I've been thinking about abortion a lot. More than usual.
It seems it's been a hot topic ever since we Americans voted in the most pro-abortion president in our history. And it's been a topic again as the House and Senate debate health-care reform and whether or not it will or will not cover abortions costs.
And then Friday, January 22, 2010 marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and I was struck with the following thought:
I think American Christians are more pro-choice than we think.
For example...
*I CHOSE when I would start having children based on when we could afford them and when it fit in with my career.
*I CHOSE how far apart my children would be because I know better than God what I can and cannot handle and heaven forbid if I have two kids in diapers at the same time.
* I CHOSE that I wasn't going to have children because I thought a career in the professional world would be better for me and I didn't want to lose my size four figure.
* I CHOSE when I would stop God from allowing life, created in His imagine, to come from me and a simple snip-snip took care of that.
That's a lot of choices we make all on our own, without consulting the almighty Creator of Life.
So, maybe in all of our political activism we're not really pro-life.
We're just anti-abortion.
musings, ramblings, stories and nonsensical thoughts that I just had to write down.
Deborah Wilson
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I think you are right. And sometimes we are not even anti-abortion because we want to demonstrate that we are open minded and not like the fundamentalist.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I just have to add this (I posted that on a Facebook forum) to help a friend understand the background of the abortion movement. I think you might be interested in this as well.
Margret Sanger, an icon to the left today. She is the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood). This is an institution who every liberal, certainly Hillary, Obama any every other Democrat in congress. would really around, defend and support. She is a progressive of the 1920s and 1930. So who is Margret Sanger? She embraced Malthusian eugenics who believed that a population time bomb threatened the existence of the human race (sound familiar?). She also viewed social problems such as poverty, deprivation and hunger as evidence of this "population crisis." Thus she started to advocate population growth control and argued for birth control using the "scientifically verified" threat of poverty, sickness, racial tension and overpopulation as its background. This lead to the ABCL, and, ultimately, Planned Parenthood (virtually all of its board members were eugenicists). Here is a quote from Margret Sanger: "The most serious charge that can be brought against modern "benevolence" is that is encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression."
Her goal was to kill the babies of
* where a parent had a "transmissible" disease such as insanity, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, syphilis,
* who had children already born were "subnormal or feeble-minded"
* and where the father’s wages were "inadequate … to provide for more children."
Sanger said "such a plan would … reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry."
And then there is the Margret Sanger's Negro project. The goal was to "restrict" the black population under the pretense of “better health” and “family planning” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEja-1emRic). In Margaret Sanger's book 'The Pivot of Civilization' she also called for the elimination of "human weeds," for the segregation of "morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races." She had no problems promoting her values to groups like the KKK.
In light of this (just to name one prominent Democrat supporter of Planned Parenthood)
Hillary Clinton accepted the Margret Sanger award (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/politics-policy-issues/ppfa-margaret-sanger-award-winners-4840.htm) in 2009 and said this "I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision…taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her. And there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from her life and from the cause she launched and fought for and sacrificed so bravely."
I hope this was not too much.
Yes, I knew all that about Sanger. It's sad that so many people do not know the true agenda behind Planned Parenthood, or at least the agenda it was started with. Also, that many African-American politicians like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (not really a politician) used to be anti-abortion because they knew the agenda of PP, but then they switched sides to get the popular vote.
ReplyDeleteBut what I was saying about us being more pro-choice than we think is that we have completely removed God from creating life because WE choose when and how often.
Not that I'm completely against birth control. I just think very few of us Christians have ever consulted God on having children. WE make the choice. We talk about how many future presidents/doctors/lawyers have been murdered through abortion. Well, how many were never even conceived because we chose to be in complete control of that part of our lives without even inviting God to the conversation.
Just something Patrick and I are working through and what it means for our family.
When I grew up I knew people who chose not to have children so that they could afford to buy the latest ski gear and other stuff. Even back then, as a child and not a Christian, it struck me as strange and could not really understand their thinking.
ReplyDeleteToday when I look at my children I feel sorry for them. They have deprived themselves of the greatest joy they could ever know, for what? Stuff that has long rotted on the landfills.
I talked with a co-worker and learned that they are in the process of adopting a child from Nepal. They have no children of their own. I asked them how it comes that they decided to adopt at this point and he said that they were personally presented with a need by a friend who lives in Nepal - a girl needed a home. As they were praying they felt that God wanted them to adopt her. We do not have much, but we have a home filled with God's love that we could share. I was very moved. So, kinda along the same line, we are praying to determine if we should adopt again (Kira has been such an eye opening blessing).
You do have a point...
ReplyDeleteWe met a couple who fasted and prayed for 100 days about when God wanted them to start having children. God answered them that He wanted them to wait for 5 years. So they did. That was a sacrificial gift to God. They didn't assume they should have kids just because they were able to.
I know we didn't ask God about when to start having kids, but He sure made it obvious to us when we were to stop having them. Just because your body is able to have children doesn't mean that is God's will for your family.