Women who have abortions usually want to put the experience behind them, tucking the memory away in the recesses of their minds. But not Emily Letts. Instead, the 25-year-old former actress filmed her surgical abortion — and then posted the video on the Internet. She says she wanted to present “a positive abortion story.”
Letts, now an abortion counselor at Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey, wrote in Cosmopolitan recently that she was “breathing and humming through” the abortion as if she was “giving birth.” She explained, “To me, this was as birth-like as it could be.” Immediately after the abortion she can be heard exclaiming, “Yeah, cool.”
Letts’ video has evoked all the expected responses, with support from pro-abortion individuals, people vowing to pray for her conversion, and some nasty e-mails from disgusted viewers. But there have also been unexpected responses — from pro-abortion respondents who consider Letts’ video “creepy.” For example, Neon Nettle’s Marnie Wayne wrote, in a scathing critique, “Here at Neon Nettle, we are certainly pro-choice — but her cavalier attitude and attempt to claim her fifteen minutes had us all astounded…. Emily looks forward to her abortion and enjoys the process as if she were nipping in for a manicure.”
Many also may note that Letts seemed to be using abortion as a form of birth control. While she counsels other women on what’s euphemistically called “family planning,” she admitted that she herself didn’t use contraception. This is despite her tacitly confessing to promiscuity by saying, “I take pregnancy tests all the time.”
And Letts is equally loose with her portrayals. While her Cosmopolitan piece is entitled “Why I Filmed My Abortion,” did she in fact film her abortion?
Or is it more accurate to say that she recorded her very inappropriate reaction to her abortion?
The video shows only Letts’ torso and face. We cannot see the abortionist. There was no intrauterine footage of the baby’s destruction. And his remains were not shown.
Many critics also point out that not only does Letts express no remorse, but she actually revels in the abortion. As she also wrote in Cosmopolitan, “Every time I watch the video, I love it…. It will always be a special memory for me. I still have my sonogram, and if my apartment were to catch fire, it would be the first thing I’d grab.”
This is a bizarre statement. A woman who delivered, loved, and raised a child would certainly be expected to treasure his sonogram. But the last thing women who have abortions generally want is a reminder that what was torn from their womb and killed was a living, breathing human being. So what does Letts’ statement about her sonogram smack of?
A sociopathic serial killer keeping “trophies” from his victims.
Elaborating on this phenomenon at Mindhunters, former FBI agent and criminal profiler John Douglas writes, “Killers like to take trophies and souvenirs from their victims. Keeping some memento — a lock of hair, jewelry, newspaper clips of the crime — helps prolong, even nourish, their fantasy of the crime.” He says that often serial killers like to have a “photo of the victim, as if they had some kind of relationship going.” A sonogram is a type of photo.
Explaining further, Douglas writes that these twisted people “pull out their trophies and just sit back in their La-Z Boy chairs and relive the crime over and over in their minds.” And just imagine if they had video.
Unlike with a normal person, these reminders of victims couldn’t bother sociopaths because, for one thing, they view people as objects. And in this they consider themselves more rational than everyone else. This may seem preposterous, but note that it accords with today’s fashions, as it is simply the taking of atheism to its logical conclusion. After all, if we have no souls, we then are just some pounds of chemicals and water — organic robots — mere things. Apropos to this, Letts was inspired to create her death video by a woman who filmed her own abortion, a woman who goes by the YouTube handle “Angie AntiTheist.”
And atheism’s fingerprints are evident in another aspect of this story. Just read a collection of statements made by Letts and consider their common thread:
• “I feel super great about having an abortion.”
• “I would say that women can feel a whole spectrum of emotions about abortion.”
• “There are also women who feel completely confident about their decision, they feel relief. They don’t feel shame or fear, they feel relief.”
• “I just care that they are confident and feel positive about their decision.”
• “I don’t feel like a bad person. I don’t feel sad. I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby, I can make a life.”
Of the 92 words above, 10 (more than 10 percent, in other words) were “feel.” Now, noteworthy here is that not “feeling” like a bad person is hardly unusual; even the Kim Jong-uns of the world tend to feel that way. But how does atheism relate to this emphasis on feelings?
What will govern man’s decisions in the area we call “morality”? There are only two possibilities: Either something originating inside of him or something originating outside of him. The latter would be God and His will, which we may call “Truth.” And what if God didn’t exist? Then we’d be reduced to looking within ourselves for answers, and the most compelling, most alluring, most seductive thing found there is emotion. Nothing feels as right as what feels right.
Some will now point out that we also have reason, but reason, properly applied, tells us that emotion is the obvious yardstick in a godless universe. Why? Well, we wouldn’t say that chocolate was “wrong” or “evil” simply because we discovered that the vast majority of the world didn’t like it; it’s simply a matter of taste. But then, how does it make any more sense to say that murder is “wrong” or “evil” if the only reason we do so is that we learned that most people prefer we not kill in a way we call unjust? If as with flavor it’s all a matter of man’s preference, then it belongs in the same category: taste.
The point is that reason is not an answer; it’s a method by which answers can be found. But if there is no Truth, there are no answers to be found in the moral arena (in fact, there then is no moral arena), and, therefore, no reason for reason.
This is why, as people become less God-centered, they become more self-centered. And this relativism, this solipsism, this supplanting of morality with feelings, was most evident when Letts said in her video, “I knew what I was going to do was right, because it was right for me, and no one else” (certainly not for the baby).
Yet perhaps, amidst all the rationalization and emotionalism, the Truth is nagging at Letts. At 3:17 in her video she says, “I feel completely, like, comfortable with the decision; I’m supported by everyone,” while shaking her head, largely side to side. This kind of incongruence between statement and body language may indicate that Letts doesn’t really believe what she’s saying.
Unfortunately, many people seem to. And how many millions of feelings will have to change before millions of babies will be saved?
