Why I won’t stop writing about abortion
People tell me “you always write about abortion, it’s really getting to be boring, Christine. Find a new topic.”
I wonder if Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman got letters suggesting they just shut up about slavery, or if Elie Weisel was warned that he was boring people with his books on the evils of anti-semitism.
Three things convinced me to write (again) about abortion this week.
The first one involves Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Let me say that again, since I like the sound so much: Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
One of the reasons that the screaming feminists and their male allies tried so desperately to keep Justice Brett Kavanaugh off of the court was because Justice Brett Kavanaugh (gosh I do love that sound) is demonstrably prolife in his leanings, a practicing Catholic and someone who– if given the opportunity – would most likely overturn Roe v. Wade.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed after a confirmation process that looked more like a hazing, and is now on the court.
Let’s hope an abortion case percolates up through the court system so he can do some magic.
The second thing that persuaded me to write about abortion this week was a comment by Pope Francis, a man who has not always made me do cartwheels of joy. but who recently said the following: “It is not right to kill a human being, regardless of how small it is, to solve a problem. It is like hiring a hit man to solve a problem.”
When I read those words I went right out and did one of those rare cartwheels, then headed to the nearest church to light a candle and pray that this version of Pope Francis hangs around for a long while to come.
The “hiring a hit man” analogy is sheer perfection, because it frames the abortionist as exactly what I, and so many of us, think he or she is: a murderer for hire.
Which brings me to the third thing that made it impossible for me not to talk about abortion this week: the world premiere of the film “Gosnell.”
Kermit Gosnell needs no introduction, no explanation, no “this is what happened.”
Kermit Gosnell has taken his place in the annals of evil alongside of Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler. Gosnell was an abortionist who operated for more than two decades out of a dirty West Philadelphia clinic that was cited numerous times for violating accepted standards of hygiene and safety, but who was able to continue killing babies (and women) until he was finally arrested and put on trial in May of 2013.
The film, which I saw this weekend, is a brilliant and moving reminder that even when the powerful have marshaled all of their weighty resources against you, you can still seek justice if your focus is on remaining human. The heroes in Gosnell are the men and women, police detectives and prosecutors, who fought to bring this man to trial and give some measure of justice back to the hundreds, possibly thousands of babies he had murdered either in utero or moments after they were born.
One of the reasons that Gosnell was able to continue his murderous spree for so many years was because pro-choice politicians like Tom Ridge, a good man who will forever bear this disgusting stain on his otherwise exemplary record, refused to allow the state to close down the clinic.
It was acquiescence to a powerful lobby, the abortion lobby that couldn’t tolerate the possibility that the “right to an abortion” would be curtailed by the government.
They looked away, including men and women who should have known better. They looked away. I won’t look away, and neither should you.
I will keep writing about abortion, even if my readers ball this paper up and throw it in the trash, even if they turn the page, even if they write me vile emails with their usual misspellings.
I will continue to write about abortion and call out the people who sanitize the act as “a woman’s choice,” to make it that much less likely that another Kermit Gosnell will find comfort in the sinister, quiet, acquiescence of the mighty.