One woman’s story related in the book confirms the movement’s arrogance, even acknowledging that abortion involves terminating human life. The account reads, “The simple truth is this: if a sperm and egg come together when a child is desired, a human being is born. But if a sperm and egg come together when a woman knows in her bones that it is not the right time for her to be a mother, then perhaps what is born is her own confident agency over life.”
Another woman betrays a hint of narcissistic callousness, writing, “I’m telling you my story plainly, proudly, flippantly even, because we’ve all been brainwashed to believe that the absence of negative emotions around having an abortion is the mark of an emotionally bankrupt person. It’s not. I’m a good person and my abortion made me happy. It’s perfectly reasonable to feel happy that you were not forced to become a mother.”27 Again, we see the unapologetic elevation of a woman’s prerogative to decide whether to carry her baby to term over the innocent baby’s right to life. But it’s an abominable lie to suggest that the life of an unborn baby is any less sacred because the mother carrying the baby doesn’t want it to be born. How does a woman’s confidence in her own “agency over life” or her bizarre happiness over terminating her own offspring justify her decision to have an abortion? These stories and the language the women use may make women feel better about their decisions temporarily, but they certainly don’t advance their moral argument that unborn babies don’t deserve to live.
One of the most dramatic illustrations of pro-abortionist brazenness was the public admission of Planned Parenthood president Dr. Wen that the core mission of her organization is abortion. Adamantly insisting that the media had misconstrued comments she made about expanding non-abortion services, she declared that Planned Parenthood’s “core mission is to provide, protect, and expand access to abortion.” She continued, “We will never back down from the fight. It’s a fundamental human right, and women’s lives are at stake.”
This was a stunning admission by an organization that typically tries to present itself as a women’s healthcare provider, not an abortion provider. According to Live Action, Planned Parenthood even manipulates its data to conceal that the overwhelming part of its business is abortion, not healthcare services for women. The group claims that abortion accounts for only 3 percent of its services, but abortion accounts for more than 90 percent of its services for pregnant women, and one in eight Planned Parenthood patients gets an abortion.28 Dr. Mohler captured the significance of Wen’s reversal. “This is an absolute contradiction of what she had been trying to say with media complicity in the early days of her leadership of Planned Parenthood in the fall,” said Mohler. “What she has now done is to reveal the fact that under pressure, Planned Parenthood is ready to say aggressively it’s really about the core mission of abortion.” In the end, Wen’s emphatic defense of abortion was insufficient—in July 2019 Planned Parenthood removed her as president. According to the New York Times, the group wanted a president who would be even more political and aggressive in advocating for abortion.29
Mohler trenchantly notes that to characterize abortion as a fundamental human right is “a particularly alarming argument, and one that wouldn’t have been offered with a straight face until quite recently, at least on those terms.… What we’re seeing there… is a renewed, very aggressive liberal defense of abortion that comes down to suggesting that any kind of reluctance to talk about abortion is a form of cowardice, or caving in to the pro-life movement.”30 The same type of pro-abortion belligerence was on display in Congresswoman Norma Torres’s insulting remarks about her GOP colleagues during an abortion debate in the House. “Mr. Speaker, it is tiring to hear from so many sex-starved males on this floor talk about a woman’s right to choose,” said Torres.31
“ABORTION AS A MORAL GOOD”
Renowned feminist Gloria Steinem compared the modern pro-life movement to Nazism. “On a more serious note, to put it mildly, is why Hitler was actually elected, and he was elected and he campaigned against abortion,” said Steinem. “I mean, that was—he padlocked the family planning clinics. Okay, so that is still relevant in the terms of the right wing.” Dinesh D’Souza tweeted in response, “Just saw a strange clip on @IngrahamAngle of Gloria Steinem insisting Hitler was anti-abortion. A big lie! Hitler was vehemently anti-abortion for Nordic Germans, and vehemently pro-abortion for the so-called inferior races. This can hardly be called a pro-life position!”32
The left gets more extreme and militant on abortion every day. In February 2019, Georgia’s Emory University hosted a lecture by a speaker positing that abortion is a moral good. The lecture, titled “Reframing Choice: Abortion as a Moral Good,” was presented by feminist professor Dr. Rebecca Todd Peters of Elon University. Peters contends that racism and patriarchy are behind the culture’s shaming of women for having abortions. So pro-abortionists, like good leftist wind-up dolls, are blaming everything on the evil triumvirate of racism, sexism, and classism. “The starting point of our ethical conversation should be women’s lives,” writes Peters, “[yet] the problem that we face in this country is our failure to trust women to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents.”33
So Peters is arguing that rational, capable, responsible, and moral agents will decide to terminate their children, and that patriarchy and racism are hamstringing them from exercising their eminently moral and rational choices? Peters, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), perversely believes her faith requires that she be pro-abortion. “There is nothing Christian about requiring women to ‘justify’ their reasons for abortion,” Peters writes. “And there is certainly nothing Christian about forcing women to continue pregnancies against their will.”34 “If we truly value women and healthy families,” she continues, “we must accept that ‘I do not want to have a baby’ is an imminently appropriate reason to end a pregnancy. And we must trust that pregnant women are the only ones who are capable of making these decisions.”35 One wonders where terminated babies fit into Peters’s definition of a healthy family.
The culture of death has sunk its claws into the most seemingly innocuous places. The Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona bestowed its highest honor, the Gold Award, on teenage scout Meghna Gopalan for her project on “reproductive health justice,” a term that includes support for abortion on demand. The project involved working with the pro-abortion Women’s March. Gopalan said she wanted to “educate people about and destigmatize access to women’s healthcare,” i.e., abortion. The left politicizes everything it touches, and it has certainly touched the Girl Scouts, though the organization maintains it takes “no position” on abortion. Former Girl Scouts CEO Kathy Cloninger let the cat out of the bag, however, when she admitted the Girl Scouts partner with Planned Parenthood organizations throughout the country.36
SIDELINING, OUSTING, AND HANDICAPPING PREGNANT EMPLOYEES
Planned Parenthood is inaptly named, as abortion ends the possibility of parenthood for the aborted baby every bit as much as it ends the baby’s life. Thus, planning an abortion is not planning for parenthood but the precise opposite. Planned Parenthood also uses the euphemism “abortion care”37 to mask the horror of the procedure, and some abortion proponents brazenly refer to abortion as a “family value.”38
Indeed, the hypocrisy of the abortion rights movement is clearly revealed in the corporate climate of Planned Parenthood. The New York Times reports that the group’s employees accused it of mistreating pregnant workers. “Employers that champion women face accusations of discrimination against their pregnant workers, showing how widespread the problem is in American workplaces,” reports the Times.39 When one pregnant employee told the HR department for Planned Parenthood’s clinic in White Plains, New York, that high blood pressure was threatening her pregnancy and that her nurse recommended frequent breaks, her managers ignored her. “Discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers remains widespread in the American workplace,” says the Times. “It is so pervasive that even organizat
ions that define themselves as champions of women are struggling with the problem. That includes Planned Parenthood, which has been accused of sidelining, ousting or otherwise handicapping pregnant employees, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.”40
Commentator Michael Knowles points out that while the Times seems to be shocked that an ostensibly pro-women organization would treat pregnant women disrespectfully, reasonable people understand it’s no contradiction at all. “You’ve got an organization that exists singularly, simply to end pregnancies and kill babies, and the New York Times is shocked that that agency, that organization would not treat pregnant women with respect,” writes Knowles.41
“A HISTORIC VICTORY FOR PROGRESSIVE VALUES”
Conservative commentators attribute the Democratic Party’s rapid leftward shift to the rise of radicals such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the extremist nature of their base, whose approval is required for any presidential hopeful. I think both are true, but politicians wouldn’t move left if their consciences prevented them from doing so, and the entire party has demonstrated itself to be comfortable with this radicalism. Democrats aren’t becoming more openly leftist as part of a strategic calculation but because it represents what they actually believe.
On no issue has this been more apparent than abortion. On both the state and federal levels, Democrats are promoting increasingly extreme abortion-related legislation. In January 2019 Democratic senators blocked a bill that would have permanently banned the use of taxpayer funds for abortion, despite a Marist poll showing that 54 percent of Americans oppose the practice. The Hyde Amendment, which is still in effect, is an annual appropriations rider that bans taxpayer-funded abortion, but this newly proposed bill would have codified it.42
During one of the Democratic presidential debates, each candidate vied to prove he or she was the most extreme abortion proponent. Washington governor Jay Inslee boasted that he passed a law forcing insurance companies to pay for abortions. Senator Amy Klobuchar noted that she was one of the three women on stage who “have fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose.” Former HUD secretary Julian Castro bragged, “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice.” In the end, it was apparent that all ten candidates on stage support taxpayer-funded abortion throughout the term of pregnancy for any reason.43
Earlier, Democrats had promoted legislation to expand taxpayer funding of abortion overseas as part of their package to end the government shutdown. This is remarkable, considering the same Marist poll found that 75 percent of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion abroad and only 19 percent approve of it. The results of this poll on other abortion-related questions are complex. While the survey found that 55 percent of respondents say they are pro-choice compared to 38 percent who are pro-life, a full 75 percent believe abortion should only be allowed—if at all—in the first trimester. Even 61 percent of those who identify as pro-choice and 60 percent of Democrats favor abortion only in the first trimester.44 Given that the Democratic Party favors abortion virtually on demand throughout pregnancy,45 it is clear the party is not in sync with public opinion. Democrats have additional cause for concern, as the poll found that only 35 percent believe an unborn child is “part of a woman’s body,” while 56 percent believe it is “a unique life.”46
On the state level, Democrats have been even more extreme. New York passed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) on the forty-sixth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The RHA legalizes abortion at any time within the first twenty-four weeks of pregnancy and at any time after that when it is necessary to protect a woman’s life or health. The exception for the mother’s health is so expansively interpreted that the bill essentially allows abortion on demand to the point of birth.47 The sanctioning of late-term abortions is especially cynical considering—as noted above—such abortions are rarely necessary for a mother’s health. Shockingly, this law even removes protections for babies who survive an abortion procedure, meaning the babies could be left to die after birth.48
Democrats jubilantly celebrated the bill’s passage, with New York governor Andrew Cuomo obscenely lighting the One World Trade Center spire in ghoulish pink to commemorate the event. Cuomo giddily stated, “The Reproductive Health Act is a historic victory for New Yorkers and for our progressive values. In the face of a federal government intent on rolling back Roe v. Wade and women’s reproductive rights, I promised that we would enact this critical legislation within the first thirty days of the new session—and we got it done. I am directing that New York’s landmarks be lit in pink to celebrate this achievement and shine a bright light forward for the rest of the nation to follow.”49 Comedy Central’s Broad City creator Ilana Glazer was equally elated, praising Democratic legislators and Planned Parenthood supporters. “Your work is making the world a better place, in real time,” said Glazer. “It is chiller in New York state because of your work.”50
Following passage of the bill, Illinois considered a bill that would make it the most “abortion friendly” state in the nation. The proposed legislation, also called the Reproductive Health Act, would legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason. The state’s Catholic bishops strongly condemned the proposal. “As Illinois faces so many pressing issues involving human life and dignity, it is incomprehensible that our elected officials have decided the pressing issue of the day is to enhance the chances that the lives of the most vulnerable and voiceless will be taken,” said the Catholic Conference of Illinois. “Their efforts, similar to recent actions in New York and Virginia, focus on corrupting our God-given right to life and sowing unnecessary division.”51
The Vermont legislature is prepared to pass H.57, a radical measure that would amend the state’s constitution to provide that the unborn “shall not have independent rights under the law.” This would further enshrine its existing law which states that there is no criminal liability for the murder of an unborn baby (such as when a criminal kills a pregnant mother and her unborn child). The bill would also remove civil liability for the negligent killing of an unborn baby.52
Democrats in Virginia introduced the Repeal Act to permit the outsourcing of second-trimester abortions to non-doctors and to permit abortion during the mother’s labor or, according to Virginia governor Ralph Northam, even after the baby’s birth, in some cases.53 “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” said Northam. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”54
Following an uproar over these comments, Northam unconvincingly attempted to walk back his statement, blaming his callous utterance on political opponents misconstruing his intent. “No woman seeks a third-trimester abortion except in the case of tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor’s comments were limited to actions physicians would take in the event that a woman in those circumstances went into labor,” his office said in a statement. “Attempts to extrapolate these comments otherwise is in bad faith and underscores exactly why the governor believes physicians and women, not legislators, should make these difficult and deeply personal medical decisions.”55 However, the bill’s sponsor, Virginia delegate Kathy Tran, admitted the legislation would allow doctors to kill a baby even when the mother “has physical signs that she’s about to give birth,” including when she’s dilating.56 All that would be required for a legal abortion just before birth would be a certification by a single doctor that the pregnancy would likely impair the physical or mental health of the mother, with no standards provided for what would qualify as such an impairment.
The left’s militant abortion advocacy reveals another gaping contradiction in its ideology. A dirty little secret is that abortion disproportionately impacts the black community—black women
are far more likely than non-black women to get an abortion.57 This appalling reality exposes the pathetic folly and irony in actress Anne Hathaway’s scolding pro-life “white women” for promoting restrictions on abortion. “Let us call out the complicity of the white women,” urged Hathaway, “who made this awful moment possible, and which—make no mistake—WILL lead to the unnecessary and avoidable deaths of women, a disproportionate number of whom will be poor and/or black.”58
“ABORTION IS SO 1973. WELCOME TO 2019.”
The Democrats’ extremism and militancy may be backfiring, as pro-life advocacy is making headway and the abortion industry is experiencing significant setbacks. Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute released a report stating that forty-one states have enacted more than 250 bills restricting abortion since the beginning of 2019, and state legislatures have passed more than 400 pro-life bills since 2011.59 These developments, coupled with President Trump’s appointment of originalist judges, have unnerved the left about the future of abortion law.
Some conservative states have recently pushed back against abortion radicalism. Georgia legislators proposed HB 481, the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, which bans abortions if the baby’s heartbeat is detected. In response, Hollywood went ballistic, with some fifty celebrities signing a letter by Alyssa Milano to Georgia House speaker David Ralston and Georgia governor Brian Kemp threatening to boycott the state if the bill passed. Milano appeared at the Georgia statehouse to protest in person.
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