Ashley is Changing her Mind About Abortion
This, to me, is really big. I’ve known a few people who not just pro-choice but ardently so; they were also unrelentingly bitter and furious at pro-lifers. I just figured they couldn’t or wouldn’t change.
It seemed that Ashley was one of those. She is a young woman, in her 20’s, who has visited Jill Stanek’s pro-life blog a number of times over the past few months, spewing venom against pro-lifers. (She uses her full name on the site and it’s her real name; you can find to other online information about her, but I’ll use only her first name here). She was unrelenting in her ridicule of the pro-life position. She was also bitter because of what happened when a prolife ob-gyn had refused to do a D and C on her mother after learning that the baby she was carrying hadn’t survived. She told Ashley’s mother to wait to deliver her dead baby naturally but soon she was rushed to the hospital with serious complications that she barely survived. Ashley was convinced that pro-lifers do not care for women, and prefer the fetus, that we constantly put women’s lives at risk, and that we were all anti-woman — in spite of the fact that at least half and probably more of the pro-lifers regularly visiting the site are women!
Several pro-life nurses on the site pointed out that there was no difficulty in conscience for a pro-life ob-gyn in doing a D and C or other form of extraction on a dead baby, but that there is usually no good reason to do a D and C, which does have medical risk and could possibly puncture the uterus and leave scars, while medical complications like those her mother suffered are usually unforeseeable.
Ashley didn’t seem to be affected by all this. In fact, we hadn’t heard from her in a while, but evidently she still kept visiting the blog. She began to read other articles Jill had posted, including many news items about men who had murdered their pregnant girlfriends when they refused to get an abortion. Then there was a discussion about John Edwards, who had tried to get his pregnant mistress to abort. She has begun commenting in shock about this, realizing how much of the time abortion only serves men; wondering “where are feminists” when these things happen? Her tone is now reasonable rather than bitter. She has begun to understand that there are lies behind the pro-abortion position. She isn’t yet in the pro-life camp by any means, but she is much more of a joy to have around. She engages now in reasonable debate and is honestly seeking information. Here is the thread where we learned about her change of heart.
We can rejoice, but we can also pray for “Artemis,” who also regularly visits the site. She is the kind who is much less likely to change. You see, she is one of the first generation of feminists. She has told us that she is from the class of ‘66, making her roughly 62 years old. A dyed-in-the-wool radical who proudly tells us she left the Catholic Church after graduating from a Catholic girls’ academy, and regularly attacks religion in a mocking tone. She also tells us that her mother had an illegal abortion and never regretted it (she’s now in her 90’s), and that she herself had self-aborted with a turkey-baster sometime back in the late 60’s or early 70’s. She is hate-filled, but of course would never describe herself that way. She resists all attempts to tell her that post-abortive guilt may be responsible for her anger, which in the end is really directly against herself. . .
The same with a post-abortive young woman named “Megan,” who has no regrets, she says, — and constantly visits the site to tell us so, over and over again, while launching bitter tirades against us and our beliefs.
The young like Megan can change. In fact, I think it is this generation that will finally realize what is going on, and will rise up and change things. Artemis may be too ideologically set in her ways. But her kind is growing old and will die out.
In the end, they all need our help and prayers because this battle will only be won one heart at a time.
