lyrics inspired by the movie Unplanned

Ms. Sally loved the parties, spent her nights out “on the town.”
Her door was open for the boys, whenever they came ‘round.
Then one morning when she woke she knew that things weren’t right,
She punched up numbers on her phone, and called “Abortion Rights.”

They sympathized and named a friendly obstetrician man.
He met her with a smile, and hypodermic in his hand.
She felt a shock , the womb convulse, and then a searing pain.
The child was born, and gave a cry—and never cried again.

It’s called ‘abortion rights’
No one would ever dare . . .
To call it – foolish

Every doctor takes an oath to do the very best he can
To do no harm,* and most stay true, in this once Godly land,
But some inject a mother so the child within her womb
Is born, a lifeless corpse, and stacked like garbage in the room.

It’s called abortion rights,
And none would ever dare . . .
To call it – reckless

There are some that some call “doctor,” and some gov’ners in our land
That hide the truth in silken words, so we won’t understand.
They say, “comfort the new-born” —what a mockery of words!
They mean, “A pillow on its face, the choking won’t be heard.”

They call that “comforting”
They say “abortion rights”
They know it’s – murder

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*Hippocratic oath: [“I, doctor ___, swear to”] “never do harm” and “not cause an abortion”

.

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A university faculty (PhD  University of California 1967, political science) and freelancer in his early career, Ted Hayes moved into full-time journalism and is now retired.

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14 Responses

  1. Peter Hartley

    I’ve never seen the film, but don’t think I need to after reading this poem. Very well done, very moving and really quite shocking, as it should be. Rights appear to trump obligations and duties every time don’t they? And expediency so often trumps the rights of the unborn. And those euphemisms! If the mother dies in the process is this “collateral damage”?

    Reply
  2. Theresa Rodriguez

    Thank you for this poignant testament to the horrors of abortion. It is an issue close to my heart as well.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      David, don’t confuse the idea of rights as compared to powers. We, as American citizens have rights, enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but the government has Powers, as described in other articles of The Constitution. These are two different things, which mainly involve the relationships of superordinate an subordinate entities. And of course nobody has the right to abort you (and it’s far too late for that, anyway), but at some point someone may or may not have the right to an abortion. In my opinion, every person should have the right to make personal decisions, and I can only hope that those decisions are moral ones, according to that person’s sense of morality. I don’t expect anyone to make the same decisions I would have made, but it is important that persons make moral decisions, for better or worse. God knows, people need practice in such activities. And God will separate the righteous and the iniquitous in His own time.

      Reply
      • David Paul Behrens

        C.B., I completely agree with you. I am against abortion on moral grounds, which means I am “pro-life.” But I am also “pro-choice,” in that it is a woman’s final decision that counts, and the government should stay out of it. I also reluctantly agree that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

      • Ted Hayes

        August 16

        Mr. Anderson,
        I understand your viewpoint. When you say that everyone has the right to make their own decisions, as long as they are moral decisions, it seems to me you are ducking the question. Is “unlimited abortion” a moral decision? Late term, healthy foetus, mother not endangered? Post-birth? – Ted Hayes

  5. Jan Darling

    I gagged as I read the poem. The clinical starkness was effective. As I re-read it, I felt increasingly uncomfortable about its message until I recalled Marshall McLuhan and I began to see the poem more as the vehicle for a point of view than a ‘cri de coeur’.
    Somehow that made me angry. But I haven’t seen the movie so I hope that this poem is mostly a reflection of having seen it. Because the subject of abortion merits much more philosophical and ethical discussion than the piece suggests. The response made by CB is a far more elegant argument than I could mount and I agree with him absolutely.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Jan, as always, you are a darling. And if what I just wrote makes me more a libertarian than a conservative, then I can live with that. Yes, the poem itself has more outrage than rhetorical skill, and doesn’t account for lives ruined from the outset by irresponsible parents. And “murder,” by the way, is a legal term. It does not denote or connote the same thing as “killing.” Every day untold thousands of bacteria are killed inside our guts, but no one, except perhaps for extreme vegans, would ever call that murder. I don’t mean to minimize the horror of what is now legal in certain U.S. states, but let us please not conflate “early-term” with “late-term.”

      Reply
      • Ted

        C.B., Rhetorical skill, or the lack thereof, may exist only in the eye of the beholder — or critic.
        If you could meet the ghosts of aborted babies, would you venture “the mother’s right to choose”?
        Are you neutral on the question of capital punishment?
        How many women who have had abortions wonder about their choice for the rest of their lives? How many finally regret the choice to terminate “flesh of their flesh”?

  6. Alexander Ream

    Truly inspiring poetry; brave also

    the soul is real; and babes will rise
    and speak and question, in the skies
    and you and i shall answer them
    with naked truth: l’homme, la femme

    Reply
  7. Margaret Coats

    The government gets involved in personal decisions about property, finance, consumption, abuse, and personal behavior of many kinds. Not much of this government involvement is intended to protect the very life and all the rights of another human being. Most abortions deliberately end the life and all the rights of a totally unprotected human being. That is why good government restricts personal decisions about abortion.

    To put it in the terms of the Ted Hayes poem, so-called “abortion rights” destroy all the rights of another human being, starting with the most truly fundamental right to life.

    Reply
  8. Joshua C. Frank

    Mr. Hayes, this is quite a powerful poem. Well done.

    However, I can’t believe all the pro-abortion comments in response to this… and the fact that we’ve all put up with them. Had I been a member at the time, I would have verbally ripped each of those filthy liberals (yes, I know that’s redundant) a new one. I’m not going to, because those comments are years old; instead, I’m going to say it all here.

    If someone wrote a poem about the Holocaust, would we put up with pro-Nazi comments? Given that science and Christianity agree that life begins at conception, the unborn are human beings. Denying this doesn’t make it untrue, any more than the Nazis’ denial of the humanity of Jews and other “undesirables” (as the Nazis called them) made them not human. That being the case, killing an unborn child is morally no better than killing an older child. You liberals support mass murder in the name of feminism, just as the Nazis supported and even committed mass murder in the name of socialism (“Nazi” is short for “National Socialist”). Shame on every last one of you!

    Reply

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