Ms. magazine has re-ignited its “I Had An Abortion” campaign, asking readers to “testify” of the fact that they aborted their babies. In today’s Wall Street Journal, journalist Julia Gorin offers her take on the campaign:
“The Web site of Ms. Magazine–yes, it still exists–is calling on readers to sign a petition: ‘I have had an abortion. I publicly join the millions of women in the United States who have had an abortion in demanding a repeal of laws that restrict women’s reproductive freedom.’
“Well, so much for the right to privacy. If Ms. readers hadn’t had so many abortions, there might be more Ms. readers. As for the rest of us, here’s a petition we could all sign: ‘I wasn’t aborted.’
“Having narrowly escaped being aborted, I’d be the first in line.”
Gorin goes on to explain how both she and her husband were scheduled to be aborted as “fetuses” in Soviet-era Russia. Gorin, who is Jewish, admits that she is no theologian. But she ponders the lives that are now achingly lonely, because of the absence of children they know were conceived but whose faces they never saw.
