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

:: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 ::

For TRA.

;-)

(Hear/see it here.)

:: ashli 11:33 PM # ::
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Pro-Life Blogger Shatters Retirement Record
Florida, August 20, 2005
Special to The New York Times
Raving Atheist Reporting

Returning just 40 hours and 48 minutes after announcing her "retirement" from blogging, pro-life blogger Ashli of The S.I.C.L.E. Cell has smashed the previous records for both brevity and pure pathos.

What's particularly funny is that her "retirement" lasted only half as long as the recent break between her August 19 and August 23 posts, said one blogging expert. "If a day and a half is a "retirement," she must be collecting at least 1,500 separate pensions."

Another expert noted how pitiable it was that Ashli's retirement post invoked the poignancy of "So Long, Farewell" from the Sound of Music, convincing tearful readers that she was truly gone. "And before you know it there's this chipper 'Hey guys, look at this!' like nothing happened," he said. "Pathetic."

Ashli admitted she felt foolish but refused to promise that she would not do it again and again. "I just can't stand the idea of my blog wasting away in cyberspace, untouched and unread." she said. "And why let that happen when I can just push a button and throw out a link?"

Psychiatric experts noted the possibility of addiction. "She walks by the computer and thinks 'one more post can't hurt,'" said one doctor. "But it never stops. Soon she'll be sitting down writing a post and thinking 'just one more thought,' eventually spewing forth a 15,000-word blogopotomus."

:: ashli 10:54 PM # ::
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God in heaven.
(I couldn't leave this one alone.)

:: ashli 5:39 PM # ::
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For now.

:: ashli 12:51 AM # ::
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I meant what I said
and I said what I meant
and an Ashli is faithful
one hundred percent.

From an email I sent to a dear, rug-burned friend in July:

"1. When my son was born I found these birthstone angels for the Christmas tree. I bought one for each of my children: a ruby, a peridot and a topaz. One day I was sitting in the living room by myself when I heard a "plunk" by the Christmas tree. Something lay on the floor. I went over to pick it up and realized that it was the body of the ruby angel, the one I bought to represent the child I aborted. You know what a D&E is. The angel's head was still attached to the tree. The body detatched from the head. I just stood there looking at it. The other angels were perfect and whole, but Tenny's angel was decapitated. It threw me.

2. I bought a teacup that said "July", the month in which Tenny should have been born. The cup is displayed in the most sentimental room of our house. One day I went to dust it and, upon picking it up, the bottom of the fine bone china simply didn't come with the rest of the cup. It sat on the shelf as if glued while the rest of the cup came away in my hand. The bottom of this teacup literally fell out. There was no reason for this. It had not been dropped, nor glued, nor did it ever have a crack in it. It simply came away. It was no longer whole, but broken in two and ruined. It was and is a mystery.

3. I also had a stork pin that had a baby charm dangling in a silver diaper from the stork's beak. Someone had given it to me as a gift when I announced my initially ecstatic pregnancy. I buried the pin when I buried the bloody socks from the clinic along with the sonogram... all the symbolism that was supposed to help me, sayeth the self help books. It didn't. One night a month or two later I was on my hands and knees in the dark digging it all up with my bare hands. The socks were totally gone, but the sonogram film was still there along with the pin. This pin became precious to me even though I didn't deserve it. It was a little worse for wear from having been buried but it was still kosher enough. One day the baby just fell off and hit the ground. Of course, of course, of course."

The fun that is life after abortion.

:: ashli 9:21 PM # ::
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"A person's a person
no matter how small."
He who wrote that
didn't buy it at all.

After Theodore Geisel
lost his life
his money of course
went to his wife.

"I want to do something
hubby would have thought good."
So she sent heaps and heaps
to Planned Parenthood.

:: ashli 10:28 AM # ::
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I think this is ridiculous. If women have the freedom to choose to destroy a child for any reason, then they certainly should have the right to destroy a child because the child is gay (or a boy, or a girl, or white, or black, or genetically bent towards obesity, or merely "unwanted").

The only just way to stop the abortion of gay children, should the technology to identify such individuals ever exist, is to stop abortion period.

Otherwise the sole remaining option would be to convey special legal status on a homosexual individual, status that other, non-homosexual individuals don't enjoy, via reverse discrimination.

And that's uncool.

HT: Rug Burned

:: ashli 7:44 PM # ::
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Woman is "aborted" after refusing abortion. (Where's the Laci Peterson coverage?)

:: ashli 8:53 AM # ::
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Plan A: concern for women

Plan B: concern for women's money

:: ashli 8:49 AM # ::
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TRA asks, "Would you like (tofu) fries with that?"

:: ashli 11:39 PM # ::
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HaHAAAAAA! The Raving Atheist busts NARAL in the worst way!!!

:: ashli 2:06 AM # ::
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"I was going to feel a little tugging in my lower belly."

:: ashli 11:07 PM # ::
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This touched me deeply for obvious reasons.
HT: Aa

Surprisingly, I found that it also comforted me regarding the disposal of my first child's body. We had asked the abortion business if they would consent to turning our child's body over to our funeral director. Our request was rejected. With an uncomfortable wincing, the abortion facility worker told us, "I'm sorry, we really can't do that."

It bothers me. Ridiculous, isn't it. Of course, nothing about any of it doesn't bother me. Being killed in the womb is despicable. Being disposed of as waste is only a cherry on top of that Snot-Sundae. Even so. It has pained me.

Reading the story of Maximilian Kolbe, I find that I have stumbled upon a petit four of comfort. Kolbe, a diamond, was killed and disposed of as garbage. And I see, a little more clearly, that it doesn't matter; It could never touch the beauty of what he was.

The value, the loveliness of what and who my child was... these are at least two things abortion had no power over. The abortionist and I... we couldn't take these things away.

For a moment, a tender moment, I rock softly my little one in the safe place in my heart that never consented to any part of the SICLE.

:: ashli 1:38 AM # ::
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The pears, my friends, are ripe and so it's canning time. It takes me just over four hours to put up five quarts, and that is a HUGE chunk of uninterrupted time for a stay-at-home mom/homeschooler/college student/wife/Christian scouting director, so I am just popping in to say hullo.

Hullo.

A few things before I dash away...

1. The other day I saw a car with a Choose Life tag and a John Kerry bumpersticker.

2. Yesterday I took my son to the dentist for the first time in his life. The office was packed. There weren't enough seats; people were standing up and sitting on the floor. I panicked. Heart racing, skin sweating, I flashed back to the equally packed lobby of the abortion facility where I commissioned the slaying of my second-trimester child. Presently, I sat in the oral office and waited with a straight, gapless smile as others were fooled into thinking nothing at all was the matter with me.

:: ashli 10:24 PM # ::
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Look up "total deception" in the dictionary and you will find this cartoon. HT: Aa

The choice to do (horrible graphic link with video and sound) this to a child is equated with the right to choose what vegetables you will eat for dinner or what sports team you will root for.

Abortion opponents, of which I am one, are portrayed as squatty evil villians and living-dead corpses. But don't worry, the violence-opposing abortion advocates at Planned Parenthood take care of that by decapitating, exploding, and boiling those pesky "lifers". They also hurl verbal insults at "anti-choicers" and use the cuteness and innocence of a baby to sell abortion.

Ahhhh! It's got everything!

:: ashli 12:44 PM # ::
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Follow the Money

HT: Patte Smith

:: ashli 12:31 PM # ::
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Found the violence link here as well. Notice the lovely "pro-choice" cartoon depicting an abortion opponent being decapitated by, of all things, a rubber.

(If the rubbers that abortion supporters are using are old enough to be that stiff, then it is no wonder they are having issues with unplanned pregnancies.)

:: ashli 5:02 PM # ::
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Just how dangerous is it to be an abortionist in the United States?

:: ashli 4:52 PM # ::
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Abortion Violence

HT: Rebecca Porter

:: ashli 4:50 PM # ::
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Thought you'd heard it all?

Think again.

:: ashli 1:40 PM # ::
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Serrin of Feminists for Life will be on NPR today. A NOW member has been invited to call in.

You can listen live here.

:: ashli 1:37 PM # ::
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On the subject of "posturing" this reminds me of this.

HT:Aa

:: ashli 10:52 AM # ::
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I'm depressed lately.

I have an overly-lovey baby girl, and I couldn't be happier about that, because I myself am overly-lovey.

When I am doing dishes she comes and clings to my legs. When I am reading a book, she toddles over and parks her diapered rear right on my head, damned if I consume another word rather than love her. It is a rare moment that she allows herself an instant away. The other day I caught her having one.

One of my finer hobbies is dabbling in the art of stained glass. I can make lampshades and nightlights, candle screens, and figures, etc., but my favorite thing to make is the cliched window. <--scroll down there.

Before she died, my mother and I made a window together. It is set with lovely bevels, which, when the sun is setting in the west, cast vivid rainbows all across the living room. Colorful bands splash themselves in puddles on the floor. It was in one of these puddles that I secretly caught my one-year-old.

She was sitting with her legs stretched out as colored light played across her knees. Her face was filled with wonder as she fingered her newly technicolored flesh. She grabbed at the rainbows trying to hold them in her hands. She went here and there trying to pick them up off of the floor. Thrusting her tiny fists in the light, she observed at last rainbows situated in her palms. Of course she tried to eat them.

These moments are precious and real. They force her worth upon me; I see what I have without buffers. My heart fills to bursting. I love so much I ache. I am the luckiest girl in the world...

The moment I think it, I am shot down. I remember my illness, I remember my SICLE, I remember Tennessee and all the lost rainbows. My heart breaks and I can never pick up the pieces.

Life's multicolored bands of light are bittersweet. I can't know one truth and not the other. Would that I could. I would tuck it away in a shoebox and bury it in the wood at the edge of the yard never to be heard from again. Alas, love prevents that, and I've never mastered the art of un-loving. I simply don't know how.

And so it was last night that I, in the midst of myriad baby kisses from my satin-lipped, silly, loving punkin, began to feel the overwhelming ache for Tennessee and all that we had missed of love and life together. When my dove was safely resting I examined her little wrist bones and cried into my pillow. There were other wrist bones, precious and mine the same.

Moments like these I can't find God. The pain is a salt that smothers the passion of that flame. I am not big enough, so I call out to the One Who Is: "Find me!" And He does.

He wraps me in blankets of darkness, velvet like chocolate, vast as the sea... a place where I can hide. I fall away as the warm-heavy tingle begins in my legs and feet and slumber overtakes me. And there I am in a dream.

A child is playing with other children. He is the target of another child who is older, bigger. This big child has a wooden bat with a strategically placed nail. The small child makes up his mind to refrain from entering games from now on. He will read books instead, become a doctor or a scientist while everyone else gulps fresh air, rosy-cheeked and laughing.

"Naw, it's all in your head," I convince him. "Go out and play; work it out. It really can't be all that bad."

Cut to the next scene: a small boy post-play, sitting in a dim grey alley, legs crossed, staring out in a crisis-induced trance. Something is not right. Moisture sparkles at his collar where blood is pulsing from a nail-inflicted gash in his neck. He is all but drained. His mother finds him and wailing, cradles him in starving arms. He speaks calmy, saying things like, "It's alright Mother. I've just been out for a play. I'm leaving softly now. Don't cry. Goodbye, my dear." And then he is gone.

I run from the scene retiring to my grungy apartment, apparently in the heart of New York City in the 30's. I am looking for my son to hold in appreciation, to cling to for dear life. He is sitting in the windowseat as dead as a doornail, the underlying skin of his face tinged with the mottled blue-black blood of death. I am crushed with loss.

He looks at me and I at him. I ask him, "Do you want to go to heaven, love?"

He answers, "No, Mother. I want to stay."

"Well are you cold then?" I ask.

He replies, "No, I'm fine."

And so he is dead and alive in my life.

And I wake up yet somehow the dream hasn't ended.

I underestimated the detriment of abortion; I was that snowed, that unevolved, that loveless. My child, though aborted from my life, is not gone. S/he moves with me, walks with me, sleeps with me. I feel him/her in everything I do, because my children are my heart and my heart is not half-beating. The engines of fond regard are at full throttle. I am over-lovey. But then, I already said that.

:: ashli 9:35 AM # ::
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"It is the family's hope that all who mourn for their son, Hunter, would join them in thanking the Lord for his precious life," the statement read.

Short-lived isn't short-loved.

:: ashli 4:40 PM # ::
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Woman wakes after 20-year coma.

:: ashli 9:34 PM # ::
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Celebrities who support abortion.

:: ashli 9:00 PM # ::
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Boycott update.

Get out your checkbooks, people!
(So you can know when to put them away!)

:: ashli 8:47 PM # ::
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Happy birthday!!!

WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

:: ashli 8:35 PM # ::
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Woman's choice/right to have her baby denied.

:: ashli 12:04 AM # ::
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"Lakoff proposes that abortion advocates go on the attack to reclaim the term 'life,' labeling pro-life groups 'anti-life'..."

LOL!

Isaiah 5:20

:: ashli 12:01 AM # ::
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From "Sidewalk Counselor" Patte:

Sanctuary Ministries
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Hyde Park Center for Women
(owned by James Scott Pendergraft)
Tampa, Florida

Our Friend Wendy was quickly brought to tears over what we saw. Women and men going inside the abortion facility to kill their late term babies by having them delivered prematurely. There were also women arriving to have their smaller infants mangled and killed (sorry, but that's what abortion does).

"Brianna"...
When we called out to them, 14-year-old Brianna came right over with her mother "Pam". Both Brianna and her mom seemed in shock that they were even there at a place of death. They told us that Brianna was about 6 weeks pregnant. Wendy spoke to Brianna with such love and concern, saying "There is a way for this baby." I spoke to Brianna about adoption and assured her that we had a network of amazing people that actually cared about her, about her mother and her pre-born baby.

Brianna is shy. She stared down at the ground most of the time and didn’t speak much. I told Brianna: "It will take a strong woman to carry this baby full term," and added, "Brianna, something tells me that you are strong-willed." Brianna broke into a beautiful smile, revealing a mouth full of braces. Her mom Pam spoke up: “Oh yes, she is!”

I asked if they would be willing to give us their phone number to follow up with them and they said yes! Brianna and her mom left with information about a local crisis pregnancy center, and hopefully a changed mind and heart.

Update: August 3, 2005
A week went by and then two. I called Brianna and her mom a few times and left messages but they never returned my calls. This morning I finally got a call! It was Brianna's mom. I was delighted! Brianna is still pregnant and wants her baby. Pam is being strong for her daughter and her gestating grandbaby. She explained that they just found out that Brianna has gonorrhea and they can’t afford to have her treated.It will take a several weeks until Medicaid kicks in, and they are having financial difficulty. Pam asked: "Can you help us?" I responded with an enthusiastic "YES!!!"

I have arranged for Brianna to receive free medical care but Brianna and her mom may have some needs in the future. Would you be willing to send a tax deductible donation for our Sanctuary Tampa ministry? Even if it’s just $5, we can use it for Brianna or another local girl that we personally know and are helping.

Please send your tax deductible donation to:

Covenant Presbyterian Church
PO Box 309
Goldenrod, FL 32733
Attn: Sharon Leigh

Kindly make the check out to Sanctuary Ministries BUT make sure you mark in the memo section "for Tampa Ministry".

We'd like you to know that when one of the moms we reach has a need, we do not hand cash to anyone. We usually pay the need directly (for example: If they need an electric bill paid, we pay the bill directly to the electric company or the doctor is paid directly, etc).

Will you prayerfully consider supporting Sanctuary Ministries Tampa on a regular basis?"

Dude, if a hundred of us send five bucks, that's five hundred bucks. I'm sending a fiver. I know Patte personally, and the money will go where she says it will.

Will you join me in helping Brianna, her mom and her little one? What a courageous girl. She's 14, and she has decided to take responsibility for the child she helped to bring into being. That's hopeful.

:: ashli 11:32 PM # ::
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Little Girl Torres is making it!!!

:: ashli 5:31 PM # ::
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