Posted on 01/22/2008 11:54:24 AM PST by NYer
America, we won’t go away. Many people wish we would, and heaven knows we would rather be doing almost anything else. But we can’t go away, and we won’t.
I’m sure you’ve seen us. We may have made you angry, or sad, or we may have made you turn quickly away and find something else to look at.
You may have seen us a few days before Christmas outside the Planned Parenthood building. The old man with the rosary, the college kids in sweats, the sad-looking woman clutching brochures and an “I Regret My Abortion” sign — that was us.
Maybe you felt offended that we stuck abortion in your face as you rushed out to do last-minute shopping, cheered by Christmas songs on the radio. Well, we felt offended that the “clinic” was open that day. We wanted to enjoy ourselves, too.
Or maybe you heard one of us at a town meeting you attended at the school or the senior center. Maybe it was a savvy young woman lawyer that you heard voice the pro-life argument. Or maybe the voice of the pro-life movement you heard was a halting, nervous voice that got a little too angry or whose words got a little too tangled. In either case, that was us, too.
We may have made you uncomfortable that day. We’re sorry for that. But we’ll be there again at the next town meeting, too. And the next. And the next.
We won’t go away, and we won’t stop talking about abortion. We won’t stop saying, again and again, that this is wrong and it has to stop.
America, you know more about the unborn than you ever have before. Life magazine used to sell out when they put an unborn baby on the cover. Now, we’ve seen National Geographic’s “In the Womb.” We have sonogram photos at the front of our baby books and we saw our children for the first time in utero, through a video monitor.
America, you know more than ever that abortion hurts women. Those of us who have had an abortion know the guilt at what we’ve done and the anger at those who made it seem inevitable, who refused all help except the kind that kills. Those of us who have a friend who has had an abortion know it is a topic that we must never, ever discuss. It causes too much sadness, inflicts too much pain that can’t be relieved.
America, you know what abortion is, and we know you know. We won’t stand by and pretend with you that nothing is happening.
And we won’t go away, because we can’t make abortion go away from our own consciences. Abortion stings us. The sting is there when we see an empty playground and remember that one in three children in America dies by abortion. The sting is there when we read of successful surgery saving unborn children in the womb, and remember that babies don’t survive the most common surgery in the womb.
Is abortion necessary for women’s rights? Ask the teens impregnated by older men and brought to the “clinic” by them, too. Is it a matter of choice? Ask the women who wanted to have their babies but were badgered and pressured and tricked and even forced to kill instead.
But doesn’t abortion help women? Ask the ones who died on the operating table — or the ones who say they wish they died because the depression is too much to bear.
What would America be like without abortion? We can’t even imagine. In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey gets a glimpse of what Bedford Falls would be like if he hadn’t been born, but then he returns to a world where that tragedy never happened.
We won’t get to return to the world we could have had.
Did we abort a statesman who would have changed the course of this country? Did we abort the musician who would have taken that art — and our emotions with it — to new heights? What cures, stories, jokes, athletic feats or technological innovations did we abort? What great actor is missing from our movies, what great teachers will never inspire our kids at school?
No, America, we won’t go away, no matter how much you want us to or how much we want to go.
We want to think we would have told the slave-sellers, “No way. Not here. I will use every legal means to stop you.” We like to think we wouldn’t have sat still in World War II Germany as the trains rumbled by. We wish we could have sat with Rosa Parks or prayed with Ruby Bridges on the way to school.
But we can’t do any of that. What we can do is remind you, America, in season and out of season, of the words you were founded on: “All men are endowed by their Creator with the right to life.”
So you’ll see us shivering in the cold again this January for the March for Life. And you’ll see us next January, and the January after that, and the January after that, until we wear you down at last and there’s no more reason to march.
And if we die before you change, America, we’ll be able to stand before God and say, “I defended the defenseless. I stood for the weak. My brothers and sisters couldn’t cry ‘Stop,’ so I cried it for them. And I refused to go away.”
Not only are we not going away, we’re having lots of kids who we are raising Pro-Life.
BTTT
Very Poignant.
I’m not going anywhere. A family that is very dear to us just celebrated the birth of their ninth child. The father actually lost a contractor because his name appeared in the pro-life ad in the local paper. “Blessed are ye when men speak evil against you on account of me.”
Thank you for posting this! My husband and “big” children are marching today and I just sent him a text saying that I have not heard ONE word on the radio about the March (and I listen to Conservative talk). I asked him how many people are there and he said “hundreds” b/c we know that is what the news will say IF they cover it!
I heard this ad on a classic rock station in SEATTLE last Sunday. That would have never happened 5 years ago.
http://www.secondlookproject.org/tslp_radio.html
Went down on my lunch break. HUGE crowd. All having fun despite the icky weather.
You may not have realized this, but you don’t actually get to force your children to vote the way you want them to.
Abortion disturbs the very Bedrock of our souls. Once you are able to define one segment of Life as a choice then you can start to define another and another and then another until we have more than a designer baby world we will have a designer society based on those few you dictate what is to be valued. Without interjecting the religious side of this battle it can be safe to say that this is about control over the whole thought process as to what is deemed acceptable. I stand with you on the side of what is right and to protect those who are without a voice.....literally.
bttt (with tears in my eyes)
Let’s kick in money and support Free Republic ~ it’s still the best place on the Internet for conservatives to meet and air their views!!
It’s more important now, than it ever was!!
You don't know me.......
hehehe
Throughout the day, I searched the online msm news outlets to see how they were covering this event. Turns out - they weren't! There was nada, zip, nil ... dead silence. I at expected they would at least write something, albeit negative but never expected their total silence.
EWTN (check your local cable listing) had live coverage throughout the day. It repats this evening at 9pm. Perhaps you will see your husband and "big" children :-)
BTTT!
That's a given. However, many young people today recognize that "they" might have been a "choice". They also realize that some have lost siblings and cousing, friends and professors, to this attack on the womb. They now view themselves as survivors and recognize that they must rise up to be the voices of those who have no voices.
Then you will appreciate this.
Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.
HUMANAE VITAE
The pro-life movement has been more successful than they realize. The public is moving in their direction on the life issue, and that trend shows no sign of abating.
But sometimes they will amaze you by the position they take and where they choose to espouse it. My college freshman daughter chose to advocate the pro-life position in a persuasive speech in one of her classes. By all accounts, it was quite persuasive and a few eyes welled up with tears. The next generation is going to receive some big dividends.
Yes this is why the faith based on thought and reason must never take the opposition lightly. They will subvert the argument to force you to choose (no pun intended) between the lesser of the two evils when the answer lies long before we ever get to that point.
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