The Left’s Champion Cause…
February 23rd, 2008 at 01:06pm Matt Margolis
An artist killed herself after aborting her twins when she was eight weeks pregnant, leaving a note saying: “I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum.”
Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. She was declared dead early the following day - her 31st birthday.
Her suicide note read: “I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does.”
It’s interesting that while the left makes up buzz phrases like “women’s rights,” “reproductive rights,” and “right to choose,” they absolutely ignore the negative effects of abortion on women.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: For more information on the devastating effects abortion has on its adult victims, please go to Silent No More. Matt and I were honored to meet some of the women from this organization and they stirred us greatly in our opposition to the practice of abortion.
Entry Filed under: Life Issues
40 Comments
1. Pain | February 23rd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
And where Mister Margolis since you choose to offer up this woman’s corpse to make a political point, is the Soul of Emma Beck?
2. Rana Quijotesca | February 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
mmm… I love the fallacy of Composition…
3. Diane Tomlinson | February 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Pain,
Is this something I can lay a bet on before I answer because I have a feeling that I know what Margolis is going to say. It’ll be like “What a horrible thing to do to assume that a Soul is in Hell?” blah blah blah. Well it’s you who adhere to all those fire and brimstone rules don’t you think someone should enforce them?
4. Pain | February 23rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
There is only one penance for suicide and there is no appeal. Eternal suffering in the manner one takes their own Life is the cost of suicide.
5. LiberalNitemare | February 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Diane,
Im not sure how things are done where your from, but on this planet, its customary to only participate on one side of the conversation.
I know its a little harder to win an argument this way, but I think you can do it if you try.
6. Diane Tomlinson | February 23rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Okay Nitemare I’ll bite on your hook too.
Where is Emma Beck’s Soul?
7. Porter Jervis | February 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
All this bickering over the soul of this poor lass. All you need do is look here:
Eph 2:8-10
“By grace you have been saved though faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any one should boast”.
So if her soul had been saved through faith, she is in heaven. Its not all that difficult.
Salvation is not earned by a man (or woman’s) works here. It is by faith alone.
You cannot be prayed into heaven, you cannot get into heaven just because you are a good guy.
8. LiberalNitemare | February 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I couldn’t even begin to guess on the current status of Emma Becks soul.
Now you can answer one for me -
Do you agree or disagree with Marks statement that the left ignores the negative impact of abortion?
9. bongoman | February 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
And if she hadn’t suicided, what should the legal penalty have been? If I recall from a previous thread Jeremiah suggested a term of years in prison for a woman who procured an abortion. Not sure why he didn’t go the whole hog and suggest the death penalty, although that was the suggested penalty for the doctor I think.
Does that sound about right?
10. SEW | February 23rd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Vote O8ama. Hope. Change. Choice. “Late term” homicide.
11. Diane Tomlinson | February 23rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Yes I do agree with mark about the liberal consensus to not look at the horros that spring from misinformed women having abortions. I’m equally still of a mind that Mark and millions of other Americans are seeing their majority status slip away because of abortion and this is the chief reason they loathe the practice. Racial culture trumps species compassion.
I do think there isn’t enough post abortion counselling and I think this whole Emma beck thing is a travesty. Tp say this girl should have had her babies is an easy out in hindsight. Who knows she might have been overwhelmed by being a mother I cannot say. What i can say is the hospital failed her psychiatric needs, her boyfriend failed her emotional needs for his own selfish wants and the media has failed her by making this a global political matter.
I think it would have seemed less creepy if Emma Beck were an American. Then this could have been a full on crazy camp meeting of the pros vs the antis.
12. Kahn | February 23rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Where is her soul? Is that all you can see in this? No condemnation of child murder? No overwhelming sense of grief, loss, and guilt? Because that is what I see.
I’ve never really understood the lefts position on abortion. I’ve challenged you over and over to pick the exact moment a fetus becomes a human and you have never been able to. So, you are willing to kill without being able to prove you’re not murdering.
Now, the religious arguments against abortion are equally weak. They can’t prove anything either.
So we are faced with two positions. One holds that the child is a living human. The other holds that it is not. Neither can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case then, I think you have to let the child live unless you can prove you are not murdering it.
13. Mark Noonan | February 23rd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Diane,
You are aware that Matt is Jewish, aren’t you? Basic bit of research - no fire and brimstone from Matt…just a basic, human understanding that life is precious.
As for where the poor woman’s soul is - that is something we dare not judge, lest we be judged. We don’t even know, precisely, where Judas is - such judgements are left to God.
I also find it disgusting that you imply my opposition is in any way related to my politics - I don’t care if every GOPer loses office in November if, by so doing, we could secure the Culture of Life. My opposition to abortion is not because liberals support it, but because it is an unmitigated evil and it must be stopped.
14. Jonathan | February 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Nice of you, Matt, to use this woman’s corpse to bash the pro-choice crowd and the left.
Good lord, man, show some decency, for Christsake.
There’s no denying it. Matt, you sir, are noting but a partisan hack.
15. LiberalNitemare | February 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Diane,
So why couldnt you say that in the first place?
16. 1moreyear | February 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
When can we faithfully say, we multiplied and filled the Earth? The question will then become, now full, how can we not abort.
17. Almiranta | February 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
How odd of Diane to claim “…Mark and millions of other Americans are seeing their majority status slip away because of abortion ..” ????????????
You do know, Diane, don’t you, that every single time abortion has been subjected to the vote of the people, the MAJORITY have voted against it? That is why the Liberals had to have activist judges overrule the will of the people to make it a Constitutional “right”.
You people are just bound and determined to find something snotty to say, no matter how dumb it is, aren’t you?
And there is the even more vicious effort to derail the actual thread point, which is that many women who kill their babies do so under great pressure, and/or that they suffer great guilt afterwards, by introducing some smirky psuedo-question about where the poor woman’s soul is now is just despicable.
As is Pain’s particularly vile approach to the essay, in which s/he sneers that Matt “…offer (s) up this woman’s corpse…” Eeeuuuwww. That is a much deeper peek into your own pathology than we really need to see, Pain. Though given your spin on things, I can see where you got your moniker.
Creeeepy…….
And it also failed. We did follow the thread, we did understand that the pro-abortion crowd resolutely ignores and denies the incredible burdens of guilt suffered by so many who have succumbed to the bogus claims that there is no down side to killing ones’ child, that it is really just a “clump of cells” and so on.
In Colorado a few years ago, the state legislature was willing to pay for abortions if the women would agree to a three day waiting period and participate in very basic counseling, which would have consisted of some medical information on the actual status of the fetus at that stage of development as well as information on options other than abortion.
The very falsely-named pro-”choice” crowd had violent hissy fits, literally screaming in outrage. Why? When any action taken without full information and disclosure is not really a ‘choice’ but is a ‘guess’, why did these people who so loudly claim their passionate devotion to “CHOICE” fight so hard to keep pregnant women from gaining the basic information they would need to actually CHOOSE any course of action?
Yeah, right in one. It is because they are not pro-CHOICE but pro-ABORTION. Abortion is big business, you know, worth billions of dollars a year. And it is a political tool as well.
So spare us the pious incantations about “choice”. We know how bogus they are.
18. plainjane | February 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Vote Democratic this November. Democrats have great ideas for reducing the number of abortions. Sending abortion back into the back alleys with coat hangers is not the answer. Republicans had absolute total control of the government for six years and the best they could do was use abortion as another wedge, get out the vote, issue. It is time for moderate Republicans to stand up and say enough is enough, my vote is not for the asking only on election day.
19. Christian Wright | February 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Deleted - off topic.
20. LiberalNitemare | February 23rd, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Regardless of your opinions on abortion, you really have to wonder about a medical system that can get you in for an abortion in a week, but just cant seem to find time to make sure that your mentally healthy before or afterward.
21. Diana Powe | February 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Of course everyone here on either side is pontificating on a bare minimum of facts. Did Emma Beck commit suicide because she had an abortion or because she was someone who suffered from a mental illness?
Obviously, the reason for this post here is to prop Ms. Beck’s corpse up for display so that Matt can point an accusing finger at it and cry, “See what you people that I hate have done! This is your fault!” In death, Emma Beck gets to serve as a cheap political prop.
If Ms. Beck had not had an abortion would she have committed suicide anyway because of her boyfriend? No one knows. Suppose she had carried the children to term and had murdered the children later in life because of her mental illness. Would that have anything to say about abortion? People who really cared about her as an individual might ask those of themselves. However, it’s a lot more fun to get into high dudgeon over a situation that you will never personally find yourself in.
22. SEW | February 23rd, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Double homicide and a suicide. 50 million homicides since choice was taken away from the unborn and their fathers. Vote Obama and support ‘partial’ birth homicide. Hope.
O8bama.
23. Kahn | February 23rd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
being depressed is the defining characteristic of a liberal.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060223/news_lz1e23will.html
Meanwhile. Just exactly on what day and hour does the fetus become a human baby?
24. SEW | February 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
In typical liberal fashion, DP only feels grief for the mother. Nothing for the victims.
25. Kahn | February 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 pm
She doesn’t even care about the mother.
26. SEW | February 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Kahn, according to the intellectuals, the choicers, it is when the last toe makes an exit, or the last hair if a breech. Fair game to suction the brain until then. Vote Obama.
27. Gozer the Carpathian | February 24th, 2008 at 12:17 am
*Rolls eyes*
Oi oi. Every time Abortion comes up it’s the same bait and tackle with both sides isn’t it?
For this article, I find it sad that it’s used as a prop. The simple fact that babies are regularly killed should be prop enough don’t you think?
Then again for those complaining about Matt and Mark using this as a prop, can we stop using as an example of how evil or uncaring America is?
28. Mark Noonan | February 24th, 2008 at 1:19 am
plain,
Please provide a verified case of an abortion being attempted with a coat hanger.
29. uffy | February 24th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Pro choice: “Too” words for the collectively stupid under the umbrella of NARAL. Too stupid to buy condoms, too stupid to say “no”, too stupid to use birth control pills, too stupid to get a Norplant, and too stupid to realize that an abortion is a medical procedure and not a birth control method.
30. js | February 24th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Where is this womans soul?
This is heartbreaking. She was so guilty in her own heart, she took her own life because she could not stand the pain of killing her own children. I think the Church teaches that suicide’s do not go to heaven, but I never read it in the Bible.
In reality, there are many women who get severe remorse after abortion (clinical depression). Depression is normal when your children die, and even more so when you kill them.
31. js | February 24th, 2008 at 8:02 am
When suicide is a result of mental depression, it is more the results of a sickness, so is it a sin?
32. Magnum Serpentine | February 24th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Almiranta
I asked people in 2006 if Abortion played any part in their vote and each said It did not and some went further to say that Values had nothing at all to do with their vote. (Iraq was the top reason many voted)
God is the person who determines when someone lives and dies. If he did not want people having abortions he would had stopped them.
I believe God is more concerned with saving the lost, than playing in trivial political games.
33. Magnum Serpentine | February 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Matt and Mark,
One more thing. People today are more concerned for the economy and the war in Iraq than they are in Abortions.
Abortions, during this election, have ranked way down on the bottom of our citizens list.
Economy and Iraq.
34. Rana Quijotesca | February 24th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Personally, I think that the magic point where a fetus becomes the moral equivalent of a post-natal baby is the after the first trimester, after higher brain function is developed.
Someone mentioned the problem with a system where abortions can be obtained but mental health care is more difficult. That’s a problem with our health care system… Psychological counseling isn’t available under most health insurance plans, so most people have to go without or pay out of pocket. That proves prohibitively expensive for many (if not most) people who get abortions, who tend to be of a lower socio-economic status or just can’t pay for counseling.
35. Almiranta | February 24th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
“abortion …… back alleys ….coat hangers ..
So now we know–plainjane is really in her 60’s, and has never moved beyond the ridiculous cant of the original pro-abortion movement.
Get your ownself into the new millenium, janie…. That tired old whine about “back alleys” and “coat hangers” is so cliched, so trite, so Last Century Lefty Rhetoric, you are seriously dating yourself.
But I see Diana, who in another post just scolded me soundly for being “hate-filled” and “uncivil” (though her quote from my post did not support such accusations—but why let truth or fact intrude on a perfectly good attack?) is showing her true color (red) by using the charming term “…prop Ms. Beck’s corpse up for display..” Not satisfied with this callous assertion, and apparently charmed by her own vivid imagery, she continues ” In death, Emma Beck gets to serve as a cheap political prop.”
The hypocrisy is staggering. Unless Diana was equally outraged by the Dems’ blatant use of the death of James Byrd in an effort to smear George Bush (for not killing Byrd’s killers deader, as far as I could determine) or the deaths of American military in their incessant efforts to show coffins being returned to the United States, just to name two examples, she is shamelessly flaunting her willingness to take whatever position most recently can be used to support her radical cause. Diana, please direct us to the archives which will prove to us that you were deeply and publicly offended by the use of James Byrd’s horrific death as a “cheap political prop”–or shut up and go away.
I read the same introductory article that anyone posting on this thread read, or at least had the opportunity to read, should relevant posting have been their desire. And I saw a sad commentary on the immense toll taken by the brutality of abortion, and how it affects the survivors as well as those initially killed by the act. I saw no gloating, no glee over the death of this tragically haunted young woman, no effort to (as Diana so charmingly put it) “prop up her corpse”.
Lefties—Abortion kills babies, and sometimes it kills those who killed the babies, whether figuratively or, as in the case of Ms. Beck, literally. If you think that is fine, then say so. But please quit your trying to obfuscate the facts with silly mindless rhetoric, whether it be about corpses or coat hangers.
Drop your facade of pretending to be merely in favor of “choice” and come right out and say that in your opinion, some lives simply have no value, and that they can easily be sacrificed for the selfish interests of others.
We’ve heard that same argument often, most recently to excuse atrocities such as slavery, the Holocaust, and the treatment of Native Americans. So it’s not a new approach. It’s just that this is the first time there has been an effort to couch it in terms of advanced (progressive?) thought—that it is NOBLE to be “for choice”.
36. ada | February 24th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
If you read the article, Emma Beck “…had a long history of anxiety and depression.” I’m sad that she had an abortion if she didn’t really want to, but it sounds like she was quite confused and uncertain. She had a responsibility to choose what was best for her, and her beliefs. It would seem she chose wrongly, for her. But I do not believe it is right to take the right to choose away from women.
And I don’t think it’s having the baby that is the hard part… We should make it easier for single mothers to raise their families. I don’t know how American single moms manage these days, without the extended families and strong social support found in other societies (like universal healthcare, to help them.
37. Diana Powe | February 24th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
The reason I chose the phrasing that I did is that the suicide of Emma Beck is a tragedy. All suicides are tragedies. However, anyone who has dealt with a person who is in the midst of a psychological crisis and is threatening suicide, knows that while they will say that they want to die because of some named event or state that the event or state is not the actual cause of their being suicidal. They’re suicidal because they’re unwilling to change in the face of some event or state and that unwillingness extends to ending their life in order to avoid confronting their need for personal change.
Emma Beck was apparently a person who had suffered for some time from a mental illness - depression. She found herself confronted with the reaction of her boyfriend to her being pregnant. This challenged her to change from needing his approval of her pregnancy to not needing his approval and coping with the fact that they had made choices that led to her being pregnant. One of the ways she could have coped would be to carry her pregnancy to term. She chose (and it was her choice) to have an abortion.
The implication of the facts in the story is that this woman who was suffering from a mental illness should have had a more assertive approach in addressing her depression before allowing her to have an abortion. However, the reality of Emma Beck’s life was not that it was defined and ended because she had an abortion which is what Matt wants to imply in his post but because she was someone who was mentally ill. The use of her death to attack “the left”, which is all Matt is doing, is defining and using her life and death in a way that is dishonest.
38. js | February 24th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
If the woman was suffering from depression, they should never have performed an abortion.
Just another reason to look at abortion on demand, and the profiteering over the execution of pre-born human beings.
Been to McAbortalds lately?
39. Almiranta | February 24th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I think I come across as a pretty definitive person. At least, I haven’t had many experiences of others believing I don’t know what I want.
I am a mature woman, a business woman, and to use a phrase that makes some Liberals giggle till they tinkle down their legs, a “decider”
Yet if I were to go into a plastic surgeon’s office and declare that I wanted a face lift, or big breasts, because I want to hang on to my husband, or I’m afraid of growing old, or any of many other reasons that raise red flags in such situations, any competent or ethical surgeon would refuse to operate on me. I would be told to go home, get counseling, and make sure I was seeking this action for the right reasons, with the right expectations.
This surgery, by the way, is not a matter of life or death. It is not the kind of thing that can haunt a person for the rest of her life, or fill her with guilt or remorse for the unnecessary taking of a human life. But it’s important enough to demand reflection and assurance that the surgical candidate is calm, informed, and properly motivated.
Fear, panic, or dismay are not considered adequate rationales for simple cosmetic surgery—but they are for an abortion.
A terrified, confused young woman can go into an aborionists’ office, clearly in distress, clearly unsure of what to do, and he can —and often does—simply go ahead and kill her baby. He often, according to anecdotal evidence from those who have been through this, ignores her concerns and fears and even pressures her to go through with the procedure.
Note the determination to simply ignore the situation in Colorado, when the opposition to the bill before the legislature was based on the claim that expecting women to have any type of counseling at all before ending their pregnancies was an unfair demand upon them. This counseling was not to try to change their minds, but merely to make sure they had all the information they needed to make such a momentous decision—-and the effort was to keep this information from them, or at the very least to make sure they had to have the means and determination and skills to seek it all out on their own.
Anyone who performs ANY surgical procedure on ANY person who is clearly distressed, unsure, confused, and/or conflicted about the procedure should be found guilty of malpractice.
And in most disciplines, he would. But not when it comes to abortions.
40. Amanda | February 25th, 2008 at 10:29 am
“…every single time abortion has been subjected to the vote of the people, the MAJORITY have voted against it…”
Um, no. Please see “South Dakota +abortion.” Or, if you’re too lazy for that, please see:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2006/SD/2006-11-08-abortion-ban_x.htm