by Kathleen M. Gallagher
Teen Vogue is a magazine for teen and pre-teen girls that focuses on fashion, makeup, shopping and pop culture. Its Facebook page has been “liked” by almost six million people, undoubtedly most of them teenagers.
The online magazine currently contains a slide show titled “What to Get a Friend Post-Abortion.” It’s essentially a top 10 list of best gifts to give a friend after she’s had an abortion.
It details the best movie to stream to help with the cramps, the newest underwear to help soak up the blood, and an “angry uterus” heating pad to ease the pain. (I am not making this up.)
It suggests hobbies to keep your friend’s mind occupied: a sign-up sheet to become an abortion clinic escort, a “we won’t go back” needlepoint project, and a Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg coloring book. (Really.)
It suggests attire to empower your bestie, including a “girl power” cap and an “F-U” piece of jewelry, proceeds from which go to Planned Parenthood, naturally. And it rounds the list off with a book of poetry and a box of chocolates.
The piece is so offensive and insensitive that it’s hard to put into words. It is blatant in its transparent attempt to sell abortion to young people, to market it as a mainstream “good,” and to treat it as casually as a manicure. In fact, it’s downright celebratory over abortion, ensuring readers who abort that they are smart, strong, powerful and resilient change-makers.
Teen Vogue advises girls that if your BFF chooses the abortion pill, she’ll need a heating pad because the cramps can be bad. The writer describes the cramps as feeling “like two throbbing hot balls of lead are trying to escape your body.”
Nope. It’s not lead that leaves your body in an abortion, it’s a baby. A small, defenseless unborn human baby. There is nothing strong or powerful about destroying an innocent unborn baby, especially when it’s yours.
Even the Supreme Court has admitted that abortion is unlike other medical procedures, “because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life.” (Harris vs. McRae, 1980)
Despite the abortion industry and pop culture denials, abortion is a profound life-altering event.
Don’t young women deserve to at least know what abortion is and get all the facts before they make their “choice”? Shouldn’t they be informed that at some point post-abortion they may indeed feel sorrow, doubt and shame, and that counseling and other assistance is available to them?
Does modern feminism have so little confidence in women that it has to brainwash teenage girls into believing that abortion is the normal natural choice, and that the choice doesn’t matter all that much, it’s the post-abortion gifts that really count?
I don’t know about you, but this kind of thing just makes me want to cry. Our teenage children are being fed fake news, and it breaks my heart, because at some point in their lives, the reality of their abortion is likely to break theirs.
Gallagher is the director of pro-life activities for the New York State Catholic Conference.
