When pregnant women in leadership support abortion, they fail women

It’s 2018, and when a woman in a position of power becomes pregnant, society still has a tendency to assume that it will be impossible for her to do her job well while also being a mother. This is not just misogynistic; it’s one of the main reasons legal abortion exists. But when pro-abortion women become pregnant, they don’t seem to realize that by working to expand abortion they are perpetuating the lie that women aren’t able to have children and be successful.

Women have been working mothers throughout history, from queens in Europe to America’s own first feminists to the first female doctors. They have proven that children are not barriers to success. Yet, since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion 45 years ago, women experiencing unplanned pregnancies have been told that their pregnancies are powerful obstacles in their paths to success, which they can’t overcome. Whether it’s college plans, athletic dreams, career goals, financial struggles, or the fears of single parenting, women are told they just aren’t strong enough or smart enough to deal with the challenges in front of them and give birth to their children. And women have been falling for this lie.

In fact, a recent study found that over 78 percent of women who seek abortion are being pressured to do so. Abortion isn’t liberating them, it’s breaking them. These women are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, to suffer from depression and post-abortion syndrome, and to consider, as well as commit, suicide.

What’s worse is there are women in government fighting to ensure that more women continue to suffer under legal abortion without any laws to help protect them or their children from the evil of abortion.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., knows what it is to overcome a challenge. She is a retired lieutenant colonel who served 23 years in the Illinois Army National Guard. Her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq in November of 2004. Duckworth lost both of her legs and shattered her right arm in the crash. In 2012, she became congresswoman for Illinois and in 2014 she gave birth to her first child after struggling to get pregnant. Duckworth became one of just 10 women to give birth while serving in Congress. Soon she will become the first sitting senator to give birth, as she is currently pregnant at the age of 50 with her second child.

Duckworth has a strong list of accomplishments when it comes to helping mothers. She worked to make major airports comfortable places for women to pump breast milk for their babies. She helped mothers in the military receive personal time to be with their newborns and adopted children. She has co-sponsored bills for paid paternal leave and affordable childcare, and even worked to help student parents gain access to on-campus childcare – something Feminists for Life has been doing for years. But Duckworth also supports abortion without restrictions.

That means she supports this inhumane abortion procedure, done between 13 and 24 weeks of pregnancy, which dismembers a living, pain-capable child in utero:

2nd Trimester Surgical Abortion: Dilation and Evacuation (D & E)

This also means she supports induction abortion, in which a substance is injected into the baby’s heart or head to induce cardiac arrest so that the mother labors and delivers a dead child.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also recently announced she is pregnant. In response to the news, at least one man expressed in an op-ed that he doubts Arden can handle motherhood along with her responsibilities as prime minister. He came to this conclusion, he says, because Serena Williams had to take a step back from tennis after giving birth.

First, Williams is an athlete and therefore faces different challenges returning to work after having a baby. And secondly, Williams suffered from other health issues after giving birth, which took a toll on her body. But that’s beside the point. Williams made the decision to take more time off. Ardern is moving forward knowing that challenges will likely come, but she is prepared to handle them. Ardern is a first-time mother, and her partner, Clarke Gayford, is reportedly becoming a stay-at-home dad.

New Zealand has stricter abortion laws than the United States, although, as Live Action News has reported, these laws are not readily enforced. Ardern sparked controversy when she stated that she would decriminalize abortion, and she received backlash when she vowed to remove the 20-week cutoff for abortion due to a prenatal diagnosis – allowing it to be legal through all nine months of pregnancy.

Arden fails to realize that current New Zealand law, which requires the signatures of two doctors stating that a woman “needs” an abortion for mental or physical health reasons, protects women from forced or coerced abortion. It’s a safeguard that women in the United States don’t have, and Ardern wants to take it away. While she likely views the expansion of abortion access as helping women, in reality, she will be causing them more pain.

Women don’t need abortion — not even in potentially life-threatening situations. There is no medical reason to deliberately kill a woman’s preborn child. Listen as former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains:

A Conversation with a Former Abortionist: Is abortion ever medically necessary?

Do Duckworth and Ardern realize that while they are  overcoming challenges and breaking barriers and managing to be a mother and a politician, they are aiding in the deaths of millions of children whose mothers just need someone to support them and tell them, “You can do this too!”? Millions of women have aborted their children and suffered the long-term consequences of that decision simply because no one told them they were good enough. No one helped them find a pregnancy resource center that would aid them in securing baby gear, continuing their education, securing housing, finding a job, and escaping their abusive partner. Many of these women just need assistance to face down the fear of unexpected motherhood or the fear of the person pressuring them to abort. That’s all it would have taken. There are 4,000 pregnancy resource centers in the United States compared to 739 abortion clinics.

If Duckworth and Ardern turned their power and attention towards educating women about pregnancy centers, they could save them from the pain and regret of abortion and save their children’s lives. These women would be able to stand up to those pressuring them to abort. They would be able to regain their self-confidence and welcome their babies with open arms.

Senator Duckworth and Prime Minister Ardern: we don’t help women succeed by assisting them in sacrificing their children on the altar of their education or career. Women are smart. Women are strong. Women are capable of being mothers. The only thing they lack is the real support to do so.