We've seen them on the news, or maybe in person. Waving placards of a Photoshopped naked three-month old, crawling inside a womb. Because they believe that abortion of something the size of a kidney bean is murder, and they wouldn't believe it if it weren't true. Right?
People's egos are very tied up in their strongly-held opinions, and rarely will anyone convince another person over the course of a few debates. Changes in viewpoint take a very long time and usually happen when people are not under the stress of trying to defend their own position. The anti-choice stance comes more from a gut feeling that it's "wrong" than from logic, and so people can be presented fact after fact and it will never change their view. For example: the kidney-bean fetus has no nerve connections between limbs and brain tissue. So there's no pain for the fetus during an abortion.
But like I say, an anti-choice advocate's opinion is set in stone.
Even on the day she's having an abortion.
As one page chronicles:
"I've had several cases over the years in which the anti-abortion patient had rationalized in one way or another that her case was the only exception, but the one that really made an impression was the college senior who was the president of her campus Right-to-Life organization, meaning that she had worked very hard in that organization for several years. As I was completing her procedure, I asked what she planned to do about her high office in the RTL organization. Her response was a wide-eyed, 'You're not going to tell them, are you!?' When assured that I was not, she breathed a sigh of relief, explaining how important that position was to her and how she wouldn't want this to interfere with it." (Physician, Texas)
That's right. For everyone else, it's clear-cut murder. All the hooey about needing the abortion because the child will ruin your life just won't do. Unless it turns out that you need the abortion because the child will ruin your life. Then it's OK.
The hypocrisy is not America's own. Here's a report from Down Under:
"I have done several abortions on women who have regularly picketed my clinics, including a 16 year old schoolgirl who came back to picket the day after her abortion, about three years ago. During her whole stay at the clinic, we felt that she was not quite right, but there were no real warning bells. She insisted that the abortion was her idea and assured us that all was OK. She went through the procedure very smoothly and was discharged with no problems. A quite routine operation. Next morning she was with her mother and several school mates in front of the clinic with the usual anti posters and chants. It appears that she got the abortion she needed and still displayed the appropriate anti views expected of her by her parents, teachers, and peers." (Physician, Australia)
Just to point out: the age of consent for vaginal male-female sex in Australia is 16 or 17, depending on which State you refer to.
Of course, it's not just teenage girls making these decisions to damn everyone else to Hell as they make sure their own brood is taken care of:
"In 1990, in the Boston area, Operation Rescue and other groups were regularly blockading the clinics, and many of us went every Saturday morning for months to help women and staff get in. As a result, we knew many of the 'antis' by face. One morning, a woman who had been a regular 'sidewalk counselor' went into the clinic with a young woman who looked like she was 16-17, and obviously her daughter. When the mother came out about an hour later, I had to go up and ask her if her daughter's situation had caused her to change her mind. 'I don't expect you to understand my daughter's situation!' she angrily replied. The following Saturday, she was back, pleading with women entering the clinic not to 'murder their babies.'" (Clinic escort, Massachusetts)
These aren't the only examples from the link I've provided. Although few studies have been made of this phenomenon, a study done in 1981 (Henshaw, S.K. and G. Martire. 1982. Abortion and the Public Opinion Polls: 1. Morality and Legality. Family Planning Perspectives. 14:2, pp 53-60, March/April.) found that 24% of women who had abortions considered the procedure morally wrong, and 7% of women who'd had abortions disagreed with the statement, "Any woman who wants an abortion should be permitted to obtain it legally."
A 1994/95 survey of nearly 10,000 abortion patients showed 18% of women having abortions are born-again or Evangelical Christians.
And a previous Planned Parenthood handbook on abortion noted that nearly half of all abortions are for women who describe themselves as born-again Christian, Evangelical Christian, or Catholic.
So I say to the Religious [f]Right: do your job. Because it looks to me like people know the talk, but are not walking your walk. Either make the women under your umbrella live by your creed by whatever means necessary, or admit that you have lost this issue. Because we all know that the day abortion is ever made illegal in this great Nation of ours; the day your girls start dying of infections picked up from wire coat-hangers in dirty motel rooms; that's the day you start to lose the support of every single parent of a daughter, and every woman, for the rest of time.