The Post-Roe v Wade California Abortion Mills - Shades Of Sobibor And Auschwitz

Brandi Mills was pregnant again.  Of course thanks to Governor Newsom and a complaisant, woman-friendly California legislature, abortions were available on demand throughout pregnancy, so she never had to give a second thought to contraception.  The Pill made you fat and break out in hives.  The IUD was always getting in the way, and condoms were a bothersome afterthought now that AIDS had largely disappeared from the scene, so abortion was the obvious alternative.  

Public clinics offering abortion were everywhere in the state, and private, non-profit agencies filled the gap.  After Roe v Wade had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, leaving abortion decisions up to the states, California immediately opened for business.  The State House hired Porter & Allen, a top-of-the-line San Francisco advertising agency to develop its 'Why Worry? No Worries. Abortion Anytime' campaign designed to attract clients from those conservative Western states whose legislatures were not so open-minded. 

The Governor's office worked closely with Planned Parenthood and its associates, agencies which had already offered 'grants' to pregnant women in states with restrictive abortion laws to enable them to travel to California. Now that the market was finally free, these agencies could work full throttle to get unwanted pregnancies ended at no expense to the client.  

The end of Roe v Wade offered them an opportunity to increase donations from liberal supporters, and soon their treasuries were flush with funds.  After covering actual expenses - bus trips to Los Angeles, inexpensive hotel lodging, and a modest food allowance, there was plenty left over for the agencies to grow. 

Politically, the Newsom governorship benefitted equally from the positive press.  'California Doing The Right Thing', said the Tucson Bee.  'California Leads The Way To Women's Rights' read the headline of the Boise Star. The Governor, considering a race to the White House or at least to the Senate, needed political support beyond California, and leading the way on abortion rights was one sure way to do it.

 

In any case, Brandi chose a private clinic in San Diego for her D&C, an in-and-out operation, tea and scones in a pleasantly appointed 'Afterwards Room', and home for dinner.  Gone were the tedious preliminaries forced upon women in the old days of conservative policies - the counselling, the consenting paperwork, the 'cooling off period'.  Now, no questions asked.  A woman was indeed free to choose in California. 

Now Brandi, a graduate or Brown and Columbia law school was no intellectual innocent when it came to the legal, social, moral and religious issues concerning abortion; yet she never once retreated from the central, salient, essential point - a woman should be in control of her own body and do what she liked with it. 

Men, except for their rooster's contribution, were irrelevant to the issue and should have no say in the disposition of a woman's pregnancy, so despite their patriarchal, misogynist whining, they were supernumerary; and so it was that Brandi never bothered to tell her partners about her pregnancies.  Why should she?  Money was not an issue nor permission, nor any moral obligation.  

Brandi had become a regular at the San Diego clinic, greeted by name as she walked in the door.  Despite her many visits, the staff never offered any contraceptive advice.  They, after all, were in the business of abortion and no business model would ever include the promotion of a competing product; so it was always with a wave, a smile, and a 'See you next time' that she left the clinic. 

Soon a fleet of busses coming from nearby states idled in front of Planned Parenthood while passengers filed in and out. The clinic had hired more practitioners and expanded their facilities so that they could do hundreds of abortions a day. Most Californians were supportive in principle of free access to abortion and found the new marketing initiatives logical expressions of the supply and demand of a valued commodity. 

As the 2024 presidential election drew near, and the Harris campaign focused on abortion rights, many Californians were proud of their commitment to women's rights and especially to women of color.  The busses filled with black and Latino women coming to California for an abortion were testaments to their progressive thinking and enterprise. 

 

Others were not so sure.  There was something disturbing and unsettling about the issue. It was the absolute indifference to any moral or religious considerations and the sheer scale of the enterprise that was so unsettling. The busses of chipper, chattering, unconcerned women lined up in front of Planned Parenthood were offensive.  

In a horrible way, they were reminders of the Nazi cattle cars hauling Jews to their death at Auschwitz.  It was the same tortuous justification, the same one-issue, one simplified reason that was so frightening.  Suppose opponents of abortion were right - that life begins at conception - then these busses were headed to death camps no different from Sobibor.  

John Paul II was the first pope to speak out forcefully against the expedient nature of abortion. While in the Church's view all abortions were mortally wrong, those done for simple expediency were in a different, far worse category.  There could be no more immoral, damaging, inhuman action than the ending of a potential life for no reason other than inconvenience.  

Such actions had universal moral implications, said the Pope.  If an individual life were so cavalierly considered and if the value of a human being was so unimportant and insignificant, then the value of all life was demeaned.  The removal of a fetus, regardless of whether it was actual life or potential life, was a degrading, dehumanizing act. 

Pope Francis reiterated John Paul's warning, adding that an indifference to human life carried over to all life.  The world around us, the environment of plants and animals, all living things are devalued by abortion. A respect for life, all life is central to human dignity.  

 

None of this bothered Brandi, and she had no reservations about her serial abortions. Not only was her body hers and hers alone, but the issues of presumed morality (what was 'potential' life but a figment of the Vatican's obsession) were simply vestiges of patriarchy.  Men had finally been put in their place and Rome was their last redoubt. 

Expediency? Another vain, unfounded criticism of a woman's right to choose whenever she chose and for whatever reason; and so it was that she kept visiting Planned Parenthood, not bothering with contraception except in an indifferent, desultory way. 

The story might end with Brandi becoming pregnant, having a lovely blue-eyed, blonde-haired child and loving her to death and recanting her former abortion ways; but that would be just whistlin' Dixie, for in her mind and that of other so pre-disposed women, the two were mutually exclusive.  Wanting to repeatedly remove an embryo from the womb and eventually allowing one to grow there were two separate issues. 

Of course they are not; but the political juggernaut has already done its damage, Californians are happy that their state is the abortion capital of America, and Brandi keeps on getting her D&Cs at her favorite Planned Parenthood in San Diego.