Saturday, January 29, 2011

Reality versus Rhetoric

HT: Jill Stanek

CBR’s shocking, graphic video juxtaposed a soothing video produced by the Northland Family Planning Centers, a late-term abortion chain of 3 mills in Michigan, with the reality of abortion.

CBR’s video got such a huge initial response, CEO Gregg Cunningham decided to take some time to remaster it to grotesque perfection. CBR is calling this video “the most shocking 4-minute abortion debate you will ever see.” CBR may be right…

This video is posted at Pro-Life Tube, where it will never be removed.
Read about Northland's malpractice history here.

Northland's sales strategy seems to be to just repeat, "We think you're NIC E and GOOD!" over and over again to try to drown out the woman's own conscience:
When a woman becomes pregnant, she is posed with a question. She must decide whether or not she is ready to bring new life into the world.
Note how they are taking as a given an unproven point -- that every positive pregnancy test does (and should) lead to actively pondering whether or not to let the baby live. A presumption of abortion is made.
Ultimately, the choice should come from a loving heart and a clear head.
A loving heart and clear head combination will never result in a decision to abort. A woman who has a loving heart might, for misguided reasons, feel trapped into aborting her baby because she doesn't realize she has other options. A woman with a clear head will realize full well that she's choosing to kill her baby because she's not loving enough to pursue the other options. But you can't love your baby and clear-headedly choose a horrific death for that baby. This is a transparent attempt to reassure women who don't want to abort -- who feel awful about it -- that it really is necessary and therefore loving.
[T]here are many helpful tools available to help you work through the decision-making process, including Northland’s Head and Heart Counseling, an unbiased, free pregnancy counseling service offered exclusively by Northland Family Planning.
Isn't that convenient? They offer a free service to reassure you that the abortion you're feeling trapped into really is not only necessary, but loving and good! And the fact that the abortion puts money in their pockets is just a coincidence.
Making a choice about your pregnancy can be a gift of learning and growth. It is an invitation for you to develop a larger vision of yourself. It’s a way to practice compassion and loving kindness toward yourself.”
This is wrong on so many levels. They're trying to convince the reluctant woman that putting herself through this needless anguish will be GOOD FOR HER. Studies have shown that one of the reasons women end up choosing abortion is that they're unable to develop a larger vision of themselves -- one that includes motherhood. Northland wants the woman to expand her vision of herself to include killer of her own child. Note how they try to convince the woman to be "normal" by choosing to abort:

You can take comfort in knowing your feelings about abortion are not unique; everyday women are faced with the same choice.

Did you know?

  • Over 1/3 of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45.
  • Women of all ages, races, economic backgrounds and religious beliefs have abortions.
  • Over 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year
Come on, honey! EVERYBODY'S doing it!
Women who are willing to explore how they feel and what they think can come to a peaceful resolution about their pregnancy. To get there, you must be willing to work at it. The exercises offered by the counselors at Northland Family Centers or in the workbook, mean you must do some soul searching and do some “homework.” It may be the most important assignment you ever do.
But notice that aside from a single passing mention of choosing birth because you're certain you're ready, everything very quietly assumes that of course, the ultimate answer will be to abort -- that it's your job to just find a way to convince yourself to do it and then feel good about it afterward.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, they're common themes as part of the morality of murder.

You are strong to have an abortion, therefore if you don't you are weak.

You are responsible and moral to have an abortion. The converse will be true if you decide to keep your baby.

L. said...

Wouldn't it be great if there were ads, "Why get pregnant in the first place?"

Women getting pregnant a lot is accepted by BOTH sides of the debate as a given. Wouldn't it be great if pregnancy prevention were given even half as much time and attention as whether abortion should be legal or not?

[And I'm talking overall, not on this blog in particular, since I know Christina has expressed support for voluntary sterilization before.]

Anonymous said...

overall, i'm not sure?

I think you said something like that we (the uk) are the teenage single mother capital of europe. re. this, you have to ask the question why on earth isn't there more being done from the top down, to try to prevent pregnancy in the first place. instead we have abortion on more or less on demand, which is more often than not free if you live in a socially and economically deprived area.


but you will be given a run of the mill lecture on pregnancy prevention if you visit bpas.

personally i was cheated of a lifetime of loving my wanted son, cheated out of ever being able to conceive again. this lecture was just the crowning glory of insults. it turns out i'm not that unusual.

Anonymous said...

But you can't love your baby and clear-headedly choose a horrific death for that baby.

I remember a question on Jill Stanek - do you think that some women would 'choose' an RU486 type abortion to try to spare the child? A resounding 'no' was the answer. Not the case. Read the post abortion forums. There's a group of women who would never have had an abortion if it weren't for RU486 because they quote could never have gone through with a surgical abortion.

Christina Dunigan said...

L., sexual activity is going to result in pregnancy a certain percentage of the time. Prolifers recognize this and thus embrace "If you have sex, you need to take responsibility for any babies you make." The abortion lobby recognizes this and embraces, "If you have sex, you need to be prepared to abort any fetuses you create."

L. said...

Yes, that's true, and I personally have no problem with being prepared to abort my babies, with is why I continue to have sex even though I'm done having kids.

But I don't see serious effort on either side to reduce that "certain number." Everyone seems to take it for granted.

Christina Dunigan said...

What planet have you been on? Just because we don't use the "throw even more contraceptives at them and hope it works this time" tactic doesn't mean we're not trying to reduce the numbers!

Anonymous said...

responsibility and morality etc,etc are words used by both sides.

the pregnant women hears this.

some of us may have heard it said that it's a kindness to abort a child. i once heard it said by a pro-choice proponent that abortion is humane.

re. crisis pregnancy, i think the pro-life try to take a more holistic view in that they will spend time with you and try to get to get to the root of the problem of why a woman might have a real crisis pregnancy, talk around it, and try to remedy the circumstances of why it happened in the first place, and try to prevent it happening again.

Christina Dunigan said...

Sarah, the prolifers have to take a more holistic approach because they don't just offer a one-size-fits-all solution. If your default is "When in doubt, abort," you never have to look past the fetus. Kill it and consider the problem solved. But the prolifers have to look at the dynamics that are driving the woman to consider abortion, and those are going to vary.

She might need help with finances, housing, employment, transportation, escaping domestic violence, medical issues, a plethora of issues. It's much harder to look at the whole person and help her to improve her life than it is to take her money, scrape her out, and send her on her way without ever giving her another thought.

Anonymous said...

yes, i agree with this.

it seems transparent that pro choice are sometimes taking specific words and ideas. sometimes turning things upside down to justify that abortion is 'the ultimate good act of mothering', to quote a journalist from The Times of London.

L. said...

I'm on planet reality, thanks.

"Just say no to sex" works as well as throwing contraception at people and hoping they use it.

People need a good REASON to choose chastity, whether religiously inspired or otherwise. And people need a good REASON to use contraception. I think some people think of it as a good-luck charm -- if they have access to contraception and make a half-assed effort to use it sometimes, they seem to think that they're somehow fully protected. If they forget to take a pill or two or five, or use the diaphragm without spermicide, or if they use a condom but it "just falls off" -- we all know what happens.

The mere availability of contraception does no one any good unless people use it diligently and correctly. And they're not!

Chastity is great for people who choose it, and they should be encouraged and supported. And those of us who don't, we (collective we) really need to take pregnancy prevention more seriously, instead of just paying lip service about "access."

Lilliput said...

Christina, I've just watched an episode of teen mom - do you watch it? Its just so sad! I can understand why the word lovingly is chosen in terms of abortion - in that Mom doesn't want to put their child through the pain of a less then good enough childhood. If you believe that death is a part of life then it makes sense.

Christina Dunigan said...

Lil, yeah, death is a part of life. That doesn't mean we embrace it. Leave that to the Taliban.

What we need to do is offer love, not death. But death is cheaper and faster and easier.

Lilliput said...

Yes but have you seen Teen Mom, where is the love, I ask you?

Christina Dunigan said...

I don't have a TV. So no.

But I'm a welfare-to-work case manager, so I'm very much aware of the challenges women face when they are poor single moms. And there is not ONE of my clients I care so little for that I'd abandon her to an abortionist's care.