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The Unspeakable Cruelty of Abortion
Q. Do you support abortion after birth?
A. It’s always a woman’s right to choose.Q. So I can kill my two-year-old?
A. It’s her choice.Q. At any point in a child’s life?
A. It’s a woman’s right to choose.
The above is from a short clip from an on-the-street interview with a pro-abortion protester. The video conveys the obvious sincerity and conviction of the protester.
The interview was conducted by LiveAction (a pro-life organization) and so it was probably deceptively edited because that’s always true of those pro-lifers, innit? They are so darned clever at snipping out phrases, the ones which, left in, would’ve let that woman sound obviously sane and completely convincing — how do they do it?
Alternatively…
Maybe this time around they just chose an unusually unintelligent and inarticulate abortion rights activist, out of a number of more nuanced and representative interviews, and posted hers to make the whole crowd sound dumb?
Still, what is the essential difference between this woman’s remarks and the testimony offered by what we might call a high-ranking and obviously intelligent abortion rights activist questioned this week before Congress?
Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, stating the obvious — that it is not lawful and morally acceptable to take the life of a child at 10 — asked abortion advocate Aimee Arrambide “what is the principal distinction between the human being that is two years old, or nine months old, or an hour old, than one that is eight inches further up the birth canal in the uterus?”
Arrambide paused. Then: “I trust people to determine what to do with their own bodies. Full stop.”
What is it, exactly, that the woman has determined when she determines to have abortion done with her body? It is a medical procedure that is perfectly and totally okay: decent and virtuous, it is healthcare and healthy and normal…But it must not be publicly described. To do so — to describe it — is “inflammatory.”
Ah well. The practitioners of many medical specialties politely hold their tongues at dinner parties: Who really wants to hear, over a plateful of bolognese, about a bowel resection; share a plate of Buffalo wings with an orthopedic surgeon who peeled apart an elderly woman’s gluteal muscles so he could yank her femur out of its socket? Heck, I’m just a chaplain, and I have to be sensitive about what sorts of details “normal people” might want to know about the body of the drowning victim I helped recover last month.
Nonetheless, if I were testifying before Congress about the effect of prolonged immersion on the human body, I would not wax indignant should my interlocutor ask me whether de-gloving is a feature. I would describe it — all of it — without the slightest fear of “inflaming” public sentiment against the work I do.
Yashica Robinson, M.D. announced, “I am a physician and a proud abortion provider. There is nothing that you can say that makes it difficult for me to talk about the care that I provide.” And then went on to not talk about it, a move that was interpreted by the mainstream media as righteous disdain for the White Men who dared bring up the subject. None —a t least that I came across—were inclined to provide their readers with the details that Dr. Robinson withheld.
“White Men,” by this time, surely ought to be plainly understood as a signal that the facts do not favor the arguments of those who take refuge behind the epithet. After all, Ms. Arrambide had also affirmed, during the same hearings, that men can get pregnant — presumably, that includes white ones. Men must now be allowed to have an opinion, or at least raise questions, about abortion.
Meh. Like “racist,” “transphobe,” “white supremacist” and “misogynist,” none of it means much more than “shut up.” And I won’t.
Forget all that: I’ll simply confess: I don’t get Yashica Robinson, M.D. or her colleagues—these young, hip, obviously educated women. I don’t understand them.
An orthopedic surgeon planning to dismantle and then reassemble my husband’s hip casually described the procedure to me, and I thought I’d pass out. I loved the hip and its owner and what he described was a dramatic and unsettlingly violent procedure. However, the end-result was intended to be (and was, thank him and God) life-giving. I knew this, my husband knew it, the doctor knew it: It was not difficult for him to talk about the care that he provided.
As with hip replacement surgery, the recovery of a dead body can be a strenuous and clumsy thing, and from the outside, it might not look like love. Still, it is love. I have even held and touched the bodies, heavy-in-death, of dead children: A small human form should arouse in adults a strong instinct to protect, nurture, comfort. Speaking for myself, they do—even when they are decomposed or otherwise damaged, beyond all the repair available this side of heaven.
Abortion providers encourage us to pretend that abortion is just about a blob of undifferentiated cells. She’ll use euphemisms, like “product of conception” and “contents of the uterus.” But the provider herself — Dr. Robinson, say — knows that when she begins her procedure, the baby is alive. She must grasp the little arms and legs and ribcages, tear them loose, drag them forth, hold them in her hands. She must gaze into the faces, see the little eyes, the nose, the whorl of the hair already growing on the crown of the crushed head.
I’m not saying she’ll catch a glimpse of these in passing, I’m saying it is part her job to examine them. To manipulate, assemble and count the pieces, to make sure nothing remains behind, to make sure the perfect whole has been successfully killed, successfully extracted. How can she?
How can she look at an unborn fetus kicking on an ultrasound screen — the same image that surely moves any normal human being to tender wonder — and see not a member of her own human family, but the target for her instruments? How can she not recoil at the thought that the fetus could feel pain as she crushes and tears him to pieces? I don’t get it.
This is a violent act — strenuous, even. One of the abortion providers caught on the (deceptively edited) Planned Parenthood tapes laughed about having to go to the gym to build up her biceps so as to have the strength required to pull a fetal thigh from its socket.
Like Yashica Robinson, that doctor didn’t look like a sadist. She looked like any nice young woman I might encounter at the YMCA, each of us going through our strength-training routines, building the same muscles for different purposes.
Do not all the atrocities of human history become wholly comprehensible in the light of this? What more evidence do any of us need for the existence of our original and ineradicable sin, our desperate need for forgiveness and grace?
Published in Healthcare
Does Yashica Robinson sell the baby parts herself, or does Planned Parenthood handle that and she gets a cut? Oh, my. “Cut” may be triggering. Does she get a share? Are receipts involved?
That’s as far as her brain works.
A powerful, and disconcerting post! There is evil in this world.
Thank you, GrannyDude.
It is indeed unspeakable. And they know it.
Evil they are, and evil are those who support them.
Yes, I think this quote was from the woman that repeated the answer three times or so to a variety of questions. When you can only answer a question with one prepared phrase, it’s a sign of extreme parsing, which is a sure sign of a lie.
This post had better make it to the Main Feed. I have never read a better heart-wrenching description of abortion providers and supporters.
It doesn’t seem difficult to understand them, to me. Maybe I’m wrong.
Rather than stating what I think, let me ask a couple of questions. What are the moral or philosophical views that lead someone to think that abortion is acceptable? What interests are being served by the availability of abortion? What changes in women’s lives would be necessary if they wanted to avoid unwanted pregnancy and motherhood, if abortion were impermissible?
Might this have anything to do with feminism?
I get your point, but motherhood isn’t an issue. There is such a thing as adoption.
I think the reluctance of abortion advocates to describe what happens during an abortion is strong evidence that they do to at least some extent get the horror of what they are doing. But, especially when speaking publicly, they should be able to put on a better face than their normal practice of completely ignoring the existence of the fetus. Almost all the arguments I hear for abortion pretend that the fetus doesn’t exist, and everything is about the host body (the pregnant woman).
A law school classmate of mine (so about 45 years ago) who was also a Christian explained his pro-abortion position by noting that the fetus did not become a living being in the eyes of God until the fetus had taken its first breath of air. His support was that the first Adam did not become a “living creature” until God had breathed into his (Adam’s) nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). So even though the fetus had DNA different from its host (the pregnant woman) and moved on its own, the fetus was not really a living creature in the eyes of God because it had not breathed the “breath of life.” So it doesn’t matter what people do to the fetus.
Although I don’t buy his argument nor his extrapolation of a creation event to the process of human reproduction, I appreciated his clarity for justifying why the fetus can and should be ignored in the abortion debate. If the fetus is not a “living creature,” then advocates should have no problem describing and referring to what happens during an abortion.
The “clump of cells” or “just like a tumor” argument makes no sense as justification for ignoring the fetus, since the fetus does have DNA different from that of the host (pregnant woman), while tumors and other medical abnormalities have the same DNA as the host.
I saw a sign one of those protesters was carrying that said, “No uterus. No opinion.” To which any man can reply, “I have no say. I have no responsibility.”
It brings me to getting all choked up actually. One can only quote Jesus on the cross: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But most of them know full well what they do.
It’s a woman’s right to choose.
Policy by catchphrases, and nothing more.
Yes, but of course, Adam was not alive, but inanimate clay. He couldn’t die if he was dismembered. A baby takes oxygen from his mother’s breathing and is sustained alive, as a living continuation of Adam’s life.
But I answer the “first breath” thing by asking, if your baby is born and before it takes it’s first breath I clap my hand over it’s mouth so it can’t breathe, until it’s dead, can you call me a murderer?
By the first breath rule, the clear answer is No.
Did Yashica Robinson’s mother own a camera when she was born?
I think that you’re incorrect about this. I have read that some women would find it traumatic to give a baby up for adoption, and prefer abortion for that reason. I haven’t had such an experience myself, and pregnancy and motherhood are physical impossibilities for me, but I think that I understand their reported feeling.
I do not condone it, by the way. I just think that I understand it. It does seem easier for a woman to pretend that her baby is a non-entity, and simply get rid of it, like a wart or a tumor.
Well, that’s not what I think the term “breath of life” means. I realize that you probably don’t think so, either.
I am against all forms of murder , including abortion and infanticide. However, I have to admit, it does make some sense to take it out, look at it, see if you like it before you decide whether or not to kill it.
If it’s possible to understand evil, then it’s understandable. But to say that giving up a baby would be more traumatic than killing a baby, requires experience at each. Or else, it’s just personal guess work, or a convenient excuse.
Motherhood in all its trauma and glory can be avoided by adoption.
Added: And if the baby’s not a baby until it takes its first breath, the woman isn’t a mother until the baby takes its first breath. And by then it can have been already surrendered to the adoption agencies.
I made that argument in 1973. The feminists weren’t impressed.
Are they ever impressed with anything other than themselves? It’s up to men to say it strongly and make the feminists understand, or at least accept it.
You have to make the courts accept it.
I was speaking of individual choice, of men refusing to associate with such women.
I’m going to skip over the point that seems to escape many that there are easy ways to avoid becoming pregnant in the first place. Many abortion advocates seem to think pregnancy is some unavoidable condition that just happens.
Assuming a woman “finds herself pregnant,” I have heard a number of arguments that carrying a pregnancy to term involves changes to the woman’s body that are uncomfortable, sometimes including feeling sick much of the time, and the woman should not be required to live with such discomfort and alterations to her body.
The trauma of giving her baby up for adoption does seem to be an issue for many women. A common theory is that usually she has seen (and may have even held) the baby. This is why at times the baby has been whisked away before the mother sees it. It is not uncommon for a planned adoption to fall apart in the delivery room when the mother changers her mind. Many argue that this emotional attachment is why abortion advocates are so afraid of showing high resolution ultrasound images to pregnant women considering abortions. Disposing of a “clump of cells” via abortion is likely much easier to take emotionally (at least initially; I have heard that doubts about “what have I done” can creep into the thinking of a woman who has had an abortion).
Actually, it exists to eliminate the consequences of the sexual revolution, something both sexes engage in.
Sorry. I missed that. I was speaking in general.
Pretend being the key word to that “argument.”
Are they trying to say that some people have a uterus and some don’t?
No worries, and it looks like at least one court might be on “our” side. I guess we’ll know in a couple months.
And I thought it was all about eliminating Blacks.
It seems to me there is always a missed opportunity with this kind of response:
Respectfully, doctor, there are two bodies in question here, as you know very well, given your medical expertise and practice. We’re discussing what the legal and moral obligations are to the living body of an innocent child, whether her mother wants her or not. . .
. . and then take the questioning from there.
The more direct but probably counterproductive response would be, “If we could trust you to determine what to do with your bodies, unwanted pregnancies wouldn’t happen, and barring medical emergencies, neither would abortion.”