There’s some discomfort on the part of the more secular DC inhabitants both left and right with any pro-traditional values anything. Perhaps that’s why President Obama feels free to do this, as reported by Elizabeth Scalia:

There are questions as to whether HHS has authority to issue exemptions to Obamacare, although quite a few have been issued for reasons other than conscience. There appear to be no questions in the president’s mind, or in Secretary Sebelius’, that they have the authority to intrude on freedom of religion. With this ruling they insist that church-affiliated institutions either act against their own belief or so narrow the scope of their community service as to be removed from the public square; either way, the government is deliberately affecting the free exercise of religion. Considering some Catholic schools, hospitals and charities were serving their communities before the secular governments even thought to follow suit, that is a damnable, and damning, legacy for a president who once taught constitutional law.

If the culture war has seemed oblique to you or somehow irrelevant or perhaps a thing of the past, read Elizabeth’s post.

If you have wondered what Rick Perry was talking about and now, what Newt Gingrich has been decrying in Florida, read Elizabeth’s post.

If you give a crap at all about the idea of Freedom of Religion and the exercise of, even if you believe nothing, read Elizabeth’s post.

Ultimately, you serve a god–either the One who bestows inalienable rights or the state as run by the latest human flavor.

Unless you’re in the mood to serve Barack Obama and his grand vision, defend your rights to self-determination and worshiping in the way you see fit.

UPDATED:

Marco Rubio rebels against Obama’s regulations.

Bookworm calls the cultural divide a “gaping chasm”.

Once again, a leftist uses her child as a prop to harass a conservative. Needing to prove a political point, the lesbian mom get that she’s harming a child in the process.

Here’s a gay mom using her son to pester Michele Bachmann, something the child clearly doesn’t want to do. And even if he wanted to, doesn’t have the notion of consequences, i.e., could look back when he’s an adult and have formed a different opinion. Kathy Shaidle has an opinion on this “bullying.”

The Left has a real problem using children for their own coercive purposes.

D.C. mom uses children as human shields [video] at Occupy Wall Street protests. This one in D.C.

Hollywood activists get kids to sing creepy pro-Barack song.

An artist made kids cry for anti-Bush art. (This is really despicable.)

Here’s a union “goon” using his son as a human shield in Portland, Oregon.

Oh, don’t forget this sweet girl used by her dad to block traffic. This is particularly upsetting, too.

And really, these are just the examples I can think of off of the top of my head. There are probably more and you’re welcome to share them in the comments.

The point is that leftists have no problem using children to achieve political ends. They force them against their will and without consent to engage in behavior that is dangerous.

Totalitarians of all stripes are the same, though.

Here’s some Palestinians using their children as human shields.

It’s disgusting whenever it’s used.

Women want to believe that they’re impervious to things like age and ovaries. So, during peak creative years, women push their energy into relatively time unlimited endeavor–career–instead of a very time limited endeavor–having babies.

Young mothers are scorned for being stupid, giving up their potential, subjugating themselves to a man’s world.

Ironically, by subscribing to a dirty man’s definition of success — rutting like animals and climbing the corporate ladder by any means necessary — women deprive themselves of doing the one thing that is essentially female–giving birth.

Newsflash: Only women can do it. There are requirements. A woman must have a functional uterus, fresh eggs, good health and it’s really helpful to have economic and emotional support. In old-fashioned terms, that was called a husband.

Imagine the shock, then, when women find out that they’ve been lied to about their reproductive ability:

A decade ago, a fertility ad campaign on public buses in several big cities sparked a vicious backlash. It featured a baby bottle shaped like an hourglass, to warn women their time was running out. But women’s rights groups called it a scare tactic that left women feeling pressured and guilty.

Another ad campaign? Sure, says Mingo.

“And it needs to come on when men are paying attention,” she says. “Heck, put it on in the middle of a football game or something!”

Women are afraid of losing career opportunities. It’s not like there is one choice or the other. I’ve always worked while having kids.

Still, it helped that because of medical training waiting to have kids was no option because it limited options.

When you know you want kids, and maybe a big family, two things should be a priority:

1. Getting married.

2. Getting pregnant.

So, women in their 20s need to strike while their hot body and biology work to their advantage. This, of course, is very politically incorrect advice.

Telling a woman to carve out time to date, join social institutions (like, horrors!, churches) that encourage marriage, etc. just seems so old-fashioned.

Well getting married and having kids young has many biological and sociological and cultural advantages.

Women need to be told the truth about their limitations so they can change their life choices accordingly. Many who want and should have children won’t be able to because of the lies they believe and they’ll find out the truth too late.

America faces an unprecedented debt crisis, true. What is not conventional wisdom is that America could face renewed, even unprecedented, greatness if a decent leader comes forward.

Given that the Republican party seems incapable of getting its collective crap together, that scenario seems unlikely, though.

Businesses are, at this point, forcing themselves to not grow. They are unwilling to take on more risk. They’re keeping cash on hand. They’re paying down debt. They’re waiting.

Individuals are doing the same. Part of it is that they don’t qualify for credit even if they wanted it. Part of it is that they don’t want it.

Still, this unrealized creation and growth waits for the right catalyst.

Obama, is not a catalyst. Quite the contrary, he’s an inhibitor. Hell, he antagonizes any growth potential.

Obama’s actions are so frustrating to expansion that even apathetic business people are paying attention. Usually business folks lobby hard for their interests–they win some, they lose some and they work around the bureaucracy and incorporate the rules and regulations and taxes and fees into the cost of doing business. Not so now. Everyone can thank Obama for being so persecutorial rhetorically and prosecutorial policy-wise, businesses are being put out of business. That’s attention-getting.

The business world is now in open rebellion. Screw you, Obama, we’ll just not spend any money, period. Zilch. The cozy win-win we had going on is over. Sure, we’ll throw some money at you on the outside chance you get re-elected–we don’t want to be the subject of your direct ire. Instead, we’ll do just enough to get by everywhere.

A couple things about this:

America should never be so beholden to the executive branch that one person can do so much damage to the economy. And yet, here we are, and business is mostly to blame. By lobbying tirelessly for the government’s favor and selling their souls (Walmart and the AARP’s obsequious deference on Obamacare comes to mind) to obtain that favor, business leaders find out [surprise!] that’s what’s given can be taken away. Obama has been busily taking away or threatening to do so.

Businesses can afford to lobby the government, but the individual has been marginalized. Businesses were totally fine with that so long as individuals could still afford to buy their wares. Nothing like a long, deep recession to drive home the point that poor people don’t buy stuff.

So, while the cozy relationship benefits businesses for a while, eventually, people have to be forced to buy stuff and people resist being forced to buy stuff (see also really expensive light bulbs). So they just stop buying stuff they don’t want (see also solar panels and the Chevy volt.) And those businesses, warmed by the loving embrace of government tax breaks, bailouts and inducements find themselves screwed. No one wants expensive, useless crap. It’s bad enough when it’s cheap. But the stuff the government touches gets very expensive.

So the individual revolts, too. He stops buying. And if the government creates perverse economic incentives long enough, he loses his job and can’t buy stuff.

And that’s where were at in America.

America is profoundly in debt. America is jobless. America is sitting on the capital it does have.

Obama is making everything worse.

And yet, America is primed for some success–if the GOP can muster something. A steady hand, reduced government interference, positive rhetoric, assurances that businesses aren’t going to be raked over the coals (or given an unfair advantage either), etc.

In a word: growth.

That requires political change and a person willing to articulate a sunny, hopeful message to encourage growth but willing to make some tough decisions–i.e. cut government spending.

More on why this is not likely to happen in the next post.

Very interesting (but rather wrong) piece about the younger generations blaming the Boomers by Walter Russell Read by way of Monty at Ace. The comments are far more insightful.

Says Alex Scipio:

Sorry, Prof. Mead, but you have widely missed the mark.

When the 18-yr olds, the lead Boomers, were given the vote in 1972 and shortly began their careers in office, the Debt was $400B. For this America had purchased and/or conquered a continent, invented air and space travel, modern manufacturing, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals, invented and commercialized computers and telecommunications, and won every war we had tried to win.

The Boomers? Have invented nothing. Have discovered nothing.Have generated wealth only in bubbles based on intenet (also invented by their parents as ARPANet) fantasy.

Sure – Boomers are in everywhere pretending that they have anything good to say or any worthwhile thoughts. But take a look around. The world of the past 50 years is a steady decline of cultural and societal courtesy, manner, education, volunteering, education, exploration, education (did I say education?).

Even better, John Lynch concludes:

I’m Gen X, and I’ve been stuck listening to Boomer [folderol] my whole life.

Now the Boomers are all doom and gloom. That’s not because the world is really all that much worse off than it’s ever been. It’s just the impending death of the Boomer generation. They’ve mistaken their own decline for that of the nation and the world.

The Boomer generation has always thought that nothing happened until they arrived (see that beautiful piece of propaganda, Mad Men) and are equally convinced that nothing will happen once they are gone. All the environmental millennialism has its origin in the Boomers. From The Population Bomb to Global Warming they’ve persistently believed that not only are they a social force but a cosmic one as well.

The world will survive their passing. I’m already enjoying the lack of 60s music on the radio and the blessed silence about Woodstock and the Vietnam War. My generation has accomplished far more, with less noise, and we won our war.

History will not be kind.

A couple thoughts:

1. I blame the parents of these indulged brats. The WWII/Great Depression parents, in an attempt to shelter their children from all difficulty, brought up a bratty, superficial, spoiled generation.

2. Learn the lesson. Children today have even more wealth and good fortune (for a while) than the Boomers started out with. The OWS-ers are astonished and dismayed because their Boomer parents sold them the same tripe they believe about themselves. So these little snowflakes are upset that the world is not interested in their brand of special.

Discipline, hard work, responsibility, right and wrong, common sense, diligence, fidelity, and humility don’t go over big but they’re characteristics that win over the long-term.

Overindulgence makes for rotten grown-ups.

I have been utterly appalled this last week. Mind you, and before getting into all this, here’s some of my history: When the Duke LaCrosse story came forth and after examining all the facts, it was evident that the whole thing was preposterous and a disgusting false charge against innocent young men. So zealous about the case was I that two mothers of boys accused of the heinous crimes wrote me emails to thank me for standing for their boys.

The stench of sexual assault and harassment charges lingers around even innocent men and it is an objective evil when this happens. Not only are innocent men tainted for the rest of their lives with doubt, women who have been abused and assaulted fear charging their aggressor for being accused of making up the story.

False charges are an abomination.

True charges denied by a serial abuser are an abomination, too.

We don’t know all the details yet, surrounding Herman Cain’s alleged sexual harassment charges. Here’s what we do know:

So, on this backdrop, I’m going to tell you my story of sexual harassment. Why? Well, it damn sure isn’t because it’s helpful to my cause if I do. Thank God I’m 1) self-employed and 2) don’t give a poop what people think. Most women don’t have that luxury. Just leveling a sexual harassment charge can damage a woman’s credibility. She’s “difficult”. She will be trouble. So, women with legitimate complaints stay quiet. They want to move forward in the work world.

The reason that sexual harassment settlements are sealed are often for the benefit of the accuser, so her reputation isn’t destroyed by a vindictive work peer or employer.

Does that mean that there aren’t women who bring spurious and frivolous claims? Hell no. That exists, too. Obviously. I’m guessing it must happen a lot because the men of Twitter and talk radio have been venomous and utterly certain that all five of the accusers are vile skanks making up stuff to destroy an innocent, innocent man.

Some men aren’t innocent men. I know you’re thinking of your own behavior and thoughts and figuring your clumsy actions and stupid jokes qualified as harassment at some point. Maybe. Some guys have a pattern of being harassing jerks, though. One socially awkward moment does not a harasser make.

Anyway, since many of you reading this know me both through my writing and in real life, I thought I’d tell my story.

Newly married, recent college graduate, 23, and jobless, I took temporary jobs to live. You know those kids bitching at the Occupy Wall Street rallies? That could have been me. Instead, I worked minimum wage plus as receptionists and secretaries. A Theology degree won’t get you a job? The hell you say!

So, my second job after working as a receptionist at a trucking company (all the men were respectful, if crass) was at an architectural and engineering firm.

My new boss was Ken. Ken had a reputation. He had gone through something like 21 assistants in 20 years. Ken picked fights with younger workers. He came to work drunk after his five martini Friday lunches. Ken was old school.

Ken had a glass office. On two sides of his office, Ken stared out at his assistant. More specifically, he leered out at his assistant all day. It was disconcerting, to say the least. He didn’t have to say a word. He just eye-f*cked you all day long.

But that sort of behavior doesn’t rise to the level of harassment–well, at least it didn’t to me. Annoying? Yes. Disgusting to be stared at by a nearly 60 year old man all day long? Absolutely.

Then one day, Ken reached for something on my desk, after walking up behind me, and “accidentally” grabbed my breast.

I was shocked. I told one girlfriend and swore her to secrecy. Why? Because Ken was powerful. I needed the job and he had a reputation for firing uppity help. Plus, the local human resources guy was impotent and cowered before mighty Ken. Ken happened to own the biggest account in the company. He was, he thought, untouchable.

Around two weeks later, the corporate head of Human Resources, a woman, came to town for meetings. We happened to be in the bathroom at the same time and I told her what happened. She asked if I would be willing to go on the record. I said yes. She told me that they had tried to get women to go on the record for years, but they were afraid of Ken.

I knew all hell was about to break loose, but by this time I hated Ken and didn’t care. He was put on probation. Not fired. And as much as I disliked Ken, he hated me with a pure, singularly-focused hatred. He shot laserbeams through that glass at me. Hostile work environment? You betcha!

Now, you might say, “Melissa, he grabbed you, that’s assault! Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Back then, no one thought in those terms. He was just an entitled dick. The thought of going to the police never occurred to me. Even now, the idea seems laughable.

I just wanted Ken to stop. More, it made me really angry that he had gotten away with this for years.

Maybe I should have threatened a lawsuit. I can understand why some women did. As it was, I was interviewing for another job outside of this company and got out and had the satisfaction that the next woman who had to suffer with Ken wouldn’t have to worry (probably) about being abused by him.

What people now don’t understand is the way the work world used to be. Twenty years ago things were entirely different. There was a five to ten year transition where men learned and adapted to women being in the workforce –and not just in helping roles.

Twenty years ago, women were graduating with degrees and just starting to be peers to men, instead of subordinates.

Guys my age and younger have less issues. They’re used to working with women and having female bosses. The dynamics of the workplace have changed dramatically.

The world has changed and a lot for the better. Some things not for the better. But a woman in the work world does not have to deal with the bull women dealt with even a decade ago.

A friend of the former generation spoke of anger between the sexes–strident women and frustrated men. Now, men and women have far more flexibility and amicable relations.

When I see young men decry the spurious claims against Herman Cain and say that a $35,000 or $46,000 claim is small potatoes, I laugh. Really? Most of these cases were like mine and no money exchanged hands at all. That Herman Cain has two, TWO!, cases like this outstanding against him makes me think that there’s more than nothing to this story.

One woman bringing a spurious claim against an executive is absolutely plausible. Two? Come on. And now, there’s five women who have spoken out about harassment or certainly, highly questionable judgement?

It seems that conservatives would at least give these women a hearing before casting them into the lake of fire.

This case is nothing like what happened to Clarence Thomas. I’ll even give Anita Hill the benefit of the doubt and believe Thomas said something about a pube on a Coke can. That is not sexual harassment. It’s stupid. People are stupid.

Now, I recognize that everyone one of these women can be filthy, lying [fill in the blank epithet] manipulated by nefarious Democrat or establishment Republican or biased media sources to plot against a black conservative man.

Can we wait, though, to destroy these ladies until the whole story comes out? Herman Cain doesn’t think so. He’s in full nuke ‘em mode.

I understand that Herman Cain can’t prove a negative.

What he can do is this: he can prove positive assertions wrong. He can go to the Hilton and release those room records and prove his accuser is a liar instead of asserting that she is one.

The Anchoress just wrote about what Herman Cain should have said today.

So, maybe everyone can just chill a bit?

Beyond all the media bias (and there’s lots of that), there are people involved. It would be appalling if these women were victimized twice–and at the hands of conservatives who know better.

My first patient in practice told me of her experience of being forced to have an abortion. In fact, of all the many women (and many you’d never guess) who had abortions, only one woman told me she was happy she’d done it and would do it again if she had the choice.

The majority of women say that parents, boyfriends, and worst of all, husbands forced the woman to abort the baby. The trauma is devastating and long lasting.

It is a lie that women are getting to choose. Many women are victims of abortion–it is used against them.

Please watch this video and share it:

So many terrified women in crisis just need one person who will say, “It will be okay.”

Just one person.

Thankfully, I see the younger generation turning against the abortion culture. They have lost siblings to abortion. It is real to them.

We need a return to honoring adoption. Adoption is a wonderful gift–both to the child and to the adoptive parents.

Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. lifted the Democrat rock and look what slithers out! Why, the very same liberal hacks who decried the lack of civility while accusing an innocent woman of being the cause of a congresswoman’s attempted murder. Also slithering: President Obama.

No reason to belabor the point: The Democrats want civility like they want a living wage. These words are so much sugary frosting on the dung pile of their By-Any-Means-Necessary actions. Videogame where you can kill Tea Partiers? As long as it serves the desired end.

Liberals want you to shut up. They want to shame you. They’ll call you a racist, sexist, bigoted, etc. They want conservatives to be in a speech straight-jacket.

Political correctness is all about silencing people who believe differently than leftists.

So, Hoffa said what they all believe:

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Hoffa told thousands of workers gathered for the annual Labor Day rally.
“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march… Everybody here’s got a vote…Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” he concluded.

Watch Jay Carney justify this nonsense here:

So, here’s to the new civility! May it be honest and politically incorrect!

Free speech means that Hoffa Jr. can be a screaming jerk. I say, bring on the speech. Let the world know who you are leftists. Reveal yourselves as spitting, vile thugs you are when let go.

President Obama, in his fork-tongued praise of Hoffa just lets us all know the truth: That he’s not for civility at all. He’s for silencing critics.

Remember, President Obama was a community organizer. Giving incendiary speeches, threatening folks and shaking down businesses is the Chicago way, the Teamsters’ way, the leftist way, his way.

Sorry, lefties, Americans refuse to be silent. And guess what, we look forward to the battle. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

More civility here.

I have come to the conclusion that all abortion, legal or illegal, is a back-alley business. Yesterday, I saw a liberal decrying regulations on abortion clinics. You know, outrageous things like medical care for the mother and cleanliness in the operating room.

Today, research (a rigorous meta-analysis) confirms the self-evident: Women who have abortions have worse psychological outcomes than women who have their babies. LifeNews has the story:

A new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry by leading American researcher Dr. Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University finds women who have an abortion face almost double the risk of mental health problems as women who have their baby.

Coleman’s study is based on an analysis of 22 separate studies which, in total, examine the pregnancy experiences of 877,000 women, with 163,831 women having an abortion. The study also indicated abortion accounts for one in ten of every adverse mental health issue women face as a whole.

“Results indicate quite consistently that abortion is associated with moderate to highly increased risks of psychological problems subsequent to the procedure,” the study says. “Overall, the results revealed that women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81 percent increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10 percent of the incidence of mental health problems were shown to be directly attributable to abortion.”

The peer-reviewed study indicated abortion was linked with a 34 percent chance of anxiety disorders, and 37 percent higher possibility of depression, a more than double risk of alcohol abuse (110 percent), a three times greater risk of marijuana use (220 percent), and 155 percent greater risk of trying to commit suicide.

When compared to unintended pregnancy delivered women had a 55% increased risk of experiencing any mental health problem.

Dr. Coleman said she conducted the study “to produce an unbiased analysis of the best available evidence addressing abortion as one risk factor among many others that may increase the likelihood of mental health problems. There are in fact some real risks associated with abortion that should be shared with women as they are counseled prior to an abortion.”

What I have seen in practice would confirm this theory. The death of a baby causes a woman much grief. The death of a baby at her own hands? Well.

Abortion advocates don’t like to talk about how women are victimized by abortions. They talk about the woman’s mental health as one of the reasons to have an abortion–the assumption being that the mother experiences great relief from being out from under, as President Obama calls babies, the burden.

The truth is usually quite the opposite. Because of this willful disregard for women, women often find themselves stricken and alone after an abortion. They are trapped by their own guilt. Often, they are trapped by the man or family member who forced her to have the abortion.

But don’t talk about this.

This abortion research was published in the most prestigious psychiatry journal. And yet, it will be either ignored or diminished by the very lucrative abortion industry.

Women are lied to about the risks routinely. An abortion risks damaging their fertility, harming their physical health and changing them forever emotionally. Abortion-lovers do a great disservice to women twice-over by abandoning them after enduring the abortion.

Meanwhile, women who work in Crisis Pregnancy centers know all about the risks to a woman’s mental health. They’re the ones doing the post-abortion group therapy — groups that are never empty.

The abortion business is anti-women. It’s a dirty business, with dirty little secrets.

Yet if making that choice was hard, the physical ordeal was only just beginning. At 18 weeks pregnant, I was too far gone for a surgical termination and would have to go through a labour and delivery, under the care of midwives at our local hospital.

The first step was to take the drug Mifepristone to block progesterone, a hormone vital to pregnancy. I swallowed the pill in a side room on the labour ward — the same room where I’d given birth to our younger daughter two years previously.

Over the two days that followed, I fought the urge to put my hands on my stomach when I felt the baby move. Knowing that he was slowly dying inside me was the very definition of hell.

After two days, I returned to the same room to take a second drug to induce labour.

What followed were the worst 16 hours of my life. They passed in a morphine-induced haze, but there was no dulling what was happening.

My baby was being forced into the world long before he could survive in it, and it felt unnatural — completely at odds with my instincts as a mother. My body seemed to be doing all it could to hold onto him, and the labour went on and on.

At one point, in the grips of what felt like a panic attack, I became hysterical. Gasping for breath and screaming, I demanded that Andrew tell me why we were doing this and why it was the right thing for our son.

What follows is her husband’s, her doctor’s, her family’s rationalization for aborting a baby that would have a difficult life.

Reading this sickens me. My own son was born severely premature and ended up with the diagnosis of autism. He was on medications, oxygen, etc. when he came home from the hospital four months later after surgeries and fears including blindness, palsy, mental retardation. We didn’t know what we’d end up with. For that matter, we still don’t know our son’s ultimate path.

You might think that makes me condemn this family for their decision to abort their baby. No. I’m too crushed to cast stones.

Their decision to abort is utterly, completely, and frightfully hopeless. There is no room for God. There is no room for hope. There is no room for the expansion of human frailty. And by frailty, I’m not talking about the disabled child, I’m talking about the parents–their selfishness, weakness, limitations of spirit. By aborting him, they’ll never fully know what they’re capable of as people.

I think about my own walk–parenting my son. The limitations, I can assure you, are mine, not his. My humor, my patience, my vision, my work-ethic are non-stop challenged and unfortunately, I fall short embarrassingly often.

Just when I think I’m going to lose it, there’s a break-through. I’ve had to expand beyond my pathetic, small, inwardness. My judgmental nature? Well, it’s still there, but the wings have been clipped. Cavalier condemnation, so easy for someone who has had the bramble-free path, that’s gone by the wayside, mostly. Thankfully.

My son loves professional wrestling. This family who aborted their son–what loves did they extinguish? What unique personality and hopes and dreams were killed when he died? And really, who are they to decide that this child’s future, as different as their own might be, is unworthy?

Parents who are able-bodied and minded project their own expectations for life on a disabled child. And while all parents do that with all their children, kids turn out to be their own people. They end up having their own hopes, dreams and ideas. The same is true for a disabled child.

How is it fair to take away that will from a child?

When we get pregnant, as ironic as it is, we relinquish control over our own lives and submit to the hopes and desires of this other life force. We spend the rest of our days negotiating this paradox. We expand our own world by making room for another person’s world. And we often do that by pruning parts of our world that we thought we needed to survive. We die a little so another can live and in the process, we live more.

As this family sees their able-bodied children grow up, they’ll see the fallacy of their thinking. I hope. It might be painful to see. Still, in front of them, if they have the eyes to see, they’ll witness a unique being straining to be his or her own person. They’ll realize how little control they have. They’ll realize that their own decision at the start most certainly began something that is now not theirs.

And for all their careful planning and protection, tragedy will strike. Evil befalls us all.

In some ways, I think abortion, just like the technology that prompted this family to abort their child, foists the illusion of control over life. As if by aborting the baby, the parent now has perfect control over her life. Life will be good, easier, better, more pleasant…guaranteed.

What if one of their children becomes paralyzed in a car accident (heaven forbid), for example? Is this child better off dead? And what do they tell this survivor about the worth and meaning of his life? How about people who sacrifice a limb for their brothers on the battlefield? Another meaningless life? How about the elderly parent with full faculties but incapacitated due to ALS or some other degenerative disease?

What life is worth living and who gets to decide this for someone else? Do these parents feel comfortable with their children making the decision to “abort” them when they reach an age where they’re no longer deemed useful…to the children? Maybe their children will project their ideas about living with deafness or blindness or incontinence or immobility or pain or paralysis and decide, prematurely, to end mom or dad’s life. Is their reasoning any different?

This callous disregard for the imperfect life rests on the premise that there’s a perfect life. Anyone who has done much living knows that’s not true. There are many shades of gray on the scale of life and value.

That’s why life, all life, must be honored and protected. That’s why we’re so careful about meting out justice. Life is valuable. To snuff it out is to end a potentiality and no one can know where a life will go or what an individual’s purpose on this earth is.

The family that aborted their eighteen-week gestated baby were surrounded by friends, family, doctors who all advised them to abort. This wasn’t just an individual or family decision, it was a societal one.

What have we become that this decision was encouraged?

That’s a question for another post. Today, it’s enough to grieve for the life of a boy with Spina Bifada who was killed inside the womb “for his own good.” It is a tragedy of epic and personal proportions. Who knows who the world is missing because he’s not here.

George. His name is George.