My last entry - Stunning Rebuke to Planned Parenthood - drew this response Bryanne:WOW!!! Thanks so much for sharing this article, Barbara. I am ashamed to admit that I have buried my head in the sand when it comes to the abortion issue. I always knew I would never personally choose abortion because I believed it was wrong, but I never looked into the "methods" of how abortions were performed because the little bit of information that I did know...well, I could barely handle the fact that people could be so cruel to the precious children (gifts) that God has entrusted to us. This has certainly opened my eyes and now my prayer focus will shift to include all the potential murder victims in the womb.
Thanks, Bryanne for your comment.
One thing that distresses me about many "pro-choice" individuals - and I put pro-choice in quotes because they have resisted all attempts to get them to share the whole picture with their clients of their babies' prenatal development (so much for informed consent!) - is that they hold onto their pro-abortion views with the tenacity of a pit bull. It's as though abortion is the defining aspect of their identity. As though it just wouldn't be cool to rethink their position. Like Anne Lamott, who claims to have had an encounter with Jesus and fallen in love with him, but who is locked in such bitter hatred of Christian conservatives that she has adamantly refused to rethink her position. (I dunno, somehow when I became a Christian I figured that all the decisions and opinions I'd formed before encountering Jesus were definitely in need of a second look :)
The most you will get from some - especially those who've experienced the miracle of life themselves - is "I wouldn't get one myself, but I support the right of a woman to choose" - as though we were talking about whether to get a pierced eyebrow or something. As though we weren't speaking of a human life.
As someone who changed her tune drastically - from a hardcore radical feminist circa 1970 who fought in Virginia for abortion rights and had one myself in 1975 in San Francisco (read about it here) to a very committed pro-life mama of 12 (including three adopted kids, one saved from abortion because we agreed to raise him) - I can tell you life is not about standing still - emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually.
We should always be testing our opinions as new information presents itself. Of course, the mainstream media has done its best to keep the truth about abortion hidden - the barbaric procedures, the profiteering/racketeering of Planned Parenthood, the lack of regulation of abortion mills, the link between abortion and breast cancer. And many younger women who've been systematically brainwashed into believing abortion is a right and an unpleasant procedure akin to a dentist visit still have their heads in the sand about who profits from "sexual freedom" and birth control and abortion: namely predatory males and Planned Parenthood. In fact the early feminists (First Wave) believed abortion exploited women and only benefited men.
The Second Wave of feminism (1970 on) was originally more about liberating women from being reduced to sexual objects than anything else. When we fought for abortion rights, I don't think any of us would have ever imagined that they would someday amount to a million and a half per year or that babies only days from birth would be murdered and dragged out from their mothers' wombs (for diagram, see here).
What a ghastly legacy. And just look around to see how things panned out vis a vis the sexual objectification of women. Can anyone say Victoria's Secret? Pregnant naked Britney Spears on the cover of Harpers Bizarre (oh, I mean Bazaar).
There is much more to say, but I've spoken of this at length in my new book Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking about Social Issues with People Who Don't Think Like You.
But for someone who's all about change and thinking outside the box, Bryanne's comment was such a reminder that people do grow and change.
I mostly just wanted to ask my readers: How you have changed in this area?
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Posted at MommyLife
Great post, but can you please only put 2-3 paragraphs as your excerpt? It would make parusing Prolifeblogs.com much easier for the general public. This way we don't have to scroll all the way down to find stories of interest.
The headlines for your posts will grab people's attention....
Great posts, BTW...
Ruben