11/13/2012
"My first tipoff that something was wrong in the pro-choice movement was when I realized that there was a great fear of information....I found some images and descriptions of fetal development, and was amazed by how much I hadn't known. For all the time I'd spent talking about abortion rights, I'd never bothered to learn the details about what, exactly, happens within a woman's womb when she's pregnant, and no one had encouraged me to do so. I had never heard that fetuses have arms and legs and tastebuds at eight weeks gestation, or that they began practicing breathing at 11 weeks. I paused and thought about that for a long time.... The biggest thing I noticed, however, was that pro-life sites had this information in abundance. The pro-lifers encouraged women to educate themselves about the details of pregnancy, suggested that they view ultrasounds to know what was happening within their bodies, and offered resources to educate women about all aspects of the female reproductive system. On the pro-choice side, it was a totally different story.... To my concern and surprise, I could not find one shred of information about fetal development on any websites associated with the pro-choice movement. When I read their literature about the details of abortion procedures, they were full of insulting euphemisms. Even when describing second trimester abortions, they would use eerily vague terms talking about "emptying the uterus" of its "contents." I felt like I had been transported back to Victorian England, where women weren't supposed to be told hard facts, even about their own bodies, because they might get all flustered."
I was sitting on a bean bag in my dorm room when I got the call. It was a friend of mine -- let's…
