Last week, pro-life activist Janet Morana tweeted about how the mainstream media so often amplifies abortion stories when they fit the pro-abortion narrative, while ignoring those that don’t.
Morana wrote, “Dear @NBCNews @MSNBC @JoyAnnReid @nytimes @washingtonpost – read your stories about House women and #abortion but where are you every year when women of @regretabortion tell theirs?”
The mainstream media’s coverage of recent House hearings on abortion legislation has emphasized tearful testimony from House members about why they support abortion. As Morana notes, what is noticeably absent is the perspective of mothers who now mourn the children they lost. Morana, the executive director of Priests for Life, is also co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, which gives mothers who regret abortion a network of support. The campaign also provides a platform for women to share their stories of regret.
Dear @NBCNews @MSNBC @JoyAnnReid @nytimes @washingtonpost – read your stories about House women and #abortion but where are you every year when women of @regretabortion tell theirs? #fridaymorning pic.twitter.com/GjDko69Mlu
— Janet Morana (@JanetMorana) October 1, 2021
READ: After three Planned Parenthood employees pressured her, Shelly still chose life with no regrets
Each year at the March for Life in Washington, D.C., and pro-life events across the country, members of Silent No More share their personal stories. Their accounts offer a sharp contrast to the predominantly pro-abortion narrative in so much of the media.
How does the media portray abortion?
Through many channels, women receive the false message that they should not regret ending the life of a preborn baby, because it is the means to education, career success, and independence. In addition to the stories of women in Congress, the media tends to highlight celebrity abortion stories, which seem to suggest that obtaining the glamour and wealth of celebrity requires the death of innocent children conceived at inconvenient times.
Abortion is also presented as a solution to a problem. In recent House hearings, several members offered emotionally-charged testimony about trauma involving rape and incest. In these instances, abortion is misleadingly presented by the mainstream media as a solution to this understandable pain and outrage.
What is abortion?
Abortion is not a means of career advancement or a solution to difficult circumstances. It is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life. Although abortion activists masquerade as advocates for “empowerment” and “choice,” this narrative offers only one way out. Mothers receive the message that if they are pregnant and want to pursue their careers, they must choose abortion, and if they are pregnant through rape, their only option is the destruction of their preborn child.
In order to justify killing the most defenseless and vulnerable, abortion activists ignore the child. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) testified during the House hearing that she had an abortion after struggling with complications in her first pregnancy. She said, “It is simply nobody’s business what choices we as pregnant people make about our own bodies.”
Additionally, Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) claimed, “You don’t see them trying to restrict men’s access to Viagra or vasectomies, and they just do whatever they want. But they want to come in and dictate to women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. It’s outrageous. It’s got to stop, and that’s what we are going to do.”
Yet the pro-life concern is not to control a woman’s body but to protect the rights of the child set to be intentionally killed by abortion. Women are not pregnant with meaningless clumps of cells, but with living, growing human beings. A preborn child is no less of a person because he or she is small and vulnerable.
Why hide abortion regret?
The mainstream media is threatened by stories of regret is partly because these stories reveal the undeniable humanity of the preborn child. Parents would not continue grieving decades later if there were not someone to mourn. The glib narrative that abortion advances and protects women is shattered by the reality that another human life is destroyed in violence.
Studies purporting to show that most mothers do not regret their abortions have also been repeatedly debunked, though activists still insist regret is rare and insignificant. But if many women regret their abortions, then it weakens the narrative of abortion as a force for social good. Regardless of regret or personal feelings, the fact that abortion destroys an innocent human being does not change. How we feel about an action does not change its moral weight, and as a society, we should all stand against the destruction of defenseless preborn children.
As much as the mainstream media tries to ignore stories of abortion regret, the evidence is hiding in plain sight. Even in the stories that the media chooses to promote, which are meant to show how empowering abortion is, there is often evidence of tremendous sadness and coercion. Underage girls with budding careers, fathers who have no say in the future of their children, and victims of rape and abuse are presented as proof that abortion is necessary and should be normalized. But what these stories actually show is that a preborn baby’s life was needlessly destroyed, often perpetuating a cycle of trauma and pain, and always leaving a lasting impact on the parents of that child… whether consciously acknowledged or not.
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