One of the arguments made by pro-aborts is that legalized abortion gives women freedom from the “tyranny” of the their unborn children, that it gives them choices and options (other than the first one to have sex that resulted in a baby in the first case, of course). The reality is that the availability of legalized abortion usually results in less freedom for women at risk of being pressured by people in their lives and by their own life plans.
The latest case in point: A a pregnant teen was stabbed by her ex-boyfriend, the father of her child, because she refused to make the “proper” choice. He allegedly told police that “she was going to abort the pregnancy ‘one way or the other.’” So much for the freedom of the mother.
This isn’t an isolated instance. Whenever I’ve participated in a pro-life vigil outside an abortion clinic, I’ve always seen obviously reluctant women being figuratively and literally dragged into the door. At one Operation Rescue action back in the early ’90s, I saw an obvious mom, dad, and young adult daughter get out of a car and head to the clinic door. At the last minute the daughter turned and started to head back to the car, but dad and mom grabbed her arms. The crying girl was then dragged by her parents and the clinic escorts through the clinic doors. All this happened in full view of pro-abortion counter-protesters, police, and the media, but they all turned a blind eye.
I’ve seen a very interesting illustration of this phenomenon in pop culture just recently. There’s a new TV show called “Defying Gravity”, about a group of astronauts in 2050 on a mission to visit 7 planets in our solar system. There’s a running plot about a mysterious being manipulating the mission and the crew, as well as a series of flashbacks by the characters to recent events in their lives before the mission began. Think of it as “Lost” in space, so to speak.
One of the astronauts, Zoe Barnes, had a brief sexual encounter with one of her fellow astronauts five years previously during training for the mission, resulting in a pregnancy that could end her chances at being selected for the mission. In the premise of the show, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade evidently, but one of her fellow astronauts tells Zoe that she “knows a guy”. With the pressure from her friend and from her own ambitions, it is understood at this point in the story that she aborted her child. Interestingly, Zoe keeps hearing the sound of a baby crying on board the ship, a sound that nobody else can hear. Is it her own guilty conscience or perhaps the mysterious being? We don’t know yet.
While this is fiction, the pressure on many to abort their children is very real, whether from boyfriends, husbands, or fathers or from bosses and career ambitions or from fears of whether she could be a good mother or from well-meaning doctors giving a difficult diagnosis of pre-natal birth defects or complications. A quick Web search for “pressured to abort” will garner dozens of similar stories.
Legalized abortion-on-demand, far from granting freedom of choice to women as pro-aborts claim, has created an opportunity for confused or reluctant women to be forced onto a path they would have been better off not having had opened before them.
