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October 8, 2004
“I can't take it.
This is too much to handle.” As Kelly talked with the distraught
woman on the phone, rescue workers were racing across the city to
reach her before she could pull the trigger of the gun in her hand.
She had just had an abortion.
Kelly has seen it
all in her twenty years of work counseling women who are considering
abortion. Her voice is gentle as she describes the women she has
met…women who choose to come back to Kelly when they are hurting.
Why do women choose
to talk with Kelly about their abortion pain? She is an openly
pro-life person.
When we break the
silence about abortion, there is a lot to learn, not only about what
abortion is, but about what it is has done to millions of women. And
these are the women who talk with Kelly, the women Gloria Feldt fails
to acknowledge, both in her leadership of Planned Parenthood and in
her editorials defending the new Planned Parenthood t-shirt campaign
promoting America’s abortion-on-demand policies.
If Ms. Feldt is
truly sincere about breaking the silence on abortion, she has a lot of
explaining to do. Women who have had an abortion and who wish to
break the silence would welcome her support.
Silent No More
is a national campaign giving voice to women who regret their
abortions. They wish to break the silence about abortion. It hurts.
They hold press conferences and testify at legislative hearings. Yet,
they are treated with disdain by members of Planned Parenthood and the
media.
There are others
who have worked to break the silence about abortion. In her book REAL
Choices Frederica Mathewes-Green sought out the involvement of
abortion providers to talk with women who had had abortions. “I got
either cold shoulders or cold feet. Usually there was no response at
all.”
Mathewes-Green
penned the famous quote embraced by both pro-life and pro-choice
advocates. “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone
or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap,
wants to gnaw off its own leg.”
Her research
confirms testimony from Silent No More women. They “uniformly
talked about pressures in relationships; the abortion was done, each
told us, either to please someone or to protect someone.”
If Ms. Feldt is
truly sincere about breaking the silence on abortion, I invite her to
join me in a call to the nation’s universities. Stop promoting
abortion and start teaching about abortion.
Where are the
college courses that open the window on partial birth abortion
procedures, forced abortion in China, and sex selection that is
aborting a generation of girl babies in India and China? Where are
the college panels that include Silent No More women sharing the long-term aftermath of their abortions?
Will Ms. Feldt
herald courageous suffragists like Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony who
denounced abortion? Does she agree with feminist Naomi Wolfe
that pictures of aborted fetuses should be brought to the table? As
Ms. Wolfe points out, how can feminists truly support “a choice” they
refuse to look at in real life?
If Ms. Feldt truly
wants to “throw off that mantle of secrecy”, I suggest she redesign
her own Planned Parenthood website. In a search under “fetal
development” the top 2 of 31 listings shout: “Why do guys have
nipples?” and “Donating Fetal Tissue.” Where are the pictures of
real fetal development...the
living, thriving babies in utero?
And if Planned
Parenthood is willing to talk about “donating fetal tissue,” what do
they say about selling fetal tissue? What should we know
about the doctor who worked out of a
Kansas abortion clinic and and was filmed on “20/20” negotiating separate prices
for pieces of babies: feet, eyes, brains and spinal cords?
If it takes a
t-shirt to break the silence, I hope Planned Parenthood sells millions
of them. And when the talking starts, I encourage Ms. Feldt to join
hands with the women of Silent No More to tell both sides of
abortion. I hope she implores the press to open its eyes and ears to
all the truth.
All the truth? If
Ms. Feldt will join in a campaign for all the truth about abortion, I
will buy a t-shirt. It’s a small price to pay to break the silence.
Copyright © 2004 Jane Jimenez
Unplanned Pregnancy?
June 25, 2004
Unplanned Joy
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