The Sky Weeps

DachauMemorial

EDITED TO UPDATE: On January 22, 2019, New York governor Andrew Cuomo passed a law legalizing abortion up until birth. I have re-shared this post to address this current development. Replace “Planned Parenthood” in this article with “New York City” and the discussion remains valid.

For an example of just one of the slippery slope consequences, consider reading this post about a heartbreaking event that occurred in Colorado:

A Woman’s Right to Choose: We Have Failed

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I huddled under the umbrella, shivering violently against the cold. Or maybe it was the oppression that still lingered beneath the soggy soil under my feet. As the tour guide spoke, I ingested his words, trying to fully comprehend the horror of it all. But of course, I can’t comprehend it. I’m only seeing pictures.

But still, I felt the ghosts whispering a haunting refrain in that place, and I knew that the oppression lingers for a reason.

It poured rain the day I visited Dachau, which felt right. I can’t really imagine the sun ever shining over those graveled walkways, glinting off the barbed wire fencing that once coursed with electricity and served as a quick death for martyred souls. I can’t fathom the dichotomy between a lovely spring day with birds singing joyfully over the ovens that burned thousands and thousand of bodies.

Can beauty and evil really coexist like that?

But I know that they can – of course they can. It happens every day. Beauty and evil intermingle, clouding our eyes and veiling the horrors around us. But sometimes, I think we have to see the evil in the rain to truly understand the depth and depravity.

I wasn’t going to write about Planned Parenthood and those videos that have been released. So many other people have written about it, and I’ve already said my piece on abortion.

I told you that we failed.

I told you that we can’t ignore Kermit Gosnell.

I didn’t want to talk about it again. I didn’t even want to watch the videos, because I can picture the horror in my mind, and that felt like enough.

But then I remembered Dachau, and I remembered that sometimes you have to see it up close, in the rain. Sometimes you have to get your feet dirty as you trod into the dark places. Only then can you truly get a glimpse of the horror.

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Yesterday, I watched the fourth released video – the one that took us a little bit further. I walked into the lab and watched as body parts were sifted in a petri dish. It was the same way I shuffled parts aside in ninth grade when I had to dissect a frog.

Here’s the heart.

Here’s the liver.

But these weren’t frog parts. They were human. I saw intact hands, tiny fingers raised in surrender, pulled violently from the safety of the womb.

I saw a fully formed leg. Little eyes that would never see the light of a summer day. Mangled and torn, the evidence of abortion screamed at me, and I felt my stomach churn the same way I did when I stepped into the oven room at Dachau. And then I heard the exclamation of the lab technician:

“It’s a boy! It’s another boy!”

I stopped the video there because the weight of it all felt too great. It was like standing in the freezing rain and hearing the stories of the men who were tortured ruthlessly, viciously, violently, all because they bore the label “Jew.”

It wasn’t a “clump of cells.” It was a boy. A little boy who would have bounded with little-boy energy. He would have eaten dirt and played with bugs, fallen and skinned his knees, and probably been too rough when he got excited. He would have hated baths and brushing his teeth, and probably would have given the best hugs.

HE was a BOY. He was real – a human being.

The city of Dachau was remote during the World War II era. This made hiding thousands of people there easier. But still, there were residents living outside the gates. Good German citizens, without the stigma of a forbidden religion, lived and worked just on the other side of evil.

Did they wonder about the smoke that billowed from the trees day and night? Did they question the emaciated men and women who arrived by train and trudged into the shelter of the nearby woods? Did they know and pretend they didn’t? And do I blame them?

Speaking out would most certainly have had ramifications. It was better to keep your head down and pretend you didn’t see.

Friends, we can’t keep our heads down anymore. We’ve been escorted directly into the furnace. We can’t pretend it isn’t there. This has to go beyond the legality of what Planned Parenthood is doing. We must get to the very heart of the issue.

Abortion is murder.

I say this with a bit of a cringe, because I know it cuts deep. It’s a blatant statement, and it may make some of you feel judged or alienated. Maybe you’ve experienced abortion, and these statements cut to the quick. Hear my heart on this: I do not condemn you as a person. I condemn a society who told you there was no other way.

As I write this, the clouds hang heavy over my house. It’s been raining steadily for almost two weeks now, and once again I’m reminded that sometimes the horror is better seen and experienced underneath the weeping sky. We can’t pretend it isn’t happening – we can’t pretend we don’t know.

And what do we do?

This is the trickiest part of the equation, isn’t it? But it doesn’t have to be. There are Crisis Pregnancy Centers popping up all over the United States. These are safe havens where young, scared women can go when an unplanned pregnancy leaves them feeling lost.

Let’s start here.

Call your local Crisis Pregnancy Center and ask them what they need. How can you help? What can you provide? And then spread the word. Let’s give young women a chance to get top care, solid counseling, and the ability to choose life for their unborn children. Let’s stop telling them they have no other choice but to abort.

Let’s give them the choice of life.

What do you say?

For two alternatives to Planned Parenthood in the Tampa area, look at:

Oasis Pregnancy Care Center

Guiding Star/ Life Choices Women’s Care

 

A Woman’s Right to Choose: We Have Failed

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I’ve let this post simmer a little bit, not really sure if I wanted to tackle it. In general I do like to avoid controversy, but the more I chewed on this one, the more I realized that it was simply too much. Because not enough people are standing up in outrage over this. Not enough of us are leading the charge to call it what it is.

Also I have a uterus, so I get an opinion.

On Friday, March 19, Michelle Wilkins went to the home of Dynel Lane to answer a CraigsList posting for baby clothes. Michelle was seven months pregnant. When she arrived, Lane lured her into the basement under false pretense, and then she beat Michelle severely and cut the baby from her womb.

Thanks to Michelle’s strength and presence of mind, she was able to call police who quickly responded, transporting her to a nearby hospital where she was well-treated. Michelle survived.

The baby, a little girl who was to be named Aurora, Sleeping Beauty, did not survive.

Lane arrived at the hospital hours later with the dead infant in her arms claiming that she’d had a miscarriage.

Dynel Lane will not be charged with murder.

This story in an of itself is horrific. The gruesome nature of the crime, which was carried out under a pretense that all of us have followed (an innocent Craigslist purchase), is sickening and heart-wrenching.  It is clear that Dynel Lane is a sick and twisted individual, and I cannot think about Michelle Wilkins without tearing up.

And the horror grows.

The coroner who examined baby Aurora could not determine that the child lived outside the womb. Despite claims by Dynel’s husband (who did not know of his wife’s gruesome crime) that the baby gasped for air, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that the child had lived for any length of time. The coroner could not find evidence that the baby girl’s lungs had inflated.

Therefore the child could not be qualified as a person under Colorado law.

We have failed.

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court announced it’s decision in Roe v. Wade, affirming that a woman has the right to an abortion until viability. Since that time, abortion has been a hot button topic, with women nationwide demanding their right to choose abortion if they feel it in their best interest.

Let me be very clear in this: By demanding our right to choose, women, we have failed millions of children. And on March 26, 2015, we failed Aurora Wilkins in the most devastating way.

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Of course the coroner had to come to the decision she did. Of course she had to rule that Aurora was not a living person. She had to, because our right to choose demanded that she make that ruling. A woman’s right to choose has redefined the viability of a living child.

We have failed.

Our right to choose as women has determined that a child in utero does not qualify as a person. It has to be this way, of course. Because if we deem a child in the womb as a person, then there is no way to classify abortion but murder. Therefore, we have removed the designation. We’ve covered our tracks so that we can choose.

We have failed.

I do believe that abortion may be the most heinous and vicious stain on my generation. And to be clear, I’ve never been in support of abortion, nor have many of the people closest to me. When I say “We” have failed, I say so only because it is a collective “We.” Because the women of my generation have demanded their right to choose what happens inside their womb.

My generation has failed.

We’ve failed the millions of babies who were never deemed viable. We’ve justified it, and twisted the meaning of viability until it’s come to this. Dynel Lane will not face murder charges because we have the right to choose.

We. Have. Failed.

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