The Right Frame of Mind
Coat Hangers with Baby Clothes on Them
By Dr. Mark Creech
Listening to some of the railing by pro-choice legislators against
SB 353 – Health and Safety Law Changes – the abortion bill considered this week
in the North Carolina House – could at times be exasperating.
No moment was more strenuous to the ears of pro-lifers than when
Rep. Alma Adams (D-Greensboro) insisted that if the bill closed abortion
clinics across the state, it would force women back to the time of back alley
abortions and pregnancies ended with coat hangers.
Adams decried, “What a terrible day for North Carolina women –
shame on us,” while waving high a coat hanger. “Do we really want that blood on
our hands? I do not,” she said.
Granted, this is an emotional issue, but the use of such hyperbole
is really what’s shameful.
More than a decade before abortion was legal in this country; the
vast majority of illegal abortions were performed by reputable physicians in
good standing. [1] In 1960, Planned Parenthood stated 90% of all illegal
abortions were done by physicians. [2] Actually, the vast majority of women
were not getting abortions from butchers as pro-choice people like to claim. In
fact, most abortions performed after legalization were performed by the same
doctors that were providing them before legalization. Neither their training
nor their equipment really improved after abortion was decriminalized. [3] So,
the entire argument about back-alley abortions and coat-hangers is, to say the
least, highly exaggerated.
The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, an abortion activist of
yesteryear, admitted that he and his cofounders of the National Abortion Rights
Action League (NARAL) fabricated the figure that a million women were getting
illegal abortions every year, as well as the number of maternal deaths, 5,000
to 10,000 each year resulting from them. [4]
Nathanson said: “I confess that I knew the figures were totally
false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in
the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so
why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding
concern was to get the laws eliminated [laws against abortion], and anything
within reason that had to be done was permissible.” [5]
Research confirms that in 1972, the year preceding the
legalization of abortion, the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
reported only 39 maternal deaths from illegal abortions. [6] These numbers are
a far cry from those figures of tens of thousands touted by pro-choice
advocates. Today, maternal deaths caused by an abortion procedure are very
difficult to track because the reporting is dependent on the abortion clinics,
which is much like asking the alcoholic to guard the liquor cabinet. But make
no mistake, women are still dying from abortions and the fatalities are mostly post-abortion
surgery and secondary reasons for these deaths like a blood clot, blood
poisoning, heart attack, hemorrhage, pelvic abscess, etc., are listed as the
official cause instead of the actual cause – the aftermath of an abortion
procedure. The point here is that abortions performed today are
characteristically performed as they always have been, but there is now a
greater risk posed to the health of women largely by the incredible increase of
the numbers performed every day.
Moreover, women lawmakers on the House floor defending so-called
abortion rights repeatedly said that women are smart. Women know what they are
doing when seeking an abortion and don’t need the government to tell them what
to do with their own bodies. But then they turned around and insulted women by
arguing that if some or all of the clinics were to close in North Carolina
these same intelligent women would be so foolish as to use a coat hanger to end
their unwanted pregnancy. Such logic not only boggles the mind, but is
demonstrably revealed for what it is – hypocritical propaganda!
There is one final
critical thought, however, that has yet to be mentioned. For every two people
that enter an abortion clinic, in some cases neither come out alive, while in
all cases, only one comes out alive and it’s not the baby. Whether an abortion
is legal or illegal, whether it’s safe or unsafe, whether it’s in a clinic or
in a back alley, in no situation is it ever safe for the unborn innocent that
is subjected to the violence of a uterine invasion. The primary horror of
abortion, no matter the means, is not the threat it poses to a woman’s health
(as bad as that threat is), but the certain death it causes to the most
vulnerable of all human beings – a tiny and defenseless little baby.
That being said, perhaps next time Rep. Alma Adams and her cohorts, Planned Parenthood, Pro-Choice North Carolina, and NARAL wave their coat-hangers in protest to pro-life legislation, then those who respect life should wave coat-hangers in kind with baby clothes on them.
Dr. Mark Creech is the Executive Director of the Christian Action League.
Resources
[1] Original source, Alfred Kinsey, cited by John Wilke, Abortion Questions and Answers (Cincinnatti:
Hayes Publishing Company 1988) pg. 169. Cited
by Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to
Pro-Choice Arguments (Portland: Multonomah Press 1992) pg. 137
[2] Original source, Mary Calderone, “Illegal abortion as a Public
Health Problem,” American Journal of
Health 50 (July 1960):949. Cited by Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments (Portland: Multonomah
Press 1992) pg. 137
[3] Original source, Bernard Nathanson, Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979), pg. 193. Also quoted
by Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to
Pro-Choice Arguments (Portland: Multonomah Press 1992) pg. 138
[4], [5] Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life
Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments (Portland: Multonomah Press 1992) pgs. 137,
138
[6] National Right to Life, “Argument 4: If Abortion is Made
Illegal, Women Will Die,” http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/responseargument4.html
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