Gianna Jessen has a message for us all

For those who are not aware, Gianna Jessen survived an attempt on her life before she was even born. Her teenage mother, at 7 1/2 months (!) pregnant, sought a saline abortion.

Gianna was born alive.

Here she is, speaking in Australia about her life:





Her story is a touching reminder that we, as a society, will be judged by how we treat our weakest members--both the disabled and the unborn.

Health care reform

The internet is abuzz with the passing of President Obama's healthcare bill.

I'll say it up front: I am a liberal. I am pleased that Obama actually recognized that we had a problem with healthcare in this country and made moves to fix the problem.

Was this the best way to fix the problem? Well, parts of it will help a lot of people. And Obama, albeit reluctantly, signed an executive order ensuring that federal funding would not be used for abortions, essentially keeping the Hyde Amendment intact. I'm holding him to that :-)

As for the rest? We'll see. Both sides (liberal and conservative) have good points and good reasons to be nervous.

Stupak and health care

I stand with Stupak. Do you?

Words cannot describe how pleased I am that a Democrat is taking such a strong stance for the unborn. I identify as liberal in *most* other ways, but I cannot stand with my liberal brethren when they take a stand against the unborn.

Cecilia Brown of PLAGAL (Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians) wrote an excellent post on the topic here.

From the article: It is my belief that we should focus on making abortion unthinkable by finding the root causes of abortion and dealing with those issues. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the most common causes are either financial reasons, or that another child would interfere with their work, education, or ability to care for other dependents.

This is why I like groups like Feminists for Life. They believe in eliminating abortion by removing the social and economic inequities that cause women to feel like they have no choice but to kill their children.

Does that make me a socialist? If so I'm not the only one. In 1911, Emma Goldman wrote in Mother Earth: ""The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief...So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies."

Women Deserve Better.

disgusted

Woman live Tweets her abortion.

I just...I don't know WHAT to say to that. I've heard so many pro-choice people proclaim "oh, it's a private decision between a woman and her doctor!". You call this private? "I don't feel like I'm doing anything different from what I do every day," said Jackson. "But now I have people calling me a killer; it's surreal."

I really, really hope she doesn't mean that she considers taking the life of an unborn child an "every day" type of event. I can't believe even someone who is pro-choice would condone this. No...I take that back. I can. Plenty of women publicly proclaim that they're not sorry.

I wasn't one of those pro-choice women. Many years ago, I terminated a pregnancy. I didn't feel 'empowered', I didn't feel 'relieved'. I felt empty and hollow and sad and thought there was something wrong with me. After all, only weak-willed women regretted their abortions, right? I was supposed to be strong, in control of my own destiny, fiercely independent, every girl-power label.

Would I have twittered about my experience? Good golly no. I wanted to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never even happened. Later as I began to process my feelings about both the abortion and the father of my unborn child (he did not know until after the fact), I realized that I felt bad because I knew deep down I had not made the right choice. Would I dare admit it to any of my pro-choice friends? No. Admitting that some women regret their abortions is tantamount to claiming that all women are weak and need to be controlled by the patriarchy, apparently.


Something is terribly wrong in a society where we not only leave women feeling like they have no other choice but to abort, but treat it as a positive thing besides!

On non-consenual pregnancies

A common exception I hear about in abortion law is "exception should be made for rape victims".

I've read the arguments stating that pregnancy cannot possibly occur as a result of rape. This cannot be a true statement--where there is unprotected intercourse occurring, there is the possibility of pregnancy. To state otherwise is to imply that the victim wasn't really raped at all, which is why I have a problem with this particular mindset.

That said-the unborn child doesn't know how he was conceived. He doesn't know who his father is, he doesn't know what his mother suffered. His mother may find the experience of pregnancy healing, she may likewise find it to be a further unwanted invasion of her body and resources.

She may grow to love the baby, she may grow to resent him. But her baby has committed no crime.

Her rapist has, and accordingly he should be punished as the law requires. There can be no justification for sexual assault.

Where are the fathers?

I had the opportunity to break bread with a man of about 24, whose girlfriend had an abortion. He had begged her not to-he wanted to raise the child, to be a father...to take responsibility for his actions.

I hold this in contrast to another young man who identified as "pro-choice". When asked what he would do if he got a girl pregnant and she refused to abort, he said "I'd leave the country, change my name...anything to avoid having to pay for it!". When questioned about a vasectomy, he asked "why should I have to do all that?".

The first man is a MAN. The second will never be anything more than a boy.

On Facebook there is a group called "I bet I can find 1,000,000 men against abortion". The description is heartening:

GENTLEMEN: We must stand strong in the defense of innocent pre-born babies. Real men defend and protect their children- that is THE core of what it means to be a man.

Men do not need to be given the right to stand against abortion, because we already have a RESPONSIBILITY to do so. We have been oppressed for long enough as it pertains to asserting the our rights as fathers in protecting our children.

The time to act is NOW.

This will offend some pro-choice feminists, I'm sure--a common argument is that as men will never get pregnant, they shouldn't get a say in abortion rights. This argument completely and utterly discredits the feelings, emotions, and connections that men have to their offspring. Are these women all dating boys, I wonder?

In the next few days I'll be posting about how I went from being pro-choice to pro-life, and the mistakes I made myself.

Whose body is it, anyway?

A rallying cry of the pro-choice movement is "hands OFF my body!". The child growing within them is not treated as a separate being, but as the woman's property.

Sound familiar?

Scott Roeder found guilty of murder

Jury took a mere 40 minutes to decide.

There is joy all around on the pro-choice blogs today at this news. One quote from the site itself disturbs me:

"The man killed a doctor for legally doing his job... How does someone do that and avoid the death penalty?"

—Jay Keggerlord

Have we not learned as a society that two wrongs don't make a right? No man has the right to take the life of another man. Period. End of discussion!

Dr. George Tiller was hailed by pro-choice advocates as a hero, who had "generosity of spirit, resolute determination" and his "commitment to serving women has a reach far beyond his Wichita, Kansas clinic. His mantra was 'trust women,' and he demonstrated that belief everyday."

Perhaps that trust went a bit too far. As one of his former employees describes it, "in over 95% of these babies, and it's probably more than that, there was nothing wrong with those babies at all—nothing—and these were third trimester abortions." 3rd trimester. These could be preemies. How many of us know and love someone who was born a month, a month and a half, early? How many of us were preemies ourselves who could have been lost under an abortionist's knife? In how many of these cases was the mother's life in no harm?

Scott Roeder didn't see George Tiller as a hero. He saw this man as a murderer and his OWN role was not to protect the unborn by campaigning to criminalize abortion, but rather by playing God himself. He played judge, jury, and executioner and carried out the sentence in Tiller's place of worship.

Should Roeder be punished for what he did? Yes, yes he should. He should spend the rest of his life behind bars, cut off from the outside world where he can no longer influence other extremists to act.

But the killing stops now.

Voices from our feminist foremothers

Found at Feminists for Life:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
She classified abortion as a form of "infanticide." The Revolution, 1(5):1, February 5, 1868

"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."
Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library

"There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this. But where shall it be found, at least where begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women?"
The Revolution, 1(10):146-7 March 12, 1868

Victoria Woodhull

The first female presidential candidate was a strong opponent of abortion.

"The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus."
Woodhull's and Claflin's Weekly 2(6):4 December 24, 1870

"Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth."
Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard, November 17, 1875