Mother and Baby: Who Cares Anymore?

When I was a little girl, I wanted more than anything to grow up to be a mother. I had a baby doll I pushed in a carriage. I dreamed about having a house full of kids. I think I was about eight years old when I told my mother, “When I grow up, I want to have a baby.” My mother said, “No, honey, you don't want that. You want a PhD. Your PhD is your baby. A PhD is far more rewarding.”

I stared at her, confused. So, thinking through this logic in my mind, her PhD was more important to her than me. Of course it was. That's why she spent all her time studying for it and ignoring me. On the positive side, my mother wanted me to grow up to be an intellectual achiever. On the negative side, she had no idea how those words would impact my belief that I was not wanted or valued by her. I'm glad she did give birth to me, though.

I was raised by two pro-life democrats. Yes, they do exist, in greater numbers than either Republicans or Democrats think. The value of unborn life was a value I always took for granted and never really thought about much. The first time I really thought about it, I was sixteen and a friend of mine, whom I'll call Betsy, thought she was pregnant. We went to a crisis pregnancy center (CPC) so she would get a free test. While the worker there was reading the test, we were shown a video on the miracle of life. I was transfixed, amazed at the wonder of how human life grows. Betsy groaned. “I can't believe we came here,” she said, “These people are trying to get me to believe that a fetus is a human and take away my right to do what I want with my body. Let's get out of here.”

We left quickly after finding out her test was negative. I asked Betsy more questions. She told me to read books by feminists like Gloria Steinem. I read that and more and found out a lot about Betsy's point of view. I wondered if she could be right. Because I was from a liberal democrat family, so were almost all my friends, and all of them but me were pro-choice. As I grew up more and more of my friends were having abortions. Two in particular had five and six abortions each. Having an abortion was nothing to them, but just having “a bunch of cells” removed. No concern seemed to cross their minds at all. At some point of time, I believed the “cell story” too.

I'm very lucky I did not get pregnant in my teen years or twenties. I didn't need a man. I was a free and independent woman. Nobody should tell me what to do. Marriage? That's a piece of paper.

I lived in a heavily abortion-minded climate. I would tell my friends, “I can't have an abortion myself, because I'm not sure when the soul enters the body. If I'm not sure, how can I take even a little risk of murder?” Yet because I wanted people to like me, I would also say, “Since we don't know, I guess you're free to take the risk if you want.” Of course, I never judged anyone for having an abortion. I still don't think a woman who has gone through with it is someone to be condemned. Most women choose abortion in a state of panic and often under pressure by family. More than half of abortions are due to the fear of not having financial resources to care for the child.

Add to that how little most women know about fetal development. I really believed that for the first two months, all that's in the uterus is a clump of undifferentiated cells. People told me if I went to a crisis pregnancy center, people would lie and try to show me that a baby was in there. I didn't realize I could just pick up a biology textbook and see that at only three weeks after implantation, there's a heart in there that begins to beat. By eight weeks, every organ in the body is there in the uterus. No, you won't hear that at Planned Parenthood, because they don't want to disturb you. But, they will tell you CPC's lie when the materials they are teaching from are either written by medical doctors or come straight out of biology text books.

I got pregnant for the first time when I was 36. I was not married and my boyfriend had just thrown me out and changed all the locks on the doors. He thought I was lying when I said I was pregnant. I stayed with a friend who watched me take three pregnancy tests and she took all three of them to my boyfriend. He said, “So what?”

I really wanted that baby. I wanted the baby so much I cried when I was pregnant. A child was all I ever wanted. I remembered my parents said they both cried when they found out my mom was pregnant, but they had really good stable jobs and owned a house. What did I have? Absolutely nothing to offer this baby. Yet, I wanted it more than anything in the world.

I left California to stay with my dad in Georgia. Yet, on the way to Georgia, passing through Louisiana, I started bleeding heavily. I went to an emergency room and took another pregnancy test. No more baby. I could die. When I got to Georgia, I saw what I'd lost. A job, relationship and home in California. A future baby. And with the loss of contact with a new age group, I realized it was a very convincing sham of spirituality. My disillusion was pretty total, my depression pretty deep.

I tried to rebuild my life so I could have a home and family, yet everything I tried to do failed. In 2009, I moved to Eugene, Oregon to try to start over, age forty. My life seemed to lose more meaning every day. When I re-discovered God and a church family, I was prostate by the weight of a life not lived as I had ever wanted. I came back to the solace and strength I had gone to in my young teen years, the Catholic Church.

To make a long blog shorter, my life is rich in meaning and purpose today. I am deeply happy. I volunteer in a Crisis Pregnancy Center now, and yes, I do want to save babies. I also want to help make life easier for mothers, so they won't feel the overwhelming need to abort. Sometimes, I still get weepy when I put together layettes with all the cute little baby clothes, because I wish they could be for a baby of my own, but I'm so glad to be doing something for any baby, especially a baby that might not have ever been.

I don't see our culture valuing motherhood very much anymore. I don't see it much looking at the lives of celebrities or in movies or television shows. My own mother didn't value it much. My inborn desire to be a mother was stifled quite a lot. Yet, I will be forty-four in about five months, and the one thing I wish I'd been able to do was to marry and create a stable home for a child.

Most people know that the Catholic Church makes saving the lives of the unborn a very high priority. It's easy to see from whence that sentiment stems. How can anyone look at paintings or sculptures of Mary with baby Jesus and not contemplate her safe, sacred womb and the violence of invading that sanctuary with a blade?

When I hear woman say it's not a decision to be taken lightly, I wonder, why? If there's any chance in their mind it might be murder, where is the decision in that? I know, I know, there are atheists in this country who don't believe in a soul. Why should they care about when or if a baby is aborted? I also know I've said every word I just said to women who have said, “So what. It's my body!”

I used to ask women why it is that when you are two months pregnant and you want to be, you say, “My baby is growing,” but if you are two months pregnant and don't want to be, you say “The fetus needs to come out,” just as if it were an appendix. Women used to look at me, stumped. But recently, I read an article by a woman bragging about this very thing, about how free she was that she could call the contents of her uterus anything she wants, baby, fetus, whatever. I shook my head. No hope, I thought. No one will ever listen.

The war over abortion is ugly. I have become the enemy in many people's minds. I have crossed demarcation lines and have become a traitor. Some will not even post on my Facebook page or read my posts. Perhaps I think they're evil villains for what they've done in the past. Of course I don't. Abortion is murder, but none of the women I've know who had abortions consciously intended to commit murder. Most of them were badly deceived. Abby Johnson, an ex-Planned Parenthood director who is now pro-life, says that overwhelmingly, the most common question women ask on their way to the surgery room, while they are groggy from medications, is, “Will my baby feel pain?”

Deep down, perhaps they know the truth. Deeper down, perhaps it's way to painful to face.

Source:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prenatal-care/PR00112/

(Note: Their week numbering is based on the whole cycle of pregnancy and the first two weeks are called "getting ready." So, week three of implantation is their week six.)

Health Care, Freedom and Conscience

I'm writing this blog about something most people don't care about and some have not even heard of. I ask that you have an open mind about the perspective I'm about to share. Most people don't understand the issue and/or they have dismissed it as unimportant. I hope you will be different.

I am presenting an issue important to both conservatives and liberals, to Christians, Buddhists and Pagans. This issue crosses all political and religious lines, because religious freedom is important to us all. A great many people have heard that the issue at hand is about birth control and abortion. It's really not. The issue is about whether a person or organization should pay for things that strongly go against their conscience. Atheists out there, how would you feel about having to pay for Bibles? Orthodox Jews, do you want to be forced to offer pork in your shops or pay a tax because you don't sell pork? You may say this can never happen to you. How do you know that once a precedent is set, it can't happen to you? A regulation under the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” which some call “Obama-care” could open the door to make this happen. It's called the HHS Mandate.

Economic Ethics drives this issue. The goal of opposing this mandate is that people very opposed to an activity shouldn't have to pay for it. Any time a person pays a premium, co-pay or deductible, they will be partially paying for birth control and abortifacients and sterilization. Companies and organizations will be forced to offer this service, even if they believe it is gravely immoral.

So, most of you may say, “Who cares? That's dumb anyway.” I was with you, before I understood the issue. I won't lie. I now believe that life begins at conception and that using birth control that will prevent that embryo from implanting flushes away a life that was meant to happen or it wouldn't have been created. Do you have to agree? No, you don't. Can you believe I am an absolute loony to believe such a thing? Yes, by all means. Can you classify me as old-fashioned, too traditional, and a general stick-in-the-mud, square sort of person? Sure, why not!

I don't care how you view me, but don't try to take away my rights. The Amish are old fashioned and many think their ways are kind of nuts, but does the government force them to buy cars? I have a right to be weird and hokey.

One misunderstanding I've seen floating around the internet is that people who oppose the HHS mandate are trying to take away rights to birth control, abortifacients and sterilization. This could not be further from the truth. People in America have a right to these services by law. People who work for an employer who doesn't cover these things are still free to purchase insurance coverage or services elsewhere. In addition, birth control is both ubiquitous and free in many clinics already.

The HHS mandate has rightly been called a “sleeper issue,” meaning an issue that will be ignored until it causes Obama to lose the election. Many wrongly believe that Catholics don't agree with the Church's position and won't oppose the mandate. Wrong. Even Catholics I know who do use birth control are nervous about this threat to freedom. I see stats floating around that over 90% of Catholics use birth control. These stats are wrong because they are interviewing lapsed and inactive Catholics. The vast majority of practicing Catholics do not use birth control. Yet, overall, agree or not, right or wrong, their faith is critical to most practicing Catholics, who are influenced by their bishops.

And, it's not just us. The list of groups opposing the HHS mandate is quite long. Evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews and Catholics are opposed. Also some secularists are opposed on the logical grounds that freedom is threatened. Where are the Buddhists on this issue? My Tibetan Buddhist friend told me abortion is against her religion. If the current government wants support for the healthcare plan, they will never get it by treating religious groups like dirt. Further, HHS shows disregard for women by forcing them to purchase birth control/abortifacieant products against their will, whether they want it or not. Is this fair?

I'm not sure about the other organizations, but since I'm Catholic, I know this: The Catholic Church won't just swallow her position and go on. No, if need be, all Catholic hospitals, clinics and schools will close. I heard a woman on a radio call-in show say, “I think the Catholics should stay out of the hospital business and just handle their worship business.” The hospital business IS our worship business. In fact, the Catholic Church innovated the first hospitals shortly following the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. With the exception of a few scattered examples of primitive hospitals from 252-325, the first major hospital undertaking was largely a Byzantine Christian effort, as hospitals were added onto most churches and cathedrals. Serving the sick and poor has always been a core priority for the Catholic faith, and service IS our worship.

Under the “exceptions” of the new mandate, if a church organization hires only church members and serves only church members, it may be exempt from paying for birth control and abortifacients. What church wants to do that? What church with a conscience CAN do that? Someone comes in with a gunshot wound and a nurse has to act if they're Catholic or Evangelical before they can save their life? To use a colloquial expression, we are being “blown off.” Blown off my the government, blown off by the general public. No one really cares about us. If this precedent is set, who will care about you?

Will you help us support opposing the HHS Mandate?
Petition Here-(Against HHS Regulation ONLY, not entire health care plan.)

Note: Articles are circulating all over the web that Plan B and Ella are not abortifacients.
This is not conclusive. Read what the Mayo Clinic has to say here.