Women are told that reproductive health services are designed to better their lives. They are also told that anti-abortion zealots are infringing upon these services. You've probably heard the cries emanating from the pro-abortion crowd.
They go berserk when anyone suggests that morning-after pills are really not in the same category with the common aspirin, and should not be sold over the counter. They experience apoplexy when pro-life lobbyists ask members of Congress to hold oversight hearings on the abortion drug mifepristone (you probably know it better as RU-486). They literally go right off the edge when someone like me says, "of course the pill should be banned; it can kill preborn children."
They argue that we have tunnel vision, that we take our orders from the Vatican, or that we are simply so unrealistic that it would be best to put us all away somewhere because we care little for women and even less for their health.
Well, excuse me. I am a woman, and I truly do care about health, whether that health is physical, spiritual or emotional. And ladies, rather than coming to you with a tired plea focused on a desire to be sexually involved without accepting the consequences, I bring you instead an appeal based on reason. So please listen up!
With all the insanity and inanity bubbling up from feminist cauldrons, allegedly designed to protect women from monsters like us pro-lifers, why is it that they have not made more out of a little-known marketing plan designed to make aborting children more accessible than ever before? Why aren't they running full page ads focused on alerting women to the fact that the abortion pill – mifepristone – can be purchased online? Why haven't these advocates of a "woman's right to choose" held a news conference to explain how you can order a "medical, non-surgical abortion" from your living room with only a credit card and a computer with Internet service?
When I heard about this, it startled me. How could this be? How could anyone be allowed to provide Internet access to a pill that is only designed with one goal in mind – killing preborn babies? Why is it legal to market a deadly chemical online?
Hold on, and I will tell you precisely why it is not only legal, but a foreshadowing of what is to come in the not too distant future.
Those who provide abortions realize that their profession is lawful in the United States. They also are quite familiar with the power of the Internet and the specifically anonymous leverage it provides when making a greater effort to convince women that abortion trumps motherhood, regardless of the ultimate cost.
So it is that mifepristone (RU-486) is as readily available on line as are i-tunes or MTV videos. It matters not that this drug has killed women. It matters not that the result of using this drug is the death of a fellow human being. All that matters is that women know they should be free to engage in sexual liaison without ever having to claim responsibility for the child conceived as a result of their frivolous relationships. After all, we do live in the "it's all about me" era.
While I hate to burst anybody's bubble, it must be made clear that sometimes, if not most of the time, it is never "all about me." Rather, it is all about results that you will have to face as a woman who pursues such a selfish, sexually-saturated view of her own life. Let me help you see the picture.
First, should you avail yourself of the online drug known as mifepristone, you will be using a chemical that always kills a member of your own species and can cripple, maim or even kill you. That is information you will not find on the "abortion pill online" web site, but it is factual regardless of their claims to the contrary.
Second, once you use any chemical designed to help the ego avoid the responsibility for another person's life (a baby) you are also using something that could make you more susceptible to cancer, to a sexually transmitted disease or to a virus like HPV (human papilloma virus) that could lead to cancer. After all, using artificially produced hormones by ingesting them is bound to have side effects, isn't it? Perhaps the government hasn't warned you about this; but that doesn't make the risk any more negligible. When you play the game, you have to pay the price.
Sure, a woman can buy into the "reproductive health" scene, believing that she has a right to be free from babies until she is ready to care for a baby. But, I ask you, shouldn't someone be telling this woman that if she uses these drugs she might be killing a baby, running a risk of suffering cancer later on or rendering herself infertile – unable to have a baby, even when it's not any longer all about her and she really wants to have a baby?
With online abortion now readily available, and with the promise of even more such deadly proposals being marketed online as time goes by, it might be time to think about what it really means to experience reproductive freedom. Could it be that phrases are just simple tools developed to make it even more difficult for women to know what is really and truly best for them and for their future?
Could it be that what's "all about me" is really all about suffering – death and depression?
Could it be that women, whether 13 or 30, would be much better served by learning a little more about what it means to be a mother and a little less about what it means to "have it all" and be "free" from babies, marriage and family?
Let's not forget one simple fact. More than 40 years ago pharmaceutical companies, high-level medical associations and groups like Planned Parenthood decided that it would be easy to change the definition of pregnancy, alter the scientific facts about when a human being begins, and convince women that professionals know better than they do about things like sex, procreation and happiness. The people who falsified the facts honestly believed that women like you and me are dumb enough to buy the lie; that "it's all about me" means "I will never have to pay a price."
Well, tell that to the woman who has breast cancer because she used the birth control pill, or to the parents whose daughter died because she used a chemical abortion pill, or the husband whose wife has used the pill for so long that she cannot now have babies, but does have a sexually transmitted disease which she acquired long before she ever met him.
Sometimes, ladies, it isn't "all about me." Sometimes it's actually all about someone else. That's not something you will find out on the "abortion pill online" web site. It is something that could make your life a lot healthier, happier and maybe even holier. Think about it!
Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest Catholic pro-life educational grassroots organization. She is a recognized expert on the sanctity of human life, member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the author of three books.
you will be using a chemical that always kills a member of your own species and can cripple, maim or even kill you.
So can virtually any drug. This is why so many people think the Religious Right is dishonest: you are.