Nothing makes the killing of an innocent person right. Nothing.

Jessica is doing her part to try to be a voice for the millions of people being slaughtered each day in the ironically twisted name of “women’s rights”; to defend that basic, constitutional right that every human is entitled to. Just as we would rise up against a dictator like Hitler who believed he had a right to destroy life based on his perceived value of that life, so should we–regardless of race, religion or political view–rise up against the atrocities taking place around us silently.

Read more about Jessica’s heart at Rachel’s Voice.

And I’ve spoken of slippery slopes that one only slightly more perceptive than a rock can see…

So here we go.

“From the Court of Queen’s Bench (the appellate court) in Alberta:

The Wetaskiwin, Alta., woman convicted of infanticide for killing her newborn son, was given a three-year suspended sentence Friday by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge.

Katrina Effert was 19 on April 13, 2005, when she secretly gave birth in her parents’ home, strangled the baby boy with her underwear and threw the body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard…

Effert will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her newborn son.

Indeed. As Judge Joanne Veit puts it:

“While many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes… “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

Gotcha. So a superior court judge in a relatively civilized jurisdiction is happy to extend the principles underlying legalized abortion in order to mitigate the killing of a legal person – that’s to say, someone who has managed to make it to the post-fetus stage. How long do those mitigating factors apply? I mean, “onerous demands”-wise, the first month of a newborn’s life is no picnic for the mother. How about six months in? The terrible twos?

Speaking of “onerous demands”, suppose you’re a “mother without support” who’s also got an elderly relative around with an “onerous” chronic condition also making inroads into your time?

And in what sense was Miss Effert a “mother without support”? She lived at home with her parents, who provided her with food and shelter. How smoothly the slick euphemisms – “accept and sympathize… onerous demands” – lubricate the slippery slope.” from National Review’s The Corner

Steyn Online

 

The body parts of an aborted baby, estimated to be about 12-14 weeks, found in the parking lot of an El Paso abortion clinic.

“The world needs to see what abortion clinics do to children. When dead babies start turning up in the clinic parking lot, no further proof is needed of what abortion is. These clinics need to be shut down.”

From Live Action, Baby Body Part Found in Parking Lot

“Your hands have made me and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn Your commandments.”  Psalm 119:73

“Another difficulty with this line of thinking, everything riding on physical perfection, is also why it’s become so incredibly expensive to have a baby period. (I realize lots of families have chosen home-birth, and I’m just going to tell you right now you’re better women than I am. )

But for those of us who are the standard ob/hospital delivery kind of gals, the pressure for endless testing (read: $$$$) begins from the minute you make the first appointment. If you are so brazen as to have children in your old age – say 37 – you’re pushed to have genetic testing sequences, amnio, multiple ultra sound screenings, and on and on and on. Politely decline most if not all, and watch the wave of contempt (I actually had a nurse roll her eyes at me) coming at you from every member of the staff. Hear the confused silence of the insurance company when you call to say “don’t pay that, they didn’t perform those tests” because many practices will attempt to bill them as a “package” for mid life pregnancies whether the tests are done or not.

Anyway, sorry for the mini-rant, but medicine itself is complicit in the obsession with “perfectly” healthy babies, with little regard for the deleterious effects much of the testing they do has on the baby (up to and including potential miscarriage), not to mention increasing the anxiety level of the mother. All presented as “so you can make the best decision for your family”. It’s more than a little creepy. I think a lot of it is dollar driven, but there’s an element to it that is trying to unravel the miracle – studied closely, the amazing part is that so many babies are born as we expect them to be.

I find it interesting that our current culture is CRAVING the hand-crafted stamp on everything right now – the imprint of the person who made an object is dear to us, it makes it special, unique,not cookie cutter or predictable. Everything, that is, except people. We can’t accept physical differences or disabilities as anything but less than the preferred standard. There’s no consideration that these differences are valuable or complimentary to us, forget beautiful, intentional even, in the sight of God. For a world bent on worshiping diversity, we don’t leave room, ultimately, for much but the superficial differences.”

Do you have any idea how loaded, how presumptuous that statement is?  And we hear it all the time.  I’ve said it myself.

Translation?  “Only healthy children are a blessing”. And that’s not what God’s Word says.

Do you want to see the slippery slope of a seemingly minor, yet glaring ethical error?

Countless babies with disabilities are being aborted every year. Worse than that, women are encouraged, counseled and made to believe “it’s the best thing”!  And that slope keeps getting steeper.

Because now we have to answer, “what’s a disability?”  Statistics show that parents abort children with an extra finger, a club foot, a facial abnormality, etc.

This is not a new idea, though.  Margaret Sanger unashamedly campaigned to eradicate, through birth control, “the defective and diseased elements of humanity”.

The logical results are upon us as we put to death millions of “the least of these”.  And following that we find ourselves on the brink of genetic engineering (“I already have a brown-eyed boy, I want a blue-eyed girl.”)  Once we started playing God, there’s no stopping.

At The Baby Conference, R.C. Sproul, Jr. shared a raw and heartfelt message about his little girl who has “smooth brain”.  She is 13, wears diapers, must be fed and needs help walking.  She also has violent seizures.

Paraphrasing his story:

“Her nickname is ‘Princess Happy’, because her smile is so big when I go to her bed each morning, that her eyes are nearly shut.  I reach down and scoop that baby up in my arms.  “Daddy made you pancakes, Shannon.“  I remember Jesus’ words…”I was hungry and you fed me…inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto Me.”

I look at Shannon again and I can’t believe the God of the universe would give me this opportunity to minister to Him…every day.  That he would tell us ‘Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven’, and here, Shannon is so innocent–she is my spiritual better, constantly showing me so much about the Kingdom.  I beg the Lord, “Please, please don’t take her.”

We don’t just break the heart of God when we kill these little babies who are less than perfect, but we rob ourselves of perhaps the greatest means God would use to show us His Kingdom, to keep us tender, to give us opportunity to minister to Him through the least of these, to allow us to embrace the cross of suffering and show the world the very picture of His mercy on us.  God’s perfect plan for us involves imperfection.  He has always delighted to use the weakest among us to demonstrate the greatness of Himself.

Our culture says “avoid hardship, eliminate suffering“.  We buy it, banish all sympathy for the child that will die to make a mother’s life easier, then use sympathy for ourselves to justify our heinous act.

Jesus Christ says, “Rejoice in your sufferings…”

God have mercy on us for our cruelty and ignorance.

God help us to say, “It doesn’t matter.  God is sending us the perfect child.”

Excerpts from Mugged by Ultrasound reveal many abortionists, unable to deal with the horrors of their job, not only leaving the industry, but becoming staunch, pro-life advocates.

“In general, abortion providers have censored their own emotional trauma out of concern to protect abortion rights. In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin “breaking the silence” in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:

‘Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.’ …

‘As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,’ he would recall. ‘And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.’ “

Full article:  Mugged by Ultrasound

“You were such a wanted child.”

Gathered around by a few, soft lights with some of our closest friends, we wished little Cooper a happy 8th birthday by speaking a short blessing over his upcoming year. It was a sweet time, and I left with his mother’s words echoing in my heart….

“You were such a wanted child.”

Cooper is the third born, and the first child Robin and Scott had after their vasectomy reversal.

A wanted child.

The words keep ringing. Have I spoken this to all my children? Do they know they are wanted? Do I live with them like they are wanted? Do those who spend any time with our family see that my children are wanted?

In an age where birth control makes it so simple, no, mandatory that we “control” the children born to us, is it any wonder why it’s so easy to arrive unwanted? In a controlled environment, any variable that changes unexpectedly is deemed “unwanted”. It’s a mistake, a plan gone awry.

We don’t even know we do this to our own children. How many times I’ve heard a child described as “an accident”. An immortal soul–a living miracle of God–an accident?

We should shudder at our evolved thinking toward life. We should read the Bible again as little children…

“It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.” Psalm 100:3

And now, I look at my children…“you are such wanted children”. Let me say it with my life.

A few snuggles before we go….

Pro-life advocates care VERY much about women–we are not “pro-fetus” as one commenter recently accused (I deleted several comments accusing the pro-life readers here of being “non-educated idiots” who she absolutely believed would be “shunned by God”).

No, we’re pro-every life, even attesting that Dr. Tiller’s murder was NOT justified.   We care deeply about hurting women who find themselves in difficult situations (we ARE some of those women).  But we’re wise enough to know that killing babies within their wombs is not going to solve their problems but make them bigger.

And then there’s the irony…

President Obama said:

“he was ‘shocked and outraged’ by the murder. ‘However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence,’ he said.”

Agreed, Mr. President.  We are shocked by heinous acts of violence like these.  And we’re just as shocked about the heinous act of babies being killed in the womb as we are over this crime committed against Dr. Tiller.

I am grateful we are still ”shocked and dismayed” over the taking of a life…I just wish it were every life.

“It’s no secret that the majority of Hollywood stars are strong advocates for a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants to terminate a pregnancy, however former “Sports Illustrated” supermodel-turned-entrepreneur-turned-author Kathy Ireland has gone against the grain of the glitterati and spoken out against abortion.

“My entire life I was pro-choice — who was I to tell another woman what she could or couldn’t do with her body? But when I was 18, I became a Christian and I dove into the medical books, I dove into science,” Ireland told Tarts while promoting her insightful new book “Real Solutions for Busy Mom: Your Guide to Success and Sanity.”

“What I read was astounding and I learned that at the moment of conception a new life comes into being. The complete genetic blueprint is there, the DNA is determined, the blood type is determined, the sex is determined, the unique set of fingerprints that nobody has had or ever will have is already there.”

However Ireland admitted that she did everything she could to avoid becoming a believer in pro-life.

“I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. It doesn’t suddenly become a human being at a certain point in time,” Ireland argued. “I’ve also asked leading scientists across our country to please show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being. I didn’t want to be pro-life, but this is not a woman’s rights issue but a human rights issue.”Ireland also asserted that she believes “no justification is adequate” (for an abortion) unless another the mother’s life is in danger.

“In that instant, your intention is not to kill but to save the life of another. If we’re about to demolish a building we make absolute certain there are no human beings in there before we take a wrecking ball to it, but the unborn doesn’t have a voice so it’s up to us to speak for them,” she added passionately. “If I see someone abusing a child I am going to stand up against that, and that’s how I feel about abortion. Women are not given all the facts, they’re told it is a harmless procedure and now it has turned into such a political football.”

The committed Christian and devoted mother even dedicated the chapter “Faith & Your Family” in her new book to her foundations in Christianity and believes that this is what’s missing from so many American families today.

“You have to figure out your own values and why you have them. People are going to try and push and pull at your convictions, so you have to have boundaries and put them in place,” she said.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, “Judging Amy” star Amy Brenneman has been busy voicing her views as a strong advocate of pro-choice over recent years.

“(My involvement) is really through this feminist majority that I work with and it is a very important issue that’s close to my heart,” Brenneman told Tarts at last week’s Autism Speaks event in Hollywood. “Unless a woman really has sovereignty over her own body we really haven’t come that far.”

 Fox News

I wanted to make a quick response to Brenneman’s statement:

She quotes the SINGLE problem and faulty logic with the pro-choice movement.  “Sovereignty over a woman’s own body” is one thing; sovereignty over another person’s life is quite another.  They just don’t want to see it, as simple as it is.