Women Deserve Better
Posted by Danielle Bean in News on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 1:00 PM
Access to abortion liberates women and makes them equal partners in their intimate relationships with men, right?
That’s what most modern-day feminists would have you believe anyway.
Sadly, though, reality is that easy access to abortion not only destroys human life, but also threatens to turn “liberated” women and their bodies into objects men can use and discard at whim.
A painful case in point: The New York Times’ My Clock Was Already Ticking by writer Margaret Gunther—a hard, honest account of her unexpected pregnancy while living with a boyfriend years ago.
Though Gunther had no ethical objections to abortion, she did not want one. She was coerced into choosing abortion, an agonizing decision that negatively affected her emotional and physical health for years afterwards, not because she was a “modern, liberated woman,” but because she was an embarrassingly weak and vulnerable woman, one who wanted desperately to hold on to her man.
The ready option of abortion made Gunther’s unexpected pregnancy “her problem” and one she clearly needed to “take care of” if she had any hope of salvaging her relationship with her boyfriend.
The truth, which came out after I’d expressed my desire to keep the baby, was more simply stated: “If you go through with this,” he said, “I want nothing to do with it.” But I still wanted something to do with him, and I thought if I were to deal with “the problem” the way he wanted me to, we could go back to the way we were. On the day of the abortion I kept envisioning myself getting up off the table at the last moment before the procedure. I knew what I was doing was wrong, not ethically, but personally, spiritually wrong.
She did go through with the abortion. And he broke up with her anyway.
Because that’s what some men will do when we women give them that kind of power. Power over our bodies—to use us for sex without responsibility or commitment. Power over our minds—to convince us that we’re better off killing our offspring than living without them.
Which is precisely why Feminists for Life‘s motto ought to resonate with every feminist on the planet:
“Women deserve better than abortion.”
Yes we do.
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