Is This the Best They Can Do?

Can’t the abortionists do better than these lame statements? Are these the best minds the pro-death movement has to offer?

“Your arguments remind me of Animal Rights activist arguments. Your [sic] saying that the life of organisms other than advanced human beings should be protected by law. If a human fetus without a cerebral cortex should be protected by law then in that case you should also not be able to kill any sub advanced human organism. You should not be able to kill and eat living animals and living plans [sic], you should not be able to kill living germs, should not be able to scratch your arm and kill living skin cells, should not be allowed to cut your hair and kill hair cells etc. If you want a 'Protection of Non Advanced Human Life Law,' you can't stop with a fetus. Your [sic] missing the point of what makes humans special, it isn't the mere fact that we are humans, it is our rationality and thought.”

Posted by “Disambiguation” at:
http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showresult.asp?RecNum=423303&Forums=0&Experts=0&Days=1&Author=&Keyword=&pgnu=1&groupnum=0

If rationality and thought are the basis for being special, then Disambiguation’s own validity must come into question. I’ve never met a new-born child capable of rational thought, although I’ve met many children who had higher-level cognitive processes than this.

Considering who we are dealing with, let’s put it this way:

If I had not had an abortion, I would have had a child. Period. Not a clump of hair or a bundle of skin cells; not a frog or a puppy or a DVD player; not a carrot or a philodendron. A human child. No matter how much I might have wanted to choose something different, the end result of conception, the meeting of human sperm and human egg, is another human being.

The unborn child is simply younger than you and I. If we must use rational thought to define our humanity, most of the living would have to be destroyed for being incapable of it, including many of those whose anti-life opinions are published and read as if they have credence or integrity. Case in point, debunked by our friends at After Abortion (check side-bar link):

"On December 23, Kevin Drum, a progressive/liberal writer at the Washington Monthly's blog, took note of the 'Some Democrats want to soften party's stand on abortion' article in the Times and added an angle pertaining to how women experience abortion.

'I'm usually in favor of more inclusive language, greater sensitivity, etc. etc. But obsessing about the emotional turmoil of getting an abortion just doesn't work. Since we fundamentally believe that there's nothing wrong with pre-viability abortion, shouldn't our job instead be to persuade women that they shouldn't feel emotionally whipsawed if they choose to get an abortion? It's awfully hard to take both sides.'"

When did we start obsessing about the emotional turmoil of abortion? As far as I can see, the grief of post-abortive women is denied. Therapists and counselors generally refuse to see the harm that is done, and look for absurd solutions to an obvious problem. Even when the patient can identify the issue which causes her pain, the therapist denies the link.

What does Mr. Drum think the abortionists have been doing for more than thirty years if it isn’t trying to make women swallow abortion as a perfectly acceptable solution to unwanted pregnancy? Shouldn’t our job instead be to persuade women that they shouldn’t feel compelled to engage in the sexual behavior that results in conception? Shouldn’t our job instead be to convince women that our special role in nurturing the offspring of the human race is vital to our survival? Shouldn’t our job instead be to persuade men and women that each human life is precious, even Mr. Drum’s (may he thank God daily that his own mother chose to give him life)? And before I give him too much weight, how many abortions has Mr. Drum had that make him an expert on women’s issues? I tire of hearing this argument from people who haven’t been there. They don’t have the experience and cannot speak to this subject.

Back to Disambiguation, and his pseudo-scientific argument:

“This is why the anti abortion movement lies in religion and why it is rejected by a majority of free and educated people, because it has no basis in the real world. Religion says humans are special because we have some kind of exalted status, we don't. We are special because of our advanced brain functions which come through evolution. Human embryo's [sic] do not have these functions, hence are not advanced human life that should be protected by law.”

By this definition, two-year old children are not advanced, and infanticide should be legalized. By this definition, the mentally disabled and injured are lacking advanced brain functions, and should be euthanized. By this definition, the elderly have lost advanced brain functions, and do not deserve to keep living.

And on this last note, may God forgive me for thinking with great satisfaction about the potential fate of the generations that made Roe v. Wade a reality in our country. You are aging in a world that is learning to dispose of human beings who are no longer functional. Paybacks are hell. In spite of myself, I pray you will not become weak, helpless, and at the mercy of these cold-hearted people who deny your viability.

Feel free to leave God completely out of this issue. Believe if you like that we are simply the most intelligent animals on the planet (which is arguable). Then explain to me the purpose of destroying our young from an evolutionary standpoint. If Charles Darwin were alive, I’m sure he would also like to hear how you have managed to pervert his perfectly viable theory that species adapt to their environments in order to survive into something that says the youngest members of a species aren’t actually members of that species, yet. When does a puppy become a dog? Do you think Darwin would say it isn’t a member of the canine species before it’s born? Do you hear your own ignorance yet?

If I took a pregnant bitch, started cutting the pups from her womb and destroying them, I would go to jail for cruelty to animals. Yet, I could do this easily to human children with a medical degree and the blessings of such great minds as these abortionists.

Survival of the species should be driving our animal instincts toward the preservation of our offspring. We are not destroying our young for the evolutionary benefit of the human race, which would mean making sure the smartest, strongest, and best bred in the ideal eugenic society are the ones who survive. Not yet, anyway, although I’m sure there are many wealthy white people who aren’t saddened at all at the impact abortion is having on the impoverished and people of color. Instead, we are thinning the herd indiscriminately, without knowing whether the ones who survive the womb are eugenically ideal or not. Must I name-drop to prove it? Has anyone listened to the latest pearls of wisdom dripping from the mouth of a certain wealthy, spoiled, hotel heiress? She survived the womb, and the existence of rational thought processes in that brain is open to debate.

But whose ideal are we using? I am free and educated. I regretted my abortion, and then I found religion. I didn’t find religion, and then start regretting my abortion. No amount of double-speak can convince me or any other woman who has been pregnant and is honest with herself and others that what I aborted was not human.

What if my ideal is to rid the world of the kind of people who espouse the murder of children for convenience? You and your kind are a threat to the human race: a barrier to the survival of the species. If you were a rogue chimp in the wild destroying the offspring of the other chimps, they would most likely kill you or at least drive you away from the group. Apparently, they are more advanced than we on the evolutionary ladder.

Dear Wounded Soul

Dear Exoneree,

I read your blog today, and oh, how I wish I could have spoken to you before you went through with it, that choice of yours to abort your child. But now you are a member of the club. I would welcome you, but I didn’t want you here. I don’t want to be here myself.

I wish you could hear what I hear in your voice today, knowing as I do what you are going to experience from this point forward. Your response to the abortion has left you puzzled by your own behavior, but I understand it all too well. When you were lying on the table you were afraid, of course. But why did you look for comfort in the eyes of strangers? “Mr. Anesthetist,” as you call him, made you feel like a little girl, and you don’t know why you were so grateful to him. But you seem to blame yourself for needing to seek comfort in the first place.

Why did your IV tube bother you so much? It’s a small pain, really. Was it really that which made you cry? And again, you looked for comfort from the White Knight Anesthesiologist, the one who made you sleep through it, the one who gave you medication for your physical pain. If he was so concerned about your suffering, would he have helped you do this deed, for which you now say you don’t feel guilty? Why, dear Exoneree, do you have to deny guilt for this if it is perfectly reasonable for you to have done it?

Remember, I have been where you are. I made the same choice, and probably for many of the same reasons, chief among them, fear: fear for my personal safety and comfort; fear of permanently changing the plans that were set for my future; fear of being the girl who was too stupid to keep from getting pregnant in the first place. But we rarely make good choices while we are in the grip of fear. We forget that, those of us who think we have it all planned, and explained, and justified.

Did you catch any glimpse of the surgical instruments at all? Why were you hiding them from yourself in the first place? You need to ask yourself these questions, hard as it is to admit that you have done wrong. Burying the answers will only cause you more grief, because you won’t be able to explain yourself anymore. When we pile garbage on top of our guilt to hide it, we end up with a trash heap for brains.

Whose blood was it on the bathroom floor, where they left you alone to bleed and faint, and suffer? Was it really all your own? Did a small voice in your mind whisper to you whose blood had been spilled? Yes, I know that it did. This is exactly why we cannot live with the truth of what we have done, and why so many women insist it had to be right. If it’s not okay, then estimates say 43% of us women of reproductive age have murdered. But of course, it’s not okay. You know in your heart that it was not okay, it wasn’t anything near okay, for heaven’s sake, it was a child. He, or she, was your child, and it was brutally destroyed. We do not allow people to treat animals with such cruelty, but we ignore what we are doing to human beings thousands of times every day. These thoughts will cross your mind, try as you might to stuff them away.

Do you think that now you could see pictures of children who have been aborted without thinking of your own child, your own choice? Wait a little while, until even the pictures of smiling, happy, living infants make you want to wail, and turn away. Can you hear a description of the procedure they performed on you, the way in which they killed the child in your womb, without wanting to cry out with sympathetic pain? You can’t. It wasn’t a tumor or a piece of tissue, which you knew in your heart the moment you knew you were pregnant. Tell me, since I don’t have the heart to read it right now, did you imagine the child in your arms? Did you wonder if it was a boy or a girl, and what you would name it? Yes, you did, even if you would deny it now. You couldn’t help it, because as women, we know the child is not an extension of ourselves, but someone brand new in the world, a unique human being who would grow, and grow, and with God’s blessing come to adulthood to have children of his or her own. We can’t deny the mother-child bond, and you will feel the pain of your empty and ravaged womb for a very long time.

I wish I could say something to spare you the grief, but the choice was made, and now you are like me. You didn’t love yourself very much to start with, or you would have treasured the life you helped create, the life which a woman’s body is designed to protect for a short time. Now you will bear the burden of secret shame for much longer than nine months. You may abuse the very body that should have nurtured the child. You may be more casual about sharing it with others because it has lost its value to you. You will have trouble in your relationships, even beyond what you’ve experienced so far. Your current relationship is unlikely to survive your decision to destroy its fruits. You will hate the man who helped make this choice possible, who helped you join the club of women who have killed their children but walk free on our streets. You may abort again, and again, struggling to find peace with your former decisions each time, and not understanding why you do the things you do.

Perhaps you will find yourself craving another child. If so, you will conceive again, and you may let this child live. But your love for this child will always be tainted by your inability to love your lost one. A part of you has died with the child, and it will be as difficult for you to feel joy as it will be for you to remember the depth of sorrow. Like so many other women who have aborted, you will find it is easier to let go of people. Too easy – you will reject those you love most because you have done it before.

Your life has been made harder, much harder than it would have been if you had carried the child. Eventually, time may make that clear to you, if you are fortunate enough to figure out what is wrong in your life. Right now the wound is fresh, and you need warm blankets, and loving arms, and I do wish I could give you those. But it may be a very long time before you will be able to accept them from anyone again.

I have bookmarked your blog, because I want to “be” with you on this dark road. There is light, as the kindest people keep telling me. I pray you find it. I do not have it, not yet. I know it is there, because sometimes I touch on it. I walk up to the edges of this great light, and the peace and joy that come with it. I stand in awe of the power of mercy, and gaze upon it like a window shopper standing on the sidewalk in the cold. It looks so nice, and yes, it would feel warm and wonderful to have it, but I just can’t afford it. I hear the beautiful women speak of their lost children’s love, and how they feel enveloped by it now that they have remembered forgiveness. I do not doubt what they feel, or that they are entitled to it, or that it is real. I only know that I cannot picture my dead child smiling down at me for any reason whatsoever. He would take after his mother in this, and at the very least, he is wagging his finger at me for being such a fool, and for taking away his choices.

As the Blackness Sets In

It was my job this week (and last week, if I am honest about my procrastinating) to write a report on our first auction results. It was a spectacular success. The first day of our E-Bay auction, our website links were hit thousands of times, and every day thereafter, peaking on the day the auction closed. Overall, more than thirty thousand people viewed our pro-life messages, including the excellent advertisements produced by Virtue Media, Inc. which can be seen in their entirety at www.virtuemedia.org. We could not have purchased this much airtime for them, and we are immensely grateful to you, the internet viewers, for your attention and your compassion. We had many bidders and many watchers. Our E-Bay ad generated at least a thousand more hits than any sale of like items in the past, and certainly we owe that to the pro-life message that made it unique.

Our winning bidder is from Norway. He purchased an excellent guitar with collector’s value for just $430 – a good price for him and a good contribution to Virtue Media that will be matched by another generous donor. But this wasn’t about a guitar sale at all. It wasn’t even about the money we will contribute. We did this for our children – and their parents, grandparents, siblings – to make others aware that abortion destroys lives and souls.

I, personally, did this for the child I aborted. Mentally, I had parted with my guitar a long time ago – there was no sense of loss, no idea that I would miss it. I felt nothing but happiness thinking of someone else learning to play as I had and developing a love for making music. I thought I was handling everything quite well, actually, in spite of the memories that were being stirred up. During the auction’s seven-day run, I watched the numbers rise as more and more people visited my website. I watched the number of hits grow and grow, and slowly it began to dawn on me that all of these people know the truth about me, now. It’s one thing to have a website “out there,” and get a few dozen hits from internet travelers. It’s entirely another to see the truth of your life spreading like bad news, and to know that others see the shame you think you’ve hidden so successfully even from yourself.

This is such an ugly truth, something which I would not even disclose to medical personnel under pain of death before now. I owe this idea of being “Silent No More” to the Silent No More Awareness program founded by these remarkable women:

Georgette Forney
Co-Founder
Silent No More Awareness Campaign
National Director, NOEL
Georgette@NOELforLife.org
(800) 707-6635

Janet Morana
Co-Founder
Silent No More Awareness Campaign
Associate Director, Priests for Life
Janet@PriestsforLife.org
(888) PFL-3448

I was inspired to write my testimony for them and by them. Originally, it was to be published anonymously, and you can find another copy of my story, with so many others, on their website, www.silentnomoreawareness.org. Please visit, and read the testimonies. So many other people want to share their pain with you, pain they have had to keep hidden.

After reading my testimony, my husband took me to an entirely different level. He’s a man of action, and not satisfied with an anonymous contribution. Having been made aware, he had to help. God blesses our world with people like him and his twin brother, who has also embraced the cause as his own. My husband, Ron, designed a site around the story, and gave me a forum, a voice that I had never had before. Then he gave me courage to speak. I wanted to honor his gift to me by being as courageous as I had to be. So I endured as the numbers grew, and my shame became more public.

I felt strangely detached, emotionless, and I suppose that should have been my first warning that I was not doing as well as I wanted to think. Even everyday things that would ordinarily at least cause me to swear a little with impatience were not bothering me at all. My goodness, I thought, I have come a long way.

And then the blackness overcame me. If you are a member of this particular club, a survivor of the holocaust of abortion, you know the blackness all too well. It creeps up on you, and sets in beside you like an old, familiar friend. Eventually, often before we know it’s coming, it envelopes, and it colors the entire world. Particularly when things go well, when we are rewarded for good efforts, or simply receive gifts unasked and unearned, the blackness comes to remind us that we are so unworthy.

I received emails telling me I am courageous. I am not. Brave women bear their children and their responsibilities. We were doing something good for the world with this auction, telling everyone who would listen that aborting the child is NOT a valid choice, any more than killing any human being is a solution to a problem. But the blackness sets in to remind me that I am not worthy of such a task. I could not do good for my poor child, who died in agony, his neurons developed fully enough to experience the pain, but without the tools we have when fully-grown that help us to cope with it. It makes me want to scream his agony to the world, even as I want desperately to hide from the grief and the knowledge that I brought about this suffering.

I have to find a way out of the darkness. I can’t reach anyone from in here. I need to thank the people who listened, and who told their friends about it. I need to pick up my share of this burden and go on to the next step. We need our next auction, the next piece of testimony that brings the truth out of the black void and puts it in the world for everyone to hear. We need your “guitar,” whatever that might be, and your experience, so we can do this again, and again, and again – until the entire world understands, and we are put out of business. God, I pray to be put out of this awful business.

What Child Is This?

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you pick up the latest issue of Reader’s Digest (January 2005, “The Contender”), and read about Kyle Maynard. Kyle, 18 years old, is a championship wrestler; a football player; and, as one of his fans named him, a “human anti-depressant.” Kyle is remarkable because he was born without legs and arms. The reporter writes:

“When Anita Maynard was pregnant with her first child, the doctors told her and her husband, Scott, that they couldn’t find the baby’s legs on the ultrasound. Upon second inspection, however, they reassured the Maynards that the child was indeed possessed of lower limbs. Then Kyle was born. What the doctors had mistaken for legs turned out to be a pair of misshapen feet protruding just beneath the baby’s hips. He had no hands. His arms were only half there.”

Had they known from the ultrasound that Kyle’s limbs were not fully formed, would the doctors have recommended an abortion to his parents? Pro-abortionists like to talk about ridding ourselves of “defective fetuses,” as if a child is something one should send back to the manufacturer if it is not in what we consider good working order. But what is “good working order?” In my experience, and most of my readers, it would include having all four limbs. But Kyle has accomplished more in his eighteen years without them than I have in more than forty with all four. Who are we to judge this young man’s life experience? Would you deny him life now because he is not perfectly formed? Who are we that we think we can make decisions about his quality of life? Ask Kyle what he thinks about aborting the imperfect. Better yet, ask the man who called Kyle his “human antidepressant.” This man was depressed, overweight, and ill – discouraged about life – until he saw Kyle and the way he has overcome tremendous challenges. He changed his life because of the courage he saw in Kyle. Herein lies one of the biggest problems with abortion and euthanasia – regardless of what we see as another person’s quality of life, we can never measure that person’s impact on others. If we deny them life, we take away the possibility that they may positively affect the people around them and change the world for the better.

If you still aren’t convinced, you should meet Ashlynn (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3768524787). She’s eighteen months old now, and the pride and joy of her grandmother and mother. We may never have known her, though, were it not for Virtue Media. Her mother saw one of their commercials and decided against having an abortion. As a result, the world has been blessed with Ashlynn’s sweet smile, and the hope that each life brings to us. What might Ashlynn do with her gift of time outside the womb? Her future is wide open, thanks to her mother’s unselfishness.

Yes, abortion is the single most selfish act a woman can commit. Certainly I don’t like saying that. I never wanted to be a selfish person. But it is undeniably done only for the sake of the people who managed to survive the womb themselves, to relieve unwanted responsibilities, including the kinds of challenges that Kyle’s parents faced. But it is exactly these challenges and the unselfish love that parenthood brings out in people that make us better human beings. On the flip side of that, it is abortion that emphasizes our selfishness, our self-absorption, and our obsession with physical perfection and conformity. Is this the world in which we really want to live?

Read Kyle’s story, and visit Virtue Media’s website to view their ads at www.virtuemedia.org. Look long and hard at Ashlynn’s picture, and as you do, consider the 45 million children just like her, including my own, who did not survive the womb, and the children who will die today and tomorrow because their mothers and fathers are unwilling to make the sacrifices that come with parenthood. Please reach into your hearts and consider the ways in which you can help fill the world with beautiful children like these.

Photo with Anomalies

The only modification made to this photograph is the addition of the logo for comparison. The "orb" is in the photograph, and most likely from a light source. The anomaly that resembles a profile is a substance splashed and dried onto the negative itself.
 

Vintage Gibson Guitar to be Auctioned for Charity

I decided many months ago to donate my first guitar to my husband’s fund-raising company for pro-life charities. The proceeds will be sent to Virtue Media, Inc., who produce advertisements that help people make informed choices when faced with unwanted pregnancy. Click this link to see their advertisements and other good works: http://www.virtuemedia.org/television.htm. If you want to see the auction, go the http://www.edistribute.net/ and follow the links.

My godmother and great-aunt Marg, who passed away just eight days ago, purchased this guitar for me when I was 17, a year after I had aborted my child, while I was still grieving for something I didn’t yet recognize. I played the violin when I was a little girl, but the guitar was cool, and since my best friend played, I wanted to learn, too. One of Aunt Marg’s co-workers, a fellow teacher, had had this Gibson LGO ¾ neck “parlor guitar” since she was my age. Her father had purchased it new for her birthday.

I only paid $35 for it. I was disappointed to find that the tuning keys, which when original were plastic, were cracked from age, and I could not restring the guitar. I took it to a local music shop for repair. The owner was reluctant to replace the keys, or the bridge, which was also cracked. He told me they had only made a few hundred of this kind of guitar with the smaller neck, and that it would have collector’s value. What did I care? I was 17, and I wanted to play the guitar, not put it in a corner to collect dust. So he put a fine set of metal keys on it for me. Other than that, the guitar is in beautiful condition, and has a very sweet, light sound. Its small body and narrow neck made it perfect for my small hands.

Since then, I purchased a standard-sized guitar, because I love deeper tones. But I always kept my first guitar safe. I love that guitar. I found healing in making music, even if I will never be a true musician. It doesn’t matter. The music I make is for me and for my lost child. When my husband decided to form a company to raise funds by auction for pro-life charities, I immediately thought of selling my guitar in memory of the son I would have had with my husband if I had lived according to God’s plan for me.

How do I know that? Well, I don’t have any evidence. But I know what I feel, and just recently, I think we received a sign. It wasn’t anything supernatural, and we have explained it, but while we were taking photos of the instrument for the auction, one of them came back with some oddities. I’ve never been a believer in ghosts or apparitions. I’ve seen photos of “orbs,” and they look like light reflection from the lens to me. I’ve never taken a photo that had one in it, though, until now.

But this photo, which appears here, had something besides an orb. There is a profile in it. Surely this was also reflected light, I thought, but it resembles so closely something that I drew myself – it’s quite strange. We needed a logo for our work, and I knew exactly what I wanted. I am no artist, no more than I am a musician, but I can finger-paint with the rest of the five-year olds, you betchya. So I opened Paint, the most sophisticated graphics program I know how to run, and proceeded to try to draw what was in my mind. I already knew it would be a profile of an infant. I prayed before and during the drawing – I asked God to guide my hand to make the image a good one, considering my lack of skill. I also asked Him to do something else for me, if it was His will: I asked Him to make it look like my baby. I knew I would never have confirmation of that in this life, but in faith, I believed He would answer that prayer.

When I saw the odd profile on the wall in the photo I took (which was the only one of all of them that I personally shot), I immediately saw the resemblance between it and my drawing – but the one that showed in the photo looks like a grown-up version of that face. Check it out for yourself, and tell me if you see the resemblance. We didn’t immediately have the negative to look at, because the developers had forgotten to do the CD along with the prints. So we looked everywhere in that room for anything that could have caused a reflection. We found nothing. I started to wonder about ghost photographs. But mostly, I started wondering about signs. Why? I am not worthy of signs from God, so where did this come from, and why was it put in our path? Then I remembered that we don’t merit gifts. By definition, they come unasked and unearned.

We got the negative the next day, and while there is a perfectly rational and scientific explanation for how this mark came to be in the photo, it only adds to the mystery because it was not light, as the orb could be. Something actually splashed onto the negative, and that substance, when you look at the actual negative, looks even more like a real face than can be seen in the photograph. Two separate events had to happen to this one photo, out of all of them. There are no marks on any of the other negatives, and no orbs in any of the other photographs. What are the chances of this happening? I don’t know.

It is a mystery, but one I will cherish for the rest of my life. No, I don’t believe in ghosties, not really. But I do believe in God, and I do believe that we go on after this life. The anomalies appear in the photo I took of my husband, who is the love of my life, and my St. Bernard – my rescuers. It makes perfect sense to me that my child would choose my husband to be his personal champion, and one of the champions in the war to protect all of the unborn.

I Grieve

I Grieve
~Words and Music by Peter Gabriel

It was only one I recall
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did.

This flesh and bone
It’s just the way that we are tied in
But there’s no one home.

I’ll grieve for you.
You’ll leave me.

So hard to move on
Still loving what’s gone
They say life carries on
Carries on, and on, and on, and on.

The news that truly shocks
Is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
Its empty, empty cage.

And I can’t handle this
I’ll grieve for you.
You’ll leave me.

Let it out and move on
Missing what’s gone
They say life carries on
They say life carries on, and on, and on.

Did I dream this belief?
Or did I believe this dream?
Now how will I find relief?
I’ll grieve…..




For Michael and Aunt Marg.