Letters to the Editor
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re: Who pays for the baby?
Marea insists that to be consistent pro-lifers must lobby for more government charity programs, as if this will solve everything. She says that we who want to protect children from abortion must promote the agenda that government is the best entity to solve all problems. But making our society more child and family friendly is a multifaceted issue that includes many aspects including the components of private charity and self-responsibility. In any case, Marea’s characterization of “the pro-life lobby” is greatly oversimplified because pro-lifers are generally extremely generous people. At risk of patting myself on the back, I wrote a check today to cover the car payment of a young pregnant and unmarried woman. How much should we give away to make our position credible?
Who pays? There is another aspect: for every newborn child of every race in this country there are waiting lists of prosperous parents waiting to adopt.
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ignorant
As I drove 2 hours for an abortion in ohio last year (it's getting increasingly difficult to get one there, too), I was overwhelmed with feelings of saddness, disgust with myself for the choice I made, and nervousness. my partner and i made the choice to abort our child for financial reasons, and i knew there really was no other "choice", but i was extremely ashamed and we agreed to keep it betweeen the two of us. as soon as we approached the clinic, those feelings morphed into a different kind of disgust when i saw the protestors, some as young as about 5 years old, leering at us and yelling obscenities and "murderers" at us. some had video cameras (which the clinic earlier informed us were just a scare tactic, because it is still illegal in ohio to film on the property), almost all had blown up posters of fetuses. these people claiming to be good, moral parents had corrupted their poor children with hatred for something their young minds cant even comprehend. the decision of abortion is never a snap decision without any afterthought. it is a harrowing experience which i would never wish on anyone and hope to never have to experience again. these people who are trying to make a woman's private, painful situation worse should be arrested, sent to jail, with their children taken to child services. the state should come up with some sort of punishment that would make them feel one tenth of the conflicting emotions running through a woman unable to support her unborn child and is forced to get rid of it. maybe then they would stop being so ignorant.
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Heaven will tear you apart
Don't the religious types who oppose abortion believe that the aborted just go to "heaven" anyway? Do they ever stop to really think about this?
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Response to the Posting Titled ignorant
Response to the Posting Titled ignorant
If you came to the abortion place in our town you would see something a little different than Michelle Goldburg’s description in her article. In our town there will be anywhere from three to 20 people standing around quietly praying or talking. Under a maple tree on the sidewalk a woman speaks on a small Peavy sound system. She uses it not to be loud, but to be heard by the people lined up to enter the abortion building door, since she would rather not shout. She might be a mother of adopted children or she might be an African-American woman with five children of her own, some of whom will be present with her. Near the driveway, another woman offers literature (information on fetal development, resources in the community, etc.) to people driving into the parking lot. Across the street on Saturday morning I am holding a large poster showing a horrific image of a 10 week aborted child, but these posters are not usually present during the week. On the ground against the light pole will be a large colorful “baby bag” –useful gifts for mother and child, symbolic of the love and help available to a mom who changes her mind about abortion. Whenever possible we give a baby shower. We have an Ob-Gyn who will consult with people at the abortion place on the telephone at a moment’s notice and will deliver babies at no charge to the parents, and we have people who are available to work with parents to see that they have everything they need. Anyway, outside the abortion site we are offering the choice of life. No one who comes to this place is forced by circumstances to kill their child.
Since I became a parent 24 years ago we have included our six children in our anti-abortion work. It is something they have grown up with. They have seen their Dad in the newspapers, on television and in the courtroom on trial as a defendant. (I won all of my cases.) If anything, this involvement has made them sensitive to the needs of hurting, needy people in our nation and around the world. I have always told them to find the greatest human need, where there is the least help, and go there. My 20 year old son was in Guatemala last year, and when Hurricane Stan blew through and a thousand and more people were killed by mudslides and floods, he went into the mountains and found a couple communities who had lost their homes. He returned to the city, and with his own money bought materials for shelters and hired a truck to take them up to the communities.
We have focused on life and death, but there also is joy in our family. My children are musicians that play primarily Celtic, with fiddle, Irish bagpipes, concertina and whatnot. My wife teaches folk dancing. Right now my 20 year old son and my 23 year old daughter are in London on their way to Scotland to explore this music’s origins. We are on the street, but we also spend time in untrammeled wilderness as a rest. All of the families involved in sidewalk counseling in our town foster joy in their homes, though in different ways. There is no need for social services to intervene.
And there’s been times when we had no money and used food stamps. Except for the first two children we never had insurance to cover childbirth, and whenever my wife told me that she was pregnant, I would say, “We’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.” Four of our children were born at home with a midwife.
Children are a blessing, and there is always a way to choose life.
Mother Teresa said, “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”