When the term “abortionist” comes up in conversation, does the word “hero” usually follow?
That’s the light in which the LA Times decided to tell Willie Parker’s story, in a piece about his acceptance of an award from a pro-choice women’s group.
The liberal media has embraced Parker’s story, especially since his memoir, Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice, came out earlier this spring. He has been interviewed on “The Daily Show,” featured in Rolling Stone magazine, and overall heralded by the liberal left as a Christian hero, mostly because he believes that pro-choice values do not contradict with Christian ethics.
The article, written by Robin Abcarian, pulls out the anecdote Parker tells about the Good Samaritan, quoting his memoir: “For the Samaritan, the person in need was a fallen traveler. For me, it was a pregnant woman.” Abcarian calls this sentiment an “epiphany” and finds that through Parker’s logic, the restriction of abortion is in fact “a profound injustice.”
She applies the same description to Joyce Schorr, founder of the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. The small group has focused on ensuring that women who can’t afford abortions are able to get them, through donations and a group of volunteers. In the same tone, this group decided to give Parker their “Person of the Year” award, a prestigious title coming from a group composed of 50 volunteers with no set location for their work.
Abcarian also decides that Schorr, influenced by what she calls “the underground railroad for women needing abortions in the years before the Supreme Court legalized abortion,” is a hero in the same way as Parker. While both individuals probably do belong in the same category, it's doubtful as to whether or not hero is the right description for them.
Abcarian does admit that there is in fact an abortion debate in this country, but for her, the decision remains unmovable. There is only one right, and that is the right to abortion. She writes, “The fundamental precept enshrined in Roe vs. Wade, that women have a fundamental right to control their own bodies, still stands.” However, she neglects to mention the precise wording of the ruling in Roe vs. Wade, which does not mention this right to control one’s own body, only the right to abortion as made legal through the loophole found in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
She ends her piece by calling Parker and Schorr “heroes,” and states that the “antiabortion mission is doomed to fail” because of their work. Their work, which heavily blurs the moral lines previously set by the pro-life movement, allows for some ambiguity in the pro-choice propaganda. In her eyes, more propaganda put out there by the pro-choice movement implies more likelihood of failure for the other side.
