NEW YORK — Planned Parenthood, abortion's biggest money-maker, tried out a new product this summer, along with some high-profile help from The New York Times.
On July 18, the Times ran an article by Amy Richards describing her decision to abort two of her triplets.
When the article appeared, the Times failed to disclose that Richards was a pro-abortion activist who served on the Council of Advocates for Planned Parenthood of New York City.
Later that week, Planned Parenthood unveiled T-shirts bearing the slogan “I Had an Abortion.” They were developed by Richards’ business partner, Jennifer Baum-gardner. The business venture and Times column have had post-abortive women and abortion survivors crying foul and have even offended some of Planned Parenthood's local affiliates.
After an uproar on the Internet, the Times printed an editor's note July 28, noting Richards’ work as an abortion advocate.
Baumgardner, along with Richards, developed the T-shirt as part of a three-prong “I'm Not Sorry” campaign. Baumgardner also created resource cards for women and is currently producing a documentary, to be released in January, that tells women's abortion stories.
“I noticed that while there was no shortage of people who have an opinion about abortion, it was rarer to hear from the millions of women who had had abortions,” Baumgardner told the Register. “Not a lot of women are willing to go on record to say they have had an abortion.
We know women get abortions, but we don't know who the women are. That allows us to hate women and makes it a shameful thing.”
While Baumgardner developed the message, Richards came up with the color scheme and modeled the shirt for an article that appeared in the Fairfield County Weekly in Connecticut earlier this year.
One of the first people to notice the connection between Richards and Baumgardner was Dawn Eden, a copy editor with the New York Post whose web log is called, “The Dawn Patrol.”
“I had read The New York Times piece on Richards, and at first I wasn't going to comment on it,” Eden said. “But, when the ‘I Had an Abortion’ T-shirt came out, I did a Google search and found Richards modeling the shirt for The New Haven Advocate.
“I found all of this from a couple of hours of searching on the Internet. The New York Times is renowned for its fact checking. Why couldn't they find the connection?”
As it turns out, Baumgardner and Richards have worked together since first meeting as 22-year-olds at Ms. magazine. Through their feminist-speaker booking agency, Soap-box Inc., they represent such speakers as Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin. The two co-authored the 2000 book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, and have appeared on numerous television news programs and talk shows.
“It's important to have real people's faces and lives attached to this issue, rather than an abstraction and a law,” Baumgardner said. “I thought the T-shirt made that connection.”
One face that is intimately connected with the issue of abortion is that of 27-year-old Gianna Jessen. In 1977, Jessen's mother, who was then seven months’ pregnant, went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in southern California to procure a saline abortion. She had the abortion, but her daughter survived.
“If abortion were merely about women's rights, then what about mine?”Jessen asked. “I was a female in the womb, and no feminists were running to my defense. I obviously care about women because I am one.”
Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the shirt is “a way to challenge the silence and shame around an experience many women have shared, however difficult that decision may have been.”
“One in three American women will have an abortion before the age of 45,” she said. “Anti-choice extremists are doing everything they can to turn that choice into a scarlet letter.”
Jessen lives with a constant reminder of her mother's abortion. Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion, Jessen lives with the effects of cerebral palsy. Doctors didn't think that she would ever walk. But she is currently preparing for a marathon.
“We're living in a culture that wants to pretend that there are no consequences to our actions,” she said. “I live with the repercussions of my mother's ‘choice’ every day of my life. Our choices never affect only us. They always affect someone else.”
Pain and Regrets
Pro-life women have been speaking about their abortions for years.
“I do believe that there are women who do not, at present, regret their abortion,” said Anne Marie Cosgrove. Cosgrove had an abortion at the age of 25 and now serves as director of Silent No More Minnesota, a post-abortive outreach. “When those women realize the truth, that they have taken the life of their own child, they will reach a wall of pain. I've met women who for 30 years say they haven't regretted it, and then they reach that wall.”
Cosgrove said shame is a natural response when a woman acknowledges that she has taken the life of her own child. “It doesn't come from society,” Cosgrove said. “It comes from within.”
Rachel's Vineyard Ministry founder Theresa Burke believes that the Planned Parenthood T-shirts are a direct response to the Silent No More Awareness T-shirts that read: “I Regret My Abortion.” The opposite message would be, “I Regret Having My Child,” she said. “Not too many women would proudly wear that.”
Rachel's Vineyard conducts more than 350 retreats a year for post-abortive women and men in the United States and 14 other countries.
“We'll have 5,000 men and women coming through our retreats this year alone,” Burke said. “We're growing at 40% annually.”
In addition to the reaction from post-abortive women, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Idaho, Minnesota, the Dakotas and the Carolinas have found the shirt's message offensive.
“Planned Parenthood's new T-shirt confirms that the abortion chain lacks any sense of integrity, tact and compassion. This shirt's message celebrates an act of violence that is traumatic for women, and worst of all, kills an innocent child,” said Jim Sedlak, executive director of American Life League's STOPP International. “When people know the truth, they recognize that Planned Parenthood is not a benevolent healthcare organization, but rather, a lucrative business that profits from selling sex and aborting babies.”
Tim Drake writes from Saint Cloud, Minnesota.