By Dave Andrusko
"The video opens with Emily explaining her feelings and justification for the abortion. Giggling, she says 'Yeah, I'm gonna be having an abortion tomorrow morning!' Emily's video includes (non-graphic) filming during the abortion. The experience was anomalous compared with the recorded testimonies of many post-abortive women. The doctor was extremely friendly, Emily was smiling the whole time, and two clinic workers were present on either side of Emily to hold her hands during her child's death."
Specifically, the Abortion Care Network sponsored a video contest–to "bust the stigma" associated with abortion—and Letts was one of those who contributed. I've been waiting for further, shall we say, explanation.
Leave it Tara Culp-Ressler to not only justify Letts' behavior, but (more helpfully) give us more context. (See "This Woman Filmed Her abortion to show other people it doesn't have to be scary.")
I learned that Letts had published on Cosmopolitan.com. Tomorrow I will offer my take on her post.
In a few words (according to Culp-Ressler), Letts (an "abortion counselor") first contemplated writing a blog to "help" women decide whether or not to "end a pregnancy." (Yah, sure.) So, in the Cosmo post,
"Letts explains that she decided to film her procedure after trying and failing to find a video of a surgical abortion online. There's at least one YouTube clip of a woman taking the abortion pill, which is the non-surgical option for ending an early pregnancy, but that's it. So Letts decided that she wanted to have a surgical procedure — the option that seems scarier to many women — to help educate people about what it's actually like.
"'We talk about abortion so much and yet no one really knows what it actually looks like,' Letts writes on Cosmo's site. 'A first trimester abortion takes three to five minutes. It is safer than giving birth. There is no cutting, and risk of infertility is less than one percent. Yet women come into the clinic all the time terrified that they are going to be cut open, convinced that they won't be able to have kids after the abortion.'"
Well, no wonder she giggled, right? Two quick thoughts, which I will expand on tomorrow.
First, the pain-free surgical abortion that Letts touts is simply not the experience of most women who have had abortions. And while chemical abortions may seem less "scary," that is only because women have not read the accounts of women who say they do not regret their abortions but tell you frankly that the pain was unbelievably intense–or know that women have died after taking this powerful two-drug combination.
Second, consider the (bitter) irony. Pro-abortionists insist that abortions are easy, safe, and virtually complication-free. And anyone who says otherwise is one of those hysterical pro-lifers making stuff up.
But what is counter-intuitive is to think that something (literally) this unnaturally would not have consequences, beyond a dead baby, that is. Why wouldn't you expect there to be damage to reproductive organs and thus an increase not only in lost subsequent pregnancies (future babies) but also more preterm babies with the associated problems that go with it?
As I say, more tomorrow. It's interesting, by the way, that the photo that accompanies Culp-Ressler's post is Letts at her finest. We don't see the photo taken from her video widely posted—and posted above.
Wonder why.
