Full-Term Pregnancy Lowers Breast Cancer Risk: Study
A new study finds that women over 40 who are genetically predisposed to have breast cancer, and who have given birth to one child, lower their risk of contracting the disease by 14% with each additional child they bear. (The study is on PubMed; LifeNews has a distillation of it.)
That means that when women over 40 who are genetically predisposed to breast cancer seek an abortion, they should be notified that full-term pregnancy would reduce their risk and possibly save their lives. At least, that's what a health-care provider who cares about women and wishes them to make a fully informed choice would do.
Not so with Planned Parenthood, whose Web site states unequivocally: "Studies have shown that abortion is not associated with breast cancer. Undaunted by the absence of compelling evidence, anti-choice extremists insist on making the connection anyway. Once more they are using misinformation as a weapon in their campaign against safe, legal abortion."
They know where their bread is buttered.
More information on the numerous studies linking abortion to increased breast-cancer risk is available on The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer's Web site.
In case you missed it, here's what happened last week when a 21-year-old college student told his fellow Catholic college graduates that they should be unselfish — a mission that, he said, included being faithful to the Church's teachings on contraception. (Note: Video contains profane heckling.)
Bettnet has more on the bravery of St. Thomas University graduate Ben Kessler, who plans to enter the priesthood.
Planned Parenthood, which receives over a quarter-billion from the federal government every year, expends much of its resources touting "comprehensive sex education." As I described in my Touchstone exposé "The Young and the Hot-Wired," comprehensive sex education, sometimes called "abstinence plus," is based on the belief that if children and teenagers are enlightened about a full menu of sexual practices, including abstinence, they will be prepared to make "responsible decisions" — meaning, to use condoms and other contraception — when they have sex.
To those who believe that children and teenagers are incapable of sexual restraint — and are yet capable of making the "responsible decision" to use condoms with perfect and unfailing discipline — such a philosophy may sound refreshingly egalitarian. After all, abstinence and sexual activity receive "separate but equal" status.
In practice, however, comprehensive sex education is not without its roadbumps. Witness the latest feature on Planned Parenthood's sex-ed site Teenwire: "Getting Closer!", by Planned Parenthood's Teen Advisory Group and Ellen Friedrichs.
The URL for "Getting Closer!" contains the word "abstinence," reinforcing just how hard Planned Parenthood is trying to appear sensitive to those who question its "sex-positive" educational approach.
Not surprisingly, the article is a glorified menu:
Ask teens why they have intercourse and many will say, "to get closer to a partner." With that in mind, TAG came up two lists of other ways teens can get close to partners.
The first list is for teens who practice abstinence.
Most people think abstinence means not having any kind of sex play with a partner — not even touching or kissing, or any other physical contact that could be sexually arousing. Teens choose to be abstinent because of their personal beliefs, religious beliefs, or because they don't feel like they're ready for sex play. Abstinence is also a 100-percent effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections — when people practice it consistently.
Teens who practice abstinence can ...
have long conversations on the phone
go on group dates
tell each other secrets
take road trips
watch sunrises and sunsets together
dance
serenade each other
write romantic poetry
fall asleep together
have candlelit dinners
send each other romantic text messages, e-mails and IMs
go for walks in the park, on the beach, or in the mountains
watch movies
meet each others' parents
As the list demonstrates, just because teens choose to be abstinent, doesn't mean that they can't have meaningful relationships! As Marcie, 17, explains, "My boyfriend and I don't have sex, but I feel closer to him than I do to anyone else. We do all the other things couples do — just not that one thing."
That was Column A, kids. If you don't see anything you like, you can choose from Column B:
The second list is for teens who practice outercourse.
Some teens choose to practice outercourse — sex play without intercourse. Avoiding intercourse means partners are less likely to exchange body fluids, which reduces the risk of pregnancy and infections.
Teens who practice outercourse can ...
hold hands
hug
cuddle
sit in each others' laps
tell each other about fantasies
kiss
sleep in the same bed together
touch each other over clothes
touch each other under clothes
have dry sex
Darren, 18 explains, "I had sex before, but with my new girlfriend we just decided to make out for now. It just seemed like there would be less to worry about and we could still have fun." For many teens, the risks associated with intercourse can make them feel like it's not worth it, and practicing outercourse allows them to feel pleasure and stay safe.
The above represents the article in its entirety, save for a final paragraph exhorting teens who are not abstinent to "protect" themselves. (" To find out how to reduce your risk, check out Birth Control Choices for Teens and Safer Sex 101.")
Note that the teens who are engaging in acts in Column B aren't urged to "meet each other's parents." Apparently parents only want to meet boyfriends or girlfriends if they're not fornicating with the parents' kid. Likewise, why "send each other romantic text messages" when you can "sleep in the same bed together"?
Also, kids, in case you're wondering, sleeping in the same bed together counts as perfectly safe outercourse and does not lead to unprotected sex. Just ask Mom and Dad.
I was introduced to G.K. Chesterton circa December 1995 by Sugarplastic band member Ben Eshbach, when — while interviewing him for a story about his group — I asked him what he was reading and he said The Man Who Was Thursday.
One could draw a straight line — albeit a decade-long one — from Ben's answer to my entering the Church last month. I can never thank him enough — but Ben, if you're reading this, thanks.
With trains still canceled due to the Amtrak outage, I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral yesterday for the Feast of the Ascension. It was only my second time there, and I hadn't gotten a look 'round on my first visit, so I made it a point to visit each of the shrines. In the course of doing that, I made a discovery that was a bit embarrassing for me.
St. Patrick's has very few through streets.
If you've ever been there, you'll know what I mean.
From Rhys Tuck comes news of an online satire depicting the "Sweetwater Post-Natal Abortion Clinic. Anyone know the story behind this? Whoever created it was well acquainted with the flowery graphics popular with abortion clinics' Web sites. Make sure you click the llink for information about "services."
Although the black humor of the Sweetwater site may be heavy-handed, its message is completely relevant to Roe vs. Wade: If a court or government may choose an arbitrary point in the human life cycle at which personhood is created, no one is safe. The great science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick made the same point in 1974 with his short story "The Pre-Persons."
The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration.
"Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement," the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals. ...
Given the organization's longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals.
Nat Hentoff, a writer and former A.C.L.U. board member, was incredulous. "You sure that didn't come out of Dick Cheney's office?" he asked.
"For the national board to consider promulgating a gag order on its members — I can't think of anything more contrary to the reason the A.C.L.U. exists," Mr. Hentoff added. [Full story]
In other words, the ACLU proves once again that it believes in free speech for all — except for those who go against the organization's pro-abortion party line.
The Raving Atheist notes two recent medical studies: one finding that prayer makes no measurable difference in the condition of patients recovering from heart surgery, and another finding that "overweight African-Americans who regularly participate in religious activities have lower blood pressure than their less-faithful counterparts."
The reasonableness of his heavy satire is impossible to escape. I'm embarrassed to spell it out — it's like spraying whipped cream on creme brulée — but, just so there's no question, I'll say it: God refuses to be tested. The fact of this is no doubt frustrating to an atheist who seeks truth; heck, it's frustrating to the faithful. But that's the way it is.
In related news, Simone Weil writes, "Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms."
On Sunday, in an entry about a filmmaker's assertion that he was trying to "demystify" sex by portraying it graphically onscreen, I wrote, "The real sin here is the what I believe is the great sin of the sexual revolution: the idea that sex needs to be 'demystified.' That's the line of thinking that makes perverts prey upon young girls. It also makes parents let their children watch obscene films or read porn magazines — as I saw a father do with his 10-year-old son on the train last week — because 'the kids'll just see them anyway, so it's better that we know about it.'"
My meaning was clear to most readers, though in retrospect I should have been more specific about a point I thought was obvious — that pedophiles use the goal of "demystifying" sex as an excuse to the children whom they prey upon. (The point was made, I thought, with my reference to the excuse parents use for letting their children see obscene materials.)
Since The Dawn Patrol's readership appears to be mostly Christian, I thought you might be interested to know that my sentiments struck a nerve with what I call, for lack of a better term, the "porn liberal" crowd. (Suggestions for a different label — one that doesn't impugn left-wingers, not all of whom support porn — would be welcome.)
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon writes:"... I can safely say that pedophiles agree with Dawn that graphic nudity, at least the kind that involves naked, grown women, should never see the light of day."
And "R. Mildred" of PunkAssBlog writes, "... Dawn Eden has been poked but never owned, thus making her entire gibbering about the 'mystery' of sex even more nonsensical and irrelevent because sex can never be 'mysterious' for her, and she has no real experience of a successful marriage either so what the hell is she gibbering about really?"
Both comments above are taken somewhat out of context, though their meaning is straightforward enough; follow the links above to read the full, profanity-laden entries.
[Gul] Khan was exposed in a sting organised by American and Pakistani missionaries who decided to save 20 such boys and return them to their homes. Using a secret camera, they filmed him accepting $28,500 (£15,000) from a Pakistani missionary posing as a businessman who said he wanted to set up an operation in which the boys would beg for cash on the streets.
Khan was observed driving from the meeting with a knapsack full of cash to the JUD headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore.
The base was funded by Osama Bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader, in the late 1990s and the JUD’s assets were frozen last month by the US Treasury after it was designated a terrorist organisation.
The article goes on to say that "the undercover missionaries have demanded the prosecution of Khan and an investigation into his work for the JUD, which claims to have created a 'pure Islamic environment' at Muridke."
Apparently the Pakistani government, a U.S. ally in the war on terror, doesn't automatically consider enslaving Christians to be a crime worthy of prosecution.
A reader asked me why I quoted Virgil the other day. It had something to do with its being the night before deadline day of the launch of two new weekly newspapers — Brooklyn News and Queens News — with yours truly writing all the headlines and copyediting all the articles.
A Reuters article on director John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus" details the filmmaker's quest to put graphic sex into a "nonpornographic" film:
In his provocative new film "Shortbus", U.S. director John Cameron Mitchell is seeking to demystify sex on screen by making it real.
Showing out of competition at the Cannes film festival, the movie set around a colorful underground cabaret-cum-nightclub called Shortbus is the culmination of a long-held ambition of Mitchell's to present sex as no more than a fact of life.
Try to forget, for a moment, that Mitchell's film contains enough graphic sexual footage to offend those who oppose pornography (which the film clearly is from Reuters' description, despite Mitchell's argument that it can't be pornographic because it doesn't sexually titillate him).
The real sin here is the what I believe is the great sin of the sexual revolution: the idea that sex needs to be "demystified." That's the line of thinking that makes perverts prey upon young girls. It also makes parents let their children watch obscene films or read porn magazines — as I saw a father do with his 10-year-old son on the train last week — because "the kids'll just see them anyway, so it's better that we know about it."
To deprive sex of its spiritual component — which is what the hippies did, and the beatniks before them, and the Theosophists and Sangerites before them — is to reduce human beings to disposable commodities.
My faith tells me that marital sex, like all acts blessed with holiness, is a great mystery — and thence comes its beauty.
The Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin home page prominently features a link to its PAC page endorsing Doyle which features pro-Doyle TV commercials. Since Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, its blatant advocacy of a candidate is a clear violation of federal election law.
"The big flaw in Mansfield's argument is that he fails to distinguish between manly style and manly substance.
"Manly style is a guy who drives a Jeep; manly substance is a guy who can fix it. Manly style is Ronald Reagan playing soldier in war movies; manly substance is Jimmy Stewart, who actually flew numerous bomber missions. Manly style is seeming and appearing; manly substance is being and doing.
"There are people who look extremely manly, but are not. And people who don't look manly, but are. T.O., with his bulging muscles and chiseled torso, is a cartoon of exaggerated masculinity. On the football field, he certainly exhibits confidence in the face of risk. But because of his constant carping, his vanity and self-absorption, he is anything but manly.
"Fred Rogers, with his silly puppets and cardigan sweaters, was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Russell Crowe, Jesse Ventura and The Arnold. But he was confident of his belief in the power of love, and he had the courage to extend respect and appreciation to all, despite the risk of ridicule. The moral force of Rogers this soft, gentle man was fearsome.
"Indeed, a manly man can be a gentleman -- 'a manly man with polish and perfection,' Mansfield writes, gentle 'out of policy, not weakness.'"
A producer from CNN called the News today to inquire about the Jesus statue. Please pray that God accomplishes whatever is His will to accomplish with regard to the statue. For all I know, His will may have been accomplished already; still, if He's planning to do something more, prayer will help. My hope is that this visual reminder of Jesus' love — and of people's desire to "give Jesus a hand" — will touch more hearts. Thanks!
Last Tuesday, a Daily News editor noticed a curious sight as he left work.
He was long familiar with the large statue of Jesus displaying his Sacred Heart that stood on the same block as the newspaper's headquarters. The statue, which looks almost directly at the national headquarters of Planned Parenthood across the street, had lost its right hand to vandalism. On this day, however, the editor saw that the statue was now surrounded by a metal frame — in preparation for its repair and for the installation of protective glass to prevent future vandalism.
I learned about the editor's discovery the following day, when I arrived at work and was asked by another editor if I could come up with a good headline for a story about Jesus under glass.
My jaw dropped. I had to explain that it was a surprise to be asked about the statue's renovation, since I was one of the locals and parishioners who had donated for the effort. (None of my senior colleagues had read my blog for a while.)
The story is in today's News (with a fine headline from the copy desk). I'm delighted and really overwhelmed that it's there. Being immersed in Catholic culture, it never would have occurred to me that people might be surprised to learn that vandalism is causing some churches to encase their statues. To me, the statue's important simply because it's beautiful and moving, providing comfort and inspiration to the faithful who pass by. But whatever the reason, just to have a picture of Jesus with his Sacred Heart in the country's sixth largest newspaper is wonderful. Look and it today and be blessed — see His face looking at you off the page know that He loves you.
Because of how this story happened, I am convinced more than ever that I need to trust God and not worry so much when media events like the "Da Vinci Code" give people a distorted image of Jesus. When He wants to get His true face into the news, He does.
UPDATE: The statue was featured on New York's Channel 5 news today at 5, 6, and 10 p.m. A reporter interviewed the pastor of the Church of St. Michael, which owns the statue (it stands near the entrance to a convent on the church grounds) and the craftsman who's repairing the hand. People really seem to be touched by this story of a church whose people wanted to give a hand to this statue that symbolizes Jesus' love and mercy.
Babies deprive you of sleep and stress out your primary relationship and are hard on your sex life, to boot.
Kids are expensive and even more so if you want to give them all the privileges it’ll take to make it easier for them to be happy and successful.
Kids eat up time I’d rather spend on other things.
For all the investment you put into kids, you don’t have a lot of control over the final product.
People are an environmental disaster and not making more is the best thing you can do for the planet.
White people are a historical disaster and making more is socially irresponsible. [Note from Dawn: Amanda writes in a comment to her post that this reason is intended to be tongue-in-cheek.]
Kids are annoying, loud and smell bad.
In light of such sentiments, I'd just like to say ...
"Holiness is like a sculpture. Leonardo da Vinci defined sculpture as 'the art of removing.' The other arts consist in adding something: color to the canvas in painting, stone on stone in architecture, note after note in music.
"Only sculpture consists of removing, of taking away the pieces of marble that are in excess, so that the figure can emerge that one has in mind. Christian perfection is also obtained like this, by removing and making useless pieces fall off, namely, desires, ambitions, projects, carnal tendencies that disperse us and do not let us finish anything.
"One day, Michelangelo walking through a garden in Florence saw a block of marble in a corner protruding from the earth, half covered by grass and mud.
"He stopped suddenly, as if he had seen someone, and turning to friends, who were with him, exclaimed: 'An angel is imprisoned in that marble; I must get him out.' And, armed with a chisel, he began to work on that block until the figure of a beautiful angel emerged.
"God also looks at us and sees us this way: as shapeless blocks of stone. He then says to himself: 'Therein is hidden a new and beautiful creature that waits to come out to the light; more than that, the image of my own son Jesus Christ is hidden there, I want to bring it out!' We are predestined to 'be conformed to the image of his son' (Romans 8:29)."
Sorry, nothing new here today; must approve the copyedited version of my book (hooray!). 12:06 AM
Thursday, May 11, 2006
When You Care Enough to End the Very Best
In September 2004, after reading a Planned Parenthood brochure that urged supporters to send "pro-choice greeting cards" for Mother's Day and other occasions, I invited readers to suggest what such cards would look like.
Well, it took them a while, but Planned Parenthood has finally caught up with the idea — via its fund-raising "Mother's Day Challenge!"
You've got to admit, the title of the promotion is truth in advertising. Planned Parenthood's mission is to make Mother's Day — that is, the reason to celebrate the holiday — a challenge.And they do make it a challenge, all the way down to the eliminations.
Note that the only e-card featuring a live baby depicts a black child. That's ironic; according to Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are nearly four times as likely to abort blacks as they are to abort whites.
There's one Planned Parenthood e-card with which I agree: Every child a wanted child. Every child is wanted by God, who wishes it to have the opportunity to thrive. The child's mother is blessed with the responsibility to give him or her that opportunity. On Mother's Day and every day, I'm thankful that my mother gave me mine.
If you're a pro-life blogger and would like to create your very own Planned Parenthood Mother's Day Challenge greeting card or e-card, please leave a trackback to it below.
Planned Parenthood Says True Love Waits ... to Use 'Protection'
Planned Parenthood's Teenwire sex-ed Web site sent its New York City-based Teen Advisory Group out to ask their peers for tips to prevent teen pregnancy, As can be expected, none of the advice used is about motivating teens to have the self-respect and wisdom to refrain from sex until marriage. Abstinence is mentioned in passing, but only grudgingly, and always in the same breath as an admonition to use "protection."
One quote in particular is priceless — the Planned Parenthood philosophy in a nutshell:
"Teens need to wait until they are more mature and ready to use condoms before they have sex." — Ashley, 14
Sex education used to be given entirely by children’s parents, free from the influence of government or other outside organizations. It was based upon personal responsibility and self-control. Even when parents erred by instilling undue shame, the lesson — that sex should be reserved for marriage — gave children moral strength to resist allowing themselves to use others or be used as a means to an end.
The Kinsey/SIECUS/Planned Parenthood paradigm, as expressed in Human Sexuality, is likewise all about personal responsibility and self-control. But the responsibility has shifted to the responsibility to make one’s own “choices” — and self-control is reduced to having the presence of mind to use a condom.
To Jesus' east, across the street, is the back of the Farley post office, Penn Station, and Madison Square Garden.
Carved on the wall behind him is Matthew 11:28: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
It's a comforting verse for the thousands of people who pass by every day, including people who work for the Associated Press, WNET/Channel 13, and the Daily News.
I've passed by that statue five days a week for the past 13 months as I've gone to work.Every day, I would feel bad that vandals had cut off its hand, and I would wish there were something I could do.
Today, I snapped these photos for a "before" picture. Tomorrow, work begins at last to give the statue of Jesus and his Sacred Heart a new hand. The workers will also repair other parts of the statue that are in disrepair, and they will put protective glass around the statue to thwart would-be vandals. Parishioners and people who work in the area, including myself, donated the money for the work so that the statue would continue to provide its comforting witness.
Directly across the street is a billboard from a Jewish organization. Although its object is different than that of the Sacred Heart statue, its message is strangely congruent: "Ask the Rabbi."
Today I was in a midtown church near my work. It's not my favorite church to attend for Mass — I was there more out of convenience* — but the building is beautiful and feels like a holy place.
I mention the services' not being special because one of the things that I like about Catholic worship, particularly in such heavenly surroundings, is that it has a certain bottom-line sanctity regardless of things like the way the music is sung or the way the homily is delivered.
As I looked up at the stained-glass windows, the white walls, and the high ceiling, I thought about a friend of mine who loves truth but does not yet admit knowledge of God.
It struck me very suddenly that my friend was a nonbeliever not because he hated sanctified things, but because he was in some sense frightened or disconcerted by the concept of sanctity — its breadth, its depth, its sheer immensity. After all, if one believes that God is holy, one discovers immediately that holiness is all around. One experiences this awareness with special intensity in a church, surrounded by images of people who, throughout the ages, lived out their faith in a way that is too beautiful and too self-sacrificing for us to fully conceive.
It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said — I think he mentioned it in Mere Christianity and illustrated it by example in The Great Divorce — about how the most ordinary person whom we pass by every day and to whom we never give a second thought, might in Heaven be a creature too bright and dazzling for us to behold.
*Cue Church Lady: "Some people only go to church when it's convenient"
I adore Fr. Joseph Huneycutt — we've long belonged to a bloggy mutual-admiration society — and am so happy for him about his upcoming book. Check out its inviting cover. Fr. Huneycutt doesn't mention where one can buy it, as far as I can tell, but I see it's available through the publisher's Web site.
I wrote the front-page headline of today's paper. Perhaps the cast of the Monty Python musical on Broadway will add it to their "Knights of the Round Table" rhymes tonight.
Planned Parenthood, as I noted yesterday, is using the story of a 17-year old girl harassed by a crisis pregnancy center as the centerpiece of its national anti-CPC lobbying efforts. Jivin J has identified the CPC and PP facilities involved in the alleged incident. He links to pictures of the CPC, on the inside and out, and questions whether it could have reasonably been mistaken for an abortion clinic.
John of Generations for Life did some digging of his own. He contacted the Indianapolis Police Department and the Marion County Clerk’s office, and discovered no record of criminal or civil proceedings involving the CPC. Unless that little strip-mall storefront has corrupted the entire municipality, PP has some serious explaining (and e-mail correcting) to do.
Christina of Real Choice is urging all concerned cyberspace residents to contact the urban legend investigators at Snopes.com to encourage a full inquiry. Orthodoxy has acted on her suggestion, and raised his concerns at Feministe as well. Perhaps they'll be convinced to join us in this relentless quest for truth. After all, as Christina says, "[i]f the story is true, PP supporters will be vindicated, and prolifers will crack down on the CPC in question . . . [i]f it's false, maybe prochoicers ought to crack down on PP for lying."
3:37 PM |
'Chaste' Taste
Earlier this week, my editor at my publisher, W Publishing Group/Thomas Nelson, sent me the front cover of my first book, due in December:
I love it. I really can't get over how good it looks.
I had steeled myself for a chick-lit type of cover with a corny caricature, juvenile candy colors, and the title written in a dainty script typeface. Instead, the publisher's gone for a classy, mature, introspective look, with just a hint of playful irony. It reflects the book's tone, which is the most that I could ask for. What's more, it looks like something that one wouldn't be embarrassed to be caught reading on a bus.
I am so, so happy and excited that this is going to be the cover of my book; it makes the book's publication, though still far away, seem that much more real to me.
* * *
One of the things that I write about in my book is the different stages that one goes through as a single woman working at chastity. The stages go in waves; one can feel confident and secure for a while, and then dip down into loneliness and a sense of lack. I believe that the worst of the loneliness gets less severe over time, but it's important not to deny one's longings for love and companionship.
Our rational nature as human beings makes us resist paradox, yet the acceptance and even embrace of paradoxes is necessary for spiritual maturity. I take issue with those who boast that a single person who has any desire for marriage can nonetheless feel fulfilled in the same way that a married person can feel fulfilled. For me, as a single woman, the paradox of being chaste is that it is nothing and it is everything. It is nothing, in that it is not good for man to be alone. Marital love is one of the greatest things that a person can experience, and it has no direct equivalent. But being chaste is also everything, in that it enables me to see, on a day-to-day basis, what beauty there is in being incomplete.
None of us are ever complete. To be complete is to lack any upward striving, any need to grow. The rubber plant on my table as I type this is complete in that it doesn't have any obviously broken leaves or stems. But to consider it complete, in the sense that it contains within itself everything it ever needs, would kill it. It can't go on living without growing; that's not in its nature. It's the same for me, and that's where chastity enables me to pursue my spiritual goals in a way that I couldn't before I was chaste.
Before I began to work at chastity, I tried to fill the empty space in my heart and soul with things that would never fill it. Now, I work prayerfully to overcome my fear of having that empty space. As I do, I find that, as painful as it can be sometimes, I need it there.
One of my favorite Bible verses is in Psalm 37:
"Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart."
I see the instruction to "feed on His faithfulness" as meaning that I should look to God for my spiritual food. To do this, I must be hungry. Chastity acknowledges this spiritual hunger, and so opens me up to God's blessing.
That's part of the thrill of the chaste. For the rest, the book will be available for pre-order on Amazon in a few months. I know a chaste person shouldn't use this phrase, but why not: I can't wait.
An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group -- one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic, and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.
The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there -- the "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.
The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace. Our clinic director reports that she was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.
Jivin J is skeptical of the story’s accuracy, as is Christina of Real Choice. Even pro-choice's Twisty is a tad uneasy about some aspects of the narrative. Although the reaction of most commenters at other pro-choice sites who have reproduced the e-mail is an unquestioning "HORRORS," I’ve seen a few polite requests for additional substantiation (Like here: "I hate to say it, but I hope there's backup for this or the whole organization is going to look like a bunch of gullible idiots").
Amanda of Pandagon (writing in AlterNet) accepts the say-so of an Indiana PP official: "[w]hile she was unable to provide details out of respect for the patient's privacy, she confirmed that everything in the initial action alert email was true." A poster named "Lucy" explains why the primary source of the story is PP's contact-your-legislator spam engine:
I wanted to let you know why you won't find any mention of the Indiana story in major media outlets. Quite simply, the young woman and her family did not want to speak with reporters about this experience. They agreed to let Planned Parenthood share their story, as long as we protected their identities. That's why the story didn’t appear in the media --we heard the story straight from our clinic director in Indiana.
Serge of LTI Blog has problems with this explanation and many other aspects of the alleged incident. It does seem odd to me that if privacy was the concern, PP would have put so many details in a mass-distributed e-mail. Unless the police and the girl’s classmates have signed confidentiality agreements, the truth will eventually come out.
If the story is accurate, I agree with Christina that the CPC needs to be shut down. But I also agree with her that "this just defies belief, like hearing that PETA activists were instructing people to go to Outback and order a steak." Whatever the case, it's reprehensible of PP to be suggesting that this sort of criminal behavior is in any way typical of CPCs, and irresponsible of the organization to conduct its lobbying efforts by way of e-mail rumor-mongering.
5:58 PM |
The cure for speech you don't like, the ACLU is fond of saying, is more speech. But when the message is "choose life," the organization may well believe that less is more. It's appealing to the Supreme Court to make sure those frightening words don't deface Tennessee license plates. Ostensibly, the complaint is that the state has violated the First Amendment by discriminating against the vehicular expression of pro-choice views -- but it’s clear from the way the group is pursuing the case that its stance has more to do with a love of abortion than a love of expression.
Some background first: The problem the pro-choice lobby has with the various license plate cases that have cropped up is that it doesn
