Ask Them What They Mean By "Choice" Blog Day

Jill Stanek is urging us all to participate in “Ask Them What They Mean by ‘Choice’” Blog Day. Jill says:

This Sunday, January 22 [the 39^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade], pro-life bloggers, tweeters, facebookers, commenters, debaters, apologists, and rabble-rousers will band together to counter NARAL’s Blog for Choice Day by asking them everywhere they can, “What do you mean by that word, ‘choice’”?

Here’s my two cents’ worth on the subject of “choice”.

“Choice”, they say; they are for women’s “choice”. But what does that really mean? In 2010, a huge outcry arose over the Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother Pam recounting the fact that Tim wasn’t aborted, despite doctors’ advice. As Matt Barber of LSN recently noted:

The New York-based Women’s Media Center [framed] it as an “attack on choice.” Get it? Pam Tebow chose alright; she just happened to make the wrong “choice,” and dared to share about it publicly.

"Choice" seems to mean different things to Pam Tebow and the pro-choice crowd.

Here’s another good de-bunking of the “choice” phraseology of “pro-choice” adherents. Dr. Donald DeMarco, on the Integrated Catholic Life (“Seven Deadly Fallacies in Support of Abortion”), writes about the fact that the word “choice” needs some qualification (my emphases):

… “Exercise is good,” is an unqualified statement.  If one is recovering from triple bypass surgery, certain forms of exercise are not good.

Similarly, “choice,” the most effective ploy in the pro-abortionists arsenal, is a notion that needs qualification, but is taken as absolute.  Even pro-choicers are not pro-choice about domestic violence, slavery, racism, or driving under the influence…

President Barack Obama, who is emphatically pro-choice on abortion, made sure he qualified his enthusiasm for choice on his campaign trail.  He fervently urged people to vote for him, thus qualifying their choice.

In an issue of Glamour magazine, Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood, stated, “The right to abortion  . . . shouldn’t be a political football that candidates can kick around at will.”  But choice, she seems to forget, is an act of the will.  If women can choose abortion, why should politicians (as well as the populace) refrain from making it an election issue?  Ms. Wattleton is perfectly willing to qualify choice when it comes to politics, but not when it comes to abortion.  In the final analysis, what does being “pro-choice” really mean?

Then there’s the current horrifying story of “Mary Moe”, a pregnant mentally ill woman whose parents and social worker have been seeking a court order to force her to have an abortion. Why? Because she has a mental illness that requires a drug treatment that will be harmful to the baby she carries in her womb. A judge ruled that if Mary Moe were mentally competent, she would choose to have an abortion. The court is now in the business of reading minds?!

Why doesn’t Mary Moe’s “choice” count? Even though this woman has voiced anti-abortion sentiments, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and her parents are ignoring the choice she has already made. In their minds, Moe, like Pam Tebow, hasn’t made the right “choice”.

When we make a “choice” for abortion the only “sane” option, it is no longer a choice, is it?

What about Mary Moe’s unborn baby? Can we also say that if the unborn baby were “mentally competent”, he or she would choose to be aborted? I think not! Human beings have an instinct to survive; isn’t life the logical “choice” when one is confronted with death?

How, then, do we reconcile the unborn baby’s "choice" with that of the mother whose choice is abortion?

Similarly, and tragically, many pregnant women in China are forced to have abortions. There is no choice there. The course of action is chosen for them, and they are physically forced to comply. “Pro-choicers” in the US might protest that they agree this is wrong, and that this kind of forced abortion is not part of their “pro-choice” package, but “force” doesn’t have to be physical. It can be psychological manipulation, for example. See Dr. Stacy Trasanco’s articles on the soothing language used to advertise abortion and persuade women that it’s a good “choice” to make: “we’re not a clinic,” they say; it’s “natural”; “we’ll help you”. And Stacy notes, there are outright lies, as well; one abortion clinic gives this “medical” information:

“If there is no embryo, why do they say there is a heartbeat? At seven weeks of pregnancy, the cells that will become the embryo start to cluster inside the gestational sac. These cells can be seen on ultrasound, but would not be visible to the naked eye. At this time, the cells that are determined to later form the heart start to “beat.” An ultrasound technician will often interpret the beating cells as a ‘heartbeat’ long before a heart develops.”

That’s a lie.

The psychological manipulation is sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant. More and more women in the US are telling their stories of their own abortions – abortions they didn’t want but were pressured to have. Go here to see more detailed descriptions of these means of pressuring women have abortions:

·         Forced Non-Choice .... “I’ll blow her brains out.” 

·         Unwanted Non-Choice ... Their Choice, Not Hers.

·         Coerced Choice ... Taken to the Clinic to Make Sure She Keeps the Appointment

·         Forced Choice ... Threats Can Escalate to Violence or Murder — the Leading Killer of Pregnant Women

So, tell me again, pro-choice folks…just what do you mean by “choice”?

See also: The Sacred Liturgy and the Sanctity of Human Life