The source of the Emily
Letts abortion controversy is a 3 min You Tube video in which she states that
she is a patient advocate for a Cherry Hill NJ Women’s clinic and she comes up
pregnant herself and has to make a choice about what course of action to take.
She states prior to the abortion clinic scene that “she just wants to share her
story to show a positive abortion story.” She goes on to say that she’s “lucky”
because she has support and “feels” comfortable with her decision. So, she
makes the autonomous decision to casually terminate her pregnancy based on how
she “felt.” It is out of her emotions that she decides upon the life inside her
and becomes her own subjective authority concerning the issue life thus
objectifying that which would become a living viable person in nine months
given a healthy pregnancy. In our culture Individual autonomy is typically exalted
over and above social and corporate concerns for others. This individual
autonomy radically emphasizes personal freedom, and the ability of the
individual to live according to their own rules without any external or
objective reference points for ethics or morality. The starting point for it all with Ms. Letts
was her sexual behavior morally rooted in hedonism. She states in her interview
with the online version of Cosmopolitan magazine “I didn’t have any long-term
partners. I thought I was OK. But, you know, things happen. I wound up
pregnant." Yes, Ms. Letts, your right, things happen; things that could’ve
been prevented, like pregnancy which will interfere with your personal
happiness and pleasure, so now you exercise your “choice” that makes you the
decision maker of life and death based upon yourself as the sole autonomous
authority.
In the tail end of the
video, which was a month and half after her procedure, she goes on to explain,
or rather to rationalize, the consequence of guilt that logically flows from
the hard inescapable moral realities of having an abortion. She said that she
talks to women all the time and states “of course everyone’s going to feel bad
about this, of course everyone’s going to feel guilty as if…, it’s a given how
people should feel about this that what they’re doing is wrong. 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, [and] I knew what I was going to do was right
because it was right for me.” Ms. Lett’s response exemplifies the moral
relativism of our times in which the determining of right and wrong ultimately
rests with the individual as their own moral law maker and personal code of
life creator that denies transcendent objective moral truths.
An analysis of the above
reveals the inconsistencies of moral relativism. She states that “it’s a given
that people should feel guilty about this that what they’re doing is wrong”,
she acknowledges that abortion is wrong which is what produces the feelings of
guilt. But, if abortion is wrong then by what criteria is abortion wrong? I
would have to reason that the women she counsels about the “given” feelings of
guilt afterwards arises out of the fact they made the decision to abort only
after struggling with some external objective moral criteria i.e. the Bible,
faith tradition, the value of human life, that affirms and explicitly
states that to take any life is morally wrong, and lastly, that they were
inwardly convinced and believed that such was true. This is the reason for the
guilt and shame. Ms. Letts relativized her personal outcome with her statement
of “I knew what I was going to do was right because it was right for me.” The
question is on what basis was it right for her? And if it was right for her,
then why go through the trouble film her abortion to convince others that they
shouldn’t feel guilty?
The moral contradiction of
Emily’s view of her abortion is baffling. What is baffling is that she states “I
feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby; I can make a life”, but yet
aborts it. She feels in awe that she can make a baby and a life, but terminates
it. However, what is stranger is that she states that her abortion is like
giving birth. How could a process that is death dealing be described as life
giving? This is the absurdity that flows out of her line of reasoning. This
absurdity is rooted in the fact that we are in a time where meaning can be
subjectively attributed to something regardless of what the object or entity
really is. For example, the notion that just simply renaming something changes
the essence of what it really is. I can call my dog a cat, refer to it in
feline terms, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a dog and will
remain as such because of its nature, and won’t change because of new label.
This is what happens when up is called down, down up, right wrong, wrong right.
Sadly, there are many of those who live their lives within these systemic
contradictions, moral, and ethical incongruities every day, but expect coherence
from everybody else and the world in which they live. The heart of Ms. Emily’s
morally incoherent statement of being in awe of making baby and making a life
and then deciding to terminate that life is an issue of sovereignty.
Sovereignty is an inescapable part of reality. We’ll either be subject to a
higher power that is the source of objective morality and ethics, or rebel
against it. In rebelling against it, that sovereignty is assumed by us to become
Gods unto ourselves to decide right and wrong, good and evil, and ultimately
life and death. Ms. Emily’s “awe” of her life creating ability was really the
worship of her own ‘divinization’ as a goddess with the power to create and to
destroy.
Lastly, Ms. Emily’s abortion
experience in an upper middle class locale like Cherry Hill, NJ is vastly
different from the experiences that women of color and poor women would more
than likely experience. Her abortion was in what appeared to be a nice, neat, well
lit sterile room with an amicable doctor and staff tending to her procedure.
However what would Ms. Lett’s video say to the survivors of Kermit Gosnell who
were in most cases young, poor, minority and immigrant women who didn’t have the means
to terminate their pregnancies in a place like the Cherry Hill Women’s Clinic?
What would she say to Robyn Reid, Nicole Gaither, and the family of Karnamay
Monger who live with the horror of surviving the hands Gosnell whose clinic basically
had the same sanitary conditions as a slaughter house, and a staff that could’ve
been considered minions of death for their assistance with his horrific
actions? What would she say to those women who were dangerously overdosed with
drugs, VD infected due to unsterilized instruments, and had fetal remains left
inside of them that could’ve ended their lives? Yes, Dr. Gosnell was convicted
of killing live aborted full term babies; however, abortion’s denial of full personhood
and the intrinsic value of life to the most vulnerable among us, really amount
to him being convicted of not having a nice, neat, tidy clinic like the Cherry
Hill Women’s center. Ms. Lett’s public display of her abortion was not about
making abortion look not so bad and dispelling bad perceptions. It was really
about her looking to expiate her own guilt and the guilt of her clients for
their choice. As long as guilt is an issue with her clients, then so is the
question of what they’ve done being ultimately wrong. If it is wrong, then that
presupposes a moral law; a moral law ultimately presupposes a moral law giver.
This is the inescapable reality of humanity being the contingent creatures of a
sovereign creator who’s also the source of objective morality. The only way to
deny this is to assume an autonomous self sovereignty from which one creates
their moral law that is ultimately relative, and presents a life of systemic
moral and ethical inconsistencies.
TWB
video URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn-GL0ZD1Tg
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