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Abortion scene from ABC's May 7, 2015 drama 'Scandal.'NewsBusters.org

May 8, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – In my ten years of pro-life activism, one of the most common tropes I have heard from abortion supporters is that nobody likes abortion. 

Pro-life activists, we are often told reproachfully, are simply making people who already feel terrible about a very difficult decision even worse. In short: Everybody knows that abortion is terrible, and there is no reason for pro-lifers to expend so much energy attempting to explain to people why it is terrible. 

That is certainly true for many people that we meet. Many women—and men—feel awful about the abortions they have endured or procured, and there are certainly many women who feel that abortion was simply one awful choice in a series of equally terrible options. Abortion regret is very real, and often very raw. I have seen more people than I can count break down as they recounted their experience and mourned their lost little ones.

But over the past two decades, the abortion movement has begun to shift. No longer do they say that abortion is a necessary evil, but an unqualified good. Abortion has always been viewed by progressives as a tool of liberation, but many of them did not dare celebrate it for fear of appearing ghoulish. Those reservations have vanished, and #ShoutYourAbortion campaigns and defiant, you-go-girl testimonials have taken their place. Even I was taken aback when I attended the 2017 Women’s March as a journalist and saw one of the speakers mount the stage wearing a sweater with the phrase “I [heart] Abortion” all over it.

All of which brings me to a truly vile article published by Rewire News, a pro-choice media website that covers abortion almost exclusively. In response to a recent article titled “Abortion Isn’t Beautiful,” writer Paige Alexandria penned a rebuttal: “5 People Share Why Their Abortion Was Beautiful,” beginning with a testimonial from 31-year-old Caitlin Lejarzar-Gaffin of West Virginia. “If I made a list of things in my life that were beautiful,” Lejarzar-Gaffin wrote, “things that were truly and utterly full of gorgeous light and warmth and love—it would include my bisabuela’s home-cooking, the West Virginia valleys and mountains I call home, and both of my abortions.”

She described the destruction of her two pre-born children this way:

My first abortion was a medical abortion. I was nervous about the process, but the clinic staff were kind and supportive and let me take my time. I took some pills at the clinic, and brought more pills home. I cuddled up with blankets and a cat on the couch, and watched music documentaries while waiting for the second round of pills to work. They did! I passed a small amount of blood and tissue into the toilet. I felt so relieved. It was beautiful.

My second abortion was a procedural abortion. I remember drifting off to sleep in the feet-holders, and then waking up once it was over. I didn’t feel any of it. The clinic staff gave me soda to drink and let me rest for a bit. I remember walking out of the clinic and into the sunshine, feeling elated and relieved once more. I felt overwhelmingly free. It was beautiful.

My abortions brought me joy and relief and sanity when I needed it most. They allowed me to be myself and direct what happens within my own body and life. I think back on my abortions and related experiences with deep fondness and appreciation. My abortions were beautiful. Abortion is beautiful.

It is genuinely difficult to know how to respond to such a cold-blooded recounting of such a horrifying act. I have held aborted children—one almost perfectly formed, another utterly shredded by the suction aspirator of the abortionist—and those scenes are irrevocably seared into my memory. These were the broken children of a broken society, and the only tragically beautiful element of it all was the still-discernible features of the babies that offered the faintest glimpse of what they looked like before they had been pulled to pieces. 

Another young woman, 23-year-old Jordyn Close of Ohio, also spoke of her abortion as “an incredibly empowering and beautiful experience, while 25-year-old Holly Bland of Wisconsin noted that the decision to have an abortion “wasn’t a difficult one…and it was a beautiful one.” Not all abortions are beautiful, she stated, but “mine was.” She now shares her story publicly so that people can know that “abortion can still be beautiful.” The other stories are in a similar vein. One mother writes that she and her husband opted for abortion because they discovered that their child had Trisomy 13. A fifth noted that having the option of getting an abortion was what made her experience beautiful.

What can one offer by way of response to these assertions that abortion is beautiful? There are many things I could say, but perhaps the most effective rebuttal is to listen to how abortionists describe the procedure. 

Dr. Anthony Levatino, for example, described abortion this way: “The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby's head.  The head of a baby that age is about the size of a large plum and is now free floating inside the uterine cavity.  You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the Sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow.  You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix.  That was the baby's brains.  You can then extract the skull pieces.  Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.”

Or consider the testimony of Dr. Ed Jones, who worked as an abortionist at Planned Parenthood: “This can burn you out very, very quickly…not so much by the physical labor as the emotional part of what’s going on. When you do an ultrasound, particularly if you have children, and you see a fetus there, kicking, moving, living, doing things that your own child does, bringing it’s thumb to its mouth, and things like that—it’s difficult. Then, after the procedure, sometimes we have to actually look at the specimen, and you see arms and legs and things like that torn off…It does take an emotional toll.”

Dr. “G,” an abortionist, described his work this way: “This was a perfect little fetus inside, and now it no longer is. I try not to focus on that too much…it is upsetting, and it’s embarrassing as well. I always feel uncomfortable if other people are watching me do this. I don’t like to expose them to this, well, carnage….because all it does is upset them.”

Or abortion clinic nurse Sally Tisdale, who described the impact of her work in an essay titled “We Do Abortions Here”: “I have fetus dreams, we all do here: dreams of abortions one after the other; of buckets of blood splashed on the walls; trees full of crawling fetuses. I dreamed that two men grabbed me and began to drag me away, ‘Let’s do an abortion,’ they said with a sickening leer, and I began to scream, plunged into a vision of sucking, scraping pain, of being spread and torn by impartial instruments that do only what they are bidden.”

I could go on. There are hundreds of testimonies just like that, from the men and women who have witnessed abortion first-hand. Their recounting of what goes on within the abortion industry tells a story of demonic darkness, dead children, and desperate evil. 

None of this is beautiful. 

If it was possible to define the opposite of beauty, surely what those men and women describe must be close: The beautiful face of a perfect child, sliced cruelly from her skull. The beautiful fingers and toes of a tiny baby, torn free of his body. The beautiful eyes of an infant, jarred free from her head during the violent decapitation that killed her. 

Abortion is not beautiful, and the abortion industry is a hellhole where beauty goes to die. No, worse—it is where beauty is murdered.

Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In his latest episode, he interviews Scott Klusendorf about why he sees a fundamental flaw in the idea that locking down the country under the guise of preventing people from getting coronavirus.  

You can subscribe here and listen to the episode below: 

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.