Actress Martha Plimpton has never been shy about discussing her numerous abortions. She said recently in an op-ed for The Daily Beast that she feels no shame regarding her abortions — only gratitude — and that since Roe v. Wade was overturned, she has watched the passage of laws protecting preborn human beings “with a mix of horror and outrage.” Earlier this month, she headed a fundraiser that benefited her own pro-abortion group.
Pregnancy as a “magical miracle”
Plimpton claims that pro-lifers are naïve about pregnancy, as if it is always rainbows and sunshine. She says, “Pregnancy is not always the magical miracle that antis [those who oppose abortion] would have you believe. It’s a complicated, messy, often dangerous medical reality that can have any multitude of consequences for a person’s life and health.”
But pro-lifers are well aware that pregnancy doesn’t always go smoothly and without issue. They know this because they have experienced complications themselves. The difference is that while eight percent (8%) of pregnancies will have complications, according to Johns Hopkins, 95.7% of abortions are carried out for “elective or unspecified reasons,” according to research compiled by the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
For those pregnancies that do have complications, the American Association of Pro-Life OB/GYNs says there are specific treatments available to help both the mother and the child. But even when those treatments are unsuccessful and the pregnancy must come to an end, an induced abortion is still not necessary. Doctors can deliver the child and attempt to save both lives.
Even if the child is too young to survive, delivering her is not legally considered an ‘abortion.’ An induced abortion — which pro-life laws prohibit — is when the preborn child is purposefully and intentionally killed prior to or during delivery. In emergency situations, it may actually take longer to kill the child prior to delivery than to deliver the child by an emergency C-section.
It isn’t that pro-lifers are blind to the fact that pregnancy complications exist. It’s that pro-lifers are not ignoring the truth: that deliberately killing a living human being in the womb doesn’t solve health issues.
Still, Plimpton claims, “In Texas, patients have been denied standard, normal, essential medical interventions for complications as devastating as having their water break too early, forcing them to carry dying fetuses inside their bodies and risking sepsis, a life-threatening infection. Or forcing patients carrying fetuses with anencephaly, a lethal condition in which neither the brain nor skull develop, to continue with their pregnancies knowing their baby will be born dead. Where is the respect for life in these cases?”
She’s right — many patients have been “denied standard, normal, essential medical interventions for complications,” but she’s wrong to imply that these standard interventions would be abortion. Abortion is not the standard treatment in any of the cases out of Texas or in any other state. When a woman’s water breaks or she enters preterm labor, the standard treatment is not to kill the baby. It is to attempt to stop labor and save the baby. If labor cannot be stopped, the baby is delivered and all possible attempts are made to preserve life, not to intentionally end it.
If the child has a condition such as anencephaly, the standard treatment is not to kill him or her. The treatment is to monitor mother and child closely, and if the child survives to birth, to provide the child with palliative care.
This is true respect for life.
Bodily autonomy
Plimpton argues that being pro-abortion is about “bodily autonomy” but no one has the right to cause harm to or kill an innocent human being in the name of bodily autonomy. When speaking on rights to bodily autonomy, Plimpton is ignoring the very person that the abortion industry wants us to ignore: the preborn child, who, as a member of the human race, has rights of her own, including the right to not be killed.
Still, Plimpton recently joined Jenn Lyon in co-hosting Broadway Acts for Abortion (BAfA) earlier this month. Using karaoke, live auctions, and “the best of Broadway,” Plimpton’s group “A is For” sought to raise funding for abortion. A website for the event said the purpose was “loudly and proudly proclaiming… Bodily Autonomy for All.” BAfA states it “is the only Broadway community fundraiser dedicated to abortion rights.”
Performers who took part this month included Tony winners Bonnie Milligan, John Cameron Mitchell, Kelli O’Hara, and Miriam Silverman, and Emmy winners Ann Dowd, Cecily Strong, Diane Phelan, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Charles Busch. It raised more than $120,000 for “A is For’s” so-called “stigma busting programs.”
Plimpton has had numerous abortions for a variety of reasons and has no living children. She has openly laughed about her abortions, worn clothing promoting her love for abortion, and even described her “best” abortion. She wrote for The Daily Beast, “Safe, legal, accessible abortion care allowed me to live the life I want, in the way I want to live it.”
As Mother Teresa said, “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”
