The Bite of “Choice”

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

[This column is a continuation in our current series on abortion providers.]

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In my current series of columns, I’ve been examining the fact that the price to be paid for doing abortions is life as an abortionist. It is, in many ways, its own punishment, and the examples we have given of how it destroys the personality are only the tip of the iceberg.

 

Another dimension of this truth is how the stigma of being an abortionist is causing the abortion industry to collapse for lack of personnel. Here we find a beautiful irony, because “choice” has come back to bite the abortion industry. They have discovered the hard truth that if women can choose to have abortions, so doctors can choose not to perform them. There is an amazing disparity in the medical community between the number of those who will identify themselves as “pro-choice,” and the number of those who are willing to work in an abortion clinic. Abortionist Morris Wortman attested, “There is tremendous support in the medical community for a woman’s right to choose, as long as she doesn’t ‘choose me’ to perform her abortion” (Medical Tribune, March 6, 1997).

 

This has created nothing less than a crisis for the abortion business, and has caused many in it to openly express their fears that the pro-life movement will end abortion without even having to make it illegal. Abortion is quickly becoming the legal procedure that no doctor wants to do and fewer and fewer women want to undergo. Don’t take my word for it; read these quotes:

 

“When I look back on the [Roe v. Wade] decision, I thought these words had been written in granite. But I’ve learned it was not granite. It was more like sandstone. The immediate problem is, where will the doctors come from?” (Sarah Weddington, pro-abortion attorney who successfully argued Roe vs. Wade before the Supreme Court; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 15, 1998).

 

“That’s how the anti’s are going to win…by attrition, because fewer and fewer doctors will perform abortions” (Abortionist Herbert Hodes, Glamour, September 1991).

 

“Abortion opponents will achieve their goal without ever having to overturn Roe vs. Wade” (Kate Michelman, (former) Director, National Abortion Rights Action League, Dallas Morning News, October 4, 1997, commenting on the shortage of abortionists).

 

“We’ve seen a turn-off of physicians coming into this field” (Abortionist Ed Boaz, ABC World News Tonight, January 16, 1998).

 

“Having the right to abortion doesn’t mean a [expletive] thing if you can’t access it” (Barbara Ellis, abortion advocate, National Abortion Federation Annual meeting, San Francisco, March/April 1996).

 

So many pro-life activists have looked for visible results of their legislative and educational activity, and often don’t find as much as they would like. Yet these quotes prove that the abortion industry feels the weight of our success. The goal in war is not to destroy one’s enemy, but to destroy the enemy’s capacity for waging war. By educating the public, especially medical students, about how ugly life as an abortionist is, we continue to rob them of what they need to keep abortion going.

 

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