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

:: Thursday, June 30, 2005 ::

I am taking a college class in the fall while continuing to be a SAH, canning, crocheting, embroidering, cloth-diapering, bread-baking, home-schooling mom. I'm also going to be directing a scouting program. Sooo... I'm going to bid a fond farewell to blogging.

After abortion I'm in quite a fix. I choose to survive, however, so every now and again I will post some tragic internal happening out of sheer necessity... those desperate, unshakable, marrow moments where it's either blog or blade.

I'll slip in and out quietly; you'll not even notice. Forgetfulness' cobwebbs will hang themselves. The nature of time and inactivity. One week and I'll be reduced to obsolescence. I accept it.

Even so, a short span remains... though I fear it will be akin to the final Seinfeld episode: nothing major and somewhat disappointing.

I promise I will get to the tea cup and the ornament.

:: ashli 12:20 AM # ::
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Haha! Last night I dreamt that I was sexy, 17 and in my senior year of high school again. The bell rang indicating the end of coach Gwaltney's 4th period biology class. I went to my locker where my tall, dark and handsome boyfriend was waiting. And who do you think he was?

Nick Cannon!

ROFL!!!

Apparently, he had me at "pro-life".
;-)

:: ashli 3:00 PM # ::
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Imnotsorry.net has a new theme song.

(HT: Cheerful Oncologist)

:: ashli 1:05 AM # ::
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In typical "my team v. your team" debates, abortion supporters are oft heard lamenting the sad fact that "pro-lifers" are closed-minded and only interested in their own impossible opinions. If we would only, for one moment, consider their perspective...

To be fair, "pro-lifers" have similar complaints.

I, having been a staunch "pro-choice" thumper for the vast majority of my life, so much so that I "availed" myself of the abominable option, am not certain to what extent I should concern myself with the "pro-choice" perspective. It was my perspective.

25 years of avid abortion advocacy are not easy to forget. I remember my rationale. I remember my low opinion of "pro-lifers" and the decades of misinformation that precipitated it. Some of them tried to tell me, but I would not hear.

Abortion made me an opponent of abortion. The movement was my grandest defect, and I've since defected. I will never go back. Never again. And I'm not sorry.

To all those abortion supporters out there, I hear you talking. I feel you caring in the only way you know how, the voices of your teachers ricocheting off of you, reverberating hollow "best wishes" throughout a lost society. But you're wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. About anything.

You're a dusty reflection of myself as you tell me what women need to survive, that children can be a gangrene that requires life-preserving amputation. It's a lie. I know. I lied it for 25 years.

I was on your side for so long but it slaughtered me. I could shield myself from theory but not from reality. It came into my life, hungry, for everything that ultimately mattered to me. I was dumbfounded by an inherent, scarlet truth from which I could not hide.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing you can say to me, that I haven't at some point said to someone else to justify abortion. You can't kid a kidder.

I know your rationale. I know your low opinion of me and the decades of misinformation that precipitated it. I also know the truth, and it's universal. Killing children is a gross violation of human rights. It's discrimination at it's utter worst. It's unethical. It's harmful. It's deevolution, and it's taking us nowhere fast.

I'm trying to tell you, but I know you will not hear.

:: ashli 6:18 PM # ::
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(Approximately 90% of children with Down Syndrome are aborted.)

I have a friend who has a son with Down Syndrome. He is child number 6. My pal, J, was told all sorts of insensitive things with this little fella was born. A good Christian friend told J that her baby was going to be her "cross to bear". He was only two weeks out! J cried for days.

J knew that her little one had a difference before birth. It looked like there was an issue on the sonograms, but the doctors couldn't give an exact diagnosis, and she wouldn't submit to testing. She has a sister who had an amnio that ended the pregnancy. Luckily she was far enough along that the babies lived. Even so, J wasn't going that route. She believed that God gave her the child He wanted her to have. She knew that God put him in this world, and she certainly wan't going to do anything to compromise that. Doctors thought the diagnosis could be hydrocephaly or any number of things. And then he was born with Down Syndrome.

His daddy wasn't freaked, didn't feel inept. Dad, you see, is a cardiologist and is confident where medical issues are concerned. Not to mention the fact that one of Dad's sisters worked with people with Down Syndrome and was bringing friends with extra chromosomes home all the time. Dad loved his son and was hopeful.

Mom grieved and adjusted. Down Syndrome is not what she particularly wanted for her child, but she knew she loved him and knew he would need more of her love than even her other five children.

Her son is around ten now. J is bilingual, and he knows tons of Spanish from computer programs. None of his siblings, not even the oldest ones, know as much Spanish as he does. They gripe about it, but he's the only one willing to sit down and give it his full attention for hours on end. Even his mom doesn't have that kind of patience.

One of his brothers was playing with him the other day when Mom walked by. The typically chromosomed lad proclaimed, "Mom, I wish everybody could have a brother with Down Syndrome!"

What can I say? The kid is a joy. When we were introduced, he came right up and gave me a big ol' sweet hug. Why? He just felt like it. How many times have you felt like jumping up and hugging someone but resisted the urge because you thought you might be rejected or deemed corny or touchy-feely? This kid doesn't have hang ups. He just loves when he feels like it. Along with an extra chromosome, he has been given extra love, extra love which he doles out freely to needy. And the needy are us.

The world is a better place with him in it.

:: ashli 8:47 AM # ::
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"I held my breath as she approached but before I could speak she produced the ring I had bestowed upon her just a fortnight ago..."

Biggest mistake of her life!

(HT: Aa)

:: ashli 11:14 AM # ::
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This reminds me of this. (HT: Jill Stanek)

While I don't know for certain where the final destination of these Presbyterian "Christians" will be... I have a feeling they'd better pack shorts.

Let's pray that they see the Light before that ticket is punched.

:: ashli 10:47 AM # ::
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Forget "Sidewalk Counselors". We need lions!

:: ashli 12:59 AM # ::
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Wav of Natalie Grant's Held.

:: ashli 12:35 AM # ::
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Evidently, Harvard Med School grads refer to abortion as "miscarriage".

Are they stupid? Or are they lying to sell something that is otherwise unpalatable?

:: ashli 2:42 PM # ::
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From a Harvard-trained abortionist's website:

"It might also help you to know that if you are in the early stages of pregnancy, there is no embryo. In fact, if it has been less than 7 weeks since your last period, your pregnancy consists of nothing visible to the eye except a tiny, empty sac in your uterus."

Remind me never to send my children to Harvard.

(And btw, can't these people be sued for lying so blatantly? "Empty sac" and "no embryo" my arse.)

:: ashli 2:30 PM # ::
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Donate, donate, donate!

(Big brother thanks you.)

HT: The banAnnie

:: ashli 1:50 PM # ::
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Leftist artwork features babies, not "globs of tissue" in the soup.

Further evidence that no matter what side we identify with we all know what abortion is and does.

So where's the liberal outrage over this very serious breach of human rights?

:: ashli 8:32 AM # ::
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Conclusion.

:: ashli 11:50 AM # ::
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Part IV.

:: ashli 1:21 PM # ::
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Part III.

:: ashli 11:41 AM # ::
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Part II.

:: ashli 11:22 AM # ::
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I've listened to it 4 or 5 times just to make certain that it's me she's talking about and that this actually, actually happened in my life.

"Ashli eventually chose abortion."

I wince and stanch the salty flow each time I hear the words. It's me alright. Apparently there's no escaping it.

:: ashli 11:46 AM # ::
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I'm a brains girl. Some like brawn or buns. I like brains. The more convoluted the better.

There are those who mistake me for smart because I like 10-dollar words, learn some on occasion, and even use them correctly half of the time. I've read a few outdated books and been around the block. But really, I'm not an intellect, a fact that is screamingly obvious for those who enjoy on a regular basis the truly genius notions of folk like Emily and the Banannie at Aa. Oh, I'd like to be brilliant, but I have neither the time nor, perhaps, the capacity, so I press on as I am, thankful to be in the occasional company of the genuinely erudite.

I came across one such fellow in my last year of college. This unnamed lad was a few years younger but had a "To serve man" forebrain. We got on swimmingly, but I was engaged, so it could only be platonic... though had I not been engaged this dude's brain would have wooed me for certain. I barely understood a word he said, which enamoured me. At any rate, we spent long hours together in 2 A.M. coffee houses torturing literature and subject.

To the sensible it poses a boring nightmare, yet in that space and time it was our rapture. The devil's advocate, he too-frequently challenged my feelings and perceptions surrounding my impending marriage. It both intrigued and annoyed me but, due to his tremendous intellect, mainly teetered on the edge of provocativeness.

We'll call him the Admiral. It was fitting and thus was he dubbed.

One sudden day he informed me that he would be leaving. "Goodbye," was all he said. Until that point we had been thick as theives going everywhere, doing everything together. As if a wand waved he disintegrated. A literal "poof!" in thin air. He left no contact information. None whatever. I found it curious and unfulfilling.

Years later I stumbled upon an online list of mind-numbing literature read by the Admiral under the direction of his swollen cerebrum. I ventured an email and came pixel to pixel with the Admiral once again. So much had happened in my life, but first and foremost I wanted to know why, when he had spent months grilling me on my youth and engagement, he had neglected to inform me of his own simultaneous engagement. You see, the Admiral left our fair city to wed his long-time fiance! He was long gone before this information finally found me.

There was no explanation really. Only that the wedding was lovely, the vows in Gaelic, the end. It sufficed; I was too laden with matters of consequence to care. In a brief reintroduction, he offered a small slice of current events: he was in med school studying to be a pediatrician. Of all things, a pediatrician.

Not much else. He was wooden and guarded as I told him a bit of my illness-related fate. I provided the url to my website and bid him what felt like an eternal farewell.

A day later I received a lingering, passionate email.

It seems he and his darling, freshly-married, were graced with an unplanned pregnancy, one that they perceived as a threat to their professional and perhaps emotional future. It was decided that the child had come too soon, and so the child was turned away in an early, surgical abortion. Uncharacteristically, the Admiral was permitted to attend, that is to say... he was present. He described in detail the procedure and the concurrent incomprehensible mix of revulsion and emasculation that he experienced. He watched as his child was liquified and aspriated, and this effectively ended the Admiral's life.

All at once, he became a survivor. It was nothing the intelligent doctor-to-be could have foreseen.

An only child, his parents had both died while he was still young. High school if I recall correctly. He lived on his own for a while, an avid cyclist, camping in the woods, providing his own medical care, eccentric genius that he was.

Abortion touched him in a place he did not know existed. His child was a light in the dark, a fact that had not been illumined until abortion extinguished vibrant rays. And what was left was darker than anything before.

Vowing never ever again to be rendered so helpless, and feeling unfit, the Admiral, a secret rarity, stole away and underwent permanent sterilization. His wife was none the wiser. He was ruined and spent and suicide was his aim. You'd have to know him to understand that this was not the cliche cry for help but mere information, notice of intent. Distressed, my subtle, wiley attempts at mooring him to life met only with sealing portals.

One sudden day he informed me that he would be leaving. "Goodbye," was all he said.

:: ashli 5:42 PM # ::
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(Massive hat tip to Stanek for today' pick-me-up entry.)

Warning: Clicking on the following link will take you to music, so turn the sound down if you need to:

"What you want morning sickness or the sickness of mourning?"

I am happily stunned by Nick Cannon's choice to come out with a true, very sensitive issue between he and his mother. Apparently, the video aired on MTV's Total Request Live yesterday.

Here's what some are saying about the song.

This kid is young, gorgeous, hip, hot and pretty much "on the scene" to be bustin' out with somethin' this strongly, unapologetically life-valuing. I am VERY encouraged. Nick has tackled something that not many of his famous peers are willing to take on, and he has done it beautifully. After all, it is his story; it gives him a certain right, appropriateness, authority.

I am so flipping ecstatic to LEARN of Can I live! This will be the first rap album I've purchased since Run D.M.C. in the mid 80's! Whoops, did I just say "album"? HA!

Watch the phenomenal video here (click "play now" in the lower left corner) and be prepared to cry your eyes out. I know I did.

Go, Nick!

:: ashli 9:26 PM # ::
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World-rocking song by Natalie Grant:

Held
Two months is too little.
They let him go.
They had no sudden healing.
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.

Who told us we'd be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We're asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It's unfair.

Chorus:
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.

This hand is bitterness.
We want to taste it, let the hatred know our sorrow.
The wise hands opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow.

(Chorus)

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.

Bridge:
If hope is born of suffering.
If this is only the beginning.
Can we not wait for one hour watching for our Savior?

(Chorus)

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.

:: ashli 12:19 PM # ::
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The big, beautiful banAnnie does it again!



Wittig '02

:: ashli 3:23 AM # ::
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In the Womb is utterly intriguing. It will be on again Thursday at 7 PM and again at 9 PM. Here's another preview.

:: ashli 7:32 AM # ::
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It's 4 in the morning, so number three has to be uber brief:

Building Babies...
Things that stood out/comments:

1. If a woman has unprotected sex during ovulation there is a 1 in 4 chance that she will become pregnant.

2. Considering the combinations of genetic information that could be imparted upon fertilization via 23 paternal chromosomes and 23 maternal chromosomes, there is a 1 in 64 billion chance of being who you are.

3. The neutral program claims that a new life begins with the diploid cell. (But this is only because the show is talking about human reproduction as a science, not a political right to abortion. Were the show about abortion life would only begin upon being wanted by the host.)

4. The program states that each of us is a mass of individual cells working together. So it's true that what is being aborted is a mass of cells. A mass of cells is also spread-eagle in stirrups. A mass of cells is also holding a cannula in hand and aspirating another mass of cells. Language is fun. But that stands to reason; it has been developed over thousands of years by many masses of cells.

5. During pregnancy a woman produces as many hormones as she would in 150 years of non-pregnant life. Obviously pregnancy is a great time to make life-altering decisions.

6. MRI's of embryos provide fascinating images. (And I use the term "embryos" like I use the term "toddlers".)

7. The program's voiceover says that the embryo MRI's allow us to "see ourselves as we've never seen ourselves before." This adds new dimension to the hackneyed "Our Bodies, Ourselves."

8. "This baby's mother..." was used in reference to an image of an 8-week fetus.

9. Fetal pain: a gestating child less than 12 weeks old was referred to as having "sensitive skin".

10. I couldn't find anything on the Net, but someone named Dr. Nelson can take an ultrasound of a baby and scan it into a machine that makes a 3D sculpture of said child. Moms can take home the novelty and more easily "connect" with baby.

11. Dr. Bernard Benoit's ultrasounds were discussed.

12. The fetoscope is mentioned.

13. The bad news is the term "it" was sometimes used in reference to the developing child. (And I use the term "developing child" to describe not only a fetus but also my six-year-old and any other child who is currently developing... my husband for instance. D'harhar!)

:: ashli 7:24 AM # ::
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This is flipping ridiculous. They're trying the 19-year-old for murder when, at best, all he is "guilty" of under current law is performing an illegal abortion (which abortion advocates claim legal abortion prevents).

Regarding the murder charges, either killing gestating children is a crime or it's not. Pick one an go with it, America.

:: ashli 3:57 PM # ::
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Protecting criminals who sexually assault the differently abled (and killing the differently abled)... another fine service brought to you by George Tiller.

More from Jill Stanek, founder of this year's "IT" blog.

:: ashli 10:11 AM # ::
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Brooke Shields while Tom Cruises for a bruising.

"The actress recently took a swipe at Cruise's religious beliefs, by saying she wouldn't take advice from someone who devotes his life to aliens."

I don't have a problem with criticizing antidepressants in general or ridiculing the move to label rational emotional responses as psychic morbidity. However, I thought that singling out Brooke and her recent harrowing experience with severe post-partum depression was in incredibly poor taste.

Has Tom gone monkeynuts? He dumped Nicole Kidman, didn't he. End of story.

("Too many people use abortion as a form of birth control. And that's very wrong. I could never, ever have an abortion." ~Brooke Shields)

:: ashli 7:18 PM # ::
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Looks like another botched abortion for the Tiller Gang.

Excerpts:

"Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who has twice vetoed bills to increase health and safety standards at Kansas abortion facilities, asked the Kansas Board of Healing Arts to investigate the January abortion death.

Fearing the legislation she vetoed could have spared the woman's life, in a memo to the agency, she asked for the BOHA's 'determination of whether H.B. 2176, passed by the 2003 legislature would have in any way mitigated or prevented the patient's death.'"

"Tiller's Pro Kan Do Political Action Committee and his abortion business donated more than $20,000 to [Sebelius'] campaigns between 1994 and 2002. In 2003, Tiller lobbied strongly against passage of the abortion facility regulation bill."

"Sebelius' concern about women's health and safety at Kansas abortion facilities is too late in coming."

"Kathleen Sebelius is protecting the abortion industry and her donors, not women."

Take note:
Money talks and bullsh**... maims and kills women.

:: ashli 9:12 AM # ::
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Number 4 on my "to blog" list...

Once I got a catalog in the mail. The pictures of the items for sale were accompanied by letters of the alphabet which corresponded with descriptions of the items so that the reader could tell which description/price went with which product. For the life of me, I will never know why the editors decided to pair a product entitled "Art" with the letter "f", making the item appear thusly:

f.Art

Since that fateful day, whenever I chance to see art that doesn't impress me, I refer to it as f.art, as in, "That's not art, that's f.art."

I feel I have introduced the term properly, but just in case any confusion remains, this is f.art:



I'd like to take this opportunity to counter the above
abortion-advocating f.art with my own (graphic) attempt.

One down, three to go.

:: ashli 1:42 PM # ::
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Out of the depths of tragedy and sorrow...

:: ashli 12:31 PM # ::
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I watched "Building Babies" on Discovery Health last night, and I have several comments that I can't blog presently. (If you missed the show, you can catch it again this Saturday, June 4, at 2 in the afternoon.) I also want to talk about this little piece of "art".

Add these to the "to blog" list.

:: ashli 9:16 AM # ::
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We flipping did it!!!

Notice the "big government" comment. Nice try.

It looked like this bill would pass into law a couple of years ago, but Senator Jim King slyly shelved it when everyone left town early for a three-day weekend... so there was no one to protest. Instead of going to the senate for its scheduled vote, the bill just silently disappeared. How convenient.

This year Florida is running with new dogs, and sanity finally prevailed.

If you would like to send a note to Dr. Armstrong thanking him for his crucial participation (the man hopped on a plane in the middle of a thunderstorm to testify and then hopped right back on the plane to get to a medical obligation afterwards) then please send me an email and I will get it to him. He is just the most humble, coolest dude ever.

:: ashli 8:52 AM # ::
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