In this bizarre, barbaric op-ed piece by veteran Washington political reporter and columnist, Bonnie Erbe, she pines for the good old days of thoughtless abortions, days "when no self-respecting career-oriented peer who conceived out of wedlock would have considered bringing that pregnancy to term."
Golly.
We are, of course, used to people trying to present abortion as the unfortunate lesser of evils, but rarely do we see journalists so brazenly championing abortion as a positive, wholesome, socially-responsible alternative (requirement, really) to birth. Planned Parenthood types, abortion clinic escorts, and Democrat politicians talk this way perhaps...but rarely journalists who want us to believe they are at least somewhat balanced.
But Ms. Erbe obviously has discarded any pretense of balance (ideologically, morally, and mentally) as she butts in and castigates recent Hollywood movies portraying unmarried women allowing the babies they've conceived to keep living. Mind you, Erbe doesn't even mention the sexual promiscuity that leads to unwed pregnancies. No, she's not against that at all. But she does hate the consequences (that is, children) and high-handedly demands that those children pay with their lives for the antics of their parents.
This criticism of Hollywood not urging enough abortion is becoming a a bit of a theme lately (see this post and this one), one that is part of the abortion movement's new school. To this crowd, feeling backed against the wall by the windows to the womb that technology has provided, the polls showing youth being substantially more pro-life than their parents, and such trends as more chaste lifestyles, Christians becoming active in politics, and the development of ever more pregnancy care centers, they are feeling desperate and vengeful. For them, apologizing for abortion in any degree is unacceptable. It gives too much away to their opponents who already seem to have secured the high ground.
No, the new school of abortion enthusiasts is willing to be us ugly, unforgiving and tyrannical as abortion itself. Thus, they will irrationally scream against abstinence programs. They will make organizations like the United Nations, Amnesty International, the European Union and the Democratic National Committee into de facto arms of NARAL. They will demand that more and more toxic drugs (drugs damaging to women too) be put on the market, even requiring by coercive law that laws of conscience by pharmacists, doctors and hospitals de damned. Indeed, they assert that medical professionals be avoided all together if need be, extending legal abortion privileges to nurses, midwives and even do-it-yourself kits.
And yes, this abortion absolutism (however harsh and brutal it may be) must involve the cultural leaders. Thus the bitter acrimony that Ms. Erbe and the new school feels towards Hollywood which, doggone it all, is just not doing its bit to sell abortion to the American people.
So, what's to happen next? Will the intolerant and in-your-face despotism now being shown by the abortion movement's leaders backfire? Or, by cultural cave-in and judicial fiat, will it end up becoming the order of business under a President Clinton or Obama? Certainly, renewed prayers and efforts to avoid the latter are very much in order. And publicizing the abortionist's new fascism is the very first thing on the list.
(By the way, the Evansville Courier & Press was one of several papers and web sites to print Ms. Erbe's column in full, but a truncated version, one that yet carried all the venomous hatred for the "wrong" babies, was carried by the U.S. News and World Report.)
In the introduction to The Rebel, in a paragraph in which Camus laments "massacres justified by philanthropy," you will find these words:
On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence -- through a curious transportation peculiar to our times -- it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.
We've reached the point where mother-love is sneered at and called upon to justify itself.