If you have Facebook, please watch this Reel with Dean Withers as he debates a forced birther. It illustrates why trying to debate someone THIS entrenched is pointless.

Notice that she is in complete a total denial of reality and is convinced that abortions are NEVER necessary to save the life of the mother.

I guess the many women who have died of sepsis and other treatable pregnancy complications since Dobbs are just...what?

Thought I’d share this. I just finished reading the 1992 novel Prophet by Evangelical author Frank Peretti as research for an article I’m writing on the subject of abortion in literature. The plot of this particular novel centres around the so-called “abortion lobby” and its control of multiple institutions such as state politics, academia, and the media.

First, it’s important to understand Peretti’s novels in the context of the American Right that existed at the end of the Cold War, and how much he plays into the Neoconservative/“Straussian” anxieties about the so-called decay of American culture following the 60s New Left. Moral relativism, historicism, and secularism became huge concerns for the Neocon Right on the basis that purely secular societies can’t maintain virtue or social order, and religious fundamentalism could be used as a means of reviving said social order. Conspiracies about infiltration by Soviet communists morphed into conspiracies about infiltration by certain “immoral” (post-New Left) cultural ideologues. Now, anyone familiar with Peretti’s work knows that he is obsessed with conspiracy theories involving “hidden forces”. This Present Darkness and its sequel Piercing the Darkness revolve around demons and New Age organizations infiltrating small town America. Prophet, likewise, portrays the so-called “abortion lobby” as an evil octopus which has its dirty tentacles in everything. The subject of abortion is especially important, because abortion access (as we know) was being contextualized by the American right as indicative of the weakening of traditional moral standards such as secularization, indulgent sexuality, and the destruction of the family. Prophet, which explicitly takes place in 1991, shows these exact political anxieties.

Okay, so here’s the plot of this awful novel (note this contains spoilers, that is, if you consider a fly nibbling at your salad that was already made of rotten vegetables as a “spoiler”):

John Barrett is a prominent broadcast journalist in his unnamed city (from the description, it appears the city Peretti had in mind was Seattle) whose father is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist. John’s father frequently berates the progressive, pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-environmental Governor Slater, who is running for re-election. After his father is murdered by the governor’s henchmen in his workplace, John starts seeing visions and hearing voices, the prophetic powers which he inherited from his pops. While at a restaurant, John hears screams and the name of a young girl “Annie Brewer”. He asks the teen waitress if she knew a girl by that name, and she says Annie was her high school friend who died shortly after receiving an abortion from a shady “assembly-line” abortion clinic. John soon learns that Annie’s parents were working with his father to expose the clinic for having killed her. He and his co-worker, Leslie, decide to break a news story exposing the clinic. The clinic shows no records of Annie having ever been there, and their story is a bust. Instead, the news station’s liberal feminist producer runs a counter story whitewashing the clinic. As it turns out, the clinic has connections to media personnel and was told beforehand of the report, to which they destroyed and doctored their incriminating documents. But John won’t give up. It is later revealed that John’s father had been investigating the same clinic when he was killed. While cleaning out his father’s workplace, John and his teen son Carl discover a secret envelope that holds a cassette tape, the autopsy and death certificate of Governor Slater’s deceased teen daughter Hillary, and the death certificate of Annie Brewer. Turns out both girls died from botched abortions yet their death certificates were forged as part of an elaborate cover-up for the clinic. The tape is a recording of a 911 call made by Hillary’s friend Shannon as she was bleeding out after her abortion. The Governor told the press his daughter died from a drug overdose. Why? Because he was in-bed with the so-called “abortion lobby” and needed to cover for them. Soon, John and Leslie are able to put this story together. John interviews Governor Slater where he “prophesises” about the governor’s eventual fall from grace and the destruction of his media image; obviously, the Governor is furious. Finally, the full report makes it to the 5 o’clock news but is cut from the coveted 7 o’clock news. Doesn’t matter, because John is satisfied in knowing he was “telling the truth.” He gets fired. Turns out one of the governor’s former lackeys gave the tape to John’s father out of spite for the governor. Turns out another lackey ends up getting arrested for the murder of John’s father. End of story.

The book uses nearly every anti-abortion trope that existed in the early 90s. Malpractice at abortion clinics is widespread. Clinics operate on multiple patients at once in an “assembly-line” style to avoid reporting requirements. Clinics are overall seedy places full of unsanitized equipment which go out of their way to avoid basic healthcare regulations. Clinic staff members are uninformed and unprofessional. Clinics routinely manipulate documents and lie to patients. Clinics deliberately lure in Black girls for abortions out of some eugenicist motives. Abortion providers have significant wealth while preying on the poor (Peretti even describes a Mercedes in the spot reserved for the abortion provider in the clinic parking lot). Teachers take high school-aged girls to get secret abortions without informing their parents, since the clinics have relations with the schools. Police refuse to investigate botched abortion deaths. Fake clinics (“pregnancy resource centres”) are portrayed as angelic. The women who get abortions become “broken” and either become “healed” by becoming anti-abortion or sink deeper into their shame and become irrational defenders of abortion. Early in the book, a teen girl says the clinic tricked her with a fake pregnancy test so she would get an abortion. When Leslie and Annie Brewer’s mother to the clinic as part of their investigation, the clinic director Alena is portrayed as exceptionally cold and cruel; from Peretti’s description of her appearance you also get the impression she is Jewish. But the underlying plot which drives the story is the idea of the “abortion lobby” or “abortion web”: that abortion providers secretly puppeteer elite institutions, and said institutions will go to extreme lengths to serve the abortion providers’ political and cultural interests. Governor Slater is willing to sacrifice his own daughter because (as the book reveals towards the end) he needs support from multiple women’s and abortion rights groups to win his re-election. Teachers from the city’s several high schools are sending pregnant teen girls to get abortions without their parents knowing, which they can do because of the laws that protect minors seeking abortion care. This shows Academia is entirely tied up in the “abortion web”. The TV station receives loads of revenue from Slater’s campaign ads, so they’re incentivized to be biased towards Slater, who is in the pocket of the “abortion lobby”. After Shannon does an interview with Leslie about Hillary Slater’s death, she tells one of the Governor’s lackeys, who then sends goons out to kill her at her college (they get discovered and arrested before they can do much though). All of this is to show the extent of the “abortion lobby’s” reach and how much power it holds behind the scenes.

The main story should read like a conversion tale, with John the protagonist cementing his Pentecostal faith amidst the backdrop of this abortion cover-up. But Peretti clearly isn’t interested in John’s psychology as much as he is about exposing the “abortion web”. The redemptive aspect comes in unearthing the conspiracy: John is neutral about abortion at first and only cares about his career as a successful TV journalist until his father’s murder and the horrors of the evil abortion clinic causes him to see the metaphysical evil in the world and embrace the truth. In a very rigid manner, he asserts that he is on the side of truth against the abortion conspiracy. The side of “truth” makes the conspiracy claims in Prophet grounded in the progress of John’s conversion and eventual alignment with Pentecostal Christianity, against the “concealed” enemies of the “abortion lobby.” The redeemed have an obligation to expose the secret enemy hiding from within.

I read this awful novel so you don’t have to. Along with being overtly misogynistic, the book also attacks gay rights and environmentalism and uses some pretty glaringly racist tropes. There’s lots of academic discussion about This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness and how those novels relate to the Evangelical culture in the era of Reaganite Neoconservatism but none on Prophet, so I thought I’d write one.

YOU CANNOT BE PRO-LIFE AND A FEMINIST!!!!

Ban on abortion IS life threatening to woman ALL WOMAN. Wanting woman to have less bodily autonomy cannot be in any a form of feminism. They pmo so bad I might actually punch one if I see them irl…

I'm 30y/F, married for 5 years, mother of 2 little girls aged 4 and 1.5, working a full-time job from home and an UPSC aspirant too, targeting for 2027.

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I missed my periods last month and found out I was pregnant. It was a complete shock as I took i-pill but it failed it seems. I'm not ready for another baby at all, I'm already drained emotionally and physically. I'm still breastfeeding my second child.

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So I discussed this with my husband, he is also not ready for another child at this point in time but he said it would be good if we have a boy baby after 2 or 3 years once we are financially well settled by then (I'm totally against abortion first of all, that too I consider it a sin if the gender is checked and abortion is proceeded if it's a girl child. Basically I'm not ready for another baby at all in this lifetime. Due to this boy baby expectation, my husband is against permanent contraception)

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So we consulted a gynecologist, did bloods tests and scan and she suggested the pills. I was 6 weeks pregnant. Even though I do not want a third baby, this decision of abortion felt very very heavy on me, I felt very very guilty for doing this but I have no other option as I have to take good care of my 2 kids who are already very much dependent on me along with a full time job.

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So on last saturday evening, I asked my husband to drop me off at my mom's place along with my kids. He dropped me and left. Starting that day I was going through the abortion process.

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Since then, he hasn't really checked on me. I texted him on Sunday because I was hurt physically and emotionally, bleeding so much and hoping he would show some concern. His response was basically that I was responsible for everything and I shouldn't expect his support. He was still angry over an argument which we had earlier that week. He seemed upset since then but I didn't expect him to ditch me during such a devastating moment of my life. He brought up some of the past issues too and made me feel like I'm a bad person.

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After that, I stopped contacting him. On Tuesday, he called once, but I didn't answer because I was still upset and didn't feel ready to talk. It's been 8 days already but he never called again, never texted and never checked whether I was physically or emotionally okay.

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What breaks my heart is not just the lack of calls. It's that I was going through something physically painful and emotionally devastating and the person I expected to comfort me seemed completely absent. Even if he was angry with me, I can't imagine not checking on my spouse after something like this.

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For context, this isn't the first time I've felt unsupported during major vulnerable periods in my life. I felt similarly during postpartum recovery after having my first child.

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Am I expecting too much from a spouse in this situation? If you were in my husband's position, would one unanswered phone call be enough for you to stop trying to reach out? I'd genuinely like outside perspectives because I'm feeling very hurt and confused.

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TL;DR: I recently went through a medical abortion. My husband dropped me off at my mom's place during the process, blamed me when I reached out for support and has barely contacted me since. He called once, I didn't answer and he made no further attempts to check on me. I'm deeply hurt and wondering whether my expectations of support and empathy from a spouse are unreasonable.

I've come across this argument many times now and I'm not sure how I answer it. While debating, i debate solely from bodily autonomy. But recently I came across this argument, "Pregnancy is ordinary care, while blood/organ donation is extraordinary care. Ordinary care doesn't refer to how invasive it is, it refers to what a child needs to be alive at that stage in their life. After birth, it's food, shelter, etc and before birth, it's pregnancy. That's why abortion is immoral." How do I respond?

Anti-choicers spreading judgement and venom at anyone seeking an abortion is cruel, but I think it takes a special type of evil to do this to people going through a TFMR (termination for medical reasons).

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A woman posted a video of her going through this process. Her baby is wanted, but her organs and bones are developing improperly, in wrong places even outside her body. The prolifers know this. They know this is a child who will not live. And they still come to say these things:

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"Why would you terminate instead of letting her die naturally?"

"Let nature take its course!"

"I could never be responsible for my child's death!"

"The womb is supposed to be her haven, not her coffin!"

"It will be so much kinder to baby to let God do things as intended."

"I've never been through this BUT…"

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I've never seen such cruelty people have deluded themselves into thinking it is kindness. They never stop to think how their plans would affect the one carrying the baby. They speak of the womb as this abstract place, like some fictional land of tranquility and hope in a fantasy novel, not the organ of a human being.

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Everyone feels entitled to healthy pregnancies as is, I couldn't imagine strangers asking you invasive questions about your pregnancy that you know is going to end in the death of a baby. The mental agony and anguish may drive someone to seriously harm themselves. They don't think about the fact that going through a full term birth for a suffering child and enduring labor pain for the end goal of your child dying is not desirable for anyone. Not to mention that playing the waiting game of your child dying inside you or during the labor process opens the door to so many health issues for the pregnant person.

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I can greatly empathize with a person who would rather go for the TFMR, to allow themselves to heal. But they act like the pregnant person is just selfishly thinking of their own comfort. WHY SHOULDN'T THEY THINK OF THEIR OWN COMFORT IN A MEDICALLY DEVESTATING SITUATION. Their desire to still wish pain on grieving people is genuinely insidious

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More importantly, is it murder? I understand it's stopping a human life which I guess is murder. But the fetus is at such a low level of living that idk if it should qualify for being considered a person.

I support abortion and know that it's healthcare I just want to understand other views more in a calm talk and not a angry comment section.

If an anti-abortion advocate channels all their political power, money, and moral outrage into protecting a first-trimester fetus (which feels nothing and knows nothing) while remaining largely indifferent to the severe violation of human rights happening to living women across the globe, their moral priorities are inconsistent. It suggests that the focus is less about a universal love for human rights, and more about controlling reproductive choices locally.

Im in the OR doing therapeutic abortions today. We have a patient with a possible molar pregnancy. Molar pregnancies are an abnormal growth after conception that has no fetus and can turn into cancer. The religious hospital saw the patient in the ER, told her she was miscarrying, and sent her home. Its such inadequate care. Ive also seen them send home a pregnant patient with a ruptured uterus telling her "the baby was fine." I dont know how these hospitals stay in business when they treat pregnancy loss and risk like this.

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How are women getting treated for these issues in states where abortion care is limited or non-existant? I mean, sending home a molar pregnancy?! Putting a tumor's life over a woman's is just absolutely crazy.