At least two Washington, D.C., police officers allege that the Metropolitan Police Department gave them an ultimatum: have an abortion or lose your job.
D.C. Assistant Police Chief Chanel Dickerson claims she was told this while undergoing the MPD cadet program in 1988. Another woman, D.C. police officer Karen Arikpo, said the sergeant leading the department’s recruiting class in 1997 told her the same thing. Arikpo said the sergeant even referred her to an abortion doctor, according to Fox 5.
It’s disgusting that any employer would make a woman kill her unborn baby to keep her job. Sadly, pressuring women into having abortions is common in the United States. It needs to stop.
This is an issue that both the pro-life and pro-choice sides should come together to condemn. Pro-lifers believe it’s horrific to take the life of an innocent, vulnerable member of society. The pro-choice side, in theory, believes the decision to end the unborn human’s life belongs to the woman and her doctor.
The pro-choice side says people have no right to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her own body. Pressuring a woman into an abortion takes the choice out of the matter. While pro-choice advocates are wrong in thinking abortion should be broadly legal, they should at least understand the problem here.
The Lozier Institute says that anywhere between 30% to 60% of women seeking abortions in the U.S. do so, at least in part, because of pressure they face. The pressure comes from the woman’s parents, family members, friends, employers, sports coaches, and the father of the baby.
Human life is a gift, and these people want to throw someone’s life away because they view the fetus as an inconvenience.
It’s an issue that came up during the 2020 Democratic primary. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg allegedly told an employee in 1998 to “kill it,” referring to her unborn baby, when he found out she was pregnant. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, called him out on it in a debate.
This is the same Elizabeth Warren who is so extreme on abortion that she supported the ROE Act, which passed in Massachusetts last year despite the pro-choice governor’s veto. The bill contained a provision that removed language from existing Massachusetts law that guaranteed medical care to babies born alive after an attempted abortion.
If someone as radically pro-choice as Warren can see a problem with pressuring women into having abortions, this shouldn’t be difficult to understand.
Our culture needs to put a greater emphasis on the value of human life. Telling women to commit violence against the unborn is horrific and should have no place in this country.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
