This autobiographical video that Emily Letts made has been on the internet for a couple of months. It depicts, in a very straightforward way, her experience of having an abortion. There's no graphic imagery, but it feels very honest.

The reason I'm posting this video is because Gawker posted it yesterday, along with commentary from right-wing blogs. I'm not interested in the conservative response to this video—of course Republicans are going to be furious about it, of course pro-lifers are going to, hypocritically, send death threats to Letts—but I am interested in Gawker's commenters' opinions on the video. Bear in mind that these are comments from a fairly left-leaning blog:

I'm not keen on this at all. Abortion should be seen as necessary, not a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-choice by any means, and am actually fairly liberal with regard to abortion rights (in terms of how late and why I might allow abortions to be performed). But honestly: What's the redeeming value of the video?

Let's agree; she's foolish for not using the most basic of birth controls.

I am conflicted by this. I am by no means a right-wing conservative. As a matter of fact, I lean quite positively to the left, however I can't very well sympathize with people that get pregnant out of carelessness and deal with it this way.

I want to be clear: No matter where you stand on abortion rights, you have every right to not watch that video. And you have every right to say whatever you want on the internet about this video, as long as you're not sending death threats. But what I want to tell you is, if you agree with the above comments, you are a bad ally when it comes to abortion rights.

Let's just back up a little bit: If you call yourself a liberal, and if you claim to support abortion rights, it's none of your business how anyone gets pregnant. It's none of your business why anyone wants an abortion. You do not decide if someone has the right to exercise a right you think they should have. You can't tell someone how they should feel about their abortion. Rights don't come with asterisks.

And if you call yourself an abortion rights ally, and if someone makes their story public the way Letts did, you definitely don't get to tell them they "deserve" to have an abortion or not. You don't get to tell them how to share their story. If you couch your support of those rights in slut-shaming and equivocation, you are helping the other side.

In this video, Letts is saying that she doesn't feel guilt or shame about her decision, and these so-called allies are saying, essentially, "you can have the right to an abortion, I guess, but you should feel terrible about using that right." Comments like these are opening the door just enough for anti-abortion zealots to creep inside, and they're helping those zealots to start shaving rights away. If you're leaving comments like this, you are part of the problem. You're the reason Letts felt like she had to make this video in the first place.