Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. In a recent article in National Review, Wesley J. Smith described a new study of over 1 million women in Quebec from 2006 to 2022. The study found, and I quote here, Compared with live births and stillbirths, patients with induced abortions had a greater risk of admission for psychiatric disorders.
substance use disorders, and suicide attempts over time. Also, and I quote again, abortion was associated with the long-term risk of hospitalization for psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and suicide attempts in models adjusted for age, comorbidity, preexisting mental illness, material deprivation, rural residence, and time period. And abortion was more strongly associated with eating disorders, hallucinogen use disorders, and cocaine use disorders.
Now, this isn't the first study to find that abortion, in addition to killing an innocent preborn child, is harmful to women. Back in April, the Pro-Life Group Live Action reported on another study that indicated that 11% of women who undergo chemical abortion suffer a serious adverse event. That's a number that's far higher than anything that's been reported by the FDA. Quote, this means one in 10 women experience at least one serious complication from taking mephopristone within 45 days. That's 22 times higher than the quote-unquote less than 0.5% serious adverse events rate that's reported by the FDA on the Mifipristone label, according to the study.
The study authors state that serious adverse events in multiple categories were accounted for in the reported rate, end quote.
Now if abortion is truly about women's health, as advocates claim, then they should immediately demand more regulation, investigation, and limits on this practice. But they do not, and that they do not, but rather doubled down on demanding abortion as a so-called right, demonstrates how abortion sits at the center of their worldview. After all, if it were discovered that a common prescription drug, a medical procedure, or food had this same likelihood of negative side effects, there would be an immediate call to act and to ban this offending substance. There would certainly not be nationwide rallies claiming that whatever it was was a human right. And yet, in this way, and in many other ways, abortion somehow goes unquestioned in our culture, treated as if it is the fundamental right of a free people.
In a recently posted video, Kristen Hawkins, president of Students for Life, shared an encounter that she had with a Michigan State student who approached her and declared, I love abortion.
Now, when asked what she liked about abortion, the young woman said this: I like that people don't die through birth, and also babies aren't being born to people who don't want babies. Unwanted babies, she continued, burden the foster care system. When she was asked if that meant that it would then be good to kill kids presently in the foster care system to alleviate the burden, the woman was shocked that anyone could suggest killing children. Like so many people, she has simply refused to connect obvious dots, and she instead is committed to regurgitating talking points. This response illustrates just how challenging it is right now to change hearts and minds about abortion.
even when the facts are so clearly on the pro-life side. and fat. Even as the facts of the matter have become more obviously pro-life, the commitment to abortion seems to have grown. According to the General Social Survey, agreement with this statement was Women should be able to get an abortion for any reason if she wants one increased from 42% in 2012 to 57% in 2022. This tells us a lot about how deeply held beliefs work, especially those that are held at a foundational worldview level.
When absolute autonomy, especially sexual autonomy is the fundamental source of human value. Abortion has to then become an absolute. Christians who want to move the needle on abortion have to understand how worldview works. It's the only way that we can make sense of those who refuse the facts about abortion and those who say they don't like abortion, but then refuse to do anything, not even vote, to restrict it. The most dominant idea that holds sway over American culture right now is that nothing should prevent people from living as they please, not even the consequences of reality.
Unless we engage, encounter, and unseat this first principle of this culture's dominant world view, it's not going to matter how many studies we present or how clever our rhetoric is. Yes, we should continue to pass as many laws as possible restricting this horror. But we have to pray for God to intervene in hearts and minds. We have to love and serve those who are the most vulnerable. and seek to persuade as many as we can.
For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for a version of this commentary that you can download, print out, or email to others, Go to breakpoint.org. Hi, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center.
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