Despite decades of pro-abortion propaganda, a nationwide CNN poll last year revealed that 73 percent of Americans favor at least some legal restrictions on the practice. Thus, the overwhelming majority of Americans understand that the removal of a baby from the womb is morally different from the removal of a tumor or cyst. To combat this self-evident truth, Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry are constantly trying new marketing strategies to mislead and confuse the American public.
Perhaps the most successful pro-abortion marketing ploy has been the deceptive and sanitized term, “pro-choice.” Because the thought of what happens to the baby during an abortion is repugnant to even fairly hardened hearts, pro-abortion activists have sought to airbrush the baby out of the debate, focusing exclusively on the mother and her “right” to “choose.” Indeed, “My Body, My Choice” bumper stickers can still be seen on the vehicles of Millennials across the country.
Other marketing tactics, like mythological “women’s health” concerns and the so-called “war on women,” focus on demonizing pro-life activists as patriarchal oppressors who want to keep women barefoot and pregnant. But a relatively new pro-abortion strategy appears to be taking a different approach.
Until recently, most pro-abortion activists were willing to concede that an abortion was not a happy event. Even Hillary Clinton famously called abortion “sad, even tragic” in 2005. Furthermore, many post-abortive women have begun to share publicly their stories of regret and pain, casting in doubt the idea that abortions are somehow unequivocally good for the women who get them.
So now pro-abortion activists are encouraging post-abortive women to tell positive stories, believing that they can market abortion as something to be shared or even celebrated. Rather than “safe, legal and rare,” they want to normalize abortion so that it is just another life event, like quitting a job or getting rid of a cat.
Care2, a large website dedicated to starting and promoting petition campaigns, suggested 2014 was the Year of the Abortion Story. “The abortion war has often failed to acknowledge the real lived emotional experience of people who have abortions, whether they feel relief, guilt, sadness, renewal –a combination, or anything beyond. These stories have been ignored or co-opted for political gain, and slogans have too often glossed over wellbeing and the gray area of lived experience.”
So abortion is no longer sad or tragic, but a “gray area of lived experience.” In this view, the child becomes a non-entity, something that only existed as part of the mother’s “experience.”
Many in the pro-life movement have responded to the “pro-mother” marketing techniques by pointing out that abortion hurts mothers physically, emotionally and spiritually. This has helped pass legislation restricting abortion in some states, protecting both babies and mothers. But we cannot forget—as pro-abortion advocates so desperately want us to—that abortion is primarily about the death of a baby. America has spent centuries trying to live up to our creed of liberty and justice for all, but what have we accomplished if we cannot stand up for the most vulnerable and innocent among us?
Both fathers and mothers are victimized in abortions, but the primary victims are the innocent children, and I believe they should remain the focal point of the abortion debate. We are a nation that prides itself on truth and justice. The truth of abortion is that is kills an innocent human being. Our sense of justice should compel us to consider the lives of unborn children as worthy of all protection and defense, while we extend compassion, tangible help, and grace to the mothers and fathers considering abortion this very day. Then the entire family, mother, father, and child can all enjoy the inalienable right to life.