In a recent column for The Sun, Tanya Gold wrote about why she chose abortion as a 22-year-old college student. While this sounds unremarkable at first glance, what was striking were Gold’s simultaneous assertions that the preborn child is a living person who is killed by an abortion, and that killing is not only justified in a wide variety of situations but should be advocated for “everywhere.” Her entire morally bereft premise is that while abortion is tragic, the world needs more legalized killing of preborn children rather than life-affirming support for mothers.
Gold writes of her decision to seek abortion at 12 weeks gestation, at which point babies begin making sucking motions and have distinct fingers and toes. “When I was 22, I had an abortion. I was very sick, with alcoholism, and I didn’t know who the father was. I had no job, no money and no home of my own.” She continues, “I waited 12 weeks, not because I wanted to inflict the greatest pain imaginable but because I really wanted that child.” Sadly, Gold concluded that choosing life for her child “was impossible.”
Our culture has embraced the idea that the death of a vulnerable, innocent person can solve a woman’s problems, with disastrous consequences. Abortion falsely promises women freedom by pitting them against their preborn children, but the promise rings hollow, as many women have later realized.
Despite her advocacy for abortion, Gold makes some honest admissions, claiming that most women undergoing abortions are very much aware that they are carrying a living human person inside them.
“[H]ow many women, do you think, walk into an abortion clinic not knowing what they are doing, and why? It’s not really a baby, say some pro-choice activists. It’s an, er, embryo.” Unequivocally, she states, “Of course, it’s a baby, and those having to make the decision know that better than anyone. I know that from my own experience. I don’t need people to tell me what I have done. It is always with me.”
READ: Documentary highlights work of pregnancy centers in offering women real choices
Gold also claims that there are justifications for abortion, ranging from the expense of child care and high maternal mortality rates, to society’s failure to demand that men support the women they impregnate, to insufficient access to contraception, which she says should be “thrown at teenage girls like glitter.” In other words, she feels abortion is acceptable for any reason and at any time.
Even discriminatory abortions committed due to a prenatal Down Syndrome diagnosis are “tragic, but that’s the right to choose.” Because women “might have an abusive partner,” or “a rollocking mental illness,” or “be a single parent” or “be at serious risk of postnatal depression,” Gold cannot conceive of any acceptable gestational limit at which to ban abortions, even after the point of viability.
But the fact remains that Gold, who now has a living son she calls “the best thing in my life,” would surely never accept justification to kill her born child if she experienced joblessness, single parenting, alcoholism, or any number of other life crises at any point after his birth.
Gold is correct in saying that pregnant women sometimes face incredibly daunting life circumstances. Unfortunately, she dismisses calls for increased support for moms experiencing unplanned pregnancies, dismissing the idea as unrealistic. Instead, she disappointingly settles on advocacy for just one thing: “We need more access to abortion, not less, and we need to advocate for it everywhere.”
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