Rh Reality has a new post ,"Abortion, Small Towns and Young Lives" up on their blog by Paige Johnson, as part of their “Tsk Tsk: Stigma, Shame and Sexuality” series. Yet another in an attempt to remove the stigma of abortion.
Paige describes abortion as “a rite of passage” for “most” of the girls she knew in the small Southern town where she spent her teenage years. The fact that she wanted "escape" her surroundings, led to a firm conviction not to allow anything to interfere with her dreams of leaving.
There are multiple problems with Paige’s post, first and foremost the total inability to take any responsibility whatsoever for becoming pregnant to begin with. In the post she blames anything she can grasp on to. The local health department was two towns over, and even if you could get there, the mother of a football player worked there. Of course, you also had to find an excuse to disappear after school, seemingly insurmoutnable, yet finding a way to have sex posed no problem.Then of course, there was the lack of restraint of teenage boys.
Seems anything they would have to do to keep their dreams alive without becoming pregnant and aborting was way too difficult, but when it came to finding money to abort they, “did what they needed to do.” Not once, does she place any responsibility on the girls who got pregnant.
Yet, for someone who claims to want to due away with stigma and shame, Paige is quick to show her prejudice and label her suitemate a pro life Roman Catholic who even, gasp, went to the March for Life! She goes on to say how hypocrisy knows no bounds as she tells us this same person not only had a previous abortion, but was ready to abort again when she found out she may be pregnant.
“Abortion is a life-giving, life saving, dream granting, mistake forgiving, medical procedure” Paige states.
As a post abortive woman who has worked with thousands of other post abortive women over the past 20 years, her lack of empathy and acknowledgement for those of us who found abortion anything but these things is amazing.
Abortion is not life giving, it takes the life of an unborn child and sometimes, yes even “safe legal abortion”, takes the life of the mother as well. It is not life saving, it destroys life.
It is also not dream granting, in fact, for countless women their dreams are destroyed as they struggle with depression, anxiety, guilt, nightmares, addictions, and sometimes physical damage leaving them unable to have other children. But I have no doubt Paige is one of those who say our feelings and experiences do not really exist. Abortion, for countless numbers of us, is also not mistake forgiving, but instead adds another larger irrevocable mistake that the woman now has to deal with for the rest of her life.
No dreams deferred? I don’t think so. For many women all dreams have been deferred and life has become a living nightmare as a result of abortion. Relationships have been damaged, trust is destroyed, and most importantly our children are dead. Maybe Paige chooses to hold abortion as some sort of an idol for women, but there are countless numbers of us out there who feel very differently. Perhaps Paige should check back with some of the girls from her home town. I am sure she would find that large majority of them would agree with me.
