Connie Marshner
Now comes the issue of post-abortion e-greetings offered by
the pro-choice post-abortion counseling organization Exhale.
Basically, these e-cards are a marketing ploy to lure
recently post-abortion women into the pro-choice support network. A concerned friend sends the e-card with its
message ( for instance,“May you find peace after your abortion”). When the recipient clicks on the card, voila,
direct connection to Exhale, “an after abortion counseling talkline.”
First, facts: most
Americans know that abortion is the killing of a baby. But they feel that it’s a necessary evil, a
lesser evil than the disruption of a woman’s life, in most cases.
This is known from many polls over many years. To use
Frederica Mathewes-Green’s famous analogy: a woman wants an abortion the way an
animal caught in a trip wants to chew off its foot.
So, assume that the woman who has the abortion knows she is killing
her baby. She feels she has no choice, but she feels miserable about it. Still, misgivings and all, she commits the
act. Then she needs consolation. How should
she be comforted?
Don’t tell me she shouldn’t be. Don't even try to read me out of
the pro-life movement for daring to suggest that a woman who has just had an
abortion should be deemed worthy of comfort. Every human being in pain is worthy of
comfort. Even Christ comforted the thief
who was crucified beside Him.
What I don’t like is to see a vulnerable woman’s pain
exploited. And that, I fear, is what Exhale is doing.
I don’t doubt that the folks at Exhale are well-meaning, in
their California pop psychology
sort of way. But, even though the group
began in Berkeley in 2000, it is
not sufficiently counter-cultural now to truly help the women it seeks to help.
To be truly countercultural today, one has to speak the
truth about abortion and its effect on women.
Exhale strives to “create awareness that abortion, and having feelings
afterward, is normal in the reproductive lives of women and girls.”
That is a lie. Abortion is not normal. It is
profound violence. It will never be in
harmony with human nature, with women’s nature. It will never be normal. Commonplace, maybe. But not
normal.
Exhale is founded on a lie, and so it cannot bring forth
truth. Helping a woman to paper over her
guilt and horror by telling her she “did the right thing” or to “remember that
you are loved” does not heal her. Really, it only helps delay her healing. It helps her to sweep a huge festering mass
under a rug. The rug may hold together a
while, but sooner or later, the rot will emerge.
Meanwhile, pro-choicers who are denying their own ambivalence,
or perhaps defending their own “choices”, can feel good about themselves
because they have “respected each caller’s belief system”. In their universe devoid of right and wrong, that’s
about the only help they can give someone facing a moral crisis. And that exploits women.
Hint to pro-life post-abortion counseling ministries: a good marketing technique is a good
marketing technique….
