Feminist Says Abortion is ‘Pro-Child’

Laura Hermer inhabits a strange universe, one in which establishing an absolute right to an abortion is somehow “a clear legal solution that should satisfy all sides” in the abortion debate. Worse, in her world, killing a child is “pro-child.” 

Hermer, a Minnesota law professor, wrote in MinnPost that:

Pro-life advocates want healthy pregnancies which give babies the best chance of a happy start. Pro-choice advocates do, too. It makes no sense to know that babies will be left to suffer in poverty or neglect without the support of programs for mothers and their infants.

Doom them! This side of the pro-abortion argument really hasn’t advanced since the days of Margaret Sanger. It’s still about eugenics, in this case a social eugenics.Imperfect family and social arrangements, just like imperfect genetic development, can and should be headed off with abortion. 

Hermer cited the Turnaway Study, “which compares long-term outcomes in families with babies born to women who were denied an abortion versus those who were able to obtain one.” It found “poor maternal bonding” financial hardship and other problems for unwanted babies. But, as LifeNews.com’s Micaiah Bilger pointed out, it also found that “96 percent of women who were denied abortions later no longer wished that they had had one.” 

That’s inconvenient, but Hermer doesn’t mention that part of the study. That would make her hurry to her real argument more complicated.

Only one person should have the power to make a decision about whether or not to keep a baby. That person will also be responsible to care for, love and raise the baby. This is the person who is pregnant. This is the decision of a competent adult, not an activist, court, religion, or government.

That, Hermer says, and a raft of government programs, is the best way to “ensure that babies have loving homes and do not suffer from undue emotional or economic deprivation.” She doesn’t mention adoption. It’s got to be all one thing or all another. A child is either “wanted” or he or she is better off dead. 

Someone who was really “pro-child” would find another way.