Tee Shirts for Life

          My seventh grandchild is in the works. Seeing as how darling daughter has slimmed down considerable since the last production, I get to seek out bargains in maternity clothes for her. Size zero. From my outpost in 12-14 land, that looks like no size at all. Hahahahahaha. Sorry. But it did mean some way-low clearance prices on classroom-acceptable duds from one major merchant when the teensy size was the only one left. I clicked in triumph.

          On a whim, I searched “maternity” on a discount website not especially known for clothes. Up --or out-- popped dozens of tee shirts with baby room and all sorts of designs. The cheesy: sprays of flowers and variations on the word blessed.  No. Lots of colors with “due in (month)” to answer the common first question, and plenty announcing boy or girl for the second question. Others I read over again, asking, “Did they put that on a shirt? They did put that on a shirt.” Among the milder texts, I did snort over “I just wanted a back rub” and “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets pregnant.” Didn’t buy them.

One that I did buy.

          Then came the peek-a-boos: image of a zipper with baby peeking out. Girl babies, boy babies, twin babies. White babies, black babies, Asian babies. Jedi baby. Army baby. Even a mooning baby. Cute. Funny. And in a natural, incidental, even accidental way, powerfully pro-life. Somehow, in a day of 4-D sonograms, surgery in utero and medical advances that save tinier premature babies than ever before, there’s a movement to insist that the little creature in there is not a baby. “Noooottt a baby,” as one tweeter contended to me. This cultic dogma calls itself “science” while it stubbornly ignores all logic and evidence of the senses. Evidence, schmevidence, you gotta believe.

          But, still. Ordinary people with brains unwarped by PC death-worship (I’ve been called a “fetus-worshipper.” So, nyah.) and its sacrament of abortion know perfectly well what’s growing in that pregnant woman. Moms and dads know it. Grandparents know it. Little kids know it. Designers of tee shirts know it. I think somewhere deep down in their twisted, dark little doctrinaire souls, defenders of abortion know it. They just don’t want to look.

Wrong God

A vision: Jesus has just told His disciples to stop hindering the mothers who are bringing their children to Him for blessing. “Let the little children come to Me,” He says, “for to such as these belongs the kingdom of heaven.” Along comes the Reverend Anne Fowler in her clerical collar and places at His feet the dismembered body of a tiny infant. “I had this one killed so I could serve You,” she says. “Wrong god,” says the Lord.

A vision: on Judgment Day, it is the turn of the Reverend Anne Fowler, M. Div., Episcopal priest. “Lord, Lord,” she says, “look at all I’ve done for you. I got a theology degree, and the Episcopal church ordained me. See the collar? Not many women get one, you know. Didn’t I serve as chaplain for Planned Parenthood? Wasn’t I part of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice? Didn’t I counsel young women that abortion is a moral choice?”

Jesus asks, “Where is the baby?”

“The what? Oh, the pregnancy, the product of conception. Well, you know I just had to abort it. I’d broken up with my husband, and I was sleeping with a guy during my seminary studies, and he just wouldn’t be a suitable father at all, and I already had one kid, and I really, really wanted to be a priest. In the church. You know. For You.”

Jesus holds out His hand. In it are the torn and bloody bits of a small baby. “His blood has been crying out to me since that day,” He says. “You might have loved him. You might have cared for him. Did you not know that whatever you do for one of the little ones, you do for Me? Or to Me?” Then He covers the little body with His other hand and lowers it gently to the ground. In its place appears a beautiful and glorious young man who looks at her with pity and says, “Mother.”

Then two things happen at once. The Lord says, “Away from Me. I never knew you,” and the Reverend Anne Fowler begins a long, long fall.

An amicus brief presented to the Supreme Court, which is reviewing whether abortion clinics in Texas can be required by law to be sanitary and to employ doctors who would be allowed to admit patients to a hospital if they should, say, rip a hole in the uterus while suctioning a baby out, said that Anne Fowler “accidentally” became pregnant during her second year at Episcopal Divinity School. No, not running with turkey baster, but sleeping with a guy she figured would not be a “suitable parent.” I wonder who was babysitting the child from her broken marriage while she was having her fornication break. Was it between Theology I and New Testament Interp.?

“Already solely responsible for her daughter, Anne knew she could not complete Divinity School and pursue a career as a priest if she did not have an abortion.” There may be a certain three on the Court who, when they meet again, will find this compelling. “Well, sure, who wouldn’t kill any number of kids for a career as a priest?” To others of us, it is the most stunning perversion of humanity, religion, responsibility and, God help us, “divinity” that any sinful human mind could possibly concoct. Yet she presents it to the Supreme Court of the United States as a good argument not to place any restrictions, not even those of sanitation, on abortion mills. It strikes me that, like Gloria Steinem, she has built a career as a life-long excuse for that bloody, selfish decision.

It’s hard to pick a “worst of all” from this reeking pile, but this may come close. One of the achievements she touts as made possible by her baby’s death is that “she meets many pregnant women who are very young or struggling economically or emotionally” and reassures them that it’s necessary and right to abort their children. “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come,” said Jesus, “but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

I’m pretty sure you cannot bring others along to make sacrifice to Moloch and expect the approval of the Prince of Peace.

Blood and Rhetoric

     With a truly astounding lack of self-awareness, one Jessica Valenti says in support of Planned Parenthood, "Words matter. When we dehumanize people, we make it easier for others to do them harm." Oh, like "fetus," "blob of cells," "product of conception"? Well, no, she seems to mean the way pro-life people point out what actually happens in an abortion and call it murder. They also warn about psychological damage to women who must then live with the memory of having a baby killed, as well as the possibility of physical injury. Is it vicious hate-speech to point out that a suction machine strong enough to rip the arms and legs off a "fetal" body is also strong enough to tear a hole in a woman's uterus, and sometimes does? Is it anti-woman to mention the possibility of infection or infertility? Abortion fans seem to think so. After all, I've never heard a pro-life person say, "Let's go shoot up an abortion clinic."  We don't promote murder because we're, you know, pro-life. 
     Listen, if I'm responsible for an anti-social flake like Robert Lewis Dear shooting people in the vicinity of a Planned Parenthood abortuary (note that he did a lousy job of attacking the abortionists. He started shooting cops outside and was then too pinned down to do much mischief inside the building. If you were going to shoot the place up, wouldn't you keep your weapon concealed under that alleged long coat until you got in the door?), then abortion boosters are sure as hell (and I mean that pretty literally) responsible for Kermit Gosnell. This is a man who had enough on the ball to make it through medical school, but then devoted himself to killing big babies. Oops, "fetal tissue masses." That's the vocabulary he was given, although if he had studied obstetrics in the 1950s, he might have read that the obstetrician has two patients, mother and baby. But when Roe v. Wade came along (and did you know that "Jane Roe" is now prolife? Look up Norma McCorvey. Norma ) the language began to change. Suddenly the baby was a "fetus." Look that up too. It simply means an unborn creature in the womb, particularly a human being. But it sounds kind of medical and sterile, and the feminist champions of womanhood insisted it wasn't really human. It was just potential, no more valuable than a chicken's egg. A product. A blob. Medical waste. "When we dehumanize people, we make it easier for others to do them harm." Sure enough, Jessica Valenti. 
     The procedure itself quickly morphed from a sad but necessary thing into an unfettered right. Abortion on demand, without apology! And those who performed abortions were heroes, champions for women, bravest of the brave. Every abortion was a salute to women-- never mind the reality that abortionists' halls are more likely to see tears, fear and coercion than women proud and free celebrating their "choice." 
     So is it any wonder that Kermit Gosnell might feel free to keep a filthy facility, to cut the necks of living babies with scissors, to keep a jar of their feet as souvenirs? Or that he would be protected by the abortionist "community"? More on Gosnell
     In the decades since Roe v. Wade, about eight abortion workers have been murdered. Eight. And the number of babies killed is pushing 50,000,000. That doesn't include women who bled to death, died of sepsis or were maimed. Pro-life people are pikers when it comes to blood on the hands. Abortion promoters are soaked in it from head to foot and licking it off their lips. Ms. Valenti has held up a mirror, but ought to turn it around. All of you will have to look in it sooner or later. 
     

Whoa, Womyn

     Back in the day, a principal tenet of feminism was that women were more than their reproductive parts, that they must be appreciated for their intelligence, their talents, their skills, their personhood. Fast forward to more recent days, in which women in Austin drew genitalia and reproductive organs on their shirts and bedecked posters with a fringe of tampons, all in order to protest a restriction on the abortion of larger babies. Warned of a plan to throw used feminine items at legislators, police began to confiscate said items, used or not. They also found jars of urine and feces in the ladies' possession, because they're so necessary to public discourse. Now, persons of female genderhood, I ask you, how is it that you wish people to see you? You, in the vulva suit, do you offer a principled and logical case for your position? Or is your rhetoric limited to "If you can't say it, don't regulate it"? In the name of women's rights, you are presenting yourselves as brainless sluts, who want nothing more than to screw around, kill the babies, and screw around some more.

     Choice, choice, you cry, but there is no choice-- certainly not for women who love their husbands and children and want to be home to care for them.  Actress Kirsten Dunst felt the wrath when she said in an interview, “I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued. We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking—it’s a valuable thing my mom created. And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armor. I’m sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s why relationships work.”

     Making up your own mind is good, right? Not to Erin Gloria Ryan, fervent feminist writer on a site called “Jezebel.”  She wrote, “Kirsten Dunst is not paid to write gender theory, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she’s kind of dumb about it.” In feminist circles, they used to say that women should never bad-mouth each other, but I guess that only applies to lousy novels. The charming Miss Ryan seems to think one must be a paid feminist theoretician in order to be allowed to have an opinion. Actual women living actual lives? “Shut up,” she explained.

     By the way, the title of her commentary was “Kirsten Dunst Thinks Ladies in Relationships Should Wife the F**k Out.” She’d fit right in with the militants of Austin, for whom noise and vulgarity are the keys to success. This former (thank God) feminist has an opinion, authorized or not: Abortion-obsessed haters of men and marriage, you have thrown away the best of womanhood--and adulthood, come to think of it--betrayed the early ideals of feminism, and become obnoxious harridans. You should be ashamed.

A Woman's Right to Chew

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Whole-hearted Evil: Kermit Gosnell

     They say he joked about the size of some of his victims. “Big enough to walk to the bus stop.” They say he kept the feet. Cut them from the bodies and preserved them in jars. Trophies, I think, like the head of a deer, or the skin of a Jew stretched onto a lamp shade. At the trial, he smiled. Found guilty of three child-murders, he seemed surprised. Too evil to be real. But real.

     In Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis, the character Ransom wakes one morning to the discovery of the body of a colorful little frog, crippled and left to suffer. “The whole back had been ripped open in a sort of V-shaped gash, the point of the V being a little behind the head. Something had torn a widening wound backward—as we do in opening an envelope—along the trunk and pulled it out so far behind the animal that the hoppers or hind legs had  been almost torn off with it… He told himself that a creature of that kind probably had very little sensation. But it did not much mend matters.”

     Ransom follows a trail of twenty mutilated animals. It leads him to the character Weston tearing yet another frog, “almost surgically inserting his forefinger, with its long sharp nail, under the skin behind the creature’s head and ripping it open… Then he finished the operation, threw the bleeding ruin away, and looked up. Their eyes met.”   

     Weston “looked at Ransom in silence and at last began to smile… a devilish smile… It seemed to summon Ransom, with horrible naïveté of welcome, into the world of its own pleasures, as if all men were at one in those pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute could ever have occurred about them. It was not furtive or ashamed… Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was whole-hearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence. It was beyond vice…”

          They say he joked about the size of some of his victims. “Big enough to walk to the bus stop.” They say he kept the feet. Cut them from the bodies and preserved them in jars. Trophies, I think, like the head of a deer, or the skin of a Jew stretched onto a lamp shade. At the trial, he smiled. Found guilty of three child-murders, he seemed surprised. Too evil to be real. But real.

Don't Worry Your Little Head

A scientist/artist marvels at infant development.

Thousands of comments greeted Alexander Tsiaras's artistic presentation of life in the womb. Many were hostile. His biggest crime? He called it a baby. In other words:

     Don’t tell me about the vertebrae that form to hold a spinal cord. Don’t tell me about the neural cells that meet to make a brain. Don’t tell me how the eyelids form. Don’t tell me about the little hands that meet across the heart. When the heart beats, don’t tell me. Don’t worry my head with fingerprints, or DNA, or bones. I have a right, you know, to choose.

     So don’t you dare say “baby.” I have a right to words that sound not-human--zygote, foetus, embryo. I don’t care what your dictionary says about “unborn humans.” No “baby.” That word is anti-choice. I will not say what I have chosen. Damn your transitive verbs. I choose a choice. A choice to choose. No “what.” No “whom.” Don’t ask me.

     You try to show me pictures. I won’t look. How dare you try to make me see. I’ll keep my mass of cells, my blob, my thing no different from a chicken, no better than a lizard. Those can be cut and crushed and burned, and I don’t have to feel a thing. That’s all I will remember. A wart, a fingernail, a cyst. It’s gone.

     Besides, I’m just a teen. I’m starting my career. I have to finish school. The guy doesn’t care. Besides. It’s my body. It’s my life. It’s my choice. I don’t want to be tied down. Adoption? That’s too hard. Besides. Some kids are poor. Wouldn’t it be better not to live?  Unwanted, wouldn’t it better not to live? Besides, the baby… no, the foetus… no, the product of conception might grow up to be a criminal. Might grow up. Might grow. Wouldn’t it be better not to live? I’ll decide.

     Keep your scans and sonograms. Keep your physiology. Keep your scientific observations and your logic. Keep your photos and your Bible and your wonder. Keep it. It’s only propaganda. It’s only meant to deny me choice. Don’t use it. Don’t tell me. Don’t show me. I will not see.

 

Valley Forge Vision

A group of half-starved men, their feet wrapped in rags, huddles around a small fire built of the few sticks they could scavenge from the snowy ground of Valley Forge. They try to warm their stiffened hands over the feeble flames. One of the men looks across the little circle and says, “Caleb, why do you fight?”

“Well,” says the one so addressed, “I see a day when an enormous government will collect a larger percentage of the people’s money in taxes than King George does today, and they will scarcely bat an eye. And you, Micah?”

“Ah,” came the answer, “‘tis like your vision, as I imagine whole generations of citizens dependent upon that great government for their bread. In fact, there should be more of them than there are people who pay the taxes.”

“Of course, that means the Holy Scriptures will have to be ignored,” another of the soldiers spoke. “How I long to see schoolchildren prevented from reading them. Even public display of the Commandments should be forbidden, and certainly no cross must be seen in any public place.”

“A worthy goal, no doubt, Ezra. Beyond that, oh, picture it. Some day our daughters will be able to shack up with men, and we will have no fear of their becoming pregnant out of wedlock, because they will be free to kill off our grandchildren.”

“Mm, yes, imagine. That is why we fight,” arose from every throat about the fire. “And certainly our children should be forbidden to carry such firearms as we use to feed and protect our families and our freedom.” Then all became silent. Pairs of eyes met across the flames. Each of the group rose, and with a muttered, “Hell, we might as well keep the king,” they shouldered what tattered packs they owned and trudged away into the darkness, leaving the struggling fire to die in the snow.  

What's That You Say?

     I used to watch “All My Children” on TV when I was in my twenties. The plots were convoluted and even a touch ludicrous, but they did make me want to see what would happen next. Then one day, a story made some glaring lights come on. A young woman was married to a much older man. Through some contrivance, she and a handsome young man were stranded together overnight. They “comforted” each other.

     When handsome young man took her home, the husband, worried and now angry, accused the two of doing, well, exactly what they had done. Instead of confessing, apologizing, or even making excuses, they became indignant at having been accused. “How can you say such a thing, after all we’ve been through?” was the gist of their response. Then the husband backed down and apologized for being so mean!

     This was such a twisted anti-morality, I never wanted to watch the program again, and I certainly didn’t want my children to see it. Now, though, I see this backwards outrage all around me in public discourse. When a “reproductive rights activist” (meaning someone who wants sex without any of that darn reproduction) cynically enrolls in a Catholic law school and then tries to force them to abandon their pro-life principles by claiming that she and her sister students need $3,000 worth of contraceptive services to get through the program, her duplicity and what sure enough sounds like promiscuity are simply “good citizenship” in the POTUS’s words. But Rush Limbaugh wonders out loud whether “slut” or “prostitute” is a more accurate term for her, and all hell breaks loose. OK, it was crude, but it was a way of naming her behavior. Pointing it out seems to be a much worse offense than doing it.

     It’s the same with talk about abortion. I use the term “baby-killing,” and I’m taken to task for being harsh and rude. Yet pointing a suction tube at a tiny baby and ripping its arms and legs off, oh, that’s just women’s health care. Pulling a bigger baby out of the birth canal except for its head, sticking a pair of scissors into the base of its skull and cutting up the brain so the head can be collapsed and the dead child pulled out, oh that’s just reproductive health. A woman’s right, don’t you know. Call it baby-killing, and you are the rube, the outcast, the criminal. And you can’t change the channel.

Swift News Service; This Just In

          The Wekilla Mall of Baffin Island announces a new tenant called “Curtains,” a women’s health center with an unusual approach to financing: seal pelt harvesting. “We want to keep our contraceptives and breast exams as inexpensive as possible, especially since we don’t actually do mammograms and have to send clients to the mainland for them,” explained director Jane Brazen. “We have a deal with Charon Ferry Line, but it still costs money.”

          Curtains staff will travel to fur-seal breeding grounds every spring to “club as many baby seals as we can,” according to Ms. Brazen. “It’s labor-intensive too. We tried using a big vacuum hose, but it tore off the flippers and made a mess of the pelts.”

          Asked whether anyone had expressed moral objections to the seal harvest, Ms. Brazen said, “Oh, only a few ignorant and closed-minded people who hate women and want to force their beliefs on others. Besides, the seals are only about three percent of our business. We give out at least three dozen condoms for every seal we terminate.”

          Wekilla Mall will host a grand opening for Curtains on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with drinks and snacks. Children are invited to play the action-packed “Whack-A-Seal” game at the front of the mall. Wekilla Mall is at 666 Reaper Boulevard in suburban Dark Soul. All are welcome.