Pregnant woman showing ultrasound photo

Stop Spreading Falsehoods to Argue Your Pro-Life Position

If you are going to argue the evils of abortion in light of New York’s Reproductive Health Act, signed into law on Tuesday night, at least do so with correct facts.

The passage of this law does NOT mean that thousands of pregnant women carrying full-term, healthy babies will be flooding into abortion clinics to kill their 37 weekers. This type of abortion is not, and never has been, a thing. The ONLY women seeking late and full term abortions are ones whose lives are in danger from their pregnancy or who are carrying fetuses that are not viable. The women who make the decision to abort late-term do so only when faced with unimaginable, devastating circumstances. None of us, unless we have been in this situation, can comprehend how agonizing that choice must be. To misrepresent the reality of that choice is just gross. If you are posting memes with full-term, healthy newborns paired with words about killing babies, STOP IT. No one is doing this.

For most, deciding to have an abortion at any stage of fetal development is a desperate choice. Lack of resources, not inconvenience, is cited as the number one reason women seek abortions. Your tax dollars are NOT funding abortions. The Hyde Amendment legislates that the only abortions that can be paid for by any federal dollars are those where the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman or where the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. The federal funding received by organizations like Planned Parenthood are used to provide preventative health care, breast exams, prenatal care, and birth control for women who would otherwise not be able to afford them. In reality, the services Planned Parenthood provides actually decrease abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancy and improving health outcomes for low income women.

Stop sharing emotionally charged, misleading information to argue your Pro-Life position. It’s disingenuous and prevents rational, fact-based discussion on a topic that should be approached with compassion and nuance.

15 Comments

  1. Terri Mertz on January 25, 2019 at 11:28 am

    Umm, this argument is incomplete at best. You are equating “pro-life” with “anti-abortion.” It would serve the public well if you would make a clear and reasoned distinction between the two. If you don’t know how to accomplish that, do some research. Without making that distinction, your credibility suffers greatly.

    • fern on January 25, 2019 at 11:37 am

      Terri Mertz, please clarify your comments if you are so well informed about the distinction.

  2. Anonymous on January 25, 2019 at 1:19 pm

    I am pro-life which also includes caring for mothers and children after birth. I’ve worked 18 years as a RN in the NICU. There’s no such thing as a late term abortion as in up to birth. Those babies/mothers are delivered early, not cut up and suctioned out.
    Let’s talk about free contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

  3. Julie on January 25, 2019 at 2:09 pm

    I appreciate your response to this issue. I, too, am frustrated seeing the emotionally charged images people are posting while taking the stance of being morally superior. My husband and I both have medical backgrounds and are highly pro-life, However we have lost trust in the current political system, filled with lots of talk and very little action. Instead we have focused our efforts on supporting the crisis pregnancy center in our community.

    The abortion issue is very complex and legislation will not help provide the alternatives that many women need in order to make the decision to continue their pregnancy. Ironically, we have observed that the social programs enacted by “left-wing” policies help empower women to keep their babies. So, our political leanings are shifting despite being very much pro-life.

    However, your information about Planned Parenthood may not be accurate. The organization is flawed with directors who often shift federal funds, do not provide enough objective information to women and many pressure women who are already in difficult emotional position to get an abortion. There is a financial benefit to the particular clinic if the woman gets an abortion and many have quotas (for abortions) that they are pressured to meet. Although the vision of Planned Parenthood is to help empower women, often their practices do not support that vision.

    Again, thanks for speaking out on this complex issue!

    • Linda on January 27, 2019 at 6:32 am

      Hello Julie,

      Can you provide backup information on your third paragraph? I have not read or heard that Planned Parenthood directors shift federal funds, nor have I heard there is a financial benefit to the clinic for abortions or they are pressured to make quotas.

      Thank you.

    • Ruth Chichester on February 13, 2019 at 11:19 pm

      Hello Julie,

      I applaud your service to your community and to your local pregnancy center as the action of your faith and “pro life” stance. However, I would argue with your faulty assessment of Planned Parenthood clinics. You cite the clinics do not provide “objective information” to women in need. I would attest that community “pregnancy centers” also do not provide those seeking assistance with “objective information”. While many do provide women in need with services or support, they also feed in their “pro life” agenda by pushing women, already facing a very difficult decision, not to consider abortion or to shame them with religious pressure from considering this. So, pregnancy centers are FAR from objective, and even, in my opinion, somewhat deceptive. They lure women to their locals with promises of “support” and perhaps providing free services, like pregnancy tests. But, once inside the door, they are proselytized, and even condemned if their thinking doesn’t align with the center’s religious agenda.
      As with all things, there can be bad operators behind all enterprises, and you may be correct in what you’ve written about some Planned Parenthood locations. However, in the fact that most throughout this nation are committed to providing vital health services to their community, with NO discrimination as to race, religion, sexual orientation or gender. These vital services include many things that our poorer citizens would not otherwise have access too. To say you’re “pro life”, but to care so little for the impact of eliminating vital health services to our citizens, simply because of the abortion debate belies your profession of faith and I feel is hypocrisy of the worst kind. The “vipers brood” is how the Messiah described them, those that spoke legalism but left love out.

      Today, a truthful witness to others of faith is the ACT of loving one another through these difficult circumstances, not condemning them for making the choice you don’t agree with.

  4. Shannon on January 25, 2019 at 7:53 pm

    Thank you for this post! It has been so frustrating to me the past couple of days to see posts full of incomplete or flat out inaccurate information surrounding this issue. Thanks for speaking out!

  5. mb on January 27, 2019 at 1:21 am

    yes. thank you for this.

    • travelgirl123 on February 24, 2019 at 2:41 am

      Breitbart is not a respected news site. In fact, it’s not even a news site. It’s a propaganda machine. There’s nothing wrong with having a particular political slant, whether conservative or liberal. Solid and trusted conservative sites would be the Wall Street Journal or National Review. For a Christian perspective, Christianity Today is solid. There is absolutely no reason to be ignorant when we have a wealth of actual news sites at our finger tips in this modern age. If you actually think Breitbart is a legitimate source, than you are choosing ignorance.

      • David on February 27, 2019 at 8:05 pm

        travelgirl123, that is good to call out the use of Breitbart. Sometimes we get in such a bubble of news that reflects ourselves.
        …but, it is not just a propaganda article (which would definitely fit your concern), but was an actual video interview with Abby Johnson who is a well known former Planned Parenthood director who was able to recognize the destructiveness of what she was participating in. You could do some research on her story, and you would find it fascinating as well as legitimate.
        Unfortunately, women like her (purveyors of truth in the arena of abortion) are often persona non grata in the mainstream news.
        There are better articles of her perspective.

  6. travelgirl123 on February 24, 2019 at 2:46 am

    The sheer amount of ignorance and misinformation is just incredible. I began moving away from the pro-life position when I had a cancerous pregnancy. I met many women with the same condition online (several of them staunch believers), who with anguish ended their pregnancies. We are invisible to the pro-life world. We are inconvenient to the narrative. It’s better to pretend that we, and our stories, do not exist. Yet another issue that makes me far less willing to identify as an Evangelical. My goodness, we are so determined to be such ignorant people. Even to friends I’ve tried to explain these shades-of-gray real-life scenarios. I’ve lived it. They don’t want to hear it. “I stand for the unborn” was the zombie response. Okay, but what about women who are literally going to die without abortions? And the future lives they’re carrying aren’t going to survive? (Crickets).

    • Waytoocool on February 26, 2019 at 6:17 am

      Hi Travelgirl, just want to mourn with you about the agonizing experiences you had- the pregnancy and then the response from others while you were facing so much pain on your end. I’m really sorry you went through all those things. Just can’t imagine how hard the entire process has been for you , from finding out about the pregnancy issues to hearing the deafening of silence. Hoping and praying for you.

    • David on February 27, 2019 at 2:36 pm

      From the loud crickets that you are shutting out,
      The vast majority, 96%, of pro-life supporters hold that if the choice is truly have an abortion or die, then the abortion is a morally acceptable choice. But of course since you have experience you know that if the baby is not already dead, then in the third trimester, birth is the safest option for the mom, not abortion. This article was about late second and third trimester abortion misinformation. Your situation is definitely tragic and not one that is actually part of the contentious debate over the lives of babies.
      I have asked the following question to folks who talk about the life of the mother, which also highlights the issue (usually responded to with crickets): If we could write a national law right now, which would completely outlaw abortions in the third trimester, that do not involve the actual life of the mother or a currently dead baby (or mass), would you vote for it. I would.

  7. David on February 26, 2019 at 3:42 pm

    I am sure my comment will be not well received since I am a male, but since truth does not know gender, here it goes anyway… Planned Parenthood does not have a money firewall. Due to the fungablility of money a dollar used in one location of an organization is a dollar not used in another. Even PP demonstrated this, with their vociferous angst about the “gag rule” issued by Trump yesterday. Abortion referrals to another portion of their organization is definitely a transfer of dollars. If you care about women, please quit defending PP when there are local health clinics that provide all of the services that PP does, but for free for low income. They are more numerous than PP. In every location that PP is located. Federal and State dollars to PP are being diverted from real healthcare in the name of radical sexual politics.
    You are completely right when you speak of babies being delivered who are in late term pregnancies as being the procedure as opposed to ripping apart…but only if that baby is already dead, or intended to be treated as a living human, ie. receive medical help. Due to current laws about being born alive, in order for the baby to be aborted, it must take place in the womb. The “partial birth abortion” procedure was used and perfected (on admittedly few women percentage wise) 10 miles from my home here in Kettering Ohio. The late term abortions are only few percentage wise because we have averaged 1 million abortions for about 40 years. After 24 weeks, no matter what the issue the safest procedure for the mom is to give birth, by either c-section or vaginally. Abortion is never the safest option for mom. It is definitely not the safest option for the baby (the English word for the Latin “fetus”). Another little dirty secret is that the number one physical problem that babies suffer from when aborted late term is Down’s Syndrome. I know, I know…Murder the loving option. We are developing earlier testing procedures so that we can salve our consciences, so there is that.
    Men are the biggest problem. We don’t take care of our families and we just want to be satisfied sexually (in numbers large enough to be a stereotype) and leave women with tough choices. So our culture pushes abortion and men don’t deal with the problem, but women always will. It doesn’t just go away mentally and spiritually. Many Christians do look the other way on all of this, but … Crisis pregnancy centers are the true pro-life option. Help you while pregnant. Help you take care of your baby. Help mom and dad be a good mom and dad. Help mom get a job and a career. Why don’t federal dollars go that way? (I don’t want it to, because the Fed’s will then dictate abortion in our current climate) If Proggys were consistent they would want that, right. At least Christian women. I know secular humanists shrivel like a vampire in the sunlight when religion is involved.
    Women aren’t murderers, they often just seem to be backed into a corner. Lets push for more options that don’t involve killing babies ( or fetuses if you prefer the Latin).
    By the way the pictures remind us of what a baby in the womb will become if we don’t execute them. You know that right? We don’t think you are cutting up 12lb infants. Or are you being obtuse?

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