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Abortion and a Shoulder to
Cry On Part Three of Four By Dave Andrusko It is not news that each side to the abortion debate employs language that the other finds hard to understand. I don't simply mean that they would disagree--which they would. It's rather that they literally do not understand what the other is saying--or perhaps better put, cannot understand HOW they could say that, publicly or privately. Perhaps you have followed something on Twitter, organized by Steph Herold. As the Nation magazine explained in a piece last week, Herold "put a call out to women on her Twitter feed: 'Time for us to come out. Who's had an abortion? Show antis we're not intimidated by scare tactics.'" The initial impetus was the massive pro-life victories in the House, the addition of a number of new pro-lifers in the Senate, and the large increase in the number of state legislators who would be more sympathetic to the right to life position than before November 2. Many women responded to Herold's request, and the notion of (as the Nation magazine headlined it), "'I Had An Abortion,' in 140 Characters or Less" was controversial from the get-go. The Nation hosted an online exchange between Herold and "Aspen Baker, founder of Exhale, representing the 'pro-voice; movement,'" who "is using a different model of online story-telling: Exhale offers women who've had abortions a private online community in which to share their experiences with abortion and support each other." Among the specific areas of concerns is that (a) these semi-private Twitter responses would be whisked away throughout cyberspace without the individual woman's consent, (b) and how "anti-choicers" had responded. A couple of comments might be in order. I have not read either this round of abortion stories or the responses to them. If any response was deliberately cruel, that was--pure and simple--wrong. Once the tragic decision to abort has been made, our goal ought to be to help as many of these wounded women as possible to heal. For them to live as an emotional and spiritual wrecks serves no one's interests, including the babies who have lost their lives. Having read some of the other abortion narratives online, however, I grant you that it's hard not to respond. The hostility towards you and me is no big deal. We don't have to say a word to be a still small voice that speaks to their conscience. But the celebration of abortion clinics which traffic in the blood of unborn babies and the cavalier indifference to what they have done (and to whom) which often seeps over into kudos to the liberating power of abolishing these children's lives, presents a real challenge. However we will meet that challenge, as we have for more than 30 years. It is a tragedy of the first magnitude when one baby's life is lost. It would be even worse if another died because we did not reach out to their mother with love, support, and a shoulder to cry on. |