A person I respect a lot was troubled by the previous post on abortion. It's not a subject Americans can discuss much any more. I've seen this in my own extended family--there are things we just don't talk about at Thanksgiving.
Abortion has turned into the "trench warfare" of American politics. You stick your head out of your trench and somebody on the other side will shoot at you. After a while, you learn to keep your head down--they always said, "In polite company, you don't talk about sex, religion, or politics." Abortion manages to be all three. That's why I think it's so important for our kids to study out this issue.
My own family learned about abortion in as personal a way as possible--we took several women in crisis into our home. Stephanie lived with us for a year, and then got married to the father of her child and lived down the street. Our kids learned that "choosing life" isn't just a bumper sticker--it's a long hard journey full of new sacrifices every day. But with all the hardships Stephanie experienced, I don't think she ever wished she had chosen differently.
Abortion isn't an abstraction. I don't think our children can be compassionate towards women in crisis until they understand how hard it really is to be a single mother. That's something we can add to our homeschoolling lifestyle--there are plenty of single-parent families we can befriend. So many mothers have faced that crisis and made that choice! They deserve our honor and our support.
If you think abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor, then we shouldn't discuss it any more than any other medical procedure. But if abortion is a crisis that leaves women trapped and helpless, our hearts should go out to them like they did for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
I wrote about this on my blog last year. It isn't easy to discuss for anyone, but the fact is that since there are so many children dying daily due to abortion... it NEEDS to be discussed. This is the reason I broke my silence over the topic, even though it causes me pain to discuss it.
Bravo! Thanks for being willing to stick your neck out.
Watching your family love Stephanie, watching you put feet on your faith every Wednesday (and on your knees), learning that there is a difference between Forgiveness from God and grief for the loss of a child. You taught my family so much. Our love and respect for you and your bride is cherished in our hearts for so many reasons. Thank you for always talking the hard topics with God's grace.
For those of you who don't know the previous commenter... she's the woman who led the way for MY family way back in 1986 when we were just getting started. Her children were several years ahead of our little first grader, and they were already winning awards like "newspaper carrier of the year." Bobbie's enthusiasm got us over the fear factor of seeking "approval" back in the bad old days in New Hampshire. Now her little "newspaper carrier of the year" is a homeschooling mom with 6 (or 7?) children of her own!
Do You Really Want Kids To Think, or Just Believe?
I understand Scott to be saying this discussion is about how we can better educate homeschooled kids on the issues, not for arguing the issues ourselves. Better! :)
So, holding tight to my "belief" that Scott does really "think" about tough issues, and means to encourage all homeschooled kids to do the same -- I accept that he's brought this up hoping to deepen their reasoning and understanding of how sex, religion and politics intersect and affect real lives.
In that positive and collegial spirit, and with great respect for every family's right to accept or reject the input as they see fit, let me offer a couple of education resources that might be hard to come by otherwise, for conservative Christian homeschool kids. First, my own willingness to answer their questions and describe my own current perspective as a stay-at-home mom and unschooling non-partisan who believes that without respecting free will, nothing can be moral, that coercion and power imbalance can poison even the most moral human ideals.
And that choosing love in your own life can redeem even the most immoral. That applies to friendship, education, marriage, motherhood, public service, work, war and peace, and I think I'm prepared to argue, to salvation itself. Isn't free will a basic tenet of Christianity?
So secondly, here are the two nonfiction books I recommend most highly for broadening homeschoolers' education on this issue and starting to "reconcile" our polarized politics in favor of greater humanity and compassion for all life. Dworkin's elegant legal argument is my best pick, and the new history of American girls who didn't have abortions is my 16-year-old daughter's pick, out of all we've ever read. (And we read everything!) Oh, and there's one we both admire for its complex and senstive power of story ,I guess it's technically fiction although not really imo - the Cider House Rules by John Irving.
The Girls Who Went Away: The HIdden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler
Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom by Ronald Dworkin
Recently we have discovered that of 3 generations of women that are living in my family right now, there are exactly as many abortions. Half of our family is missing.
There are subjects we absolutely donot discuss, only G-d can change hearts and political views.
As the wife of a youth pastor, we have had alot of contact with teen mothers the last few years. When we discovered I was pregnant with our "last" child, our biggest worry was since I gave all my maternity and baby boy clothes to pregnant teens...what were we going to do now? (as usual G-d provided) Having a girl in my study once announce 6 of her friends were pregnant made me wonder, "is there any one besides pregnant girls for her to hang out with? is there no one to walk with her?" i was ashamed at this reaction i had.. why shouldn't she be with the pregnant teen moms but christian teen girls to encourage them and love them?
As a teen i saw the rejoicing with married women who discovered they were pregnant, and the tears when the unmarried announced their pregnancies, the incredible joy over babies who were kept and the overwhelming sorrow over babies lost to abortion.
I have become an expert of sorts on postabortion syndrom thanks to the education both you and my parents have given me. I use this more often than i would like.
Francine Rivers wrote an incredible work of fiction, "the atonement child' I HIGHLY recommend it!!
and side note..How beautiful was Stephanie's baby?! Besides the Somerville babies i held and rocked, he was another favourite.
Heather
Posted by that newspaper carrier... at 12:00 PM, Sep. 26, 2006
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this issue. I, too, get frustrated by people who want to ignore the issue and act like it's not happening. I think it's great your parents were able to show love to mothers in need. That's such a great example to you, and US too.
Heard part of a wonderful NPR program this morning about the words we use making it almost impossioble to come together and understand each other. It should be available for listening online later tonight or tomorrow, whereupon I'll catch the whole thing. Linguist Geoff Nunberg is a big favorite of mine and has a new book out this sumer (see below)
The part of the show I heard specifically included the words we use to polarize abortion, also marriage protection, etc --
Politics & Society
Political Glossary for the Midterm Elections
Listen to this story...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5536444
Talk of the Nation, September 27, 2006 · Defeaticrat, culture of corruption, and security mom are all part of the election-year war of words. Guests explain the strategy behind the slogans.
Guests:
Geoffrey Nunberg author most recently of the book, "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show"; linguist at the School of Information at Berkeley
Frank Luntz, Republican pollster
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Before that, there was a good discussion of Protestants who are NOT radical or evangelical but are value voters and very concerned about morality. There was a whole riff on polls being problematic because when they change the wording even slightly, results swing wildlyy and commetators can't figure out what we really want!
JJ said, "without respecting free will, nothing can be moral, that coercion and power imbalance can poison even the most moral human ideals." She may like to cite the Cider House Rules, but here's my take.
You have free will. That is something no one can take away from you. You may be controlled by the choices you have, but you always have an option. That said, you are not free to choose without consequences. If I choose to commit murder, I'm going to pay a price for it before civil authorities. What we do has an affect on those around us. Anyone doubting that should reference Duane Morrison. JJ apparently thinks we should be free to commit all sorts of crimes. We are, but not without consequences.
Abortion removes a fetus and stops its heart, its brain, its life. Should a mother and her doctor face the consequences of terminating that life at 8 weeks, 30 weeks (nice round number), or 2 years after birth? Such a determination is arbitrary. Abortion takes a life and destroys it.
"JJ apparently thinks we should be free to commit all sorts of crimes. We are, but not without consequences."
That wild first premise doesn't lead to the second! But the second is true enough -- trouble is, it's about crime, which tells us nothing useful about legal freedoms like privacy and choice, including law-abiding moms and potential moms.
Scott and I are both scholars of First Amendment law, in which there's a bright line drawn between "prior restraint" of free expression (which our Constitution doesn't allow) and allowing the law to impose punitive consequences for certain expression because our government deems it NOT free -- in other words, you won't be prevented from violating the law before the fact but you're on notice of what is violative, and that there are legal concequences.
So, any citizen with a voice or a pen or a keyboard is "free" to violate the law by inciting violence, making death threats, libel etc, -- free in this sense meaning they can't legally be restrained from all communication before they violate the law in the first place -- but not "free" in the sense that there is no legal price to pay after they DO commit a tort or crime.
It seems like Steve believes a range of of private female behaviors, choices and decisions are free only in the first sense but not the second, that various reproductive, pregnancy and contraceptive choices are actually capital crimes akin to murder?
We all know that's not what we're talking about here. The pro-life movement interprets God's law when it calls abortion murder, not Government's law.
And the difference between God's Law and Government's Law makes all the difference in how well America can preserve and protecting both freedom and life. Confusing the two is getting fully born and free people killed throughout the world, all in the name of some doomsday divinity doctrine that we're told is futile for free, thinking men and women to resist. Freedom is not the enemy here, and virgins are not the prize!
Evangelical homeschooled teens who care so deeply about "life" need to understand that difference before they protect even their own life and freedom from totalitarians, much less mine, or future life potential for anyone male or female, born or unborn, Muslim, Christian or Jew.
Sorry I had to run, Favorite Daughter needed a ride to her community college class - I want to address Steve's point about "natural" consequences as well as social-government consequences.
While I thank any man for his concern about my welfare (even teenagers) and any woman for her support, the fact is that there are all sorts of physical consequences that threaten women's health. We're learning through science that most physical conditions are correlated with particular habits, beliefs, behaviors and practices -- not just sex and reproduction but eating, drinking, sleeping, exercising, kinds of health care or lack thereof, general lack of resources like education and income. Marriage, friends, even getting enough hugs per day (ten is optimum, did you know that?)
I personally face significant and potentially life-threatening "natural consequences" myself resulting from choosing to BE a mom, rather than choosing not to be a mom.
Am I being punished by God or nature then, and should I have known better and chosen differently? Should pro-life homeschooled children learn about THOSE consequences while they are getting this other set of scientific "facts?"Where were the loving, caring folk to counsel me AGAINST pregnancy and all its life-threatening natural consequences?
I really hope pro-life homeschooled teens are learning to think through such fallacious arguments; the Well-Trained Mind curriculum and other critical thinking programs available for home education. For example, I suggest a pro-life essay topic worthy of our finest young students might be to read this female professor's polemic called "To Be A Mother" and then articulate the best-reasoned argument against it they can, if any:
What do you think about this approach from bioethics-philosophy professor Hilde Lindemann?
http://www.bioethicsforum.org/20060306hlindemann.asp
(Here's one excerpt, but it's an elegant argument that needs to be read in full to appreciate, much less attempt to refute.)
"They want to hold pregnant women – who are innocent of any wrongdoing –to a punitive standard of specific performance, sentencing them against their will to the many kinds of hard work, physical discomfort, and outright danger that my daughter has undertaken to bring her wanted child into the world.
No other class of people is held to this standard in peacetime. No woman should be held to it either.
If the South Dakota legislature is really serious about saving lives, it might consider distributing the gender burden more evenly by enacting a law that forces all able-bodied men to donate a kidney to someone who will die without one. That way they too would have to do something with their bodies to support someone else’s life--something a little like the creative and purposeful work that women do when they sustain a pregnancy..."
Nice dodge, JJ. You missed my point, however. You can't be free of consequences, legal or moral. Does one always line up with the other? Unfortunately, no. Does that make it right? Never! You can ad hominem all you want against me, my gender, or my faith. You still can't erase the fact that abortion condemns a living, human being to die.
There are risks every day in life, with each life. The fact that you don't have a stroke or a heart attack is a minor miracle. You take risks getting into a car and driving. Abortion, especially with the way clinics are run today, is more risky than any other outpatient procedure. But they are risks nonetheless. An unborn child is in the safest place they could be unless their mother chooses abortion. Then they're going to die. It's a certifiable guarantee, not a risk. How can you justify death to avoid a risk?
JJ, when is a baby human? When it's halfway out of the mother? When it's feet are moving and it's arms quivering? If so, congratulations. You've just outlawed partial-birth abortion. Where do you draw the line, if you've thought through this?
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So, holding tight to my "belief" that Scott does really "think" about tough issues, and means to encourage all homeschooled kids to do the same -- I accept that he's brought this up hoping to deepen their reasoning and understanding of how sex, religion and politics intersect and affect real lives.
In that positive and collegial spirit, and with great respect for every family's right to accept or reject the input as they see fit, let me offer a couple of education resources...
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Defend yourself as an individual, your manhood and your faith as you please but it hasn't been attacked not am I lobbying to define any of those thing in law or to restrict, ban or criminalize them.
So who's erasing "facts?"
And what in the world is this rant about trying to dodge consequences? I started by saying there ARE consequences, for everything, and thus free will is the only ethical frame within which any human can choose, can act, can be held accountable.
For example, I wrote:
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So, any citizen with a voice or a pen or a keyboard is "free" to violate the law by inciting violence, making death threats, libel etc, -- free in this sense meaning they can't legally be restrained from all communication before they violate the law in the first place -- but not "free" in the sense that there is no legal price to pay after they DO commit a tort or crime.
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That is core principle stuff for ethics, philosophy, psychology, and public-private policy analysis including but not limited to this issue. Have I thought about it? You bet. Now if only homeschooled kids will think as deeply about it. Which I THOUGHT was the point of Scott bringing it up here?
JJ, obviously I've misunderstood what you've been saying. I was reading too quickly and jumping to conclusions, and for this I apologize. I was also off topic, which you were right to point out.
Homeschoolers, specifically those old enough to take on abstract reasoning, need to be taught to think through arguments, see both sides, and come to a conclusion as to which is the better. This is something that a lot of parents don't grasp, and it weakens their children's capacity to reason through real life issues they will run into as they begin their lives as independent adults.
However, I believe that until they are old enough to reason through these arguments, relativistic or contrary viewpoints such as the Cider House Rules only serve to confuse the student. When is the student old enough? That depends a lot on the student's maturity, but I would guess no earlier than 10-12 years old.
Abortion is a hot button issue for me and I reacted, thinking that you were espousing this vile practice. Please forgive me for trying to shoot you down. I'm going to read slower next time.
And thoughtful, too, which (from me at least) is more of a compliment than charming. Thanks Steve.
Good point about the age of the child. We don't use curriculum but I've explored some over the years for myself. Classic curricula e.g. the Well-Trained Mind operate with the trivium for the three stages of the developing mind - grammar, logic, rhetoric, if I remember right -- and it would be interesting to approach this issue with that in mind maybe, with different materials and arguments or reasoning for children thinking at the three progressive stages? Scott, there's an assignment for you engaged dads to tackle!
