Transparency or Justification? A Reality Star’s Abortion Confession
A piece in The Daily Mail recently serves as an argument against abortion and worthy of reflection. It’s a short article about a woman who was on the popular TV series Love Island in 2016 and is now opening up about an abortion she had last week. She is described as a “reality star” presumably in relation to her apparently unsuccessful time on Love Island nearly a decade ago. The woman herself, Liana, posted her abortion story on Tik Tok for her followers because she wanted to “be transparent and raise awareness”.
I know Liana not at all and the thoughts I share on her story are just that, thoughts on her story as she has presented it. Liana has put this in the public domain for transparency and awareness, so in that spirit I offer some thoughts.
The first point of interest is from the Daily Mail rather than Liana as they headline the article with the “heartbreaking reasons” why she had an abortion. Are the reasons heartbreaking, or is the abortion heartbreaking? I think both, it was heartbreaking that a baby was killed, and the reasons why are also heartbreaking. We can look at the reasons why she decided on abortion which meant a baby, her baby, died and decide for ourselves where the heartbreak is.
Liana describes the pregnancy as a huge shock, as it happened 7 months after she had given birth to her first child.
An unexpected pregnancy can easily cause distress for mothers and families at any stage of finance, stability or commitment. Liana even says in an ideal world she would have not had an abortion. The world is not ideal, it wasn’t for her mother, or for her first child, or anyone. She seems to feel a regret already.
Liana then seems to get muddled. She speaks about the reasons why she was pregnant with their second child. A few lines before she was talking about her shock, unplanned pregnancy but here we see her saying the only reasons she became pregnant again was her first child needed a sibling, the age gap was nice and the siblings could be friends when they were older. She suggests these are not good reasons to have a child.
If that is true then how much truer is it that are not good reasons to kill a child? Because it will be a sibling? Because the age gap with that sibling suits them? Or because they will one day be an adult and adult siblings? This is the damage abortion does. Her eldest child is deprived of this younger sibling through the mother’s reasoning that it’s not a good reason to have a child. Liana does not elaborate on what a good reason is. I wonder how many minds like Liana’s would be blown if I suggested that children are not born of reasons they are born from love and blessing. I would not be surprised if she is yet to realise that she is herself a blessing and beloved by God.
Immediately then the article moves to how Liana struggled breastfeeding her first child and “couldn’t go through the mental and physical pressure again”. This is a reason to abort your child? Many women struggle with breastfeeding but they don’t abort their babies. Some also choose not to breastfeed and supply formula milk instead. It looks to me like a clutching at straws to justify what has happened.
From that Liana talks about how she has been living abroad, how her boyfriend works away a lot and she has been doing a lot of single parenting. Babies and toddlers are a handful there’s no denying that. Two handfuls if you have two under two, so I’m not saying parenting is easy, at any stage, or for any number of offspring. But neither of these situations are reason to kill a child.
Finally, she cites her reason for aborting her second child in order to be a better mother for her first. A prime example of how not use “quality over quantity” argumentation. This a sound argument for small class sizes, because we do not kill additional children in oversubscribed schools, but it fails miserably in the case of families and abortion. The baby brother or sister of her first child has been killed, in what way is that quality parenting?
The article finishes with a couple of anonymous affirmations for doing the right thing from Liana’s followers and she talks about making the decision with her head not her heart which again implies some regret afterwards and some kind of battle with her conscience beforehand. This I think, is the main thrust of what Liana’s done by broadcasting this. She gets to read affirmations from followers and takes that as absolution.
The conscience is a powerful force, it can take a great deal to drown it out and perhaps this is what we have seen here, an attempt to drown it out and realise peace after the fact. I hope Lianna finds peace and healing – a true and lasting peace and healing which comes from dealing with the trauma and heartbreak of abortion in a safe and loving environment such as Rachel’s Vineyard rather than seeking comfort in transitory public affirmation.
Daniel
March for Life UK Content Creator
