Guest Post by Mary Christine
“Now she’s feeling more alone than she ever has before.” Ben Folds
The next day, I stuffed all of those feelings deep down inside and went on with life as if nothing ever happened. Many of us are very good at emotionally numbing ourselves so that we can appear to function normally after dealing with this kind of trauma. We just keep on keeping on. It’s really not that easy, though. The impact this has on us both physically and emotionally is great. The scientific community likes to pretend that there is no impact. One small study of about 800 women comparing PTSD symptoms between women who obtained an abortion with women who were unable to obtain an abortion found no difference in PTSD symptoms. It did admit that:
“This study has some limitations. Findings from this study are limited to symptoms of PTSD. Without clinical diagnosis, we were unable to assess whether women went on to develop full PTSD. Furthermore, we were unable to precisely identify the source of women’s trauma. In-depth qualitative interviews about women’s lives would have been better able to explore the coexisting stresses and complex life experiences that may have contributing to symptoms of PTSD.”
In other words, this study was a waste of time and money. No widespread unbiased studies have been done because of the politics behind it. There would be a terrible price to pay for the abortion industry if it was ever shown that abortion damages the mothers and fathers whose lives have been altered because of the after effects of abortion. Because abortion is all about women’s health, right?
An internet search for Post-Abortion Syndrome will return links to Ramah International, a Christian ministry dedicated to helping women and men recover from the after-effects of abortion. Another link will take you to AfterAbortion.org, a private organization dedicated to researching the physical and mental effects abortion has had on women. According to their website:
“There is no disagreement over the fact that abortion may trigger, worsen, or exacerbate mental health problems, but rather the main controversy is over whether abortion is ever the sole cause of severe mental illnesses, according to David Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute and author of the review published in Sage Open Medicine. Additional conflicts arise over how known facts are best interpreted and over the definition of key terms.
Notably, while many pro-choice activists dismiss the idea of any link between abortion and mental health issues, this denial of any and all links is supported by AMH minimalists whose own research has confirmed higher rates of mental illness following abortion for some women.
For example, even the hand-picked team of abortion-supporting psychologists who wrote the 2008 Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion, acknowledged that “it is clear that some women do experience sadness, grief, and feelings of loss following termination of a pregnancy, and some experience clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety.”
Indeed, the APA Task Force went further, identifying at least 15 risk factors which can be used to identify the women who are at greater risk of psychological problems after an abortion:
- “terminating a pregnancy that is wanted or meaningful”
- “perceived pressure from others to terminate a pregnancy”
- “perceived opposition to the abortion from partners, family, and/or friends”
- “lack of perceived social support from others”
- “low self-esteem”
- “a pessimistic outlook”
- “low perceived control”
- “a history of mental health problems prior to the pregnancy”
- “feelings of stigma”
- “perceived need for secrecy”
- “exposure to antiabortion picketing”
- “use of avoidance and denial coping strategies”
- “feelings of commitment to the pregnancy”
- “ambivalence about the abortion decision”
- “low perceived ability to cope with the abortion prior to the abortion”
I would encourage you to go to the link to the entire article. It’s a rather long but very informative article that gives you a well-balanced insight into both sides of the argument.
I think we can agree that pregnancy, regardless of whether it is planned or unplanned, will change your life. Even when you think you are ready to have a child you are confronted with all kinds of physical and emotional changes that you have to learn to deal with. Our minds are in turmoil as we question how we are going to deal with the upheaval. As women, our bodies are changing quickly. A flood of hormones puts our emotions on a roller coaster up and down. Crying jags can come on for what seems to be no apparent reason. If the pregnancy is unexpected, then we are dealing with even more emotional turmoil and it can be very hard, if not impossible to make a reasoned decision when we are in this state. The abortion industry knows this and women who are in a panic are easily convinced that having an abortion will solve all of our problems.
When we choose that option, it does seem to solve the immediate problem, at least in the short term. It does not relieve any of the problems that existed before the woman became pregnant. It is true that someone died so that we could deal with the rest of our lives the same way we were dealing with them before the pregnancy. Either way, abortion or not, there are consequences.
Statistics have gone back and forth between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 women who have had at least one abortion by the age of 44. Half of those women will go back for a 2nd abortion, many times, within the next year. My mentor once had a woman walk into her office and confess that she had had 10 abortions. As peer-to-peer lay counselors, we are trained to help the post-abortive mother. We are also trained to know when to send them to get professional help. This woman was so far gone that my friend said she wasn’t sure that she could ever recover.
So we make our choice, and we stuff those feelings way deep down inside so that we can continue to function. Or do we? What kind of emotional blowback is there after an abortion? A year ago I wrote an essay entitled “What Really Made Women Go Nuts?” in response to another essay entitled “Why Did Women Go Nuts?”. Neither essay addressed the proliferation of abortion, although the subject came up in comments under both.
Since 1972 abortion went from around 100,000 a year, which was a rough estimate to about 1.5 million a year. What are the underlying emotional problems that arise after an abortion? Maybe we should first examine what are the most common reasons women have them in the first place?
Number one on the list is “Having a baby would dramatically change my life”. Coming in at a close second is “financial strain”. Relationship problems and a desire to avoid single motherhood are also high up on the list. The health of the mother and fetal health factored in, as well as women who have decided they are done bearing children.
Done bearing children. The surprise baby. Born 17 years after my brother, with no siblings in between, I was a surprise baby. If my mother had decided she didn’t want to start all over again raising another child I would not be here. All she had to do was tell the doctor that she would commit suicide if she had to continue the pregnancy. She was embarrassed enough to quit her job before she began to show. I don’t believe that maternity leave was offered back then so she would have had to quit anyway. I wonder how many of us would not be here if abortion had been legal much earlier than 1973? But I digress.
We always feel like abortion is our only choice. That’s rather ironic, isn’t it? Very few women will consider adoption. The reason given for this aversion to adoption is that it is wrong to give your baby away to someone else. I can relate to that feeling. I did not want to carry a baby for nine months, only to give it away for someone else to raise. Honestly, ever since then I have looked in awe and admiration at women who were able to do that. At least they let their child have a chance at life.
There is no doubt that an unplanned pregnancy feels like a crisis. Pregnancies that result from rape or incest can certainly be called a crisis, but those pregnancies are quite rare and even women who have abortions for those will have emotional problems that are not solved by the abortion. Pregnancy is a part of life but we have turned it into a disease that needs to be remedied.
People who have never had to deal with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy will commonly ask why, when there are so many options for birth control available, is this such a big problem for society? The answer to that question is complicated. The short answer is that for many women, hormonal birth control, which is the most reliable form of birth control, is not really as reliable as it is stated on the package inserts. Hormonal birth control must be taken at the same time of day, every day, without missing a single pill to reach the upper 90% effective target. Any variation from this and the reliability begins to drop. Other drugs can interfere with the efficacy. Many women have unpleasant side effects and are unable to take them. The biggest reason seems to be that women and men either are not consistent with it or they don’t practice it at all.
60 million abortions since 1973 are the result of our sexual escapades. Do you think it is possible to have that many people dealing with the kinds of emotional blowback that underlies abortions and have a sane society? If it feels like society is becoming more and more insane, there has to be a reason for it.
Some of the most common emotional difficulties that women experience after an abortion are:
- Flashbacks or nightmares
- Compulsive thoughts and feelings that started after the abortion
- Suicidal thoughts or feelings
- Depression or anxiety
- Lack of attachment to your children (bonding issues)
- Self-hatred
- Shame
- Social isolation
- Relationship difficulties
- Compulsive or addictive behaviors that started after abortion
- Anger
Do you ever wonder why the divorce rate is so high? No doubt there are other reasons but relationship difficulties following an abortion are bound to factor in. You see, we never link having an abortion to any of the other problems we might be having in our lives.
I really did go on to function as normal, married mother of two children for many years after my abortion. At least that is what I thought. A health crisis in my early 40’s caused me to think back on my life and even though I was very pro-choice at the time, I began to think about my abortion. I began to believe that I deserved to die for what I had done and no matter how I tried to divert my attention, those thoughts would not go away. Eventually, the crisis was remedied and the thoughts did go away for a while.
About a year later I had an encounter with the Lord and became a Christian. Sometimes this will change the minds of people immediately but more often than not, it’s a process and I remained pro-choice for a couple years after that.
One evening, I happened to be watching Fox News and Bill O’Reilly was interviewing actress Jennifer O’Neil. She had written a book about her experiences with abortions and her testimony brought me to tears. It forced me to look at my abortion from a different angle than I ever had before. Over the next few days I came to the decision that I wanted to help other women, not really understanding that in order to help others, I had to deal with my own issues that were intertwined within my psyche like the roots of a dandelion.
Fortunately, most crisis pregnancy centers understand this and they will require a volunteer who wants to work directly with clients to go through a post-abortion recovery class before she be in direct contact with the clients. I have spent more than 10 years serving in some capacity with a CPC and later a ministry that serves only post-abortion mothers and fathers. I stepped away from it in the past year but I will serve again, sometime in the near future. There is a definite need for this type of service.
“What do these classes look like?” you might be wondering. They go by different names but they all deal with the emotional stages women go through after an abortion.
- Relief
- Denial
- Anger
- Depression
- Grief
Forgiveness and acceptance are necessary to be able to move past the other stages and the class helps us to learn to do that. Like many of the women that take these classes, I was certain that I understood forgiveness and equally certain that I was not angry with anyone connected with my abortion. I was certain that I had moved past those things years before. I was wrong, and most of the time, they are too. Women don’t want to open up those old wounds but there is infection still there and it nearly always rears its head as we journey through the class.
Occasionally there is a woman who, it seems, has built a brick wall made of ice around her heart and we facilitators wonder if we are having any impact.
Forgiveness is the hardest brick to remove. It’s hard enough to forgive others who were involved in some way with our decision. When it comes to forgiving ourselves, that takes it to a whole new level. Scripturally there is nothing in the Bible about forgiving ourselves. It’s really not so much about self-forgiveness; it’s more about stopping the self-condemnation.
“4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame Ps 34 NIV
Near the end of the class, we have a memorial for their children. At If Not For Grace Ministries, where I most recently volunteered, we have a weekend retreat and on the final day before we leave to go home, we set up a chapel. We encourage the women to choose an item, or write a letter to memorialize their child who has passed on. This is when we will see the ice break. This is when we will see them finally be able to move on. Never have we had a mother who was not positively affected by this experience.
Always, they believed they did not have a right to grieve. We give them a real chance to put it all behind them, not to forget, because that will never happen, but to finally cut all of the chains they have been dragging around with them. This all may sound weird or creepy but it is not just a Christian issue. Japanese women have their own way of dealing with pregnancy loss and abortion and it’s not by ignoring it, they too have memorials for their lost children.
Very few women will take advantage of these types of classes. Partly because they are unaware they exist and partly because they are afraid to open up those old wounds.
Men are affected as well, and even fewer men will ever be able to put their experience behind them. I wonder, what does it feel like, having no voice in whether your child lives or dies?
“ While studies on the impact of abortion on men are scarce, available research and anecdotal evidence shows that men can experience problems such as broken relationships; sexual dysfunction; substance abuse; feelings of self-hatred; risk-taking and suicidal behavior; increasing feelings of grief over time; feelings of helplessness, guilt, and depression; greater tendencies toward becoming angry and violent; and feelings connected to a sense of lost manhood.”
Numerous musicians have written about their experiences with abortion, even Eminem. It is raw in typical Eminem style. The video is a mini-documentary recounting how he is unable to forget about his child.
“I can’t keep my lies straight, but I made you terminate my baby; This love triangle left us in a wreck, tangled,” he raps. “What else can I say? It was fun for a while, bet I really woulda loved your smile, didn’t really wanna abort, but f*** it — what’s one more lie, to tell our unborn child?”
It is sad, because the insanity will continue until we realize what we are doing to ourselves.
Ben Folds dealt with his memories about his girlfriend’s abortion by writing this song and dramatizing it in his video.
6 a.m.
Day after Christmas
I throw some clothes on in the dark
The smell of cold
Car seat is freezing
The world is sleeping
I am numb
Up the stairs to her apartment
She is balled up on the couch
Her mom and dad went down to Charlotte
They’re not home to find us out
And we drive
Now that I have found someone
I’m feeling more alone than I ever have before
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly off the coast
And I’m headed nowhere
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly
They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
And I walk down to buy her flowers and sell some gifts that I got
Can’t you see
It’s not me you’re dying for
Now she’s feeling more alone than she ever has before
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly off the coast
And I’m headed nowhere
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly
As weeks went by it showed that she was not fine
They told me, “Son it’s time to tell the truth”
And she broke down and I broke down ’cause I was tired of lying
Driving back to her apartment
For the moment we’re alone
Yeah
She’s alone and I’m alone
Now I know it
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly off the coast
And I’m headed nowhere
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day tend to remind the post-abortive parent of their past choices. If you know someone who you think might benefit from an abortion recovery class, here are some resources about halfway down the link. Additional information specifically directed towards men may be found near the bottom at this link.
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Abortion for women is akin to combat for young men. Society hammers you with certain behavioral limitations- thou shall not murder- then comes up with equally powerful excuses for how a duck is no longer a duck and encourages you to do what you know to be wrong. It breaks something in you to take a life no matter how strong you may believe yourself to be and it never goes away, that is if you have a conscience.
Job’s dilemma.
This was an important set of essays and I really hope it finds wider readership. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is a book in you that needs to be written, that would benefit others. And if we are to ever find some kind of redemption for our failures in life, helping others to avoid our mistakes has to be among the most useful.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers out there who made the choice to love their babies more than the world we bring them into.
Keen observation. Right. Mother’s Day.
Mary, was the timing of your release intentional?
Brilliant.
Yes, Lgr, I did time it for Mother’s Day. It caused me to scramble because I had a family emergency last week and didn’t get anything else done. But I was determined to have it done, so I made up for lost time. The fact that it was rainy and cloudy most of this week helped.
Very well done MC…. as I said I will let the comment stream die down before I make any real commentary. I did take a photo of Baby Dau Hasty up at the family cemetery when I was there. My granny made sure all of us girls knew about her sister Nellie and Baby Dau.
Now that families meet at beaches and rent vacation condos, I wonder if anyone except me puts anything on their graves. I left them both pretty rocks from the Holy Creek.
For you, Granny Fannie, because Nellie had to live with what happened to her, too. I barely remember her. But, I do remember her. Especially when I walk into that Holy Creek where Nellie was baptised.
Interesting that you would liken abortion to combat. If it’s kill or be killed, is the trauma the same? I don’t know the answer to that question but I believe if life is precious and it’s not up to us to decide who lives and who dies. There is always going to be a price to pay for the person who caused the death, even if it’s in self-defense.
Regarding a book..no, I don’t think so. There are many good books about the subject already out there. I think my husband would divorce me. Nothing else gets done if I am writing and it takes me forever. But I am honored that you would even think it possible that I could.
One brick at a time, to build a chimney.
Set a timer. 1/2 he. a day, or whatever schedule works, and doesn’t cause problems.
Time is precious; sure.
If I may be so bold, Farmer recognized writing talent in you. And offered encouragement.
I agree with him.
For what it is worth… I think you could too. Someone is going to have to start writing again one of these days.
Probably with lead pencils or feather quills and inkpots…
HF, my thoughts go in different directions with each comment I read.
1. I call my mother once a week. Every once in a while, I go into a rant while talking to her. Kids don’t know, I tell her, who broke his back or who complained and who was angry when their grandfather or father was conceived. They don’t know how my father got deported to some small town many miles south of the border and how he and another deportee made it back from that godforsaken place. How they jumped off the train to go grab some carrots in a field and found they were green chickpeas. They know nothing of him spending time in jail before he could get a greencard.
2. This watch, I tell the cleaning lady, and some running shoes I have at home, I got years ago. My step kids gave them to me. You see couples fighting over the kids when they split up, for what? They grow up and never call unless they want something.
3. I had this disturbing dream, I tell the beautiful blonde, that I had killed someone and had forgotten about it. I woke up feeling sick about it and tried hard to remember who I had killed and why had I forgotten?
4. What comes after nieto (grandkid)? we asked my grandma. Bis-nieto she said. and what comes after that? Tatara-nieto, she said. And what comes after that? She thought for a second and said, nothing, (ya no son nada) after that they are just pueblo (people).
————————————————————–
So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.
Wow EC– amazingly profound–intensity, depth, insight, I read it several times and took a different mental pathway each time.
Thank you.
“Ecclesiastes 12:13 KJB… “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”
Unfortunate, but not without great cause, did Solomon never meet Paul.
That was great.
Why I always come back whenever I have a free moment, it’s like hanging out in Athens in 400 BC.
Good work, done well. A deeply contemplative piece that had to be hard to write
Thank you
Well done Mary. Your words unlock tears dammed by the damned realities you describe.
Mary Christine –
This was very hard for you to write but your story and all your diligent research has to be told, shared. Suffering women need to know they are not alone. Healing can begin, especially from your story. He knows your name. He knows your story and He knows your heart.
Our Father will put what has been so eloquently written – with His Guidance – into the many hearts He already knows this will go to. Just as He has put you here, now, His plan is already in place. You will never know how far reaching this will be but He already does. God bless you, my dear sister in our Messiah. This story is not finished.
A women’s physiology and nature will forever be mysteries for men.
The unique ability to give birth separates male and female in ways neither can fully appreciate.
You opened a window, shined light into our darkness, and posed soul-searching questions about what the darkness conceals.
Of all the spiritual tests one imposes on themselves, surely giving one’s child to another, saying goodbye forever, requires the most courage and inflicts and aching, empty vacuum that cannot be filled.
Except by those who pour caring to empty grief. Thank you for another generous pour.
“The unique ability to give birth separates male and female in ways neither can fully appreciate.”
True that, but modern “science” and “culture” constantly seeks to blur the differences in the name of…………. Progress?
Science has nothing to do with the blur – science is all about knowledge, and precision, and facts, and logic. Traditional culture doesn’t blur either – the highest function of the family is to create society, and culture, and science when trained and capable. I would throw art, implements and devices, and spiritual exploration in there as well.
FEELINGS cause the blur – you want something to be untrue that is true, or true that is untrue. Science has no feelings, and seeks no rationalizations. Science only wants the truth, and to discover something new about reality. Culture uplifts, when it is positive and creative.
Male and female are different, and wonderful. Men were created to appreciate and protect women, and women to do everything men cannot. They are complementary, in survival terms – women can nurture children even when food is scarce, as long as they are healthy. Men cannot – they must hunt and farm to feed their children, and cannot until the children have enough teeth to chew. Neither can have children alone, nor should they try.
If we would just quit listening to the mentally ill who suggest fanciful nonsense out of jealousy, society and households would be more peaceful – and better served by the truth.
I love science. It was my first love. Puppy love.
It explains things that are seen, and unseen, whose natures are mysteries. People believe science.
Anyone can test, and reproduce, and demonstrate its laws. Science is our path to the universe.
But science is not a unified ‘Truth’. Newtonian physics (earth) cannot explain or usurp the laws of Quantum movement (heaven). Scientists will forever search for their Holy Grail, a ‘Unified Field Theory’ UFT (Bible), which harmonizes the ‘argument’ between Quantum and Newtonian physics (Old and New Testament).
They are trying to find God in a test tube, an outer journey. It won’t happen.
UFT’s metaphor and its key, ‘Absolute Zero’ the cessation of all movement, even at the subatomic level, is like trying to handcuff God.
3 minute explanation:
I hunger for Spirituality, a feast the Soul never finishes, never diminishes. It is an inner search for Truth. My path is unique, but I walk it with everyone. A path cleared by God’s Voice, well worn by those who hear it also, all arriving at the same destination from different departures.
God’s voice guides us from within, and His Guides without; Sons and Daughters who embody his voice. In this world, they are usually ignored, frequently persecuted and often killed.
Insanity is the inevitable result of the inability to hear His Voice within. Many become deaf because they ‘believe’ that they must ‘believe’ another’s Truth; those who proclaim with Authority that only they follow the ‘One Truth’, the ‘One God.’
Those who ‘believe’ that God abandons those who are deaf to His voice aren’t listening. That is worse than being deaf.
Again, MC, I just wanted to commend you for your courage in writing these very poignant and informational writings. There can be no doubt your healing words on this difficult topic will comfort those who needed comforting at this time.
Please don’t be discouraged should there be any dearth of comments. Some pieces are like poems or moving arrangements in music. It’s just good to hold them in silence for a while.
In closing, just as many different folks like to collect different things- I like to collect ideas and quotes. In reading your Part II today, it brought to mind a triune that I just looked up for accuracy:
and
and
Thank you again.
“Please don’t be discouraged should there be any dearth of comments.”
I tried to prepare myself. This is a hard topic and sometimes people just do not know what to say. Even the people who never seem to lack for words. If one person who needs help gets it, then it was all worth it, regardless of whether there is 400 or 4 comments. Thanks for the encouragement and the reminder to not be discouraged by a lack of comments.
You have every right to be very proud of your posts here. I was on the road a lot taking some fascinating photos and talking to a few folks “down” in the bottom lands.
On my journeys, I visited a number of cemeteries looking for some soldiers who fought at Pilot Knob Civil War Battlefield. I’m on a one woman mission to get some Colors onto our forgotten soldiers’ graves around here. . While I am in those “old” cemeteries, I look for Baby Dau and Baby Son and I usually find them there. Not so much in the newer cemeteries. There doesn’t appear to be space for them.
We keep bumping into 1972, don’t we?
I wonder why.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/equal-rights-amendment-passed-by-congress
I’m going to put a link to another piece about the ERA campaign that NEVER REALLY ENDED. Congress passed the stinker in 1972 in a pathetic bit of pandering to the NOW crowd.
“Honor Women’s History Month by ratifying Equal Rights Amendment
© Getty Images
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.” So far 37, states have ratified the ERA. In 2019, the historic 38th was expected to involve either Virginia or Arizona’s State legislatures to no avail. How will gender equality fare in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere?
[[[MY INSERT. Are you kidding me? They are still wasting time and money on this?]]]
The Constitution is silent on the topic of equality based on sex, in contrast to the constitutions or equivalent charters of many other developed countries. In 1979, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, aka CEDAW, absent the United States.
[[[The Constitution is “silent” about equality for a reason. It is NOT a math quiz.]]]
…
So, who are the winners and losers in the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment? There are no losers…
However, during the past 50 years, social conservatives have spread brazen, unsubstantiated misinformation about gender equality for women. [[[BRAZEN. That’s a word you don’t see in many objective journalistic articles from days of yore.]]] It’s a mystery why partisans deride the ERA and condemn that women’s rights will change their lives, and not for the better. Some opponents even claim that the ERA would challenge the family unit or “traditional” gender roles. On average, gender equality adversaries stem from “family values” followers who hold a sincere religious acceptance promoting men’s domination over women. [[[Those pesky “family values.”]]]
Foes other central and mistaken arguments portray the ERA as a Trojan horse that would mandate abortions “on demand.” [[[Ding, Ding, Ding.]]] That is simply false. Abortion access is already legal in the United States, and the ERA would not alter that or change the existing Constitutional framework under Roe v. Wade, which is grounded in constitutional privacy rights not sex equality. The ERA also will not require states to pay for abortions any more than current law does, e.g., if a state pays for all “medically necessary” procedures except for abortion, it may be required to pay for “medically necessary” abortions. In the states that have equal rights amendments, none require abortions on demand. There is no reason to think that the ERA will be any different.
[[[Or IS there?]]]
The piece is worth reading, if you grasp that I believe the ERA was indeed a Trojan horse and by keeping the NOW crowd in the public eye* for so long, those bitches managed to turn a lot of men into effeminate caricatures of men and themselves into the disgusting examples we see every time we visit the People of Walmart page.
*That public eye is selective but once caught, it is hard to alter the perception and perspective of those who’ve looked through that particular lens. It takes paradigm shift to dispel the cognitive dissonance.
It’s me, Gayle
Mary C.
My first impulse is to congratulate you on your courageous and well-written articles. But how to congratulate the honest expression of pain and regret and found wisdom? You have spoken profound truth, a commodity that becomes more elusive every day in our crazy culture.
When a woman has an abortion, she has been taught that she is a moral free agent not subject to any judgment of right or wrong. Some in her life may even encourage her to rejoice in her decision. On the other hand, a woman who suffers a miscarriage mourns, and those near her offer comfort and hope. Her child is defined as LOST (“She lost the baby.”). The aborted child, however, is thrown away, not lost, but deliberately sent to the pail, the incinerator, or the fetal parts broker. Unless the mother is mentally ill, reconciling the deep grief of baby-loss with the deliberate destruction of baby is impossible. Kudos to you for your efforts to help women who suffer the trauma of this dilemma. Like you, I believe spiritual healing is the only possible solution.
As fetuses continue to be destroyed, medical science congratulates itself on the progress made in saving babies who are born very prematurely. If the child is so fortunate as to be of value to Mom, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent to assure eventual viability outside of an artificial womb. No one questions the burning desire to save the baby, while down the street, a baby at the same stage of development is worth no effort. In fact, attending personnel may be forbidden from assisting a poor baby who emerges from the procedure fighting to live.
This is simply schizophrenic. Trying to live out a truth and a lie simultaneously is crazy-making. And as you suggest, the negative effects on our culture, and thus on every one of us, may be far more reaching than we ever imagined.
It is schizophrenic, isn’t it? I am afraid it is getting worse and soon an essay like mine simply will not be allowed to be published at all, on any forum.
John 21:17;
Asked him a 3rd time.
A writing I saw today suggested a possible explanation.
Perhaps the Risen One asked 3 times, as a healing form of forgiveness
for denying Him three times in the courtyard, during such emotional crisis.
And on the seashore, before the charcoal fire, in the aftermath of a traumatic test of faith.
Not so much a command for doing penance, but by repetition, the searing in, to the consciousness, the substance, and importance of forgiveness’ healing powers, and
what type of commitment might be required to fully receive it? A dedication of Love.
Not saying it’s the undisputable lesson. Just something to contemplate.
Tomorrow (Mothers Day) I’m going to ask my mom if either she or dad considered having me aborted. Really. I think I have a right to know.
My seester had an abortion in her late 20s. I believe it turned her into the raving libtard she is today. Not kidding. She, like me, was conservative and a Believer. After she got pregnant she was more or less “shunned” by her church and Believer friends. Then she got the abortion and she pretty much became a total outcast. So, she basically said “fuck you” to these bastards, left the church and never looked back …. all because Christians tend to shoot their wounded.
Christian artist Chuck Girard wrote a song titled “Don’t Shoot The Wounded”. The lyrics are one of the most hauntingly beautiful in Christian music. It’s a beautiful song for moms who have had abortions … God forgives, he won’t shoot you.
============================
Don’t shoot the wounded, they need us more than ever
They need our love no matter what it is they’ve done
Sometimes we just condemn them,
And don’t take time to hear their story
Don’t shoot the wounded, someday you might be one
It’s easy to love the people who are standing hard and fast
Pressing on to meet that higher calling
But the ones who might be struggling, we tend to judge too harshly
And refuse to try and catch them when they’re falling
We put people into boxes and we draw our hard conclusions
And when they do the things we know they should not do
We sometimes write them off as hopeless
And we throw them to the dogs
Our compassion and forgiveness sometimes seem in short supply
So I say…
Chorus
We can love them and forgive them
When their sin does not exceed our own
For we too have been down bumpy roads before
But when they commit offenses outside the boundaries we have set
We judge them in a word and we turn them out,
And we close the door
Myself I’ve been forgiven for so many awful things
I’ve been cleansed and washed and bathed so many times
That when I see a brother who has fallen from the way
I just can’t find the license to convict him of his crimes
So I say…
Chorus
That doesn’t mean we turn our heads when we see a brother sin
And pretend that what he’s doing is all right
But we must help him see his error, we must lead him to repent
Cry with those who cry, but bring their deeds into the light
For it’s the sick that need the doctor,
And it’s the lame that need the crutch
It’s the prodigal who needs the loving hand
For a man who’s in despair, there should be
Kindness from his friends
‘Lest he should forsake the fear of almighty God
And turn away from God and man
So I say…
There is nothing to fear from God. I upthumbed you because I feel His heart beating in Chuck’s words.
Except for one line: ‘Lest he should forsake the fear of almighty God’
Our greatest fear should be the consequences of ignoring His voice within us.
Often, people remain deaf because they cannot “forsake the fear of almighty God.” They’re afraid of His judgement. The Bible offers innumerable warnings:
“I tell you, my friends, don’t be afraid of people. They can kill the body, but after that they can do nothing more to hurt you. I will show you the one to fear. You should fear God, who has the power to kill you and also to throw you into hell. Yes, he is the one you should fear.”
My experience is my Truth: God is all-embracing, all-forgiving, waiting patiently, forever, for us to forgive sins against us, by others and ourselves. All we have to fear is the refusal to forgive.
We are instructed to forgive, but God doesn’t? God is Omnipresent. Yet Papist doctrine suggests that He bans Himself from Hell while tossing unrepentant sinners into His absence.
I have experienced His presence even there, showing me the way out.
1. There is that teaching in church about kids who suffer from rejection when parents considered aborting them. It’s possible. Back then, I didn’t question it; I accepted that difficult kids were the result of that early rejection.
2. I can’t address the resultant depression in an abortion but it sounds the same as when a new mother gets post partum blues, she is coming down from a pregnancy high.
3. That’s an interesting hypothesis, Stuck. That the guilt makes your sister hang on desperately to an idea that does not condemn her and hold on to that in order to live with herself.
4. I had read and wondered a long time ago about the observation among dog breeders that a bitch that had been impregnated by a different breed would have impure pups long after even if she later bore a litter from another purebred dog. Only recently, I read that humans also have that quality. The summary of a study said that the fetus changes the mother’s DNA permanently (of course, a woman’s eggs are already there since birth so they aren’t affected in the same manner). According to the study, this change is the cause of baby brain, she is transformed and changed by the pregnancy.
“the fetus changes the mother’s DNA permanently”
Absolutely.
DNA is miraculous stuff. It can be ‘changed’ and changes us, with thought.
Jean Auel’s stories aptly portrayed genetic memory. It’s a stream that flows both uphill and downhill. Mothers ‘absorb’ them from their child the same way a child absorbs them from their mother, and it changes both.
The church has been a big problem. Some churches have”Sanctity of Life” Sunday and will sermonize on abortion and not talk about forgiveness. I have had women tell me that they get up and walk out or avoid going altogether. It’s amazing that they stay in church at all.
Morons.
The Bible is a redacted, ‘managed’ document.
Martin Luther didn’t start Christianity’s internecine warfare over what would be included and how it would be interpreted. But he made a hellofa fuss that fractured Papal control of western civilization, which led to the rise of secular democracy. The Vatican branded him a Heretic and announced a special place in Hell for all Protestants.
It was in 325 AD, that Arius brought the 3-century old debate about Christ’s nature to its current ecumenical posture, also by being branded a Heretic.
Arius knew Jesus was a man who became divine by finding God within. Papists wanted the sole right to declare the path to God – through a priest, and Catholic coffers, by offering indulgences.
As Eusebius, an Assyrian Bishop, I refused to sign the anathema condemning Arius and my fellow Arians, but I eventually agreed to adopt the papist mantle; I signed their Papist Creed. Even though I knew it was corrupt. It’s taken two centuries to forgive myself for advancing their corruption.
Gail Forsyth-Vail tells the story well.
https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop2/arius
Not very Christ like.
“…all because Christians tend to shoot their wounded.”
Those likely are not Christians. The majority who profess Christ could not identify the gospel that saves a man today at gunpoint, to follow your example. If one can’t speak the gospel clearly in his own words, I very much doubt his salvation and need to go to work.
Christians understand they were saved from that already inflicted fatal wound and that others require the same.
I had a friend that took me seven years to bring home the gospel to him. Patience and tenacity. Speak truth in love… which sometimes can be painful.
John 3: 3-7
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
1 Corinthians 2: 12-14
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Turn in your Bible to the gospel of our salvation.
1 Corinthians 15:1-4 KJB… “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:”
Corresponding, is the so called “Organ donation”.
The brain death has been invented, to make this atrocity possible, the disembowelment of the breathing body.
In the video, a woman who decided to let this happen to her son, in a night full of desperation.
Afterwards, she insisted to see him once again, an immediately regretted. Now she shares the story.
Here in Germany, a law is under way, to make everyone organ donor, to make it opt out.
Just watch a minute, her face tells the story.
For you, Mary Christine, and those your wings lift
I started listening on my laptop and realized it was not doing it justice so I hooked it up to my Bose Wave. I don’t have the words available to describe the beauty. Help me place the song. It sounds like a hymn or worship song, but I could not bring the title to mind.
Thank you, Dio.
I was searching for Marsten Smith tunes (Pachelbel’s Cannon was posted here) and found it – I don’t think the tune is called ‘Lord of the Cello’ but that’s how it’s described in several versions.
Marsten Smith is the Coltrane of Cello. He riffs different versions of songs every time he plays.
My best guess is that it’s ‘Joyful Procession’ from his CD, ‘Lord of the Cello’. That made my heart float just as high.
Here’s another of his improvs
very cool instrument, never saw an electric cello like that, guitar head stock, curved fretless neck, and, in insane looking kickstand that attaches to some sort of modified belt.
nice playing, very interesting video, one of the many reasons to visit TPB!
Mary C…
Wow. Makes the other essays look like Dick, Jane and Sally stuff.
Took me 90 minutes to read both articles and all the comments. If it helps ant, maybe no one reading this on TBP will be Gods intended target. The recipient might be at the end of a chain of sites it gets to.
I was sold the same bill of good Most of us here were sold. A fetus was nothing more than a lifeless chicken embryo or a stillborn calf. I wasn’t convicted until the age of 40 when I saw a picture of a baby in the womb. It was like my second road to Damascus moment, the first being when I sobered up and found God. Not too long ago I forced myself to watch 3 different types of abortions online. It took 2 weeks to get all the way through them. This from someone who committed some wanton and cruel murders in my dark past. Watching a Partial birth abortion was awful but so was the one dismembering a small 4 month old baby in it’s mother. To sell the lie that something like that would not traumatize a woman! If what I did haunted me and drove me insane trying to blot it out with drugs and booze to no avail, how much more so for the young woman who was misinformed and suddenly a moment after it is too late to stop, is seeing and feeling what is really being done.
My already extremely high regard for you has just gone up much further and my heart goes out to you on Mothers day as well. You’re one courageous Broad and for you guys out there She’s one fine looker too.
Lets not forget to pray for those promoting this awful thing that perhaps some may repent before God gets his hands on them.
Before I went through my abortion recovery class I punished myself by looking at the pictures you can find online of aborted babies?
I wasn’t punishing myself. I wanted to know just what exactly it involved because I didn’t have a clue. Now I know exactly how barbaric and evil it is. Makes me look like a lightweight.
Sorry I didn’t mean to imply that you did that to punish yourself. Your comment just reminded me of something I used to do before I learned to stop the self-condemnation.
Thank you for slogging through it all at once. It got very long and I still left stuff out.
The link between coercion and abortion, for example.
I thought I commented on this earlier. Not sure what happened to it. I didn’t mean to imply that you were punishing yourself. Your comment just reminded me of something I used to do before I learned to stop the self-condemnnation.
Amen, Flea…
guy just admitted to murder, online.
let’s just call that literary license.
A no name stirring shit. fukk off. that was decades ago and has been dealt with. I use it to try to help other people with their skeletons to find forgiveness. Asshats like you are why I rarely visit here anymore. Mary gave me a heads up that her essay was posted or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Get a handle so we know who you are dikwad.
Abortion is genocide for the sake of pleasure. Does not bode well for any nation. It means its death. Watch and learn.
Their reasoning for agreeing:
From the woman-needed to remove something unwanted
From the men – saves me money and work
However, it is a child , it is murder. You ended a life.
When people can live with that as nothing more than just a choice you would have to examine their souls.
brother, their appears to be a log in your eye, for you cast heavy stones.
I just call it what it is
One song I remember from the 1979 Album Squeezing Out Sparks, Graham Parker’s “You Can’t Be too Strong”
MC, superb writing. You are precious.
And to think we call ours an advanced society.
Enjoy your day Sunday. Hugs.
Mary Christine
Thank you again. I have learned much from these 2 essays. Thank you for writing them.
“It’s really not so much about self-forgiveness; it’s more about stopping the self-condemnation.”
Colossians 2:13 KJB… “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;”
Philippians 3:13 KJB… “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Very well said MC. Keep pressing on. You’ve left here a valuable resource for many I am sure.
grace and peace…
That statue of the sobbing mother and her aborted child/child she never had is really poignant. I wonder where it’s located.
I just want to thank everyone for their thoughtful comments. Some of you even shared a bit of your own painful stories. I hope that part 2 was uplifting for you. It was my intent.
I learned things from all of you. Maybe you learned from each other as well as me. That is the point, isn’t it? It’s why I’m here.
For those that celebrated Mother’s Day with your mom or other family, I hope you had an enjoyable day. It rained again, all weekend and was cold. I am ready for some sun and some warmth.
Finally had the time to read Part 2 and the comments.
No one can provide guidance, healing and support nearly as well as someone who has walked that mile. You are a beautiful example of the truth of that.
My sister has been involved in a women’s healing and support group for several years. She originally went to see if it was appropriate to implement for the church were she is the admin secretary, not to actually be involved. After one session she was so aware of her need for this program herself – in some areas she thought she was already healed, and in others which became apparent in that first look-see – that she immediately went through it. She has become one of the most effective… mentor? guide? instructor? I’m not sure what word would define her role.
She suffered classic symptoms of PTSD for years, but none of us knew back then what that was all about. Her specific issues had nothing to do with abortion, but she works with many women who have had that trauma, both having it inflicted upon them and performing them.
I don’t believe there really can be a sharp delineation between causes for PTSD. Trauma has no defined parameters.
Pain is pain, horrible is horrible, regardless of its origin.
Thank you, MC. Very well done, and so important, even in areas besides abortion.
I am so glad to see how you have risen above and conquered what could have destroyed you.
MC, your writing has elevated my already high opinion of the people of TBP people. Good people and some of you are really smart.
When I saw “What Really Made Women Go Nuts?” by Mary Christine*, I sensed there was an important storyline opportunity which could add (or detract) for the reservoir of knowledge the Admin guy on this burning platform has attracted. Whether you like any of us here or not, you gotta know we are a package of smart cookies. A strange variety pack, perhaps, which no one but Homer would even consider digesting on the way to Canterbury, but a pack of smart cookies nonethe less.
Yes, I know that was Chaucer, Smartass, but there was no other way to get a reference to Penelope here without the alliterative lift. And if you don’t know who any of those references refer to or if the alliterative lift makes you want to demand Admin get out the duct tape, you need to downvote me now and get yourself to a library where there are real dictionaries and not ones the general public gets to write their own interpretation onto. Because those of you wondering how words come to mean what they come to mean need to study something called linguistics. And, all the tomes on linguistics are out there but not easy to find these days. Unless you know where they are in libraries. Unless you can put your hand on a page and know it will not have different words on it the next time you look, you really can’t count on that information to be valid. Unless you really know what you think you know. Unless you will stake your sacred honor on it. And, if you do not grasp the difference between a simple promise and pledging one’s sacred honor, then I suggest you do some additional reading.
https://www.americanheritage.com/we-mutually-pledge-each-other-our-lives-our-fortunes-and-our-sacred-honor
When I was a real reporter for a real newspaper before the H.H. Herbert School of Journalism became the glitzy Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at OU, I was taught by a surly old editor named Jack Wills who cut his journalism teeth with Will Rogers, I think. He told me three sources meant three. Two could carry the “fact” label if the third was at least a decent rumor. One high quality source would carry the piece ONLY if the reporter was the source. Meaning, the reporter needed a tape recorder and/or a camera. I carry a digital recorder but I can capture a lot of detail with photos. I was taught by a professional writer and photographer named Dad. Jack Wills gave me the only “B” I received my entire journalism student career after AWACS… I could have been a contender for that Magna Cum Laude sash but my stubborn Missouri mule nature got me the Thank the Laude diploma instead. Jack Wills refused to accept my visit to the Bloomfield Vindicator’s old printing press at my father’s lifetime friend and editor of the local paper’s office as the “required” tour of a newspaper office to qualify for A standing. I stood my ground and I am prouder of that B than I am of the 3.8something GPA that really means little to me now. I do know where that old printing press sits idle, but protected. That’s good information to have.
So, God and/or Guido** called me to Iceland twenty seven years ago to pick up a guy who really does seem to love me the way Christ loved his “church” if Christ existed the way the Bible tells me so or not. Speculation about there being a virgin birth or not seems moot when you consider the guy Mary was watching on that cross really would have been considered to be an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy by any cultural norm. A historian called Josephus made a few notes about Jesus of Nazareth being crucified for wrongful assembly or some silly infraction like that and if his mother had to watch her son die on that cross, he was probably looking into her eyes and loving her unto his death. Most of us grasp the depth of that sort of love. Especially us mothers and beloved wives.
I’m writing my own article to offer here regarding the changes which took place in our society with an abrupt and unannounced shift (you might say a paradigm shift) in attitudes toward what we once embraced as family values. Our society once believed the basic building block of the nation was the family. In the 1970s, a successful campaign made our children embrace the ridiculous notion that a made-up thing called equality could be legislated by a pack of money-grubbing congresscritters so they could pander to the power of now. And if you get the dou·ble en·ten·dre regarding Eckhardt Tolle and the National Organization of/for Women (NOW), at least admit I can plop the poop in line as good as any tadpole.
If you plan to argue my points and think you got what it takes to take me on regarding this issue, I have just one thing to say.
Bring it. But, do your homework. I won’t say when I might get this one finished. I’d hoped to respond to Mary’s Mother’s Day offering when it arrived, but like Mary, it has been a busy sort of week for this mother too. And, this offering deserves more commentary from others. It was an extensive piece of research and you more than met Jack Wills standard for journalistic excellence.
I will have to say, in my own defense, I had the highest SCORE in the whole class of Newswriting students that semester. But, since I was 15 years older than most of them, I was not as easily pushed around by that surly old dude. I’d been around a lot of surly dudes in the USAF and beyond. I was sure I could win him over. But, the stubborn old bastard would not relent. He wanted me to go to a NEWSROOM and talk to “real” journalists.
Well, if he were here today, I would introduce him to Mary Christine and tell him to give her a fucking A+++. She’s more than earned it.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/equal-rights-amendment-passed-by-congress
*I want to commend your parents on their choice of names for you. I’d never seen the two together before I “met” you here. When I saw it, I said to myself, “Self? That nice lady suggests I Marry Christ and I already did.”
**There was another evaluator people sometimes called Nick the Dick. My husband was known as Nick the Knife. Nick the Dick called my husband “Guido” in the office and he was the only person my husband allowed to do so.
One of my great frustrations when dealing with others is the ignorance of some and flat refusal by others to actually use the correct words, but expect me to ‘know what I mean’. There are all kinds of fascinating ways to use words in similes, metaphors, etc. but every word was coined to convey a specific thought, and should be used with that understanding. Even mangling a word/phrase on purpose is all good, if the person understands what the original intent was.
Kind of funny; the only ‘F’ I ever got in any class, training or school anywhere in my entire life was for Journalism, clear back in 1972. With my love of the written word and strong sense of justice, it seemed like a good direction to explore. It took me no more than 2 classes before I saw where it was going, and I couldn’t stomach it. I flat refused to attend any more classes and was flunked. The teacher was shocked that I had such disdain for his beloved profession, but I could already see the putrid liberalism involved, even back then.
I have known some very admirable journalists, but they are few and far between. I could see where this world was heading, way back then. I have never regretted my decision. I know, looking back, that being who and what I am I would’ve been completely marginalized, or sucked into the cess-pool.
There are almost no admirable journalists now.
Just send Lot on his way and burn the motherfucker down. Even if whatshername turns to sand.
Sand, I think, turns into granite.
When Mary Christine opened the doorway into this topic I said to myself, “Self? Do you think this woman is going to?”
I think I may have even made the first comment on that thread without getting getting pelted with shit*. I don’t know for sure and I’m not going back to look. I spent hours and hours reading archives here trying to grasp why I was intrigued with the cast of characters and caricatures jumping off the page at me every time a ZH re-posting would bring me here years ago when I was still an Okie hoping to save enough money to retire early.
My personal take on TBP is that Jim Quinn, shock jock or not, was assigned to collect stories and storytellers in the grand schema of preparation for The Big Event. Like the Fireman in Farenheit 451 whose job it was to burn all discovered books, JQ can’t help tucking the occasional rare find into his collection of soon-to-be rare bookwriters.
Some of his rare finds have been stinkers, but one can’t be too selective when one is racing rats to raise a family in a world increasing overrun with vermin. No matter what happens over the next weeks while I get this particular monkey off the back of my lifelong friend’s Harley and onto a Vietnam Vet’s hog near the Alamo, I admire you greatly for what you’ve accomplished here, Admin.
Now, after that brief reminder I was once a respected member here until I got sick and got shit on while sick, I’ve given a nod to the real Big Dog around here, which is what any good introduction should do.
Now, the meat of the matter.
I had an abortion when I was 17, but my mother did not take me, nor did my former POW father. I drove myself from Missouri to Texas in a Chevy Vega that needed a new battery. I had jumper cables with me in case I absolutely had to turn it off and someone had to give me a jump. I’d told my father in a brief late-night conversation that I had to go somewhere for a week or so and would miss school and need a note. I told him I could not tell him what it was I was doing, but that my brother knows and our old friend in Texas knows and I had to do it.
My father’s sad gaze lingered on me for a long, long time. Then he said “Do what you have to do. There are always consequences, you know.”
I know that now. I thought I knew it then. I did not.
15 years later, I developed a cyst on one of my ovaries during pregnancy that caused torsion of that ovary after my son’s birth. The internal surgeon who drew the short straw at the military hospital where I “presented” that morning after taking my baby to the sitter’s (Grooch was TDY), told me the good news was that I did not have a burst appendix. The bad news was my right ovary was dead and tangled in my intestines. He held index fingers to thumbs to show me how enlarged the thing had gotten. He told me he’d sent the blackened tissue off for biopsy and it had deteriorating hair, tooth and bone tissue in it. I remember thinking the life of an internal surgeon must be dull for him to be so excited about that biopsy he wanted to share that unwanted information. Part of me suspected it was that long dead child I’d left in a clinic in Houston, somehow trying to remind me I could never really be a good mother if I didn’t come to terms with what I’d done.
It had been a very uncomfortable and painful pregnancy for me, so much so I was given half-days and put on restricted duty as “Commander’s Secretary” where I developed an admiration for the man who later turned down full-bird because of the evil that went down when Captain Wang controlled (or not) that shootdown of a UN helicopter during Desert Storm.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/21/us/air-force-officer-is-acquitted-in-downing-of-army-aircraft.html
So, I was around then and off flying status because my ovary surgery had put me DNIF (duties not to include flying) for a while, as I remember it, but it’s been 25 years already and I’m not checking my notes and records. Though I do have them. You gotta know I do but this isn’t about that.
It’s about why I got an abortion when I knew I should not. And I’ve been putting a lot of thought and research time into it. Mary Christine did her work and so did I. I spend my research time at a real library where there is a basement full of old books for me to pile on tables and read read read. The “article” will come later because as much as I thought I knew about the Equal Rights Amendment and what was behind the changes in our linguistic code around the same time (1972), I only thought I knew. But, like Horton said, “I meant what I said and said what I meant.”
When Mary Christine let me know she was indeed researching the article for a Mother’s Day presentation I thought the timing brilliant. As I thought the July 4th gathering of the TBP community was a brilliant scheduling move (I will not be in attendance though Flat Stucky is scheduled to stop by on his way to Georgia).
That is what one looking for truth always bumps up against. What you know versus what you think you know. Here’s the nutshell version for now and I’ll let you assholes throw all the shitballs you want. I’m wearing an Armor they just won’t penetrate.
Nutshell version.
My Catholic boyfriend of over a year simply said “get rid of it” and then, when I did, he told everyone he’d wanted to do the right thing. He never married. I don’t think his father explained the consequence thing to him.
My mother, already driven close to the edge of insanity by my older sister’s child, born out of wedlock in a world where people did not do that, had to be treated with Librium for a while. I wasn’t sure what it was for, but I picked it up for her at the pharmacy a time or two because she couldn’t drive. She just slept and cried most of the time while I took care of the child in the house and doted on him, becoming Momma Marfa while Momma Melly worked to buy formula and diapers. Because my father had said the same thing to her; actions have consequences and you will now have to raise this child. But, the family will help, he said. Because that’s what families did once upon a time.
My father didn’t speak to me for a long time when I returned from Texas. Eventually, he did and it was wise and kind and helped me come to terms with it for a while. He wasn’t good with girl things, but he did the best he could.
And, that is, my TBP friends and neighbors, all the Good Lord requires of any of us.
At the abortion clinic, I had to leave and walk back in to fill out a new application. The counselor told me I could not apply for an abortion consult if I was not 18 or accompanied by a parent. She told me to come back in, talk to another counselor, put a date on the form which made me 18 and no one would ask for ID. That’s what happened. A few hours later, my friend picked me up from the clinic and took me to Galveston, where I sat upon the rocks and cried for a while. Then, he helped me get that Vega ready for the 18 hour drive back to Missouri and sent me home to a community where everyone thought they knew what I’d done. And they didn’t mind throwing shitballs at me.
But, I survived. In fact? I thrived. Because I learned how to walk into the River and get myself cleaned.
I’ve got a video of that too. I never visit that Holy Ground without stepping into that little creek that feeds the Castor River way up the line just like the Missouri gets fed by the waters of South Dakota and beyond. But I need to check with Flat Stucky’s PR team about what I can show you folks here. Some of it may be proprietary. If my appointment next week works out the way I expect it to. If it does, I’ll let the farmer know.
My Daddy would have like HSF. Probably Quinn, too, but his use of foul language would have put Big Joe off. He didn’t really think there was a place for that in written languages, though he appreciated good writing no matter where it occurred. I think you would have made his cut too, Admin. Even with all the potty mouth business. He was a bit of a prude, but he was brilliant.
And I’ll leave it at that, for now.
Thank you, Mary Christine. When people ask me what Brave means I will show them this article and say Mary Christine did what all of us knew should one day be done. And she did it well.
*I’ve been pelted with shit most of my life. I clean up pretty good. Because I may have been born with my feet in muddy water, but I leaned how to find water cleaned by the Rock of Ages to scrub them clean. A man who faced death and spit into its face because of his Faith taught me how.
By the way, this is what the Veterans Cemeteries look like around here.
All Summer Long.
Oh, two things:
The sad gaze lingered. Feeling, thought action. Then speech. That’s how a response occurs. You can argue and argue but every damn time, I will get irritated, think I need to quit wasting my time and I will leave the conversation. And never return.
Because SILENCE is sometimes the best response.
The second thing?
I see a big shift in the music in the late sixties and early seventies. Just sayin’… a LOT of work roes into changing society.
Around the same time, Hillary was cutting her wisdom teeth on how to conduct a witchhunt while assisting with an investigation of a burglary at the Watergate Hotel.
I don’t suppose anyone paid any attention to her Politics of Meaning drivel when her father died? I did. I pretty much pay attention to most of what occurs in my range of viewpoint. And that was in my range of vision then. I had just left the USAF and planned to get my degree in Journalism and take that Geore Will editorial job when he retired. He never did retire. I guess he’s just gonna keel over at his desk one day.
The video and text of her speech are worth only the briefest of cursory reviews, if that. Suffice it to say it was social justice drivel. Someone told her she was smart and forgot to tell her other people just might be smarter.
“In 1993, with her father on his deathbed, Hillary Rodham Clinton was not yet a two-time presidential candidate. She was not a New York senator or the secretary of state. She was the president’s wife — a first lady who hosted the Easter egg roll and Christmas tree lighting at the White House, in addition to trying to overhaul the health care system.”
Word. Mary’s detailed research deserves more commentary because she bravely stood where no woman has stood before. With Amazing Grace. Which I play beautifully. As long as I have the music.
I do indeed plan a researched piece on the ERA and how I believe it influenced the changes in society. But, I’ve got a lot more research to do and if you plan to argue the point, so do you.
You know, Martha, you really are a very talented writer. All I did was pour my anger and my heart into words and did a lot of research. And I tried to make it all flow in a decent manner and make it readable. I just wanted people to know what I already knew. We are killing our kids. Even when we allow them to be born we lie to them and let others lie to them. We send them off to banker wars and allow them to be turned into cannon fodder.
Sorry, I am particularly angry at the moment. Thanks for the compliment. I never though of myself as a journalist.
Lady, you are the best sort of journalist. I will bring YOUR book to you. The young man still lives in Kansas City, having joined the rat race for fiat dollars when he could have helped us design an off-grid system and turned this little piece of ground into Grooch’s Gulch.
Brat. Who wants to live in a freaking luxury apartment on a lake when he could have a treehouse?
My Veterans Day article (featuring Flat Stucky trip around the WORLD… I’ve got a lady on the Gold Coast who thinks she can “catch” him from a military hop. It really is fun making these connections) is actually themed and I will share the theme with you here.
That is NOT proprietary.
The Theme?
America’s Blood Treasure on the Altars of Abortion, Absolute Empire and Abomination.
The little song I added to my own post about paradise and snakes is an interesting one. It triggers people when the LGBTXY+++ sign goes up.
Think about that.
When I was in the “Masters” program in journalism, I showed correlation (strong) between academic snobbitry and bigotry. I did so by placing one very odd question amidst the rest of the seemingly mild questions.
So, when the androgynous singer holds up that sign, I immediately saw my very odd question and liked what they’d done without seeing the rest. I did watch the rest and it is very moving.
The bigot will turn it off because they think it “pro-faggot.”
Just as 85% PLUS of respondents marked “bigot” on my odd question.
My question?
Of the following list, choose any person whose opinion does not matter. I then offered a list of terms applied to people with less than “desirable” opinions.
They marked “Bigot” 85% of the time. If you are even afraid to listen to the bigot, how do you change the bigot’s mind?
I do not mind sharing additional information. I think the Truth is best discussed in the light of day, like that Milton guy said.
“Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”
Comparable with statement of Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address (4 March 1801): “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
(and thanks, MC… I just prefer photographs as my storytelling medium.)
The “inside” of the treehouse which was overrun with Mennonites when my log home was built. That old refrigerator was inside full of old food. I had my son put on gloves and a mask and empty it. Then, I scrubbed it down and when Nick ran the electricity (he did all our electric installation after my old friend, the certified electrician, put in the circuit breaker panel as a favor) I plugged it in and it worked.
Those old Frigidaire machines just hum right along. Owner’s manual on top. 1967 model.
Oh, and I was once known around here as the mudding/taping queen.
Hey, we have an old GE that belonged to Mark’s grandma in the garage, it looks just like that. It keeps stuff colder than my new Whirlpool I got last year when we moved in.
I have just one question, why did you go to Texas? Seems like Kansas would have been so much closer but maybe not, if you had to criss-cross all the way from SE Missouri to Overland Park or somewhere near there. I know Planned Parenthood was settled in it’s current location by around 1980ish. Other places were available before that. Just ask me, I know where they were.
I really didn’t know a lot about what was involved in getting “rid of it” as my boyfriend suggested. And since he suggested it with an angry punch at my gut, I didn’t feel like asking him for clarification.
So. I had an unwed sister whose baby I cared for most evenings after school (Junior year) and sometimes even carried the little bugger with me on dates until she got the tables cleared at the Holiday Inn and could come meet me and take him from me, wherever I might be. Often, from that ’68 Road Runner, beep beep.
I remember calling my brother and him letting out an explosive groan that ended with a faint little dam. He told me whatever I needed to do, he’d help all he could and when I suggested his old friend in Texas, he said he would call him and I told him I already did. I told him I’d tell Daddy where I was going but not why.
I drove to Texas because my “other” brother by another mother had moved there. Since my own brother was in the US Navy, I went to Texas for moral support.
By the time I realized my boyfriend really intended to ignore the issue while still attending Mass every Sunday morning, I knew I would not be able to find my way around any city. I went to Texas because my brother’s friend would help me figure out what to do.
He offered to take me in and any baby too. But, I just wanted it over. And besides, there was a baby at home I had to help take care of and I knew how damn hard it was for my sister and me already.
It was later when I realized how hard it all was on my mother. And why.
When I went to Air Force Leadership Training (Staff Sergeant prerequisite at that time), I was one of eight women in the class of about a hundred students ranging in age from mid-20s to late 30s.
We “gals” ended up in one wing of an old student dorm, which we turned into a big chatter hall from Sunday evening until Friday after class each of the six weeks of training. (We were TDY to the school, so even if we lived close enough to drive, which I did, we had to live in the dorm. It was a bit psycho.)
One of the young women discovered she was pregnant during training, which makes any group of women a bit clucky*. We all sat and talked about our own experiences. A couple of the women had children, but most did not. This was to be “Mavis’s” first, so it was a good bonding time for us all.
Four of the eight women there, myself included, had abortions prior to coming into the USAF. One of them had an abortion while actually in the service. I didn’t realize the USAF would do that and am not sure if it occurred at the base hospital or not. So, 5/8 of the women in my leadership class. That’s a bit more than half, which I suspect to be higher than the general population simply because a female joining the military in the 80s was still a bit of a “new” thing.
However, since I’d already spent some time in college (one year post high school and one year before joining the USAF with a couple years living on the Gulf of Mexico between), I knew there were a lot of women my age who’d had abortions, but had not spent a lot of time discussing them. We don’t like to admit we did BAD THINGS, do we? Because if we admit we did the bad thing, people demand to know why we did such a BAD THING.
I’m glad, MC, that you have discovered the truth and it has set you free.
And, I don’t mind answering any questions you have about the BAD THING I once did. Because, it really is time for us all to admit that Abortion is murder and, while it isn’t unforgiveable, it is unforgettable.
*Clucky… when a brood hen knows her chicks are hatching she begins to nestle them and make little chirping noises. Women around babies should do the same… get clucky.
And, by the way… it actually helps to talk about it. It was one of the first things I told my husband before our relationship moved into the realm of possibility.
Is probably why the marriage survived and why we’ve thrived with all sorts of monkeys throwing shitballs.
I always wonder about the “statistics” Gutmacher reports. Planned Parenthood reports theirs to them, but there are a lot of clinics that are not affiliated. I don’t know if they report to Guttmacher or the CDC or not. They don’t really have to follow too many rules to stay in business.
4 of my 7 sister-in-laws have had abortions. The other two I don’t know about because we never talked about it. So maybe your airbuddies were a higher stat and maybe not.
It’s never a good idea to keep secrets in a marriage. Seems like they birth more secrets and pretty soon you can’t keep track of your lies.
It’s really not good to start having to keep track of lies in any situation.
I know you’ve never “liked” the idea of monikers/nicknames/pennames here, but there is a very valid reason for it. Think Federalist and Anti-Federalist.
Did you know some of those Founding Fudders wrote debate for both sides? Not a lot, but on some issues they realized the issues were more complex than one overarching opinion could cover.
Some folks will not be able to accept that Free Will and Redemption are the yin yang of the whole thang. I do plan to write my own article on the Equal Rights Amendment and its underlying agenda to destroy the foundation of this country: the family unit. However, my husband and I are watching the Great Santini right now and that’s more pressing than this, right now.
I knew a very young woman in the military who’d tried to commit suicide related to having had an abortion in Minnesota. A situation similar to yours, I believe.
She has scars on her wrists to show it and she showed me several times when crying late at night over too many beers to brag about.
When I approached her a few years ago regarding the abortion issue, she cut all ties to me and refused to discuss it. I still whisper prayers for her. That’s a hard and heavy secret to keep from an entire family forever.
M C…this post has become a magnet for erectile dysfunctional algorithms selling viagra, cialis and other meds.
Thought u would be amused. Am still phone tapping.
I couldn’t help dredging this one out of the swamp this day of Memory, 2019.
I’ve discovered there are three kinds of women who’ve had an abortion and told me about it over the course of my life. However, I’ve not talked to everyone and am certain there’s a few I don’t want to meet anyway. Some are scarier than even me.
1. The ones who thanked me profusely for sharing my story of self-forgiveness and telling them how I’d come to realize abortion was not the unforgiveable sin I feared it was.
2. The ones who grow angry that I had the gall to remember them in prayer as I ask God boldly to touch someone’s suffering heart. Those will deny they told me such a thing and so… boldly I go. These have been known to turn into the first kind.
3. The ones who are so mangled by the onslaught of the sexual revolution and what it has done to their bodies and their minds while casting their souls into a bottomless pit of banality that they actually believe the remains of one dead child is just another dead child and the two are equal to zero.
Disclaimer: There are “other” kinds out there, including a woman who’d had three abortions while married to a man who demanded she abort them or divorce him. I’m not sure where she fits in the grand schema.
But, that could just me early Memorial Day Morning ramblings. Around here, there is a hundred mile yard sale ongoing and, while out placing a few red, white and blue rocks, I think I’ll see what sort of things are available for a bit of junk silver. You city slickers would be amazed.
http://data.dexterchamber.com/events/details/one-hundred-mile-yard-sale-4577
MC… I know you probably have lots of family keeping your eyes and hands busy, but I do hope you have the chance to at least visit this note and hear my favorite tribute to Arms in the past five years since my own father passed away. Yes, his grave and stone are dressed in the Colors when the weather permits.
Since last dredging this essay up from the “boneyard” of TBP to comment upon additional research I’ve done regarding the Equal Rights Amendment, I’ve read a lot of books.
And I’ve learned a lot about the debate in this country started tentatively by President John F Kennedy’s 1961 commission on the status of women which exploded into Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique and led to the forming of the National Organization for Women.
Then, to grasp the roots of the idea of “equality” of individuals and groups being the job of government to ensure, I had to step back to the turn of the 20th century, when hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured into this country to escape the horrors of genocide when Europe, Russia and Germany used a different methodology at making all their citizens equal: forced emigration or death.
I then found the need to review the roots of Yellow Journalism, the rivalry between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer and a few other minor details that led right back to Greece to philosophers and degenerates all rolled up into a big Platonic mess close to the Isle of Lesbos.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-pulitzer
(Yes, indeedy…. Pulitzer was indeed Jewish but he was also from Missouri, where he first got elected to the Missouri State Assembly before purchasing the St. Louis Post Dispatch and, later, the New York World newspaper, which published a cartoon character called the Yellow Kid. The Yellow Kid was so popular, Hearst hired the cartoonist FROM Pulitzer’s paper and the era of Yellow Journalism was “named.” Tabloid journalism influenced the education of countless thousands, perhaps millions of Americans – immigrants and rural-to-urban dwellers who were learning to read English and assimilate into urbanized American society. At the turn of the 20th century, the tabloid press was to be a bulwark against ignorance, society believed, helping immigrants and illiterate citizens make sense of the new urban setting. Not only were hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Asians pouring into the country, there were also hundreds of thousands of rural families flocking to cities to escape drought and financial ruin. It was the crisis preceding another Fourth Turning, but I don’t want to get into that here.
This is about abortion. And, while I tried to get a small Wikileak reference about Margaret Sanger’s role in the development of the ERA as well as the organization of NOW, I just couldn’t avoid the truth. You cannot blame a single person for much. Someone raised them, someone else educated them and someone else made them angry enough to do whatever it is you want to blame them for. The truth doesn’t lend itself to small references to someone like Margaret Sanger and others who brought abortion to the forefront of American politics as THE issue most relevant to women, according to the NOW crowd.
I really wish I was a more modern sort of researcher who could simply grab a sound bite, link it and “prove” to the world I know what I’m talking about. I can’t. I end up reading a book, then looking at the bibliography and reading more books. And so on. Fortunately (or not) I had a very long car ride to accommodate reading today. Then, I had a long drive back to think about what I’d read earlier in the day. It helped keep me from raging at my son, who is a millennial convinced of his entitlement in spite of being raised by me and his frugal father, who did NOT refrain from raging.
Once upon a long time ago, I was the editor for a number of scholarly books for a woman from Oklahoma whom I called “mentor” for many years and many of those books were books about Congresswomen. I read, revised and refrained from commenting about my dislike (as an objective editor who wants to be paid does) into more than a few stories about the National Organization for Women. I also had the dubious honor of speaking with several of those women, as well as a few of their underlings, to verify quotes and any comments which might cause conflict. It was a good gig for an older graduate student like me, who understood how idiots are sometimes commanding officers in the military and morons are sometimes elected to high office.*
I am close to sitting down to write about the topic, but still need to explore another little book about the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which dictates an enormous amount of equality be distributed to persons who are “differently” enabled. In fact, so many people are entitled to the same access to everything as everyone else that the American taxpayer must pay for it, even if they reside in other countries. But, in this country today, a single judge can dictate that certain things happen because of that strange little law. Similar to what happened in Missouri today, when a circuit court judge determined a Planned Parenthood Clinic which had been denied re-licensing was to stay open in spite of the fact countless abortions had been performed so badly the fetuses had been expelled alive and the women rushed to other medical facilities to save their own lives after they’d paid to kill their babies. That judge declared the law of Missouri null because women are entitled to abortions now.
While driving, I heard that on the radio, I called my husband (in the truck in front of me) on the phone to tell him “I told you so.” Because he’d said yesterday there was no way a Missouri judge could get away with stopping the closing of that dirty clinic. I had told him there was NO WAY that Missouri judge could avoid it.
It is all dirty politics now, even though they call it law.
The article will be written and shared at some point. For now, I enjoy dredging and reviewing facts. Because I can.
*I never completed the Master’s because I had brain surgery (hydrocephalus) while “writing” my thesis. Five times over the course of three years. The thesis fell to the wayside and even though my “mentor” suggested applying for a waiver to finish it years later, when I was more able, I decided it was a waste of my time.
I found that I no longer gave a shit about what roles women played during the American Revolutionary War.
When I was still active duty USAF, the ADA was passed. I probably would not have realized the impact, except that the addition of wheelchair ramps for all of the operational squadrons became the law of the land. This, in spite of the fact no one used a wheelchair to enter the operational squadrons. Oh, but the law said everyone must have equal access.
But?
So, in addition to all the “spouse and family” types of facilities being required to have ADA mandated access, all of the operational and training facilities did as well.
And, if for some reason, there could be NO wheelchair access? A sign of some kind was required to inform and apologize to the wheelchair bound individual denied his/her entitlement. It was nuts. As is most government mandated garbage shoved down our throats.
Apparently this old essay inspired ED and prostate ads.
Very Weirrd!
More and more of them…one of them visited my fb page!
MiGGer, that is a bot or whatever you call it, for some reason they employ old articles. Not that this article can’t use a second curtain call.
I still plan my follow on set of posts but cannot get one done on a phone by the southeast window.
Prehistoric corn shucking losers who are glad high tech boy hit the road. We got therapy to resume.
Just because I saw it in the scroll…
Do you think bfyzxk and the fungi doctor really do have cheapest viagra?
I love it. I will email that to him…
The erectile dysfunction botz just may take this post to infinity. I wonder if women who think they are men take viagra.
Does Bruce Jenner?
If someone answered the botz would the botnazi nurse gripe?
T4C? I’ve noticed the same viagra bots show up at my place… Mary Christine really did bring the cooties to the place, I think.
I am particularly interested in this here at TBP…the viagra botz have found me in southeast misery.
My son says the algorithms “learn” how to follow.
Now…I birthed him and taught him readin’ and arithmetic and scribbling.
He thinks equations can revise themselves.
Is why the computer knows what only the shadow once guessed.
Did u search esoteric rabbit holes?
I discovered the dark elves I think.
In the 80s I played an online game called “mansion” and opened a doorway to the dark realm.
I won the game but could never find that door in the game again.
I did not own a computer then but I knew even then about hidden passwords under keyboards. COMPANY treasurer left her office key in ladies room at the oil refinery outside Pasadena TX.
Her password was money&bag$.
The game was on the server although I really never saw a server until I met Paula. No passwords under her keyboard
Mansion was an early game involving simple basic if, then commands.
I wonder if it still sits on that server…
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