A few years back, the Toronto Star—Canada’s largest and most liberal newspaper—ran a human-interest story that, from their progressive perspective, was supposed to be touching and heartrending. It was a profile of a gay abortionist who, once he and his partner decided they wanted to have children, started feeling horrible about all the children he was scraping out of women and putting in the trash. After all, one of those children could be his. The abortionist, of course, concluded that he couldn’t let his personal feelings interfere with his great work aborting babies.
I thought of that story when I read the recent comments by pop star Billie Eilish. In an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times, Eilish noted that she badly wants to be a mother. “[I would] rather die [than not have kids],” Eilish explained. “I need them.” The pop star currently travels the world on tour with an entourage that includes her mother and her brother, and she told the Times that one day she’d love to do that with a family of her own—despite the inevitable difficulties and frustrations of motherhood
The reason Eilish’s interview reminded me of the Toronto abortionist is that both stories highlight a brutal cognitive dissonance. The abortionist, I’m sure, would tell you that he is not aborting babies—he is aborting fetuses, or whatever his preferred euphemism is. Yet, when he wanted to have children, he was aware—despite this delusional belief—that what he was doing was eliminating children. Eilish, too, has been one of the most vocal pro-abortion celebrities, and has been borderline hysterical in her insistence that abortion is a fundamental right.
