Treebeard For Life!

Ok... I guess there is one more thing to say about Obama at Notre Dame

2009-05-12T23:11:00.003-05:00

A letter from two women jailed at Notre Dame

I'd like to hear a straight answer to that question, too!

All that needs to be said regarding President Obama speaking at Notre Dame

2009-05-02T12:08:00.002-05:00

Go here and read this:

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1402

I would love to hear a direct answer to that question.

Pro-life Awesomeness

2009-04-21T22:44:00.005-05:00

Since starting this blog I have found many resources regarding the abortion debate, and they have been so incredibly helpful that I figure I ought to share them with you (yes, all three of you). I've kind of laid out the links based on a rough idea of how to construct a well reasoned argument against abortion.

But before I do that, let me start by saying this; I think that it is always important when discussing any contentious topic to first acknowledge the goodwill of the other person. After all, there are many women out there facing a tough and scary situation, and I honestly believe that many pro-choice advocates are just trying to help them out. We should try and show them that the means does not justify the end with charity and respect.

Ok, on to the links.

The first set has to do with how the different abortion procedures work, and what the end result looks like. I think it is really helpful to start here because it provides context to the debate that is based in reality. In depth discussions about abortion center often center around specific scientific details or abstract philosophical ideas, and it becomes very easy to forget what we are actually talking about.

Quotes from abortion providers on how abortion works
http://www.priestsforlife.org/isthiswhatyoumean/isthiswhatyoumean.pdf (scroll down to read the quotes in red)

Video series demonstrating how the different type of abortions work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us_y9GP_-DA&feature=PlayList&p=1D719AEF8790CA52&index=0&playnext=1

Pictures of aborted babies organized by gestational age
http://www.priestsforlife.org/images/index.aspx#galleries

The second set of links has to do with the central question of the abortion debate, what is the unborn? This is THE crux of the issue. If it is wrong to kill innocent human beings, and the unborn is not a living human being, then we should be free to perform abortions. If the unborn is a living human being, then abortion is wrong.

There is not much debate in the scientific community about when a new human life begins from what I have seen. The most informed and intellectually honest pro-choice advocates agree, life begins at fertilization (conception).

http://www.abort73.com/index.php?/abortion/medical_testimony

http://www.priestsforlife.org/ultrasound.html

More quotes here, including one from Alan Guttmacher, the former President of Planned Parenthood.

http://www.caseforlife.com/evidence.htm

Here is a paper that gets into the specifics of the the beginning of life, heavy reading, but well worth it.

http://www.westchesterinstitute.net/images/wi_whitepaper_life_print.pdf

The third set of links really gets into the philosophical debates that mostly revolve around the 'personhood' of the unborn. Pro-choice advocates who understand that abortion kills a living human being will often defend their view by saying that this living human isn't yet a 'person' because of a lack of mental or physical development, or its size or number of cells, or its location, or its dependancy of the mother. The first link is an informational website, the second two links point to podcasts that should be regular listening if you wish argue for the pro-life cause effectively.

http://www.caseforlife.com/sled.htm

http://lti-blog.blogspot.com (podcast)

http://lti-blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/lti-podcast-episode-3-serge.html (A great episode from the above podcast that addresses the bodily autonomy argument for abortion)

http://www.prolifepodcast.net (podcast)

Live Action Films has exposed several different Planned Parenthood employees in several different clinics in several different states covering up statutory rape and showing young girls how to circumvent parental notification laws.

http://liveaction.org

The Silent No More Awareness Campaign gives a voice to those women who have had abortions and regretted it, and in some cases seen it ruin their lives. These videos are incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxlMsvR_upQ&feature=channel_page

So thats a long list. But I think when you look at everything, it seems impossible to me to justify the means that pro-choice advocates take to reach their end. Women facing unplanned pregnancies do need our help, compassion, and not arrogant judgement. But we cannot kill innocent human beings in order to reach this end.

Viability - how can life BEGIN only when we are pretty sure it won't end???

2009-02-17T23:52:00.001-06:00

4D Ultrasound of a 24 week viable fetus

from ProLife America. Click here to see

what abortion did to another 5 month old

fetus

One pro-abortion argument in my Crux of the Issue post that I didn't address goes something like this: "The point where the fetus becomes viable is the most crucial point that can be used to determine when we should and shouldn't perform some/all abortions."

What does viability mean, and what determines the point of viability?

Viability refers to the ability of the fetus to survive outside of the mother's womb. The more interesting question though, is when is a fetus designated as viable? Well that depends on a number of things. First, at what point in history are you asking this question? In the 1970's, babies born before 28 weeks were basically doomed. Now, that threshold has been pushed back to 24 weeks, and some have survived when born around 21 weeks.

Technology and a greater understanding of neonatology have pushed the barrier back a few weeks closer to conception in the last 40 years, and this is an important point. Fetal development has not changed in the last 40 years, only our understanding and ability to support a fetus outside of the womb has changed. A fetus at 24 weeks that now has a chance at a long, full life is no different than a fetus at 24 weeks in the 70's that was almost certainly going to die. Fetal viability is largely a function of our abilities, not the fetus's. So why should we use this as a benchmark as to when we can abort or kill the fetus?

Are you saying that life begins at viability?

In light of the fact that the point of viability of the fetus is dependent on our knowledge and not the development of the fetus, this would seem to be a very poor spot to mark the beginning of life. It would mean that a baby in the 18oo's and a baby in this century and possibly (if they ever figure out how to simulate a uterus) a baby born in the next century all had lives that began in different places. This is of course the pinnacle of inconsistency, and therefore viability cannot determine when life begins.

There is another logical problem with stating that life begins at viability. If viability is determined by the point at which it can survive outside the womb, that means that it is the point where the fetus has a good chance of not dying. Of course, if something is going to die, it has to be alive first; this is kind of hard to get around.

Most abortion advocates are astute enough to recognize these points, which is why many resort to the whole "it may be alive, but it hasn't reached it's potential yet" which I addressed in the Crux post. In short, if someone is alive, we have no business judging the value of their lives, especially if it is based on some threshold of potential that no one agrees upon. By extension of this logic we might as well kill all the poor people in the world. After all, you could say they haven't reached their potential, and they are just another mouth to feed, just like any unwanted baby. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Of course it does, but this is where the logic of the abortion rights movement leads us, and it is also where it started:

"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

If we can do some abortions, we can do any and all abortions.

If viability is not indicative of the beginning of human life, then why should it have any impact on whether or not an abortion can be performed? Often, the more serious abortion advocates also dismiss the threshold of viability as a useful point to determine if and when we should be able to perform an abortion. They support abortion on demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

It's perfectly viable if you leave it where it is supposed to be in the first place.

I can see being concerned about viability when dealing with a mother who is trying to carry her child to term and may deliver prematurely; surely you would want to do whatever you can to stave off the delivery until after viability has been reached. This gives you increased odds of the continued survival of the fetus (note the word continued).

However, if you are trying to decide whether you can morally kill a fetus (or "terminate a pregnancy") that has every chance of living a full life if left to its own devices whether it is at 8 months or 8 weeks of gestation, it seems you have already ignored viability as a reason not to abort.

INDEED, THE MOST COMMON REASON TO HAVE AN ABORTION IS BECAUSE THE LITTLE LIFE INSIDE THE WOMB IS PERFECTLY VIABLE IF LEFT AS IT IS, AND WILL MOST LIKELY RESULT IN THE BIRTH OF THE CHILD IF WE DON'T DISMEMBER IT FIRST.

Really, there are two possibilities here when we look at the big picture in the abortion debate. Either abortion takes an innocent human life, and represents the most fundamental human rights violation, or abortion does not take an innocent human life, and banning it would be a violation of the rights of the mother to do what she wishes with her own body.

If fetal viability cannot speak to when life begins, than it can have no bearing on whether an abortion should or should not be done. After all, many premature babies are not viable outside of their incubators, many are not viable without a respirator, and absolutely zero babies are viable without someone to feed and care for them every hour of the day. Our viability has never made us more or less human, or at least it shouldn't.

This leads us back (yet again) to the Crux of the Issue. If an embryo or a fetus is an innocent living human being, we cannot kill it, whether it is "viable" or not.

What is the definition of newsworthy?

2009-01-23T01:01:00.019-06:00

If over 300,000 people marched on the capital, would that be newsworthy?

If the march happened every year for thirty six years, would that be newsworthy?

If the march inspired countless marches all across the world, would that be newsworthy?

If members of congress from states all across the country publicly spoke at this march, would that be newsworthy?

If these 300,000 marchers contained Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians (and maybe more?) all marching together with a united purpose, would that be newsworthy?

If the first African American President in U.S. history took office just days before, and leaders of the black community including Dr. Alveda King, neice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived at this march to challenge this president on civil rights issues, would that be newsworthy?

I've been searching for press coverage on the March for Life 2009, and even with the almighty Google scouring the internet, the pickings are slim. Try Googling the The New York Times and March for Life 2009, you won't find anything. An LA Times article found 2 of the approximately 10 abortion advocates at the march and decided that a picture of the two of them would be the most accurate representation of the other 300,000+ prolifers that were there. Most other mainstream media mentioned the "thousands" or "tens of thousands". It seems that they don't want to talk about it, or show how big it was.

Why is this? Why would 300,000 people in the Mall be completely ignored by the media?

A liberal bias? I'm sure there is some of that, but Fox News didn't seem to have much coverage either.

Old news? Some of that too, I suppose.

Maybe this is just a really unpleasant subject that doesn't make our readers/listeners feel good so they might change the channel or read something else.

Where do you get your news from?

There were several speakers on the coverage that I watched on EWTN, here is one, Pastor Luke Robinson. He shows how abortion is just the latest chapter in the same civil rights battle that Martin Luther King fought. And this man can give a speech!

The speech that really stuck with me though, was a woman who told an intensly personal story about her own abortion. I couldn't find her speech on YouTube, but I am sure the Silent No More Awareness Campaign will have it up soon. Here are three videos from previous demonstrations, they are, well... just watch.

In fact, go to the Silent No More Awareness Campaign's YouTube website and watch their videos. No amount of reasoning or logic can say what we are trying to say as well as these women can.

How is this not newsworthy?

This isn't just about religion.

2008-12-04T23:17:00.000-06:00

One thing that gets me going is when I hear that abortion is just a religious issue. Some people seem to think that because many prominent leaders from all churches and faiths speak out against abortion that the issue is a theological one. To these people, banning abortion for everyone would be like banning meat on Fridays for everyone during lent. Some even go so far as to say that it would violate the separation of church and state or suggest that pro-lifers want to create a theocracy.

As best as I understand it, the argument goes something like this:

Your faith teaches you that you should oppose abortion, and so you do, and that is ok. However, since this is an issue of personal beliefs, you just can't come out and say we should ban it. After all, not everyone shares your faith. At first blush this may seem to make sense. However, when we really think about it, this argument misstates the role of religion in the public, and more than that it completely misunderstands the reason why people of faith speak out about abortion.

The problem arises from the fact that anyone who makes this argument is confusing religious doctrine with religious teaching on morality. Just because not everyone shares my faith, or the religious doctrines I ascribe to, doesn't mean that our laws should not represent our foundational and universal morality. After all, that is exactly what laws are meant to do. Why do we all agree so readily that it is wrong to steal, cheat, and kill an innocent person? We do not need to agree about the validity of the doctrines of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Atheism, Agnosticism, or any other "ism" to agree on these things.

Indeed, the fact that so many people from ALL faiths and NO faith speak out against abortion greatly discredits the argument that it is just a religious issue. If Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Atheists can all agree about one issue, well then it is clearly not an issue that speaks to what makes us all Jewish, it is an issue that speaks to the heart of what makes us all human. Abortion is not wrong because the Pope said so, rather, the Pope said so because abortion is wrong, and a bunch of Rabbi's, pastors, atheists, and faithful Muslims, and countless other groups of people happen to agree with him.

Religion doesn't function in the public square as rule-maker, instead it informs the consciences of those who make the rules, namely you and I, so that we may make rules that are fair and just for everyone. People of faith speak out about abortion not because they are just following orders from their spiritual "bosses", they speak out about abortion because their faith calls them to "be their brother's keeper", to care about the lives of other human beings. They see that reason and science point to the fact that innocent life is being taken by abortion, and their faith then requires them to act. This is not theocracy, this is compassion and justice.

The crux of the issue

2008-11-13T00:05:00.005-06:00

November 9th was my daughter's due date. That very day we had the legal right to "abort" her for any reason... oh, except for the fact that she had already passed through the birth canal seven days earlier and is currently sleeping on her grandmother's lap. "That is a pretty big difference", some might say. But is it really?

Before the election threw me off course, I had planned to first address what I believe is at the very heart of the abortion debate: the beginning of human life. Abortion doesn't just kill an embryo or a fetus, it kills a person; a living, innocent human being. In the next several (and I mean several) paragraphs, I intend to explore some common suggestions about the criteria used for determining when life begins. As I thought about all of these ideas, I saw that the “big difference” between my daughter inside the womb and my daughter outside the womb has more to do with our perceptions rather than the child herself.

Things we should all be able to agree upon

Lets start with a couple of (hopefully) obvious common principles. First off, I think we can all agree that taking innocent human life is a bad thing. It's the ultimate no-no, even the most primitive civilizations have realized this. In fact, the only thing that can super-cede my right to my own life is your right to yours! In other words, I can't kill you to get a kidney that I may need to survive. (Obviously, if you were attacking me, I have the right to defend myself, hence the requirement for the 'innocent' tag.)

Secondly, I agree with Barack Obama when he says that there are people of good will on both sides of the debate. Here is how I see it: If we have a woman in a terrible situation surrounding an unplanned pregnancy, abortion advocates will claim that they can help her. Their compassion leads them to want to help because they recognize the anguish that this woman is in, and they want to help her deal with this anguish and the (sometimes extreme) difficulty of her situation. They recognize a neighbor crying out for help, and out of respect for her human dignity they reach out to help. (In other words, it is not my intent to demonize the people who support abortion, I only hope to show the intrinsically evil nature of the act which I believe most people haven’t thought about. I know I didn’t.)

What its all about

So if we all agree that taking innocent human life is a bad thing, and if we are considering the option of abortion out of respect for the human dignity of the mother, then we had better well know when life begins. If the fetus is nothing but "a clump of cells" and not a human life, then the case for abortion gains some credibility. If, however, it is a human being, then abortion takes an innocent human life. If the fetus is a human being then it has the same dignity as the mother, and therefore requires the same care and compassion given to the mother. If the fetus is a human being, it is as innocent (if the mother was raped) or perhaps more innocent (if the mother was irresponsible) regarding the cause of the pregnancy. If we are performing abortions and we are wrong about when life begins, then we are taking innocent human life.

And yet, we never see Planned Parenthood or NARAL explain where they believe life begins. In my limited experience, pro-choice advocates almost inevitably try and shift the debate from whether abortion takes a human life to how "comprehensive sex education" and contraception can lower abortion rates. We are not debating the merits of different strategies to lower abortion rates, we are debating whether or not abortion takes human life. Because if it does, then just lowering abortion rates is about as acceptable a solution as Hilter just killing less Jews in Nazi Germany. The problem is that the beginning of human life is the heart of the abortion debate, and one side almost never seriously addresses it. Maybe it's because people have a much easier time defending abortion when we don't talk about when life begins.

What other people are saying

So when does life begin? If you are reading this post because you received my email, you'll recognize this link: http://www.priestsforlife.org/ultrasound.html. Here you can find the discoverer of the cause of Down's Syndrome, the founder and director of the Department of Genetics at Mayo Clinic, and an embryology textbook published in 1998 all stating that conception is the point where life begins. Honestly though, I'm sure you could find conflicting quotes with just a quick Google search. I found one from a Sheldon Turkish, an abortionist, who by his own admission told a woman who was six to seven weeks pregnant that the unborn child was "nothing but some tissue" when she asked if "the baby was already there". I wonder if she would have considered the beating heart that I was looking at on our son's 7 week ultrasound "nothing but some tissue". You can read about it here or just Google his name and his quote.

Or, instead of just trusting quotes, you can you can use your own reason. At one point, you and I were not alive. Clearly we are alive now. I think we can all agree that we weren't alive as a separate sperm and egg, we weren't even "put together". I think we can all agree that we were certainly alive when we were crying our eyes out on the delivery table. Therefore, somewhere between these two points we were given the gift of life and all of the “inalienable” rights that come from this gift.

Location, location, location

The way the law is written right now, that moment is the when we pass through the birth canal and into the outside world. This makes no sense what-so-ever, as it essentially defines life by location. Inside the womb? Not alive yet, no rights. Outside the birth canal? Living, all the rights you could want. Never mind the fact that there is no difference in the development or growth of the child as it passes through the canal, except that she was probably pretty happy where she was and now she is royally ticked off.

The lunacy of this is made even more apparent when I think about the birth of my daughter, as I had mentioned earlier. Had she been born on her due date, it would have been legal to abort her on Nov 9th. Yet, on Nov. 9th, she was already 1 week old. No one would advocate “aborting” a one week old infant, that is infanticide. So what is the essential difference here? Location. The child herself isn’t really significantly different, she is just outside the womb instead of inside it.

As an aside, until the partial birth abortion ban passed, everything but her head could have been outside the birth canal and they could have legally stuck a closed pair of scissors into the back of her head, opened them up, and sucked out her brains. If you were unaware of this, I am not making this stuff up. Thankfully, this technique is now illegal, but that may not last if President-elect Barack Obama signs the Freedom of Choice Act. Here is the Senate and House version of the actual bill for those who wish to do some homework, it is a very short bill. Call your representatives.

So at what point between the separate sperm and egg and baby-on-the-birth-table does life begin if not at live birth? Would a heartbeat qualify? Well, you’ve got that at three weeks after conception. How about a brain? At eight weeks after conception, your brain is growing at a rate of 250,000 neurons per minute. I do not suspect that Planned Parenthood would support either of these points as benchmarks for the beginning of life.

Its all there at conception

When we go backwards from live birth, we see that we are covering gradual and indistinct stages of growth and development. At no point is there a defining moment that clearly separates one stage from another until we hit conception. At conception, the child has its own DNA, clearly differentiating it from just another body part of the mother. All it needs now is the nutrients and shelter provided by the mother’s womb, which in effect isn’t much different than the nutrients and shelter the mother provides once the child is out of the womb. The baby will grow and develop in amazing ways, to be sure, but all the power of this growth and development is harnessed at conception. A glaring example of this comes from many abortion advocates themselves; they speak in hushed tones at the power of embryonic stem cells, yet these same embryos are dismissed as merely a clump of cells or “just some tissue” when referring to abortion. I do not believe it is conscious, but this does show how utilitarian our view of the dignity of human life has become. If it can DO something for us, it is valuable. For those of you who share my faith, it seems being made in the image and likeness of God isn’t good enough anymore.

Any argument that life begins at some point after conception invariably states that the fetus is a potential human life, and must reach some point of development before this potential is reached. Yet when pressed about what point of development this is, no one seems to be in consensus. The argument almost always devolves into a personal list of two or three things the fetus must be able to "do" before they are considered "fully human" by the person you are speaking with.

There are two logical problems with this argument, we'll tackle the issue of life being defined by development or abilities first. This kind of argument for human life usually goes something like this, "Once you can do 'this' and 'that' you are human." with the 'this' and 'that' often referring to some basic level of communication or cognizance. In essence, we end up being defined based on our behavior and/or abilities instead of our innate characteristics or features. (Again, the spread of this kind of thinking shows that we are becoming more and more utilitarian.) We do not do this anywhere else in life, a coffee mug isn't a coffee mug because it can hold coffee and keep my hand cool at the same time, a thermos can do that just as well, and clearly a coffee cup and a thermos are two different things. We define things based on their inherent characteristics or features, and it is these characteristics or features that give rise to our abilities & behaviors, not the other way around. Here is another example; a shark isn't a shark because it can swim fast and eat seals, a killer whale can do that just as well. It is the characteristics and features of the animals that define them and differentiate them from one another.

Secondly, when we consider that before this point of development is reached, the zygote/embryo/fetus is clearly as developed or more developed than many of the single or multi-celled organisms that science considers living, this idea becomes very problematic. If it is not a living human being, but it is alive, and it has human DNA, then what is it?

Have it your way

Aside from the moment of birth, the moment of conception, or some developmental benchmark, another common answer to when life begins states that it is a personal decision. This is what many abortion rights groups and activists claim. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, it is between the woman, her doctor, and her god. (As a self-proclaimed “ardent, practicing Catholic”, I think her choice of word order is telling.)

Well, it is certainly true that you must choose what you believe, but just because you choose to believe it doesn't mean it is true. For example, lets say I believe that life begins at conception, and Nancy Pelosi believes it begins once the child exits the birth canal, and crazy uncle Billy believes it begins at 3 years of age because kids are annoying during the terrible twos, anyway. Clearly, all three cannot be right at the same time. Therefore, two of the people must be wrong, despite the fact that it was their personal belief that led them to their decision. And if you are wrong about when life begins, then an innocent life has been taken.

Another problem with this personal choice approach is that there can be no set standards, it opens the door to whatever you think at the moment. Uncle Billy can say that 2 year olds aren’t human lives because, hey, that’s his decision. I realize that in reality Uncle Billy wouldn’t be able to act on his belief, but the premise of personal choice allows this. It is moral relativism at is finest.

Created equal, with an unalienable Right to Life

When you get down to it, it becomes less a question of whether the fetus is human and alive, and more question of whether that life is valuable. When we start assigning our own judgement of value to another's life, we are opening up doors to some very ugly places. Just look at Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger edited the Birth Control Review, which promoted eugenics. She reffered to immigrants and the poor as "...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Please note that I am not saying that every pro-choice advocate is also an advocate of eugenics. But if we start to believe that not all human lives should have human rights, and we leave that power up to the government? Yikes...

When we look beyond all of the emotional, philosophical, political, social, and religious differences involved in this issue, we all end up looking at the same thing, the fetus inside the womb. The more we look, the more we realize how our perception of what the child is changes more than fundamental make-up of the child itself. The more we look, the more we open our eyes to the miracle of the power of procreation, and the harder it is to tell ourselves that this is just a “clump of tissue”, or just a “potential” human being. The more we look, the more we see that the potential has been reached. If we deny this and abort the child, or if we see this tremendous power simply as a means to our own ends and destroy embryos for stem cells, then we have taken innocent human life. If this is the road that our generation continues to travel down, then hopefully future generations will look upon this as a dark period in American history, and they will see what is plainly before us in the womb: a child.

A door opened, a foundation crumbling?

2008-11-05T23:29:00.011-06:00

As Barack Obama has been elected President of these United States, I can't help but feel that one door that has been shut long past it's time has finally opened. How good it must feel for young African Americans to be able to look at their television set and see the proof that, yes, they can go anywhere they want in this country, even right to the top.

For years, their human dignity was stripped of them as they were bought and sold like cattle. The basic rights that are born of that dignity were denied them, not because they were not in truth human beings, but because they were not percieved as human beings or fully human. How could this be? How could the mere color of one's skin lead any rational person to believe that blacks were not human?

I believe there are many reasons for this, the first being that the culture supported their way of thinking. When people get used to an idea and it gets supported by culture they live in, it can be hard to let go of this idea no matter how wrong it is. Others had their whole livelihood based on slavery, and its abolition would have drastic effects on the greater economy as well as their personal economic well-being.

Perhaps a more intrinsic and deeply personal reason allowed slavery to be morally defensible in the minds of men: guilt. Imagine that you had grown up on a plantation in the South, and all you had ever known was this life. Your entire family worked this plantation for generations, and maybe they even treated their slaves well, relatively speaking. If an abolitionist stepped on your front porch one day and told you that all your life was built on the great of evil of the time, you would be infuriated. After all, this is everything you know and love. Your wonderful parents and grandparents, your brothers and sisters, all of them are good people; they even treat their slaves well. Clearly, you would think, this abolitionist is making too much of the 'evil' of slavery. After all, it may not be a perfect system, but how else are we to maintain the plantation?

You would have an emotional reaction, instead of an intellectual reaction. As soon as the intellect is even slightly engaged in the abolitionist's arguments, emotions can take over to shield us from the guilt that we would feel about ourselves and our family and all that we stood for. We don't even like to be wrong about very little things, much less grave moral issues.

And so, it took years, and finally a horrific war that pit brother against brother, to revoke abolish the legal right to keep slaves. After the legal right was removed, it took another 100 years and a man named Martin Luther King, Jr., to help the black community receive the full rights that their dignity allowed them. After this, it took nearly a half a century to elect the first black president. It has been a long, hard, even bloody road. So, we should all rejoice that one door that has long been kept shut, full recognition of the dignity of the black person, has been opened publicly to its widest extent with election of Barack Obama.

And yet, I worry about the foundation that this door rests upon. While this election was a serious blow to the lingering problem of racism in our country, it may prove to be a rallying cry for the foundational evil that racism is born of: the arbitrary assignment of dignity and rights to human life. Racism and abortion are just fruits of this same tree. How can we celebrate the recognition of human rights for one group of people, and deny another group of people those very same rights and more, their foundational right to life? Dr. Alveda King, neice of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., has a very personal and powerful witness to these twinned issues, she suffered the effects of both racism and abortion.

Science has supported what faith and right reasoning have long taught, that children in the womb are exactly that: children. Three dimensional ultrasounds, a deeper understanding of fetal development and fetal surgery, and the understanding that each child in womb has its own unique set of DNA from conception have made the issue of when life begins very clear; it begins at conception. It is not that the zygote, the embryo, or the fetus is not in truth a human being, rather it is that they are not perceived as human beings or fully human.

Unfortunately, there are those out there who have put much of their lives into the "pro-choice" cause, and I suspect they reject the truth of the pro-life movement for many of the same reasons mentioned above regarding the plantation owners rejecting the truth of the abolitionist movement. Their culture supports abortion, their livelihoods depend on abortion, and to admit the evil of abortion means that they must face feelings of guilt that they are not prepared to deal with.

Hopefully, the road to the widespread recognition of the dignity of human life from conception to natural death will not be as long as the road we have travelled to get a black man elected to the highest office in the land. Unfortunately, it has already surpassed it in bloodshed. I do take comfort in the fact that though there were many ups and downs and periods of intense frustration for the abolitionists, truth did win out the day.

And so, around the country a forceful blow to the evil of racism is celebrated, and a blow to the dignity of all races in the womb may be coming. Oddly enough, this blow is overwhelming directed towards the black community in America. My sister has a interesting perspective on this as she has adopted two black children. Check it out here, and be sure to check out the links at the bottom.

A door is opened, but the foundation is under attack. We must speak out. I am not talking only about large, nationally organized activists groups. I am talking about sharing the truth with your neighbor, or in the grocery store, or at church. Until we get to the level where the common man speaks out with conviction, we will get no where. Fortunately, the truth is on our side, and most Americans do not have the problems that those who work in the abortion industry do when faced with this truth. It is our job to see that if we respect civil rights in this country, we must respect them for everyone, otherwise they are not rights at all, but privileges granted and revoked at will by those in power.

VOTE! AND BRING YOUR FRIENDS!

2008-11-01T00:40:00.011-05:00

My first post was going to be a rather long discussion about how we aren't just killing fetuses or embryos, we are killing people, but at this point I think it is more important that we get people (including ourselves) to the polls on Tuesday. Right now, that is the most effective thing we can do to save lives.

If polls and media pundits have discouraged you, if long lines at the polls and your work schedule seem like enough to keep you from voting, then I'd like to show you something that may motivate you.

This link is not for the feint of heart; I have learned anatomy from human cadavers, and this almost made my physically sick.

It is not for the eyes of ANY children.

It is a gallery of children murdered by late term abortions. You can find it here.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/photosassorted/index.htm

Why look at this? Why subject yourself to seeing such awful things? Why?

Because it is happening, abortions happened 3000 times today, and we need to do everything we can to stop it. Actually seeing the evil touches us in a way that is not possible with words. When we come face to face with "the right to choose", any hesitation to do all that we can to stop this horror is removed. We have a great opportunity on Tuesday, and a grave responsibility.

Vote. And vote life.

No Google, this is not a spam blog

2008-10-30T22:10:00.000-05:00

I don't know why you would think it is when there are no links to spam with...

I just haven't gotten a post up yet. As Treebeard would say "It takes a very long time to say anything ... because we don't say anything ... unless it is worth taking a long time to say."