Claire Keyes: A Voice of “Choice” Discourages Choice
Pro-abortion groups, like the ACLU, NOW and NARAL, have long framed their arguments as supporting “choice” and “reproductive rights”. Despite these high-minded ideals, few pro-choice activists encourage any other choices but their own — abortion.
Without lawyers and public relations professional speaking on their behalf, activists reveal a different reality. Claire Keyes, a 30-year abortion industry veteran, co-authored a piece we recently ran, titled How Do You Want Your Abortion?. Keyes is, not surprisingly, a media darling and has been featured repeatedly in Newsweek magazine and her local Pittsburgh newspapers. Claire Keyes’ words reveal her worldview…
In a 2004 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, Hearts Full of Hurt, Keyes admits the mental dissociation that occurs when one lusts for power:
“We in the movement, those of us in the clinics at the beginning, were so caught up in the early euphoria about winning a right to an abortion, we weren’t listening to what the patients were saying. They weren’t talking about abortion in the same way we were. They weren’t talking about the constitution or women’s rights. And many of them weren’t talking about a bunch of cells, either. They might call it ‘my baby,’ even though they were firm about going through with the procedure. Many of them expressed relief, but many also talked about sadness and loss. And we weren’t paying attention.“
What’s interesting is that Keyes first considers a fetus a political cause, then a “bunch of cells” before understanding it to be someone else’s child. This worldview would make more sense if Keyes were really Skeletor in disguise.
Fellow activist, Peg Johnston, discusses a similar coming-to-sanity, but felt at first that women were simply succumbing to right-wing brainwashing. Johnston says:
“The pro-life movement has done an effective job of showing that a fetus is not just a ‘blob of tissue’”
Can you hear the regret in Peg’s voice? She continues:
“Her patients now talk about ” ‘babies’ ” and ” ‘killing’,” she says. “At first I thought they were picking up the language from [anti-abortion protesters] outside. But then I started really tuning in to my patients, and I realized, ‘She really feels that way’.”
Faced with this reality — that chidren are not solely a political issue — abortion activists continue to consider their cause righteous. They cloak the procedure in spiritual language; they make abortion into a peaceful ceremony. Nurse Ratched Claire Keyes works with her patients to make their inconvenient feelings go away:
“A growing number of clinics are coming up with coping strategies. At her Pittsburgh clinic, Claire Keyes encourages patients to write their feelings on a paper heart that she later tacks to the waiting-room wall. “I love you even though I know in my heart I can’t keep you,” reads one of about a thousand hearts, which have now overflowed into binders. Keyes gives each patient a polished semiprecious stone to imbue with whatever meaning she wants. The two clinics that permit late-term abortions let their patients hold the fetus in a blanket.“
Fetus in a blanket? Fetus in a blanket???
Why don’t any of these silly activists consider the 3rd choice in the abortion vs. life debate? The free market always provides a solution: adoption. How many couples wait numerous years to adopt a child of their own? Under what circumstances is abortion a better decision than adoption?
We’ll get into the 4th choice — the choice not to whore yourself out and get pregnant — in another post. Common sense must come in small doses.
» Read: How Do You Want Your Abortion? (by Claire Keyes)
Jim Cipriani maintains a blog at pretend pundit and contributes to Stop the ACLU.
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Posted by Stop The ACLU Special Contributor on June 4, 2006 6:10 pm
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8 Responses to “Claire Keyes: A Voice of “Choice” Discourages Choice”
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I am clad to hear that pro life is winning the battle but I still feel the progress is very slow. We need to give women aid in not killing their own children. It is horrible that the barbaric practice of infanticide is so prevalent in the United States. It is also sad that their are people like BV that are so brain washed that they fail to think for themselves. I wonder if there is anything that can get their brain working again or are they always going to be the puppets of the Elite crud that rules us.
“We’ll get into the 4th choice — the choice not to whore yourself out and get pregnant — in another post.”
Thank you, Mr. Cipriani, for revealing your and the rest of the anti-choice movement’s contempt for women who experience unintended pregnancies.
Jason Sonenshein,
I see so you say it is a woman’s choice to commit genocide and infanticide.
abortion is defined as infanticide by Charles Darwin and Susan B. Anthony.
mass abortion meets the qualification for the international definition of genocide.
Hitler would be proud of you.
Jason Sonenshein wrote:
Thank you, Mr. Cipriani, for revealing your and the rest of the anti-choice movement’s contempt for women who experience unintended pregnancies.
Jason – anti-choice?? get a grip. we’re not choosing a box of cereal in a grocery store isle.
would-be rapists make choices, too. they choose to rape or not rape. do i need to suuport him in raping because I’m “pro-choice?” no – the fact that the rapist is making a choice is not the significant fact in determining whether to support rape.
people do not support rape because it’s a BAD CHOICE.
Jason, I really am in favor of people having choices. just not the choice that leads to a murder. granted, i realize this is more of a mini-murder to you. one you can ignore.
maybe my more sensitive audience can understand this: we all make choices. some good. and some bad. we live. we learn. but our bad choices don’t necessarily need to lead to an even worse choice – ending a life.
to my less sensitive audience: why would i give a rat’s ass about a woman’s senseless prerogative when it means the ending of another human’s chance to live?
(except in the rare circumstance of rape or potential harm to a mother)
being fixated on “choice” when discussing abortion is like being concerned about a house fire during a nuclear holocaust.
If abortion is murder, then every miscarriage is a potential negligent homicide. Why do you want to make every woman who suffers a miscarriage into the target of a homicide investigation, Mr. Brown?
Criminalizing abortion won’t make it go away. It will just create a black market for it. Black markets create revenue streams for terrorism and organized crime. Why do you want to create another black market, Mr. Brown? Are you a terrorist, or are you just in with the mob?
Take a look at this article from the New York Times Magazine about abortion enforcement in El Salvador. The Salvadoran government forces women who are merely suspected (not convicted) of abortion to submit to gynecological examinations. There’s a word for poking around in a woman’s reproductive system without her consent. That word is rape. Why are you for government-sanctioned rape of innocent women, Mr. Brown? I’ll bet that idea turns you on, doesn’t it, Mr. Brown?
“(except in the rare circumstance of rape or potential harm to a mother)”
Let me get this straight, Mr. Cipriani. You believe that a fetus is a person, and therefore that abortion is murder, but you make an exception for rape. If a fetus really is a person, you believe that it’s OK to murder a person because his or her father is a rapist?
What do you think you’ll accomplish by criminalizing abortion? Chile has the strictest abortion ban in the world, but has an abortion rate that is twice as high as that in the United States. To what length would you go to enforce an abortion ban, Mr. Cipriani? Would you make every woman who suffers a miscarriage into the target of a homicide investigation? Would you force women who are merely suspected of abortion to submit to gynecological examinations, as El Salvador does?
Look at all of the holes that have been punched into the Fourth Amendment in the name of fighting the drug war. Now imagine the lengths to which our government would go to fight a drug war that has the added justification of protecting innocent fetal “life.” An abortion ban wouldn’t prevent abortion, but it would make all of us much less free.
Sorry. Forgot to close the tag.
Jason Sonenshein,
All human beings disserve the same treatment under the laws of the United States unless there is a noble purpose for being discriminatory. So what is the noble purpose to deprive a child still within their mother’s womb of his/her life. Because their mother wants to just does not work. Population control does not work. Because they are the offspring of rape or incest does not work. So do you believe that human beings should be treated unequal because you say they should be treated unequal or do you have criteria to treat them unequally?
Chances are that any statistics about the rate of abortions that occur in countries where they are illegal are bogus because people that admit they kill their own children face penalties. I have read pro genocide by abortion sites and every one I have seen admits what I just said. Please direct me to where you obtained your statistics.
Do you know 100’s of women die of legal but unsafe abortion in India. Planned Parenthood operates there. Have to control the population and dead women do not have a very high birth rate. They also operate in China where women are forced to have abortions. I guess choice only counts when women are choosing what you want. Should I talk about aborting children based on what sex they are. It happens in the United States. OK women, you have the right to kill your daughters. The U.S. also practices Eugenics through abortion. Use genetic testing and if you don’t like the child nature and nature’s God has given you then kill him/her and try again.