:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Saturday, September 27, 2003 ::

I received this re: songs and abortion:

"There are many many...anything, really, with a melancholy strum or that takes me back to an innocent and safe point in childhood. Those childhood memories remind me that my child has been robbed of innocent memories of his own. He was never safe and he will never know my/his world. So stupid shit like "I've Been to Paradise", or "Both Sides Now" Joni Mitchell, Helen Reddy, the Carpenters, or the damned Coke song "I'd Like To Teach the World to Sing". I remember the things I was doing when these songs imprinted on me...sitting in a beanbag with my brother mesmerizing over his blacklight posters and listening to his records. This makes me sad to know I've destroyed a lifetime of these memories for someone else. So if it is important enough to be a strong link to my past, it is also reminds me of my dead baby.
Followed up by anything reminding me of the wonders of prepubescence...the songs that really transport memories from milestones and firsts, even if they have nothing to do with babies or loss at all...Margaritaville, Brown Eyed Girl, Have You Ever Seen the Rain?.
"Yesterday" Beatles
"How Did You find me Here?" David Wilcox
The universal "I will remember you"."

Awright, people. I'm right in the middle of a hellacious health crisis, so I probably won't be blogging much for a while. Take it easy. Hang in there. Until this is over, pray, pray, pray for me.

:: ashli 1:37 PM # ::
...

With permission, an excerpt from a letter I received:

"I did a search on the woman that you told me about and I found a lot of sites with info about her and her case. I don't know why I never heard about her on the news.

The site that I went to had some stuff about abortionists (I really hate to refer to them as doctors because they aren't healers in my book) and I found an article about the guy that Paul Hill killed and was floored when I read that he had been responsible for a girl's death in the same abortion clinic as the Jane Roe woman. Why in the hell wasn't that mentioned during the endless Paul Hill media parade leading to his death? It would have been important to add along with all the other crap they showed. Not that it would have made it OK, it just would have showed that Britton wasn't just an innocent, compassionate old fart that cared about women's rights like the they portrayed him to be. I don't understand this at all.

You know I live in Jacksonville, Florida where the church, mainly First Baptist Church, has a HUGE part in all decisions that are made here. The guy that was the preacher there died about 3 years ago, and I will never forget, because this club that he was hell-bent on shutting down (and he tried many times before his church was finally successful) threw a big party the weekend after he passed. Homer Lindsey, that was his name. Anyway, his church hated the fact that this club had a bondage night every Saturday. "Saturday Night Seduction" it was called. So almost every Saturday it would get raided and the owner would be arrested and the people attending would all have to go to somewhere else. Whatever. My point here is that... well, why is it that the church, not just First Baptist (because I know that there are Homer Lindsey's everywhere) doesn't "flex their muscle" when it comes to abortion?

Everything I found out after losing my child in an abortion... why wasn't all of this info available before? I mean, I know that the sites that I go to have been there forever but that can't be the only way to show people what this is really like.

Why is it that I can't buy liquor on a Sunday and restaurants can't even sell liquor within a certain amount of feet from a church here and yet there are 3 abortion facilities almost next door to at least 4 churches here?! I want to go to one of them this Sunday and say "Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that while you are sitting here listening to the Word, 10, if not more, babies are being killed right next door. But don't worry, when the broken women leave the clinic and you wave to them as you get into your SUV's, they will not be able to buy any alcoholic beverages. Yippie!! " What the hell?

How can religious people fight tooth and nail for stupid things like alcohol and clubs but will take a bow to abortion? I don't get it. And things may not be like this everywhere but they certainly are here."

This writer has some great points. Religious people aren't the only ones who act like this, but they have, I think, the greatest responsibility because they represent God. Still, they aren't alone in their abortion-related hypocrisy.

First, how about women's groups that claim to care about women first and foremost - and then sell them abortion and lie to them about important things like the fact that abortion causes breast cancer. Boy, that's really caring about women.

And look at frickin PETA for cryin out loud. They would cut off their own arm to prevent a rabbit embryo from being aborted but they have no comment regarding the death of a child at any stage of pregnancy. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? How about People for the Ethical Treatment of People???

And how about the ACLU? Or anyone who fights for equality or civil rights? How about Black or Jewish groups that support abortion? Hello, do they not know what it's like to be targeted, used and slaughtered because of the way an individual looks or his/her ability or some other difference?

Lots of hypocrites in this world, but I do understand the particular outrage regarding the church. We have been excused of all our dreadfully bad ethic because the innocent Son of God enveloped the world with compassion as He stretched out His bruised and broken arms on the cross and gave the ultimate payment for us. To whom much is given, much is required.

However, if you look at the flip side, pretty much the only people doing anything to prevent abortion or to help women after abortion are Christians. Should the church be doing more? Absolutely. But so should other groups and so should individuals.

And information on abortion has always been out there. Many people devote their lives to preventing that information from ever seeing the light of day. Abortion is a gigantic cash cow. Millions of dollars are spent on keeping information suppressed if that information is harmful to the industry. And the truth about abortion is harmful the the industry.

Women are being oppressed for lots of reasons, but one of them is because an organization makes a ton off of aborting women's children and then makes certain contributions that empower the organization to influence individuals in law-making power. Certain people come into power, like Clinton, and they embrace abortion and start creating all kinds of laws that promote abortion. People who try to speak out or who try to share information about the reality of abortion are frowned upon and do not gain favor or power when people over them support abortion. This is just one aspect of the power struggle. We have groups right now, like the American Cancer Society, who refuse to inform women that abortion can cause breast cancer even after most of the scientific evidence supports that conclusion. You can bet there's a dollar bill somewhere behind that.

I'm not trying to say there's a government conspiracy, but think about it: if abortion is available it makes it easier to cut back on welfare spending. You say to a woman, "I'm taking away this benefit and that, and if you have five more children, good luck to you." I have read comments from moms on welfare and they said that they felt like they could not feed and clothe the children they were pregnant with because their benefits were running out or they weren't getting more benefits for the extra child... so it led directly to their decision to abort. Now, if abortion was illegal we'd have a starving baby or two if the government didn't step in, and I believe they would have to step in... but not if abortion is available. If abortion is available the woman is abandoned, because she has the power to "take care of it". The government doesn't leave her with a starving child, they leave her with abortion, and that is just dandy for the economy (but bad for people). Abortion lets so many people off the hook but not mother and child.

You've heard of the Liberal media? It is. Often groups try to get abortion information to women by trying to spend a wad on full-page articles in massive papers with scads of readership. On several occasions the newspapers refuse to run ads. I know that some groups had trouble getting black and white illustrations of partial birth abortion in papers, because abortion-supporting papers said these images were too disturbing. No blood, no gore, just the truth in a few simple images during a time when America's representatives were voting on this issue. How can our officals represent our opinion on something we know nothing about? How can we ourselves support something we know nothing about?

Oh, we manage that just fine. And that's where an individual's responsibility comes in. From the moment I decided I was staunchly "pro-choice" I had the responsibility to make sure I knew what I was talking about. However, I gave that responsibility away. I trusted other sources to relay truthful information. They did the research so I didn't have to. I never questioned abortion. I developed my own seriously flawed ideas based on cliche "coathanger" soundbites. It helped me kill everyone else's children with my vote, but it ended up killing my child. Oopsie. What a way to get an education.

There are many to blame in my situation but my child was given to me to carry, my child was my responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. And when we vote, we carry the massive responsibility of determining whether we have the right or not to kill millions of innocent children. In that way we are given much, and much is required. But so far we haven't given so much as a simple commitment to educating ourselves. We wouldn't do it to save our own lives, and our children are dying because of it.

Hillary Clinton, a very misguided woman, said it takes a village to raise a child (and yet she abandons women to abortion). Well evidently it takes a nation to even give birth to a child. We as a nation all have the responsibility to seek out information regarding something we intend to vote on or do for the good of ourselves and everyone else. We have been given the power to embrace and nurture human life or to extinguish it. That is a huge responsibility.

To whom much is given, much is required.

:: ashli 8:17 AM # ::
...

Music. What is it about music? I know that after I lost my first child and got to the point where I was so emotionally low I couldn't even cry anymore, could only sit and stare out the window... nothing could break through the numbness like a song. If adopted abortion-supporter Sarah McLaughlin's lyrics came from the radio: "I will remember you... will you remember me?"...I would lose it. Mariah Carey's "Butterfly" could send me into hysterics every time (not the part about being all I could be, but just imagining my child's spirit as a butterfly floating up to heaven... the concept that I had to let go when I didn't want to... I could identify with that). Bread's "Aubrey" was another one that really cut to the core in many, many ways. There was a time when I could be found weeping bitterly as I listened to that song over and over again for hours. I don't know if I found comfort in the words or if it was just another form of self-torture. These songs were cigarettes I burned myself with to make sure I could still feel ("I Never Promised You a Rose Garden"; 1977).

Often people are moved by songs that remind them of happy times or lost loves. A song, like a scent, sometimes has a way of riveting you to the spot and taking you instantly on an emotional journey through time. "If You Leave" played on the radio every five seconds during a breakup in high school, so I always think of the boy when I hear it, and I always feel a little weird just because I associate it with a bad time.

Music has a way of tapping something deep inside. I rarely cry for my mother. I never really even had a chance to grieve for her before I was desperately ill and then grieving for my child. But I hear the song "Because You Loved Me" and I am in a fetal position in the corner missing my mommy. The package of powerful lyrics and sensitive music just drills into me pneumatically, past the flesh and bone and right into the emotional being.

Today someone sent me lyrics to some songs that "do it" for her. She made the comment that, if she didn't know better, she would think these lyrics were written by a mom with a SICLE and not Trent Reznor. I can see where The Big Come Down and especially Gave Up echo the sentiment of many with SICLEs.

Torture or "art therapy"? Whatever music is it's affective. I would like to hear from others regarding music and the SICLE. I'd like to get different perspectives on different songs and post the anonymous comments/experiences. Did anyone ever get any of those "post-abortion healing" CD's?

:: ashli 7:48 AM # ::
...

Yesterday Emily discussed the "be happy or I'll kill you" attitude of parents who have aborted some of their children but not others. It's so true.

A common theme I hear from women who abort children (and are "fine" with it) is that everything they do from there on out will lead to some extraordinary financial (or other) accomplishment. They themselves are bound and determined to "be happy or die". Often they will express an idea like: "My abortion taught me that it's all about me; I sacrificed too much not to live an exceptional life."

I think this concept is often extended to surviving children. Any related disappointment might threaten the protective facade of "The abortion was necessary, because look how good my life/the life of my other child is now because I did it."

Exceptional accomplishment and perfection must exist as a buffer. The idea is: "I/my other child would never have been able to have this kind of life if I hadn't aborted." It's a perfect Linus blanket to drag around through the years, as it justifies and consoles the mother who seeks to remove herself from as much abortion-related pain as possible.

Forget the fact that no amount of money or success can match the value of a child. Being "sensible" and not emotional is desirable when it enables a person to circumvent a degree of grief. However thinking with the head alone and not any heart denies the whole person, who is neither all head nor all heart but a combination of the two.

"Be happy or I'll kill you" may in fact translate into "Be happy or I killed my other child for nothing." And that is too much for many moms to bear.

:: ashli 8:34 PM # ::
...

Uh oh. I have it from a very trusted source that Alan Keyes, who spoke at a local event last week, compared women who abort to the terrorists of September 11th fame. A very misguided comparison which is, imho, neither true nor good for the "pro-life" movement.

(I thought "pro-lifers" were supposed to "love them both".)

I, for one, was not aware that the terrorists had been working so hard to make sure all those Americans had long and happy lives but then ended up physically snapping and sacrificing hostages in order to be able to eat again... thereby reversing the liver dysfunction and ending starvation-induced hallucinations caused by the lives of hostages who the terrorists loved and really wanted to preserve. I just really had NO IDEA all that was going on. All this time I thought it was a simple situation of baddies v. goodies, but what a complex issue!

I tell ya, Alan Keyes, I learn somethin' new every day.

:: ashli 9:40 AM # ::
...

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.
~Moliere

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
~Kenji Miyazawa

In the night of death, hope sees a star,
and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
~Robert Ingersoll

:: ashli 8:51 AM # ::
...

With permission from the writer, an excerpt from an email I received:

"I came home and received a letter from my attorney. The abortionist (who wouldn't stop when I changed my mind) has no insurance and the clinic was sold 2 weeks after I was there. They say they have 10 people who will testify against me. According to them, when I told them to stop they gave me the option of going to the ER to save my baby (oh i mean "fetus"), and they say I didn't respond to their offer at all. First of all, none of that ever happened! I was never offered any alternative!! When I told them (loudly) to stop and they ignored me, I tried to get up off the table and physically walk out of there, but they wouldn't let me! They held me there against my will, and I didn't have a second chance! Their testmony is full of lies, and now I feel I don't even have a case and nothing is going to happen to the people who did this to my child and I. Nothing! This is so messed up! I can't believe this is happening! And to make things worse, my attorney had requested all original docs which would have included the sonogram that I want so badly. I was planning to ask him for it but now it's too late."

Boy, they really respected this woman's "right to choose".

:: ashli 8:49 PM # ::
...

"It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."

~Colette

:: ashli 7:56 AM # ::
...

Until recently, scientists believed that babies learned to smile by mimicking their parents at around 6-weeks post-birth. However, sonogram advances are proving that scientists (and abortion supporters) should never assume.

Click here to see video footage of a 26-week-old baby smiling in utero.

:: ashli 2:26 PM # ::
...

Ever since my son saw his first dead person (on one of our visits to friends who own a funeral home) he has been fascinated with dead things. This is why, at the library a few weeks ago, he picked out the book The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown. We normally pick out around 32 books, so I only just got around to reading it.

The book is quite juvenile, just the way a juvenile book should be. The illustrations and format are simple and touching. So simple, so touching and so childlike in fact, that I found myself suddenly rather melancholy, even tearful.

It seems silly, and I want to know more about the reaction.

The story opens with a dead bird lying in the green grass. Children come along, discover the bird, and begin an exploration of death and its process. The bird is still warm but that warmth quickly fades. Rigor mortis is sped up for this book, and the bird's tiny legs stiffen, the head no longer flops. The book informs us that this is the way death is. This is what it looks like, what it feels like in our hands.

"The children were very sorry the bird was dead and could never fly again. But they were glad they had found it, because now they could dig a grave in the woods and bury it. They could have a funeral and sing to it the way grown-up people did when someone died."

This "insignificant" bird is then given an elaborate funeral where he is wrapped in warm sweet-firns and grapevine leaves and committed to the ground with song. Marking the grave are little white violets and yellow star flowers, along with a homemade tombstone that says: "Here lies a bird that is dead."

I think, for a mom with a SICLE, this book can represent caring deeply for someone that the rest of the world seems to think is insignificant and cares very little for if at all. I could identify with the children and appreciate their lengthy efforts to express their regard for the little one.

"And every day, until they forgot, they went and sang to their little dead bird and put fresh flowers on his grave."

The last illustration (by Remy Charlip) shows a field of ball-playing children who have rejoined the world, yet just beyond them a violet covered grave sits in the forest.

This could be a marvelous illustration for the "post-abortion healing" movement.

For me, however, I can only relate to the proximity of the grave and the playing space of the children. The loss of my child seems always at least that close to everything else that goes on in my life.

:: ashli 9:16 AM # ::
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An excerpt from a letter I received (with permission):

"So Tuesday is the day and I feel like I am preparing for something, I've taken the day off from work, informed my roommate to stay out of the house, and I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to do what I would have done if she was here. Last year I freaked my boyfriend out when I told him that all day I wanted go the store and pick up diapers and other baby stuff and pretend like I was a Mom. I wanted to pretend I was buying this stuff for my new baby. I daydreamed I would tell the cashier at the checkout about how beautiful my daughter was and how much everyone just loves her and can't get enough her and how happy I am to be a Mom and just how freaking wonderful it is and just look at me everybody, I'm a Mom!

But somehow this year seems worse. Last year I was wrapped up in me and my pain and my baby and that was it. This year I think about what I have deprived both of our families of. She would have been the first grandchild on both sides. I am thinking of that and of the life that my baby will never have... the love she will never feel or know. I hate that. And I really hate that everyone else acts like she never existed. If I were to die tonight there would only be two things that would prove that she existed, the sonogram next to my bed and the certificate from the Shrine of Holy Innocents that I sent for last year. I keep that in my dresser. It has my baby's name on it, and the folks at the shrine include her name in a prayer the last Sunday of every month in some church in NY. I'm going to go there just so that I can hear someone say her name. I just want my baby. I don't want to be sitting here writing. I want to hold her and know what it feels like to mother my child. I'm sick of sleepless nights and being afraid to fall asleep, wishing for her, wanting her, crying all the time, and being forced to hide my love and grief.

How is it that you have made it this far? I wish that I had known you or women like us while I was pregnant."

How many "women like us" are out there and yet refuse to speak? How many others will follow our footsteps right into the stirrups because our silence gives them no reason not to? How many will we sacrifice to save ourselves?

:: ashli 8:14 AM # ::
...

Yesterday I received a copy of the National Right To Life News. On page two there's an encouraging (if not entirely accurate) editorial on the "pro-choice" movement and how "Laughably Out of Touch" they are.

The writer claims that young people know that a quarter of their peers are missing because of abortion. They know that abortion contradicts the concepts of liberty, justice and equality for all. They know that abortion is an "acid" that eats through family ties. And, according to the author, they also know that abortion "can and does have a devastating impact on young women, women whose wounds many times never heal."

What's that? A "pro-lifer" acknowledging that many times women do not heal from wounds caused by abortion? You won't hear this type of revelation coming from most in the "post-abortion healing" arena. In fact, it's an idea that is frowned upon.

Some groups are so busy trying to present "healing" to a woman that they sacrifice the validity of her feelings. "Women whose wounds many times never heal"? Not acceptable. Suppress that information.

Read a couple of abortion-related grief books. You will quickly notice that, aside from the token suicide, everyone miraculously heals. Watch any number of the "post-abortion" videos. Tears form rivers but everyone is "healed". You won't hear from one single woman who says:

"Abortion killed my child and devastated my life. I've been through every post-abortion program I know of and nearly a decade later I still cry weekly, I think about it every single day, it affects my relationship with my husband, children and other family members, it has not been entirely possible for me to forgive myself or many of the people involved, I sometimes still wish I was dead, I am haunted by dreams and mental images related to abortion, I do not have inner peace, the world is not as it was, the laughter is a thin veneer atop miles of bitter sadness, a light has gone out, my child and my innocence are gone forever, and I can not get over it or 'heal' simply because it would be good for a movement or even because it would be good for me and all who know me. Still somehow, I breathe and move each day. It's tough, and perhaps it's not really 'living', but I have managed to exist thusfar. Though, compared to my former life, it's a hated, hated existence. I may be a better person for knowing what I now know, but emotionally, I feel ruined for all time."

You will never, ever, ever hear that woman's voice in any of the Hallmarky, feel-good, happy ending, post-abortion books, videos, television panels, heal-a-thons. That voice is "bad" for the "heal-or-else" movement, and that voice is silenced.

It is interesting to me that when "pro-lifers" are trying to deter women from aborting -or- trying to educate the public on the powerful negatives of abortion, they don't seem to have a problem acknowledging that abortion causes wounds that "many times never heal." However, when "pro-lifers" are dealing with grieving women who feel that they will never heal, that concept is surprisingly nowhere to be found.

That abortion would cause an individual woman to suffer irreparable emotional harm may be "ugly", but it's the truth nonetheless.

It's curious that in all the heated conversations I've had with "pro-lifers" who've pressed or demanded that I "heal", for the good of myself, the good of others or because of my belief in Jesus Christ, none of them have ever imposed the same standard on my cervix, which was also permanently damaged by abortion.

But I suppose the cervix is concrete while emotional life is abstract and so one is more real than the other. I.e, it is not so hard to imagine fixing something that may be looked upon as somewhat imaginary itself.

When my cervix remains obliterated, no one accuses me of wallowing in self pity or of not loving Christ enough or of not wanting to heal. No one attempts to suppress that information, yet the emotional component of the SICLE does not receive such unquestioned regard.

It is only seven years after losing a child in a "therapeutic" second-trimester abortion that I finally see in print a "pro-lifer" acknowledging that some women never heal. At reading the words, I feel somewhat relieved, allowed to be who I am and permitted to have my own perspective without being a defective disappointment to the people I most identify with. But this moment will only last until the next conversation, book, video, article, program.

"Laughably Out of Touch" is used in the National Right To Life editorial to describe the "pro-choice" movement, but I sometimes wonder if the same can not be said for certain factions of the "pro-life" movement.

:: ashli 9:14 AM # ::
...

Some of you know that I am home schooling my little one. When I was looking over the pre-school information (I taught elementary-not pre-k) I realized that we accidentally covered virtually all of it last year just playing. This year we have officially started with the Five In a Row curriculum, and I really like it.

Five In a Row works like this:
You read one of the books listed for five days in a row (Five In a Row, get it?) and you pull multi-discipline lessons out of the book. For instance, the book we read last week was A Story About Ping. It was marvelous! From this one story we pulled out related Math, Social Studies, Geography, Language, Science: Biology, etc. lessons. He is able to relate the new lessons to something in his own world as the story becomes his background. This makes for a more cohesive and ADhesive education. I.E., things correlate, connections are made, and things that make sense last longer in the brain. The little one learns without even knowing it-the best kind of learning!

At any rate, I found a really great video (endorsed by Discovery) on ducks. It's called A Little Duck's Tale and is basically the story of a mother duck who, for whatever reason, decided to make her home in a man-made pond smack dab in the middle of a business center in Japan (basically across the street from the Emporer's pad). When her ducklings are ready, she trots them across a multi-lane freeway ever so carefully. Waiting for just the right moment, she spends the day eyeing traffic across the busy lanes. Peeking ducks who don't want to be Peking ducks! A real life Make Way for Ducklings!

In this particular video, she has a baby who just has all sorts of trouble because of his size or lack thereof. The Japanese media has dubbed him "Chibi" for "runt", and they all root for him. He overcomes "this and that" all to the delight of human fans everywhere, and he finally makes it across the street to the big lake. However, before flying lessons begin Mother takes on a curious "survival of the fittest" attitude and attempts to oust Chibi from the family. She is successful. It is hard to watch.

The voiceover explains that in the wild the mother will sometimes recognize that one of the members is weak, needs more care, and therefore is holding everyone else back from their full potential. Therefore, the "rational" thing to do in the unevolved kingdom of beasts is to scrape 'em off. (Sound familiar?)

Chibi is isolated and spends the day alone, unprotected, rejected by his mother, until one of his little siblings swims out and brings him back to the group as if to say, "Hey, Chibi, what cha doin' over there? Come on home where you belong." The mother duck sees this and decides she will exempt Chibi from the "law of the lake". He becomes her duckling once again.

At this point they are roosting in a swan's abandoned nest, as the swan is on holiday. Alas, back she comes, spying from the distance a mother duck and her 9 ducklings squatting in her home. All are sound asleep unable to respond to the looming threat that glides in on the silk glass surface a few yards away. All are unaware - save for Chibi who notices the swan and it's grave threat immediately.

"Peep! Peep! Peep!" Chibi cries as he "pecks" the heads of his dreaming siblings and mother. "PEEP!" he continues as they rise, take notice, and flee. Chibi, the unwanted runt, not only saves the day, but he refuses to protect himself and stays in the swan's nest until he is sure that all of his family are safely away. At the last minute he flops himself into the water, and the little boy sitting next to me cheers.

Chibi IS the runt. His development IS slower, he DOES prevent the others from reaching their "full potential" as quickly as they would have if he had not been around, he DOES need more than the rest of his siblings, all of it is true. However, he is concerned for the safety of his family, attempts to always be with them, ends up saving the day, finally reaches maturity and eventually flies away with his family in the familiar V-formation.

He grows, he contributes, he amounts to something. Lo and behold, the little runt is valuable.

Those, who had watched the duck drama unfold since the first cracked shell appeared, say goodbye with misty eyes. A news reporter wonders how he will ever go back to reporting politics. A grown man nearly cries. A little boy gets a glimpse of what is real and good and important in this world.

There is much to be learned from the story of Chibi, and I like to think that even people over the age of four might somehow understand that.

:: ashli 1:44 PM # ::
...

These commercials are uber powerful. They're all true and great, but the one that just gets me is the one with the disappearing people.

Why isn't every city in America running these pro-humanity spots?

:: ashli 1:12 PM # ::
...

Here's a poll on Paul Hill. Although it's easier for me to muster up sympathy for Paul than it is to muster up sympathy for people who kill children for a living, I do have to agree with Sheila and Bev. Paul's actions had a decidedly negative impact on the "pro-life" movement.

It IS possible to help women and children without criminalizing yourself and making a movement of love and truth look like a bunch of violent loonies.

:: ashli 3:11 AM # ::
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Emily has written an interesting piece about abortionists, women who abort and forgiveness. Lest this appear to be some sort of rebuttal it is not. I merely want to veer off the path a bit with a few thoughts.

Being a woman who aborted a very much anticipated and mutually wanted child due to a medical illness... even I realize that I am not a blameless victim. I agree that all mothers have a responsibility to their children. That being said...

In a previous post, I expressed that killing thousands of innocent children and killing a person who kills thousands of innocent children are not the same thing.

I am not, I repeat NOT saying I think it was a good or even acceptable thing for Paul Hill to kill the abortionist (and the security guard who protected the killing of innocent children), but I am saying the two things are different. Murdering a murderer is what Paul Hill did, is what the State of Florida did. On the one hand it is wrong for Paul Hill to kill a man who killed probably thousands of innocent children, but on the other hand, it was "justice" when Florida murdered Paul. (And America wants to murder Saddam... because he's a murderer.)

And just as an aside, convicted criminals Henry Lee Lucas and his pal Ottis Toole (little Adam Walsh's decapitating murderer) rotted in jail but were never murdered for being serial murderers. So murdering murderers is justice and not murdering murderers is justice, but murdering murderers is wrong and not wrong.

What? The only explanation is that some murdering is different than other murdering. Even in prison there seem to be grades of murderers. I have heard tell of particularly heinous murderers having to be protected from other murderers in jail, because the other murderers thought the heinous murderers were bad.

Being a woman who aborted a child because of a terrible, debilitating illness and being an abortionist who kills thousands of children day in and day out for money are two different beasts. Being a woman who aborts a child because she is scared of being kicked out or killed or left or starving her other children... and being an abortionist who jerks a sonogram out of her view as he prepares to destroy his 20th baby of the day are not the same. A person who kills one person and a person who kills 100 people are not the same. They are both murderers but not to the same degree.

And in the case of abortion, the mother delivers her child to a hired killer, but she doesn't actually do the killing. Call it a technicality, a cop out, what have you, but unless she swallows a deadly pill, her crime will always be paying someone to kill her child, not actually killing her child. I don't know anything about law, but someone tell me how it works in illegal cases of hiring hitmen. Who gets the stiffer penalty, the one who hires the hitman or the guy who actually whacks the victim? It should be the guy who actually does the killing and not the guy who has the wallet, but not the stomach, for it. Without the murdering hands of the hit man, there is no crime.

What about the mother who whips out her gun and aims for the pecker of the neighborhood pedophile who has, coincidentally, molested her own son? She's going to jail all right, and maybe, if he's not too busy "contributing" to society, the pedophile will even send her a post card from the outside. Are we all so turned off by this type of vigilante justice that we would actually say with a straight face that what she did was just as bad as what the child molester did? Oh please.

All sin is sin and separates us from God no matter how small, but some people take wrong doing to a whole nutha level.

It is very hard for me to feel any sympathy for people whose business is killing children. I know that I didn't cry a tear on the day that the abortionist was gunned down, but I did feel a little sick inside on the day Paul Hill was tucked into bed for his big dirt nap.

Moms who've aborted v. abortionists who continually abort...
I have heard of women who have aborted 12 times. That's about a half a day's work (or less) for an abortionist. So who is the star player in abortion's Scum Bag Theater? The scared, sick or even selfish woman or the abortionist who makes his monthly Jag payment off the blood of countless children?

I'm a fallible human being (read: "crummy sinner"). In my personal life, I sometimes find it hard to forgive people who are sorry. But I find it nearly impossible to forgive those who are not only NOT sorry but proud of the heinous acts they commit. For example, it's hard for me to forgive myself for bringing my child to a place of death and hiring a man to kill him/her, and it's practically irrealizable to forgive the man who tore my 15-week-old's legs off, snapped his/her spine in half, and crushed his/her very precious little human head. I was sick as a dog, desperate to not only survive but to live one moment without physical pain. What's his excuse? He did it because I asked him to? Would you do it if someone asked you to? Is that all it takes?

We're talking about a man who wants to erect, in the center of Ocala, Florida, a statue of himself that says he brought them "freedom".

As Emily points out, what I did and what he does=wrong. But I want to go a step further and say that what I did and what he does are not the same.

I'll tell ya, I'm all for supposition, but with me there just comes a point, a black dot of reason where a spade is a spade and an abortionist is just damned Evil.

Not that the degrees of wrongness are so important. (Although it might explain why people like Paul Hill are picking off abortionists and not their patrons.) In my case I appreciate Christ all that much more. Whatever the crime, He paid for it on the cross for those who love and accept Him AND ARE SORRY. In that respect, all sin is the same: forgiven.

:: ashli 10:38 PM # ::
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Excerpt from an email I received (with permission):

"I just watched the video 'The Silent Scream'. It really wasn't the doctor holding the model of the baby and showing how the forceps and everything removes the baby... it was the sound of that machine and the image of that girl up on that table with her feet in the stirrups and the doctor between her legs moving the suction tube in and out of her body... and the sound. You would think that I would have forgotten what suction sounds like when it makes contact with skin. Nope. I heard it in the video, and I was on that table again. You want to know something really crazy? That day, when I tried to get up and I couldn't... and [the abortionist] started the suction machine and I couldn't do anything but lie back... I stared up at the ceiling screaming, and I felt her leave my body. This was not just the suction making contact with her body and mine and the pull that it made, but I swear to you I felt something... life, a soul, a spirit... I can't explain it, but something left my body. I know it sounds crazy. That's why I haven't ever told anyone this. I already get the crazy look whenever I talk about my baby. To add my perspective about feeling my child's life force or soul leave... well just imagine the kind of crazy look I'd get then. That wouldn't help matters. But just between you and me, it did happen."

:: ashli 9:52 PM # ::
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"He soon stopped eating, began to lose weight, stayed home from work and nearly lost his home.

'My life spiraled down into a hell,' Walsh said. 'I had lost the one thing that I loved more than anything in the world, in the worst way you could imagine. I had nothing left to live for.'"

While our situations were obviously very different, I reacted to my illness-induced SICLE in exactly the same way. When I could finally eat, I stopped eating. I lost even more weight, stayed home from work, lost my job, would have lost my home if not for my husband. My life spiraled down into a hell. I had lost the one I loved most in the world, in the worst way you could imagine. I had nothing left to live for.

I ache for John and Reve Walsh. I'm glad that they don't have to look their child's murderer in the face each day, eat with him, shower with him, live with him, die with him... like I do.

:: ashli 6:38 PM # ::
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This little boy was born at 24 weeks. Notice the preemie bear for scale.

Bear in mind that Orlando, Florida's Pendergraft officially aborts children all the way up to 28 weeks.

:: ashli 8:59 AM # ::
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