Kathryn Jean Lopez Dislikes Facts, Women Who Don't Regret Their Abortions
LatestThe subject of Kathryn Jean Lopez’s latest NRO column is the abortion piece in the new Glamour that many are talking about. Thing is, it seems Lopez read a different piece.
This is K-Lo’s takeaway:
An article near the very back of the March issue treats abortion with a level of honesty rarely found in such venues. “I am still filled with regret . . . that I will never meet [my] child,” one Virginia woman announces. Hers is one of many similar stories of regret and pain featured in the article. Abortion is not a clean choice; it’s a life-changing (and -ending) decision with traumatic repercussions, a wrenching and frequently lonely ordeal that one can never be adequately prepared for – and our culture and our clinics often don’t try to help much at all.
Uhhh, what? She obviously missed this part:
Tiana says her surgical abortion was exactly what she expected: “The procedure is unsettling, because they basically vacuum out your uterus. It was painful, but I knew it was the right choice and I had no guilt afterward.”
And this part:
says [Aspen Baker, the cofounder of Exhale, an after-abortion counseling help line], “I cannot tell you how many women call us wondering if they are somehow bad people for feeling relieved, or happy, or proud for having made it through a difficult decision.”
Let alone the fact that the article quotes 2 therapists, an OB-GYN and a doctor that performs abortions. But, you know, “our clinics often don’t try to help much at all.”
K-Lo’s point, of course, is that abortion is bad, bad, bad and women are are bad to ever think about getting one. We don’t treat sex with enough respect, she says:
Sex possesses an awesome power, not only in regard to procreation, but in opening ourselves to a total physical surrender to another.
Sex is surrender to another? How quaintly patriarchal of her. Obviously, it’s not about mutuality, it’s about surrendering to the penetration of one’s vagina. Sex must be fun-times at K-Lo’s house.
She then takes Bill Cunningham’s side in the ongoing California octuplets debate, stating that it’s just one more example of what pro-choice and birth-control-loving activists have wrought on the world by interfering with the way God meant it all to be.
Likewise, when we see the next interview with the much-discussed mother of the California octuplets, we should not be asking, “Why did she have so many?” “Is she crazy?” Or “What’s wrong with that doctor?” (Well, we can ask those, too.) But we should inquire: “How did we come this far, and how do we take a step back?” In the wake of this case – and in this age of rapid reproductive advances – even liberal feminists have begun to question the unregulated aspects of the fertility industry. This is another fruit of treating unborn babies as disposable objects, viewing them as items to be acquired, in bulk, at your convenience.
Did it seem like a bit of a jump to you, from abortion to octuplets and then back to abortion? That’s because it was. But for conservatives likes K-Lo and Elizabeth Hasselbeck, there are no other issues. It’s all abortion, all the time, until we can make it illegal again, prosecute the women getting them/the doctors performing them and take back our country for God. And then maybe we can think about the economy. Or not.
Signs of Life in Unlikely Places [National Review]
Related: Abortion: The Serious Health Decision Women Aren’t Talking About Until Now [Glamour]
Earlier: Speaking Out About An Abortion Can Be Harder Than Getting One
Wombs As Tombs
Elizabeth Hasselbeck Needs To STFU About Ashley Judd, Abortion
Picture courtesy of United Features