by Katie Yoder | LifeNews.com | 10/24/14 3:42 PM
A new book – a gospel of responsibility-free sex – defines abortion as “right,” “good” and “moral.” It’s
what’s “best for kids” and it’s all about a woman’s “unalienable right” to pursue happiness.
When Katha Pollitt, an outspoken feminist and columnist for The Nation, published “Pro: Reclaiming
Abortion Rights” on Oct. 14, the journalists used it as a launching pad for their latest abortion obsession:
no-fault abortion. Pollitt’s book “reframes abortion” as “a moral right with positive social implications.” And
since nobody ever went broke telling the self-obsessed what they want to hear, the book has received
rapturous praise form the feminist left.
Here, as given to us by Pollitt’s media acolytes, are the tenets of the new Church of Guilt-Free Abortion.
1. SLATE: Abortion is ‘Great,’ a ‘Positive Social Good’
“Abortion Is Great,” began Slate’s Hanna Rosin in her book review. She reasoned, “As Pollitt puts it, ‘This is
not the right time for me’ should be reason enough.” “Saying that aloud,” she said, “would help push back
against the lingering notion that it’s unnatural for a woman to choose herself over others.”
Trashing the pro-life movement, Rosin again cited Pollitt to argue, “we have all essentially been
brainwashed by a small minority of pro-life activists” – or the “loud minority [that] has beaten the rest of us
into submission with their fetus posters and their absolutism and their infiltration of American politics”
instead of “saying out loud that abortion is a positive social good.”
As far as messaging, “The pro-choice side should be able to say that a poor or working-class woman
getting an abortion is making a wise choice for her future,” Rosin wrote, “That way, the left would own not
only gender and income equality, but also a new era of family values.”
2. REFINERY 29: Abortion is a ‘Social Good’ for Women to ‘Live Full, Complete Lives’
Like Rosin, Refinery 29’s Sarah Jaffe urged, “It is past time for a revived, unapologetic and unified abortion
rights movement that understands abortion as a social good.”
Jaffe celebrated the book’s “powerful call to understand abortion not as some singular culture-war issue
but as one part of a struggle for women to be able to live full, complete lives.”
Change, she said, “will come from many more people joining a revitalized movement that is able, as Pollitt
argues, to stop conceding territory and, yes, demand abortion be part of any true struggle for social
justice.”
3. THE GUARDIAN: Abortion is ‘Women’s Pursuit of Happiness as an Unalienable Right’
“Abortion isn’t about the right to privacy. It’s about women’s right to equality,” began Jessica Valenti for The
Guardian. But “The hard part about arguing that abortion is necessary for women’s equality, of course, is
that there are still too many people who don’t see women’s pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right,”
she whined.
Not one to play around, Valenti quickly went to the crux of her argument: “It’s time for the pro-choice
movement to lose the protective talking points and stop dancing around the bigger truth: Abortion
is good for women.”
She explained:
“The pro-choice movement needs to put the opposition on its heels, and make what some in
the ‘pro-forced birth’ movement say what they’re really thinking: that it’s more important for
women be mothers than go to college; that the ability to support existing children, to have a
job that pays well or to pursue a career path we love are inconsequential realities compared to
embracing our ‘natural’ role as perpetually pregnant; that a woman’s ability to incubate a
fetus trumps any other contribution to society that she could possibly make.”
4. BUSTLE: Abortion is ‘the Best for Kids’
Bustle’s Lisa Levy praised Pollitt’s
“elegant, pointed, and smart” book
as an “explanation of why keeping
abortion legal is so critical to
women’s lives.” In her piece, she
listed the “7 Things I Learned from
Coffee with Katha” – such as
“Keeping abortion legal is not only
the best situation for women – it’s
the best for kids, too.”
“Abortion is a crucial way to make
sure all babies are wanted, and
their mothers are able to nurture
and provide for them and help them
to realize their potential,” Levy worshipped.
5. THE HUFFINGTON POST: Abortion is ‘More Moral’ than Having a Child, Part of Motherhood
To announce Pollitt’s book, The Huffington Post published an excerpt where Pollitt recognized abortion as
“part of the fabric of American life.” “We need to see abortion as an urgent practical decision that is just as
moral as the decision to have a child — indeed, sometimes more moral,” Pollitt spurted.
“Actually,” she continued, “abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of
caring for children is knowing when it’s not a good idea to bring them into the world.”
HuffPo later invited Katha Pollitt on for an interview on HuffPost Live.
6. THE WASHINGTON POST: Abortion is Worthy of ‘Pop Culture’
Alyssa Rosenberg reviewed the Pollitt’s book with a different twist: “Why it is so important that pop culture
be able to discuss abortion.”
The book, she wrote, “reaffirmed my long-standing conviction that it is important for pop culture to get
more confident and less coy in talking about abortion.”
In her conclusion, she decided, “If Hollywood really wanted to show off its ability to shape public
consciousness and change the conversation in the same way it contributed to the gay rights movement,
‘Pro’ ought to be a challenge to that industry to prove it can do what politicians cannot.”
7. ELLE: Abortion is Ending ‘Potential Life, Not a Life-Life’
Elle’s Laurie Abraham not only interviewed Pollitt, but read her book as a “kind of call to action, an appeal
to stop letting abortion opponents fill all the available airspace.” Or, in other words, a call to “tell a different
story, the more common yet strangely hidden one, which is that I don’t feel guilty and tortured about my
abortion. Or rather, my abortions.”
She did so for Elle’s November 2014 issue in a piece entitled, “Abortion: Not Easy, Not Sorry.”
As a “highly educated daughter of a Planned Parenthood clinic volunteer,” Abraham believed, “An embryo
or a fetus is all potential.” “Now is the time to say that I don’t think that I killed anyone when I had an
abortion,” she said.
To describe her first abortion, Pollitt wrote:
“By 12 weeks, it has become a fetus, 2 inches to 3 inches long, with features that are
recognizably human. Yet by my lights, a fetus at this stage is not a person in any real sense of
that word. It can’t live outside the womb; none of its organ systems is fully developed; and,
most crucially, it’s not capable of conscious thought, since the cortical synapses don’t begin to
form until the second trimester. The way I’ve always thought of it, in lay terms, is that I ended
a potential life, not a life-life.”
While “she sobbed” before her second abortion, she reasoned, “A third child would put too much strain on
our marriage, I wanted to keep working, and I didn’t want to cheat the children I already had.”
8. THE NEW YORK TIMES: Abortion is a ‘Right’
For The New York Times, Clara Jeffery recognized the book as an “eye opener for those who have never
darkened the door of a women’s studies classroom.”
Although she never had an abortion
herself, she helped friends
terminate their unborn. Jeffery
noted how, “contraception and
abortion have allowed women to
widen their worlds dramatically.”
“If you’re a woman, I don’t need to
detail all the barriers we still face,”
she assumed. “If you’re a mother, I
don’t need to tell you all the ways in
which the workplace is set up as if
you didn’t have kids, and schools,
camps and childhood extracurriculars as if you didn’t have a job.”
“Motherhood is hard enough if you go into it willingly,” she said. “And Pollitt is correct to insist that the right
to an abortion is merely society’s down payment on all the rights we are yet due.”
9. NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Abortion is ‘Good for Everyone’
“We should accept that it’s good for everyone if women have only the children they want and can raise
well,” Alex Ronan wrote for The Cut, “which is both obvious and worth repeating in a climate that’s openly
hostile to women’s lives, safety, and ambitions.”
And Pollitt was the best champion of the cause. “Blending statistics, history, and stories of real women
along with her signature wit, Pollitt is an excellent guide to the debate’s most important questions,” Ronan
continued.
10. SALON: Abortion Is Valuing Women
Salon’s Michele Filgate described Pollitt’s book as “a refreshing and comprehensive look at abortion
rights.” Because, as Filgate whined, “There are many preconceived notions about abortion that lead to one
terrible conclusion: our society doesn’t value women nearly enough.”
“One would think that in 2014, all women in the United States would have easy access, but that’s somehow
not the case,” she said. ”’Pro’ is a passionate plea–and a book that is needed now more than ever.”
11…
That is the media take. That is the “feminist” take: the voices of women who regret their abortions, pro-life
women, baby girls who are no more, don’t exist.
Let’s prove them wrong.