Student Debates Role
of Crisis Pregnancy Centers
To
the Editors:
Before
anything relevant to the abortion issue can be said, the true point
of disagreement must be identified: the humanity of the fetus. If
one
believes fetuses to be members of the human race, strenuous efforts
to prevent the killing of fetuses are very much in order. Conversely,
if one believes fetuses to be less than human, then efforts to prevent
other people from being inconvenienced as a result of irrational
taboos against the killing of fetuses might be helpful. A woman
should always have the right to choices about her own body, but
if the fetus is human, then she or he likewise has the right not
to have choices forced upon her or him: in this case, death. If
anyone has objections to this logic I will be fascinated to hear
them, because I cannot imagine any. These are the two alternatives
we face regarding abortion, but the objective of this particular
letter is not to choose between them.
I would rather leave that question up in the air (though I have
a feeling the response to this letter may force me to discuss it
soon) and simply examine Marianna Leavy-Sperounis claims about
the false advertisements of adoption services, in terms
of ethics and political theory. These Crisis Pregnancy Centers openly
advertise an alternative to abortion: adoption.
They are presumably run by people who believe the first of the two
alternatives above: that the fetus is human, and that abortion is
wrong. They advertise their service in such a way as to put it in
direct competition with the abortion industry. For this reason,
they show anti-abortion videos in order to promote the alternative
they provide and to discourage abortion. In the same way, when one
goes to buy a can of Pepsi, one sees advertisements for Pepsi all
over the Pepsi dispenser. As far as I can discern from her letter,
Leavy-Sperounis faults the CPCs not for false advertising but simply
for advertising, and she demands legislation preventing such exercise
of free speech based on the mandates of ones conscience. It
is as if someone would write a letter demanding laws to prevent
the insidious distribution of pro-Pepsi propaganda because this
anti-Coke movement ruthlessly sought to deny soft-drink buyers the
full range of thirst-quenching services. Leavy-Sperounis claims
not to advocate censorship, but based on the rest of the letter
I dont believe her.
Of
course, practically speaking, censorship on behalf of the abortion
industry is nothing new. Glamour magazine recently published an
article on abortion saying that there are no long-term health risks
associated with it, even though almost all studies reveal an unmistakable
link between abortion and breast cancer. Also, since the Clinton
years, America has been performing taxpayer-funded abortions abroad,
triumphantly carrying abortion rights to women in third world countries
so that a few years hence we will have far fewer little brown
brothers to bother about helping (or wresting land and resources
from). (Of course, this was the purpose for which Planned Parenthood
was originally founded: to distribute birth control among undesirables
in the rural South in order to reduce the burden on the State which
they supposedly were. Look it up.) And since most American women
dont know that natural childbirth is four times as survivable
as an abortion (which is not surprising since the procedure most
commonly used is analogous to that used to chemically disinfect
a swimming pool except with stronger chemicals), I doubt
if they tell women in Namibia about it either. We need not look
so far away to find violations of womens rights in the name
of abortion. Stories of women who were harassed into having abortions
either by social workers colluding with local abortionists, or by
employers who dont want to pay for a maternity leave (many
of them then dying or suffering permanent injury in botched abortions),
are reported every day, but they seldom make it into the mainstream
media because of the political influence of abortionists and their
supporters (www.prolifeinfo.org/oldnews.html). The reason for this
bias is simple: abortion is much more profitable to those who provide
it than adoption. Same reason why Nikes are made in Indonesia.
Free speech means that even if a person disagrees with the law,
one always has the right to speak, write, or advertise according
to the mandates of conscience. During the Nazi regime, those who
believed that Jews deserved human rights were not allowed to express
this belief publicly or form organizations to advance their agenda.
The first-amendment rights of Abolitionists were likewise threatened
and violated in the years prior to the Civil War. I am afraid the
day is already here when similar laws are in force in California
and may soon be in the entire country.
Patrick
Schwemmer
College sophomore
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