There are two things radically wrong about the Manhattan Mini
Storage billboard that displays a wire coat hanger above the
words: "Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right
to choose." First, it is hideously insensitive to those who
endured an abortion via such a pre-Roe v. Wade procedure.
Secondly, it perpetuates a myth.
The symbolism of a wire hanger has been a traditional gambit used
at feminist rallies and by counterprotesters at anti-abortion
rights marches. Actors Whoopi Goldberg and Cybil Shepherd waved
their hangers at an abortion-rights rally in Washington, D.C., in
April 2004. In January 2003, I was at a Washington March for Life
and noticed a man who wasn't carrying a sign but was swinging a
wire hanger. His silent message: "Overturn Roe and women
will be dying from coat-hanger abortions."
A woman so desperate that she would endure that procedure does
not need to be confronted by such a crass commercial reminder of
her past. The dangerous insertion of a straightened hanger inside
a rubber tube to puncture her uterus, which sheltered an unwanted
baby, is seared into her memory because it is more than likely
that she witnessed the results of her deadly decision.
That a commercial business would trivialize such pain is
reprehensible but not surprising. Manhattan Mini Storage has
placed other controversial billboards around the city that
clearly support the agenda of liberal Democrats. Last year, one
read, "The Democrats Cleaned The House ... Now It's Your
Turn," the text superimposed over an elephant carrying a
suitcase. Another read: "Your Closet's Scarier Than Bush's
Agenda."
One can say that these advertisements are clever, but I also find
this latest one proof that true concern for a woman is overridden
by superficial rhetoric and inaccuracy.
Myths, of course, endure if they are repeated for ensuing
generations who do not have the benefit of witnessing truth as it
occurs.
The myth of the origin of Roe v. Wade has been perpetuated by
feminists and abortion advocates either willfully or out of
ignorance. There is no convenient catch phrase that can be put on
a billboard on behalf of a storage company because the truth
requires deep thinking, not sensory amusement.
The "Jane Roe" whose case went before the Supreme Court
was not a victim of rape. She never had an abortion. Her real
name is Norma McCorvey and she now adamantly opposes abortion.
She wrote about the truth of her involvement in the historic 1973
decision in her 1998 book, "Won By Love." Dr. Bernard
Nathanson, a cofounder of NARAL, blew the myth wide open in his
1997 book, "Confessions of an Ex-Abortionist." He
admits that early abortion-rights advocates totally fabricated
the number of women dying from back-alley and wire-hanger
abortions. The 10,000 figure they used to affect public opinion
was actually closer to 250, he writes. The actual figure in 1972
for deaths from illegal abortion was 39, according to the Centers
for Disease Control. Dr. Nathanson also admitted to fabricating
polls that indicated public support for abortion rights.
The lies continue to this day. Healthy women are dying from legal
abortions, but these deaths are disguised as hemorrhaging,
peritonitis, or other natural causes. In 1998, Tamika Dowdy, 22,
of Crown Heights, was pronounced dead after having a legal
abortion at Long Island College Hospital, the New York Post
reported. Police officials didn't report that Dowdy died from an
abortion, even though the clinic had been under investigation for
a previous incident in which a woman's uterus was punctured, the
Post reported. Veterinary clinics are better regulated than
abortion facilities, whose profit margins rely on quantity, not
quality care.
I cringe whenever I hear a politician spout about "safe but
rare" legal abortion. It's never safe for the baby and the
damage to the woman's mental health is never discussed.
Post-abortion support groups like Silent No More and Rachel's
Vineyard are routinely dismissed by mainstream journalists who
tell them, "Get over it." But a 13-year study taken of
all Finland found that post-abortive women were more than six
times likely to commit suicide than those who had not had one.
Meanwhile, a billboard flaunts its supercilious take on a serious
issue; heaven forbid if a billboard were erected with the image
of a mutilated fetus. I can just imagine the furor that would
erupt at such a gruesome but real vision of abortion.
Ergo, the myth continues.