Pro-abortion play mocks pro-life activism
by Carder
The show follows Jessica Beth Giffords, a 15-year-old girl who is equal parts Justin Bieber superfan and aspiring pro-life celebrity, as she attends the Students for Life of America Conference.
Throughout the hour-long solo performance, Jessica interacts with six other characters based on real-life pro-life activists, from crisis pregnancy center directors to ministers to self-described “pro-life feminists.” We follow her as she absorbs the misinformation in an abstinence-only “sexual purity” workshop and struggles to contain her crush on a popular and flirtatious Christian boy who sports a purity ring.
This sexual struggle and the notion that girls and women can embody sexual desire outside of the context of heterosexual marriage is precisely what Students for Life finds so vulgar.
~ Playwright and actress Madeline Burrows, describing the plot of her pro-choice play, MOM BABY GOD, and the controversy surrounding it, via RH Reality Check, February 19
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I’ll have to share this with my friends Natalie and Andrew, who met through Students for Life, presumably had crushes on each other, dated, married, and now have a son. How disgusting is that? ;-)
So Burrows’s little play is actually being performed? In front of people?
Good! Bring it, Madeline! We support anything that gets people talking about life and abortion.
The term is pro-life feminists, not “pro-life feminists.” Unnecessary quotation marks are unnecessary.
What is truly vulgar to Students for Life is celebrating the ripping apart of babies.
Little Miss Knucklehead does not believe that authentic feminists can be pro-life. Abortion is a sacrament to her sort, and a pro-life feminist is blasphemy.
Here is what really bothers Madeline Burrows: She can go to a Students For Life conference and write a play that mocks the hundreds of enthusiastic young people attending there, knowing that there are chapters of SFL on every major campus. But there is nothing like a “Students For Choice” with any meaningful numbers or influence.
I hope that pro-lifers do not picket and protest her shows…. I hope we buy tickets and make up the majority of her audiences. The Q&A sessions should be a lot of fun, speaking truth against her mockery!
How about a prolife play called BortsMiseryDeath?
I read about this awhile ago. This woman had nothing better to do with her life than take years off of college to do research for this stupid show by infiltrating pro life groups. In her time with them did she really not find any truth to the cause? Were the people she met really so insipid that she must portray them in this way?
Del, you can go but I personally don’t want to contribute to any pro abort bank accounts!
What I find odd is that the pro-abortion crowd can’t seem to understand that abstinence does not equal “lack of sexual desire” or “unsexy.”
“This sexual struggle and the notion that girls and women can embody sexual desire outside of the context of heterosexual marriage is precisely what Students for Life find so vulgar.”
Wrong. Wrong, wrongity-wrong, McWrongster. Pretty sure we can all understand sexual struggle, and we’re all aware that sexual desire exists outside of marriage. No one finds that vulgar. What we find vulgar is, first and foremost, the taking of innocent human life. And many pro-lifers also find vulgar the fact that sex (any kind OTHER than married, heterosexual sex, actually) has been elevated to the status of “must be allowed to obtain at all costs, even if I have to get rid of the inconvenient ‘result’ of that sex.” And if you abstain, you must be some sort of religious freak. Because apparently no one has been clued in to the fact that there are plenty of non-religious reasons to delay and restrict sexual activity to a monogamous relationship.
People who choose to abstain from sex outside of marriage have to be incredibly strong – strong enough to choose to keep themselves from situations where they might be tempted to compromise those beliefs, and strong enough to endure being called a weirdo by a larger, more vocal segment of society. Grace under pressure.
By the way, what I think is weird are those side ponytails. If you’re past age 10, you’re too old for them. :D
Nice strawman you got there Madeline.
Tell us – are you getting compensated for writing the materials?
The ponytail represents the age she emotionally stopped growing.
Oh heavens no!! A fifteen year old girl has to struggle with a crush!!!! The drama!! The intrigue!!!! And these so called pro life feminist unicorns leading her down a path of self-respect and self control!!
9_9
I’ve met a few people who belong to SFL who are definitely not virgins nor interested in waiting for marriage, they just cared about unborn babies. But I guess we’re stereotyping pro-lifers here so all is well.
And implying that it’s bad for fifteen-year-olds to, you know, wait a couple years before sex. For goodness sake. She couldn’t have aged up her hypothetical to some not-as-creepy age? It’s pretty well supported that sex at that age has detrimental effects for the kids involved, particularly girls. It seems like a true feminist would recognize that.
Right. These pro-aborts love the caricature of a single type of pro-lifer, despite the clear evidence that there are a wide variety of pro-lifers, including atheists and feminists and different religions.
Great point DLPL. Fifteen is young even for people who don’t think you should be abstinent till marriage. Regardless of where you stand, sex is an adult activity. It (ought to) require maturity and a real understanding of all the consequences involved.
It’s quite telling that the ‘horrible’ situation this pro-abort is portraying is a 15 year old child who is struggling with a crush. Not everyone has sex with crushes. By nature they are usually fleeting and unrealized. Fifteen year olds have crushes, yes. But they ought not be having sex.
“It’s quite telling that the ‘horrible’ situation this pro-abort is portraying is a 15 year old child who is struggling with a crush. Not everyone has sex with crushes. By nature they are usually fleeting and unrealized. Fifteen year olds have crushes, yes. But they ought not be having sex.”
Yeah… I’m not exactly a prude but fifteen is a kid. Teens that age haven’t even finished puberty completely on occasion, and their brains aren’t even close to being finished with development. It’s not responsible to encourage people that age to go for it. And like you I don’t get the “crush = sex” thing.
What I find odd is that the pro-abortion crowd can’t seem to understand that abstinence does not equal “lack of sexual desire” or “unsexy.”
I mentioned before that my daughter and her husband waited until they were married to be intimate. It was hard for them, but they are not weird, or religious nuts . nor do they hate sex. In fact, my daughter told me she couldn’t wait until her wedding night!
I thought the feminist movement and the sexual revolution were all about CHOICES. Why is the choice of being abstinent, then, ridiculed
Phillymiss, how is your daughter? Is she adjusting well to married life? :)
“fifteen is a kid. Teens that age haven’t even finished puberty completely on occasion, and their brains aren’t even close to being finished with development. It’s not responsible to encourage people that age to go for it”
Hi Deluded Lib Pro-Lifer,
It’s not like any encouraging is needed. There is a total hook-up culture, and in our local Students for Life group, it’s as prevalent as anywhere else.
Same for our Students for Life. They may not actually be making life, but they are certainly going through the motions.
“It’s not like any encouraging is needed. There is a total hook-up culture, and in our local Students for Life group, it’s as prevalent as anywhere else. ”
Well yeah I know. It was just as bad a decade ago when I was fifteen (actually, I think recent numbers indicate the rates of younger teens having sex have dropped a bit). But especially since there’s already a problem with that kind of thing, I think it’s massively irresponsible for this woman to mock the thought of waiting or encourage sex at an early age. That’s all I was saying.
Where are you from, Gerald and Brianne?
I’m from a southern school where the students like their privacy.
Phillymiss, how is your daughter? Is she adjusting well to married life? :)
Oh, she just loves it! She and her husband are still so much in love. I like to tease her and call her “Little Miss Sunshine” but she always sounds so happy. and I am thrilled for them!
Glad to hear it! I’ve been thinking about her. :)
“ Abortion is a sacrament to her sort, and a pro-life feminist is blasphemy.”
Del I meant to mention this earlier. Has anyone else noticed the weird language shift among feminists and such lately? Abortion seems to, in the past couple years, gone from just one feminist issue among others to THE issue. I’ve heard people even say that, that the most important or even the ONLY important thing that feminist should fight for is zero abortion restrictions or regulations. It’s pretty much a requirement for them. Do you think it’s a reaction to the recent successes the pro-life movement has had, maybe? Like, they feel threatened so they are doubling down or something?
Jack, I think that in part it’s because other feminist issues are actually far harder to change and require far more effort. It is super, super hard to address and discuss, much less brainstorm solutions to and effect change on, things like: maternity leave, paternity leave, breastfeeding in the workplace, childcare costs and quality and availability, “mommy-tracking,” elder care, disrespect of culturally feminine jobs or hobbies, viewing of STEM fields as existing in their own vacuum rather than in the broader social context that they actually do (which can alienate girls from these areas in early forms of play and thus from these careers later on), increasing time and energy demands required to be a member of the workforce, etc. Waaaaaay easier to just act like abortion is the primary concern because abortion is an answer, even just “one of many,” to all these other problems – they don’t exist if you don’t have kids! and if you have kids then you “chose” these problems so…they’re yours, not mine! Of course no one says that – everyone pays lip service to these things in their own way – but it’s there, implicit in the prioritizing of abortion.
I know that when I was pro-choice, I thought – not really consciously but just sort of as an assumption – that all these other problems were secondary to abortion, because all of them could be avoided if abortion were legal and accessible. Not that I thought that it was ever my place to judge whether any woman should have an abortion or not, but I thought that for women who really didn’t want to have to worry about childcare or breastfeeding while in the workforce or whatever, it was only fair to have the chance to opt out. Obviously that is a HUGE PROBLEM because that means that the choice to abort is just about inherently coerced. But it is really surprising that it took a lot for me to actually see that – to see that viewing abortion as a solution to all these other problems meant that I was effectively saying that abortion SHOULD BE a solution for women facing these problems, and that meant that I was effectively coercing women to abort by accepting that financial and social burdens of parenthood and motherhood are reasons for abortion to be legal. Until I could see that, I viewed abortion as absolutely paramount – the choice upon which all other choices hinged. College women not having a ride to an abortion clinic was literally a bigger tragedy to me than the fact that childcare in a lot of US cities costs upwards of $2000/month. Because, well, if a woman can’t GET to the abortion clinic, then she’s basically STUCK paying that childcare, whereas if she can, she can CHOOSE NOT TO pay it. Again, I didn’t consciously think any of this. I just had so little peripheral vision on the issue that I could not see how coercive and dismissive that view was. Basically as soon as I consciously considered the issue, I was appalled, and it was the beginning of me becoming pro-life. I think that if abortion were for some reason NOT the most important feminist issue, it would fall dangerously by the wayside (dangerously for pro-choicers). I think that the other issues, once you really examine them, are so much larger than abortion that to focus on them will often recast the issue entirely.
It’s a bit like focusing solely on giving homeless people money. Homeless people don’t “need” money. They need what money can get them. That seems like a semantic distinction, but it isn’t. Giving a homeless person money gives them nothing aside from another day stuck in the same spot. Money, the kind that is given in that situation, is a very short-term solution to a very embedded set of problems. Homeless people need a LOT more than money, things that are far bigger and far more infrastructural and far harder to give. Things that require far larger sacrifices than the price of a cup of coffee. But we as a society don’t really feel up to giving the types of help that homelessness actually needs, too often. Easier to just chuck a few quarters someone’s way. You don’t even have to slow down, or look up, to do that. I have told this story before, I think, but I was once in a McDonald’s up in one of the parts of Harlem that is actually still sort of rough. It was early and I was exhausted and the line was taking forever, and everyone was in a terrible mood, and then of course this guy came in and shuffled up and down the lines, asking everyone for money. Everyone just looked away and then he got to this one old woman, the sort of person you just look at and know she’s spent her whole life living in these same ten blocks, and he asked her for money. And she looked up – she looked him directly in the eye – and she said, “I can’t give you money. But my church gives breakfast and dinner. I will be walking that way after I am done here, and you can walk with me if you want, so that I can show you exactly where to go for more help than I can give you alone.” She said it very matter-of-factly and sternly, but not without compassion; I knew she’d probably said those exact same words hundreds of times over the years. The man didn’t even respond – just kept walking to the next person in line – and where I probably would have rolled my eyes and thought something like, “It figures,” she said, very kindly, “You have a nice day, sir. You come find me if you ever want to know where that church is.” I think about that woman a lot. How she probably worked hard in her church and gave lots of money, lots to her at least, to do her part to keep those meal programs running. How she was willing to walk with that man when no one else was willing to even look at him. How she was willing to talk to him like he was a person deserving of respect even when he could not make himself look at her. I think about how much effort and social compassion and care – REAL care, not just token words – it takes to live your life like that, so that even on a crappy snowy weekday morning before the sun is up, you are ready to do what is best for anyone around you who needs it. I try to be more like that woman whenever I am able to step outside myself and remember to. I don’t think that woman would ever prioritize abortion access over any of those other things I listed, just like she didn’t prioritize “getting him to leave” over helping that man, or at least offering to.
Abortion allows people to remain blind to the massive structural problems that still exist in our society. It is easier to be blind to them, or to their severity, than to see them, because to see them is to be obligated to change them. I honestly think that’s a big part of why mainstream feminist culture these days focuses so exclusively on abortion.
I’m from a southern school where the students like their privacy.
LOL. They can’t like their privacy all that much if they are filling you in on their sexual activities.
Alexandra, great post. I do agree with you. Systemic issues are much more difficult to fix, so it makes sense people would focus on giving women an “out” to be like men in regards to child-bearing instead of changing culture and society enough to make it so they don’t feel like they have to have an “out” through abortion just so they can have a successful career and such.
I was also thinking that most of the blatant inequities in the US are fixed (like unequal legal rights to vote, etc), and so now we’re left with cultural, systemic stuff that perpetrates gender roles and sexism against both genders, which is much more difficult to fix. Easier to blame female biology and reproductive capacity, instead of working on changing things so that women can be respected as mothers in the workplace and such instead of being expected to be just like men.
And great point with homeless people (as a former homeless person I endorse your message lol). Giving homeless people cash might help them eat in the short run, but it doesn’t fix the mental health issues, lack of job skills, addiction problems, domestic abuse problems, or whatever else it was that made them homeless in the first place and is keeping them there. Throwing money at people in these cases doesn’t fix anything and could make it worse in the case of drug addicts. I like your analogy.
And the woman you mention sounds very kind, Alexandra. I remember a few kind people from when I was homeless who I still think about on occasion. I remember on Christmas when I was 17 going to a church that was serving dinner to impoverished and homeless people (at that time I was seriously anti-religious and afraid of Christians, so I was reluctant to go but I was very hungry and lonely) and they acted like I was just any other teenager, treated me with respect and not as a problem and a project. I don’t really know how to describe what a difference it makes or how those kind attitudes stand out, because as a street kid people treat you as an embarrassment/tragedy at best and a dangerous criminal at worst, you don’t often have people actually smile and talk to you like you’re just as good as anyone else. And it’s even worse for older homeless people. So, I can tell you that I bet that guy still thinks about that woman speaking kindly to him and offering him help and such. Once I got back on my feet I donated whatever I could, no matter how poor I was I tried to spare at least a couple bucks, every Christmas to that church I mentioned just because I’ll never forget how it felt to be looked at like a real human being instead of some thing.
As I mentioned awhile ago about this situation, what’s next, a play called “My Big Fat Greek Abortion?” (The Greek Wedding movie also started out as a one-woman show)
P.S. The phrase “My Big Fat” is still being ripped off for use in other titles over 10 years after that movie came out! I liked the movie, but this has gotten out of hand IMO.