WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 01: Demonstrators gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, on December 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. With the addition of conservative justices to the court by former President Donald Trump, experts believe this could be the most important abortion case in decades and could undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The latest New York Times opinion column from Jessica Grose claims that "reproductive choice," AKA abortion, is a "family value." The column centered on one abortion clinic executive director’s perspective that abortion is also a "moral good," and "religious law."
In her Tuesday morning piece, Grose presented the practice that takes the lives of unborn human beings as the opposite of what it is: something that’s integral to family life.
Grose wrote about the life of Calla Hales, the "executive director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, a clinic that provides abortion care in Charlotte, N.C." and in other major cities in the south. At the opening of her piece, she illustrated how Hales wore a "bulletproof vest" the day after Roe v. Wade was overturned because of the "endless stream of threats that abortion providers get."
Though as Grose indicated, Hales is "dubious about how useful the vest is: It doesn’t cover her entire body so she knows it won’t necessarily save her life." Though the column noted that "her loved ones were texting and calling her to make sure she had it on."
New York Times piece claims that abortion is a "family value."
Grose featured Hales’ account of her apprehensions living in a "post-Roe reality" which she claimed, "nothing could have prepared her for." She has been hearing from more people calling for appointments who are worried about being unable to receive abortions due to the Supreme Court’s decision.
"But ‘a heartbreaking amount of people from Louisiana and Kentucky are calling’ from the parking lots of abortion clinics, she said," Gross wrote, adding that "those states had trigger laws where abortion was banned immediately."
But Hales soldiers on because she believes abortion is a "family value" that needs to be provided. "Hales’s parents started the network of clinics that she runs more than 20 years ago, and I asked her how she thinks about her role in carrying on what they began. She feels that providing access to abortion is absolutely a family value," Grose recounted.
A recent piece from NBC's Today.com portrayed abortion in a similar light, featuring fathers claiming that their abortions were beneficial for their family roles.
Abortion-rights supporters chant their objections at the Kentucky Capitol on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, in Frankfort, Ky., as Kentucky lawmakers debate overriding the governor's veto of an abortion measure. (AP Photo/Bruce Schreiner, File)
"Most abortion providers have families of their own, and they are going out of their way to make sure other people have the families they want as well. But we’re constantly demonized," Hales stated.
Grose added, "Hales pointed out that the majority of people who get abortions are parents already — as my colleagues at The Upshot explained in December, 60 percent of women who get abortions have at least one child."
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Not only is this a "family value," but according to Hales, it’s a "religious" one as well. Grose quoted her, writing, "She added that running an abortion clinic is ‘not only a family value for us, it’s also a religious choice.’ Hales, who is Jewish, told me, ‘I have been really able to embrace Judaism as an adult and an abortion provider.’"
Hales emphasized this point even more. "’In our minds and religion and values,’ reproductive choice is ‘not just a moral good, it’s a religious law,’" Grose wrote, quoting her.
Abortion-rights protesters gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. ((AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana))
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