Pro-life forces, Planned Parenthood want the same thing: fewer abortions

Sorry (not sorry) if this comes across as condescending, but I’m running out of ways to describe what should be self-evident: Nobody is “pro-abortion.” Aside from a few psychotics, nobody wants there to be more abortions.

In that sense, the recent Women’s March and The March for Life were both anti-abortion demonstrations. That’s what I think many are not getting or, rather, choosing not to get.

Planned Parenthood and other women’s health clinics — which some seem to regard as drive-thru murder facilities — are first and foremost abortion-prevention facilities. That is, they offer the tangible services it takes to decrease the need for abortions in the first place. Only as a last resort, and because they acknowledge the unfortunate realities of the world we all inhabit, do they offer safe abortion services.

Many Planned Parenthood clinics, like the one in Lexington, do not perform abortions at all and never have.

By directing “pro-life” fury at Planned Parenthood, people are literally encouraging the rise of teenage pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies, disease, poverty and overall instability that result in more — not fewer — abortions.

When former Gov. Mike Pence and a GOP-led state legislature eviscerated Indiana’s public health-care infrastructure in the recent past, for example, Planned Parenthood facilities that had provided HIV testing and education were forced to close. What happened? An immediate and unprecedented HIV outbreak.

Same goes for Texas. Public health care destroyed. Planned Parenthoods shuttered. The “pro-life” result? A doubling of pregnancy-related deaths in just a two-year period that gave the red state the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.

Noble as activists’ aim may be, their methods are beyond debunked.

They. Do. Not. Work.

Imagine this: A community hospital has to sometimes make the tough decision to pull the plug on terminally ill patients. Nobody is glad that it happens. Everybody would prefer that it happened less. So what is the solution? “Pro-life” crusaders shut down the entire hospital. Congratulations, no more wicked plug pulling. Just a skyrocketing amount of death and suffering and no way to stop it.

Well, don’t have sex and there won’t be any problems. Right? Look, you can believe that human beings are some sort of semi-celestial fallen angels that were zapped here 6,000 years ago all you want. It’s not true. We’re animals. We’re the most complex animals that we know of, but animals nonetheless, and as such we are hardwired for two things: to survive and reproduce. An abstinence-only approach to curtailing unwanted pregnancies isn’t going to work any better for humans than it would for rabbits. Case closed.

As for those who say they see no difference — and therefore the law should make no distinction — between killing a fertilized egg or a born child, here’s another hypothetical situation:

You are standing in front of your church’s congregation. On your left is a six-year-old boy. On your right is a petri dish of fertilized human eggs. You have a baseball bat in your hand and you have no choice but to destroy one of them. You mean to tell me that you’d be torn? I don’t believe it. And if you did hesitate in your decision, that’s not the proud behavior of a principled devotee. That’s the behavior of a madman.

Whether they know it or not, many pro-life advocates use the “heroic” defense of the conveniently voiceless unborn to justify support of authoritarian tyrants as protection from everyone and everything that might challenge the hypocritical cult of American-style Christianity and nonsensical neo-conservatism. Just a hunch.

So what causes them to demonize and berate those having real success in achieving the same goal that they supposedly want to achieve? If they are so “pro-life” why do they invite so much needless death?

Something to consider, maybe, while they sit in a pew this Sunday, rubbing a rosary while innocent refugees are tossed back into terror.

Coleman Larkin of Shelbiana is a writer, artist and cook. Reach him at colemanlarkin@gmail.com.

This story was originally published February 9, 2017 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Pro-life forces, Planned Parenthood want the same thing: fewer abortions."