There’s an Agatha Christie book where a man turns up murdered and the police ask a suspect if she’s surprised. “I’m shocked,” she says, “but not surprised.”

A few days ago, the New York Times published a long profile about a young woman named Giselle. In 2020, at the age of 17, Giselle became pregnant with twin girls. She tried to procure an abortion but was blocked by a Texas judge. The babies’ father, Cecil, ended up leaving her. Giselle and her children slept in friends’ living rooms and in campers parked on their lawns. Right now, the twins are spending a year living with a couple named Michael and Rachel Borego. At the end of the year, Giselle will decide whether she wants to let the Boregos adopt her daughters.

It’s heartbreaking—truly, truly heartbreaking. You can’t help but choke up, reading about all the pain Giselle has gone through, and how much she has sacrificed for her daughters. But, for the Times, this isn’t about a young woman overcoming adversity. That is clear from the title and subtitle:

She Wasn’t Ready for Children: A Judge Wouldn’t Let Her Have an Abortion: As abortion access dwindles, America’s “parental involvement” laws weigh even more heavily on teenagers—who may need a court’s permission to end their pregnancies.

Here’s how the piece ends:

Several weeks ago, G texted me in the middle of the night, worried: She could give up her parental rights, as her father did, or she could raise her children without the stability or the warmth that they deserve, as her mother did. In her own experience, both left her feeling abandoned, unloved. She didn’t know which one was worse.

The Times’s position is perfectly clear. Giselle should have been allowed to kill her daughters in the womb. She would be better off. Frankly, her daughters would probably be better off, too.

I’m shocked, but not surprised.

It is shocking because pro-choice polemicists are rarely so honest. But that is exactly why it’s unsurprising. All the Times does is follow the pro-choice argument to its logical conclusion. If some women are better off killing their children, then some other women would be better off if they’d had their children killed. If abortion was the right choice for Giselle when she was pregnant, then the survival of her daughters is a tragedy.

Of course, most supporters of abortion don’t think this way. But why not? They support abortion precisely because they believe that women should not be forced to endure the “trauma” of carrying and giving birth to a child. Giselle believed that children would force her to work low-wage jobs to support her family. It would prevent her from getting an education and starting a good career.

Well, that is exactly what happened. So, why shouldn’t she regret having her children? Why shouldn’t the Times argue that Giselle would be better off if her daughters were dead?

Those who find the Times article repulsive but support abortion are just suffering from cognitive dissonance. They should rethink their position. I hope they do. But I’m not holding my breath.

I think we are entering a new phase in the abortion debate. I think the pro-choice camp is going to become a lot less squeamish—and a lot more honest. They’ll stop pretending that the babies they want to abort suddenly become precious little bundles of joy simply because their mothers failed to have them killed. I expect they’ll get used to the idea of openly wishing that some children were dead.

That’s bad enough. Yet it is only the beginning.

Again, there is no “expiration date” on the pro-choice argument. Let us say you accept the principle of abortion: that it is sometimes better for mothers to kill their children. If so, you must regret that some children are allowed to be born. That doesn’t change when the child is one day old, or a month old, or a year old, or ten years old, or twenty, or fifty, or eighty…

The Times thinks that Giselle would be better off if the Texas judge had allowed her to kill her children. And I’m sure she is grateful for their support. But what if Giselle’s own mother had wanted an abortion? Then Giselle’s own life is something regrettable. Her happiness is irrelevant. It is the fifth step in a cruel, utilitarian formula—but that formula went wrong on the fourth step. Giselle’s children shouldn’t exist, and neither should she.

It was always going to end this way.

Once you accept the principle that some babies are simply better off dead, then you must eventually conclude that some children and grown-ups are better off dead, too. If one human life is disposable, then every human life is disposable.

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This may never come to pass. There is a chance that, as the hideous logic of abortionism continues to unfold, Americans will be driven into the pro-life camp. May it please God.

And yet, even then, this article will still bear fruit. Because the Times profile gives names and places. It has lots of photos—of Giselle, of Cecil, of the Boregos, and of the two little girls.

Someday, those girls will grow up. They will get laptops and smartphones. They will search their name, as we all do at some point. And they will find that the New York Times ran an 8,000-word article on why they should have been killed in their mother’s womb. They will know that millions of American progressives looked at their beautiful little faces and wished that they were dead. I hope they will find this article, too, somehow, and know that they are wanted, and valued, and loved.