LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE: Abortion Clinic Worker Counsels Women to “Be Selfish” and Abort. “I see selfishness as a virtue in making choices for yourself and your life.”

Of course, the commentator offers a three-paragraph disclaimer at the bottom about how “many women are driven to abortion by desperation,” how they are “pressured into abortions” by their lovers or parents, and how even the seemingly selfish ones “grew up in a consumer culture where they were constantly given the message . . . that abortion is an acceptable and moral choice.”

Interestingly enough, these things — desperation, pressure, and bad influences — absolve the women but not those around them who happen to encourage abortion.

It is easy to judge these women, but doing so is counterproductive. We must reach out even to these women, with compassion.

But we will judge the men in their lives, who are sometimes even more desperate (facing the prospect of eighteen years of child support, rather than nine months of pregnancy) and just as misled by popular culture. This is a common theme in pro-life literature — that only men are true moral agents who can be judged. Evidently, they are the only ones who can be influenced by arguments about the morality of their actions, while women have to hear about how carrying a baby to term is good for number one.

See also Michael Stokes Paulsen’s essay, “Men, Abortion, Sin, and Salvation,” wherein he blames men for abortion —

Men are deeply responsible for the tragedy of abortion. . . . Men . . . are often absent in crisis pregnancy situations, leaving women abandoned and alone. . . .

The accounts are legion of men pressuring, threatening, intimidating, and abusing wives and girlfriends into killing their unborn children. Even more frequently, men are absent, indifferent, or cavalier.

— but, when it comes to the women, says not to judge:

Placing the emphasis on the morality of the parents’ [read: women’s] conduct, especially when such morality is cast in terms of “sin” and responsibility, may well undermine the persuasive effort to rescue unborn children from destruction. When a woman is contemplating abortion, the response should neither be “You sinner!” nor “I understand completely; you are totally justified under the circumstances.” It should be, “Let’s see what we can do, together, to save the life of your baby.”

This disposition not to judge and to make the woman’s life as easy and shameless as possible is a part of “Pro-life Stockholm Syndrome”:

The pro-life movement often works to reduce, as much as possible, the consequences of female fornication. Traditionally the consequences of out-of-wedlock sex could include (but did not always include, and never did so equally for both men and women) shame, loss of status and income, and other consequences. Pro-lifers worry that these things will lead more women to abort: unborn children are hostages, keeping the pro-life movement captive.

As a result nearly our entire society is united on the goal of making unwed pregnancy and out of wedlock motherhood as easy and consequence-free as possible. People formally support abortion on the left, people materially support abortion on the right (even though many genuinely wish to oppose abortion and do formally oppose it), and almost nobody actually opposes abortion.