That thing way out there called politics?

Say whaaaa???  Yeah, I had almost forgotten about politics, until of course I realized it was 2012 and election year (and I still can't vote!) and there are all these republicans running for that job called Mr. President and I'm not impressed with them.  I've grown up believing that all republicans are good and all democrats are bad (except for my Great Uncle/Grandpa), buuut, I'm starting to think otherwise.  How many politicians can lie to everyone's faces before our country falls apart?  So, I'm thinking I might be not republican and not democrat, but what I think they call independent.  Because, I don't trust almost anyone anymore!

Anyways, so the other day at Life Services (update coming soon!) my supervisor, Janine, asked me to do some research on a bill that was being voted for over in Olympia, WA (so just a state bill for my the state of Washington).  The bill, if passed, is going to force all insurance companies in the state of Washington to cover abortion costs with no limit whatsoever except for the general policies, (i.e. the amount of money that is provided per year).  Janine was having trouble finding it, and it took me probably 15 or 20 minutes just to get the bill number.  In the past, when I have searched a bill that I didn't know the number of, I usually was able to find it quickly.  This time it was different.  No article that I found included the bill number, and only one included a link to the .gov site where it was posted.  Plus, even though a public hearing was scheduled on Friday, the 19th, there were no recent reports on the outcome, the only articles I found were written before Friday.  We even called a prolife, conservative representative's legislative office, and when the legislative assistant searched the bill for us, he found that the vote count was not posted.  He stated that that was very strange. 

The next week, I sent an email to the legislators who would be voting on the bill that day.  That night, I watched the hearing.  The chair (who was the most supportive of the bill) ignored one of the committee members who asked to postpone the vote so as to not risk losing federal dollars since he wasn't sure if the bill was quite legal.  She promptly said, "Well, sorry, I'll look at that, but will pass it anyway."  It was passed, went to the Senate, and was passed there.  Unfortunately, they picked the perfect time to bring up this bill since a gay marriage bill was just signed into law by the governor (THAT'S a whole different story itself, ugh).  So, that is overtaking the news, and I have heard nothing in the news about the insurance bill.  I just visited the site, and the last thing it has on the schedule is that it was relieved from the Rules Committee and placed on second reading.  I'll keep you all posted on what happens.  (And if you live in WA, please consider emailing your legislators about it!  For a sample email, email me at, well, you should know the email address by now, lol.)

If you would like to read the bill, click here.

**[As of 2/23/12, the bill is waiting to be passed by the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and if passed, will go to the Senate floor for a vote.  I'll keep you posted!]

Thanks so much you guys!

Aubry

Why Abortion is Wrong: The Pro-choice Arguments

   Why Abortion is Wrong is a series that attempts to view the issue of abortion from a number of different views and angles. In this series, we answer the age old question: Why is abortion wrong? You can see the whole series here.


   Within any argument, there are two sides. If there was only one, there would be no argument. For any good argument, you must understand your opponent's position. If you don't know what you are arguing against, how can you refute it? So far in this series we have examined the arguments against abortion. Now, it is time to examine and refute the arguments commonly put forth for abortion. Let's begin.

Historical Context

I was doing some research for a post I wrote entitled "The Raging Debate," and I came across an astonishing yet familiar stat: Roughly 50 million abortions occurred between Roe v. Wade and 2008 in America alone. Most of us have seen this stat before, but I find that it is really hard to wrap my mind around such a huge figure without some context. So here are a few historical figures to put the abortion numbers into perspective:

• According to this paper, under the fifth point, the Roman Empire, at its height, had between 60 and 100 million people. That means that abortion deaths in America total between 83 and 50 percent of the Ancient Roman Empire.
• The deaths in the American Revolution are hard to pin down, but this site (scroll down to "Cost of War/Casualties) roughly 53,000 people died in the war. That means American abortion has taken nearly 1,000 times as many lives as the war that gave birth to America.
• According to this site, the American Civil War resulted in the death of roughly 700,000 Americans. That means abortion has killed roughly 71 times as many Americans as that war
• According to this site, World War One was responsible for roughly 8.5 million military deaths. That works out to be 17 percent of the abortion toll.
• Remember the 180 video and the comparison to the Holocaust there? The Holocaust, according to this site, accounted for roughly 6 million Jewish deaths. Abortion has accounted for more than eight times that amount in America alone.
• According to this site, a total of 1,343,812 American soldiers have died in battle throughout history.  That's roughly three percent of the American abortion toll.
• This list (though it is from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt) provides some excellent context. Using a figure of 50 million abortions, found here, abortion in the US could be placed as high as first or as low as fifth, depending on which figure you accept for each event.

The list could go on and on, but the bottom line is that abortion has killed more people than almost any other event in history. The Holocaust is decried as an atrocity, and justly so, but how can we ignore the atrocity right in front of our faces when it has eclipsed the death toll of Hitler's genocide? Abortion kills more than one million babies in the United States each year. We can't ignore it anymore.

In Christ,

Jacob

Seeing the liberal side of things...

I know, I know, we keep bringing up the topic of Komen and how they defunded Planned Parenthood and then buckled and how the whole situation is really just like girls in junior high.  BUT, something happened that I'm super duper excited about (like I was literally screaming for like an hour and a half about it).  I searched for a liberal magazine and found The Nation.  The Nation had like a gazillion articles about the Komen controversy, and even they were negative.  Well, I found this one.  It talked a lot about feminism and "anti-choice" and how women and the pro-choice movement are being suffocated to death.  Well, haha, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you might be able to guess that I like debating, especially about these specific topics.  So yeah, I took them on.

Here's what I said:

Women are more well-off than they have ever been (they have never had it better). I don't say that as a white republican man. I am a teen girl who is being manipulated by the feminists (as are all the rest of teen girls) who whine and complain about losing $680,000 when that is only 1/20 of 1% of the donations.


If you are so keen on pro-choice victory, come live in Washington State, where a 13-year-old girl is not allowed to get a tooth pulled or her ears pierced without a guardian's permission, but is allowed to go through with a more life-threatening procedure, abortion, without having to tell anyone. The state that is ranked with the most pro-choice activism in the country. The state that will most likely be requiring all insurance companies (even religious ones) to cover abortion in every single plan. The state that is trying to require all Pregnancy Resource Centers to tell clients every single service they *don't* offer. The state where a gay marriage bill has passed both the House and the Senate without any proposed amendments and is just awaiting the governor's signature (and this means that when I get married, I'll have to "take this man to be my lawful wedded spouse" rather than husband--THAT is not romantic, at all).

How, I ask, are any of these laws pro-choice? (Other than the one about the 13-year-old girl, but then, how many 13-year-old girls do you know that are mature and capable of making decisions other than which boy likes them and what to wear the next day?) Choice does not include restrictions. Choice means choice. And educated choice, in regards to abortion, most definitely includes an ultrasound before making a decision to have a surgery performed by a traveling doctor.

I admit, honestly, I do, that many pro-lifers are quite anti-choice, and the only thing that matters to them is saving babies. I would agree with you in saying there are anti-choice people in this country, many, in fact. But you are only digging yourself into a hole when you try to pass legislation that is so obviously anti-choice.

I am a female, I am not feminist, and I am pro-life. Fancy that.

Sooo, I got several replies.  They were all across the board, one that didn't believe I was a teenager and screamed at me, and one that told me how great I was.  One thing I learned from this, it is GREAT experience to read about issues from the opposing side.  You either find a fault in your argument that you can change and gain a new understanding of your opponents, or, you are able to form arguments against their points.  Seriously, read up!  I encourage you to go back and read the article if you haven't already, and read the comments it got.  They are quite interesting, may I just say.
 
And if you're wondering why I was screaming, well, I am too.  But hey, it is an exciting experience to be yelled at by a pro-choicer.... okay, really, not even joking.  I know, I'm a nerd.

Another Voice in the Komen Controversy

So I was skimming through the paper on Tuesday and a headline on the opinion page caught my eye: "Abortion Reality Lost in Fight." Curious, I read the article. In it, writer Mona Charen notes that in all the chaos surrounding the Komen funding, the truth about abortions and Planned Parenthood has been pushed aside in favor of "ugly politics." Charen, oddly enough, also brings up the statistic Aubry posted about on Tuesday, that of percentages within Planned Parenthood. According to Charen,

"Throughout the Komen imbroglio, PP circulated another misleading statistic – that only 3 percent of PP’s services involve abortions. As Charlotte Allen revealed in a 2007 Weekly Standard essay, that figure is, well, inventive. They arrive at that number by counting every service individually. When a client comes in for an abortion, she gets a pregnancy test (one service), a pelvic exam (second service), an STD test (third service), a breast exam (fourth service), a package of contraceptives (fifth service) and so forth. But calculated as a percentage of revenue generated, abortion accounts for about a third of PP’s business."

If Charen is correct (the article that she referred to can be found here, and it is a fantastic read), then the whole Planned Parenthood controversy becomes that much more important to pro-lifers. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the world, regardless of what percentage abortion plays within Planned Parenthood. That alone is worth fighting. Komen defunded Planned Parenthood saying that because PP was under government investigation, Komen is not allowed to fund PP under Komen guidelines. Many have attacked that reasoning, and I agree that it seems suspect. However, as Charen says, Planned Parenthood does not actually provide mammograms, and the key demographic of PP has an extremely low chance of contracting breast cancer. Planned Parenthood has made a big deal of the fact that no Komen money funds abortion, but the Komen money is still used by an organization that does nothing to find the cure Komen seeks, while providing abortions, whether they are funded by Komen or not. The money Komen sends merely frees up other funds to be used for abortion. The mission of Planned Parenthood does not fit with the mission of Komen. Why, then, should Komen fund it at all?


In Christ,
Jacob

Statistics

A few days ago, Jacob emailed me about a stat that we had posted on the left-hand side of the blog.  The one about how PP says that abortion only accounts for 3% of their services, but that really, it was 96%.  I had said that that came from AUL.org.  After searching and searching, the only thing that Jacob could find was proof that the 3% was the true stat.  The truth of the matter is, we will never know, because many prochoicers exaggerate in their own favor and many prolifers actually do exaggerate in their own favor (I know I have been guilty of this myself in the past, though I try not to as much as possible).  I'm speculating that 3% is low and 96% is high, and the stat is somewhere in the middle.  I am sorry for putting false information on this blog.

The proof that Jacob found for the 3% stat was on Politifact (click here to read the article) and they gave numbers directly from PP and did the math.  The largest service that they provide, by far, is that of contraception.  Now, to most prochoicers, abortion is defined as a surgical procedure, and even the abortion pill may fall under the category of "contraception".  We probably will never truly know, numbers on both sides of any controversial issue will most often be skewed.  But, when I did the math, if you count contraception as abortion (if you define abortion as the termination of a pregnancy at any stage of the pregnancy, contraception like the abortion pill, the morning after pill, etc. would probably qualify as abortion), the statistics of services including contraception and abortion is 38%.

After discussing the issue further, Jacob and I decided that from now on, we will not only give statistics from trusted prolife websites, but also prochoice sources like the Guttmacher Institute (which is affiliated with Planned Parenthood) and Planned Parenthood.  The reason being, if the stats are skewed or exaggerated at all, they would be in favor of the prochoice cause, not the prolife cause.  As Jacob said, "If we can use their arguments to show that we're right, we win:)."  So, the stats on the sidebar will be changed to prochoice stats shortly.  Here are some of the stats we will be posting:

• Nearly half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these end in abortion.
• About half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy, and nearly one-third will have an abortion, by age 45.
• Some 1.21 million abortions were performed in 2008, down from 1.31 million abortions in 2000.
• Nine in 10 abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy
• 58% of women who have had an abortion are in their 20s.
• 73% report a religious affiliation.

Also, to wrap up, I'll share this video that was made by the Guttmacher Institute:

[*Editor's note:  I don't believe everything that is said in this video.  This is a prochoice video, made by a prochoice organization.]

If you have any comments about this statistics issue, please share them with us!  And be sure to take our poll about it!

In CHRIST,

Aubry

Komen Foundation Defunds Planned Parenthood! but then doesn't...

Have you heard about the Susan G. Komen foundation issue of late, and wondered why I haven't posted about it?  So have I.  I've been pretty busy and I don't have much time to write about it right now (although I've been following it closely, and have lots of thoughts about it that will come later).

For those of you who don't know, here's an earlier article about it when the news first came out that Komen was discontinuing funds to Planned Parenthood.  However, it has since come out that Komen was bombarded so heavily, that they have gone back on the announcement, and I've even heard that they are raising their donation!

The latest news I could find, here's a video:




  and here's a link. 

If you have any questions or comments, shoot us an email!

P.S. I just read in an email from Planned Parenthood itself (I accidentally got signed up for PP's emails) that $3 million were donated to PP in 3 days!  This was after Komen said they'd stop donating.  The money came from other organizations and individual supporters.  Wow, if you think about it, that's basically $1 million more that they can spend on every abortion they do for the next eight and a half years!  They say the money will go to help breast cancer services that they do (those services are basically fictional), but in reality, that is $3 million they don't have to spend on other services that they can spend on abortions.  This situation seems like so out of our control and so bad that we couldn't do anything to stop any bad that's happening.  Please pray that God will work something good out of this!

Testimonies: Amanda Young, Part 2

Here is the second part of Amanda Young's story.  Read down to the bottom, because I have a beautiful surprise for you!

Once I made the decision not to have an abortion, I needed to take a good look at all of my options. I did not know very much about adoption at all. I had heard of open adoption before, but did not know anything about it. I was given a list of local adoption agencies from Life Services. I decided call Nancy Johnson from Spokane Consultants in Family Living. When we met, she answered all of my questions. She made me feel so supported. After we talked, I really felt like adoption would be the best option for me. One of the deciding factors for me was that I really wanted my baby to have a dad. I loved her with my whole heart, and I wanted to give her everything she deserved. She deserved a father, and that was something that I would not be able to give her. Yes, I know that God is her ultimate father, but I feel like a physical father is also very important.

I felt like, when it came down to it, I was still a kid myself. I was not ready to raise one. Sure, I was “mature for my age,” but I did not have the emotional or mental stability to support a child. I realized that I still had a lot of growing up to do.

The simple answer to why I had an adoption, is that it was God’s will. God showed me that I was not ready to raise a baby, even though I loved her so much. I knew that having an adoption would be hard, but God also showed me that He would carry me through it. I knew that my God is strong enough to overcome anything, and that He is the God of all comfort. I had confidence that He would be there with me every step of the way.

At the beginning of my trial, when I first found out I was pregnant, I thought it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. God turned that all of that around! Elliana is truly the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can’t even count the blessings that have come for choosing life for her; for choosing to follow Jesus… She was truly an answer from God.

I did what was hard. I followed God’s plan for me. I was walking completely in the dark with no idea where I was headed. All I knew, was that The Lord was my guide. He truly brought me to that place of nothingness. I knew that I would not be able to get through that trial without Him, and that was exactly where He wanted me to be.



"This is my favorite happy ending."  ~Amanda Young



Even though my pregnancy was a result of rape, the best decision that I have ever made, was the decision to not have an abortion. Honestly, I feel like if I had never gone to Life Services, I probably would have ended up having an abortion. I am extremely grateful that I was spared from that terrible heartache. I also realize that not all girls are as fortunate… Those are the girls that my heart really goes out to. Those are the women that I pray my hardest for. They are the ones who need our love. They need the healing that only Jesus can bring to their hearts.

I challenge you to open your hearts, and actually make an effort to be there for those who are broken. They are the ones who need you. I challenge you to share hope with those who are hopeless. That’s what the volunteers at Life Services are doing all the time. But I want to challenge you to be a light to the broken wherever you might be. If that one woman from church had not been there for me to tell me about Life Services, who knows where I might have ended up. Just be there for someone else. That’s all it takes. We need to stand up, and start talking about our problems, and the problems that we have yet to face. That includes abortion! Some people are at the place where they have no one, and that’s when they need Jesus. Someone needs to point them to Him, or they might never find Him. We all have struggles. We need to learn to not be afraid of them. Rather, we need to learn to embrace each other, and point each other to our Heavenly Father. Step up, and make an eternal difference in someone’s life. If you know Jesus, chances are, someone made an investment in you… Get out there and make the same investment in someone else.



A gift from God!  Elliana's adoptive family.





And now, the surprise.  Amanda is going to be a permanent writer on We Can't Ignore!  I am so excited to have her, she will be an amazing addition to the team.  If you would like to contact Amanda, email her at wecantignore@gmail.com.  She will be up and posting in the next couple weeks.  Thanks, as always, for reading!



Ron Paul and Abortion

After Rick Santorum spoke with Piers Morgan, Ron Paul took a turn. In this video, Morgan asks Paul, a former OB/GYN, if he would allow abortion after rape. Paul answers, but in doing so nearly contradicts himself. His final answer actually falls under the article I posted a while back under the label "Why Abortion is Wrong." Ron Paul is proud of saying that he is "strongly pro-life," but he misses a key fact that he even states: Life begins at conception. We shouldn't take risks with a life.

The Raging Debate

(Note: I've been unable to get around various school things to get on top of the "current events" situation, so this article is not quite current. I apologize for the delay and hope to get even more current in the future.)

Source: Politifact

As many of you know, January 22nd was Sanctity of Life Sunday. On this day in 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided, and abortion was legalized. Many believed that the Supreme Court's decision would end the growing debate over abortion. Instead, it fueled it. Why? In an article posted on CNN's belief section, R. Albert Mohler Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explains. Mohler proposes five key reasons that the Abortion debate has only grown since Roe v. Wade. Each reason is an excellent explanation for the current raging debate, but his last three reasons really struck a chord for me, showing in one stroke why the debate rages and why we, as Christians and pro-lifers, ought to continue that debate:

Third, the death spiral of abortion simply defies adequate calculation. Over a million abortions are performed in America each year. Reports last year indicated that over 40% of all pregnancies in New York end in abortion, a rate that increases to almost 60% of pregnancies among African-American women. The sheer scale of the death toll sears the pro-life conscience. Young people can now see that millions are missing from their own generation. Fourth, abortion has proved to be exactly what pro-life activists warned it would be: a deadly threat to human dignity that would target specific populations. Prenatal testing has produced a deadly reality for unborn babies considered less than acceptable by their parents. The vast majority (90%) of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. Sex-selection abortions are legal in the wide-open “right” to abortion declared by the court. Prenatal testing of other characteristics means that parents can now abort a baby that does not meet their specifications and try again. Fifth, powerful imaging technologies now allow a look inside the womb, a privilege unknown to previous generations. That window has transformed the equation, as millions of parents have seen their unborn children and witnessed the miracle of life. They have seen the little human form and the actions of the unborn child, sucking its thumb as it nestles within its mother. Millions of siblings have seen the images of their unborn brothers and sisters taped to the refrigerator door. Those of us who believe that every single unborn child has a right to be born cannot resign from the effort to protect those lives.

Mohler nails each of these reasons and, in doing so, reminds all of us why we fight against the injustice of abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute (more on that from Aubry later), nearly 50 million abortions have occurred in the USA between Roe v. Wade and 2008. That's 50 million lives lost, an astonishing 1/6th of the population in 2010, going by stats from the US Census Bureau. If that isn't worth fighting, I don't know what is.

Guest Post: Rebeka Fry

Standing for Life: Gaining God's Heart for the Unborn

“Mommy, what did Candace do?”

I was six years old. I could sense the disturbance in the home, something startling had happened. Determined to get to the bottom of the unsolved mystery, I asked my mom what was wrong.

“Sweetie,” she started hesitantly, “I don’t know if you’re old enough to understand all this, but your cousin’s wife aborted her baby.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means that the baby was killed.”

This was a new concept to my 1st-grade- mind. How could something be killed when it wasn’t even in the world yet? After that scenario, my ears always perked up when talk of this concept was brought up. At age 10, while watching a film on bioethics (I’m homeschooled; we start on this stuff young), I saw an abortion take place through the ultrasound screen. As I grew older, I was horrified to learn of all the various methods of abortion, particularly the partial-birth procedure.

Yet, even though I knew the information, read the statistics, heard about it on the news, it never fazed me. I still carried on through life, occasionally startled when I heard a friend or relative committed the crime or when new legislation passed to make abortion services more readily available, but it didn’t affect me personally. Not to mention, abortion is illegal in the county where I live, which significantly cuts down the exposure to it. The issue is so broad; what’s the use of making a big deal over something I can’t change? However, since Miss Aubry mentioned the possibility of me writing a guest post (by the way, hi, everyone!), I’ve taken some time to research the pervading issue of abortion, both from Biblical and factual standpoints. What I’ve found has appalled me.

In Proverbs, God calls us to stand for those who cannot help themselves, and those who are being mercilessly killed without even a voice to raise in protest.

“Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”

~ Proverbs 31:8-9

Who are these speechless ones He is referring to? Who are these helpless victims appointed to die? The answer is, more often than not, so obvious it’s easy to overlook it.

In addition to the countless number of orphans and vulnerable children around the world, from the moment of conception, the life of an unborn baby is immediately put at risk in the Western world. In the United States alone, 23,000 babies were killed just this week at the hands of abortionists. 1.2 million babies are murdered within the womb each year. One in four babies conceived in America is surgically aborted. What’s more, abortions outnumber live births in at least 14 U.S. metropolitan areas. And these horrifying numbers are only growing each year.

Why is this evil allowed to prevail at such a high level? Sin and the effects of living in a fallen world, that’s a given. Government promotion, yes, that too. Another often-overlooked reason is the prevalence of feminism in post-modern culture. In her article “What Women Need,” Frederica Mathewes-Green, a formerly ardent feminist, argues that feminists sought to be equal to men with respect to having a career and having a promiscuous sex-life. The main obstacle to those two goals: the possibility of pregnancy. So abortion became the necessary condition for careerism and promiscuity. Women could not have complete sexual and professional freedom without unfettered access to abortion on demand. She writes:

“Thus these two bad ideas come together, pressing in like the jaws of a vise, and making a woman feel she has no escape but abortion. Feminism sought (1) increased access to public life, and (2) increased sexual freedom. But that participation in public life is significantly complicated by the responsibility for children, and uncommitted sexual activity is the most effective means of producing unwanted pregnancies. This dilemma – simultaneous pursuit of behaviors that cause children and that are hampered by children – inevitably finds its resolution on an abortion table.


Feminists defend abortion with desperate passion because the whole shaky structure of their lives depends upon it . . .


While pro-choice advocates present abortion as an act of autonomy, pregnant women experience it rather as a response to abandonment. Pregnancy is the icon of human connectedness, binding a woman to her child and the father of the child. Abortion shatters those connections and leaves her desolate.”

(You may read the full article here: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-06-020-f)

Abortion in America is not just a disturbing political issue; it’s a silent genocide. It is a crisis of unfathomable, epidemic proportions.

Many of us have wished for a worthy cause to devote our lives to. We read biographies and watch inspiring films of history’s heroes, such as William Wilberforce who poured out his life to the cause of abolition in his day. We long to be part of such noble adventure and calling. But few of us recognize the opportunity we have sitting right in front of us. We do not live in a time of peace and harmony. We live in an era when millions of innocent souls are being slaughtered in mass quantities, and an entire generation of young women’s lives are being ripped apart by the deceit of evil men.

As Christians, we must gain the heart of God for the unborn. Many of us choose to steer clear from the issue because there’s too much political red tape, it’s too emotionally charged, or too confusing. The issue is so huge, we aren’t really sure what to do about it. Many of us don’t feel we can make much of a difference anyways. As a result, we do nothing. We shake our heads at the sadness of it, but we fail to fulfill God’s sacred call to open our mouths for the speechless and stand up for those helpless lives who are appointed to die through tragic ends.

I would like to challenge you to rise up and stand for life, and to become God’s hands and feet to the weak and vulnerable lives that have no voice to bring their plea to light. We are chosen for such a time as this, and no matter how helpless you feel, remember that the God of the Universe stands for life – He is the Author of it, He invented the idea. When we stand for life, we stand for our King. And the strength of Heaven backs us up as we take up God’s burdens and fight His battles.

 

Rebeka Fry authors her blog, Redefining Femininity.  On this blog, she speaks about how girls can take back femininity and use it to the glory of God.  I encourage you to check it out, it's gold!