A new movie that I want to push here at Religion Political Talk is called 22 Weeks. It is a movie that will -- I am sure -- bring more substantive discussion to the table. Mind you, I believe that there are logical, scientific, philosophical reasoning behind choosing life. However, many liberals do not think like that, they are more visual and feelings oriented. One blogger, Revie’s Ramblings, speaks about a recent Mike Gallagher show where Mike played many of the women that called into NPR for the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (listen to the interviews from NPR here):
On the way to work, I listened to the Mike Gallagher show. On the show, he was playing part of a show on NPR that aired on the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade. The show asked women who had an abortion to call into the show and tell them about the experience. The show had a couple of psychologists there to help reassure the women that they were doing the right thing. I think the show did not get what they expected to get in the way of callers. One caller said that she had an abortion and was not sorry that she had done so. She would tell her family and was ok with that. There were two women that called that had an abortion in their late teens and it still haunted each of them years later. One refused to have children because she had killed a baby. The other experienced miscarriages after the abortion and never had children. Both regretted to that day that they ever had an abortion. The rest were in between those two extremes. The general theme was that the women were ashamed that they had the abortion and that they never forgot any of the details of the abortion, no matter how many years it had been.
Mike Gallagher asked one question to a caller just after that experience that exposed the essence of the abortion debate. The question was, to paraphrase, why do people push abortion when it causes so much pain in the life of women? That was profound. If I was saying something was good and people were suffering as a result, I would really think hard about my position. Something good should not cause people long term pain and suffering. I do not mean like the pain of a shot to immunize you against disease. That is pain, but not suffering and it is not long term. The pain and suffering of abortion lasts for years and is never forgotten by the women that experience it. Even one man called into the show and expressed much the same feelings for helping a woman go through an abortion.
No matter whether you think that abortion is good or bad, think about what it is doing to women. There are a few women who seem not to be impacted by having abortions. But, for most women, having an abortion is something that haunts them for the rest of their life. Some women never forgive themselves for causing the death of the baby that they were given. Others come to grips with the reality that they ended a life and try to make amends by living a good life to compensate. And, some women do not seem to care about killing the fetus or baby that they were given because they have one abortion after another. The last seems rather callus to me, but then I am strongly pro-life.
The other thing about abortion that is not commonly put out is that black women make up about 40% of all abortions. Blacks make up only 12% of the population. One reason abortion was made legal was to limit the number of blacks that are born in every generation. At least that was the perspective of the leaders of the abortion movement back in the 1970’s.
At any rate, remember that the following preview is for the person who doesn’t respond well to erudite conversation, or pretends to enjoy erudite conversations but really responds to artistic depictions based on a true story.
22 Weeks Traler
Probably the best book I can recommend for both the skeptic/pro-choice person as well as the believer/pro-life person is:
(HotAir props)
Yesterday, on the anniversary of Roe v Wade, abortion supporters expected Obama to issue an executive order reversing the Mexico City policy imposed by George Bush prohibiting American aid dollars for international abortions. Obama demurred, perhaps wishing to avoid the media scrutiny that would attend such a move on Roe’s anniversary. Instead, Obama will quietly sign the new EO today, away from the media spotlight:
President Barack Obama will sign an executive order later Friday ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortion, officials said.
It is a move certain to please liberals and other abortion-rights advocates, and the reversal was expected in the Democrat’s first week as president.
The so-called “Mexico City policy” has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since Repulican President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. President Bill Clinton then ended the ban, but President George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.
