I’m in a debate on one of the boards I frequent with a woman who’s very pro-choice and insists that she would abort if she became pregnant. She called the preborn child a parasite and compared it to a tapeworm.

Needless to say, I disagreed with her.

What might need to be said is that she and I are friends, so I feel a particular tenderness toward this woman, and a need to protect her from some of the other, even more passionate remarks, of some participants.

A parasite is another species which invades the body. A baby is the same species, created as the natural outcome of an important human activity: sex. The primary purpose of sex is to create new life.

So – there are a few things we need to think of, when we talk about abortion:

Is the unborn child alive? At what point does it become a human life? At “quickening?” at the point of viability? A few short years ago, viability was pretty late; now it’s possible to save babies born as early as 20 weeks. In a few years… who knows how early a wanted baby’s life can be saved?

And, who benefits from abortion? Certainly not the baby. Even the mother, who “chose” the procedure, suffers. If she didn’t, there wouldn’t be organizations like Feminists for Life, or Project Rachel.

Nope – the people MOST LIKELY to benefit from abortion are men. The men who don’t have to own responsibility for their sexual pleasures. The male-dominated OB-GYNs who perform the procedures; it’s a damned lucrative industry.

Women being exploited for the benefit of men.

And abortion promoted as a feminist “right.” Yeah, right. And donkeys fly.

Read the news, the commentaries, and the TRUTH about abortion at Father Z’s blog. (some interesting poetry about abortion from the classic Latin poet, Ovid, too – a pagan, not a Christian, I might add)

Well, Lady –
“Annual” women’s physical today, stirrups and all – only for me it had been a lot more than one year since I’d done the last.

Now that I’m fifty a few more tests get added to the mix. I’m scheduled sooner rather than later for a mammogram (more indignities to save my life) – and I have to have a fasting blood sugar, lipids and the works. Lots and lots of stuff for Old Ladies.

I’m just sitting here complaining, that’s all.

yuck, gross.

Exquisite – Kathleen Battle sings “Ihr Habt nun Traurigkeit” from Ein Deutshes Requiem (Brahm’s “German” Requiem). Herbert von Karajan conducts.

I’m sorry – I have NO IDEA who to attribute this to; it was sent to me via email this morning. I’ll keep looking, though, okay?

Did YOU know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a REPUBLICAN???

Yep! He was!

Now that I think about it, though, it only makes sense. The Republican party was the party of Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation. The Republican party was the party of Reconstruction.

The Democratic Party grew strong in the South precisely because it opposed those laws and policies imposed on her, after the Civil War, by the Republicans.

George Wallace, governor of Alabama during King’s historic works and the nightmarish school desegregation imposed by Federal Law (I remember watching on CBS News when I was a child) was a Southern Democrat. The Democrats opposed, vehemently, desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation.

What else could King have been, but a Republican?

However, Obama and the Democratic party have made Dr. King their token figurehead as they seek to brainwash blacks and win their votes.

Do you think I’m going to be quiet about this little bit of information? Uh…. no.

He’s black. He’s passionate. He’s articulate. He’s… a Republican?

oh, yeah! Go, Alfonzo!

And, if you have a half-hour to listen/watch, and don’t mind some rough language (maybe he’s just plain-spoken?) you can check this out, too.

Nathan Winograd has this blog about animal rights, right here at blogspot. On Friday he posted about the deceptions of a proposed mandatory pet sterilization law in CA. It’s rather an interesting piece of work, actually.

What I find intriguing is – two things, actually –

I was disappointed that Mr. Winograd doesn’t allow comments on his blog, but a friend has informed me that he’s received numerous death threats from his book. Go figure. We can push for freedom of speech in this country, so long as you don’t offend the wrong people. sigh.

Second, I couldn’t help but notice as I read, the staunch parallels between his beef against these California/Los Angeles animal shelters, for their heavy euthenasia policies, very very strongly parallels the conflict between contraception and abortion.

He points out that the law to sterilize animals, cats and dogs particularly, got bogged down in so many amendments that it ended up being rather invisible – “This isn’t about sterilization, is it?” “No, it’s not,” the dialogue is supposed to have gone.

Forty years ago, Pope Paul VI warned that the increase of artificial birth control would, inevitably, lead to the murder of unborn children via abortion. The link between disrespect for procreative capability of human beings and the willingness to kill is tragic, and indisputable.

Very interesting, indeed.

As I stand inside the pyre
let me not shrink from these flames,
which round me lap up, higher and higher –

There is nothing more I can aspire,
No greater hope, no dearer claims
As I stand inside the pyre

Than that of sanctity entire
while dross burns amidst false blames
which round me lap up, higher and higher,

til all at last is purged, inspire
and I, in Love’s pure holiness, re-names
As I stand inside the pyre.

I flinch not, tho agonies grow nigher
and humiliations leave no fames
which round me lap up, higher and higher.

So here I stand, my Love, my Buyer
no pretense offer up, nor games –
As I stand inside the pyre
which round me lap up, higher and higher.

I haven’t blogged in a few days. Anniversaries hit me rather hard, and Tuesday, the 12th, was the 32d anniversary of my wedding to the man I now refer to, in my nastier moods, as “the Faerie Prince.” We can also call him DH – because “Dear Husband” also shares those initials for his name.

DH was one of my best friends in high school, and I simply could not bear the thought of ever facing a future in which he was not a central figure. We dated for a year, and married.

We both had our issues. I was the daughter of a mentally ill mother; he was fighting a secret issue that I didn’t learn of until later. I was wounded, emotionally. I saw him as strong, decisive, heroic. I expected him to fill my “love tank.”

He couldn’t.

When we returned from our long weekend honeymoon, he took to a chair in the evenings and hardly had a thing to say to me. Suddenly, this beautiful boy who had been my best friend became a cold, silent, almost-hostile stranger. For years the memory taunted me, infuriated me; I didn’t know how to fight back against such neglect and contempt.

But believe me, I did my best. I became consumed with thoughts of “justice” and “right.” DH wouldn’t be warm or companionable to me? I shut down. I became, I’m sorry to say, more passive-aggressive in the things I refused to do to be a good wife and friend to him.

I didn’t know what his struggles were. What’s worse, at that point in my life, I didn’t care. I’d married him so I could be dear and important to someone; if he wouldn’t give me that which he’d promised, then I’d be damned if I’d stick my neck out for him, either.

I was no help to him in his struggles, in his sorrows. I made his journey even more difficult than it had to be.

I do not absolve him from his part of the failure. He ought to have been honest, before. Of course, we were young, we were ignorant; that kind of honesty was simply not possible for us at that point in our lives. But later on, he ought to have been. Instead, he sat in the counsellor’s office and smirked and said, “I know a good marriage takes a lot of work, but frankly, I don’t want to be bothered.” (I ran into that counsellor, ten years later. She remembered us vividly because of this one comment.)

But I’m sorry, now, that I wasn’t a better, a more mature, a more independent woman. I might have done him some good, and in that, I failed miserably.

I am praying for him, and for his deliverance and his conversion. It’s a small bit of restitution that he’ll never see or know of – but I deposit it “on account” with my heavenly Father Who does see and know all, and Who will distribute it rightly, in His own way.