When It Seems Like There Is No Choice

Here is a short, poignant retrospective by Sydna Masse in the LA Times on her own abortion, her days as a pro-choice activist, and her conversion to pro-life activist.

Choice Killed a Part of My Heart

Masse is an old friend of my husband, and she now runs a healing ministry called Ramah International for women who have had abortions.

Ramah International

A second chance in north Dallas:

For local women in crisis pregnancies looking for real, living options -- women who want a hopeful, positive choice for themselves and their babies -- here is a link to a ministry which provides counseling, medical services, and adoption help. It is supported by local churches, including members of our evangelical church here in Texas. Did you know these kind of organizations are dotted all over the country?

Hope Crisis Pregnancy Center

And below is a link to ministry which helps single moms receive housing and career counseling and support in North Texas, founded by some dear friends.

Shiloh Place

Finally, here is a ministry that is one of my favorites, as it provides safe housing, food, transportation, and career counseling to homeless families, and helps homeless school kids stay in their regular school system through the process. It is a national group with local chapters. Local churches provide overnight housing, facilities, and hot meals in the church building.

Family Promise

There is hope and second chance for ALL of us. We all need a second chance (and a third chance, and a 77th chance), and God is the God of second chances!

These ministries and many, many others all across America provide real, wholesome, life-giving CHOICE and a second chance to mothers and fathers and children.

Check Your White, Female Privilege

In the New York Times, Ross Douthat counters Milbank et al's arguments that the only way for Planned Parenthood to provide family planning services is for them also to provide baby-in-the-womb dismemberment services.

There Is No Pro-Life Case for Planned Parenthood

It's good to point out when the actual narrative conflicts with the establishment narrative. In these videos, the antagonists are women, the victims are predominantly minorities, and the hero is a white male. Time for PP to check its white, female privilege.

"What If I Have Already Had an Abortion?"

My thoughts keep winding back to the women watching these Planned Parenthood videos who have, themselves, had abortions. I can imagine some women, especially those who had second or third trimester abortions, experiencing a deep sense of personal horror and grief. Down at the bottom of a woman is a wholly wholesome, natural, and real love for her baby, a love which well-coiffed abortion activists in suits and scrubs cannot really tamp down, try as they might.

Christian Scripture carries in it major themes of life and death. It is not only clamorous on the side of life, but also on the side of forgiveness. One of God's greatest heroes was once a killer.

"Let the Bones You Have Crushed Rejoice"

David -- shepherd, musician, poet, warrior, and king -- was beloved of God. David loved a woman named Bathsheba, whom he had spied bathing naked. But Bathsheba was already married to a soldier fighting on behalf of David's interests. When David couldn't cover up the fact that he had made Bathsheba pregnant, he had her husband killed.  There were those who were complicit in his act, but he is the one who ultimately had the authority to kill and the story is about him. After this, David recommenced life as usual, on the throne in Jerusalem, married to Bathsheba, this new bride of blood.

Nathan, the prophet, came to David and told him a story about a poor man's beloved little pet ewe lamb, which was taken, killed, and eaten by a rich man who had many sheep of his own, and the reality of what David had done penetrated and sickened him.

Stories and pictures make us see things more truly.

When David was made to really feel and see the evil in his acts, he became weak with the emotional understanding of his acts.  He talks about being "broken." He even said that his very bones were "crushed." I know what he means when he describes those feelings. I have felt that inner, gut-twisting sickness of realization about my own life at crucial points.

Being a poet, he describes his misery, repentance, and eventual relief in Psalm 51. Here is part of it:

"Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.

Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart you, O God, will not despise."

(Psalm 51, NIV emphasis mine)

Sin, followed by repentance, leads to real, true saving by a real, true Savior. Followed by relief and a renewed focus on serving God -- "May it please you to prosper Zion" is David's new prayer at the end of the Psalm. He is brought down, to be redeemed, in order to serve God truly again.

"Have Mercy on Me, O God...according to your great compassion."

My invitation to the women who have had abortions -- who believed the lies told by their culture, their political party, their doctors, their sisters, and perhaps even their family -- is to be a truth-teller. Tell the truth to yourself and God:

-- Talk to an already-knowing God
-- Confess what you have done to a righteous God
-- Ask forgiveness from a gracious God
-- And receive the profound relief -- and renewed purpose -- that are the gifts of a merciful, compassionate God
-- Go to church

Jesus Christ never takes something without giving something else back. He takes your sin upon himself, and gives in return his own Spirit, to those who believe.

Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 11, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Changing Your Mind about Abortion

Sometimes the bravest thing to do is change your mind.

For those pro-choice women considering changing their minds about abortion in light of the new video documentation, please read the following article, written by a PhD and former pro-abortion advocate.

I Thought Planned Parenthood Supported Family Values

Over our summer road trip the kids and I listened to The Screwtape Letters by Oxford professor C.S. Lewis. I was reminded of that shrewd tempter Screwtape's gleeful reporting that, while in former days men and women would change the course of their lives based on one solid, consistent line of reasoning about an issue....in modern days that kind of noble behavior -- the behavior of following truth even when it means change -- need not concern tempters.

(And if you balk about facing religious people, know that no honest Christian can look down in pride on those who have found they are wrong. All Christians have altered the course of their life based on a change of heart and mind.)

Sometimes a change of mind and heart is an integral part of your own story, your own personal narrative of who you are -- You-Now grows out of You-Then. Sometimes "Then" is "just yesterday" or even "just this morning."

"Just yesterday, I believed...But today I realize..."

Will you change your mind?

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

[From the Preface] ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Conquest's Conquests

Robert Conquest, a man who described misrule in Stalinist Russia when information was scarce, has died.

What an interesting man: historian, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, poet, and writer of prose. I enjoyed reading this obituary:

Seminal Historian of Soviet Misrule 

Stalin's daughter also recently died. She lived in Wisconsin.

About her life in Wisconsin:

Lana about Svetlana

Review of a biography of her (by Rosemary Sullivan)

Stalin's Daughter