OPINION:
Much ado is being made about Texas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith’s graduation speech, the one where she bait-and-switched her approved talk about the media to a more hotly charged condemnation of her state’s clamp-down on abortion. It took real “guts,” Hillary Clinton said on Twitter.
But more ado should be made about the shocking moral decay of society that this girl’s rant demonstrates.
Since when should high school girls express “gut-wrenching” grief at the inability to have sex as desired without the accountability of pregnancy?
This is where America’s culture currently stands.
The Texas heartbeat bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott prohibits abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancies — as soon as a heartbeat can be detected in the womb. The law, due to take effect in September, exempts medical emergencies but not pregnancies due to rape or incest. It also gives private citizens the right to sue violators.
So here comes the high school girl crowd, barely above teeny-bopper status, decrying the restrictions on — what, free and easy sex? What a long way America has come on the moral scale.
“Today, I was going to talk about TV and media and content,” Smith said, at her Lake Highlands High School graduation ceremony, The Hill reported. “However, under light of recent events, it feels wrong to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in the state.”
She went on: “I have dreams and hopes and ambitions, every girl graduating today does, and we have spent our entire lives working towards our future. And without our input, and without our consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us.”
The crowd cheered.
Of course the crowd cheered.
This is America, circa 2021, a time when today’s youth are being taught that the right to recreational sex is as endowed by our Creator as the right to freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion. Or more to truth, of no religion.
“I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter,” she went on. “… I hope that you can feel how gut-wrenching that is. I hope you can feel how dehumanizing it is to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you.”
Sex isn’t a choice?
“I cannot give up this platform,” Smith finished, “when there was a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters. We cannot stay silent.”
Clinton fawned.
“This took guts,” Clinton wrote. “Thank you for not staying silent, Paxton.”
Comedian Sarah Silverman fawned.
“Brave,” she tweeted.
But let’s not make the mistake into equating abortion with, say, the women’s suffrage movement. The two are as different as night and day. The fight for the vote for females was an honorable, entirely defensible, proper and even moral campaign that ultimately, after years, in the early 1900s, led to the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
The battle for abortion?
It’s about as immoral as it gets.
Witness: A high school girl decrying a future where she — where all little girls, where all teenage girls, where all mature women — might not be able to have sex when they want, with whom they want, wherever they want, without having to pay a dear price called consequences. Without having to deal with an unwanted baby that messes up their materialistic plans for life.
This is the stuff of fallen societies.
That the teenage Smith received such high-ranking and wide-spread approval for her views only shows how far America has turned from God, from godly principles, from Judeo-Christian virtues, from biblical beliefs.
As the Founding Fathers warned: A nation without morality is a nation on the brink of tyranny. Smith, praised by the left, cheered by the Democrats, embraced as a hero by the ungodly, is a sign of the here-and-now of tyrannical times.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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