What about their rights?

If you have had an abortion, and suffer from post-traumatic abortion pain, there is hope and help at Project Rachel's website http://hopeafterabortion.com/.

If you have been raped and are being pressured into an abortion, or considering whether to abort, please see http://hopeafterrapeconception.org/MothersStories.html.

If you are suffering from either having had an abortion, rape, rape conception I have to warn you my passion on this issue (as obvious from overuse of font enhanced emphasis throughout) may have resulted in thoughts being conveyed in ways that will upset you. This is not intended.

Our "Witness to Life" activities are multiplying at my daughter's high school.  This is the group that I ended up being a regular driver and chaperone by chance (definition 7:  Holy Spirit's orchestration).  Instead of just the one Saturday trip to the Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois - which was the largest abortion facility opened in the United States when it opened (since then this evil organization has opened larger facilities) we are now also visiting a facility in downtown Chicago.

Before I start what I hope to be a persuasive, fact filled, inspired rant, I wanted to relay a couple of heart-touching incidents from this past Saturday when we went to the Abortion Clinic at I-90 - "the Kennedy" and Washington Boulevard in the Chicago Loop (downtown Chicago).

• Six escorts were out in yellow traffic vests, and they were replaced at regular intervals by other escorts.  The escorts have their own website and a location for food, beverages, and wind-down after a volunteer shift is completed.  They started immediately telling our high school kids where the 50 feet ended so they wouldn't be in violation of the 50 foot bubble law.  This is a local law that limits the location of free speech to 50 feet + 1 mm (I guess), for the safety of the employees, patrons, and pro-life activists.  Problem is they were inaccurate with what they told our team.  I was ready to set up our sidewalk counselors just past where the escorts told us but the sidewalk counseling woman that had been out there for 3 hours previous, shook her head no.  She said, "I have a measuring tape in my car.  Let's find out where it really is."  One of the escorts said, "I have a better idea.  Let's have the Police come and measure it for you."  I told her "Go ahead and get the measuring tape, I'll help you."  It was about 50 feet in from where the escorts told us, which was one problem.  Second problem was I accidentally bonked the other sidewalk counselor in the head when I was helping to roll the tape back up.  I got this email on Monday from the brave woman with the measuring tape pictured below (also pictured is the escort in front of the door in a pose):
  

• Thank you so much for coming. I have been wanting to measure 50 feet in front of the escorts for the longest time. Attached is the flier we made up. Blessings to you and all your students.

• Our girls, sidewalk counselors, range in bravery, but every single one of them is brave, and self-sacrificing as they are often getting up within 3 or 4 hours to make it to one of these early Saturday morning events.  One of them asked an escort, why she decided to do this.

• The escort, a woman about my age, articulate, and filled with confidence said, "Because something happened to me once where I had to have an abortion.  I was raped and it was necessary for me to get an abortion because I should not have to deliver the rapist's baby."
• I explained privately to our girls, that might be her view, but there are also rape victims who are in the pro-life movement that regret that family and friends encouraged her to have an abortion and that it compounded the trauma.  I didn't express my cynical thought that this might be another inaccuracy handy for young, impressionable teenage pro-life activists to make them rethink how they are spending their Saturday morning.
• Later, shortly before we left, the same two girls went up to the escort and told her, "We are really sorry for what happened to you.  Is there anything you would tell girls that might protect them from something like that happening to them?"
• The escort went up to them and hugged them both!
• They could have been cynical, or uncompassionate, instead they assumed this was a wounded woman and they wanted her to know that they did care about her.  It was a stronger testimony than when I heard a counselor at the Aurora clinic yell to the escort there (they only had one; there were 6 at all times present at the Loop clinic), "You are beautiful on the outside.  Why don't you get beautiful on the inside by repenting of your sin, being complicit in the killing of innocent babies."  Her heart was strong too, but have to think my girls, one of whom was my daughter . . . who is not the bravest sidewalk counselor, had a bigger impact reflecting the compassion of Christ than the woman proseltyizing from the curb of the Planned Parenthood parking lot.   Her intentions were similar to our girls, but her method was different.  The Holy Spirit can certainly use both methods!
• I don't know if that woman was honest with our girls.  She used absolute language and was very quick on the draw with her story, which I don't have anything that traumatic to tell, but seems like wouldn't be that easy to tell to two strangers.  It doesn't matter though.  They touched her heart regardless.
• A teenage black girl and her mother or aunt (don't know) pulled over to an escort to ask where to park.  I was the closest so as the escort blocked off the whole passenger window with her body, I held out with my hand the brochure with the title "Pregnant?  Worried?"
• The older woman in the driver seat was shaking her head no, as she edged away from the escort.  I said to the girl in the passenger seat, "Hi, I am not here to judge you. I am hear to love you.  You don't need to talk to me.  Here is something you might want to take and read."
• The escort said, "She'll love you now, but will she love you after?  We will."
• I said, "Of course, I'll love her after."
• The girl shook her head initially, then stuck her hand out the passenger window to take the pamphlet.

So here are my questions - we are told often by advocates for free, available, tax subsidized abortion facilities and abortions that the woman has the right to choose.  Here are some other obvious and not so obvious people that should have rights but do not currently in our country, and the disregard for their rights is increasing under the current president (Obama the one that needs to be defeated), and as bad as the HHS regulations are now, is their any question that things could get even worse in a second term?

1. The one most pressing on my heart and thoughts:  What about the girl that is being forced to have the abortion?  This is what I suspect when I see an older man, Dad?, driving in a teenage girl that is crying, weeping really, in the passenger seat when she is being driven into the Planned Parenthood parking lot.  Where are her rights, not to mention the rights of her unborn child?  Is this the decision she has come to after careful deliberation and/or prayer, or is it the snap, angry, "I'll fix this for you, dammit!" decision of her Dad?  Maybe she would prefer to not have the experience replayed in her mind, the post-trauma memories reawakened, the thoughts of what might have been for her child coming into her mind if she might have given the child up for adoption or left home, found help and found a way to give the child life and provide for the child?
   
   I imagine it is natural for her to want to trust her Dad and go with his decision, but what if she doesn't have the right to say, "No, Dad.  I can't.  It is my body, and the baby is growing in my womb.  It is my decision, Dad, not yours.  I need time to think and talk to others about this."  Please see related story below related to Grandma's rights.
   
   I wanted to let you know, there was an incident two months ago at the Planned Parenthood in Aurora where a woman was lying on the surgical table when she said, "Is it too late to not go through with this?"
   
   She was told, "No, it isn't too late."
   
   The woman, got up, got dressed, walked out, and then talked to a counselor and went to Waterleaf, the nearby free women's center for help.  Praise God!
2. What about the Father's rights?  Sometimes the man that fathered the child doesn't even know that he has made a girl pregnant.  Sometimes in the case of incest, rape (and all rape is legitimate rape!) the man doesn't deserve to know.  How about the other cases though?  Why is it that the woman has so many more rights than the father?  What if he just needs her to take care of herself for the remaining 8 months of pregnancy and deliver the baby and then he will take care of and provide for the child, or he is willing to bear the brunt of the effort of finding adoptive parents.  Why doesn't he have any rights?  As one of our girls yelled to a man walking a woman in to the abortion facility, "Men mourn lost fatherhood."
3. What about the Grandma or Grandpa's rights?  Here is a story that combines the power of prayer with the rights of the young mother with the rights of the Grandma (yes, I know I haven't mentioned the right to life of the unborn child . . . that one is the most obvious, but bear with me.)  This story, which you would do well to share on FB or a post tells how a girl was being pressured into an abortion immediately after telling her father with no other options allowed, and the Grandma took it upon herself to pray prostrate, all night in her dining room.  The answer to her prayer: the young Mom, 16 and a junior in high school, was given the option of adoption or abortion.  She chose life and adoption for her baby girl, who was adopted into a Christian family and is now friends and co-worker with her Mom in the pro-life movement.  You will like this story:  http://www.lifenews.com/2012/08/23/prayer-saved-from-from-abortion-three-days-beforehand/  The picture shows how the two now look like sisters, since the Mom was so young when she had the baby.  Here is the Grandma's note to her grown-up Granddaugther (Alisha) concerning her intercession for the life of her great-granddaughter (Katie):
   
   
   “I remember years ago you told me that Alisha’s decision had to be made by the morning… but what I haven’t told you before was that I laid face down on my dining room floor and prayed with all my being for that precious infant’s life… and I feel so blessed to see the complete fulfillment of that prayer…first, by being present at the hospital just after Katie was born to see her ‘physical’ life, but also seeing her now…a life abundantly beautiful! And I am so overjoyed to see YOUR joy, because I know that it was not easy for a lot of years. God is good…VERY good!”
4. What about the rights of the individual taxpayer that would not like tax dollars funding facilities that perform life termination on defenseless babies within the wombs of their mothers and consider this an evil practice on par with child sacrifice to Moloch in the Old Testament (part of the reason God gave through Jeremiah for letting the Babylonians destory Jerusalem, and the Temple)?  What you now consider me a fundamentalist, extremist quoting Biblical mythology?  The opposite is true:  it is extreme and opposes truth to not read the Bible, inclusive of the Old Testament as the inspired Word of God and treasure the fact that God reveals himself and what he loves and what he hates through the words of the Prophets, and his actions, whether it was to bring forth Isaac from Sarah's post-menopausal womb, deliver Daniel from famished lions, or to permit the destruction of thousands of Israelites and their temple because they worshipped Molech and sacrificed their children to this false god.  Did you know they banged drums to drown out the cries of the infants as they were burned so that the parents would not be able to hear them?  "When a child was sacrificed to Moloch, a fire was lit inside the statue. The priests would then beat loudly on drums and other objects so that the cries would not be heard."  Similar to the woman being anesthetized for surgical abortions, isn't it? 



21 Weeks from Conception:  Samuel grasps doctor's finger

5. Women are anesthetized but the babies undergoing the procedure that will painfully destroy their life do not receive anesthesia.  In contrast, if a baby is operated on in utero they are given anesthetic http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/magazine/10Fetal-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0.  Forget about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what about the unborn baby's right to not suffer a painful death where the only mercy shown is quickness so as to maximize the number of revenue generating abortions that can be performed on a given day, by a given abortionist, in a given facility?!  Yes it is all sad, but if this doesn't upset you, compel you to pray and use your voice and presence to stand-up for the rights of the unborn, what will?

Did you know? (Planned Parenthood 2009-2010 Annual Report via Lifesitenews.com)

In addition to its $320.1 million in clinic income and $223.8 million in private donations, Planned Parenthood receives $487.4 million dollars a year from taxpayers. And that number is drastically increasing. Taxpayer funding for the abortion giant has more than doubled in the last decade.

This increase is in part due to the fact that it is now reporting the numbers a little more honestly. For the first time, Planned Parenthood is reporting revenue from Medicaid as revenue from the government, taxpayers. Its latest report states, “In past reports, payments from Medicaid managed care plans have appeared as ‘health center income’ rather than ‘government grants and contracts’ ….”

So now that Planned Parenthood has graciously decided to stop under reporting the money it takes from taxpayers, we can see more fully, how much Planned Parenthood relies on the Government. Over 46 percent of its $1 billion total annual revenue comes from the government – from our tax dollars.

What about our right of conscience?  No where in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence does it state the federal government needs to ensure the right of a woman to terminate the life of the child in her womb through the misappropriation of other people's tax or health insurance dollars.  Yet that is what we are being told, and were inundated with during the Democratic National Convention.  I hope that the consciences of those that are lovers of God, and thankful for the gift of his Son, his Son's redeeming death on the cross, and the gift of the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus are troubled like mad trying to reconcile how it is still OK to vote for the presidential candidate that is ensuring more funding from conscientious objectors who do feel killing innocent children in the womb is evil. 

We believe in the God-given right to life and that a woman's choices, once pregnant with a child, do not justly include the right to terminate the life of the child within her.  Her rights to not have to take care of herself and the baby, not have to endure the discomforts (and joys) of pregnancy and child birth do not logically, or justly, nor in the eyes of God as reflected in the Fifth Commandment:  Thou shall not murder trump the child's right to the health and safety of her womb to prepare for birth, nor the right to life, love, and care once born to pursue life, liberty, and happiness like the rest of us.

Why do some rape and incest victims say "abortion was not a good solution and I would not recommend it to others"?

• "I was an innocent victim of a horrible crime.  I was not to blame for what the rapist did to me.  But in choosing to abort, to kill the innocent child growing within me, I lowered myself to the level of the rapist." victim of rape
• "After the abortion, I wanted to die.  How could I live when I had just ended the life of my child?  The negative feelings resulting from the rape were not eliminated by the abortion.  Nothing was solved; instead, the grief was now doubled." victim of rape
• "Like any woman in a crisis pregnancy, a pregnant sexual assault victim might welcome an instant answer to her problem.  But abortion is too permanent an answer to a temporary problem.  Abortion may sound compassionate--even noble--but it isn't." victim of rape
• "Making it through the pregnancy is a way for a victim to overcome the abuse.  The selfless act of giving birth is proof that she is better than her attacker."  counselor to rape victims who choose life

Did you know? (Sandra Mahkorn, "Pregnancy and Sexual Assault." The Psychological Aspects of Abortion (Malls and Watts 1979), 53-72.):

• Two major studies of pregnant rape victims found that 3/4 of these women chose to give birth.
• None of the women who gave birth said they did not want their children or wished they had aborted instead.
• Of those who aborted, nearly half did so because of the demands of others.
• 94% of women who gave birth said abortion would not be a good solution to a pregnancy resulting from rape.
• 93% of those who had abortions said it "had not been a good solution to their problems" and they "would not recommend it to others in their situation."

Finally, Thank God (!!!) that Romney did well last night.  I don't know about you, but this is proof to me that God heard mine and others' intense prayers that God's favor would be upon him, and that he would have the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to do very well in the debate.  Given that I was rather disheartened by his RNC nomination acceptance speech, thought he seemed a bit plastic, and his doing phenomenally better last night, how could I not be thanking and praising God for answering prayers?  I know not everyone considers him the perfect candidate, so I will tell you I do include, "if it is your will" when I pray.  

Will you join me in continuing to pray for the defeat of Obama's re-election efforts and continued help from God for Romney and Ryan to continue to do better than their human best in the campaign for the leadership of this country?

Pat Buchanan, "Romney did even better than Reagan ever did."

What?  Pat would know, and yes, prayer is powerful!  Romney wasn't perfect, but he was really outstanding, and Obama was just OK.