For the 2020 March for Life, the organizers have decided to honor the suffragist movement and celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. The theme is “Life Empowers: Pro-Life is Pro-Woman.” It’s an attempt to change the messaging that often permeates the culture that being pro-life is somehow anti-women.

For years, Planned Parenthood and other abortion activists have successfully been able to frame their cause as one that supports equality and female empowerment by claiming that abortion remains a critical component of women’s health care. This false notion is wrong and based on the premise that the procedure itself is somehow a benefit to women. Sadly, that isn’t the case.

Women who have abortions are likely to experience “regret and guilt, distress and anxiety, and grief, loss, emptiness and suffering” shortly after an abortion. Some of the feelings are based on the gestational age of the child and the abortion procedure used. For example, some women consider a chemical abortion a “loss” while a surgical abortion is a “death.”

In the long-term, an abortion can continue to have an impact for years. Having an abortion is a stressful experience, and feelings of anxiety are known to increase marginally afterwards. About 13-41% of women who’ve had an abortion also experience some level of depression and a lower self-esteem. Substance abuse of alcohol and other illegal drugs were reported. Women who’ve had abortions are also more likely to experience violence at some point in their lives.

Most women report that the process itself is invasive. Definitely not as “safe” and “simple” as Planned Parenthood and other’s claim. These are not feelings that disappear over time. There are also many physical complications that can occur, like bleeding, infection, uterine rupture, cervix perforation and, in extreme cases, death.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, abortion businesses have been able to successfully manipulate the public into believing that these very real consequences are nonexistent, and that abortion is somehow health care.

The March for Life is attempting to change that narrative. “Life Empowers: Pro-Life is Pro-Woman” is about recognizing that not only is abortion damaging to women’s health care, but that throughout the world female babies are often the target of sex selective abortions.

In certain areas of the world, sex selective abortions are common, especially in countries where boys are the preferred for cultural reasons. One researcher, Amartya Sen, estimated in 1990 that 100 million girls are “missing from the from the global population as a consequence of neglect, infanticide, and inequalities of care.” By 2011, one researcher estimates that imbalance had reached 160 million.

Recently, Melinda Gates has announced a campaign to promote “equality” for women here in the United States since the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that wage equality in this country is 208 years away. It’s unclear how the WEF got to that ridiculous number, but this equality people are searching for will never happen if even the most vulnerable among us aren’t protected.

There is no equality if abortion remains legal, especially sex selective abortion. That’s why this year’s March for Life is so important. Being pro-life is being pro-women. Having the right to vote doesn’t mean anything, if potential women voters are aborted for simply being women. Equality begins in the womb, not in salary negotiations.

 

Photo from the Aleteia Image Department