Yesterday, a graphic press release and image told the shockin
g story of forced abortions at seven months. Reggie Littlejohn, president and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, spoke on ending forced abortions, “it does not matter whether you are pro-choice or pro-life on this issue. No one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice. And this violence must stop.”
Reggie introduces two points. Firstly, she argues that China’s policy violates the will and consent of mothers. Secondly, she argues that China’s policy is violent.
America requires consent of the mother, and we therefore do not have the same violation of the will that occurs in China. Yet we accept the same violence in the name of choice.
No one really desires this kind of violence. Yet we accept it. As a student at UC Berkeley, the heart of pro -abortion feminism, and president of the Students for Life group, I often speak with the most extreme pro-choice persons in Berkeley. I have the opportunity to talk with the most anti-Life groups and ask them if they like abortion. They eye me warily, as if they know this might be a trick question.
“Do you enjoy it?” I ask. “Do you say, ‘Yes! I’m getting an abortion today!’? Do you purposefully get pregnant to have abortions?”
They look at me with disgust, “Of course not, don’t be crude, but we need abortions.”
No one — not even the most radical pro-choice woman Berkeley has to offer — desires the violence of abortion. China forces women into it, and we condemn it, while the United States silently pressures women into it, through societal pressures, economic pressures, media, family, and academics.
We rise up in protest at China’s forced abortion, for as citizens of the home of the free, we understand the ugliness of violating the will. We also raise our voices to protest child-soldiers in Uganda pressured into murdering their own families. The pressure is more blatant, the violence out in the open.
Then how can we, in good, consistent conscience, allow our society to pressure our own young women, many of them merely children themselves, into violence against their own children?
We understand the violation of will that haunts China. Please, recognize violation of human dignity that haunts both the United States and China alike.
This violence must stop.
