Reflections on Abortion and Women's rights

On Sunday, Christina and I joined our friends down in front of Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara to pray the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy and the Rosary at 3pm, the hour of divine mercy. We prayed for an end to abortion, for all victims of abortion, including the women who are driven to them, the men who cooperate with them, and the children who die. We also prayed for Terri Schiavo. It was Sunday, of course, so the clinic was closed. I was also reflecting just on when, how, and why abortion became so intertwined with the women's movement, particularly in the United States, and I've often asked myself how it is in other countries.

Many of you know, and I've stated this many times on this blog, that, contrary to what we understand as the modern feminist movement within the United States, classical american feminism has always been consistently pro-life, viewing abortion as the ultimate form of oppression of women and children. Activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton successfully argued for the illegalization of abortion and abortifacient methods that were, at the time, very prevalent and fairly easily obtainable.

So what happened? As I understand it, building on a foundation influenced largely by eugenic and even Nazi philosophy, characters such as Margaret Sanger and her Birth Control Federation of America sought to introduce abortion into American society as a means of controlling birth rates among poor and disabled persons. It didn't have anything to do with empowering women or women not wanting their children. At least, not until the mid-20th-century. To cloud its ties to eugenics and nazi philosophy, the Birth Control Federation of America changed their name to Planned Parenthood. In the 1960's and early 1970's, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of NARAL, helped to convince the media and the women's movement that abortion was somehow their issue, as he wrote in his Confession of an Ex-Abortionist:

We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal enlightened, sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favour of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalising abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalisation.

We systematically vilified the Catholic Church and its "socially backward ideas" and picked on the Catholic hierarchy as the villain in opposing abortion. This theme was played endlessly. We fed the media such lies as "we all know that opposition to abortion comes from the hierarchy and not from most Catholics" and "Polls prove time and again that most Catholics want abortion law reform". And the media drum-fired all this into the American people, persuading them that anyone opposing permissive abortion must be under the influence of the Catholic hierarchy and that Catholics in favour of abortion are enlightened and forward-looking. An inference of this tactic was that there were no non- Catholic groups opposing abortion. The fact that other Christian as well as non-Christian religions were {and still are) monolithically opposed to abortion was constantly suppressed, along with pro-life atheists' opinions.

A favourite pro-abortion tactic is to insist that the definition of when life begins is impossible; that the question is a theological or moral or philosophical one, anything but a scientific one. Foetology makes it undeniably evident that life begins at conception and requires all the protection and safeguards that any of us enjoy. Why, you may well ask, do some American doctors who are privy to the findings of foetology, discredit themselves by carrying out abortions? Simple arithmetic at $300 a time, 1.55 million abortions means an industry generating $500,000,000 annually, of which most goes into the pocket of the physician doing the abortion. It is clear that permissive abortion is purposeful destruction of what is undeniably human life. It is an impermissible act of deadly violence. One must concede that unplanned pregnancy is a wrenchingly difficult dilemma, but to look for its solution in a deliberate act of destruction is to trash the vast resourcefulness of human ingenuity, and to surrender the public weal to the classic utilitarian answer to social problems.

Dr. Nathanson admitted to having performed as many as 75,000 abortions, including the killing his own child. Soon, Planned Parenthood began to setup clinics, not in well-to-do areas, but in extremely poor areas of cities, areas with large minority populations. In many circles, abortion was and is seen as inseparable from the women's rights movement and, very frequently, an attack upon abortion is seen as an attack on women themselves. Susan B. Anthony has to be rolling in her grave.

Dr. Nathanson changed his mind on the issue of abortion and went on to become one of the leading pro-life activists in the United States, producing such famous films as The Silent Scream. He has also written a few insightful books detailing his testimony:

Aborting America
The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind

Later, he was even baptized into the Roman Catholic Church.

We were duped in this nation. How have we become so blind? Why can there be no honest reflection and discussion? A little education can be a dangerous thing. Even when Norma McCorvey and Dr. Bernard Nathanson raise their voice, they are discredited by the women's movement as being kooks, against women, and out of step with America. Is this true? The pro-life movement within America has been gaining steam, though at times it seems like an uphill battle. Yet there is a lot of discouragement, particularly when individuals, particularly church leaders, shy away from confronting this issue. And we have Howard Dean who, as a physician, is proud to have sat on the board of Planned Parenthood in Vermont.