Letters to the Editor

A pro-abortion activist recently asked pro-lifers to "join with us in our efforts to end the need for abortions."

What will they think of next? How about a pimp asking the vice squad to help him eliminate the "need" for prostitution? We'd see through that in a heartbeat. Even though prostitution has been practiced for thousands of years, it meets no need. Men can survive just fine without prostitutes. Prostitution exists because some men are infantile and refuse to learn to be sexually responsible. Only by eliminating the "boys will be boys" mentality can we eliminate prostitution. You could never eliminate prostitution by elevating it to the status of "need."

The same goes with abortion. It meets no need, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of women live just fine without it. They do this by taking responsibility for their sexuality in one of many ways. They may engage in sex only when they are prepared for motherhood. They may abstain. Or they may make adjustments, either by changing their plans to include a child or by placing the child with a loving adoptive family. Only by eliminating the abortion mentality can we eliminate abortion. You can never eliminate abortion by elevating it to the status of "need."

A pro-abortion activist recently asked pro-lifers to "join with us in our efforts to end the need for abortions."

Why doesn't she join pro-lifers in their efforts to eliminate at least the clearly needless abortions?

According to pro-choice commentator Naomi Wolf, 11 percent of abortions in the U.S. are on women with household incomes over $50,000. Wolf herself says that these women "have no excuse whatsoever for their carelessness." Just eliminating these abortions would reduce the abortion rate by 11 percent, eliminating 176,000 abortions annually. And nobody could complain that the parents of these 176,000 children can't afford them.

So what is this pro-abortion activist willing to do? Is she willing to eliminate abortions like these? Or the abortions sold to non-pregnant women? Or the abortions done on women without their consent?

I've never seen her propose an initiative that would eliminate even one abortion, much less 176,000. Could it be that she isn't interested in eliminating abortions at all?

A pro-abortion activist recently asked pro-lifers to "join with us in our efforts to end the need for abortions."

Nonsense. If pro-choice organizations were serious about reducing the number of abortions, they would start with trying to limit the number of women placing themselves at risk by engaging in baby-making activities outside of marriage. But have you seen abortion advocates treating chastity as anything but a joke? The young woman who spends her time in productive activities is painted as a silly prude, and the woman who spends her time having sex with a man she may not even like is held up as a role model. But which woman has the better life? The woman who spends her time accomplishing things, or the woman who keeps climbing in and out of bed and on and off the abortion table?

If we start taking women seriously and stop treating them as sex toys, the abortion rate will plummet. But I won't hold my breath waiting for the abortion industry to lead the way.

A pro-abortion activist recently asked pro-lifers and abortion advocates to "join together to end the need for abortions."

Reality check--the only "need" for abortion is in abortionists' heads, not in women's wombs.

Pregnant women have many needs: food, shelter, medical care, love, and so on. But abortion advocates ignore these real needs and instead substitute their one-size-fits-all solution of abortion.

Every woman who ever gives birth, whatever her circumstances, is living proof that there is no "need" for abortion. Some women have overcome physical and mental illness, rape, incest, poverty, and a variety of problems to have their babies. Most problems leading to abortion aren't that serious.

It is insulting to women to suggest that the only way they can cope with their problems is to kill their own children. Women are able to rise above the most difficult situations with dignity and grace. They are not, as abortion advocates claim, so weak and stupid that they have to kill their babies to survive in the real world.

To tell the truth, the biggest "need" for abortions is the financial need of abortionists. They can't get real jobs. If they can't kill babies, they'd end up washing cars. Granted, it would be honest work, which would make it a change of pace. But it won't pay for the BMW, will it?

The truth is that there is no need for abortion. There is only the abortionists' unwillingness to offer anything else.

A pro-abortion activist has proposed that pro-lifers join abortion advocates in "eliminating the need for abortions."

I'll let the word "need" slide for the moment. Let's examine what both sides are doing about the reasons women abort. Pro-lifers run crisis pregnancy centers that address women's problems. They arrange or provide housing, food, medical care, the chance to finish school, and so on.

Pro-choicers just send them, one and all, to the neighborhood abortion mill. It's their one-size-fits-all solution. And if the pro-choice group gets a kickback (excuse me--if they get reimbursed for their counseling), so much the better.

It's obvious that abortionists aren't satisfying a need of women but a greed of their own. Since day one, their profit protection strategy has been to make the American people overlook the extraordinarily common by diverting their attention to the extraordinarily rare. They constantly harp about these "hard case" reasons for abortion, knowing all along they are almost never the reasons women have abortions!

A pro-abortion activist has proposed that pro-lifers join abortion advocates in "eliminating the need for abortions."

This abortion supporter is trying to portray us as unwilling to end the "need" for the very abortions we oppose. She also wants to imprint the word "need" on people's minds. After all, it's harder to make something illegal that the public perceives as needed.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Planned Parenthood affiliate, did a survey using a questionnaire developed and refined with help from the National Abortion Federation. Guttmacher claims the data was obtained from women who submitted to abortions at 38 locations in the United States.

The largest percent of women--76 percent--gave as a reason for abortion that they were unready for how a baby would change their lives. Other common reasons were "not ready for responsibility," "has all the children she wants or has grown-up children," and "does not want others to know she has had sex or is pregnant." These hardly constitute a desperate "need" to kill children!

The only way to eliminate the "need" for abortion would be for these rabid abortion fanatics to stop advocating it as the solution to all problems from poverty to boredom. And there's nothing pro-lifers can do to change that.

A pro-abortion activist has proposed that pro-lifers join abortion advocates in "eliminating the need for abortions."

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, an organization associated with Planned Parenthood, did a survey of why women have abortions. The reasons most often cited as "most important" included "Woman is concerned about how having a baby could change her life," and "Woman is unready for responsibility." Only seven percent of the women gave as the "most important" reason "Fetus has possible health problem," "Woman has health problem," or "Woman was victim of rape or incest."

Even those "hard case" reasons include plenty of abortions that even a pro-choicer would classify as "unneeded." For example, abortion clinics are known for not verifying a diagnosis of fetal ill health, so women are often lured into aborting what turns out later to be a healthy baby. Many "health problems" for which women are encouraged to abort are easily managed by doctors who don't make a knee-jerk recommendation of abortion every time a woman gets sick. And Fortress International, a support and advocacy organization for women who have become pregnant through rape, takes a pro-life stand because they found that abortion just further harms the already traumatized rape victims.

The "need" for abortion exists in pro-choicers' heads, not in women's wombs. There is nothing pro-lifers can do to change that. The only way to eliminate the "need" for abortion is for pro-choicers to be honest and realistic--and if they were honest and realistic, they wouldn't be abortion advocates.

A pro-abortion activist has proposed that pro-lifers join abortion advocates in "eliminating the need for abortions."

In a survey done by Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher Institute, the most common reasons women cited for having abortions were "can't afford baby now," "unready for responsibility," and "concerned about how having a baby could change her life." These are some pretty frivolous justifications for taking someone's life. It seems to me that when a nation legally condemns millions of babies to death, while knowing that the reasons women abort are centered around avoiding the normal responsibilities of grown-ups, something is seriously wrong in that country.

What have abortion advocates proposed to eliminate these responsibility-avoiding abortions? Have they promoted adoption? No. Have they promoted avoiding sexual intercourse until both parties are ready to assume the responsibilities of parenthood? No.

Instead, they have gone to the Supreme Court to defend their practice of using Title X tax money to suggest abortion to every pregnant woman, regardless of whether she thinks she needs an abortion or not.

To even suggest that abortion advocates have any interest in reducing the "need" for abortion is like suggesting that General Motors wants to reduce the "need" for privately owned automobiles!

Abortion advocates want to expand the perceived "need" for their profitable "service." The ones fighting to eliminate the perceived "need" for abortions have always been pro-lifers.

Finally, I'd like to know how a practice that kills women saves women's lives.

But I don't think pro-choicers will have any answers to these questions.

A guest editorial last week reveals a new abortion sales technique. It was suggested that pro-lifers and abortionists work together "to address why it is so difficult to talk women out of abortions once they have decided that they need them."

That's like a used-car salesman asking why it's so hard to talk a customer out of buying a lemon. If you never try it, you'll never succeed.

Back before abortion was a legal way to get rich, Planned Parenthood's medical director, Mary Calderone, said that "when a woman seeking an abortion is given the chance of talking over her problem with a properly trained and oriented person, she will in the process very often resolve many of her qualms and will spontaneously decide to see the pregnancy through."

How is it that the abortion industry has forgotten this very simple thing? Before abortion was a legal money-maker, "resolving her qualms" meant helping her to see that she could indeed handle the pregnancy and have her baby. Now that abortion is legal and profitable, "resolving her qualms" means convincing her that she is a useless piece of trash that couldn't raise a turnip, much less a child. It is to make sure that come hell or high water, she goes through with the abortion.

Women haven't changed. The motives of the counselors have changed. Why is it so hard for abortionists to talk women out of abortions? Maybe it's because they never try.