The Eighth Commandment forbids lying, but in recent years that has not always been practiced by those who speak about the controversial matter of legalized abortion.
In recent years, Planned Parenthood has asserted that the American public is “solidly pro-choice.” This is a lie. Most people who speak about abortion are deeply conflicted about this issue and just recently a Gallup Poll reported that 47 percent of Americans interviewed affirmed that they want more restrictions on abortion. Young people especially are rejecting the idea that what is aborted is simply a mass of protoplasm.
Modern ultrasound evidence easily contradicts that false assertion. They know that a beating heart is silenced in every abortion. Partial birth abortion is the straw that broke the back of Planned Parenthood as Americans are now aware of Dr. Tiller of Kansas, who performed a multitude of late-term abortions.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former practitioner of abortion and co-founder of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) in his later years quit performing abortions. He had supervised over 60,000 abortions when his conscience finally gave in. He admitted that he was the originator of the lie of “back alley abortions.”
Dr. Nathanson was once asked where did NARAL get the figure of “10,000 back alley abortions” performed each year before Roe v. Wade became law. He responded, “I gave it to them. I made it up for the cause.” The truth is that, in 1972, nobody knows how many illegal abortions were performed. We do know that 39 deaths were reported as a result of abortion in 1972. Today, with what are called “safe and legal abortion,” we don’t even have a statistic for death after abortion. In 1986, the Centers for Disease Control stopped counting. They said that it was “too difficult and confusing to get the statistics.” I suspect that it was also too embarrassing to announce the results to Americans. Nobody knows how many American women are dying after abortion today but I suspect that the cessation of statistics tells us a lot. Another lie we have come to accept is that Roe v. Wade has settled the law concerning abortion. It is far from settled. Roe v. Wade allowed abortion throughout the first trimester of a baby’s life.
Attorney Sarah Weddington represented Norma McCovey in this case before the Supreme Court in 1973. Norma had lied to her lawyer in saying that she had sought an abortion because of having been raped. The fact is that Ms. Weddington herself had recently had an abortion in Mexico. She lied to Ms. McCovey that she didn’t know where she might go and later lied to the court that Ms. McCovey had sought out many places to have it performed. Roe v. Wade is thus based upon many lies. McCovey never did have an abortion.
Doe v. Bolton is a second case before the court that was based upon lies. This case extended the right to abortion from the first trimester to the point of delivery. Sandra Cano, “Doe,” didn’t want an abortion at all. She had come to see her lawyer about a divorce. She never had an abortion nor sought one. Her ACLU lawyer, Margery Fitz Hayes, saw an opportunity to advance the cause of abortion so, without telling her client, Ms. Cano, she proceeded to push this case all the way to the Supreme Court. Sandra Cano never knew this was even happening. The case came up with no evidence — unheard of at the Supreme Court. There was presented an affidavit that said that Sandra Cano asserted that she would “go crazy” if she had to have another baby.
The truth is that Sandra was pregnant and wanted her baby. She had two babies who were at that time in state care and she wanted them back. She loved babies and wanted to have them. Her lawyer lied and said that Sandra wanted to be sterilized. More lies. Both McCovey and Cano subsequently became active pro-life spokespersons. They attempted to set the record straight and to dispel the lies surrounding “Roe v. Wade.”
There are additional lies about a woman having the right to determine what we do with “her own body.” Our rights are not unlimited and the unborn is never a “part” of a woman’s body. Fifty percent of the time the baby is not even the same sex as is she and 100 percent of the time the child possesses different DNA from the mother. Our choices are not unlimited and the choice to have a child can and should be made long before conception.
Seldom is the subject of such complicated surgery as abortion so poorly uninformed as in the case of abortion. In recent years, 90 percent of women who came for an abortion have walked out without doing so once they saw an ultrasound of their baby. Planned Parenthood has made millions off abortion services since 1973 when it became legal. They have much to lose even when abortion becomes, as some call for it to be, “safe and rare.” Lies are no foundation for public policy. Perhaps, a little truth about abortion and its consequences — physical, social and moral — will set us free from this cancer on the soul of our nation. Let us tell the truth about abortion. God always gets it right!
John J. Kwiatek
Beverly