In August, readers saw the New York Times expend time, energy, and words to accomplish what can be described as little more than another long diatribe that misses the point. The piece was called The Dawn of the Post-Clinic Abortion. Times contributor Emily Bazelon traveled to Amsterdam seeking a story that began with abortion activist Rebecca Gomperts.
Gomperts started “Women on Waves,” a now-defunct organization that attempted to bring a Dutch “abortion ship” to the ports of countries that protect their citizens rather than allowing them and their preborn babies to die in abortions. Gomperts would take pregnant mothers seeking abortions aboard her ship and sail into international waters, dispense abortion-inducing drugs, and send them home to miscarry. There were allegedly “hundreds” of women in Ireland who wanted to come aboard Gomperts' ship to induce chemical abortions.
But the Netherlands halted her crusade when the country realized that Gomperts did not have a license to commit abortions in accord with Dutch law. One would think that obtaining an abortion license would have been ticked off of Gomperts' list first, prior to obtaining a ship, recruiting a crew and purportedly obtaining bevy of abortion pills — not to mention actually setting sail for Dublin. After all, Gomperts is a physician abortion activist; it's not as if she did not know the abortion law in her own country.
Two years later, Gomperts' insidious mission failed once again, when the Portuguese Minister of Defense ordered two warships to keep the crew and their threat to unborn Portuguese children out of national waters. Bazelon reports that no local boat could be found to “to ferry out the women who were waiting onshore.”
After the incident, a pregnant Gomperts proudly stated on Portuguese television that she had aborted one of her own children in the past, and that she was “very happy that I have the choice to continue my pregnancy how I want, and that I had the choice to end it when I needed it.”
Therein lies the principal misconception of Gomperts and her ilk: that women need abortion. Why have so-called “feminists” spent so much time marketing abortion as a necessity, and so little time and so few resources affirming pregnancy and motherhood? Why haven't these fauxminists funded maternity housing on college campuses, adoption awareness programs, and mentors for moms who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant? Why haven't they demanded better maternity benefits from all employers? Why is abortion, which is a distressing choice according to most abortion advocates, considered an acceptable solution to unplanned pregnancy at all?
Why so many women see pregnancy as a life-or-death, me-or-the-baby situation is clear: because societies have funneled so many resources into abortion on-demand, and embarrassingly few into maternal assistance endeavors that would shine hope onto crisis pregnancy situations. Adding insult to injury, these societies include “progressive” cultures where women are believed to be equal to men.
With her abortion ship mission thwarted, Gomperts undertook “Women on Web,” an organization bent on getting abortion pills into the hands of women who find themselves in unplanned pregnancy situations. Today, Women on Web partners with an Indian business man who exports abortion pills to the women who contact Gomperts. Mohan Kale, runs Kale Implex — a pharmaceutical company that exports mifepristone and misoprostol, which are the drugs used to intentional induce abortion.
But Indian drug exporters have been under international scrutiny, curtailing the reach of Kale Implex. In the US, they have been investigated for patent violations. More recently, an Indian pharmaceutical company was responsible for the tragic deaths of at least 13 Indian women who had been sterilized together; they were given antibiotics tainted with a compound used in rat poison.
Women on Web obtains 90 euros — over $110 US — from the large majority of the women who order their abortion pills through Gomperts. This money covers “staff salaries and overhead.” And we know the abortion industry is lucrative. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, for example, made over half a million dollars in the last reported fiscal year (and it would take over one thousand Planned Parenthood abortions to pay that salary).
Among abortion advocates, Gomperts is a heroine. She's connecting women who don't have easy access to abortion with ways to kill their children. Abortion advocates call this feminism. Real feminists call this failure. We recognize that Gomperts' undertakings represent a societal letdown to women as a whole. That anyone believes chemical abortions are the best we can offer to distressed, pregnant mothers bespeaks the need for our Pro-Life work more than ever.