A pro-abortion billboard brandishing the phrase “I’m Grateful for My Abortion” is upsetting women across Cleveland, Ohio this week.
ABC News 5 in Cleveland reports the billboards are a project of Preterm, a Cleveland abortion clinic. The group recently had five billboards with the bold pro-abortion message installed in and around Cleveland.
The billboards advertise a new campaign by the abortion clinic to “creat[e] safe spaces for nuanced and respectful conversation about abortion experiences—and providing resources and tools to help get those conversations started.”
But the brash celebration of abortion is having the opposite effect on the community. The news station talked to a number of women who said the billboards were offensive, including several women who believe abortion should be legal.
“Too much. I think a woman has a right to choose, but I don’t think they should put it on a billboard,” local resident Renee Stuart told the station.
In a sad irony, Preterm is the abortion clinic that killed a young black woman in an abortion.
For other women, the billboards are causing pain.
Here’s more from the report:
Nina Mink of Parma said the ad she saw on W. 130th St. near Brookpark Rd. stirred up painful memories of her own abortion years ago as a teen mom.
“It hit me really hard. I mean, I was appalled,” Mink said. “You think you’re not going to be a good enough mother. You’re not going to have enough money and it’s got nothing to do with being grateful, believe me.”
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But a spokesperson for Preterm argued many women are grateful for the right to make that choice.
“Throughout Ohio it’s easy to find anti-choice billboards that shame and judge women,” Nancy Starner with Preterm said in a written statement, “Rarely is there a pro-choice message in response.”
The billboards appear to be part of a national effort by abortion activists to attempt to normalize abortion. They have staged “Shout Your Abortion” storytelling campaigns and other efforts that make aborting an unborn child seem normal and good for women. But these campaigns ignore the immense pain and trauma that countless other women have experienced as a result of their abortions.
Katherine Franklin, director of communications for Ohio Right to Life, called the billboards “insensitive.”
“Preterm is doing this in spite of the trauma suffered by thousands of post-abortive women who are anything but ‘grateful’ for their abortion,” Franklin told LifeNews. “As the largest abortion outfit in the state, Preterm has no financial incentive to actually listen to these women they claim to be helping.”
She also noted that Cleveland is the abortion capital of Ohio, and African American women especially are vulnerable. Franklin pointed to state statistics showing that 65 percent of abortions are performed on African American women and their babies, though they make up about 30 percent of the population.
She continued: “This insensitive billboard campaign shows the sheer desperation of the abortion lobby at this point in time. Abortion clinics are closing in Ohio, and our abortion rates are falling. The abortion lobby is losing the cultural war because Americans, as divided as they can be on abortion, know that abortion is not a positive thing.”
Recognizing the painful truth about abortion has brought many post-abortive women to the pro-life movement. Through projects like the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, thousands of women have shared their painful abortion stories to encourage others to avoid the same pain by choosing life for their unborn babies.
