“Help us tell the real story. Your story. Right now. Congress needs to hear from women who have experienced wanted pregnancies where there was a sever health risk to the fetus, causing the women to choose abortion…. This is just the type of real and compelling story to illustrate how an abortion ban would affect women all over America.”

I have 305,310 compelling abortion stories; each is the story of a child killed by a Planned Parenthood abortion in 2007.

Everyone is aware that people suffer. Planned Parenthood and other pro-aborts are hardly tilling new soil there.  But the idea that alleviating suffering justifies the killing of another is untenable. The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens has some great language for this discussion. The case involved murder charges against survivors of a shipwreck who, after supposedly casting lots, ate the cabin boy who was a fellow castaway in the lifeboat. When reading the case for criminal law, I was struck by the following language, which is an great response to the “hard cases” in bioethics (emphasis mine):

It must not be supposed that in refusing to admit temptation to be an excuse for crime it is forgotten how terrible the temptation was; how awful the suffering; how hard in such trials to keep the judgment straight and the conduct pure. We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and to lay down rules which we could not ourselves satisfy. But a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he might himself have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime.

“I’m doing this to de-mystify abortion,” she says. “I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad.”

These are the words of Angie Jackson, a blogger and mother of a 4-year-old son. Her IUD birth control failed; she is four weeks pregnant and writing about her abortion on YouTube, her personal blog, and on Twitter under the hashtag #livetweetingabortion.

Last Thursday, Jackson visited a Planned Parenthood where her doctor gave her the first dose of RU-486, the abortion pill. (Note: The abortion pill is not the same as the morning-after pill.) She had to take four more pills — swallowing two and letting two others dissolve in her mouth—on Friday and Saturday.

She hasn’t taken to her various media platforms to show the graphic parts of her abortion. Instead, Jackson is chronicling how her abortion feels physically and emotionally — as she puts it on YouTube, “It’s just not that bad.” It’s almost like guerilla sex ed.

An optimistic part of me thinks that the woman’s callous disregard for human life and the way that she is acting in the public square will actually hurt her cause.  Instead of de-mystifying abortion, she offers an extreme example of self-absorption and selfishness.

Well, that’s what I tell myself to keep from weeping.

By the way, I find the comments of the person blogging about this to be hysterical.

I think it’s brave of her to share something that will make her a bulls-eye for anti-choice activists.

Oh yes, what a brave woman.  She will have to endure the slings and arrows of hundreds of furious blog comments (like this one) that she most likely will never read.  It certainly takes a brave individual to swallow a few pills in order to “do away with a problem” rather than take responsibility for one’s actions.  She’s a real warrior that one.

“It’s ingenious,” said the Rev. Johnny Hunter, national director of the Life Education and Resource Network, a North Carolina-based anti-abortion group aimed at African-Americans that operates in 27 states. “This campaign is in your face, and nobody can ignore it.”

The billboards went up last week in Atlanta and urge black women to “get outraged.”

In your face? That’s for sure.  I’m still shocked.  Thoughts?

I’m a pretty big sports fan, but I had never heard of Sean James, until I saw this commercial only moments ago. Al Joyner, I’ve heard of, but only because of his talented late wife, Florence Griffith Joyner, and sister, Jackie Joyner-Kersey.

But here’s my take on this: if you have to tell people you’re a famous athlete, you’re probably not a famous athlete. I can’t imagine, for example, Michael Jordan saying, “Hello, I am Michael Jordan. I am a former professional and college basketball player, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. I was also a member of six NBA championship teams in the 1990s.”

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked “The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us” to reveal something important about themselves: They aren’t actually “pro-choice” so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn’t be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn’t.

I discussed my 2007 book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press), which, as of Monday evening, was the #1 ranked book in the category of “abortion and birth control” on Amazon.com.

(Originally posted on the Return to Rome blog)

An employee at the clinic … insisted that everything had gone well at the second-floor medical facility.

“The patient was transferred to the hospital, she didn’t die at the clinic,” said the woman, who refused to give her name. “Nothing happened here.”

(emphasis added)

Just another day at the office.

Although the article does not mention the child, I presume it was ably killed it as well.

It is heartening that we have made some small strides through the years.  Opposition to abortion has increased, and we’re seeing some signs that the youth of today are embracing the culture of life.  But we still have far to go, as evidenced by the actions of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council.

The Montgomery County Council is considering a regulation that would require pro-life pregnancy resource centers to tell new clients that the information they provide is not intended to be medical advice and to turn to other providers before “proceeding on a course of action regarding [her] pregnancy.” The regulation would impose a fine of up to $750 per day for not doing so.

The bill singles out pregnancy resource centers only because of their pro-life mission. If approved, the Montgomery County regulation would impose government-compelled speech on a non-profit organization that does not receive public funding simply because the organization declines to provide or refer for abortion. The regulation does not apply to “family planning” clinics, which the County government funds, or to abortion clinics.

Maryland, which as a colony was a haven for Catholics, is now the state with the fourth highest abortion rate in the country, and had been one of the few states where the rate is increasing.

There is a critical need for offering alternatives to abortion. While the abortion rate declined 9 percent nationally between 2000 and 2005, the abortion rate in Maryland rose 8 percent in the same period. Our state’s abortion rate is now 38 percent higher than the national rate, with more than one-in-four Maryland pregnancies ending in abortion. There were 37,590 abortions performed here in 2005 – about 103 per day.  To even consider targeting centers that help women choose life is unconscionable in light of these tragic statistics, which represent an even more tragic reality.

Though there is growing opposition to this movement, the Montgomery City Council has not a single Republican member.  My wife has written to our Council member, but I fear our pleas will fall on deaf ears.  If you are in or around the Montgomery County area, please write your local representatives to fight this ideologically motivated attack on pregnancy resource centers.  There is more information on how to get involved here.