I recently watched a 1980’s video from Melody Green who framed abortion as a war on children. She argued that Americans were war-weary in 1973 (when abortion became legal) due to the televised reporting on the War in Vietnam. No one wanted to see any more victim images or see a daily death toll figure on the screen. Accordingly, there was seldom any visual imagery attached to the issue of abortion in the media. Her video Baby Choice is must watching for those who want to see the graphic (not bloody) truth about the aftermath of abortion.
The media’s tradition of obscuring the reality of abortion-as-death and cloaking abortion victim imagery persists still today.
But, as Green pointed out, there is a daily death toll attached to abortion. The CDC reported in 2019 nearly 1800 daily abortion deaths in the US, while admitting the data is incomplete.
And there is a war raging for the lives of the children being killed. Polls show the battling of pro-lifers to protect those lives; both political parties and factions going to court, fundraising, and campaigning on the battle, as profits flow freely on the side promoting the children’s’ deaths as freedom for women.
I thought about our war on children as I read the reporting on recent activism from those on one side. They are variously known as
- Pro-choice (old-school and squishy—who isn’t in favor of choice?)
- Abortion rights activists (noble sounding—who isn’t in favor of rights?)
- Reproductive rights activists (again, rights are a good thing)
- Reproductive justice activists (justice—even a greater good than rights)
- Pro-abortion (official definitions, here and here, skirt abortion, going back to legal rights)
- Offering abortion care (how kind!)
Because you paid for it, I’ll link to an update to NPR’s 2019 Style Guide. Spoiler alert, you may discover their side in the war based on this quote from the guide:
“It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion rights,” but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.”
National Public Radio
Of course those who favor abortion rights are also in favor of abortion. But it must not be said.
Abortion as warfare was also the subject of Mother Teresa’s rebuke to the Clintons at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. She said,
“What is taking place in America is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
Mother Teresa
Her remarks bear watching still.
What if, according to the framework of children as victims of abortion violence, we instead labelled the movement to keep abortion legal as Pro-Death?
That would clean up the style guides in a hurry.
The pro-death side would howl, of course.
But the scientific reality is that every elective abortion results in the death of a living human being. There is no controversy in the field of embryology. From conception forward the zygote is a distinct, living, whole human being. We can argue about when that human life begins to have value as a philosophical question. But a human life ends in every single abortion. It is a death.
Why won’t those in favor of a policy keeping abortion legal simply admit this basic truth?
What the Scriptures say
The Offer of Life or Death
11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Deuternomy 30: 11-20, NIV
God’s Word is so clear–telling us the truth is right in front of us, and predicting what will happen when we choose ourselves, other gods and the culture of death. I can tell you that I bought the lie that I had only a pregnancy and not yet a child before my abortion. Today I know that my child at twelve weeks gestation had a fully formed skeleton, a face, fingerprints. To understand, to repent, to mourn his death has marked my spiritual journey through life in Jesus Christ. I am not afraid to admit abortion equals death.
Why are they?
