Jane Jimenez
October 8, 2004
“I can’t take it. This is too much to handle.” As Kelly talked with the distraught woman on the phone, rescue workers were racing across the city to reach her before she could pull the trigger of the gun in her hand. She had just had an abortion.
Kelly has seen it all in her twenty years of work counseling women who are considering abortion. Her voice is gentle as she describes the women she has met…women who choose to come back to Kelly when they are hurting.
Why do women choose to talk with Kelly about their abortion pain? She is an openly pro-life person.
When we break the silence about abortion, there is a lot to learn, not only about what abortion is, but about what it is has done to millions of women. And these are the women who talk with Kelly, the women Gloria Feldt fails to acknowledge, both in her leadership of Planned Parenthood and in her editorials defending the new Planned Parenthood t-shirt campaign promoting America’s abortion-on-demand policies.
If Ms. Feldt is truly sincere about breaking the silence on abortion, she has a lot of explaining to do. Women who have had an abortion and who wish to break the silence would welcome her support.
Silent No More is a national campaign giving voice to women who regret their abortions. They wish to break the silence about abortion. It hurts. They hold press conferences and testify at legislative hearings. Yet, they are treated with disdain by members of Planned Parenthood and the media.
There are others who have worked to break the silence about abortion. In her book REAL Choices Frederica Mathewes-Green sought out the involvement of abortion providers to talk with women who had had abortions. “I got either cold shoulders or cold feet. Usually there was no response at all.”
Mathewes-Green penned the famous quote embraced by both pro-life and pro-choice advocates. “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”
Her research confirms testimony from Silent No More women. They “uniformly talked about pressures in relationships; the abortion was done, each told us, either to please someone or to protect someone.”
If Ms. Feldt is truly sincere about breaking the silence on abortion, I invite her to join me in a call to the nation’s universities. Stop promoting abortion and start teaching about abortion.
Where are the college courses that open the window on partial birth abortion procedures, forced abortion in China, and sex selection that is aborting a generation of girl babies in India and China? Where are the college panels that include Silent No More women sharing the long-term aftermath of their abortions?
Will Ms. Feldt herald courageous suffragists like Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony who denounced abortion? Does she agree with feminist Naomi Wolfe that pictures of aborted fetuses should be brought to the table? As Ms. Wolfe points out, how can feminists truly support “a choice” they refuse to look at in real life?
If Ms. Feldt truly wants to “throw off that mantle of secrecy”, I suggest she redesign her own Planned Parenthood website. In a search under “fetal development” the top 2 of 31 listings shout: “Why do guys have nipples?” and “Donating Fetal Tissue.” Where are the pictures of real fetal development…the living, thriving babies in utero?
And if Planned Parenthood is willing to talk about “donating fetal tissue,” what do they say about selling fetal tissue? What should we know about the doctor who worked out of a Kansas abortion clinic and and was filmed on “20/20” negotiating separate prices for pieces of babies: feet, eyes, brains and spinal cords?
If it takes a t-shirt to break the silence, I hope Planned Parenthood sells millions of them. And when the talking starts, I encourage Ms. Feldt to join hands with the women of Silent No More to tell both sides of abortion. I hope she implores the press to open its eyes and ears to all the truth.
All the truth? If Ms. Feldt will join in a campaign for all the truth about abortion, I will buy a t-shirt. It’s a small price to pay to break the silence.
Unplanned Pregnancy?
June 25, 2004: Unplanned Joy
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