From Waldo Jaquith (one of the brightest liberal bloggers in Virginia) by way of Shaun Kenney (one of the brightest and best conservative Virginia bloggers, and a fine Catholic to boot) we learn that bloggers have been posting do-it-yourself guides to abortion.

Kenney’s right: there’s a special place in hell for people like this.

Oh no, my heart sank at this news. Though he’s supposed to be back for the big dance, all us GW folks here have to hope (and dare I say pray) that he’s 100% by then.

This story has been making its way around the ‘net of late, describing a summit of the greatest minds in baby-killing… I mean “choice.”

Aspen Baker does something most women don’t do: she talks about her abortion. When she got pregnant at 23 she wasn’t ready to be a mother and her relationship was already dissolving. Pro-choice, Baker unexpectedly found herself facing a moral quandary about her decision. “I really struggled,” she says. After the abortion, she figured she’d be given a list of support groups or even just a number to call…

The procedure left Baker relieved, but sad enough to seek out counseling. What she found, though, were mostly judgmental pro-life Web sites and religious groups. Even when her search led her to volunteer at CARAL, the California affiliate of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, she didn’t find many sympathetic ears. The battle to keep abortion legal left no room for emotional turmoil. Neither side of the polarized political debate really spoke to her. “Abortion is either tragic or a simple choice,” Baker says. “But I had a lot of complicated feelings about it.”

Today, six years later, Baker finally has a number to call. In fact, it’s a post-abortion counseling hotline that she helped to create, called Exhale. She has joined a new generation of pro-choice activists and abortion providers that is insisting on talking about the emotions—and, yes, morality—surrounding abortion. Exhale recently went national and fields hundreds of calls a month in five different languages.

This is a sick story in so many ways. The fact is that many of the pro-life post-abortive help sites are not judgemental. If anyone goes to a Rachel’s Vineyard or Project Rachel retreat they aren’t condemned, but brought to healing. Ditto with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. What scares the author of the article so much is that they are religious, and that there is a religious component to coming to closure with the fact that you killed another persion, but that God forgives you if you’re sorry, so you can forgive yourself. The pro-abortion post-abortive counseling, of course, doesn’t want you to feel sorry. It’s bad for future business.

Michelle Arnold accurately describes the pro-abortion approach, “This isn’t about healing from an abortion; it’s about numbing the pangs of conscience. Screwtape must be proud.”