Time Magazine--Pot Calling the Kettle Black?

This week's Time Magazine (Feb. 26, 2007) features a cover story titled "The Abortion Campaign You Never Hear About: Crisis pregnancy centers are working to win over one woman at a time. But are they playing fair?

I've had only a few moments to skim the story, but the gist seems to be that by letting pregnant women hold life-sized plastic models of their unborn babies, crisis pregnancy counselors are extending an emotional appeal that is "unfair." By telling women that abortion increases the chance for breast cancer, CPCs are using scare tactics.

They quote Christopher Hollis, Planned Parenthood's vice president for governmental and political affairs in North Carolina. He says, "What is really tragic to me is that a woman goes into a center looking for information, looking to be able to make a better, healthy choice, and she doesn't get all the facts."

Excuuuuuse me? I'm sorry, but that's what we've felt about Planned Parenthood centers for YEARS. Women there are not told they're carrying a baby, but a lump of cells called a "zygote" or a "fetus." After hearing former NOW-president Patricia Ireland speak, an editor friend of mine remarked that he got the feeling she would rather call the unborn child a potato than a baby.

The Time article goes on to say that while counselors at crisis pregnancy centers lay out the physical and psychological risks associated with abortion, "they don't mention that the risk of death in childbirth is 12 times as high and that many women . . . experience only relief." The magazine clearly forgot one statistic--the risk of death in an abortion clinic is 100 percent. All the babies die.

And lately politicians have stopped trumpeting that abortion is a woman's right (an inherently selfish position) to making a bid for sympathy. Hillary Clinton has called abortion "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women . . ." People are reluctant to speak against abortion because to do so is to hurt the feelings of women who are already hurting, broken, and sad . . .

Isn't that like saying that it's okay to kill your elderly mother (who's inconvenient, whose appearance in your home was unplanned, and whose medicines you can't afford) as long as you feel bad about it? According to Time, many women who eliminate their babies feel nothing but relief. If some troubled, overworked, overburdened women eliminated their adolescents, they might feel relief, too. But not MOST women. Not women whose hearts are still tender and whose minds are still open to the truth.

What are we doing? Abortion providers are disguising the truth with language and denying women the right to know that 1) they are carrying a human child and 2) they are increasing their risk of breast cancer and 3) help is available. People who fight for abortion rights at any cost are obviating the God-given desire to nurture. Women are becoming hardened through repeated denials . . . or, if they are unable to suppress their natural feelings, they are suffering post-abortion guilt.

We who are pro-life are often accused of not walking our talk, but those who say that aren't listening or looking. We do adopt these babies--there are more waiting adoptive parents than available infants and young children. We do provide financial, emotional, and career support for expectant mothers. The Time article, to its credit, points out that one clinic offers everything from emergency food and formula to strollers and baby clothes to help with the rent.

Last week I spoke at a Valentine's Day event sponsored by A Woman's Place Ministries in Tampa. (http://www.awpm.net . ) As I waited my turn to speak, I heard stories about how over 100 young women had seen their babies on the sonogram machine and had decided to give birth rather than have an abortion. There were about 100 women in the audience that day, and I looked around, amazed that so many precious lives had been saved . . . in part, because of technology. Once young mothers see that there's a real baby within their wombs, it's a struggle against nature to press ahead with the destruction of that precious life.

I stood to speak and was so choked up, I could barely manage it. I managed to say, "I'm an adoptive mother," and when I heard the murmur pass through the room, I knew they understood the reason for my tears. Fortunately, I'd brought my linen napkin from the table. :-)

I don't know . . . lately I've been reading about this HPV vaccine being rushed through states and required for girls as young as nine. Our society seems to have accepted that girls will be, must be, promiscuous, so we will do all we can to eradicate the natural results of promiscuity. Get an STD? We'll give you a vaccine. Get pregnant? Get an abortion.

Through it all, the unspoken message is this: life is all about pleasure, so do what you want, when you want, to whom you want.

That sort of selfishness is the antithesis of a Christian life. It used to be the opposite of a moral life, but morality is based on shifting stands these days . . .

At least there is good news on one front: Somewhere on my desk (madly shuffling through papers) is an article from today's paper that says the drug company Merck is pulling back on its efforts to push through the law that requires girls to have the HPV vaccine. Why? Because the vaccine needs more testing. It has NOT been effectively tested on children.

Shame on them for the psychological attack they've launched on the American public over the last few months. Shame on them for implying that their expensive vaccine will completely eradicate cervical cancer--or that it's the only answer for the HPV virus. Shame on them for shamelessly putting money into politicians pockets and then pushing for this vaccine's requirement. (Google for my past columns on this if you want details.)

And shame on us if we swallow those half-truths.

~~Angie

For more information on the link between abortion and breast cancer, go to http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com .