The "pro-choice" moniker has always been at best a euphemism, at worst an utter deception perpetrated by a movement that has always had an unhealthy interest in affirming it the ultimate manifestation of self-fulfillment and autonomy to butcher a child in utero.
Those engaged on the pro-life side of this titanic, 50-year struggle for the legal recognition of human rights for unwanted, illegitimate, or handicapped children, have often and properly termed their opponents "pro-abortion." The following rage has been anything but muted:
"I'm not pro-abortion, I'm pro-CHOICE," has been the uniform retort.
Perhaps that's true, but it's intentionally generic. The question that really matters is the one that follows such an assertion: you're pro-choice when it comes to choosing what?
Consistently, I have found that I favor giving women far more choices than many of the angry progressives demanding the privilege to end the life of their unborn children with impunity. Unlike most leftists, I favor giving women:
- The choice of their doctor
- The choice of their health care plan
- The choice of what school to send their child (or to homeschool)
- The choice of what gas guzzling vehicle to drive
- The choice to set their home thermostat on any temperature they prefer
- The choice to protect their family with a concealed handgun
- The choice whether to vaccinate their child (and themselves) against COVID
- The choice to wear a face mask when flying commercial airlines
...and many, many other choices that are part and parcel of freedom.
But it is true that I and many others believe that any civil society will place some limitation on the choices we humans make with our bodies. No one has, nor should they have, complete bodily autonomy. When it comes to depriving another person of their life, liberty, or property without due process of law, those are choices that shouldn't be morally permissible or legally available to citizens.
And that, of course, has been the heart of some of our foremost human rights struggles throughout American history. Slave owners, plantation operators, and southern aristocrats all claimed the right to choose. Choose what? The legal ownership over another's bodily autonomy and self-determination. The government stepped in and said, "No, that isn't a legitimate choice a free society can permit you to make."
Today, the abortion movement claims similarly – the right to choose legal ownership over another's bodily autonomy and self-determination. But just as slaveholders claims of "states' rights" or "choice" masked a far darker, far more wicked motivation, the same is becoming self-evident among the country's leading advocates of abortion.
Having worked closely with hundreds of pregnancy clinics personally over the last decade of my life, this kind of thing would be despicable if I actually believed that Warren was aware of what she was saying. She has no idea the expertise, the kindness, the compassion, the long hours, and the personal investment these ladies who serve and volunteer at these clinics have invested. But Warren is a political puppet. She's no thinker and she's no leader. The hundreds of women (and some men) who lead these clinics are making a million times the contributions to society's well-being that Warren is, and I'm content to let her personally "persist" in melodramatic meaninglessness.
But in terms of the larger issue, consider that what the senator is saying completely undermines her stated love of "choice." Let's suppose Warren is right, that these pregnancy resource centers do outnumber abortion clinics 3 to 1. Why is that a problem? What do these facilities do? They provide free maternal care and maternity services. They offer baby formula in the midst of a national shortage. They offer diapers, clothing stores, birthing classes, ultrasounds, and so much more.
Someone truly interested in "choice" recognizes that in the case of abortion, there are two choices possible – to kill or not to kill. Even if you support a woman's right to choose the former, what could possibly motivate you to not support the latter? Yet by vociferously attacking the very existence of pregnancy resource clinics, threatening them, and vowing to "put a stop" to what they're doing, you give up the ghost.
Just like it was never about states' rights, this was never about choice.
Just like it was always about the right to enslave, this was always about the right to kill.
As Senator Warren's stern-faced, bobbled-headed, anger fit demonstrates, the death of Roe has caused a demonic shriek on the progressive side of America's ideological spectrum, not because choice has been imperiled, but because the ritualistic sacrifice of children on the altar of convenience has been.
