Lena Dunham arrives on the red carpet for the 65th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California, on September 22, 2013. AFP PHOTO / Robyn Beck (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Once upon a time in the debate around abortion, pro-choice activists as they liked to call themselves always stressed that having an abortion wasn’t a pleasant experience for women and woman preferred not having the need to get one. It still caused trauma for women, but that it was still important for abortion to be legal. That façade has now been completely removed with abortion now being viewed as a wonderful female experience.

This was no better demonstrated by celebrity feminist Lena Dunham who on her podcast ‘Woman of the Hour’ stated “Now I can say that I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had’’. Dunham is one of the celebrities we are all told by the media and the critics we must love and her television show Girls is one we must all watch and enjoy.

This is not the first time Dunham has attracted controversy in her career. In her book Not That Kind of Girl she claimed she was raped in College by some Republican guy. Oberlin College which she attended could not find a student which matched Dunham’s description nor could any other media outlet. In this book she also flippantly discussed how she sexually touched her one year old sister while she was a child.

Quite rightly her desire to have an abortion was met with outrage and she was forced into somewhat a retraction stating ‘my words were spoken from a sort of “delusional girl” persona I often inhabit’ whatever that means. Even pro-choice advocates were not impressed with the Daily Beast’s Erin Gloria Ryan stating ‘What we don’t need are actresses with messiah complexes issuing ignorant and irresponsible comments about wishing they’d had one of their own’.

But sadly Dunham is not the only abortion advocate who seeks to glamorize woman and doctors killing babies, in fact there is a movement for women to gloat about it. The first time this movement emerged was when the United States largest abortion facilitator Planned Parenthood launched an advertising campaign in 2012 with accompanying merchandise with the slogan ‘I had an abortion’. One of the faces of this campaign was feminist Gloria Steinem who smiled while wearing the shirt.

This movement came to Australia in the form of a twitter hashtag #shoutyourabortion and was promoted by feminist and proud man hater Clementine Ford, writing that woman should reveal and feel happy about having an abortion because it is just part of female reproductive health. Feminist commentator Jane Caro in echoing the shout your abortion movement believes the pro-life movement is part of some grand conspiracy to control women. You will notice in this movement there is absolutely no mention of the fact that abortion involves the killing of a baby, at most these advocates describe babies using the term ‘clump of cells’. Shout your abortion almost comes across as a chilling message of ‘I killed my baby and I liked it’.

Redefining the meaning of abortion to a form of female empowerment is not confined to only feminists. Even right wing commentators have embarrassed this point of view including Brendan O’Neill who glowing stated that abortions are acts ‘by individual women with individual beliefs and feelings to shape their destinies in a way they think will be best for them. I don’t see carelessness for life; on the contrary, I see human life in action, in all its decision-making glory’.

In fact even advocating for women to keep their baby is frowned upon as infringing on women’s choice. Apparently you are allowed to encourage and pressure a woman into having an abortion but not the other way around. This is why we have seen in Victoria and Tasmania exclusion zones being erected outside abortion clinics to prevent pro-life people handing out information to woman asking them to think of alternatives and offering support to woman who really don’t want to go through the procedure.

Advocating for alternatives to abortion and highlighting the harms it causes woman apparently should disqualify you from being a politician. We saw this recently with a hit piece on pro-life Liberal Party preselection candidate Stephanie Ross with people commenting that her views were too extreme even in a conservative party.

We have seen a culture of death emerge since abortion was first legalized in Australia and the United States by rulings in various courts (the people did not get a say). The slogan was once safe, legal and rare, now it is actively encouraged, embraced and now celebrated. These are dark times for those who care about protecting the unborn and reducing the hundreds of thousands of abortions that occur in the west every year.

But we should not be beaten into submission by the pro-death crown we must continue to stand up for life, offer support and alternatives to woman who are being pressured into abortion and create a culture of life and one that views children as a blessing.

Author Details
Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.
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Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.