Dreaming again

Since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states, the U.S. government reports that more than 43 million abortions have been performed on some 27 million women. It’s estimated that approximately 43 percent of women who’ve reached the age of 45 have had an abortion.

So, I had hoped to finish (or at least get to part two) of my “perspective on abortion” story…but I can’t write it for some reason right now.  Perhaps I’m not a very skilled writer (true) and just can’t find the words, but I don’t think that’s the case this time just because the words were certainly their last week (in my head)! I had the whole thing together…but  then I just kept researching reading and learning more about the history of adoption, abortion, the politics surrounding it, and the pro-life movement over the last 30 years…. and it just got to be too much!  Not too much that I would stop reading and consuming myself with it (haha) but too much for me to begin to write down my main reasons people should support life.  Besides the obvious reason, because it’s life! There are too many reasons and parts of the debate to address!  I just don’t know enough about some of the legal side, and while I can say what my heart wishes were true in America today, I have to be able to back it up with reasoning that is not just personal or religious… in order to convince anyone on the other side. I know it can be supported with both legal and religious reasons…I just want to know more so I don’t sound naive and do more harm than good.  I think the pro-choice side is at an advantage just because their concept “it’s a choice” is so simple and basic of an idea. You can agree with them with little use of your brain and never need to give it a second thought. But it’s a lie, it has nothing to do with choice! It’s about life, what it is, who defines it and who has authority over it.   If it’s about choice, isn’t that’s like me saying, ” Ok, I chose to kill your grandma, it’s my choice not yours, stay out of my business!”  And I’m mad they keep reducing the gift of life to something so trivial.   I hoped to finish writing it before the election anyways. Now divulging my heart and the personal experiences I have had, knowing the decision of a pro-choice candidate has already made…just makes me to upset to finish right now.

Whenever something means the world to me, I have trouble putting it into words.  My mind or my heart or both… just can’t go do it.  It’s as if I feel I can’t do my thoughts justice.  I may write about it personally and have hundred’s of ” rough drafts” but I can’t condense it all.  It happens a lot, right now the only other thing I can think of that has held this much importance to me is my letter to the adoptive parents of my daughter. It’s just an update letter about me, and their will be many of them I write over the next 18 or so years…but this first one (which I was supposed to send 6 months ago, and should of sent 4 by now) is so hard to condense and put into words.

So anyways, I thought I was doing so well these past 7 days or so because I wasn’t talking about the issue and trying to avoiding the T.V and certain websites discussing the election.  But today, I realized I didn’t stop thinking about the election or the abortion issue… it actually just went deeper.

I have a habit of suppressing my feelings (or rather, just honestly not knowing what exactly to do with them) when the emotion gets too deep.  But my dreams always end up screaming to me how I really feel. It’s takes me so long to realize the pattern or acknowledge the dreams (I even try to suppress the dreams too) Anyways, it’s kinda funny how oblivious I am sometimes!  To summarize my dreams from last week… they all involved my mom telling me, in one way or another, that I was going to die.  I was at a different age in each of them, but in every one I was never told why I was dying…just that the doctor confirmed it and it was going to happen to me today, and probably within the next few minutes!  I certainly wouldn’t make it to the end of the day, they knew for sure. So I laid in my room on my bed just waiting. It was the worst feeling ever!  I would watch the clock and try not to think about it. I would pray and remind myself this wasn’t my real home, and I’d  go to be with God..but I was still scared to death and always viewed it from a child’s mindset.  I remember realizing, in the dream, that it is probably just too hard for my family to be with me right now and that must be why no one will come sit with me and wait. My sister and my mom would peak their head in the door to my room, every hour or so, just to check if I was still alive or not.  After a few hours of that, I started to feel really anxious, scared, and eventually guilty.  I started telling them how sorry I was that I wouldn’t just die already. It was bad enough not knowing the reason I was dying (I just accepted what my mom told me) but to have it prolonged and keep waiting for it was horrible feeling!  After 6 hours or so,  I started to think the doctor might be wrong, but then he would confirm it and tell me, “Nope your about to die alright! You should only last for a few more seconds” But I just kept waiting…Then I always wake up before I die or else I just don’t remember the rest of the dream from then on out.  So it seems obvious now, but it took me five nights of that horrible dream to realize I was putting myself in the position of the unborn children subject to abortion.  I was more than upset for them…I was beginning to “feel” their pain…or at least my version of how I thought it would feel.  At least the dreams stopped, but my hear is still in the same place it always was concerning them.

So, I asked God the question sometime last week,of  basically “What am I supposed to do each day if Obama wins and the Freedom of Choice Act is signed.  You want me to just go about everyday knowing millions of babies are dying and in more gruesome ways, like partial birth abortion! How can I live with myself and sleep at night knowing that? Seriously God!”

I believe whole heartedly in God’s Sovereignty over EVERYTHING, and i believe that he puts good and bad in the world, but all to achieve his ultimate design, which is ALL GOOD.  We don’t even know what the word “good” really means, God is so much more powerful than we give him credit for.  Anyways, back to the subject, I believe he therefore has some reason for Obama being president.  It took me a while to figure out any good that could come of it such a decision… and I was kinda mad at God that he would let a guy win who disregards the sanctity of life.   But not too long after that…I realized I already was seeing the good that was coming  from his decision.  My earlier question, when I asked God how I was supposed to live everyday knowing the result of the FOCA act….was already answered.  Why would I live any differently than I had before the act was passed…babies were dying then too!  Is one life any less precious than one hundred?  I should of been this upset and outraged long ago!  I always cared, but it wasn’t until the possibility of the law being pushed to the extremes occurred and I had some personal experience in my life with it, that I began to take it  seriously. I hope maybe that will be the case with many Americans and Christians especially. That we will realize there is a time to get off our butts and stop hiding behind the “politics” of it, and realize abortion is about God!  We can’t just “stay out of it”  because that is just as good as saying we support it.  So, I realized it shouldn’t be something I can rest easy at night knowing (and how selfish of me to ask for that privilege). I have a duty to protect my brothers and sisters in Christ and I should feel like it is me dying when they die. It will take a lot of prayers and action in defense of them, for me to get through the day now. I already thought the day was hard enough thinking about my daughter every second, but in a way it is all starting to come together…the reason for my experience with adoption, pregnancy, talking to people who had abortions,  and the situations that keep throwing themselves at me.. maybe it’s all because I can use the experiences in some way to benefit these children the most. I just haven’t put my finger on exactly how yet, but I’m getting a better idea now!  So I updated my goals page and I implemented the saving lives aspect a bit more, into the plan for my non-profit business (which may happen someday)

Anyways, that was my dream.

(I didn’t know babies have full REM sleep and can dream just 5 months after conception! They can surely feel pain by six as well.)

This is a baby at 25 weeks. On the right in my blog is one at 11 weeks. It’s amazing! I still can’t believe I really had that inside of me! It seems to me a miracle in itself, that any of us came from such humble beginnings..solely relying on one woman for our survival. I can’t believe anyone would give me such a big responsibility! I know no one on earth would trust me with a big endeavour still, so it’s pretty cool (I think) that God would pick me to be responsible for a little person’s life! I may be biased, but I think it is the most important job anyone can be given…even more important than the president of the United States??? I mean he had to come from somewhere…and at one time was just as helpless as the baby pictured below. It’s a miracle for any of us to just be here!

Here are in, in my opinion, some of the best Pro-life resources I have found on the Internet. The debate against abortion is something I think we should all (those who agree with me) be so informed about and updated on, that we can shut down any false claim the other side throws out with the exact reference and page number for the facts…if they want it!  I want to become so knowledgeable on all the legal and political, and moral topics of debate, that I never get stumped in public debate or something.  Right now if Im talking someone about it, sometimes they throw out a random statistic the memorized that contradicts me…and I usually have to say like, “Well, let me get back to you on that one….I think your citing that in the wrong context, but I have to go check because I don’t know as much as I should.” And the discussion ends. I hate when that happens…especially if someone else is listening and trying to make a decision of the issue too. And I really don’t like it when people respond to pro-choice debate by yelling “baby killers” and things like that at people…The words my be true,yes, but there are better ways to get your point across.  It causes people to quickly label the whole “other side of the issue” as insane (or similar word) who have no real political basis for their opinion other than religious reasons. One article I read…(I forgot which one, but think it was by Francis Beckwith) says that most often the biggest mistake we make in the debate is that neither side fully understand where the other is coming from. To convince someone on the “abortion is a choice side” we have to understand their mindset.  (Oh, BTW…”The Liberal Case Against Abortion” is supposed to be really great, I haven’t read it yet) But I like this quote in addressing that perspective…it’s form an interview with Beckwith, over his book “The Case Against Abortion” (I underlined my favorite part):

You take great pains to emphasize that the arguments you put forward are not religious, but based in logic, philosophy, and law. In your experience, is that more effective? Do you think it will it prove to be more effective in the long run?

Dr. Beckwith: I think it is effective insofar as it removes the impediment that the pro-life view is “just religious.” On the other hand, I am careful to say in Defending Life that the fact that an argument may be religious does not mean that it is de facto bad. However, there is a sense in which every argument on abortion—whether pro-abortion, pro-life or somewhere in-between—tries to answer a question that is fundamentally religious: who and what are we and can we know it?

My experience has been that in some circles, especially in the secular academy, the pro-life view is dismissed as merely religious, and thus disreputable as a live option in public policy. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told by audience members when lecturing at secular institutions that my arguments are “just religious,” even though the premises of my case are based on what one would call public reasons. Last year at UCLA Law School when I debated the issue of embryonic stem-cell research, I answered the “religious argument” charge this way: “Wow, I thought you were going to claim my argument was bad.” The audience let out a chuckle. That gave me an opportunity to explain to them that terms like “religious” and “secular” are adjectives that do not appropriately modify reasons or conclusions for the purpose of assessing the quality of an argument. The appropriate adjectives we apply to arguments or their parts are terms like “good,” “bad,” “sound,” “unsound,” “valid,” “invalid,” “strong,” “weak,” “true,” “false,” and “plausible.” Asking if an argument is “religious” is like asking how tall is the number 3. It is a category mistake that, unfortunately, is rarely challenged.

Before the resources, the first thing I listed below is for anyone affected by an abortion to sign…

The Supreme Court is listening!

Join Operation Outcry now!  Help us collect a million declarations from those who have experienced abortion first-hand so we can show the Supreme Court how many have been hurt by abortion.

One declaration per person.

You can also download a paper copy of the declaration below…

Women’s Declarations      Men’s Declarations

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion-on-demand, the tide has turned.  It’s the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade.

Upholding the federal ban on the horrific and gruesome “partial-birth abortion” procedure, the Supreme Court cited The Justice Foundation’s Amicas Brief (also known as a friend of the court brief) in its ruling.  The brief was filed on behalf of Sandra Cano, who was “Mary Doe” of Doe v. Bolton (the companion case to Roe v. Wade), and 180 women hurt by abortion.

Citing sworn testimony that The Justice Foundation presented, and acknowledging the argument that “abortion hurts women,” the Court recognized that “some women come to regret” their abortions.  “Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision” and is “fraught with emotional consequence,” the Court said.  The Court also noted that “severe depression and loss of esteem can follow” an abortion.

Click Here to read more…

The above info was taken from this website:

Best 2 books for the case against abortion:

Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Why Can’t We Love Them Both? This book is the greatest single resource of educational information on abortion and related issues in the world.

This is taken from Chapter 2

THE THREE QUESTIONS

FIRST, SOME DEFINITIONS.

Define “Alive”

Alive means that this being is growing, developing, maturing, and replacing its own dying cells. It means not being dead.

Define “Human”

Human means one of the biological beings who be-longs to the species Homo Sapiens. Such beings are unique from all other beings in that they have 46 human chromosomes in every cell. Such beings do not belong to the rabbit family, the carrot family, etc.

Define “Person”

Person is defined in at least a dozen different ways, according to the field or discipline in which you define it. In theology it usually means when the soul is created.

In law (in the U.S.), personhood begins at birth. Other countries have ruled that it begins at different ages. In medicine and natural science, person usually means when the being is alive and complete. In philosophy it has multiple meanings and shades of meanings. We strongly suggest that no one use this term without first defining precisely what you mean by it; for, unless you do, any discussion of personhood is foolish.

Define human life?

This is the question that must first be considered, pondered, discussed, and finally, answered. It cannot be brushed aside or ignored. It must be faced and met honestly. Upon its answer hinges the entire abortion question, as all other considerations pale to insignificance when compared with it. In a sense, nothing else really matters. If what is growing within the mother is not human life, if it is just a piece of tissue — a glob of protoplasm — then it deserves little respect or consideration, and the primary concern should be the mother’s physical and mental health, her social well-being, and, at times, even her convenience.

NOW THE THREE QUESTIONS

There are three questions that are basic to the entire abortion controversy:

The first is: “Is this human life?” As we will see, the answer clearly is Yes. That answer is a medical and scientific one, for we cannot impose a religious or philosophic belief in our nations through force of law. The second question is: “Should we grant equal protection by law to all living humans in our nation?” or,

“Should we allow discrimination against entire classes of living humans?”

The third question is about Choice and Women’s Rights.

COMMENT

For two millennia in our Western culture, written into our constitutions, specifically protected by our laws, and deeply imprinted into the hearts of all men and women, there has existed the absolute value of honoring and protecting the right of each human to live. This has been an unalienable and unequivocal right. The only exception has been that of balancing a life for a life in certain situations or by due process of law.

• Never, in modern times — except by a small group of physicians in Hitler’s Germany and by Stalin in Russia — has a price tag of economic or social use-fullness been placed on an individual human life as the price of its continued existence.
• Never, in modern times — except by physicians in Hitler’s Germany — has a certain physical perfection been required as a condition necessary for the continuation of that life.
• Never — since the law of paterfamilias in ancient Rome — has a major nation granted to a father or mother total dominion over the life or death of their child.
• Never, in modern times, has the state granted to one citizen the absolute legal right to have another killed in order to solve their own personal, social or economic problem. And yet, if this is human life, the U.S. Supreme

Court Decision in America and permissive abortion laws in other nations do all of the above. They represent a complete about-face, a total rejection of one of the core values of Western man, and an acceptance of a new ethic in which life has only a relative value. No longer will every human have a right to live simply because he or she exists. A human will now be allowed to exist only if he measures up to certain standards of independence, physical perfection, or utilitarian usefulness to others. This is a momentous change that strikes at the root of Western civilization. It makes no difference to vaguely assume that human life is more human post-born than pre-born. What is critical is to judge it to be — or not to be — human life. By a measure of “more” or “less” human, one can easily and logically justify infanticide and euthanasia. By the measure of economic and/or social usefulness, the ghastly atrocities of Hitlerian mass murders came to be. One cannot help but be reminded of the anguished comment of a condemned Nazi judge, who said to an American judge after the Nuremberg trials, “I never knew it would come to this.” The American judge answered simply, “It came to this the first time you condemned an innocent life.”

Ponder well the words of George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.” Wm. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon & Schuster, 1959

Is this unborn being, growing within the mother, a human life? Does he or she have a right to live? Make this judgment with the utmost care, scientific precision, and honesty. Upon it may hinge much of the basic freedom of many human lives in the years to come.

Great resources and articles:

“Taking Abortion Seriously: A Philosophical Critique of the New Anti-Abortion Rhetorical Shift.” Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics 17.3(Fall 2001): 155-166.

“The Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, and Abortion Law.” Liberty University Law Review 1.1 (2006): 37-72. Revised and updated version of the previously published article, “Roe v. Wade: Its Logic and Its Legacy.” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 7.2 (Summer 2003): 4-28.

“Defending Abortion Philosophically: A Review of David Boonin’s A Defense of Abortion.” Journal of Medicine & Philosophy 31 (April 2006): 177-203.

“Law, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Abortion: A Reply to Simmons.” Journal of Church and State 43.1 (Winter 2001): 19-33

“Disagreement Without Debate: The Republican Party Platform and the Human Life Amendment Plank.” In Politics and Public Policy: A Christian Response. Edited by Timothy Demy and Gary Stewart. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publishing,2000. Pp. 233-55. Originally published under the same title in the journal Nexus: A Journal of Opinion (Chapman University School of Law) 4 (Spring 1999):113-33.

- Abortion, the Hidden Holocaust
- Adoption or Abortion?  Decision of a Lifetime
- American War Casualties
- How Are Abortions Done?
- Partial Birth Abortion, Is It Really Happening?
- Planned Parenthood; It’s not what you think
- Sing a Little Louder
- The Breast Cancer/Abortion Connection
- Abortion as Your Option
- Complications You can have With your abortion.
- Ten Reasons I Want an Abortion
- Ten Reasons I Don’t Want to Place my Baby for Adoption

Prenatal - Milestones

The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L. Dennehy, University of San Francisco http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp
This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics–insofar as it is a virtue ethics–forms individual character so that a person not only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover, possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for all.

The best Website and book online:

some more from site:

Statistics
Techniques
Testimonies
Ultrasounds

The Three Questions of Abortion: There are three questions in the abortion debate to be answered before any side has a claim to being right.

Abortion as Your Option What you should know before you choose.

What are the Ultimate Goals of the Pro-Abortion Movement? The ultimate goals of those who favor abortion are known. Abortion is legal in both Canada and the U.S. until birth for social and economic reasons.

What are the Ultimate Goals of the Pro-Life Movement? The ultimate pro-life goal is direct and simple. Pro-lifers want an amendment to the U.S. Constitution and to the Canadian Charter of Rights that will give equal protection under the law to all living humans from the time their biologic life begins at conception until natural death.

Abortion Arguments - After 25 years, are the arguments the same and do they still have faults?   Article.

One Man’s Viewpoint - A thoughtful essay on the issue of abortion.  Mark Sprengel examines the facts and comes to a conclusion.

Medical

Fetal Development A detailed and documented look at the development of a baby starting at conception and going to birth.

Complications You can have With your abortion. What are the possible medical side-effects from abortion?

How Abortions are Done A list of abortion procedures and a description of what is specifically done during them.

When Does Human Life Begin? A discussion of this question from a religious, philosophic, and biological standpoint.

How do You Determine if Something is a Human Life? A discussion of the yardstick that can and should be used in determining the humanity of the unborn.

Numbers

How Many Abortions Are There? Complete discussion of the numbers “war” and what is believable and what is not.

The Ultimate Look at Illegal Abortions: Will dangerous back-alley abortions return if abortions are forbidden?  Where there that many in the first place?

Isn’t Abortion Safer Than Childbirth? A look at the numbers and the real facts.

What about Coat Hanger Abortions? Finding women who have had a coat hanger abortion.

What about All the Women Who Die from Illegal Abortions in Other Countries? A look at the numbers when compared with documented facts

How Many Unwanted Pregnancies Are There? The published numbers in light of the facts.

Trauma

Rape and Abortion, The Complete Discussion: Statistics, facts, and documented quotes about rape and abortion.

Why Not Allow Abortions for Rape Pregnancies? The moral logic of abortion in the case of rape and the problems of the arguments that use this logic.

What of Incest and Abortion? A look at the dynamics of incest and whether abortion is the answer.

Social

Abortion and the Bible What does the Bible have to say about abortion? Plenty.

Wouldn’t Pro-Life Laws Impose Their Morality on Others? A complete look at the arguments of abortion and morality.

What About Unwanted Children? Documented fact, quotes, and statistics on the idea that many children are unwanted.

Shouldn’t Every Child Be Wanted? A look at what is entailed in the argument and slogan “Every child a wanted child” and the proper ending of “or kill them”.

Don’t Unwanted Pregnancies End in Unwanted Children? A look at this argument with documented studies and facts.

Does Being an Unwanted Child Cause Psychological Problems? A look at documented studies to answer this question.

Aren’t Unwanted Children in Other Countries Maladjusted? A look at the studies of unwanted children in foreign countries.

Don’t Some Studies Show That Unwanted Children are Abused and Abusive? A look at the only 2 studies which say there is maladjustment.

Don’t Unwanted Children Become Abused Children? A look of the occurrence of child abuse and unwanted children.

Doesn’t Aborting Unwanted Children Reduce Child Abuse? A graph of abortion numbers as compared with child abuse.

Overpopulation, The Real Story: A look at the the overpopulation myth with the documented statistics to back it up.

Don’t Adopted Children Have More Problems Than Biological Children? A look at the studies and documented facts of adopted children complications.

Don’t Poor Women Want Abortions Paid for by The Government? Documented proof that the poor don’t want abortions for the poor paid for as much as the rich do.

Isn’t it Economically More Sound to Abort a Baby Rather Than Have Another Person on Welfare? A look at the economics of abortion.

What About Women Who Can’t Handle another Child? A look at the alternatives for women who don’t have the means to support a child emotionally or physically.

Controversial

Don’t Picketers Harass Women? The picketers and their goals.

Pro-Life Views on Capital Punishment and War: A comparison of the unborn to the cases of capital punishment and war with charts and graphs.

World Statistics

World Abortion Statistics
Australia Abortion Statistics
Brazil’s Abortion Statistics
Canada’s Abortion statistics
China’s Abortion Statistics