Column: Abortion guilt may trigger hostility toward Palin
October 25th, 2008Writing in the National Review, Kevin Burke says some of the public hostility and criticism aimed at Sarah Palin may stem from “collective grief, shame, and guilt from personal involvement in the abortion of an unborn child.”
An estimated 133,000 American women receive a “poor prenatal diagnosis” or PDD each year, Burke writes, and 90 percent of these pregnancies end in abortion.
Against that backdrop, Gov. Palin’s message that she and her husband joyfully celebrate their son Trig may strike at a deeply repressed and painful wound in our culture, Burke writes. An excerpt:
Seeing the Palin family, in a very visible public forum, with an uncompromising and public pro life philosophy arouses deeply repressed feelings in post abortive parents, as well as media members, counselors, health care professionals, politicians and others who promote abortion rights, especially the abortion of children with challenges such as Down Syndrome. These powerful repressed feelings of grief, guilt and shame can be deflected from the source of the wound (i.e., abortion) and projected onto an often uncharitable focus upon the trigger of these painful emotions…the Palin family.
… The Palin family’s decision to once again affirm the value of the unborn child, and support a decision to give life confronts the collective grief, guilt and shame of all who have participated in any way in the death of an unborn child.
What we can hope and pray is that Sarah Palin’s story does not continue to feed a disgraceful media feeding frenzy fueled by our post-abortive culture and instead becomes a beacon of hope and healing.
Kevin Burke LSW is the co-founder of Rachel’s Vineyard, a post-abortion healing ministry of Priests for Life.
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on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under Campaign 2008, Down syndrome, abortion, commentary, prenatal diagnosis, public attitudes, selective termination.
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October 26th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Not an ignorant article. As someone who is appalled by the way feminists are treating her (I’ve been told by two “feminists” now that she should stay home with Trig, as though her husband is incapable of being a father and as though we were still in the 1950’s), I admire the way she has taken on corruption in Alaska and has increased funding for education, including special education, considerably.
I admire the way she has taken a common sense approach to government and found ways to support her constituents in Alaska and made herself the most popular governor in our country. I resent the idea that her 17-year-old daughter has no mind of her own and that it is somehow the mother’s “fault” that her daughter is marrying her boyfriend of 3 years and they are going to raise a family, being “punished with a child” and all.
I made the same choice that Governor Palin did, and I resent everyone who believes that my son, Ethan, should have been aborted. I agree with the article and can find little else to explain the incredible hatred being levied at Governor Palin.
October 25th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
It is not ignorant just because you disagree. I happen to agree with him. I have been amazed at the hateful things that people have said about her..it is possible to disagree with someone without going to the lengths that many people have gone to.
Governor Palin has never said that she was special, or better, or wonderful for continuing the pregnancy after finding out that Trig had Ds .. but that is what many of her critics say..they say that she uses her son as a ‘political prop’, when clearly he is with her in public because he is part of her family. They say that because she ‘made the choice’ to continue her pregnancy, she will ‘force’ other women to carry to term babies that they do not want..and all she said is that she loves her child and that each life is precious .. and that she does not believe abortion is right.
For some pro choice people, the way they deal with ‘choice’ is to try to discredit those who are pro life..or to refuse them the right to state their beliefs..Palin has been called a “fundamentalist right wing wacko”…based largely on her pro life stance. Think about it. Just because she had a child with Ds, she is seen by some people as being dangerously religious … and I know that there are plenty of parents who are pro choice and chose to have their child after a prenatal diagnosis … but that is not what society thinks, by and large … many people think that only mindless religious robots continue a pregnancy after a prenatal diagnosis … I have read comments from pro-choice parents who were concerned that people would think that they had their child due to ‘religion’ … and they were mortified by that!
You can see this hostility in a smaller way even on Ds ’support’ listservs … people who are pro life are marginalized and told that they are not allowed to talk about abortion on the listservs because it is ‘too divisive’. so yes, I believe that this man knows what he is talking about.
October 25th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
what an ignorant article.