“Your Body, Your Choice”: Fetishizing Abortion from Womb to Garbage Can

When a society begins to celebrate what it once mourned, it reveals not just a shift in policy, but a sickness in its soul. Abortion has always been an issue of profound ethical weight, but we have reached the point where it is no longer just defended — it is fetishized. And when a culture fetishizes the killing of its unborn, it does not merely reflect a loss of morality. It heralds the loss of its very humanity.

The phrase “Your body, your choice” has become the rallying cry of a movement that has evolved beyond advocacy and into something far more unsettling. What was once framed as a reluctant necessity has now morphed into a grotesque display of moral decay—where the act of ending a human life is not merely defended but celebrated, paraded as a symbol of empowerment. It is a transformation that reveals a dangerous cultural sickness, one that strips away all pretense of moral wrestling and replaces it with performative bravado.

There was a time when even pro-choice advocates understood the gravity of abortion. The rhetoric of "safe, legal, and rare," once championed by figures like Bill Clinton, at least acknowledged the moral weight of terminating a pregnancy. Abortion was framed as an unfortunate but sometimes necessary option, not a cause for celebration.

But somewhere along the way, that narrative shifted. The movement became more radical, no longer satisfied with mere access but demanding that society not only tolerate but applaud abortion. Campaigns like Shout Your Abortion and Abortion is Normal have transformed what was once an agonizing decision into a cultural spectacle. Women take to social media to flaunt their abortions as if they were merit badges, turning personal trauma—or moral apathy—into a public performance.

The question is no longer whether abortion should be legal, but whether it should be revered. And that is where we find ourselves today: in a society that no longer debates the ethics of abortion, but instead revels in it.

For all the talk of "bodily autonomy," the reality of abortion remains what it has always been: the violent destruction of an unborn human life. Whether through chemical poisoning or surgical dismemberment, the result is the same—an existence snuffed out before it ever had the chance to take its first breath.

Yet, in this dystopian cultural shift, this brutal reality is erased. Abortion is rebranded as an act of power, a declaration of self-ownership, a milestone to be celebrated. But behind the hashtags and slogans, the biological facts remain unchanged:

• A heart that was beating at just 22 days is forcibly stopped.

• Fingers and toes that had already formed by week 10 are torn apart.

• A skull that would have housed an entire lifetime of experiences is crushed before it ever saw the light of day.

And where does this all end? In a trash bin, in a medical waste bag, in the silent disposal of what was once a human being. That is the reality—from womb to garbage can.

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force. In order to justify something so grim, it must be reframed. The child must not be a child—it must be a clump of cells. The process must not be brutal—it must be healthcare. And the outcome must not be tragic—it must be empowering.

But reality does not bend to rhetoric. No amount of euphemism changes what happens in an abortion clinic. No slogan can turn death into life. And no hashtag can erase the truth: that abortion is not a human right, but a human wrong.

The more extreme the celebration, the greater the need for self-justification. Because deep down, even the most fervent abortion advocate knows what they are endorsing. The evidence is in the language, in the way they recoil at medical descriptions of abortion, in the way they bristle when confronted with ultrasound images, in the way they refuse to answer the simplest of moral questions: When does life begin?

If abortion were truly something to be proud of, there would be no need for slogans. No need for Twitter threads romanticizing the experience. No need for the collective, desperate attempt to drown out the small, persistent voice of the conscience whispering: This is wrong.

It is not enough for abortion to be available; it must be sacralized. It must be treated not as a tragedy, but as a triumph. Those who hesitate, those who grieve, those who whisper that something feels off about a world in which the most vulnerable can be discarded on demand—they must be silenced.

And so the abortion movement grows louder, prouder, more radical. The more the conscience resists, the more fervent the indoctrination must become. Abortion is not just a right, they say. It is a moral good. A sacred act. A necessary ritual in the religion of autonomy.

But at what cost?

The cost is our collective humanity. The cost is the deadening of the conscience. The cost is a culture in which the strong dictate the worth of the weak, where life is not an inherent right but a conditional privilege.

A culture that fetishizes abortion is not one that merely tolerates moral wrong—it is one that has ceased to recognize morality altogether. And when morality dies, so too does civilization.

Postscript:

After writing this I felt compelled to ask ChatGPT for how many abortions have been performed in the United States since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Copied below is the answer:

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“Since the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, which legalized abortion nationwide, the United States has seen significant numbers of abortions performed.

Estimates suggest that from 1973 through 2020, approximately 63,459,781 abortions occurred in the country.

The annual number of abortions peaked around 1990, with approximately 1.6 million procedures. Following this peak, there was a gradual decline over the subsequent decades. For instance, in 2017, about 862,300 abortions were reported, and in 2020, the number was approximately 930,160.

Regarding the distribution of abortions by race and ethnicity, data from various years provide the following insights:

• Non-Hispanic Black women: Consistently account for a disproportionate percentage of abortions relative to their population size. In 2022, they represented 39.5% of all abortions, with an abortion rate of 24.4 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years and an abortion ratio of 429 per 1,000 live births.

• Non-Hispanic White women: In 2022, they accounted for 31.9% of abortions, with an abortion rate of 5.7 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years and an abortion ratio of 106 per 1,000 live births.

• Hispanic women: In 2022, they comprised 21.2% of abortion cases.

• Other races (including Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, and mixed race women): Accounted for 7.3% of abortions in 2022.

It’s important to note that these figures can vary based on the data collection methods and reporting practices of different organizations.”

https://www.nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/despite-bans-number-abortions-united-states-increased-2023?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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And now back to my writing:

Sixty-three million children—killed in utero.

Not for what they did, but for the quiet crime of being too small, in the wrong place, at the wrong hour. For when the dust settles, whether we name them zygote or embryo, fetus or newborn, child or youth, adult or elder—these are not different beings. They are the same human in the same unfolding poem, chapters in the same human story, bound by a single, sacred breath from conception to death.

This is an order of magnitude worse than the Holocaust, and history will rightfully judge us for this. It always does.

When those who shout their abortions today are whispered about in shame tomorrow, the world will mourn not just the millions lost, but the conscience it buried to justify their deaths. As with the Holocaust, the question will not be whether we knew—but why we looked away.