While millions of Americans go off to church on Sunday mornings, a segment of our liberal elite has a different tradition. For them, Sunday mornings are designed for a hot cup of coffee and a leisurely read of the New York Times Style section. The “Vows” columns are some of the most popular reads because they give insight into the weddings of America’s most prominent people. The details of the relationships are analyzed with great fervor, which caused Sarah Jessica Parker’s character on Sex and the City to refer to it as “the single woman’s sports pages.”
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And it’s not just women. Wedding Crunchers, an analytics website exclusively dedicated to New York Times “Vows” columns, compiled more than 60,000 New York Times wedding announcements from 1981 through 2013 to create a searchable database of words used in the announcements — all to see what our nation’s “elite” are really like. For example, you can search for “Harvard,” “Andover,” and “investment banker” to see the how many times these have been mentioned on the pages of the Gray Lady. It’s enough to make your reception in the multi-purpose room of the local church seem a little less glamorous.
However, one word that has come up only four times since 1981 is “abortion.” The first three mentions refer to weddings of activists in abortion-related causes. The fourth, however, charted new territory in the New York Times’ dedication to promoting the grisly act.
“Taking Their Very Sweet Time” covered the wedding of Miami Heat basketball player Udonis Haslem and Faith Rein. It began with the usual relationship details: They met fourteen years ago during college. Both were athletes. He was from the “wrong side of the tracks,” which made him question if it could work out. This is when the New York Times‘ promotion of abortion went to a new level:
By May 2001, however, she and Mr. Haslem had become a couple, spending most of their free time together.
Their first challenge took place the following spring when she became pregnant. It was her junior year and his senior year, and he had begun training for the N.B.A. draft. Despite the pregnancy, she was busy with track meets and helping him complete homework. The timing was bad.
“I am not a huge fan of abortion, but we both had sports careers, plus we could not financially handle a baby,” said Mr. Haslem, noting how he struggled with supporting Kedonis, the son he had in high school, who is now 14 and who lives with his mother.
“Udonis appreciated that I was willing to have an abortion,” Ms. Rein said. “I found him caring, supportive, nurturing and all over me to be sure I was O.K. I saw another side of him during that difficult time and fell deeply in love. He had a big heart and was the whole package.”
Isn’t that a heartwarming detail? They bonded over the murder of their first child.
Let this wedding announcement be a clear sign: The abortion debate is conducted on dishonest terms. The left tries desperately — and successfully — to limit the debate to cases of rape, incest, and poor women facing desperate circumstances. Remember when the Clinton administration’s policy was to make abortion “safe, legal and rare?” In a few short years, we’ve devolved to “safe, legal, and celebrated as a romantic detail in a wedding announcement.” This article shows the other side of abortion: murder for the sake of ambition to advance personal careers. In other words, here’s one couple’s choice to kill their own baby for the sake of a basketball career. My husband David wrote about a volleyball player who had two abortions to save her athletic career:
“It is striking how completely the idea of such an act inverts Judeo-Christian morality, which is saturated with an ethic of care, where self-denial is a prime virtue. Christians are quite directly called to ‘deny self’ even to the point of taking up one’s figurative cross to follow Christ. Yet the ethic of “choice” is simple: Kill others to pursue self-interest. I suppose if you want to make a career omelet, you have to break a few eggs.”
Oh, but wasn’t Udonis Haslem’s decision the right one? After all, he’s no woman’s volleyball player. He’s won three NBA championship rings while playing for the Heat. Doesn’t his success justify his pre-career decisions?
Hardly.
Lately, the kids and I have been listening to NBA audio books — “When the Game Was Ours,” about the legendary Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and Shaquille O’Neill’s book “Shaq Uncut.” Even though we pay very close attention to the NBA, the books are filled with names of significant players whom we barely remember, if we’d ever heard their names. As David wrote,
“In less than two generations even the most “soaring” career will mean virtually nothing. At best, most of us will be a fond memory for surviving family and close friends. In three generations, even those memories will fade. In four generations, we’re simply a name on a family tree. But hundreds of thousands of Americans see that wisp of a career as important enough to kill a child to preserve.”
The New York Times wedding announcement of Udonis and Faith actually provided us a service: It showed us that the abortion debate is held on dishonest terms and showed us how callous the nation’s liberal “elite” is toward the death of the unborn.
Come to think of it, it also makes your reception in the multi-purpose room of the local church seem just about perfect.
Nancy A. French is a New York Times best-selling author who lives in Tennessee. Follow her on Twitter @NancyAFrench