Prolife advocates are speaking out on a decision by the Portland, Oregon, city council to grant paid time off to employees following an abortion.
The city council voted unanimously in October to allow city workers to take up to three days of paid bereavement leave if they have endured a miscarriage, stillbirth or loss of pregnancy, “irrespective of whether deemed medically necessary,” according to the council.
“What they are acknowledging is that abortion is a tragic loss — that somebody dies in an abortion,” said Gabriel Vance, director of external affairs for Created Equal, a prolife advocacy group.
Acknowledging ‘loss of someone’
Vance said bereavement leave for an abortion acknowledges the “loss of someone — someone died … a human being, who is a person. … They’re trying to normalize abortion, but in that, they’re acknowledging that, like miscarriage, like stillbirth — that it’s tragic.”
Apologist Ken Ham also responded by addressing the personhood of a preborn baby, tweeting that “bereavement is actually the right word to use” because by definition it is “the state of being sad because a family member or friend has recently died.”
Author Larry Farlow added, “That’s an incredible admission. If this is just a ‘medical procedure’ why would you be bereaved? You don’t mourn over having your appendix out.”
“Granting this type of leave following an abortion is a tacit admission of the humanity and family membership of the one who has been aborted — something abortion advocates almost never do,” wrote Bettina di Fiore in an article at LiveAction.org, a prolife news site.
“It is ironic that people on the pro-abortion side, which frequently refers to preborn children as ‘pregnancies’ — processes rather than people — would pass legislation to grant paid time for mourning the deaths of precisely those people whose humanity they deny. If a life has not been ended, then what, exactly, is being mourned? And conversely, if mourning is necessary, then the death of someone whose life had value must have taken place.”
Advocates for the new policy believe Portland is the first city in the nation to explicitly enact such a policy.
