A friend of ours was recently job hunting and came across an advertised opening at Planned Parenthood. Though she wasn't interested in the job there, she was interested in the terminology used in Planned Parenthood's self-description that follows:
Planned Parenthood offers high-quality health care, including birth control and family planning, gynecological care, STI/STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, and abortion services. Our providers prevent an estimated 617,000 unintended pregnancies annually, helping to ensure that everyone has the right to choose when or whether to have a child, and that every child is wanted and loved. We advocate for expanded access to these services, drawing on a base of 3.5 million activists and supporters. We also work with allies worldwide to ensure that all women and men have the right and the means to meet their sexual and reproductive health care needs.
Helping to ensure that "everyone" has the right to choose? What about the baby being aborted. Does she have a right to choose whether she will live, grow up and be able to make a million other choices, including about having children herself?
Ensuring that "every child is wanted and loved"? What about all the children whose lives are taken by Planned Parenthood's "abortion services"? Are they being wanted and loved as they are mercilessly torn apart in the womb?
I deal with this in my books Prolife Answers to Prochoice Arguments and Why Prolife? But here is my response to the motto of Planned Parenthood: "Every Child a Wanted Child":
There are unwanted pregnancies, but there is no such thing as an unwanted child. While certain people may not want them, not only does God want them, but other people desperately want them.
Nearly 1.3 million American families want to adopt, some so badly that the scarcity of adoptable babies is a source of major depression. There’s such a demand for babies that a black market has developed where babies are sold for as much as $50,000. Not just “normal” babies are wanted; many people request special-needs babies, including those with Down syndrome and spina bifida.
Many children who are at first unwanted by their mothers are very much wanted later in the pregnancy, and even more at birth. Unfortunately, many women who would have wanted the child by their sixth month of pregnancy get an abortion in their third month.
Furthermore, many children wanted at birth are not wanted when they are crying at 2:00 A.M. six weeks later. Shall whether or not the parents want the baby still determine whether she deserves to live? If that’s a legitimate standard before birth, why not after?
The problem of unwantedness is a good argument for wanting children. But it’s a poor argument for killing them.
One of the most misleading aspects of pro-choice argumentation is making it appear that abortion is in the best interests of the baby. This is so absurd as to be laughable, were it not so tragic. A little person is torn limb from limb, for her benefit? Similarly, slave owners argued that slavery was in the best interest of the Africans. (Who are we kidding?)
People say, “I can’t have this child because I can’t give it a good life.” And what is their solution to not being able to give him a good life? To take from her the only life she has.
So what about that wonderful Planned Parenthood slogan that looks so nice on a bumper sticker: "Every Child a Wanted Child"?
Unwanted describes not the child but an attitude of some adults toward the child. The real problem isn't unwanted children, but unwanting adults.
“Wanting” is simply one person’s subjective and changeable feeling toward another. The “unwanted” child is a real person regardless of anyone else’s feelings toward her. A woman’s worth was once judged by whether or not a man wanted her. A child’s worth is now judged by whether or not her mother wants her. Both of these are tragic injustices.
So Planned Parenthood’s slogan, “Every child a wanted child,” is something we should all agree with. Where we will disagree is in the proper way to finish the sentence. How do you think the sentence should be finished?
1) Every child a wanted child, so... let’s place children in homes where they are wanted, and let’s learn to want children more.
2) Every child a wanted child, so... let’s identify unwanted children before they’re born and kill them by abortion.
Everyone agrees that children should be wanted. The only question is this: Should we get rid of the unwanting or get rid of the children?
When it comes to the unborn, the abortion rights position is more accurately expressed in a different slogan, one that wouldn't look so good on a bumper-sticker:
“Every unwanted child a dead child.”
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
