Where Charity and Love Do Not Prevail

Scrolling thru Twitter, I came across the following exchange between a woman who had had an abortion after rape, and another who was conceived in rape...

This is not wisdom or compassion, but a dark and sad nihilism born out of injury.

​My heart aches for both these individuals. But they both reminds us that abortion culture doesn't help women who are victims, it goes on and victimizes them more.

Concretely, in the first case, I don't know the circumstances of the woman's grandmother. Maybe she herself was in some sort of abusive relationship and had limited options. These sorts of things we cannot know from the narrative presented. What is clear from that narrative is that the woman's son violated her granddaughter, and then not only was that son sheltered from prosecution but the grandmother also facilitated the "cleaning up" of his crime. Abortion providers participate in this sort of thing more often than we think, judging by the amount of testimony floating around out there. All of the shouting about women being "forced to carry their rapist's child" misses the fact that it is not infrequently the rapist himself who will force the woman to get an abortion in order to cover up his abuse. And all the lobbying Planned Parenthood and others did over the years to try to get rid of parental notification or consent for abortion was a mechanism that made this kind of thing easier for rapists to get away with.

Moving to the second tweet, we see another consequence of this shifting of the moral burden and blame of the crime to its victims rather than its perpetrators. If you look closely at the profile image of the person who posted the second tweet, it says, "I was a walking crime scene." We can set aside for the moment the ethics and morality of abortion itself entirely for a moment, and consider one jarring fact. A movement that is supposed to be, or claims to be, about empowerment and the dignity of women has left this woman feeling that it would have been better if she were never born, and that she is "a walking crime scene." Just let that settle in for a moment.

Again, my heart aches for these two women, really and genuinely. They have been victims of horrible crimes, and more than one in both cases. The child conceived in rape is a victim, even one who manages to be born, because the trauma of the way in which he or she came into being does transfer its weight to him or her inevitably. But no more than we should ever think it right or loving to say to the first victim that it were better if she'd been killed, we should never allow that to be the message that these secondary victims hear. And yet, it is. Loud and clear.

That is why I must also call to mind all those who have been hearing these things shouted by pro-abortion (I'm glad they agree now that we can call them this) activists for decades, but in particular over the past sever weeks and even more loudly on just the last 24 hours. Men and women and children conceived in rape, or born with a disability or deformity, or who for any other reason are only here because they were saved by the laws pro-life advocates fought so hard to establish, have had to face this message everywhere they turn from those supposed ambassdors for "dignity and empowerment" marching around City Halls all over the country this morning: you're a burden, you're a mistake, you're unwanted, you're unloved… you're better off dead. I don't think one need look much further than that to see on what side of this debate true compassion and love lie.

CNN commentator uses her disabled brother & step granddaughter who has Down syndrome as examples of why we need abortion.

The ugly cruelty. The utterly bald ageism and ableism. The unfettered call for violence against the unborn disabled. pic.twitter.com/qo3jdfkK8b

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) June 24, 2022

Criminals should be punished. Their victims should be met with all the compassion and practical support we as a society can muster. But we should never, out of mistaken compassion, compound the injury of a crime by visiting more outrages upon the victims and the innocents who are caught up in it. 

No person is a "walking crime scene." No person should be made to feel that it would be better if he or she were never born. And when any movement does make them feel this way, I think we should take a harder look at whether that movement is really all it claims to be.