The #ShoutYourAbortion movement has a new target for its propaganda—children. In Huxleyan fashion, they have written a book for young people and are promoting it with a video in which one of the cofounders has an uncomfortable discussion with young kids about her abortion.
Amelia Bonow tweeted the video in which she compares her abortion to “a crappy dentist appointment.” She says the kids grilled her about it, but the “educational moment” was less a grilling by the kids and more a cringe-worthy attempt by Bonow to indoctrinate them.
I let a bunch of kids grill me about my abortion and it was great. #ShoutYourAbortion will be releasing a children’s book about abortion in 2020! https://t.co/1LSxdyf9f8
— Amelia Bonow (@ameliabonow) December 29, 2018
Treating the interviews as if they were part of career day at school, Bonow presents the video as “Kids meet someone who’s had an abortion.” I remember meeting firemen or policemen back in school, but someone who had an abortion? In those days, such discussions were handled by my parents or school counselors.
Not today. Now, we have a pro-abortion advocate challenging middle schoolers about their religious beliefs and spreading false information—all to make herself and others feel good about their abortions. The idea that “abortion is a last resort” has given way to “abortion is a noble cause” in which those who’ve ripped out their babies demand affirmation and approval to ease their troubled consciences.
Bonow begins her session by asking the kids what’s an abortion, and true to form, they answer, “It’s when you go and get rid of a baby.” Bonow seems immediately uncomfortable with the response, but it’s okay. She has a plan. Through questions and maneuverings, she eventually drives home the point that it’s not really a baby because “life doesn’t begin at conception.” According to Bonow, it’s when the baby is born.
When a boy describes a fetus as a sea cucumber, Bonow smiles in affirmation and even giggles. It’s reminiscent of the Director in Brave New World watching little kids in erotic play and calling it “charming, just charming.” It’s downright creepy.
Despite the failure to instruct these kids on real science, which tells us that life actually does begin at conception, Bonow plows on with her propaganda. When one girl asks what happened during her abortion, Bonow coldly explains, “You go to the doctor and they put this little straw inside of your uterus and then they just suck the pregnancy out.” It was uncomfortable “for my body,” she says, but she was “grateful” that she wasn’t pregnant anymore.
Notice how she dehumanizes the baby, the life inside of her. She also fails to tell the children about the physical risks to the mother. She ignores the pain women suffer and the long-term adverse effects. She skips over the emotional toll having an abortion takes on most women.
She doesn’t describe what happens to the baby—how it’s chemically burned, how it feels pain. How it is cut up into pieces. Little arms, legs, and torsos. Planned Parenthood has plenty of pictures she could have provided, but no, she tells these kids it’s a simple procedure—and you’ll be so grateful afterwards.
When one boy challenges her by saying that abortion shouldn’t be sought when you’ve been “reckless” (i.e., no birth control), Bonow counters as if she were talking to an adult who isn’t intimidated by grown-up correction. “I disagree,” she said. “If I am forced to create life, I have lost the right to my own life. I should be the one to decide if my body creates life.”
Bonow strangely disconnects her mind from her body, as if it is somehow acting on its own, as if she didn’t make a choice to engage in behavior that created that life—even as she contradicts herself by saying it isn’t life. This “life,” she insists, has been imposed on her by some mysterious force outside of her control. In truth, it was the result of her own agency—the effect of her own free will.
Personal responsibility escapes her, and it is absent in her conversation with the kids—who, more than anyone, need to be learning about personal responsibility. Instead, she chalks up her actions and choices to “God’s plan,” grabbing sanction from the divine to justify her violent act against creation.
Instead of being honest, she dresses up her decision in noble verbiage—how kids shouldn’t be raised in poverty, as if that’s worse than being sucked out by a straw. When one of the more thoughtful boys offers the alternative of adoption, she snaps back: “Even if you’re giving a kid up for adoption, you still have a kid out there somewhere.”
This statement shows that the abortion movement isn’t merely anti-babies, it’s anti-motherhood. Bonow didn’t want the responsibility or emotional burden of motherhood, whether the baby was with her or not.
Think about how a child would normally process such a comment. Children rely on their parents for self-esteem and value. They rely on their mother’s (and father’s) love to give them security and meaning in life. Yet, here is a woman—an authority figure of sorts—who admits that she had unprotected sex because she basically had no self-control, and who killed the baby because she didn’t want to be a mother. The normal response of a child would be horror and shock.
Children absorb information reflectively—how it relates to them. To hear a grown-up say that it is better to end a life than be burdened with motherhood degrades their value as human beings. They should be instinctively repulsed by such a statement. When they aren’t, they’ve been corrupted by lies.
“At the end of the day, it’s my body,” Bonow emphatically says, adding that she doesn’t want “old white dudes in the government” telling her what she should do. When some of the kids echo this sentiment, she praises them.
The #ShoutYourAbortion movement, with its goal to influence children in this way, reveals that it is hostile to life from conception and even into childhood. They don’t seem to care about the negative effects these discussions have on the minds and hearts of children. The only thing that matters is the kids jumping on the pro-choice bandwagon at an early age—future voters wrapped up in a bow for the Democratic Party.
Ironically, I found myself in a situation in which I had to have a discussion with my young child about abortion. I got pregnant out of wedlock due to my own bad choices. When faced with poverty, loss, and isolation, I considered aborting her. I went to the clinic but couldn’t go through with it.
Years later, I decided to write about my experience. At that time, I talked with my middle school daughter about what happened. To hear a parent say, “I almost aborted you,” is tough for any child—as it should be. It didn’t make me feel good to have this discussion. I wasn’t proud of myself. I was horrified and ashamed.
But as I cried through muddled words, my daughter wrapped her arms around me, thanking me for her life. I reassured her of my love and how grateful I was for her and blessed by the joy she brings to everyone.
My daughter, who has grown into quite the libertarian, is still staunchly pro-life. I believe she always will be, because she looked for a moment into that dark abyss and realized what it meant—a selfish choice that would have wiped out her existence.
Abortion is real to her. It’s not theoretical. When I talked to her about it, she wasn’t merely someone who might have an abortion later or who could become a supporter in the abortion movement. She was that baby—that “life at conception” who has grown into a beautiful young woman full of grace and love. Maybe we should look at all children that way and be humbled by them.
Bonow says she is grateful for aborting her child and now sits among children indoctrinating them on the “good” she did. How much better would it have been if she could have held her child’s face in her hands and told her how she chose to sacrifice her own comfort and ease to be a mother who loves her child more than anything in the world? Instead of corrupting the children of others, she could be loving her own.
As Bonow talked with those kids, I imagined interjecting a question to each one, “What do you think of abortion if you were the baby being killed?” What do you think an honest, well-adjusted child would say? I know what they’d say—”I choose life.”
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