As I write this, I don’t know the result of the Dobbs decision. I think I can guess how the Supreme Court is going to rule. We’ll just see if I’m right.
We all might know by the time you read this.
The first time I wrote anything public about abortion was in 2016. I don’t even think it was obvious that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination at that point. I’ve become a bit notorious for it now. I say things I think ought to be obvious, such as that keeping a corpse for decades without burial is wrong and that racism is wrong and that bullying is wrong, that stealing and lying about cadavers for a publicity stunt is wrong. And people get mad at me. All kinds of people get mad at me. Pro-choice people have harassed me in nasty ways, but most of the vitriol is from pro-lifers who want me to know I’m disgusting and a slut and a baby-killer. I’m used to it now.
I have learned that if I insist I don’t want to kill anyone, people will not believe me. So I’m not going to bother to explain or defend my position anymore. I don’t even call myself pro-life anymore because I have found the movement to be nothing but con artists and I don’t want to be associated with con artists. I would rather focus on saving lives and helping people than whatever it is they’re doing, as my Catholic faith demands of me and as people of any faith should.
I am just going to point out that we now know what I predicted in the first place: that abortion rates have stopped their decades-long decline and begun to rise since Trump took office in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, the Republican party had total control of the White House and Congress, and abortion rates went up. They went up in every state including the red ones. When the so-called pro-life movement gets everything it wants with a cherry on top, abortion rates go up.
I’d also like to point out the fact that, as I predicted, when women can’t get abortions in one state, they go to another, and the results can be chaos. Abortion doesn’t seem to be a thing that goes away when it’s illegal.
I want to remind you that lawmakers with no medical knowledge who have no idea what an ectopic pregnancy is, and not doctors, are going to decided what happens to a pregnant woman in an emergency now.
And I remind you that after decades of telling us they only wanted abortionists prosecuted and never women who obtain abortions, pro-lifers have already shifted the conversation. They’re talking about putting women in jail and in mental hospitals.
Is this really what you want?
Is it worth sacrificing what credibility you had, for monster of a president who couldn’t care less about babies?
Was it worth it to drive abortion rates up, and to murder other human beings as well, and to make other forms of killing more likely, slaughtering actual people born and unborn for the sake of a plan you thought might work?
Was it ever really about saving lives?
Was it really?
I don’t believe you anymore.
I’ll never let you gaslight me again.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Image via pixabay
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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