Today on the the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, some of America’s top pro-life leaders have penned some poignant words about how the pro-life movement empowers women and their families.
This week, U.S. Rep. Diane Black, R-Tennessee, called out the abortion industry for betraying women’s trust in a column for Time magazine that she and Americans United for Life President Charmaine Yoest wrote. Black is one of the leading pro-life advocates in U.S. Congress. She has been one of the most vocal legislators in the fight to cut off taxpayer funding for the abortion business Planned Parenthood.
Black wrote:
Consider that, for 20 years, the pro-choice lobby has operated under the unofficial rallying cry of “safe, legal, and rare” abortion, yet just last fall the nation’s largest abortion provider—Planned Parenthood—tweeted a link to a story celebrating London’s “free and plentiful” abortions and birth control. Perhaps that is why Planned Parenthood, in a callous betrayal to women, has lobbied against informed consent laws across the country that would require full disclosure by a physician of the risks and side-effects of abortion.
We also oppose abortion because we are willing to look at the facts that the abortion lobby continues to ignore. For example, we know that premature babies have now been saved as early as 22 weeks into fetal development, that the U.S. remains one of only seven nations to allow elective, late-term abortions, and that abortions worldwide disproportionately discriminate against baby girls.
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The anti-abortion movement is well-founded in logic and common sense, but perhaps its greatest supporting force is love.
Yoest issued additional comments in a press release leading up to the national March for Life. She pointed out modern feminists’ failed logic that women somehow need abortions to be on a equal level with men. She said:
Only in the twisted thinking of modern day feminists are wombs a weakness and women dependent on abortion for their success and status in society. A coalition of feminist groups has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in the upcoming Whole Women’s Health v. Cole, claiming that abortion is essential to women’s equal dignity and full equality. This is an offensive and deeply impoverished view of women. These abortion advocates are the true misogynists, thoroughly discounting female power and ability. Arguing that a woman’s destiny is shaped negatively by motherhood, and that her equal citizenship is dependent on abortion, is fundamentally anti-woman.
Rather than working to equip women for success, these denigrators of women work to alienate us from the strength and power inherent in the feminine body, telling us that we must choose death for our unborn children to have a life, and thereby achieve a Pyrrhic victory in our careers. No archetypal Victorian character so thoroughly discounts women as effectively as our so-called women’s advocates who insinuate that families preclude greatness. On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I stand with pro-life Americans across the country proclaiming that as women, we are more than capable of shaping our destinies while embracing life and love. Therein lies our true and fullest dignity.
In fact, it is the women who recognize the deception of abortion who are the strongest pro-life advocates – a fact that even the pro-abortion-leaning New York Times pointed out recently.
Ashley E. McGuire, a senior fellow at The Catholic Association, wrote a column for The Hill touting the work of female pro-life leaders such as Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade who later became pro-life. Both McCorvey, who worked at an abortion clinic, and King, who had two abortions, came to the pro-life side after recognizing the devastating effects of abortion.
McGuire continued:
More recent additions to the slate of women fighting the government on abortion include Barbara Green of Hobby Lobby, who led her family’s fight against the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that would have required her to provide employees with abortion drugs, the Little Sisters of the Poor, nuns are fighting the government on the same issue for the non-profit sector, and now Margo Thelen and Rhonda Mesler, two pharmacists who are fighting a law in Washington state written by Planned Parenthood that would require them to fill prescriptions for abortion drugs, or else.
The leadership of these women and others like them have made it harder to maintain the narrative that to be a modern feminist, one must be pro-choice.
These recent comments plug into the 2016 March for Life theme, “Pro-life and Pro-woman Go Hand-in-Hand,” which organizers said exposes the truth “that life is the empowering choice for women.” The Jan. 22 event is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers, including many women and young people, to the nation’s capital.
