Today's blog entry is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. I would suggest that any pregnant persons stop reading now. You know who you are. :)



Abortion is something we've been discussing on Locke's forum. I brought the discussion up in the first place so I suppose it is my fault, but, it got people talking, which is what I think discussion boards are supposed to be for. At any rate, over the past year I have gone from what would technically have to be called "pro-choice" (I have never ever thought abortion is the right choice, ever; but I used to use the cop-out of 'people will still do it so it should be kept legal') to fiercely pro-life. And I mean fiercely. This is probably the single issue I feel the most strongly about. I don't know exactly why, because I wouldn't say that I am personally affected by it, as in I never had one nor do I know anyone who has. Joe's best friend was adopted, and my best friend's mother was 17 when she was born... I guess that's about the closest I know... two people whose mothers chose life, and what would our lives be like if they hadn't? But I digress.



In tenth grade I wrote a research paper on abortion. I argued for the pro-life side but as of now I have no idea what I actually said. I know it wasn't very good. Most of what I know about abortion I have learned in the past few months, which is actually rather odd I think, since as I said, I once did a research paper on the subject. What the heck did I research? Don't know. I remember having mixed feelings on it then though. Not being sure which side I was actually on. I know I didn't actually read anything about the specific procedures, about what was really going on. If I had then I don't think my attitude would or could have been any different than it is right now. Maybe I would have turned out to be a different person. But, and I know I have mentioned this before, I have never been a very passionate person. I have never believed so strongly in anything that I would die for it, or even that I would argue for it. This is probably the biggest change I have noticed in myself since I became Catholic. Question everything, get all the facts, decide what you believe in and believe it -- that means defend it from those who oppose you. I used to care more about making everybody happy, and let everybody think I agreed with them... now I stand up for myself. A bit too defensively sometimes, I admit. I am still learning how to be passionate and assertive and firm without stepping all over people who disagree with me. But anyway, back to abortion...



The discussion was interesting for awhile, we were debating personhood and the beginning of life, etc. I think Joe and I backed the other side into somewhat of a corner though because next thing I know one of the guys is telling us that we are closed-minded and that we don't understand the fundamentals of our own religion. That made me very upset. VERY upset. That someone who is not even Christian, would be arrogant enough to assert that we don't understand the religion we have spent the entire past year thoroughly studying (and thereby also implying that he knows more about our religion than we do)... that was just insulting. Especially since the discussion we were having was completely not religion-based; Joe and I were doing our best to push through a rational, logical, scientific and legal argument to support our own side, and not even bringing religion into it at all. Oy. So, that was annoying.



Following that though, really what the debate comes down to for us, if the debate is going to continue at all anyway, is the issue of "personhood", ie, whether or not an unborn human is a "person". So I've been poking around on the internet for some more information, for both sides, to try and flesh out my position. A lot of pro-life stuff. Testimonials. Descriptions of the procedure. And pictures. I wasn't actually looking for pictures, but one of the websites I was at had some, of aborted fetuses from about 7 weeks all the way up until about 24. It was disgusting, and it was heartbreaking, to see such things and realize that people actually support this, people think that women actually have a "right" to this "procedure". It just makes me sick that anyone could support such injustice! The littlest ones, their little hands and feet are smaller than a dime, but you can tell those are human hands, little human fingers, that's a teeny tiny person that got butchered and is reconstructed on somebody's surgical glove. And the older the baby is, the more plainly obvious that it is, in fact, a baby. Do pro-choice people actually realize what they are supporting? Do they know about the different procedures? I didn't, and I wonder if most of the fence-sitters like I used to be are sitting in the dark on it. D&C, dilation and curettage, the vacuum that sucks out the tiniest fetuses... Saline poisoning, kills it by poisoning and chemically burning it with salt... D&E, dilation and evacuation, this one the doctor actually reaches in with forceps and dismembers the fetus, literally ripping it apart in the womb and removing it piece by piece. I, in my ignorance, did not realize this is an accepted medical procedure. It is absolutely grotesque and barbaric and I can't believe people actually think it is okay! D&X, dilation and extraction, better known as partial-birth abortion, this one I had heard of, though I only found out about it earlier this year. This is where they deliver the baby feet-first, everything but its head which is still inside the mother. Then the doctor pokes a hole in the baby's skull and sucks out its brain with a vacuum. Again I have to ask, how can anyone think this is NOT horrible? There's also live-birth abortion, where they deliver the baby normally and then just deny it any sort of medical treatment and wait for it to die. And I'm sure there are even other things that I'm not aware of.



I've learned more about all this over the past few weeks than I think I ever wanted to. I knew it was wrong already, but now, having seen and read the things I've seen and read, I can't believe that anyone would think this is okay! How can somebody support such an obvious wrong? How can you justify that it's okay for anyone to deliberately kill a child! How can you see pictures of these children and continue to hold the opinion that they are not actually children... that they are not "people" and never were... that it was okay and morally right for someone, anyone, mother father whoever, to "choose" to butcher them like this and throw them away with yesterday's trash? The whole thing has made me so sad and so angry.



This is not about forcing my religion on others. This is about stopping an injustice and a form of genocide. I don't care what religion you are or if you even have one; abortion is wrong. It is wrong, and it is evil, and it is barbaric and tragic. It is not a "choice". It is sad that human life has been reduced to a "choice", and that this is socially acceptable. We are a culture that would think it barbaric to eat our young, and yet we have no problem with murdering children and throwing them in dumpsters with the rest of the garbage. Can't we see what's wrong with this picture?!



A person's a person no matter how small. These are real people, real human lives. Look at the pictures. Understand what you're supporting. If you still think abortion is okay, I feel sorry for you, because you're wrong. And I'm going to do whatever I can to make you realize that.