Abortion Foes Have a New Tactic

According to the New York Times this morning, the new argument of the anti-abortion crowd is that “abortion, as a rule, is not in the best interest of the woman”. The new strategy is to publicize the fact that not only are there physical risks to having an abortion but that women feel depressed and despondent afterwards. The NYT reports that the Texas-based Justice Foundation "is a nonprofit public interest litigation firm that has handled an array of conservative causes, has increasingly focused on abortion through its project called Operation Outcry." The Justice Foundation's president Allan E. Parker, Jr., said "the group began hearing from women in the late 1990s who considered themselves victims of legalized abortion — physically and emotionally — and wanted to tell their stories. Operation Outcry, which grew to include a Web site, a national hot line and chapters around the country, eventually collected statements from more than 2,000 women. “In its friend-of-the-court brief, the group submitted statements from 180 of those women who said that abortion had left them depressed, distraught, in emotional turmoil. ‘Thirty-three years of real life experiences,’ the foundation said, ‘attests that abortion hurts women and endangers their physical, emotional and psychological health.’” All of which cannot be disputed. But the other side of that argument cannot be disputed either. Giving birth can endanger a woman’s health, and having unwanted babies or putting a full-term baby up for adoption also leads to emotional and psychological problems, not only for the mother, but for the father, the child and society. Not to mention the fact that some distraught parents of unwanted babies murder their new-borns. The one claim anti-abortion groups cannot make is that banning abortion solves the problems created by unwanted pregnancies. Time was when the anti-abortion crowd beat the drum for fetus rights. They said pregnant women had no rights. That plan of attack hasn’t worked too well. Now they are saying pregnant women really are important too and that abortions are bad for their mental and physical health. Typically, the anti-abortion faction doesn’t look at the other side of their new argument. And the other side points to exactly the same conclusions. Aborting an unwanted fetus or not aborting an unwanted fetus can lead to mental and physical health problems. The only perfect solution to unwanted pregnancy problems is not to get pregnant. After all the new anti-abortion hype is perused and analyzed, it comes down to the same old nonsense. The anti-abortion political bloc is trying to divert attention from the real issues confronting voters. But voters know the problems in the United States have nothing to do with abortions, gay marriage or flag burning. The problems in the United States have been caused by the Bush administration’s malfeasance in general and the war in Iraq in particular.