2009/04/01: I See Your True Colors!
In 1986, Cyndi Lauper released the song "True Colors." For some readers, 1986 is probably like a million years ago, musicologically speaking. Not being much of a Cyndi Lauper fan, the tune is actually stuck in my head because of Kodak's "Show Your True Colors" campaign. In any event - Cyndi got this one right!
The pro-choice camp has long talked about abortion as an unfortunate necessity, the least of a plethora of horrible evils, a kind of worst case alternative just short of murder or suicide through twisted coat hangers, or shadowy meetings with back-room surgical hacks. As the saying used to go: let's keep abortions "safe, legal, and rare."
But like water colors on thin paper, the true colors do eventually leak through. Over a decade ago, in 1996, an Episcopal priestess by the name of Katherine Ragsdale wrote in a speech given before the Mars Hill Forum:
"So, the first question – addressed to us all – is: what are we doing to reduce the need for abortions? None of us, regardless of our position on choice, approves of a world where pregnant women are faced with despair and see no viable options but to abort. But what are we doing, as God’s agents in the world, to change that situation?"
She continues later on in that same speech: "… we cannot eliminate the need for abortion. But we could dramatically reduce it." She sounds earnest and compassionate, don't you think?
Well, that was then. This is now.
In July of 2007, the same Rev. Ms. Ragsdale, in an article entitled "Our Work Is Not Done"1 wrote about the same terrible risks that have always awaited poor, undereducated, helpless women who are unable to obtain safe and legal abortions; oppression, death, and the like. She lists the three traditionally "good" reasons to get an abortion (rape, fetal anomalies, poverty), and in such cases, she says, abortion is no tragedy, but a blessing.
But she goes one step further and writes:
"And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight – only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing."
Even that's not enough. Not only must abortion be kept safe, legal, and – not rare? – she goes on the attack with medical health providers who have a different mind on this topic:
"If you’re not prepared to provide the full range of reproductive health care (or prescriptions) to any woman who needs it then don’t go into obstetrics and gynecology, or internal or emergency medicine, or pharmacology. Choose another field! We’ll respect your consciences when you begin to take responsibility for them." (emphasis hers)
A respected Christian apologist once said in my hearing that a plea for tolerance is often a prelude to tyranny. Within a period of about 10 years, Ragsdale's comments move from "safe, legal, rare" to "obey or leave." In The Merchant Of Venice, Shakespeare puts these words in the mouth of Launcelot: "murder cannot be hid long … but at the length truth will out." (Act II, Scene 2) As they like to say these days: "duuh, yuh think?"2
- 1. The link to Ragsdale's essay "Our Work Is Not Done" had been to her blog page, but that page was taken down within 24 hours after I wrote this essay on 4/1/2009. The link to NARAL-Texas's web site has also been deleted (2010-07-28). See the World Magazine article.
- 2. See a reference Dr. Ragsdale's appointment as the new president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge MA at VirtueOnline here and here. Since she is "openly gay," - by which I suppose the writer means that she is a homosexual - her appointment is even more of a coup for EDS, enabling them to show exactly how progressive they are.
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