Tag Archives: womb

Of Band-aids and False Compassion

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From Zoey (meaning “Life”)

“Joanna,
Overall I don’t support abortion and I understand what you are saying but I still think that there should be exceptions. There are a lot of children under the age of 12 that have given birth so it’s not a rare situation. In some instances both the mother and the baby died in childbirth. It is not God’s will for a young lady to end up pregnant and then for her and her baby to die in the process. A woman’s body is not physically prepared to deliver a child until the age of 18. It is not rare anymore for a small child to end up pregnant. I don’t believe that its ever God’s will for a child to be pregnant. A lot of people don’t have health insurance and it costs $10,000 to give birth in a hospital. We live in a very fortunate country where pregnancy centers take in young women with a baby on the way and no place to go but other countries don’t. Think of a young child in India or Mexico that has gotten raped, ended up pregnant and doesn’t have any means to take care of the child and no one to help her. Think of all the children that can’t afford to go to a hospital. If there are any problems whatsoever and they can’t deliver the baby naturally, both the mother and the baby die. Other countries don’t have non-profit charities and involved churches or pregnancy hot lines, help centers and women’s shelters. In poorer places both the mother and the child end up homeless, or dead. Just because we have the technology to ensure a proper birthing process doesn’t mean that everyone can afford it. I’m a Catholic, I don’t support abortion, I was in danger of abortion myself, my first name is the Greek word for LIFE and my grandmother gave birth to 15 children, and only 10 survived. And even *I* can make some exceptions for those that really need it.”

Joanna to Zoey:

Dear Zoey (meaning “life”),

You say “I’m a Catholic, I don’t support abortion.” What does that actually mean if you then turn around and become you own Magisterium with your statement, “And even *I* can make some exceptions for those that really need it.”

God loves and values the life of each individual regardless of circumstance and without discriminating on the basis of age or social situation. You seem to place a greater value on lives because of perceived need, (i.e. pregnant 12-year-old) but would abort the life of the even more vulnerable 12 week old living in the womb. Do you really think abortion doesn’t severely scar at any age ( emotionally, physically or spiritually?)  Invading the womb with death is more than a moral intrusion. Abortion is a token band-aid. Allowing abortion has led to tolerance and acceptance in our broken society, so that now it is an over-the-counter/vending machine “choice” with no one the wiser. Intrinsic evil is never morally okay. One in four women in our country has had an abortion , and I’m guessing, they weren’t pregnant 12 year olds. A sin like rape or incest is also not justification for another sin, murder. The perpetrator of the killing being a man or woman with an MD after their name doesn’t make it less deadly, nor that fact that the media or law makers gives it the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Facts versing fantasy:


Abortion Statistics

The following is a list of useful abortion statistics as well as some facts on abortifacients. All abortion numbers are derived from pro-abortion sources courtesy of The Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood’s Family Planning Perspectives.Click here for the Guttmacher Institute’s latest fact sheet on abortion.WORLDWIDENumber of abortions per year: Approximately 42 Million 
Number of abortions per day: Approximately 115,000Where abortions occur:
83% of all abortions are obtained in developing countries and 17% occur in developed countries.

© Copyright 1996-2008, The Alan Guttmacher Institute. (www.agi-usa.org)

UNITED STATES

Number of abortions per year: 1.37 Million (1996)
Number of abortions per day: Approximately 3,700

Who’s having abortions (age)?
52% of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions; Teenagers obtain 20% and girls under 15 account for 1.2%.

Who’s having abortions (race)?
While white women obtain 60% of all abortions, their abortion rate is well below that of minority women. Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly 2 times as likely.

Who’s having abortions (marital status)?
64.4% of all abortions are performed on never-married women; Married women account for 18.4% of all abortions and divorced women obtain 9.4%.

Who’s having abortions (religion)?
Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as “Born-again/Evangelical”.

Who’s having abortions (income)?
Women with family incomes less than $15,000 obtain 28.7% of all abortions; Women with family incomes between $15,000 and $29,999 obtain 19.5%; Women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999 obtain 38.0%; Women with family incomes over $60,000 obtain 13.8%.

Why women have abortions
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).

At what gestational ages are abortions performed:
52% of all abortions occur before the 9th week of pregnancy, 25% happen between the 9th & 10th week, 12% happen between the 11th and 12th week, 6% happen between the 13th & 15th week, 4% happen between the 16th & 20th week, and 1% of all abortions (16,450/yr.) happen after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Likelihood of abortion:
An estimated 43% of all women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old. 47% of all abortions are performed on women who have had at least one previous abortion.

Abortion coverage:
48% of all abortion facilities provide services after the 12th week of pregnancy. 9 in 10 managed care plans routinely cover abortion or provide limited coverage. About 14% of all abortions in the United States are paid for with public funds, virtually all of which are state funds. 16 states (CA, CT, HI, ED, IL, MA , MD, MD, MN, MT, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA and WV) pay for abortions for some poor women.

© Copyright 1998, The Alan Guttmacher Institute. (www.agi-usa.org)
© Copyright 1997, The Alan Guttmacher Institute. (www.agi-usa.org)
© Copyright 1995, Family Planning Perspectives
© Copyright 1988, Family Planning Perspectives

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Life Will Out

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Michael Clancy took this amazing photograph. Slide show like no other.

As a photojournalist, my job is to tell stories through pictures. The experience of taking this photograph has had a profound effect on me, and I’m proud to share this moment with you.

Life – Not An Abstraction!

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Count the Blessings? of Abortion: 50,000,000

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When you think you’ve heard it all, Amy Welborn tells you that the unanimously elected a new dean, Dr. Katherine Ragsdale of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge is preaching Abortion is a Blessing!

As quoted by Chris Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal:

And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing

and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing – who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes — in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You’re engaged in holy work.

Can there be anything sadder ? Convenience over conscience, money over morals, sex over sacredness, what are those Doctors of Divinity thinking.  Dr. Katherine Ragsdale is their unanimous choice.  I can better understand why questions of the true Presence of Christ in the Eucharist are at issue when these people cannot recognize the true presence of a child in the womb.

Pursuing Holiness has this: [UPDATE: Ms. Ragsdale deleted the sermon, but on the intarweb things have a zombie-like way of coming back to get you. Cached copy is here. And for posterity, here’s a PDF of the cached page with Our Work Is Not Done.  Why do you think she deleted it?

Educators Fail – Lawmakers Fail – Journalists Fail – False Compassion Fails!

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We have important moral and ethical problems to face in America and in the world.  In order to make educated decisions, people need to be educated.  Our present culture seems determined to keep the people, young and old, in the dark as to the life that lives and moves and has its being within a mother’s womb.

National Geographic will take you inside the womb, so that you can watch the reality.  While Planned Parenthood, funded by U.S. dollars, enters into the most personal and profound decisions women can make, offers less than the reality.  For the woman making a life changing decision, a decision that will impact, for better or worse, how she thinks and feels about herself and others,especially her own child, Planned Parenthood obscures the facts in favor of  its own agenda.  Planned Parenthood will, for instance, turn the monitor away from the pregnant mother during a sonogram procedure.  Why trouble the client with the fact within the womb of their client, an actual picture of the truth, the infant/fetus growing  within them.  Why is that? Could it be that seeing is believing and believing can effect a decision to abort, when such a decision would effect the financial bottom line of this booming mega-business?

Our schools are no better.  Values-free education is of  no value when it comes to living a moral, ethical human life.  Giving teenagers less than science, and telling them less than the actuality of  pregnancy and person-hood is to fail them.  We propagandize them, when we pretend they will not be effected by decisions that society makes for them in lieu of  the education that can with present technology show them, in flesh and blood, not only the life in the womb, but abortion as it really is.

When the young teenager is aborted of the baby she carries within her, she sees it and feels it, and then has to live with it.  What teacher, lawmaker, journalist or councilor has prepared her for this reality, rather than failed her  in the name of compassion and/or convenience?  False compassion leaves scars too deep to be helped by a brochure hastily given before dismissing the girl to make way for their next act of “mercy?”

The education needed for today’s moral and ethical decisions goes beyond the facts of pregnancy to the heavy lifting science touching on  embryonic stem cell research.  Here journalistic misinformation and purposeful skewing of the facts muddy the waters. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput spoke of  “The Evil of Embryo Destruction – In embryonic stem cell research, end does not justify the means.”

Commenting on journalistic integrity Chaput responses to the Denver Post:

In the debate over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, some of the massive media coverage has been fair, accurate and thorough, but much of it — too much of it — has fallen short of reasonable journalistic standards.

By far the most troubling piece I’ve seen was the editorial, “Zealotry vs. science,” published by the Denver Post….. in this case, the Post used bombast and misleading information to argue its support for federally funded embryonic stem cell research in a way reminiscent of a not-very-bright bully.”

Ed Morrisey talks about the issue here with more from Archbishop Chaput

Living in the Womb

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I should be in bed.  It’s too early for this, but if I don’t share it, I won’t be able to get back to bed as I still imagine I will do.  I was listening to a rosary reflection on the Visitation.  Here in essence is what was said:

Our Lady, now expecting,  goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth.  We can be sure that during the journey and the months she was caring for Elizabeth, Mary never forgot the baby growing within her.  Jesus, being fashioned, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit; that’s an image of what happens to us in our life of grace. That intimate fashioning is what my whole life as a christian is to be.

When we are in the state of grace, we have the Holy Trinity living in us.  We, however, can be so caught up in daily life and its demands,  that we don’t think of that at all.  If we did, we’d be aware of the movements of grace within, and so be motivated more by grace than by nature.  Jesus being fashioned by God in the womb of His Mother Mary; to be in touch with this mystery is not to leave Jesus alone, as it were, but to be with Him as Mary was.  The reality of our life of grace is that,  like Jesus, we are very dependent on Mary.  It is our Father’s plan: to be fashioned by God in intimate dependence on Mary into a perfect likeness of Jesus.  This is the essence of our whole life of  in the Spirit.  Our entire life is now wrapped up in loving God.  In Mary,  for the first time, God is adequately loved by a creature.