Know the lie behind choice

It’s common knowledge among people who work in crisis pregnancy centers and post-abortion care that most women who go for abortions aren’t exercising a thought out choice based on information and freely given consent.

The pro-life movement has worked hard to prevent those women from suffering the devastation of abortion by legally engaging what they can in that reality – the requirement for informed consent before a medical procedure. This effort has spread across the states. And Planned Parenthood, NARAL and their colleagues in the abortion industry have fought those laws every time they’ve been drafted.

They also continue to adjust their strategies in other ways, the newest one being an ambush tactic at abortion clinics that I detailed here. A cameraman approaches pro-life people with the question “If abortion is criminalized, what should the penalty be for women who get one anyway?” Another way they put it is: “How much time should she do?”

That article prompted an email from Karen Brauer of Pharmacists for Life International, who I interviewed a couple of years ago on another story. She reinforces the importance of knowing the facts and not falling for these tactics.

The main reason that there cannot be a penalty for women who abort is because so many of the abortions are not actually the choice of the woman. In the U.S. a staggering number of women fear violence or abandonment of themselves and their other children if they refuse to have an abortion. In these cases, the women are not initiating the crime of abortion. There is not a way to discern which abortions are coerced and which are not without further compromising the safety of these women.

A person coerced to do a crime is minimally culpable. I think this precedes the issue of women being denied informed consent regarding the procedure, whether chemical or surgical.

Prolifers need to be ready with this answer. The abortion supporters will stop grasping for this kind of sound bite.