Yesterday at the pro-abortion rally outside of the Supreme Court, somewhere in the middle of a United States senator threatening two justices by name and a congresswoman warning pro-lifers that they if they keep it up they won’t be able to have sex with her, an actress named Busy Philipps took the stage to brag that her abortion enabled her to have a career in Hollywood. She also screamed about her yeast infections and periods, but we’ll not dwell on that part of the speech.
Her exact words are instructive:
There I was sitting in Los Angeles in my beautiful office of my own late night talk show. Soon I would be driving my hybrid car to my beautiful f**king home to kiss my two beautiful and healthy children, and my husband who had taken the year off to parent so I could focus on my career. And I have all of this, all of it, because, because, because, I was allowed bodily autonomy at 15… I will never stop talking about my abortion, or my periods…or my yeast infections!
Philipps believes — or pretends to believe — that killing her baby was a sacrifice worth making because it resulted in luxury and success. This kind of reasoning is repulsive on its face and impossible to defend from a moral or ethical perspective. But I think it’s worth noting just how Philipps’ literal deal with the Devil actually worked out for her.
That late night talk show? Canceled after one low rated season. That devoted husband who took the year off to support her? He did that because she threatened to divorce him if he didn’t. That career? She did three big TV shows and was still, by her own admission, broke by the end of it. Since then she’s had bit roles on various mediocre TV shows, a skit on Comedy Central’s “Drunk History,” some cartoon voice over work, and she was in one episode of a now defunct Lena Dunham series. I’m not trying to insult the woman. I just believe it is important to notice what people actually gain when they sacrifice their children on the altar of “success.” In every case the answer is the same: nothing that has any value in comparison to what they lost.
Of course, I would be saying this even if Busy Philipps had cinematic classics on her resume rather than “White Chicks” and “Don’t Trust The Bitch In Apartment 23.” But the fact that her payoff was so pathetically meager and embarrassing only makes the point clearer. She might have money and a nice house, but she obviously is not happy (happy people don’t say things like “I will never stop talking about my yeast infections”), and we can bet that she doesn’t have the kind of professional success she thought she was buying with the blood of her offspring.
I’m reminded of Thomas More’s ironic words in “A Man For All Seasons” after he finds out that his friend Richard Rich betrayed him for a bureaucratic post in Wales. “Why Richard,” More says, “it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?” One might look to Busy Philipps and say something similar. It profit a woman nothing to give her soul and her child for the whole world. But for the D-List?