Saint Paul wrote:
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”.
(Romans, 12:21)
And “Too Young In Las Vegas” did what Saint Paul
said to do:
October 6, 1999
DEAR ABBY:
I am 18 years old, married and seven months pregnant with our first child.
Recently, my husband and I got into a fight about my 3-year-old son. He was the result of a rape. I put him up for adoption, and I keep in contact with his parents through the agency.
The first Christmas after my son's birth, his parents sent me a locket and a picture to put in it. Since then, I have never taken this locket off, because it is the only thing I have with his picture that I can keep close to my heart.
My husband thinks I shouldn't wear the locket because he feels that when our daughter gets older, she may resent my wearing it. He also thinks I will be unable to love our child as much as I love my son. I fear that I may fail to be a good mother to our daughter because I couldn't be to my son.
I also worry about the future. How will my daughter react when she learns I gave her half-brother up for adoption three years before she was born?
Abby, how can I make my husband understand about the locket? Also, how can I overcome my fears?
~ TOO YOUNG IN LAS VEGAS
It was my Mother who came across that letter to Dear Abby printed in the newspaper in 1999 and who showed it to me. I was so immediately captivated by it that I clipped it out of the paper and have saved it to this day. I can’t imagine a better example of someone following Saint Paul’s exhortation to “overcome evil with good”. Reading this again now, in April of 2011, my eyes well up a little bit with tears.
Over the years I have often thought of ‘Too Young In Las Vegas’ and her situation and I am no less enamored of her today than I was twelve years ago. Had I been a younger man and if she was not already married, I would have been willing to marry that woman sight unseen. What a lovely, Godly heart she possesses! I can only hope most sincerely that her husband eventually came to realize what a beautiful and rare female gem he had found and I also hope that she has experienced lasting peace and happiness!
I still love “Too Young In Las Vegas” – whoever she is - as much as I have ever loved anyone in my life, never mind the fact that I never met her and don’t even know her name.
Although I have never been Catholic, over the years I have donated a fair amount of money to the Catholic Pro-Life organization AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE (A.L.L.). And years ago I purchased from them the t-shirt pictured above, with the words “Former Embryo” emblazoned across the front of it.
The shirt is old and grungy now, so it has been relegated to sleeping or working out in, but back when I still wore it in public, I always got more comments about that shirt than any other I owned. Invariably, people would laugh out loud and many people over the years would remark to me how much they liked it.
I very often got the sense, however, that a majority of the people who commented on the t-shirt or laughed about it, did not actually realize it was expressing an Anti-Abortion/Pro-Life message. I figured there were plenty of times when recollecting those words “Former Embryo” sometime later, a good number of those people who had been amused by it suddenly had that proverbial “light bulb” go on above their heads and then thought: Hey, wait a minute! I’ll bet that guy was making an anti-abortion statement!
You got it, Bucko!
WHAT IS ABORTION?
Abortion is murder. I have known this unequivocally from the day I was old enough to understand what the word “abortion” meant. Here’s the simple truth of it made plain: When conception takes place - barring any unfortunate biological/medical complications – the end result will be the birth of a new human being provided that you do one thing and one thing only: . . . leave it alone!
If an adult human being does not interfere with the development of the embryo from the initial point of conception, a human baby will enter the world. At no point is that embryo anything less than a human being in its earliest stages. There are many stages of a human being’s life, from infant, to young child, to adolescent, to young adult, to adult, to geriatric (or “generics” as my Pa sometimes referred to them). But tracking back from infant to the earliest point of this development, you have a human zygote that proceeds through various embryonic stages leading to the time of birth. At the moment of conception, just one strand of DNA contains as much information as 33 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Just don’t mess with the natural order of things and the human zygote will develop into a human baby. All that is necessary for this to happen is already present.
Proponents of abortion often resort to the specious “viability” argument to justify the taking of this most defenseless person’s life prior to its separation from its mother (or at least until its final stages of development within the womb). They claim that until the person has achieved viability – that is the capability to live on its own apart from its mother’s body – it more closely resembles a parasite than a person. This is bullshit.
Really? It is more “viable” once it has separated from its mother? Take a newborn, place it in a corner and pay no more attention to it for a few days and see just how “viable” it is! In fact, to be literal, a better argument could be made that the infant is actually more viable in its mother’s womb, because there it doesn’t require all the tending to keep it alive that it does from the moment it has separated from its mother’s body.
It boggles my mind how people can rationalize killing an embryo and deceive themselves into believing that it is anything less than “murder”. For an embryo is nothing less than a human being “happening” and working its way toward the almost certain goal of independence.
HOW DO I FEEL ABOUT ABORTION?
There is probably nothing I hate more than abortion. I’ve never been married, never had children – never even wanted to have children – and yet there is little that I find as repulsive as abortion and nothing that I despise more. Evidently I came into this life with this visceral hatred of the form of murder that we call abortion. But this disgust I feel toward abortion does not remain solely in the realm of my gut, for it is an intellectually understood hatred as well; I feel it instinctively, but I can also express it logically, rationally.
I haven’t always agreed with Ann Coulter, although usually I do. I also find her to be delightfully, humorously offensive. Yes, she’s gone too far on a couple of occasions, but anyone who can write chainsaw politics and simultaneously make me laugh is certainly a personality I will treasure.
Oddly, however, probably the one opinion that Ann Coulter has expressed that I concur with with most of all and which, for me, is the most memorable of the most memorable Coulter quotes ever, is what she said to a Time magazine interviewer pertaining to partial-birth abortion, which contained not a trace of her trademark humor and which was published in the April 25, 2005 edition:
They're terrible people, liberals... This can really summarize it all - these are people who believe you can deliver a baby entirely except for the head, puncture the skull, suck the brains out and PRONOUNCE THAT A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT HAS JUST BEEN EXERCISED. That really says it all. You don't want such people to like you!
~ Ann Coulter
Boy Howdy! I couldn’t have said it any better! She expressed my own position as well as I myself could have. I agree completely! If you are not willing to publicly denounce abortion – and not just partial-birth abortion (although that’s the most revolting form of all) but every form of abortion, then I really, seriously, DO NOT want YOUR friendship. I have no desire to form a friendship with anyone who is Pro-Choice. That’s how strongly I feel about this subject!
Oh, you might be a Pro-Choice “acquaintance” of mine, and if the crew from work is going to gather for dinner at a local restaurant after hours, I’m not going to refuse to go simply because you will be there. But if you asked me afterwards if I wanted to accompany you to the nearby movie theatre to see ‘Tippy The Wonder Dog’ - the new comedy movie everybody’s been raving about - my answer is going to be “No, thank you”. And don’t ask me “Why not?” unless you really want to hear my answer.
Babe, you could look like Gene Tierney in a black leather skirt cut up to *here!* but if I know you’re Pro-Choice, I won’t even momentarily consider trying to put a move on you. Well, truth is, I don’t date at all anymore, but if my attitude toward dating should suddenly change, I can assure you I would determine a woman’s position on the abortion issue before I would even entertain the idea of asking her out. No point in wasting my time or hers.
At different times I was once considering regularly attending the Sunday services of two non-mainstream Christian churces. So I approached each minister of these churches privately and inquired about whether or not the church takes an official, public stance against abortion. Neither of them did. One minister told me that while they “hope that people will make the correct decision in regard to this problem, the church does not have an official position on it.”
Wow! Two churches, both using the word “Christian” in their names, unwilling to publicly proclaim that abortion is wrong. The real question might be: “What has gone wrong with Christianity?” Needless to say, that was the last time I ever attended services at either of those two “Christian” churches.
Yes, when it comes to the question of murder (aka “abortion”), it is an entirely black and white issue for me. It’s the very first thing I want to know about any candidate in any political election. “Are you Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion?” That’s the first test that every political candidate must pass before I even begin to examine their views on other issues such as economics, regard for Constitutional restraints on government, immigration policies, et al. If the candidate can’t pass my Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion test, then I ask no more questions and move on, looking for another candidate to cast my vote for.
In 1990, I began writing my one and only (unproduced) screenplay titled ‘Billy & Billie’. The story began as an interracial urban romance between White Billy and Black Billie – two young people trying to survive in the mean streets of Los Angeles.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the romance. Because of my strong anti-abortion feelings, the story kind of wrenched itself away from my premeditated direction and took on a life of its own. Relying on my subconscious Pro-Life affinity, the screenplay just sort of naturally developed into an anti-abortion statement. This was not my intent in the beginning; I thought it was just an interracial romance, but it seems an interracial romance just wasn’t controversial enough for me and I somewhat absentmindedly guided the story into an even greater hot-button topic: abortion. Abortion - I hate it, I dislike people who support it, and I needed to write something about that.
I suppose just in writing an interracial romance I was stacking the deck against this movie being made, but when it became a Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion statement, I had pretty much slammed the door on any possibility that my screenplay would ever be purchased. Can you imagine shopping an Anti-Abortion movie in Hollywood?! Oh yeah, good luck with THAT! Nevertheless, I’m still pleased that I wrote the screenplay, and although it could use a rewrite and some minor adjustments, I still feel that it’s a pretty good bit of writing.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT ABORTION?
What do you suppose my opinion is? Is it that we should declare all abortion murder and we should arrest and charge with murder anyone who performs an abortion? Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect me to say, based upon what I wrote above?
Well, not so fast. You see, as much as I detest abortion, as much as I’m convinced it’s never anything less than murder, I’m also intellectually honest enough to admit that there are some extenuating circumstances that make abortion not quite the easily remedied problem that I wish it were.
First of all, I want you to know that I am consistent in my world-view when it comes to life and murder. I surely do not condone the killing of abortionists. Murder is murder. And I’m not one of those persons who feels that killing the unborn is wrong but putting to death a convicted murderer is right. I not only oppose abortion, but I oppose capital punishment, too!
Anyone who knows me knows that I am generally for the smallest government possible; for the most part, I want government to protect us from foreign invasion and to facilitate international trade and (Constitutionally-valid) treaties and otherwise to basically just leave us the hell alone! Like Henry David Thoreau, “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’.” Which is not to say I believe in anarchy – I do not believe that government is best which governs not at all. But generally, the less government you have the more liberty you possess, and I want government kept at the bare minimum necessary, particularly at the national level.
I hate unnecessary and/or Constitutionally-illegal taxation. And there is nothing about my country – NOTHING! – that pisses me off more than having my tax dollars supporting abortion! And if you don’t believe that’s the case, you need to bone up on the subject of Title X of the Public Health Service Act.
One of only a handful of uses for my tax dollars that I would never object to is for the housing, clothing, and feeding of prison inmates. I am willing to be taxed to keep alive until natural death occurs even those convicted prisoners whose crimes were so heinous that they are actually deserving of a death sentence. I don’t deny that there are some criminals for whom death would represent justice, but there have been too many instances of convicted criminals being found later to have actually been innocent, and if you believe that no one currently on Death Row or serving a lifetime prison sentence is in fact innocent, you are incorrect. The number may be quite small, but mistakenly putting to death an innocent man is something we ought not unnecessarily risk.
Furthermore, putting a man to death prematurely ends any chance he had of accepting the Sacrifice of Jesus for the atonement of his sins before he meets his Maker. Some Christians believe that his acceptance of the Sacrifice – if sincere – would save him from an eternity in Hell. I am not a mainstream Christian, and thus I do not concur with that opinion, however, believing in reincarnation as I do, I think that a prisoner’s sincere acceptance of the free gift of Christ – the Atonement – would indeed initially have a positive effect on any future lifetime he might enter into.
Yes, I am willing to be taxed for the upkeep of prisoners if only to ensure that none are wrongly put to death for crimes they may be innocent of, and in order to give them every opportunity to come to Christ prior to natural death. I do not believe in the killing of human beings excepting extreme situations of genuine self-defense; you have a right to protect your own life and the lives of other innocent individuals.
But when it comes to the act of murder that we call abortion, unfortunately, there is a monkey wrench in the works. As black and white as I personally view it, I must admit that the question of pregnancy from rape is a question that must be addressed. Like most Pro-Lifers, I do not want to see ANY baby aborted for ANY reason. It is my most sincere wish that every woman who was raped and became pregnant as a result, had as big and beautiful a heart as does “Too Young In Las Vegas” and would bring the baby to term (and then give it up for adoption if necessary). But I know that precious few people have the heart of “Too Young In Las Vegas” – she is a rare and supremely loving human being, and there is no way any one of us could EXPECT that kind of reaction from people in general.
The question of pregnancy from rape (and to a lesser degree, pregnancy from incest) kept me contemplating the controversy about abortion for many years despite my strong anti-abortion outlook. I knew that there was some grey area, some serious questions that needed to be wrestled with, even though my personal belief will ALWAYS be that every act of abortion is an act of murder.
According to the excellent ‘Life Guide Series’ booklet “The Facts About Abortion; Volume 3” published by Judie Brown’s American Life League (A.L.L.) but now “sadly out of print due to lack of interest”, “only one half of one percent – or one in 200 cases – of women who are raped become pregnant as a result”. So what we are talking about is an issue that arises only 0.50% of the time. But even so, it does occur and thus it must be factored into the way we remedy the abortion problem. I do not at all feel that I am in a position to demand that a woman who has been raped and become pregnant as a result, bring the child to term. I certainly hope she would, but how can I demand that she find within herself a heart as big as “Too Young’s”? I simply can’t. I have no right to demand that a person who has suffered rape through no fault of her own must endure future suffering because of the initial horrible crime that was perpetrated against her.
And then there is the question of pregnancy from incest. This too is a very rare occurrence. According to that same A.L.L. booklet, “the probability of pregnancy due to incest (per girl, not per case of intercourse) is 16 out of 2,500 cases – 1 out of 156 (0.64%)”. Some studies “have shown serious birth defects in up to one fourth of all children who were conceived through bloodline incest”.
I don’t have quite the same sympathy for the person involved in an incestuous relationship that I do for the woman who has been raped, and I personally do not believe that birth defects constitutes a valid reason for abortion (i.e., You should be able to legally murder a handicapped individual who is handicapped through no fault of their own? I think NOT!) Nevertheless, I do have some degree of sympathy for an emotionally and intellectually undeveloped young girl who has been taken advantage of by an older male in her family, and I do concede that some people have a far less rigid outlook than I do when it comes to such an unfortunate situation. Still, approximately 75% of the babies born from an incestuous relationship will be healthy and could be put up for adoption.
It literally took me years of contemplating all of these facets of the abortion problem before I was able to formulate the plan that I would ideally like to see the United States of America adopt; a plan that I felt was fair to all in all situations.
Here is what I came up with after much mental wrestling:
#1: At the National level, abortion MUST be declared “Illegal at all times” in the United States. This is important for two reasons: 1) to reestablish in our own eyes and in the eyes of the rest of the world a moral sense and a respect for life that this country cast away long ago, and 2) to ensure that no American citizen will ever again have tax dollars extracted from him or her and spent in the support of an act (abortion) that he or she considers to be nothing less than murder. Only by proclaiming abortion “Illegal at all times” can we be certain that the Federal government will never again be able to fund this form of murder and financially support clinics that perform abortions from the wallets and purses of objecting citizens.
As a result of this, while some clinics that perform abortions might still be operating, they will have to operate solely on the money collected from customers, individual donors, or non-governmental organizations. No funding will come from any government agency at any level.
#2: Any clinics that perform abortions will be required to maintain files indicating that the women who purchased abortions (or who had an abortion paid for by someone else on their behalf) signed an affidavit stating that she is pregnant as a result of a rape that has been previously reported to law enforcement authorities. (We might even be able to set up a program where the clinic can confirm beforehand that a rape has been reported to the authorities. Something along the lines of the E-Verify employment program.)
Any clinic that performs an abortion on a woman who has not reported a rape to the authorities would be brought up on charges, just as a woman who lied about a rape in order to obtain an abortion would be.
So, in a sense, we would have a law on the books that was sort of a combination of Teeth and Gums. All abortions would be considered illegal – an act of homicide – but under certain circumstances, the act would be classified as something else (“Justifiable Homicide” or some newly invented classification?) and the law would “look the other way”.
As for the question of pregnancy from incest, personally, I would prefer that these abortions too were a chargeable offense, but I am able to consider other viewpoints. Obviously, there are a lot of details that would need to be worked out in my proposed solution, but I believe that this basic approach would be fair to all concerned.
SOME CLOSING THOUGHTS
“No other country in the industrialized West imposes so few restrictions on abortion” as does the United States of America.
The Centers for Disease Control attributed 39 women’s deaths in 1972 to illegal abortions – but also attributed 24 women’s deaths that year to legal abortions. (So much for this argument that we must have legalized abortion in order to save us from some back alley abortion holocaust.)
“Roughly half the public thinks abortion is murder.”
“There is a reason that pro-choicers have invested so heavily in keeping this issue in the courtroom. Outside it, they can only lose ground.”
The real name of Jane Roe of “Roe V. Wade” fame is Norma McCorvey. Did you know that Norma McCorvey has since become a strong Anti-Abortion/Pro-Life advocate who now regrets her part in the Roe V. Wade decision and is attempting to have that court ruling reversed?
You’ll never believe what first got McCorvey reconsidering her Pro-Choice position. She was working at an abortion clinic in Dallas in 1995, when she stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and spoke to Flip Benham, of Operation Rescue, who was outside protesting against abortion. McCorvey writes:
I goaded Flip. “What you need is to go to a good Beach Boys concert”. Flip answered, “Miss Norma, I haven’t been to a Beach Boys concert since 1976”. The seemingly innocuous response shook me to the core.
To learn why the mention of a Beach Boys concert was the starting point in changing Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) from Pro-Choice to Pro-Life, you should read the outstanding book “THE PARTY OF DEATH: The Democrats, The Media, The Courts, And The Disregard For Human Life” by Ramesh Ponnuru. It’s one of the best works pertaining to abortion that I have ever read.
A November 2004 poll found that 55% of the public thought abortion should either be illegal altogether or illegal with only rape, incest, and for saving-the-life-of-the-mother exceptions. 31% thought it should be legal for any reason but only during the first trimester. Only 9% felt that abortion should be legal for any reason at any time. So, why has the federal government agreed to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a social issue that only 9% of the population concurs with?
As for that saving-the-life-of-the-mother exception goes, in the ‘Life Guide Series’ booklet “The Facts About Abortion” Doctor John F. Brennan states:
I have delivered babies for over 50 years. I have never encountered a pregnancy where an abortion would have “saved the life of the mother”.
Therefore, if there really is any validity to this “saving the mother” argument at all (which is highly questionable based on Doctor Brennan’s statement), it is so minuscule as to be hardly worth considering. It must certainly be an occurrence even more rare than pregnancies due to either rape or incest.
The 24th chapter of Matthew in The Holy Bible gives an account of the things Jesus Christ said we should watch for as indications that the End-Times are coming upon us:
Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”
And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
I don’t believe I could imagine any better example of “the love of many growing cold” than when you have a large number of would-be mothers murdering their own children in their wombs and doing so LEGALLY, as a supposed Constitutional right! Really, could there possibly be any more dramatic example of “love growing cold”?
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
LINKS:
American Life League (A.L.L.)
To Let Be, Or Not To Let Be: That Is The Question
A.L.L. Anti-Abortion Clothing
YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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