Bill Donohue released the following remarks today:
Yesterday in Geneva, the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion was branded “psychological torture” by a member of the U.N. Committee Against Torture. It would be instructive to know why this committee contends that those who are against abortion are guilty of promoting “psychological torture,” but not those who like it.
Emily Letts, 25, does not like abortion—she loves it. That’s why she had one. More than that, she had it videoed; to read her Cosmopolitian story, click here.
Letts admits that not too long ago, she “felt fairly depressed most of the time.” Why? “I disliked my body. I felt competitive toward women.” That changed once she became an abortion counselor—now she was in a groove. Then she got pregnant. She confesses that “I hadn’t been using any kind of birth control, which is crazy, I know. I’m a sex educator, and I love talking about birth control.”
When she found she was pregnant, “I knew immediately I was going to have an abortion. I knew I wasn’t ready to take care of a child.” But she wanted to do more than have an abortion—she wanted you to see it. “I could have taken the pill, but I wanted to do the one that women were most afraid of. I wanted to show it wasn’t scary—and that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story. It’s my story.”
Letts said her abortion was “as birth-like as it could be. 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.” She adds that “every time I watch the video, I love it.”
Members of the U.N. Committee on Torture should ask Letts for a copy of the unedited video, watch it, and then explain why abortion is not torture.
Ask the U.N. Committee Against Torture to watch the video and then issue a statement: cat@ohchr.org
