Abortion’s Message: Be Like a Man, with a Helping of Hypocrisy

Gabriel Garnica

It is nauseating to hear the pathetic mantra that opposing abortion is opposing women and, in fact, that being pro-life is somehow waging a war on women.  I am having difficulty coming up with a more ironic and absurd claim than this one.

Between various studies showing a link between abortion and breast cancer, depression, later miscarriages, and subsequent infertility, as well as the ultimate message of abortion, it should be clear by now that, if anything, it is abortion which represents a very real war on womanhood.

The early feminist icons recognized that abortion was a surrender of womanhood on two counts. First, abortion was a paradoxical claim for women to demand since its very essence is the declaration, and implicit assertion, that someone was somehow less worthy, less human, less entitled to self-determination. After all, does not abortion begin with the assumption that the human life inside the mother is not human at all but, rather, a mere glob of cells not worthy of any special protection?

Is it not ironic that women, while demanding to no longer be treated as mere property to be disposed when convenient at a whim should turn around and, with a straight face, spew that their unborn children are, in fact, mere property to be disposed of when convenient at a whim?

The second  count on which early feminism recognized  that abortion was the ultimate surrender of womanhood was its implicit proposition that the only way that women could truly succeed and reach their full potential was to become like men in the area of reproduction, able to engage in sexual behavior without long-term consequences or physical changes.

The clear message conveyed on this count is that pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing are unfair burdens which enslave the poor unfortunate allowing herself to be caught in its web. The successful person was the one who could fool around and escape responsibility; doing the deed and evading any evidence of the deed having been done.  It is unfair, so the message goes, for men to be able to have sex and just walk away if they wish, while women were left pregnant and compromised.

Rather than basking in the sacred uniqueness and special role of women in our society, or on how much they can accomplish while fulfilling those unique and marvelous roles which only they can fulfill, abortion throws its hands up and practically declares womanhood a physical and economic liability, that women have every bit as much right to be like men as men are!

The ironic hypocrisy of all of this is, of  course, that those who go on and on about the so-called war on women are the very ones who are defending, advocating, honoring, and promoting the ultimate attack on womanhood in the  promotion of abortion.

Imagine the absurdity of someone declaring that the only way to be a happy vegetarian is to give up being a vegetarian, that the only way to honor and promote being an African-American is to become more like a White person, or that the best way to be a happy and successful teacher is to give up teaching and do something else.  Such claims would be laughed off the stage of social discourse and discussion.

Yet, to this date, the ironic hypocrisy of abortion’s take on womanhood is not fully and directly addressed, and the hidden war on women that is not so hidden lingers on.

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9 thoughts on “Abortion’s Message: Be Like a Man, with a Helping of Hypocrisy”

  1. Pingback: Pope Francis to World: Stop Crimes in Iraq - BigPulpit.com

  2. I also an opposed to abortion. I do have a serious problem with the presentation of data from flawed studies about the relationship you presume to exist between induced abortion and various cancers, especially, breast cancer. It simply is not so….

    “The topic of abortion and breast cancer highlights many of the most challenging aspects of studies of people and how those studies do or do not translate into public health guidelines. The issue of abortion generates passionate viewpoints in many people. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women aside from skin cancer; and breast cancer is the second leading cancer killer in women. Still, the public is not well-served by false alarms. At this time, the scientific evidence does not support the notion that abortion of any kind raises the risk of breast cancer or any other type of cancer” The American Cancer Society…..here is the link and they are they authoritative source for mega-studies.

    http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/moreinformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer

    Also, I have serious doubts about an absolutist position on abortion:
    (1) Should an 11 year old child forcibly impregnated through incest be required to carry a fetus to term?
    (2) Should any woman who bears a fetus or embryo which is absolutely incompatible with life, i.e. polyhydramnios, Potter’s syndrome (absence of kidneys), triploidy (46 rather than 23 chromosomes), complete and total anencephaly (no brain development noir brain stem) be forced to carry the fetus to term to deliver a dead child?

    1. 1. Is it the child’s fault? I totally sympathize with the mother’s desire to not raise the child, but denying the child life gives power to the one who assaulted her. She has delivered him of the evidence of his guilt.
      2. Are you guaranteeing the child will be born dead? Some of those children live a few hours or a few days or even a few weeks. You don’t have to look far on the internet to see the poignant joy of the families who claim the huge influence that child has on the love and unity of their family and friends. Think of the child, who knows nothing but love for their short life, a child who can never sin.
      Further, if a child dies in utero, the body is not carried to term, your premise is false. There is either a spontaneous delivery or the body will be removed medically before the mother is poisoned by the decaying body.

    2. Joel Brind? A Baruch epidemologist whose analysis of studies have been repudiated by objective scientists and research as data-picked, flawed, non-methodological, shewed, misinterpreted. Brind’s meta-analysis is deeply flawed, relies on data from countries where there are numerous predisposing factors to development of breast cancer, ie air pollution in China where you can’t see two feet in front of you. Also, Brind is and always was a very prominent anti-abortionist. It’s not bad to be anti-abortion, but this level of vehemence hardly makes for an objective researcher.

      23 separate studies massaged into Brind’s “meta-analysis” report
      found no pattern linking breast cancer and abortion. Ten other reports
      detected varying degrees of increased risk, and another ten studies found no
      increased vulnerability. Three studies actually suggested that abortion had
      a “protective effect” against breast cancer! Boston University medical
      epidemiologist Lynn Rosenberg rejected the new study as “invalid,” and asked
      “Why would one want to combine contradictory studies and say the average must
      be the truth? It makes no sense.”

      If you want to use Brind as an objective scientist it would be like me using Peter Singer as a disability advocate! Sheesh!!!

    3. The American Cancer Society is hardly objective either. Why don’t we just say that abortion is not the best thing for women, despite claims by those in favor of it that it is the best thing for them since suffrage.

    4. The question is not proposition or opposition to abortion, the question is whether you regard human life as valuable.

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