Live Action is an anti-choice group based in California, known for an adversarial and deceptive approach to anti-choice advocacy. They’re also the creators of a magazine, distributed to local colleges and high schools, called the Advocate (an ironic name, considering the founder has been described as a conservative Christian. Evidently, the group didn’t do enough research (the Advocate is the name of a leading gay and lesbian magazine), a fault that I suspect has come up more than once).

Yesterday, I was perusing the latest issue of the Advocate online ( PDF form), and, in addition to featuring a photograph that I can only hope was photoshopped (because if it wasn’t, the person who staged and took the picture is 100 times more cynical than I’ll ever be, which is saying something), it included an article entitled “Conceived in Rape.” Because I spend so much time on this kind of site, it can be hard to shock me… and, indeed, most of the article included the same ill-informed arguments I’ve seen ad nauseum. Until this: “Rape victims who choose to abort their children can recover from the trauma of the rape, but the trauma of abortion remains forever because they themselves made the decision.”

Wow, right? To me, this appalling sentence sums up one of the ugliest features of the anti-choice movement… that they feel entitled to decide why someone should feel pain or sorrow, and which type of pain or sorrow is worse than others. They’ve moved from telling a woman what to do with her body to coming after a woman’s right to feel and think for herself. (While at the same time completely, and horrifyingly, trivializing the experience of a survivor of rape).

It makes me wonder how someone reads that sentence and has the conscience to agree with it. What do you think?

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