These ladies doth protest too much, methinks.
“The vicious slander and attacks on Planned Parenthood must be stopped!” declares radical pro-abortion group Stop Patriarchy in an online call for counter protests to our August 22nd rallies in 300+ cities nationwide. Perusing their site, it wasn’t their decision to assemble which recalled Shakespeare to my mind. Rather, it was the message they planned to declare.
“A FETUS IS NOT A BABY!” read bright orange letters emblazoned across the pamphlet designed for the event. Declarative statements pepper the piece—asserting fetuses are not babies, abortion is not murder (emphasis not added)—but lack one critical element: the tiniest shred of objective evidence.
Public protests are not only permissible. In the face of injustice—such as the decapitation of young humans—they may also be necessary. However, what separates cacophony from voice of reason is truthfulness.
Stop Patriarchy is at least honest about their intentions. “Abortion on demand and without apology!” they declare. Still, when we peek behind the curtain to see why they strive toward this goal, we are left wanting.
On the pamphlet, they admit the fetus is “a form of life.” Further, they concede abortion “destroys this form of life.” Yet they conclude: “Well then, isn’t an abortion killing another human being? No, absolutely not.”
Why? Borrowing decades-old rhetoric, they answer by calling the baby a “clump of cells,” referring to her dependency on her mother, and finally asserting she isn’t human until birth when she “takes [her] first breath.”
Here they tell us things about the baby—how she looks or acts—but make no effort to explain how these descriptions define the baby as less than human.
They seem to be too busy writing slogans like “There is NOTHING wrong with abortion,” essentially telling the public to move on. But this defensive tone may have the opposite effect, causing the public to take interest and leading them to see what abortion actually does to living human babies.
Those babies’ stories reveal destruction causing Shakespearean tragedies to pale in comparison.
By exposing this, we can change the fate for other babies. Indeed, all we have to do is show or describe abortion and, as Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s Gregg Cunningham has said, abortion protests itself.