Abortion As Performance Art

For those coming to this story late, Emily Letts is the new face of abortion after taping hers and winning the Abortion Care Network’s Stigma Busting video competition. Letts is an actress with three IMBD credits (‘Hallows’ Eve,’ ‘Ivy’ and ‘Clap on Clap Off’) and since Capital One wasn’t exactly beating down her door to flog credit cards, Emily opted to raise her profile by endorsing death. Of course this doesn’t rule out a call from Capital One in the future, Emily just has to make sure she doesn’t offend the Gaystapo. Letts is a ‘patient advocate’ at the Cherry Hill Euphemism Factory in New Jersey. Whoops, make that ‘Women’s Center’ — but only if the woman taller than a travel mug. When Emily became pregnant she didn’t think of her abortion as losing a child. It was gaining the role of a lifetime!

Letts’ wrote an explanation in Cosmopolitan that gives insight into a shallow, confused individual for whom an abortion is a good career move. She explains, “I was a professional actress for many years. I loved acting, but I felt fairly depressed most of the time…I felt completely alienated from myself and everyone else because I was intent on being successful.” In reality Letts was lost and deeply disturbed, but she did have a friend “who was a birth doula, and she fascinated me with her stories about giving birth and growing life.” (For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a doula is a type of life coach, except I don’t think they use LinkedIn and their cards are always recycled from sustainable trees. Doulas are frequently found cluttering up delivery rooms or cheerleading during a home birth.) So after being exposed to the wonders of life, Emily decides to become a volunteer sonderkommando working in an abortion mill.  Maybe because she avoids long–term commitments and didn’t want to agonize over buying age–appropriate birthday presents. Letts job is to support and reassure women during the abortion process, turning a grave sin into something like pre–emptive liposuction. After she went to work for the center, “I fell into this perfect world that fulfills me in so many different ways.” By day Emily counsels women — somehow the advice is always to kill the baby — and dispels rumors surrounding the abortion process, because in her words, “The misinformation is amazing. And she helps women rationalize the consequences their decision by stressing, “they are still wonderful and beautiful.” By night she’s personally tormented by rumors and misinformation regarding the pill. “(H)ormonal birth control scared me because of complications I’d heard about from friends — gaining weight, depression, etc.” That’s why Emily adopted the rhythm method and prevented awkward, calendar–based inconvenience by sleeping around and avoiding long–term partners. Then she became pregnant. Here the timeline in her story becomes vague. Outsiders have to consider four distinct actions while evaluating “her story.”

1. Finding out about the Abortion Care Network’s video competition.
2. Discovering there were no videos that featured a woman going through an abortion and happy about it.
3. Getting pregnant even though Emily checks her ‘Ovulation App’ almost every day.
4. Starring in Emily Gets Her Abortion a mere two weeks after learning she was pregnant.

I suppose the order could have been 3 – 2 – 1 – 4, but somehow I doubt it. After finally getting top billing in a movie, Letts video commentary proves she needs help, the kind unavailable at the ‘Women’s Center.’ During the video Emily says she’s “in awe that I can make a baby. I can make a life.” After which she snuffs it out like a candle, while bizarrely humming during the abortion. A reporter writing for the UK’s Independent was impressed. “In filming and sharing her experience with the world, Letts has not only dragged from their caves the dank and sordid unmentionables who still think a woman a murderer for choosing her own life over a cluster of cells, she has shown that an abortion can be a positive experience.” Unfortunately for the reporter, we are all a “cluster of cells” it’s just some clusters are larger than others. Evidently somewhere deep inside a conflicted Emily knows that too, because she also says, “I still have my sonogram, and if my apartment were to catch fire, it would be the first thing I'd grab.” Our nation’s Media–Entertainment–Cultural opinion setters are an iron triangle of license and irresponsibility that we are supposed to rectify. Last week in Oklahoma it was outraged that a man responsible for murder and multiple rapes experienced some discomfort during an execution held before a handful of witnesses. And now it celebrates a performance art video of the brutal dismemberment of an innocent, unborn child, who was only responsible for being both alive and inconvenient. After forcing her baby to pay the price for Letts’ own irresponsibility, Emily claims to be entirely free of guilt. “Still, every time I watch the video, I love it. I love how positive it is.” Emily Letts is lost and in need of our prayers, but she’s certainly not alone.