PBS301H: Paul Swope

Abortion: A failure to communicate (1998)

• Another issue, semi-unrelated to Klusendorf's critiques: can these ads be deceptive, to a degree? Can they give a woman false reassurance about the control she will have following pregnancy?

[A woman is in front of a nice house, raking leaves. She says good-bye to her daughter, then turns to the viewer.] “I was sixteen when I found out that I was pregnant with Carrie. I wasn’t married and I was really scared. You know, some people today say that I should have had an abortion, but it never occurred to me that I had that choice, just because it wasn’t convenient for me. Hey, I’m no martyr, but I really can’t believe I had a choice after I was pregnant. Think about it.” While this ad is not always popular among pro-life activists, polls showed it is extremely effective with young women. This is because it presents a role model who is approachable and believable, and the subliminal message in the ad—the nice house, the good relationship with the daughter, the image of control as the woman stands holding the rake as she takes care of her own yard—all reinforce the message that this woman is, in fact, a kind of martyr, because she has made a difficult decision but “gotten on with her life.” The ad subtly offers the very kind of resolution a woman facing a crisis pregnancy desperately seeks and which she is too often deceived into thinking abortion will provide.

• Talia's comment about how this wouldn't be much comfort to the woman who is in poverty, and may still be after birth
• Counter-point: we do want to offer hope to women in crisis pregnancies, help them to see that their future life does not have to be a shambles. Ex. Choice42's videos from women who did choose life
  • Also, Talia's comments about how many women who have abortions already have other children. Does the same crisis of identity happen for these women?
    • Yes. (It may not be a crisis of identity with “motherhood” in general, but about the loss of freedom and one's life being overtaken by a newborn baby, again, I think.) — Blaise Alleyne 2019/03/08 13:32
• Pastoral approach and educational approach: currently, we need to combine education about humanity of the pre-born with responding to the unmet needs of the pregnant mother. The goal of the educational arm is crucial, though, because we want to get to a point as a society where women in need are not even abortion-minded. (And we need to respond to their needs, but just like we would for any person in difficult circumstances, not because we're trying to also prevent killing).
  • I.e. people in poverty or other difficult circumstances will always need support from those around them, but one day we want to get to the point as a society where killing a pre-born child is just as unthinkable a response as killing a born child. When parents of a 5-year-old lose their jobs, or the father walks out, etc. there's usually not even a question of whether the 5-year-old should be killed.

A New Understanding of the Trauma of Abortion (2013), with Charles Kenney

Women carry an unwanted pregnancy to term when guilt wins out over shame, when they feel that the pregnancy will not end their own current and future selves, and that the unborn will be better off alive than dead.