This week commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Roe versus Wade decision that legalized abortion on demand in the USA. There have been an estimated 55 million legal abortions since then.
1. If you or a friend is suffering from the effects of abortion, perhaps Rachel's Vineyard could be the start of healing.
2. Small Things posted a wonderful link about Mary's Shelter, four homes for women in crisis pregnancies. They can stay as long as they need to! Click on the embedded video- just beautiful.
3. Have you watched this video entitled 'I Like Adoption?' We also have friends who have a 'United nations-style' family. They are really special people and the adopted children bring so much to the family life.
4. Jen Fulwhiler of Conversion Diary (and suffering from blood clots in the lungs while pregnant with her sixth child!) wrote a piece on why she used to be rabidly pro-choice. The title is 'Why My Support for Abortion was based on Love (and Lies)." It's a good reminder that we need to build a society where welcoming a child in a crisis situation won't be a disaster for the mother...in my opinion, economics more of a 'distributionist' variety would meet that goal.
5. The pro-abortion stance is changing from 'it's just a bunch of cells' to 'it doesn't matter if it's life.' The stance has to change because science is catching up very inconveniently. Viability? Well...that number is getting smaller and smaller as medical technology is becoming more advanced. The pro-abortion stance has to become like the opinions of journalist Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon.com. Her latest article is entitled "So What If Abortion Ends Life?" with the tagline "I believe that life starts at conception. And it's never stopped me from being pro-choice." Her honesty and flippancy is just a bit more elegantly put than the "Happy 40th Anniversary, Baby" video that I posted yesterday. The new direction of the pro-abortion argument is that much of life does not deserve to be on this earth.
6. "So what if abortion ends life?" Mary Elizabeth? Well- "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. " Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
7. Some very serious words on abortion from the Church fathers:
The wealthy, in order that their inheritance may not be divided among several, deny in the very womb their own progeny. By use of' parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs in the genital organs themselves. In this way life is taken away before it is born .... Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating children?" St. Ambrose of Milan ca 339-397 A.D.-Hexameron
Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For you do not even let the harlot remain a mere harlot, but make her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather something even worse than murder. For I have no real name to give it, since it does not destroy the thing born but prevents its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the place of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? St. John Chrysostom ca 340-407 A.D.-Homily 24 on Romans
more quick takes at conversion diary
All I can say... Savita Halappanavar should have had the right to live. She was already alive, capable of living outside the womb. She was murdered in the name of a fetus that she was miscarrying anyway. How on earth is the killing of women in favour of a fetus that will not survive anyway pro-life?
ReplyDeleteHevel- we don't know all of the medical information pertaining to this case- but speaking in generalities...there are two patients and the intent needs to be to care for both. This is why a cancerous uterus can be removed even if the patient is pregnant. (double-effect)
DeleteI had pre-eclampsia with my last child. Luckily, my symptoms could be controlled until 32 weeks when they delivered her. We were balancing both patients' needs- but we could have delivered earlier if I needed that- maybe my baby would have died, but that was not the intent.
I can't think of a medical reason why scrapping out a baby is necessary for the mother-patient
A few very interesting links here.
ReplyDeleteAnd Hevel, most evidence at this point suggests that she would have died anyway because her septicemia was likely linked to an antibiotic-resistant bacteria that's increasing in prevalence in Ireland at the moment.