Feng Jianmei and her second child
When Slate.com editor Allison Benedikt wrote last week that the pro-choice movement in America needs to stop being squeamish about sex-selection abortions and just accept it, I thought my head might explode, but ultimately I said nothing. One can only respond to so many outrageous things said by the abortion industry and its advocates, and her article was definitely outrageous.
This article was originally published at Catholic Online. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.
Ms. Benedikt’s pièce de résistance was this: “Also, let’s just remember that we are talking about fetuses. No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals — not little boys or little girls. If pro-choicers object to aborting because of the sex of the fetus, aren’t we then saying that abortion is “murdering” girls? Aren’t we basically arguing that a fetus is not a blank slate but a future possibility? That is not the case to make if your goal is to protect abortion rights. Gulp for a second if you must, then get over it.”
Now you see why I thought my head might explode.
When not instituting wild new pseudo-science and rewriting human biology, Benedikt is like some weird hybrid of hypnotist and drill Sergeant: You will NOT acknowledge that instinctual revulsion rising up in your throat at the idea of killing girls just because they’re girls! I know you’re a girl, too. So what? You will NOT admit that it’s wrong! Listen to me, it’s not really a girl anyway! Swallow hard! Abortion is good! Ignore the queasiness in your stomach — it means nothing. All that matters is abortion!abortion!abortion!
Blank slates? Fetuses with female genitals or male genitals? Benedikt is choking on her own desperation and the desperation of the entire abortion industry. Since actual science refutes them at every turn and logic and reason are not on their side, they must invent their own “science” and their own logic. Suddenly that “thing” in the uterus is just a blank slate. Just an ambiguous creature with genitals that might be male or female, but whatever, it’s not a boy or girl. I wonder when the magic happens that turns the creature into a baby girl or baby boy.
Every rational person knows that Benedikt’s argument is preposterous, to put it nicely. But it’s her dictate that everyone just ignore the stirrings of their conscience and squash their uneasiness with the horror of gendercide that is most troubling. It ought to set off alarm bells in every feminist heart when someone starts preaching the necessity of killing girls merely because they’re girls for the sake of women’s rights.
It ought to disturb every person professed to be interested in justice and equality that the “choice” to kill girls just because they’re girls must be protected and defended for the sake of protecting the “choice” to kill any baby, for any reason whatsoever. If girls must pay a highly disproportionate price, so be it. Who cares about girls?
Benedikt is desperate because she knows that anyone who allows themselves to be repulsed by the idea of targeting baby girls in the womb will soon have to question abortion altogether. How can it be wrong to kill a baby girl but not a baby boy? How can it be wrong to abort for *this* reason but okay to abort for *that* reason? No. Once the veneer of morality is stripped away and the illogic exposed, abortion is revealed for what it truly is every time it happens: the intentional killing of a child.
So if you’re going to tell everyone to gulp and then “get over it”, then be honest about what you’re getting over, Ms. Benedikt: Killing a child — killing a girl. (Thanks for nothing, ya lousy feminists.)
So though her outrageous nonsense was mind-blowing, I decided to ignore Ms. Benedikt and move on. Until today when I saw the wrenching images of Feng Jianmei and her little baby who’d been forcibly aborted in China just a few weeks ago. It was more than my heart could take.
Via Jill Stanek:
“On May 30, 20 local Chinese officials dragged 23-yr-old pregnant mother Feng Jianmei from her home and held her three days for a 40,000 yuan ($6250) ransom before killing her seven-month-old baby en utero by lethal injection and delivering her tiny corpse after family failed to come up with the cash.”
“At the hospital they held her down,” said Mr Deng to All Girls Allowed, a Christian organisation in the United States that campaigns against the One Child policy. “They covered her head with a pillowcase. She could not do anything because they were restraining her,” he added. He said his wife had tried to kill herself after the abortion.
Mrs Feng told All Girls Allowed that she could “feel the baby jumping around inside me all the time, but then she went still”….
Chai Ling, of All Girls Allowed, said officials had “launched a campaign of forced abortions”. Li Yuongjiou, of Ankang’s family planning department, told Caixin, a magazine, that the town had missed its targets under the One Child policy for two years, and this year there was an emphasis on stricter enforcement.”
So, shall we still “gulp if we must, and then get over it”?? But that’s China, you say, not the United States. We don’t forcibly abort here! We’re all about choice!
Look at those pictures, and see our future. Actually, look at that baby and see our present. No, our government doesn’t hunt down pregnant women, abduct them off the streets, drug them, beat them, and then violently kill their babies against their will, thank God.
But the instinctual revulsion and horror we would rightly feel at the thought of tearing the arms and legs off a baby or stabbing a baby in the heart has been diluted in our hearts and silenced in our consciences for 40 years now. We’ve been told we have to allow abortion even if that thing in the pit of our stomachs won’t leave us in peace. We’ve been told to disregard that voice in our heads screaming that it can’t possibly be okay to kill a child.
We’ve been told abortion is a good thing for women and society, and those unsightly remains of bloody babies are just anti-woman propaganda. Yeah, it’s not pretty to look at, so do yourself a favor and stop looking at it. Forget the baby; it’s not human anyway.
All we’re left with is a mere feeling of uneasiness and discomfort at the idea of targeting girls in the womb, and now that discomfort, we’re told, we must swallow down and “get over”
Babies like Feng Jianmei’s are killed in our cities here in wonderful America every day, and we call it our “right.” Children are ripped from the womb in pieces and we call it our “choice.” We are well on our way to becoming China. If people heed Ms. Benedikt’s directive to just “gulp, then get over it”, the only possible destination is China.
Ms. Benedikt, take a good, long look at the photos of Feng Jianmei and her dead baby. Be horrified, if you still can be. Look at the baby. That’s no blank slate. That’s a child. That’s what your precious “choice” destroys while you play deaf, dumb, and blind to everything but your sacrosanct “right”.
All of you who insist you can personally be opposed to abortion but cannot “impose” your beliefs on anyone else, take a good, long look at that child. Now tell that child you just couldn’t “impose” on anyone else. Sorry, baby.
Is there anything left that will shock our numbed sensibilities? Fr. Frank Pavone is absolutely right when he says America will never reject abortion until America sees abortion.
Well, America, I dare you. Take a long, hard look at Feng Jianmei and her murdered little baby. That’s abortion. Don’t just gulp and get over it.
