This past Sunday, a speaker at the Georgetown University Right to Life seventh Annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life caused an unexpected stir among attendees with controversial rhetoric.
The conference featured two keynote speakers, including former actress/model Jennifer O’Neill, spokesperson for the national anti-abortion campaign Silent No More.
O’Neill related her own painful experience with abortion, equating the position of what she called “pro-abortion” with “pro-death” and encouraging the audience of mostly young adults to continue to fight for the anti-abortion movement.
“We’re going to win, because it’s God’s sword and his truth,” O’Neill said. “We need you to be one of Gideon’s army.”
Discussing her activities in the 1970s, O'Neill said she had studied other religions before finding Christianity.“At the time, I was studying Eastern philosophies, which, by the way, are the biggest, fattest lie in the sky,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill also discussed problems plaguing abortion clinics, saying that a veterinary hospital is often more sanitary than an “abortion mill.”
Addressing abortion abroad, O’Neill said that fetuses in Japan are sometimes aborted because they are female.
“They believe in reincarnation, so they believe they [the fetuses] will come back,” she said.
Professor Kevin Doak, Chair and Nippon Foundation Endowed Chair in Japanese Culture in Georgetown's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, confirmed that abortion is prevalent in Japan.“My sense is that yes, sadly, abortion is rather widespread in Japan, not only among very young schoolgirls, but also among married women who want to limit the size of their families for various reasons,” he said. “A culture of abortion, really a culture of death, has developed over the last several decades.”
However, Doak denied that fetuses are aborted because they are female.“I think Ms. O’Neill probably mistook Japan for China,” he said.
Bridget Bowers, president of Right to Life, the conference’s sponsor, said that O’Neill gave the audience a look at the trauma a woman experiences following an abortion.
“Jennifer O’Neill’s speech was definitely a new spin on the feel of our conference,” Bowes said. “It is always emotional to hear from a woman who has had an abortion.”
The Knights of Columbus, co-sponsors of the conference, declined to comment specifically on O’Neill’s statements.
Students from Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha, Wisconsin, said that they found O’Neill’s religious conversion experience made her speech even more powerful.
The conference’s first keynote speaker, Sister Agnes Mary Donovan, Superior General of the Sisters of Life, spoke of her experience helping pregnant women in New York City.
“It would never be said that it is natural for a mother to destroy her child,” she said.
