Abortion was at the forefront of the recent “Women’s March”, with advocates in favour of it rallying against President Trump’s suggestion that he may make abortion a states rights issue again.
The extreme pro-abortion lobby has repeatedly argued that a foetus is just clumps of cells and the unborn have no intrinsic right to life.
Beyoncé’s recent pregnancy photograph broke Instagram records to become the most liked photo ever with over 6.3 million people “liking” the picture, and the news of her pregnancy was front page on many major publications.
Under one of the pictures Beyoncé, who is reportedly around 3 months pregnant, wrote “I have 3 hearts” in reference to the fact that she’s carrying twins. Her description placed emphasis on the humanness of the twins she is carrying, which is important. Beyoncé did not attend the “Women’s March”. However, she did send words of support to the attendees.
Many pro-life women’s groups believe that life starts at conception, a foetus is more than just a “clump of cells”, the unborn have rights that should be protected, and women’s empowerment should not be centred around the right to end life.
Although the march was billed as a women’s event, pro-life women’s groups were denied a platform as their views are deemed by the pro-abortion lobby to be retrograde and a threat to women’s empowerment.
Gianna Jessen is an American pro-life advocate who criticised the march.
Gianna is an abortion survivor and has rightly questioned why her rights while in the womb weren’t protected, and why a march claiming to be about women’s rights would exclude her views.
Jessen was seven and a half months old when she survived the abortion. Her mother, who was 17 at the time, had a saline injection administered on her (a procedure which burns and starves the baby’s brain of oxygen). Gianna has been left with cerebral palsy as a result of the abortion attempt.
The average limit for abortion in America is 24-26 weeks which is around 7 months.
Jessen, who is adopted, is a committed Christian and is pro-life. On the issue of abortion as a women’s right she’s said: “My mother made a decision that she thought affected only her, and yet every day I bear the result of that decision through my cerebral palsy. I’m not saying that in condemnation, but in truth. It’s more comfortable for people to think of abortion as a political decision, or a right. But I am not a right. I am a human being. I am the reality. If abortion is about women’s rights, then where were mine? There was no radical feminist screaming for my rights on that day. That is why I want to live my life with integrity, having lived what I profess. My job is not to change your mind [if you are pro-abortion]. My job is to present the truth and leave you to decide.”
Gianna has credited her survival to the fact that the doctor who carried out the abortion was not at work when she was delivered alive. She says: “Thankfully, the abortionist was not at work yet. Had he been there, he would have ended my life with strangulation, suffocation, or leaving me there to die. Instead, a nurse called an ambulance, and I was rushed to a hospital. Doctors did not expect me to live.”
Jessen has confounded doctors by walking and has even run marathons.
Melisa Ohden, another American abortion survivor, has raised the fact that Barack Obama, who is pro-abortion, frequently voted against protections for babies who survive abortions. She says: “While in the Illinois state Senate, Barack Obama voted to deny basic constitutional protections for babies born alive from an abortion — not once, but four times. I know it’s by the grace of God that I’m alive today, if only to ask America this question: Is this the kind of leadership that will lead us forward — that would discard the weakest among us?”
Whilst he was President, Obama vetoed the Born Alive bill aimed at giving babies who survive abortions the same protections as babies born prematurely. Black American babies make up the highest percentage of aborted babies but this issue is not discussed by groups like Black Lives Matter.
Ohden found out that she was an abortion survivor when she was 14 years old and has said that the discovery shattered her life and tested her feminist views as she thought that being a feminist meant being in favour of abortion. She reconciled those contradictions and toured the US for many years with a group called “Feminists for Life” which embraces equal rights for all, including the unborn.
President Trump has also been criticised by women’s groups for reinstating the ban on US funding of abortion overseas. Pro-abortion groups argue that access to abortion is vital to women’s empowerment in developing countries with high birthrates.
New technology is providing innovative ways to empower women in developing countries by giving them access to finance. The Harvard Business Review recently produced an article on how new technology is enabling unbanked groups and women, in particular, to have access to finance thereby enabling them to empower themselves and their surrounding economy. This seems like a far more organic and sustainable solution to the issue of high birthrates in developing countries.
There were numerous contradictions at the heart of the recent “Women’s March”. The stories of Gianna Jessen and Melisa Ohden demonstrate why abortion rights is a much more complex issue than currently presented by the pro-abortion lobby. Jessen and Ohden are right to ask why their rights were not protected and why third-wave feminists continue to dismiss the reality of their being.
