Wounded

I woke up this morning after having dreamed of an old friend I had to drop because she started picking off the men in my life to have sex with. If I was close to them, she'd get closer. I didn't know it at the time, but her promiscuity was a salve she was applying to a very big wound.

Someone had told her that her greatest attribute was her sexuality. She tested that theory and became pregnant. Her parents, overgrown hippies, helped her to an abortion, then a few more, all the while supporting their daughter's "choices." She was buying urine to submit for her drug tests the I last heard from her.

She's resurfaced in my life to a certain degree, with a child. I'd like to say she's had a wonderful change and is now a rock solid personality with the drugs and alcohol a thing of the past, but I honestly don't know. I've not initiated contact for various reasons. If my life was open for a transformation, surely hers was, too. I content myself to pray for her when she comes across my radar and I pray for her beautiful child.

Abortion didn't help my friend. It made her miseries harder to bear. After that first one, she wrote a few poems, took a stuffed animal to help another friend grieve through her abortion, she talked. After the second one, that girl disappeared--the one who could express her emotions and use them to connect with others in any way I understood. In her place was a young woman who would do just about anything to go numb.

We had a lot in common. We both spun out of control in our own way. There was one major difference between us. Growing up, politically I was Pro-Choice and she was not. I was the Pro-Choicer who would never have had an abortion. She didn't like abortion but had several. Was that the defining difference? I can't say. What I can say is that she is part of the reason I became Pro-Life later. Some of the conversations we had jarred me in my Pro-Choice rhetoric just enough to nag at me for 20 or so years until I took a second look.

Our friendship didn't last, but her influence did. She showed me the pain abortion can cause a woman and the havoc the aftermath can wreak in an already complicated life. Hers is one of the many faces I place in the forefront of my mind when I write or speak about abortion, so that I am careful with such painful truths.

In the build-up to the 40 Days for Life, keep my friend in mind when you march, speak, and write. Pray for her. Think about her. Most of all, be careful with her. She may be listening. 

Defund! Defund! Defund!

There's some creative thinking going on in Massachusetts regarding taxes and conscience. Simcha Fisher chimes in.

Click her to link to the blog I Have to Sit Down...

Oh, and I love how the Globe and other media think it’s some kind of stinging insult to say “antiabortion” instead of “prolife.” Call me “antiabortion” all day long, folks.  Abortion is the kind of thing that the prefix “anti” was invented for.

Is the USCCB the next Catholic Scandal?

When you have a Bishop telling his flock the Catholic position is a Pro-Life position, can he be silent when his own association is giving this group money? I guess the answer is yes to that. Can I hear an "Amen" from the Pro-Choice Lobby?

Is it possible to fix this? I'm pretty ignorant of the political aspects of the church, and I'm wondering if this scandal has even run its course.

Another Double Standard

Two pictures of Christ displayed in violation of an ordinance. One is inoffensive and is put up by people on "the wrong side" of the life issue. Police instantly respond.

The other picture violates the same ordinance. In addition it is offensive, makes fun of Christianity and Christ himself. It is put up by people on "the politically correct side" of the life issue. After months of complaints, still no action.

What a lovely lesson: the laws only work for the politically correct?

Teen Guest Blogger: Margaret Ohmes

Abortion Is Wrong!

I believe that abortion is wrong not only because of my religious beliefs but also for medical reasons. I do not think that you are solving anything when you put your life at risk while you take the life of an innocent child(http://www.abortionfacts.com/effects/effects.asp). Post-abortive women often go through great emotional trauma after they have had their abortion(http://www.abortionfacts.com/PAS/PAS.asp). They feel guilty and shameful about the child that they killed. Many of them commit suicide because of their grief. My family and I have a friend who had an abortion when she was nineteen. She said she started to drink because that gave her relief. She said that she still misses the baby that she never had.

In the year 1973 abortion was legalized in the United States of America with the Roe vs. Wade decision. Before this doctors were allowed to perform abortions only when the mother's life was at risk. Records have shown the total abortions done at two different hospitals prior to 1973, St. Luke Hospital and Cornwell Hospital, was 1. If this was a legitimate concern you would expect to find a significant number of legal abortions before 1973. This evidence points to the fact that abortions are unnecessary, especially now that our medical knowledge is so much more advanced.

The law “except to save the mother” really is a contradiction. Post-abortive women are at risk of breast-cancer and heart trouble due to the hormonal aftereffects of abortion. In fact abortionists themselves say that there is no medical indication for partial-birth abortion, a grisly procedure that involves turning a viable baby so that she is born in the breach position and killing her while her head remains in the birth canal (Editor's note: During a partial-birth procedure if a baby accidentally births herself during her struggles and is then killed, it is considered infanticide). There is no such thing as an abortion to save the mother. It is never necessary to kill the child to save the mother. A pro-life doctor I read said, “Doctors who do abortions are oxymorons.”

My religious reasons for opposing abortions is that you are directly disobeying the Sixth Commandment “Thou shall not murder” (Deuteronomy 5, 1-21). No matter how you look at it you are killing a baby. Also in Genesis the Lord commands Noah “have many children so that your descendants may live all over the earth” (Genesis 9, 1). I want to know how are we obeying God when we are killing children daily?

I think that it is as bad as murdering when you vote for a ‘pro-choice’ official (governor, mayor, president, etc.) because you are practically killing those babies killed by the laws they pass or allow to stand. Jessie Romero a lay evangelist probably said it the best, “When you vote for a ‘pro-abortion’ official you have the blood of those babies on your hands.”

I hope that by writing this people will realize the horror of abortion. For those who have had one remember that God is love and that he will forgive the repentant heart.

Which Side Are You On?

I can’t believe my ears. I am having a conversation with a Pro-Lifer, and he has just explained, very calmly, that I have no right to exist.


"What?" I say, unbelieving. I must have misheard him.


"Of course abortion is wrong. Of course! But..." And here he shrugs, "When a woman is raped? Or if there is incest? Surely, we have to have compassion for her situation."


"Compassion? How is abortion ever compassionate?" I am flabbergasted and am having a bit of trouble stating my point. I get that way. It’s why I don’t evangelize as much as I should.


"Oh, I’m sure it would be a difficult choice. It may even be hard to live with after. But a woman can’t be expected to bear the child of her rapist." He looks so sure of himself. He doesn’t even seem to notice that he has taken up the language of the other side to explain his point.


"Huh?" I manage. Like I said, I’m really not good at this stuff.


"I’m just saying that it would be devastating to spend nine months harboring the child of the man who raped you. Can you imagine that?" the man shakes his head sadly.


"So," I begin slowly, to give my brain a chance to kick out of emotional gear and back into logic, "you feel a woman should abort depending on her feelings for the father of her child?"


He shakes his head again, irritated I’ve jumped to a conclusion he doesn’t like. "No, what I mean is that a woman who has had violence committed against her, a crime against her, she shouldn’t have to bear the product of that crime."


Again, that funny echo of language from the Pro-Aborts. "You’ve renamed a baby," I point out. "You just called it a ‘product of a crime.’"


"That’s not what I meant! You know what I mean!" He’s beginning to dislike this conversation as much as I do.


Good.


"Did you know I was adopted?" I ask him. He blinks at me, struck dumb at my seeming non sequitur. "I’ve met my birth mother, too."


I smile. He shakes his head a little as if trying to jiggle together the sense of my sudden tangent. I decide to add another tangent. "You’ve met my kids right?" His eyes are getting that slightly worried look, but he nods. "Nice kids, I think. And I’ve adopted, too. Yeah," I sigh. "I wonder if my daughter would have spent her life in foster care. Not too many people were lining up to adopt her, you know. Just us."


I stop talking. He says, "Um," and raises a finger. There’s a look in my eyes he doesn’t much like. It’s a hurt and disappointed look. I know, because I’m the one letting it show. I always feel it when I hear this argument from the Life side.


"My mother was raped."


I let that sink in for a moment, then I walk away. I don’t have the civility or good sense to continue. If I did I’d explain that my birth mother wasn’t particularly noble or courageous. She just knew I was a baby. I was her baby and even though her husband tried to force her to abort, she didn’t. She was an OB-GYN nurse and knew there was no such thing as a safe abortion. So, like I said, it wasn’t so noble. Mostly self-preservation and part whim.


She is a very whimsical woman in a lot of ways. She has the modern disease of the worship of the self, like we all do to some degree, and she has remade herself many times over. I’m actually very lucky.


At her whim I could have been torn limb from limb until I bled to death, never heard, never known. At her whim my children would never have been. At her whim, my adopted daughter would most likely have become a permanent ward of the state and been raised in foster care until she aged out at 18. I was a school teacher, known in my school for "saving" the kids who were severe discipline problems. What would have become of all those kids? Think It’s a Wonderful Life. At her whim, how many would have wound up expelled, jailed, lost because they never "bought into school"? Of course I never think of these things quickly enough to really, really drive home my point.


I’m here. I was here the moment I was conceived. My mother would not have been better off by having the violence of abortion performed on her already violated body. She was able to go to sleep at night, after the fear and anger simmered down, because she had not lashed out against me because of the harm done to her.


Life is a gift, even when the start of it is a horror. My mother was able to heal more completely from her rape knowing she had chosen the better part. She was not a twice over victim.


And in case you are wondering, I don’t have some deep psychological scar because my father was a rapist. He was a sperm donor. The man who raised me was my father. And unlike most every movie I’ve seen depicting adoption, I’m not some crazed time bomb waiting to reveal my true nature as damaged goods. Well, at least not any more than the rest of you. I mean, really, nobody’s perfect.

Writer's Note: If you are Post-Abortive or Post-Rape and still in anguish, please seek prayer and care. Contact http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/ for healing after abortion. Contact http://centers.rainn.org/ for a directory of local Rape Crisis Centers. God loves you and wants to comfort you in the cradle of His arms. I will pray that you let Him...