Feminists think that telling abortion stories will help de-stigmatize abortion.
They believe that if enough women come out of the closet and announce they have had an abortion, it will influence people not to judge abortion and the women who've had them. After all, you wouldn't judge your mother, your sister, or your neighbour would you?
It hasn't worked in several decades, and it will not work.
However I-regret-my-abortion stories work extremely well. It has mainstreamed the belief that abortion causes psychological harm and hurts women.
Why is that?
First off, when a woman announces that she has had an abortion, she is announcing the she has killed her unborn child.
Feminists always seem to neglect that salient fact.
So any woman who announces that she has had an abortion in order to say what a good thing it is, is off to a bad start.
The second reason is that every abortion story is open to damaging criticism.
In the case of the Tweep featured on the Abortion Gang, she said that she was heavily into drugs and did not want to give birth to an unadoptable baby.
The obvious response is: why didn't you just kick the drugs, go into rehab and give birth to the baby? If abortion made you decide to kick the drugs, then pregnancy should have done the same thing.
You could go on ad infinitum:
If you were too poor to have a baby, why were you sleeping around?
If your boyfriend didn't want to support you, why didn't you just give the baby up for adoption?
What? You had an abortion because you don't like kids? How selfish. You could have given up that baby for adoption.
If you're too young to be a mother, you're too young to have sex.
In order for feminists to de-stigmatize abortion, they have to convince people that no killing is involved.
But of course there's killing. That much is evident.
That's why they can't de-stigmatize abortion. If abortion is the solution to a problem, the question becomes: why did you get yourself into that situation in the first place, or why didn't you choose another solution that didn't involve killing your unborn child.
Feminists don't think that way though. They operate in a type of Orwellian mental paradigm in which they either do not admit abortion kills a human being, or they treat it like it doesn't matter, and they expect others to think the same way.
The problem with promoters of abortion is that every negative abortion story detracts from what they're trying to do.
Whereas positive abortion stories do not detract from the negative story.
When you are trying to say that something is good, every fault blemishes it. The more blemishes there are, the more people do not trust the narrative that it's good for you.
Whereas with negative stories, it only takes a dissatisfied minority to cast serious aspersions. So for instance, if only ten per cent of users of product X says it's a really sucky product, even if the other 90 per cent say it's fine, you're going to think twice about buying product X because it provokes such a bad backlash. Your sense of trust towards that product is diminished.
If abortion is supposed to be so good, and such a wonderful solution for women, then practically no one would state what an awful experience it is. They wouldn't attend Rachel Vineyard's retreats or similar events.
Now the women who talk about being negatively affected by abortion did things that were open to criticism. However, the difference is that these women are probably inclined to agree with their critics. So it's hard for someone to object you should have kept your legs closed, you should have put it up for adoption, you should have quit drugs, because the narratives tend to confirm that worldview.
So it makes their narratives somewhat irreproachable.
The only serious objection that I have seen some feminists lob at women who regret their abortions is that if they were really sincere in their regret, they would give up everything that they were able to do because of their abortion. So, for instance, if you earned a college degree due to having an abortion, you should renounce your college degree. This suggestion is meant to cast a suspicion of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is one of the easiest accusations to make, because it's based on reading people's intentions and motives and no one can genuinely disprove hypocrisy. That's why it's such a self-serving accusation. You can make yourself believe one is not genuine even though they were. Or vice-versa.
While casting aspersions of hypocrisy on one woman might work, it's difficult to accuse dozens, hundreds, thousands or even millions of women of that same fault. It's a bit of a stretch of the imagination to think that ALL these women who admit to killing their unborn children are insincere.
It's also obviously politically motivated.
I don't expect feminists to understand this. I only write about the flaws in their strategy when I am certain they won't take my advice. They're so sure of themselves, they will continue to do so.
