Jamaica CAUSE

Jamaica CAUSE

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Abortionist Says It’s Time to “Make Abortion Great Again”



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.

I Mean It When I Say ‘Make Abortion Great Again’
Dr. Lealah Pollock
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.








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