William Donohue
January-February 2009
The pro-life movement knows that 2009 will test its reserve more than ever before. It is an appropriate time, then, to consider what we’re up against.
Most of those in favor of “choice” don’t have the courage to complete the sentence. The “choice” they support does not entail choosing between chocolate or strawberry, but between life and death. Deep in their hearts they know this is true, and their gutlessness is at least testimony to their guilt: they are tacitly acknowledging that the choice they advocate is nothing to celebrate.
So in fairness, it would not be accurate to say that most of those who are “pro-choice” are actually “pro-abortion.” But it is a monumental mistake to assume that the abortion rights movement is not dotted with those who truly are “pro-abortion.” Indeed, some actually love it so much that they call it a “positive good,” or a “blessing.” Some even call it a “sacrament.” Here’s the proof.
Feminist lawyer Gloria Allred knows that abortion is murder, yet she contests the idea that our society would be better off without abortion. For example, in 2003, she told Sean Hannity that she took the side of Laci Peterson, the pregnant woman who was killed by her husband (she had named her unborn son Connor). When the D.A. considered the evidence, Allred said, “the fact that there are two individuals who are dead here, Laci and Connor, that has to be the most important consideration of everything.”
This is quite an admission given that three years earlier she had the following exchange with Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly: “Wouldn’t it be better if there were never an abortion?” Allred: “I think that’s a world we’re never going to see, so I wouldn’t speculate.” O’Reilly: “All right, but wouldn’t it be better if a….” Allred: “Not necessarily.”
So it would not necessarily be a better society if there were no abortions, notwithstanding the fact that abortion kills. It therefore seems plausible, according to Allred’s way of thinking, that society might be better off with abortions. This isn’t the voice of someone who is reluctantly “pro-choice.”
In the late 1980s, the Fund for a Feminist Majority released a video, “Abortion for Survival,” that included advocates hailing abortion as a “positive good.” A few years later, a retired women’s studies professor from the University of Washington, Patricia Lunneborg, wrote a book called Abortion: A Positive Decision. According to a rave review in Publishers Weekly, Lunneborg found abortion clinics “to be places where women are highly valued and patients’ self esteem is carefully tended.” Sounds like a resort.
A few years ago, in a book entitled Beyond Choice, Alexander Sanger lashed out at those who say “abortion is the lesser of two evils.” According to him (he is the grandson of Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger), such reasoning was faulty. The time had come, he argued, to recast abortion as a “positive good.” Beverly Harrison, a professor of Christian ethics at the Union Theological Seminary, had previously come to the same conclusion. She contended that abortion was not only a “positive good”—it was a “loving choice.”
In 2007, a writer from England, Caitlin Moran, said that she regards abortion as “one of the ultimate acts of good mothering.” Ex-priest Daniel Maguire upped the ante in 2001 in a book, Sacred Choices, wherein he maintained that abortion for the right reasons is “a holy choice, a sacred choice.” He is still teaching theology at Marquette University.
In 2008, radical feminist Erica Jong wrote a piece dubbed, “If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would be a Sacrament.” She credited the late feminist, and anti-Catholic, Florynce Kennedy, with first coining this line. Another anti-Catholic, Freedom From Religion Foundation founder Anne Nicol Gaylor, wrote a book in 1975 called Abortion is a Blessing; it was hailed by feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem for seeing abortion as a blessing.
Patricia Baird-Windle, one time owner of three abortion clinics, has also held that “abortion is a major blessing, and a sacrament in the hands of women.” Catholic dissident theologian Mary Hunt, who runs the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, admits that she “dares” to call abortion “sacramental.” Episcopal “priestess” Carter Hayward has similarly said that “Abortion should be a sacrament even today.”
No one beats French author Ginette Paris. After having an abortion, she explained her “radiance” as such: “What’s going on is that I’ve just had an abortion and lived an impossible love and accomplished a great reconciliation with myself. But it was my secret and my gift.” She broke her secret in her 1992 book, The Sacrament of Abortion.
So it is not true that all those in the “pro-choice” movement are struggling with a difficult choice. Some really love abortion. Remember this the next time some apologist for abortion rights tells you how everyone on his side finds abortion problematic. And then tell him to purge his side of these very sick people.
