Most abortions are performed on unmarried women. Mary Rose Short, director of California Right to Life, took notice when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that unmarried women accounted for 86.3% of the 620,327 reported, U.S. abortions in 2020.
At about the same time California Governor Gavin Newsom foisted deadly abortion-promoting billboards on seven pro-life states.
“I started putting those two things together,” Short said in a recent phone interview. She became inspired to develop a billboard campaign with a message meant to save the lives of women and children, instead of destroying them.
Encouraging marriage
The campaign promotes abstinence as a better solution for unwanted pregnancy than abortion.
Short wanted to encourage marriage and saving sex for marriage.
“It’s better and so much safer for children because they’re nine times less likely to get aborted,” if the mother and father are married, according to the CDC data, she said, and she wants to put the “benefits of waiting until marriage back in the public eye.”
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When men and women engage in illicit sex, the result is often an abortion. Sex outside of a marriage between one man and one woman used to be a societal taboo. Short noted that encouraging chastity seems unacceptable now.
Through the billboards’ message Short aims to “break the taboo to suggest that people wait until marriage,” she said.
A more hopeful future
Alexandra Snyder, CEO of Life Legal Defense Foundation, designed the billboards. The text is in the same color and font as Newsom’s pernicious abortion ads.
They are a project of Coalition for an Abortion Free Future, a group of pro-life advocates including California Right to Life, Life Legal Defense Foundation, and Created Equal.
“Save sex for marriage,” the billboards read. “Plan your future, not your abortion.” It pictures a young woman looking hopeless and disappointed as she reads a positive pregnancy test strip. Her boyfriend sits nearby looking distraught.
Their attitude is the picture of quiet panic and fearful regret. The message is clear that whatever choice this unmarried couple makes will be painful and difficult – but that waiting until marriage for sexual intimacy can prevent such misery.
The idea comes across that if the couple had waited until marriage, they would be planning their future instead of dreading the future.
An overlooked solution
Abstinence is often “totally overlooked and not expected,” she said, even in the pro-life movement.
Tweet This: Saving sex for marriage is better and so much safer for children because they’re nine times less likely to get aborted
Short hopes the billboards will help “someone on the edge, who’s unsure whether to start sleeping with someone, [that it will give] strength in their backbone and get them to think about the future, the future of their children and the future of their relationship.”
The billboards also state, “Over 85% of abortions are performed on unmarried women,” followed by “Learn more at anabortionlessfuture.com.” They replace Newsom’s billboard spaces near Cincinnati, Ohio, and in Jackson, Miss.
Newsom’s twisted ads claim that pro-life states don’t “own your body. You do.” They depict a woman in handcuffs. This illogical campaign equates slavery with the pro-life states’ efforts to protect women from heartache, and babies from being killed in the womb.
prior to the Coalition for An Abortion Free Future's billboard was placed.
Do pro-life states really want to own women’s bodies? No. Abortionists are the ones who want to own women’s bodies and make a profit off of them. Abortionists also own the bodies of aborted babies – and do hideous things to them.
Killing babies in the womb is no way to love your neighbor
Newsom’s billboards abuse the words of Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself. They make the irrational claim that annihilating babies in the womb is somehow a way to show love.
“I think he was trying to twist people’s faith,” Short observed. “He put them [the billboards] in states with more active Christians and tried to twist their understanding of Scripture.”
Confusion, evil, and ignorance
Short speculated that Newsom misquoting of Scripture could come from his own confusion.
“Is he actively evil or incredibly ignorant?” she asked.
LAX airport that directs people to a government-run abortion website.
Newsom’s sales pitch purports to offer women freedom.
But billboards from the pro-life coalition promote the truth that women experience real freedom when they follow God’s design of enjoying sex within marriage. Billboards encouraging self-control can bring about more freedom than anything California’s destructive governor has to offer.
