If there can be anything related to abortion that can be called a gift, it is the repugnant video made by Emily Letts of her own abortion.
Letts, a “patient advocate” at the Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey made a 3-minute video of her abortion in order to assuage the fear and guilt of mothers who choose to have the lives growing within them snuffed out.
What’s repugnant about this video are not the bloody remains of the baby that Emily and her medical accomplices destroyed. No, Emily chose not to show any evidence of the life she took.
The horror of the video is the glib, vacuous, narcissistic chatter from Emily and the sterile rote cooings of compassion that the nurse and doctor, who know they’re being filmed, direct toward Emily while they facilitate the killing of the least among us.
I guess we’re supposed to titter along with Emily’s Annie Hall-esque announcement that she’s pregnant, and smile contentedly along with Emily when she announces that the following day she’s having an abortion.
Emily tells us she’s “lucky” because she “feels completely comfortable with the decision” and that she’s “supported by everyone.” She was driven to film this act by her desire “to show women that there is such thing as a positive abortion story.”
When the “procedure” is over, Emily smiles and says, “Yeah, cool,” and her nurse tells her to “pass on” her story of how positive the experience was. The entire group — Emily, her doctor, and her nurses — came together to create a fiction, a story that ignores the central character and the crime at the center of the story.
The most shocking moment in the video comes six weeks after the killing when Emily shares more fully her philosophy of life — a philosophy in which guilt for taking the life of one’s own child does not exist:
I talk to women all the time who say, “Of course, everyone feels bad about this (abortion). Of course, everyone’s gonna feel guilty,” as if guilt’s a given how people should feel about this, that what they’re doing is wrong. But I don’t feel like a bad person. I don’t feel sad. I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby! I can make a life! I knew that what I was gonna do was right because it was right for me and no one else.
The fact that Emily’s moral universe is shaped by nothing outside her own self-serving desires should be troubling to any who seek to live in a decent world. The fact that after her abortion, Emily acknowledged and felt joy that she had created a new life should horrify all decent people. The fact that she could tacitly admit that she — as a mother — had ended the life that she had created and felt nothing but relief should horrify anyone who yet has a conscience to feel “bad” and “sad.”
Emily was lighthearted when announcing her pregnancy. Lighthearted when announcing her impending abortion. Relieved when her baby was dead. And deadly serious when announcing the absence of guilt. Yeah, it’s cool when conscience is dead.
What “patient advocate” Emily ignores as she lays on the abortuary table commenting on having “a lot of hands, a lot of supports” is that there were two patients involved, but only one had an advocate.
The other one who was there that day had no one to hold her little hand. No one to stroke her pale delicate arms. No one to speak soothing words of comfort. No one to tell her that everything was going to be okay. No one to tell her to breathe as her body was torn apart.
Don’t worry, you can watch the video. There’s no baby in it.
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