rights for all women. Amid a sea of pointy-eared pink knit hats, I
proudly carried a sign that read “MAKE ABORTION GREAT AGAIN.”
People pointed and giggled, gave me high fives, or
stared in confusion. On social media, my sign received some mixed responses.
Even some pro-choice friends said that the sentiment was a counterproductive
joke and that abortion was never meant to be great, only necessary.
I disagree. My sign and the idea it expressed were
not jokes, and I do think abortion is great when it is a safe, legal, and
accessible option for all people.
As a family physician and abortion provider in the
Bay Area, I see patients choose abortion for many different reasons. A woman
who desperately wanted a child chose to have a later abortion when she learned
that her baby would be born, and quickly die, without a fully formed brain.
Another woman who had a 6-month-old child with Down syndrome chose to have an
abortion when her highly effective birth control failed. There was also a woman
who was trying to leave her abusive husband and was scared of what he would do
if he found out she was pregnant; she chose to end her pregnancy with
medication abortion. A pregnant 16-year-old didn’t want to finish high school
with a child. And a mother with two kids chose to have an abortion simply
because it was not the right time in her life to have another baby.
Because I work in a state that doesn’t single out
abortion for unnecessary restrictions and in a practice where medical care
isn’t dictated by religious affiliation, I could provide each of these women
with nonjudgmental and fact-based pregnancy options counseling. They could make
an appointment at a clinic close to home. My patients could get their
counseling, ultrasound, and abortion all in the same day, often covered by Medicaid
or private insurance.
For each of these women, abortion was indeed great.
Abortion spared the first patient the emotional and physical pain of having to
deliver a baby who wouldn’t live. The second patient was able to focus her
limited resources on meeting the needs of the baby she already had, a child
with significant physical and developmental disabilities. For women
experiencing intimate partner violence, pregnancy can be an especially
dangerous time. Being forced to continue this pregnancy would likely have
trapped my third patient in her abusive relationship. The 16-year-old and the
mother of two were both able to decide the best path for themselves and their
current or future families.
For some of my patients, choosing abortion is a
hard and sad decision. But for many others, it is simply a decision—and
that’s okay, too.
This is not what abortion opponents tell us. They
would have us believe that abortion plummets women into depression and a
lifetime of negative consequences—which
simply isn’t true.
Those same anti-abortion forces have made sure that
not all women are as lucky as my patients. According to the Guttmacher
Institute, more than half of U.S. women of reproductive age live in states that
are hostile
or extremely hostile to abortion rights. Because of targeted
restrictions on abortion providers, an increasing number of states,
including my home state of West
Virginia, are left with only one abortion clinic.
Combined with an increasing number of laws that
impose waiting periods, mandate parental notification, limit the gestational
age for abortion, and ban insurance coverage for abortion, the dearth of
clinics means that many women are essentially left without access to abortion.
For these women, Roe v. Wade
is meaningless. Abortion might as well be illegal. And this is exactly what the
anti-choice movement wants. They are winning.
In order for women to have full economic and social
equality, we must have access to the tools needed to decide how, when, and if
we parent. We must fight back against the onslaught of state-level and federal
restrictions on abortion.
We can start by not being swayed or cowed by the
notion that abortion is a hard but necessary option for a few “unfortunate”
women. This rhetoric has been adopted even by legislators
neutral to or supportive of reproductive choice. This language isn’t
neutral. Saying that abortion is a devastating choice or “should be rare”
ignores the oft-cited fact that one in three women in the United States will
have an abortion by age 45, and it also implies that abortion signals a
personal, moral, or physical failing.
This stigma affects women who consider or choose
abortion. My patients may feel a lot
of emotions—sadness, relief, guilt, happiness, anger—but societally imposed
shame should not be one of them.
Abortion is great! And a United States where
women are forced into unsafe abortions or unwelcome (or unsafe) childbirth is
not great at all.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://rewire.news/article/2017/02/02/make-abortion-great-again/
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