While I was in DC this weekend, we were confronted with a huge sign that read, "3500 Abortions Daily".  In front of the sign were long red strips of plastic, upon which were placed 3500 tiny pairs of baby booties, baby shoes, and baby socks.  Attached to the little socks were letters written to aborted babies, by their grieving, healing mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and other relatives.  They read, "I'm so sorry!  Please forgive me.  I can't wait to hold you in heaven."  "Please forgive your mother.  We miss you."  A lady came up to me, and talked to me about the display.  "We are all women who have had abortions, and have experienced depression and pain, and we are here to share the healing we have received after our abortions, and also to tell the truth about the pain that abortion causes."  I am amazed and humbled by the stories of these incredible women.  I highly recommend their website to anyone who has ever regretted an abortion, or who is concerned about the welfare of women in the matter of abortion.

Three Cheers for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt and Bush who appointed him!!!  The American College of Obstretrics and Gynecology has been including threatening language in its licensing procedures, which would censor physicians who will not perform abortions.  Mike Leavitt advised them against this language, but they would not listen, and insisted they meant no harm to anyone (muwaaahahahaaaaaaaa).  So Mike asked for regulations to be drafted which enforce the three separate federal laws protecting a physician's right to follow his/her conscience!  Woo hoo!  You can read about it here!  A copy got leaked to the press before it was finalized, which caused a big brouhaha (in his previous post), but his clarity is refreshing.  Please write him an encouraging line, as many pro-abortionists are weighing in on the conversation.

I did weigh in myself, with the following letter in response to some of the negative posts:

This is not about preferences.  It is about morals.  Murder, to be exact.  Abortion to a pro-life conscience is the same as if the government forced physicians to terminate the life of any child three-years-old or less upon demand of his or her mother.  It would be an unconscionable, abominable, egregious breach of justice against the physician's conscience.  Not to mention that it would be an unconscionable, abominable, egregious breach of justice, period. 

We pro-lifers value life in all its stages, shapes, and sizes.  We believe human life is intrinsically valuable, not based on extrinsic traits accomplishments and the whims of the powerful. 

It is a fallacy to assume that abortion, per se, will actually bring the mother the happiness she pursues (beyond the initial sex act).  Countless women and men have suffered depression and grief over the loss of their babies through abortion, not to mention future infertility and other medical complications. 

There should be no debate about when life begins.  It clearly begins, sex/complete DNA at conception.  Is there anybody who really believes that a zygote is dead--that the little life has not inexorably begun, and will continue unless snuffed out by natural or unnatural means?  The question that people really  want to ask, is "When does personhood begin?"  Is it when we have consciousness?  When we can speak?  When we can respond? When we are wanted?  As you can see if we define personhood by traits or accomplishments or more dangerously by the desires of those in power, this is a very slippery slope, which brings many of our most inspiring and humanizing citizens in danger of extermination.

Pro-abortionists must come to the conclusion that either the human embryo is not a human being, which is debatable (because s/he is human and s/he "is").  If an embryo is a human life, then they have the uncomfortable position of saying that  mothers may kill their children wtih impunity, before a certain developmental stage.  Already, the idea that mothers should be allowed to kill their babies up to 40 days after birth is being discussed and disseminated in academic halls, which would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.  What unthinkables today will be reality 40 years from now, thanks to our current legal system and cultural environment?

History has shown us that any time a more powerful group decides that another less powerful group is not human or less than human, a travesty of justice on a massive scale occurs.  Look at Nazi Germany, which decided that Jews were not equal to other humans.  Look at our own country, when we decided that people of African descent were only worth 3/5ths of a human.  The biggest problem for unborn people is that they cannot speak up for themselves.  They are not seen.  Their dismembered and saline-burned bodies are buried in trash cans, and scurried away from public view.  At least a newborn can cry and look cute in a pruny sort of way.  The law has abandoned unborn people, and the medical field is power-reaching to demand that even every single physicians may not abstain from the blood bath! Who will speak up for the helpless?

If mothers, being more powerful than their unborn children, are legally able to exterminate their children from their wombs, and doctors are required by law and professional pressure to silence their consciences on the behalf of the powerful agenda of the pro-abortionists because of the weight of rearing children is too heavy for mothers to bear if they don't want to, it is only a matter of time before other care-givers will be given legal impunity for exterminating their dependents whose needs exceed their desires to care for them, starting with the elderly and infirm (such as Terri Schiavo, but I suspect it won't stop there). 

I understand that we people who love human lives in all its sizes and stages, have lost the legal battle to protect these little tiny people, and that people who love and inexorably pursue and applaud abortion have won the right to exterminate lives in the womb.  I am pleased, however, that Mike Leavitt has seen fit to promote the legal freedom of conscience for physicians who love life and do not wish to do any harm to our innocent members.

As a woman, who has delivered two children and is raising them (with my husband), I have had many OB/Gyn doctors, due to legislatively irresponsible liability insurance costs, and moving.  I have always looked for pro-life docs.  When I'm not able to find them, am sick and tired of being pressured to take invasive, risky tests to determine genetic diseases, for which there is no in-utero cure (except for a so-called "cure" of abortion).  It is offensive and rude to have a baby be 'welcomed" into this world by a physician who thinks that any child with a possible (not even real) defect would be better of dead.  Kudos to Secretary Mike Leavitt!

Okay, my life is pint-sized right now--2 little cups of energy, problems, and love, filling my  every day.  Well, make that a pint and a quart, if a 6-foot-three man can be personified by a quart.  Why is my life this tiny size?  Well, I chose it--maybe it chose me--who knows?  The fact is, that marriage and children are two supreme values in my life--stuck right below my Savior, Jesus Christ and His Word. 

At the start of our marriage, I took the unusual stance of drastically cutting back my career to make room for a fabulous relationship with my husband.  As a young (well, young-ish), single music teacher, who was passionately involved in my work, two things were clear:  I was not interested in just any marriage--only an awesome, amazing man would do.  Such a marriage and my work would be competing passions that could not be simultaneously be fulfilled in a satisfying way, so work would have to be subordinate.

When I met John, he was that good; he still is.  I have stuck by those ideas of mine.  What has amazed me is the powerful pressure of our culture to define my personal worth in terms of professional success and dollars earned.  I thought applied peer pressure ends after high school, but it only becomes more subtle and stronger.  I am thus forced to define my boundaries and personal value by counter-cultural means, because nothing I do is validated by the larger culture. 

My choice to stay at home was probably unconsciously made as a small child, basking so securely and freely in the rock-solid commitment of my parents to each other, their joy and delight in being one in purpose, mind and body; by my absorbing the amazing selflessness of my own mother,  drinking deeply and unashamedly of her love and patience, and observing her ensuing joy and powerful influence for good. 

It was solidified as a young adult, as I worked after college in a day care--I witnessed the daily miracles of young infants and toddlers and vowed I would not miss these if ever I were to have children.

As a middle school teacher, that vision was cemented from knowing my students--wandering aimlessly through life, experimenting with fire, with parents busy, uncool, and excluded from their problems.  I suppose you can't really force your children to choose one way or the other, but over my dead body would I not be available for them.

These things I hold dear are under attack--have been under attack for a long time.  Marriage has become culturally meaningless first by  wide-spread stale commitment held together only by social mores; by the revolutionary fallacy that sex can be "free";  then by routine, commonplace, no-fault divorce--the obvious result of the broken trust of sexual freedom; and now by the logically sequential victory of gay marriage. 

I am battered and broken.   I ache for the majority of children who will never know the joy and security I have known--to have the audacity to know that I am worth the full attention of my mother's life; to know what it means as a woman to have a father who faithfully and passionately loved my mother to give me hope that waiting for such a man is worth it.   I am broken for one of my young tween students who wept and sobbed uncontrollably when she found her father in a compromising situation with another woman, and who now, though beautiful and intelligent, lives with a loser because she cannot believe that faithful love is possible;  my heart breaks for the children deprived of the necessary diversity of male/female relationships.   I am torn and tattered.  I loathe to confess that I have wasted time regretting my "loss of status" in the eyes of the world, that sophisticated conversations divert around me because my world is too small, but now I only weep for generations who will bear the cost of the self-absorbed choices of this generation. 

Part 1

Chuck Colson has written  an interesting article  on the new Hate Crimes Bill pending in the Senate.  Please call your  two senators today. 

Now that I seem to have found an easy way to upload photos onto my blog, it's really easy to avoid putting any thoughts down, but rather just to show images.  In Losing Our Virtue,  David F. Wells comments on the cultural shift from words as the primary means of communication to images as the primary means.  It is interesting to compare this shift in light of John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  God has used words to communicate His message of redemption to us in Scripture, and He chose to do so before there were historical means of recording images.   It is also interesting to note that idols historically have always been images. '

I'm not condemning the use of pictures, and I intend to continue to use them--I'm just musing on my personal temptation to rely on images to record our life, and the accompanying mental lazilness....

Cheers!

Lori