3b. Abortions! Buy One, Get One Free!

Today’s post will contain homophobia, racism, and sexism expressed by the author of Accelerated Christian Education. This installment will be much tamer than previous posts, but heads up all the same.

Exhibit 101

Rebirth of Our Nation, page 84

Welcome back to Safe White Space!

In the last post, Women, amirite? Guys? Guys…?, I shared some examples of how Donald Howard injected sexism into both the educational text of the PACEs, and the comic strips that demonstrate various Christian character traits. Even a subject as tame as English was leveraged to advance extremely sexist and predatory narratives.

Today, we’re going to run through Donald Howard’s feelings about women’s rights. In doing so, we’ll knock down some lies and myths perpetuated by modern far-right losers about abortion and reproductive healthcare.

Considering Donald believed “human rights” to be a liberal “smokescreen” (Ex. 6, for example), it shouldn’t be surprising that he rejected the idea of women’s rights altogether:

Exhibit 102

The Sexual Revolution was a form of social idolatry that flew in the face of God’s ways. God’s commandments were intended to develop and value the family[…]

In the guise of granting “rights” (to gays, feminists, pro-choice, and Planned Parenthood advocates, and so forth), the idolatry was given pseudo credibility and legitimacy. In the name of “freedom,” “understanding,” “consciousness raising,” or “rights,” these individuals and organizations (with common purposes) attempted to tear down the very fiber of American culture and the first institution that God ordained: the family.

World Awakening, page 48

I really appreciate what he acknowledges here. That “the very fiber of American culture” is based on withholding ““rights”” from “gays, feminists, pro-choice, and Planned Parenthood advocates, and so forth.” Don’t gloss over that “and so forth.” There were three things Donald hated both equally, and more than anything else, and that’s gays, feminists, and racial minorities.

“and so forth” isn’t the camouflage Donald thought it was.

Donald made a habit of giving up the game:

Exhibit 103

In 1967 the “God is Dead” movement surfaced.

The National Organization of Women (NOW) was also formed at that turbulent time in U.S. history. NOW organized with some 300 members, mostly divorced women who carried their personal bitterness and failed idealism with them into action against public inequities:

THE FRUITS OF HUMANISM

[..]

It was not long before homosexual groups were demanding rights and status. And women seeking the “right” to abort pregnancies. Soon there were children’s “rights” supporters, drug-use advocates, and those who wanted the “right” to disobey draft laws or other disagreeable legislation.

The 1960’s and 1970’s were years when just about anyone could (and everyone did!) demand some kind of “rights.” Some were just and noble causes; others were frivolous. Some even set dangerous precedents.

Yet, a Biblical principle implies that we cannot have rights without equal levels or responsibility. Without the influence of Biblical morality, and traditional values, minority rights were demanded (and given) at the cost of majority rights.

Teen Turmoil, page 50

The “cost” to “majority rights” is the inability to subjugate the LGBT+ community, women, children, and racial minorities. That’s it. Also, those “just and noble causes” are never expounded upon in his manifestos. That’s just lip service.

Now let’s swat down some common anti-abortion lies and myths. Before we do, let me give you context for how extreme Donald’s stance was on abortion:

Exhibit 104

Today the American taxpayer is obligated to fund abortions (through Medicaid) for the following “government-approved” reasons:

1. If giving birth is believed to endanger the life of the pregnant woman.

2. If giving birth would, in the opinion of two medical doctors, cause the pregnant woman to suffer “severe and long-lasting physical health damage.”

3. If the pregnant woman had been the victim of rape or incest — providing the incident had been promptly reported to a law enforcement or a public health agency.

Have we any right or reason to expect God to continue blessing America?

Rebirth of Our Nation, page 83

Even the orange Donald in his recent presidential debate against Kamala Harrais said these stipulations were common sense. Not that I believe Trump actually believes that, but even he had the sense to say they were reasonable stipulations.

With that in mind, every time Donald rails against women who have had or will have abortions, remember that he wouldn’t give a fuck if every single one of them were victims of an incest-rape, and/or too young to safely give birth. In his mind, all abortion is murder, no matter what, and damn any woman who won’t risk her life to bear a man’s seed. In these following Exhibits, you can exchange the labels “women” and “mother(s)” to “victims of the most extreme kind,” because it wouldn’t matter to Donald if they were:

Exhibit 105

During 1974 there were 900,000 legal abortions reported and during 1975 over one million. In New York state alone from 1970-75 over 850,000 abortions were reported. Experts say that one in five New York women have had at least one legal abortion since 1970. Abortions in the U.S. alone represent more lives than have been lost on both sides of all the wars fought during this century. But, these murders were committed with the consent of the expectant mother…

To Save Our Nation, page 48

Let’s ignore Donald accusing millions of mothers of literal infanticide.

That line -

Abortions in the U.S. alone represent more lives than have been lost on both sides of all the wars fought during this century.

- is just an emotionally fueled, boldface lie.

Per the Johnston archive, abortions between 1970-75 in the US totaled ~3,942,000. In World War 2, the Soviets by themselves lost between 8,000,000 and 10,000,000 military combatants, and about 14,000,000 civilians[1]. Low balling the Soviet total to 20 million, that’s around 5 times the amount of total abortions. One nation in one single war disproves this emotional outburst.

For some mental masturbation, let’s get even more generous: Christian Life Resources and others put the total number of abortions between 1973 and 2020 at ~64 million. WW1 deaths range between 15,000,000-20,000,000 [2, 3], and WW2 deaths fall somewhere between 50,000,000 and 75,000,000 [4, 5]. Low balling both numbers, in just two wars, that’s 65,000,000 people - which puts us over the 64 million total legal abortions in the U.S.

Eat my ass.

In the Exhibit above, I quoted To Save a Nation (1976). Rebirth of Our Nation (1979) was pretty much a rewrite of former, with some edits and additions. Here he is, three years later, using the same language, but with a twist:

Exhibit 106

Abortions in the United States represent more lives than have ever been lost on both sides of all the wars fought during this century. For the total decade of the 1970’s, approximately 9 1/2 million unborn babies were legally murdered in the United States of America. That’s one and a half times the number of Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust of World War II. But those 9,504,000 murders were committed with the consent of the expectant mother…

Rebirth of Our Nation, page 82

That last sentence reads, “But those 9,504,000 murders were [worse than what the Nazis did to Jews].” Women exercising their right to reproductive healthcare bothered Donald more than systemically gassing the Jews. Even the underage girls who are victims of incest rape are equivalent to Nazi death camp guards. I swear, dudes opposed to women’s rights can’t help but to minimize the Holocaust in some way.

In this next Exhibit, he re-reiterates the ‘women seeking healthcare are literal Nazis’ theme:

Exhibit 107

Napoleon used this strategy as a means to subjugate a people.

Adolf Hitler also used the legal system to redefine “personhood.” Hitler altered the laws to say that Jews and other minorities were “non-persons,” and the German courts decreed it so. At the war crimes trials following World War II, Nazis argued that they broke no laws. They had slaughtered millions of Jews and others but had done so with the sanction of German law. In the same way the Supreme Court declared unborn children to be “non-persons.”

A monumental “holocaust” of over one million abortions are now performed every year. Since abortion was legalized, some 23 million lives have been ended by this cruel and immoral practice, sacrificed on the altar of complacency and Humanistic expediency.

Teen Turmoil, page 51

Sure, pal.

Moving on to Roe v. Wade, and Jane Roe myths specifically:

Exhibit 108

In 1973, Humanist Manifesto II was signed. […]

That same year (1973), a woman sued the state of Texas. “Jane Roe” said she had been raped, and she sought to terminate the resulting pregnancy by abortion.

The case, Roe vs. Wade, went all the way to the Supreme Court. The following statement is Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s majority ruling:

“A fetus is not a person under the Constitution and thus has no legal right to life.”

It means that the woman’s (“pro-choice”) decision to abort her unborn child is a “right” she may enjoy because under the law, the Constitution, the baby has no right to live.

So, in 1973, the Supreme Court decreed that the laws of all fifty states were wrong. It legalized abortion and neutralized the existing moral codes based upon Biblical principles which held abortion to be the same as murder.

Teen Turmoil, page 50, 51

I’m going to punt on the rape claim, because it comes back around later in greater detail. We’ll address it then.

First off, I only found reference to this quote -

“A fetus is not a person under the Constitution and thus has no legal right to life.”

in an Wisconsin Medical Journal on archive.org. One Robert F. Purtell is the only person I can find quoting Justice Blackmun this way. No one else. Despite using full “closed quotes,” it doesn’t appear that he’s quoting Justice Blackmun directly. It seems he’s summarizing this text from the Roe v. Wade case:

“All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”

That doesn’t say what either Purtell or Donald wanted it to say. Not even close.

To boot, the Primary Holding (Final Decision) on Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) is painstakingly clear that you cannot terminate a viable fetus:

A person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks after conception.

Next time someone (like the Tangerine Titler) claims that “post-birth abortions” are being performed, drop ‘em that direct link to the Supreme Court’s primary holding. It’s impossible to refute, and if they actually have evidence of post-birth abortions, they are legally obligated to report said evidence to the authorities, because that is called murder. The rest of this ruling repeatedly stresses that limitations to abortion access are based on the viability of the fetus.

Here we circle back to the false claim that:

…in 1973, the Supreme Court decreed that the laws of all fifty states were wrong.

This Planned Parenthood abortion timeline is really informative and I encourage anyone interested to look it over. For our purposes, I want to ping on two things. One, in 1966 “California amended its prohibition on abortion to allow hospital committees to approve requests for abortion” and then “Between 1967 and 1973, four states — Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington — repealed their abortion bans entirely, while 13 others enacted reforms that expanded exceptions. Instead of just allowing for abortion to save the patient’s life, they now allowed it in instances where a pregnancy was dangerous for the physical or mental health of a patient, fetal abnormalities, and when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.”

The Fed decided that the laws of 32 states were wrong, not 50. The country was already wising up to the common sense necessities of abortion access, and reproductive healthcare.

Let’s circle back to the claim that the Roe v. Wade decision was based on her false rape claim:

Exhibit 109

Incidentally, in 1988 “Jane Roe” admitted that she had lied about being raped. In reality she had become pregnant by an estranged lover, and she had invented the story about being raped. The historic court case which unleashed a holocaust of 23 million abortion deaths was based upon a hoax! […]

It is absolutely clear that a government’s responsibility, as commissioned by God, is to protect life. But the Court says the unborn has “no legal right to life.”

Teen Turmoil, page 52

Nope. For starters, recall the actual reasoning cited in the Primary Holding:

That does not say “because the plaintiff was raped.” Not even implicitly. To be very clear, Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey 1947-2017), did lie about being raped, but that did not play a role in the Scotus decision[6, 7, 8]. Per the AP: “she admits to fabricating the rape as she sought an abortion in 1969 because she believed it would help her get access to the procedure.” I feel like that is the only good reason to lie about being raped. She didn’t blame anyone specific, so it was a victimless crime.

Let’s hit one more common myth (one I heard from a family member not 2 months ago):

Exhibit 110

A new study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed women of 20 Western countries from 1982-86. Their research confirmed that the typical American woman is less likely to use contraceptives than European women.

Instead, American women tend to use abortion as birth control. As a result, one third of all American pregnancies end in abortions.

Teen Turmoil, page 51, 52

Of fucking course European women are more likely to use contraceptives, THEY AREN’T CONTROVERSIAL in the same way that they are in the U.S.

Further, many women who get abortions were actively using contraceptives of some kind. Per Donald’s own source, the Guttmacher institute: “In 2014, about half (51%) of abortion patients in the United States reported that they had used a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant, according to a new analysis by Guttmacher researcher Rachel Jones. This proportion represents a slight decrease from 54% of abortion patients in 2000, the last time these data were examined. The methods most commonly used by abortion patients in 2014 were condoms (24% of patients) and the pill (13%).”

These findings are corroborated multiple times over. Here’s one:

“MYTH: Women are using abortion as a method of birth control.

In fact, half of all women getting abortions report that contraception was used during the month they became pregnant. Some of these couples had used the method improperly; some had forgotten or neglected to use it on the particular occasion they conceived; and some had used a contraceptive that failed. No contraceptive method prevents pregnancy 100% of the time. If abortion were used as a primary method of birth control, a typical woman would have at least two or three pregnancies per year -- 30 or more during her lifetime.

In fact, most women who have abortions have had no previous abortions (52%) or only one previous abortion (26%). Considering that most women are fertile for over 30 years, and that birth control is not perfect, the likelihood of having one or two unintended pregnancies is very high.”

And here’s another:

“There is a great urge to blame women for their unwanted pregnancies, but in most cases, women are actively using birth control. It simply fails them… It’s worth nothing that every year approximately 1.3 million women have an abortion, 90% of which are within the first trimester. Their reasons are innumerable.”

Sure, back in the 1970s, more women needed abortions because birth control access was very minimal. Because of this relatively new accessibility to reproductive healthcare, the total number of legal abortions in the US are around their all-time low, despite the US population growth over the last 50 years. If you want less abortions, contraception and sex education are the answers. Unfortunately for everyone, Donald and his ilk are vehemently opposed to either of those solutions, so we’re stuck in this back and forth battle over reproductive rights with the intentionally obtuse of our time.

That’s it for today. Thank you all for reading!

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 18:6

These two Exhibits exemplify the type of mental acrobatics that appear in Donald’s manifestos, and the PACEs:

Exhibit 111

Rebirth of Our Nation, page 83

Exhibit 112

Teen Turmoil, page 53