Columnist Tanya Gold recently lambasted a young writer who criticized proposed legislation that would have allowed abortion on demand for any reason up until birth in the U.K. In her op-ed Mercy Muroki described her experience with unplanned pregnancy in her teens and her decision not to abort. Tanya responded with her own story, insisting that for her, anything other than abortion would have been “impossible.” Chillingly, Tanya acknowledges that her abortion killed not a “clump of cells” but her baby. She writes,
How many women, do you think, walk into an abortion clinic not knowing what they are doing, and why? It’s not really a baby, say some pro-choice activists. It’s an, er, embryo. Of course, it’s a baby, and those having to make the decision know that better than anyone. I know that from my own experience. I don’t need people to tell me what I have done. It is always with me.
Tanya knows that her abortion took the life of her child. The abortion industry’s lies could not conceal that fact. In the aftermath, she is parroting the abortion industry’s talking points even as she struggles to live with what she claims was a choice she “had to make.”
“When I was 22, I had an abortion,” explains Tanya. “I was very sick, with alcoholism, and I didn’t know who the father was. I had no job, no money and no home of my own.” Reading those words, my computer screen blurred in front of me as my eyes filled with tears as I thought of how my sister’s birth mom was in almost the exact same situation when she found out she was pregnant. Battling mental illness and addiction, unsure of who the father was, aware that the child she was caring would be born with disabilities, and knowing that she would not be able to raise her child, she chose life. I am forever grateful for that she did and I cannot read Tanya’s insistence that her abortion was “necessary” without thinking of how different my life would have been if my sister was not part of it.
The abortion industry would have you believe that a person’s value is determined by their situation and that the right to life can be eclipsed by someone else’s “choice.” No child deserves to be killed simply because they might face poverty or disability or spend time in the foster care system. No child deserves to die because his or her parents are facing difficulties. There are no circumstances that can make a person less valuable or worthy of life, or that make it any less of an injustice when a child is killed in the womb.
Abortion activists often point to the “hard cases” as “proof” that abortion can be “compassionate” or “necessary.” In doing so, the abortion industry tells a hopeless story of a world people are unable to escape or overcome whatever challenges they might be facing, where people’s life circumstances can never improve, and where no one is ever offered compassionate help and support.
Yes, my sister had a difficult start in life, but her story doesn’t end there. She is part of a family where she is loved and valued, and I have seen the ways that she has touched the lives of countless people.
Women do not need abortion and they deserve far better than what the abortion industry offers. By falsely pitting care for women against care for their babies and insisting that we can only choose one, the abortion industry fails to offer any real help to anyone. Instead, the abortion industry enables coercion and abuse, lies to women, and dismisses the reality of abortion regret. By contrast, the pro-life movement offers true compassion and support to women and their families and equipping women with the resources they need.
Tanya’s story is heartbreaking because it didn’t have to be that way. In her desperation, she accepted the abortion industry’s lies. Convinced that there was no hope, she agreed to become an accomplice to the murder of her own child. Making things even worse, now she has turned around and is telling other women that this choice was necessary. Tanya claims to be a champion of choice, but her insistence that abortion was her only option feeds into the abortion industry’s fearmongering narrative and puts pressure on women in similar situations to abort their babies. This is anything but empowerment.
Tanya Gold insists that choosing life would have been “impossible,” but my sister’s life is evidence to the contrary. A woman in nearly the exact same position chose life, and my sister is alive today as a result. Abortion is a profound injustice. It takes the lives of innocent children, it harms women, and it robs the world of people who would have been someone’s sibling, neighbor, or friend. My heart breaks thinking of who Tanya’s baby might have been.
