Albert Mohler: Their Abortions—What Do These Abortion Testimonies Really Reveal?

November 15, 2013

Excerpt:
If the purpose of this article was to assist women to overcome the stigma of abortion, it is hard to imagine that it succeeded. The fact that this article appears four decades after Roe is proof that the decision failed to reset the nation’s conscience on abortion.

The pro-life movement faces huge challenges in the task of reaching the nation’s conscience, but there are also great opportunities. This article reveals both in full force.

For the advocates of abortion, these testimonies offer a clear refutation of their strategy of doing everything possible to speak constantly of a “woman’s right to choose,” while avoiding any reference to the baby. The baby refuses to disappear. When these testimonies of abortion reveal the very women who had an abortion speaking of “our baby” and noting that “the baby would now be one year old,” the moral bankruptcy of the pro-abortion argument is there for all to see. The baby refuses to leave the picture.

That essential point is powerfully revealed in Bryce A. Taylor’s eloquent poem, “How to Have an Abortion,” originally published at First Things:

Don’t think about the freckles he, or she,
Might have, or how much hair, how big a grin,
Or whether swimming would come naturally,
Or whether–it?–might play the violin.

Don’t think of prom, don’t think of puppy love
Or calculus, or snow, or spring in bloom,
Or anything that might remind you of
The future now contained within a womb.

Don’t feel anxiety, don’t feel regret,
Don’t fret about some otherworldly guilt.
Don’t feel the bond of parenthood, don’t let
Insane outmoded Don Quixotes tilt.

At private windmills–don’t spill any ink
Examining yourself. Don’t feel. Don’t think.

Meaghan Winter says that Americans prefer to speak of abortion as an abstraction. But, as that poem makes so clear, the baby will not agree to remain an abstraction. For that reason we should see this important cover article as proof of the urgency and the enormity of our challenge in the defense of life—and as evidence of our opportunity as well.
Full Essay image

New York Magazine: My Abortion