There Is No Such Thing As "Forced Birth," And We Need To Retire This Propaganda Phrase Once And For All

When Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, the entire country erupted, some with joy and others with anger. The states were left to decide whether abortion would remain legal for their local constituents, and the media went into a frenzy, producing a slew of content about the dangers of the 1973 Supreme Court landmark case being overturned.

Since then, there have been many different myths circulating the internet about abortion. Many people claim that abortion is medically necessary to save a woman's life (spoiler alert: it isn't) and that women will be denied basic healthcare and life-saving procedures without abortion being made readily available (also false). Throughout these conversations, the phrase "forced birth" is always brought up. Abortion activists insist that no woman should be forced to give birth, whether she's been raped or she just simply doesn't feel like having children. But this phrase is nothing more than abortion propaganda and it needs to be put to rest.

There Is No Such Thing as Forced Birth

In July, a viral story of a 10-year-old being raped by the man that her mother was dating became headline news across the nation. The girl lived in Ohio and was brought to an OBGYN for an abortion when she was more than six weeks pregnant, and Ohio had already banned abortions past six weeks gestation. She had to cross state lines to Indiana to have a doctor administer an abortion. This story became a political weapon for the left to claim that abortion was necessary for women and even young girls who had been raped.

The most common line that was seen in countless articles and spoken by many celebrities was, "Without abortion, this would have been a forced birth!" It's certainly a delicate topic and a difficult one to approach, but even though this young girl had survived a heinous crime (more on that below), that doesn't mean that forced birth is a real thing.

There is no such thing as forcing someone to give birth.

There is no such thing as forcing someone to give birth. You cannot force the human body to give birth no more than you can force the human body to digest, breathe, pump blood, or any other number of bodily functions that happen naturally without external force. If a woman is pregnant and you simply allow for her body to naturally develop the pregnancy, the process will likely end with a child being born (or, sadly, a miscarriage or stillbirth). There is nothing that we can do to force the child to be born.

The phrase "forced birth" is rooted in fantasy and it's nothing more than a propaganda term that abortion activists have been using as a weapon to convince women that abortion should be made readily available at all stages of pregnancy.

But What About Cases of Rape?

Even people who oppose abortion try to create logical responses that will allow for abortion to be made available to women who have been raped, because they claim that it's unfair or even cruel for a mother to give birth to her rapist's child. First of all, it's important to note that less than 0.5% of abortions are due to cases of rape. More than 99.5% of abortions are elective, meaning women simply don't feel like accepting the responsibility of having a child. So it's actually extremely rare to see women walking into an abortion clinic because they have been raped.

But even if they had been raped, why is a child's life suddenly worth less simply because his or her father was a criminal? Why are we sanctioning an innocent baby to pay the price via death penalty for the crimes of his or her father? It's a barbaric, regressive way to approach justice. In communist North Korea, if you defect, the next seven generations of your family will be punished, imprisoned, tortured, or even killed. It's extremely disheartening that the United States, supposedly the most developed country in the world, would try to adopt similar values as a violent communist country.

It's understandable that some people insist that it's unfair for women who have been raped to have to carry their baby to term and give birth. It's no doubt an extremely difficult experience to face and probably one of the hardest things she will ever have to do in life; however, a woman who has been raped has already faced immense trauma. Encouraging her to kill her child is not going to help her heal any quicker. In fact, it's only going to add more trauma and loss to her life. A woman who has been raped deserves love, care, and compassion from her family and her community. She deserves to be looked after and assisted in the healing process. That process does not include helping her kill her own child.

When we advocate for the life of the innocent child in the womb, we are not trying to force the woman to give birth.

When we advocate for the life of the innocent child in the womb, we are not trying to force the woman to give birth. We are simply advocating for the innocent baby to have the right to life—a right that we all have, no matter how small or how underdeveloped we may be, and no matter how sinful our father was.

Women Deserve More Care During Pregnancy, Not a Death Sentence for Their Baby

Just about every single person who opposes abortion will agree that women deserve more care during their pregnancy. We need to have a better support system set up, and that starts in the home—with our family and our community. Before industrialized society, women were supported immensely by their tribe; they had sisters, mothers, aunts, friends, and midwives who surrounded them and offered support when they were pregnant and during birth. This has, for the most part, disappeared since we have entered the modern era.

Instead, we isolate families, including and especially women, and only present them with a broken hospital system that treats birth like a sterile, money-making medical emergency. No wonder so many women, especially women who have just endured the trauma of rape, feel isolated and as if they aren't able to make it.

Rather than thinking about delivery as a forced birth, we should return to how we used to approach birth: a beautiful yet challenging physical experience that is a temporary sacrifice to bring a new life into the world. There is nothing more sacred than that. If we changed our language and our perspective on birth, we would be much better equipped to help women who have been raped and impregnated. We need to realize once again that human life is precious, especially the innocent life that grows in our wombs. Even if that life comes about in a tragic situation.