As Christian parents, if we aren’t willing and able to train up our children, the leftist culture of death is ready and eager to take our place.
This was one of the reasons Elizabeth Johntston, the Activist Mommy, fought so hard against the magazine Teen Vogue when it was still in print and publishing such disgusting articles for young girls as how to have anal sex or the best vibrators to purchase.
While the print magazine was pulled from the shelves after our national campaign against its perversion, the website still provides young girls with all manner of disgusting advice about “sexual health and identity,” something no child has any place hearing about from anyone but their parents.
In a recent article for TeenVogue.com’s “Down to Find Out” column, in which author Nona Willis Aronowitz “addresses your biggest questions about sex, dating, relationships, and all the gray areas in between,” young readers got a practical how-to guide on something truly horrifying.
This is an article on how to get an abortion without your parents finding out.
Unborn children have no rights, but teenage children should have all rights to bodily autonomy, including consent to dangerous, irreversible procedures like abortion without their parents’ involvement?
In a chilling, “Dear Abby”-reminiscent Q&A, Aronowitz answers the following reader question:
I’m 16, I’m pregnant, and I don’t want to be. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to get an abortion without my parents’ permission, but I’m really scared to tell them because they are both against abortion. What should I do?
First of all, our reaction to this question should be nothing less than utter heartbreak. This should be a major wake-up call to each of us.
This girl’s background isn’t thoroughly explained, but we do know that both of her parents hold strong convictions against taking the lives of innocent children. How is it that even though her parents believe abortion is wrong, those beliefs have not been imparted to her. This should be a sobering reminder not to let the world’s culture raise your children. No doubt this young girl’s world, between school and television and smut like Teen Vogue, is influencing her views on abortion. After all, it was Teen Vogue that she took her troubles too.
In the introduction to her response, Aronowitz recalls an incident in which she, as a teen herself, was faced with the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy after having unprotected sex with her boyfriend. She recounts the fear she felt, even though her own mother was unabashedly pro-choice and eventually helped her procure a prescription for the morning-after pill.
But if teenage me had a hard time broaching the subject of a hypothetical pregnancy with my pro-choice parents, I can only imagine how overwhelming it might feel to announce an actual pregnancy, much less a desire to get an abortion — in any circumstance, really, but especially to parents who are against it, and especially during a time in American history when the bodily autonomy of people with uteruses is under serious threat.
(Note the hyper-politically correct language Aronowitz uses, “people with uteruses,” so as not to offend transgender “women” who end up seeking abortion. Ugh.)
Aronowitz continues:
First of all, I’m here to tell you that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Accidents can happen even to the most careful among us. And it’s only logical that if teens are mature enough to become parents, they are mature enough to decide whether or not they want to give birth. Having access to abortion should be your right, regardless of your parents’ beliefs.
Now, this girl’s pregnancy, even under the worst of circumstances, is the creation of a precious life forged by the very hands of God. That is nothing to be ashamed of, and one would hope that her pro-life parents would tell her exactly that if given the opportunity.
Next, Aronowitz gives the girl a little lesson on case law when it comes to state laws regarding abortion without parental consent, explaining that “21 states require that at least one parent provide consent for an abortion if the patient is younger than 18 years old, 11 states require notification of at least one parent, and 5 states require both consent and notification.”
As far as “logistics,” Aronowitz explains that the girl’s first step is knowing her state’s rules when it comes to parental consent. However, Aronowitz slyly notes that there are ways to “sidestep those rules depending on what state you’re in.”
Later in the article, she provides a work-around in case the child lives in a parental consent state but fears that her parents may harm her or kick her out:
…There is a legal option in 36 states that would let you get an abortion without parental approval called a judicial bypass procedure — an infantilizing holdup to which nobody should have to resort. The process for a judicial bypass is different in every state, but in each case that it’s an option, it involves a minor testifying before a judge and receiving court approval to access abortion care without telling their parents. If you live in a state with consent or notification laws, it’s likely that a clinic can help guide you through this process. There are also organizations in particularly obstructionist states that offer more resources, like Jane’s Due Process in Texas.
Judicial bypasses take time — and abortions get more expensive, more complicated, and harder to access the later they happen — so the sooner you can start this process, the better. And regardless of whether your state requires a bypass, you can contact your local abortion fund if you need help paying for it on your own.
Stopping just shy of providing a link to Planned Parenthood’s contact information, Aronowitz states that “If you live in one of the handful of states in which a minor can get an abortion without parental involvement — and if you don’t want to tell your parents — you’re all set.”
And, in her obligatory explanation of how the girl can “do some soul-searching” and talk to her parents about her desire to kill her child, Aronowitz all but says, well, there’s always the chance that your parents are one of the many pro-life hypocrites who are secretly pro-abortion, or can be turned:
One thing I’ve learned while researching and reporting on these issues is that supposedly anti-abortion Americans often get abortions. They often help their children procure abortions. You know those activists who stand outside clinics holding signs adorned with Bible verses and pictures of fetuses? Even they sometimes get abortions. Dr. Yashica Robinson, a board member with Physicians for Reproductive Health and the medical director at Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives — in a state that just passed a near-total abortion ban, even in the case of rape or incest — says she has performed the procedure on some of the very people who protest abortions. “People don’t really know what they think about abortion until they’re in the position themselves,” she explained to me at a recent roundtable of abortion providers. She’s born witness to staunchly anti-abortion patients who tell her through tears, “I will never judge another woman again.”
To be completely fair, this argument certainly favors Aronowitz. Hypocrisy in the pro-life movement is rampant.
The answer to that, however, isn’t to lay down our arms and embrace abortion for our own personal convenience. The answer is to learn why we believe what we believe, to cement our convictions with science and, above all, faith.
If every supposed pro-life advocate had such a clear understanding of the issue and convictions built on a firm foundation, Aronowitz wouldn’t have a leg to stand on with this point. It is to our shame that she does.
Please be in prayer for the girl who wrote this upsetting letter. It is truly tragic that she believes some columnist for a children’s sex manual could provide her better counsel and support than her own parents.
Build up and nurture your relationships with your own children. Despite our best intentions in parenting, the day may come when our sons or daughters come to us with the news of an unplanned pregnancy. If it does, we must do as God commands and love them, guide them, and care for them and their precious child.
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