The New York Times on abortion

After thoroughly going over the Sunday New York Times Magazine cover story, “Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?”, I have to say…it gives mixed signals. For any secular mainstream elite media to do an in-depth story of this sort is unusual. For the Times to do it is amazing.

After all, one of the most recent Times fiascos was a Sunday Magazine cover story on abortion in El Salvador based on lies and propaganda. The Public Editor apologized for it and the general editors eventually issued a late correction.

This story, by contrast, looks at the details of the pro-life movement’s work with and for post-abortive women. The very title of the article means the Times was willing, in so prominent a place as the cover of its Sunday Magazine, to ask the question — is there a post-abortion syndrome? They may have an agenda, and hope to discredit a syndrome women are suffering in tremendous numbers. But I think asking the questions gets people thinking.

Read it with scrutiny, because this article puts out there conflicting evidence of post-abortion well-being. The usual disclaimers and unsubstantiated myths are there. That’s a prerequisite for a paper like the Times. I tried to read it from both views — the people working so hard to help women suffering from post-abortion syndrome, and the usual NYT readers who may lean hard left on abortion. I thought it might have opened some eyes in that crowd.

It’s main point is that in over three decades since Roe, the attention of activists has shifted.

Thirty-four years ago this week, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, and since then the American abortion wars have pitted the rights of “unborn babies” against those of living women. Rhonda Arias and a growing number of abortion-recovery activists want to dismantle that framework and replace it with this: Abortion doesn’t help women. It hurts them.

With that conviction, these activists hope to accomplish what the anti-abortion movement has failed to do for more than three decades: persuade the “mushy middle” of the American electorate — the perhaps 40 to 50 percent who are uncomfortable with abortion but unwilling to ban it — to see that, for women’s sake, abortion should not be legal.

Spread across the country are anti-abortion groups that offer post-abortion counseling. The Catholic Church runs abortion-recovery ministries in at least 165 dioceses in the United States. The federal government finances at least 50 nonsectarian “crisis pregnancy centers,” like the one where Arias worked in Houston. Many of the centers affiliate with two national groups, Heartbeat International and Care Net, which train abortion-recovery counselors. Then there are small, private counseling and Bible-study groups, both Catholic and evangelical, which raise their own money. Some abortion-recovery counselors just minister to other women. But many also feel called to join the fight to end abortion.

Perhaps without intending to, the Times seems to be probing into the realities behind the slogans.

If the activists have a Moses, it is David Reardon, whose 1996 book, “Making Abortion Rare,” laid out the argument that abortion harms women and that this should be a weapon in the anti-abortion arsenal. “We must change the abortion debate so that we are arguing with our opponents on their own turf, on the issue of defending the interests of women,” he wrote. The anti-abortion movement will never win over a majority, he argued, by asserting the sanctity of fetal life. Those in the ambivalent middle “have hardened their hearts to the unborn ‘fetus’ ” and are “focused totally on the woman.” And so the anti-abortion movement must do the same.

The article does take a swipe at Reardon’s credentials, for no reason. Cheap. But he proves himself in what the article does quote him as saying.

Pro-life forces have changed their emphasis and strategy over the years to reach that hardened public conscience. Here’s the point: If it’s easy to refute sanctity of life claims, and deny the personhood of the unborn, let’s see how the abortion activists deal with questions on their own terms. Focus on the well-being of the woman.

For anti-abortion activists [pro-lifers], this strategy offers distinct advantages. It challenges the connection between access to abortion and women’s rights — if women are suffering because of their abortions, then how could making the procedure readily available leave women better off? It replaces mute pictures of dead fetuses [aborted babies] with the voices of women who narrate their stories in raw detail and who claim they can move legislators to tears. [Claim?]And it trades condemnation for pity and forgiveness.

By the way, the pro-life movement is not into condemnation. It has always reached out to women — and men — with forgiveness and the need to forgive. That’s not new. 

The article recounts the story of South Dakota and considers the wisdom of activists figuring out “it would be wise to find common ground” in a dialogue about “making abortion unthinkable by making sure that woman have better choices.” Whether the Times intended it or not, that quote is an important key to pro-life efforts.

Now, who in the abortion movement can argue against “making sure that women have better choices”?

The article looks at the work of Georgette Forney and Janet Morana, co-founders of Silent No More, an awareness campaign of women who regret their abortions.

Forney and Morana compare abortion to smoking.

Not exactly. They made an analogy.

“The suppression of truth about the harms of abortion is the same as the suppression of truth about the harms of cigarettes,” Morana said. Once the public understands the trauma of abortion, as they now do the health problems associated with cigarettes, then “changing the law will be an afterthought,” Forney predicted.

To repeat, once the public understands the trauma of abortion, changing the law will be an afterthought. That’s a strong statement, when allowed to stand on its own.

The “abortion recovery counselor” this story follows from start to finish is a post-abortive woman with experience, resolve and faith. The writer may have wanted to stereotype her. But it gave her plenty of print to say faith-based things. Like this:

She opened her Bible to the first Book of Kings, Chapter 11. “Solomon builds a temple for Moab and Moloch — the false god who demanded child sacrifice,” she recounted. “And then ‘the Lord therefore said to Solomon: Because you have done this, and have not kept my covenant, and my statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom, and give it to your servant.’ So you see, when we allow the killing of children, we defy the will of God. There is so much blood defiling the land.”

It amazed me that the Times even printed that. But then, no surprise, the writer took a swipe.

At the prison the day before, I watched the inmates drink in Arias’s preaching, too. Abortion-rights leaders would accuse her of manipulation, of instilling guilt in women to serve the anti-abortion movement’s political ends.

Of course they would. The MO of abortion activists is manipulation. They know it well and serve the abortion movement through it. That would be their first thought.

But Rhonda Arias ministers from the heart; the lack of scientific support for her ideas merely underscores that she is a true believer.

Look, there’s no lack of scientific support. There is plenty of support — and they’re not only “her ideas,” as the record in South Dakota proves.

And here’s something else to look at. The term ‘anti-abortion’ has come to replace ‘pro-life’ in the MSM. And ‘abortion-rights’ is just a spin on a political agenda.

So read the article, be aware of what they’re saying, and how they’re saying it. If the original intention of the story was to discredit post-abortion syndrome, I don’t think they succeeded. And it may just backfire if, hopefully, readers start to see that there is a powerful, determined movement of people working hard out there to heal the ravages of 34 years of “choice”.