“I am sick and tired of being told that without the right to kill, and without the right to take a human life, I am somehow not equal.”
This young woman in Ireland is making substantive point after point. Today, Ireland will vote on whether to allow the abortion plague into their culture. Please pray for the righteous outcome.
Cecile Richards has told us: “Women are not free without abortion.”
Compare and contrast.
”We refuse to accept the idea that our safety as women is reliant on the dehumanization of other people.”
Tweet from the Women’s March, May 23, 2018
Cecile Richards quotes are irony gold. I wonder if it’s possible for her to say, “Pass the salt” without the cook questioning his over-seasoning. Maybe it’s all been a brilliant conceptual stand-up act and literally everything she says is backwards.
Remember while you read that Cecile Richards, during her tenure as President of Planned Parenthood, presided over the termination of many millions of unborn human beings. Please read each quote, pause, and reflect before you read the next.
The next generation is what gives me hope.
Someone always has to be the mom.
Part of the way you win is by being good at strategy. Part of the way you also win is by surviving, and enjoying yourself, having more fun than the other side, and persisting.
Everyone deserves health care.
Early on, I had an experience that crystallized for me why the fight for reproductive rights—the fight to give every person the opportunity and freedom to live their best life—is so important.
Planned Parenthood may have been the only thing standing between them and an uncertain future.
I hope that we leave here even more inspired to fight for all people. Because nobody is free until everybody is free.
We believe health care isn’t a privilege. It’s a fundamental human right.
No human is illegal.
Whatever the future holds, I’ll always be committed to that revolutionary idea and all those who refuse to settle for a world where women are anything less than full equals.
No person should be forced out of the only place they’ve ever called home.
1. I just finished wiping the icing off the bottoms of a bunch of birthday candles. I’m going to need those again in ten days, and again less than a month later. Why would I buy new ones when these still have a good inch and a half? Crumbs of old homemade icing never hurt anyone yet. I bet moms of two kids buy a new set of candles every birthday and throw them away.
Also, homemade-from-scratch cake costs about 1/20th of a bakery cake and tastes 20x better. Hydrogenated shortening kills; real butter doesn’t.
2. My son needed to do zero adjusting when he went to college and shared a room with two other guys. He shared a room with two guys at home too. Maybe my boys were unusual, but they never fought over territory. So at college my son was perfectly content with his bed and his desk; he let the other guys vie for lebensraum.
3. It is essential to learn patience when eight people share one bathroom. It is equally essential to learn sympathy and consideration for others (‘ bladders).
4. Bags and bags of clothing used to show up on our porch. We had never asked for hand-me-downs; people just assumed we could use them. They were right and we were thankful. It would have been difficult indeed to buy new clothes every season for every child. Most of the clothing we received was in like-new condition, and a lot of the items had price-tags.
Perhaps the most valuable component of these acts of generosity was that my kids learned that a second-hand item in good condition does not differ one iota from a brand-new one. There is shame neither in sharing nor receiving, and there is nothing which so inspires giving than receiving.
5. My kids are now adults who don’t expect the world to hand them all the amenities– partly because we didn’t teach them to expect gifts except on Christmas and their birthdays. They didn’t expect candy except on Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.
My oldest daughter was honestly judgmental about her friends expecting big gifts for Easter and lesser holidays. My kids know how to delay gratification, and although they do not always practice it, they know how to be frugal.
6. Reduce, reuse, recycle. It was our lifestyle before the motto was coined. I was raised by children of the Depression and learned to make my spending count. When I was growing up, we didn’t spend money on non-essentials but we had all we needed. We weren’t used to vacations and we were usually the last of our friends to get the latest tech like color TV.
We raised our kids with the same mindset: one not deprivation but careful frugality. Spend when you need to without regret, but save whenever you can for future needs. We didn’t spend much on vacations. We drove our cars until they were junk. Eating out or ordering in was a rare special occasion.
7. Contrary to popular assumption, big families have small footprints. We eight use approximately the same resources that the four of you, or the two of you, do.
At the same time they condemn parents of several kids for selfish and wasteful American materialism, my childfree acquaintances espouse the superior lifestyle of spontaneously flying the globe, to stay at the priciest family-free resorts, indulging themselves in only the finest and most select perks that the self-absorbed can devise. Driving further to shop for only the trendiest fair trade items.
I’ll compare my eight-person staycation expenses to your two-person dream trip any day you like. Guess who comes out using up more of earth’s precious resources? Virtue-signaling and Childfree -signaling don’t mix.
8. Happy families. Positive family experiences. Fostering a concept of unconditional belonging. We believe that being plunked in the middle of a bunch of other difficult human beings is actually according to a wise plan; we are each more or less compelled to learn how to live in peace with these other people, which teaches us valuable lessons about how to get along in a world full of other people.
9. Raising people who want to have children and build families, and who see the importance and enduring value of pouring their lives into others and investing themselves in creating a unique family culture which will continue to influence after they are gone.
In other words, small footprints may lead to small footprints.
10. Today, a large family orientation usually develops within a faith orientation. Our society has moved toward smaller families with the advent of birth control and the cult of personal fulfillment. I might also say with the de-emphasis of faith culture and the growth of materialist culture. It is counter cultural to have large families and, counterintuitively, large families very often happen due to deliberate choice. That choice usually derives from faith in the intrinsic value of each person, given by a gracious God.
Because of this faith orientation, the lessons of other-centeredness, the value of family, the hope of enduring heritage, good stewardship of material wealth, sustainability, recycling and reusing–all part of a whole.
Bonus reason: I love my big family.
The next generation is what gives me hope.
Part of the way you win is by being good at strategy. Part of the way you also win is by surviving, and enjoying yourself, having more fun than the other side, and persisting.
Everyone deserves health care.
Early on, I had an experience that crystallized for me why the fight for reproductive rights—the fight to give every person the opportunity and freedom to live their best life—is so important.
Planned Parenthood may have been the only thing standing between them and an uncertain future.
I hope that we leave here even more inspired to fight for all people. Because nobody is free until everybody is free.
We believe health care isn’t a privilege. It’s a fundamental human right. No human is illegal.
Whatever the future holds, I’ll always be committed to that revolutionary idea and all those who refuse to settle for a world where women are anything less than full equals.
No person should be forced out of the only place they’ve ever called home.
To be continued.
I invite you to think about these things.
We live in a world where a person can walk into a school full of defenseless children and shoot, and shoot, and shoot. Without empathy, feeling only hate and power. Without regard for any code or consequence, God or man.
Rather than register shock and horror, then eagerly place that item on a back shelf marked: ABERRATION; let us acknowledge that we really do live in such a world.
But let us also notice that against that one evil act, we can counter with several acts which were its polar opposite. In fact, that evil act was countered with several (at least) selfless and noble acts.
A football coach shielded students from bullets with his body, and died. A geography teacher ushered students into his classroom for protection but never made it inside. A quick-thinking ROTC student protected 60 to 70 people from gunshots behind Kevlar. Another teacher hid 19 students in a closet. A janitor warned about 40 students that they were running toward the shooter, and ushered them into a safe classroom. A 15 year old held the door for fellow fleeing students but was shot dead.
In the face of that evil act, these people responded by trying to save the lives of other people at the expense of their own. That requires incredible empathy, other-centered-ness, and self-sacrifice.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends
It suggest belief that there is right and wrong, good and evil; that life is objectively valuable and better than death. And a belief that such horror and hate ought to be met with its opposite.
We live in that world too.
But we tend to live in the world of our mind’s making, the one in which we feel comfortable, the world as we imagine it. We might even secretly congratulate ourselves for choosing the world we do. I’m the kind of person who sees the world positively, so I’m a loving person. Or I see the world as tough and harsh, because I’m strong and a realist.
But those imaginary worlds don’t prepare us for the real one. It might be better to recognize the world we live in so that we can encounter it usefully. We can recognize that pure nihilism can cross our path, and we can choose to respond with selfless love.
That there will be more evil there is no doubt. Let us be prepared.
There are many other thoughts you may have on this matter. This was one.
On January 19, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act — legislation protecting babies who survive abortions.
H.R. 4712 contains an explicit requirement that a baby born alive during an abortion must be afforded “the same degree” of care that would apply “to any other child born alive at the same gestational age,” including transportation to a hospital. This language does not dictate bona fide medical judgments nor require futile measures, but rather, requires that babies born alive during abortions are treated in the same manner as those who are spontaneously born prematurely.
House Passes Pro-Life Bill Protecting Babies Born Alive After Botched Abortions
One hundred and eighty-three congresspersons, all Democrat, voted against the bill. Zero Republicans voted against it.
235 Republicans voted for the bill. Six Democrats also voted in favor.
FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 36
One hundred and eighty three people who have attained the honorable station of legislator in the great nation of the U.S. voted to allow the denial of medical care to tiny infants who are living after their abortion attempt. In the past these babies have been left to die or sometimes actively killed. Rep. Blackburn: “We have heard horror stories of babies being strangled, suffocated, or neglected to die.”
Someone ought to tell the honorable Democratic Congresspersons that this is not the moral high ground.
On this day of the March for Life 2018, I repost this.
Let’s not be on the wrong side of history. I like to hope that some future people who descend from us will have rediscovered a better moral compass, learned to honor objective justice, and found the Truth. If so, they will look back at us and be appalled at our indolence and our indifference in the face of genocidal baby slaughter.
There can be no escape for us as a people. Multiplied millions of murdered children cannot go unanswered by the conscience of any belief system. Only an utter nihilist could deny that the scales will ultimately be balanced and we will be found wanting. A universe which assigns no meaning to, and passes no judgment upon endless human carnage is an absurd nightmare.
The activities of Planned Parenthood are indefensible. If we do not have the will to purge this corporate atrocity from our society, we do not deserve to call ourselves civilized, moral, or even decent human beings.
That said, I do realize that all abortions are not chosen in as careless a manner as PP advocates that they should be. It may be, for many women, that all available medical advice was to terminate and try again. The professionals they looked to assured them that termination was best for all. They grieved terribly over losing a child they wanted. Some women may have aborted for elective reasons but felt unaccountably uncomfortable about it after. I realize that there are many women who were urged to abort for what seemed like unarguable reasons.
That’s the problem. If the default of our society is to err on the side of death in order to solve our problems, and women are confronted with life-and-death decisions when they are at their most vulnerable…death becomes the predetermined result.
Then those women, and their children, become victims of opportunistic corporate interests, and of the aggrandizement of political interests. The best and most well-meaning solution that such a society can offer is death as panacea.
Such a value system is inadequate to meet the needs of real life. In real life, unexpected stuff happens, lives are in peril, less than perfect decisions have to be made. If the overarching goal in the face of the unexpected is to get back to our comfort and our plans, no matter what the damage, those decisions will be brutal.
We need cultural change. We must not blink in the assessment of our own culture. We need to value Truth. We need to be willing to call evil, evil; and good, good. We need to be a culture which values all human life and devalues none.
When difficult situations come, as they will, our impulse ought to be an honest search for a solution which protects and honors all involved. Our default should not be death for the defenseless ones.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages
Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes that:
“Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
It is this kind of intentionally vague statement that totalitarians throughout our history have used to establish control and shape societies according to their will.
I see the problem right away, don’t you? Who exactly is everyone? It should be obvious that any despotic body can exclude any group it would prefer from the “everyone” umbrella with ease. Human society has a long history of selective inclusion to the most favored status. Slaves, European Jews, Armenians, Hutus.
Although over 100 organizations and states argued for the right of the unborn to be recognized among that “everyone,” a UN body has excluded the unborn from any rights or protections which international law can recognize.
From https://c-fam.org/right-life-international/
The latest effort comes from the Human Rights Committee, one of the oldest and better known of the UN treaty bodies. The committee is drafting a legal commentary on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the Right to Life, one of the foundational human rights instruments, that categorically excludes children in the womb and denies their membership in the human family.
The Human Rights Committee has created a contradictory premise within a universal statement. According to the HRC, the right to obtain an abortion is far more significant than “the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
The progressive penchant (born of Marxist theory) is to present two rights as though they are in conflict, make the best use of that conflict, and then to pick a winner.
As though two universal human rights can be mutually exclusive.
In reality, the right of every human being to be regarded as a person should not stand in conflict with the right to reproductive healthcare. It seems logical that if a universal right and a non-universal right are in conflict, the non-universal right is void, or at least questionable. A particular right can be forfeit by its owner; a criminal forfeits rights as the penalty for his crime. But the unborn do not forfeit their rights–the HRC and many others declare that they never posses such rights at all.
Both rights–the rights to life and to reproductive healthcare–are life affirming, health affirming, good things. But that argument as presented by our progressive death culture reveals much: the right to life does stand in conflict with the right to obtain an abortion.
The pro-abortion mind has been tenacious in its preference to present this moral dilemma as a struggle between two interests: the interest of the woman vs. the interest of the unborn fetus inside the woman. Note the entrenched exploitation in the attempt to divide the most intimate co-existence known to humankind.
After which, that mind declares that it does not acknowledge one party–the unborn fetus–as an interest which it must respect. Erase that person from the equation (which you have created)–et viola!–the only interested party is the woman.
And anyone who would deny her rights is perpetrating injustice.
The UN HRC body is a nonsensical entity until it is able to recognize, at the very least, that the plight of the pregnant woman is a plight which involves two persons. From that position, we could then move forward in an effort to ensure the rights of both persons in a realistic manner. As long as we must play pretend while making international declarations, we are making ourselves selfish children engaging in nonsense.
Our cause is to keep the reality of the personhood of the unborn child always before the world. We must not allow the world to erase, forget and ignore the rights of the unborn human child.
Embryology and Science Denial
by Patrick Lee and Melissa Moschella
from The Public Discourse
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/11/20449/
