There’s a new pro-abortion placard being waved at rallies. It reads: My Mind My Choice (italics theirs). Perhaps a defensive tactic against the pro-life “winning hearts and minds” strategy (proving increasingly overly optimistic considering the apparent shortage of hearts and minds), and presumably intended to be heir to the My Body My Choice trope, the new slogan is a coy wink at Big Brother-style Mind Control, suggesting we “be afraid be very afraid” while inadvertently stumbling upon something truer yet inconvenient. In today’s social landscape the sign should properly read: My Mind My World (italics mine).

The positive and reasonable message of Life Is What You Make It has been replaced with Reality Is What You Make It, which once introduced spread like an invasive weed. It’s attractive because it’s one size fits all, which is also its weakness: once adopted everyone is eligible to formulate truth as it suits them. The rationale for abortion without apology is that it’s a baby if she wants it and a mere cluster of cells if she doesn’t. Obviously, it’s not just a medical procedure she believes she has a choice over. One of the reasons the “trans” movement got so far so fast is because at first a lot of women weren’t uncomfortable with it. After all, if I play Mozart for the cluster of cells I want but flush away the ones I don’t want, who am I to argue with someone denying biology in their own neck of the woods? And when it comes to men being women simply because they say so, why make such a big deal about what defines a woman anyway, especially with all the baggage that comes with it? (More on this later). So a lot of women bought into it. It was low investment, high yield; it’s polite to call a him a her (women pride themselves on being polite), and one avoided the un-cool “engaging in culture wars” accusation. Now more and more women are rejecting it, not coincidentally when they started seeing their teenage daughters getting creamed on a soccer field by a 200-pound oaf in lipstick. Now that’s biological reality!

What is the genesis of this Reality Is What You Make It phenomenon? Yes, the need to justify no-holds-barred abortion encouraged taking to that idea like ants on a sugar cube, but I don’t think abortion lore inspired it. I think it was there already; the seeds were planted long ago, and it’s a product of mass media. Bear with me please, this may sound a bit way out at first.

I have a very clear memory, and many folks my age may share it, of being six years old and sitting on the floor in front of the television watching Walt Disney’s animated production of Peter Pan. In what was certainly a breakthrough event in cartoon art, and perhaps the first example of “interactive” media, Tinker Bell is dying and only we children can save her. We know she’s dying because her magical little glow is getting dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer while the narrator carries us along towards the awful moment of her imminent demise—unless we clap! If we clap, she will live! Clap, children, save her! And as we clapped, sure enough her glow got brighter, and brighter. Now she’s back! We saved her! Relieved, and somewhat exhausted, I relaxed my shoulders, whereupon I heard my father yelling “This is brainwashing!” while pointing at the TV set. Mom sighed and said, “For goodness sakes, it’s make-believe.” To which Dad said: “Does she know that?” She didn’t. I was all in. I truly believed I had generated change via “magical thinking” circa 1956 courtesy of lighting effects and a trusted narrator. And, freed from the constraints of reality, I felt powerful.

Now about that womanly baggage. Menstruation, pregnancy, pain in childbirth, all the usual suspects, right? What if it’s something else? Everyone is in the Rat Race, but women are expected to run it wearing a bikini, beaming big phony smiles and telling the world how happy they are to be Fun, Fearless and Sexy—and aborting, be it surgical, suction or chemical. Perhaps that explains the reluctance of some to feel proud and protective of their uniquely female experience; they’re embarrassed by it.

Peter Pan, the play by J.M. Barrie, opened at London’s West End Duke of York Theater in 1904. George Bernard Shaw described it as “ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people.” Although Barrie’s story was wonderfully imaginative, it was firmly lodged in metaphor and the willing-suspension-of-disbelief tradition that tethers even the most fanciful storytelling to reality. And it did have Tinker Bell brought back to life by vigorous clapping. It was never a children’s book per se, but if it had been it’s hard to imagine parents reading to their kids and sneaking a hand around to slowly dim and undim a lamp while telling them it was their ardent wishing that was causing it to happen. I don’t think the Disney Corporation intentionally toyed with the belief system of little kids (back then anyway). I think it was artisans thrilled with the possibilities of their craft and exploring new expressions of it. I’m not saying the My Mind My World devotees of today trace directly back to gullible children growing up in the ’50s, and I’m not saying they don’t. My generation were in fact the abortion pioneers, the first to embrace it with little questioning. Gullible, you might say. What I do say without reservation is that I had a taste of being freed from the constraints of reality back then and can testify to how seductive and powerful it can be. And all I was doing was helping Tinker Bell.