The pro-choice movement and the right to choose to kill

Bryony Gordon as reported in the Telegraph says the advocates of restrictive American abortion laws ‘claim to want to honour life, only for them to disregard it once it has been born’, and dismiss ‘the needs of women who have been made pregnant by their rapists’ (‘The attitudes driving Alabama’s abortion laws are alive and well in the UK’, Telegraph, May 18, 2019).

The tired old trope that ‘so-called pro-lifers’ don’t care about women or even children is somewhat challenged by their wide range of caring services - none of which are taxpayer-subsidised, unlike the enormously profitable abortion industry. She will search in vain, however, for ‘pro-choice’ maternity homes, pregnancy helplines, charity shops, and housing and welfare programmes, because they are rendered unnecessary by abortion, which ‘takes care’ of all a pregnant woman’s needs.

Ms Gordon links ‘abortion shaming’ with the ‘body shaming’ and ‘fat shaming’ that she says is rife in this country, but abortion is the ultimate sexist answer to female body fat. 

Only those who really care about women take the trouble to ask them what they really want, which is why the pro-life movement seeks to know what the raped pregnant woman actually wants rather than automatically deciding she wants an abortion; and why abortion is the rapist’s friend.

Like other abortion defenders Ms Gordon omits to mention what abortion actually involves; ‘pro-choice’ advocates trumpet ‘abortion rights’, but their campaign could be compared to a ‘right to roam’ campaign that allowed only pregnant women to go through a gate marked ‘freedom’, only to find themselves falling over a cliff. The pro-life movement is the only one that gives such women a hand up; that listens to women who regret their abortions; that provides a voice for the voiceless.

It is not ‘anti-woman’ attitudes that are driving restrictive abortion laws but the introduction of ‘liberal’ abortion laws giving more rights to rapists than to unborn babies; sadly, the latter are indeed ‘alive and well’ in this country – unlike the babies.