March 29, 2004

It may be controversial

But I don’t see how anybody who calls themselves a Christian can be pro-choice if they’ve really thought it through. I went to Wash. DC over spring break and visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I bought a book there to further think about the profound devestation caused by people who viewed others as not-human. The Jews, Gypsies, handicapped and ill had no rights. Because they had no rights they were systematcally destroyed and everybody looks upon that as evil and wrong. In the same way, a fetus has no rights; because of that, they are destroyed as is convenient but very few look upon that as evil and wrong (just as few Nazis perceived their destruction of the Jews as wrong). There is a holocaust going on now against unborn children. Ask any happily pregnant mother if her baby is alive. Ask any happily pregnant mother if her baby is human. You will get a, “Yes!” Ask any woman who has miscarried, even a very early miscarriage, if her baby was alive and human and valuable to her. Most will answer, “Yes!” We mourn over our miscarriages. How have we come to decide that a woman can make the decision of life or death over her own child? Once that child is born she doesn’t have that right. It just doesn’t make sense. Abortion doesn’t make sense.

I can’t believe that I, one who was so stridently pro-choice in the past, have come to believe even more strongly that abortion is WRONG in any instance; but I have. Should a child be killed because he is the product of rape? Should a child be killed because he is handicapped (the Nazis did that)? Should a child be killed because he will be an inconvenience to the parents? Why are the fetus’ rights less important than a mother’s rights? Why is a fetus less important than an adult. Do people become progressively more important as they get older? I don’t think so. They just have more power as they get older. We are truly no better than the Nazis if we stand by and don’t stand up against abortion. The only difference is there is no one able to come back and look us in the eye and tell us, from the fetal perspective, what was experienced. There is no fetal memorial museum that catelogues the horror of partial birth abortion, no voices of the unborn, no pictures of a life prior to devastation, because they had no chance to even be born.

I wish I would have understood all this before. Words don’t make a big difference now but maybe long ago they would have. I have very little impact upon abortion decisions and, Praise God, I never had one; but I know I would have, back when I was unmarried and young, had I gotten pregnant at the wrong time. I feel sick to my soul to even know that.

Riot Grrl

May 6, 2004

I am NOT trying to argue, but it is very easy to pass judgment on a situation, especially when one has never been through it. Most people that are pro-choice are not pro-abortion, but are proponents of the school of thought that allows each person to make decisions that will affect us for the rest of our lives. If you cannot trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?

Comparing women who have had abortions to Nazis is incredibly callous–it is a difficult decision, but it is also a private one to be made by the individual, not by the government or people who have been more fortunate. Many people will advocate adoption, but nobody can truly know how incredibly difficult that is to go through–most simply don’t have the strength. I gave my baby up for adoption,

and then was a basket case for about 2 years. I tried to commit suicide twice, was in the hospital for longer than I care to remember. It is not a recommendation to be made lightly–statistics show that a significant number of women who are dissuaded from abortion will end up taking the baby back from the adoptive parents–unhealthy for both the child and the couple. You may not agree with it,

but a child deserves every right to be happy and have a full life. If the birth mother cannot provide that for the baby, and cannot go through with the adoption, then that baby is no better off than it was in the beginning. It is one of the hardest things a person can go through, and calling them murderers or Nazis is both callous and unfair. Women that have experienced this need compassion,

instead of harsh judgments from people who admit that they have never been faced with the decision themselves. Condemning someone for a choice that they may have felt they HAD to make is wrong, no matter how you look at it. If you cannot make a pro-life argument without religion, then it is not a valid debate when concerning legislation–that is the power of the separation of church and state.

Again, I’m really NOT trying to start a debate–I just sometimes wish people would think about the people involved before making broad generalizations that are harsh and stereotypical. Perhaps if girls were taught something besides abstinence in schools, abortions would not be so common, or so “necessary”–for lack of a better word. Sorry if I offended you–it hasn’t been my intention. Lyla