Written By Marjorie Dannenfelser

Pro-abortion advocates are “shunning” the “pro-choice” label according to the New York Times.

Reporter Jackie Calmes’s piece, published on Tuesday, explains that the movement is shifting away from abortion policy, fought for with euphemisms like “choice,” to broader economic issues. It is a must read — but it’s what is not said that’s the real story.

For decades, the pro-abortion feminist movement has had a pure message: Abortion is a fundamental human right. Women can achieve neither liberation nor success nor happiness without unfettered abortion access. That message came to women at the most vulnerable times in their lives and, tragically, many bought the lie. Writing her concurrence in the 1989 Webster decision, Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued that, in fact, millions of women had “ordered their lives” around the availability of abortion. She was exactly right. Women did come to order their lives around it – only to find out it is not the fundamental liberating human right that was promised.

After decades of laser-like focus on this one, ultimate issue, abortion advocates suddenly say there is more to the story. Abortion is “complicated.” Young women don’t like to label themselves. There is room for other viewpoints. The economy! Don’t forget about the economy.

It is dishonest, cynical spin.

While the leaders of America’s No. 1 abortion business, Planned Parenthood, as well as NARAL, NOW, and EMILY’s List, now attempt to ignore what their movement was built upon, the women who bought the lie they made so appealing are left to suffer alone, and suffer the loss of their children. This “pro-whatever” movement does nothing for the women whose lives they helped destroy by selling the “quick and easy” fix.

For more than twenty years, for instance, Dr. Teresa Burke, the founder of Rachel’s Vineyard, has helped women to heal from their abortion. Many of these women experience what they call post-traumatic stress disorder while the pro-abortion movement denies their grief. It’s no big deal, they say.

In the last 41 years, the lie of Roe has become less and less popular, because people found it to be less and less true. There is a reason why there’s an “intensity gap” among young people on this issue. America’s youth have seen the ultrasound screen, they’ve seen their premature brothers and sisters nursed to health in the NICU. They have also seen the intense pain of their mothers, aunts, sisters, and friends after abortion. 

Instead of admitting the truth about the unborn child and the damage abortion inflicts on women, the pro-choice movement now pretends they’re about something totally different – several somethings different, in fact. This is a far cry from the “sacred ground” Nancy Pelosi stood on only last year. That ground is crumbling. 

You know you’re losing when you try to change the subject.

When asked about their failure to support a commonsense, compassionate limit on abortion after five months, vulnerable incumbent Senate Democrats are continuing this theme across the country. Kay Hagan and Mary Landrieu change the subject, Mark Pryor quite literally ran away to avoid answering.  

This is a defensive posture. Pro-whatever crowd, what are you for?