I want to introduce you to a guy I met this weekend...

His name is Jesus.

Just kidding, I'm actually talking about my friend Dave. And I met him at a bar.

See, we've been long time internet friends (not like in a Worlds of Warcraft way, just on Facebook through NWF). I already knew he was a cool dude, but in the course of just two days he went beyond that and restored my hope in the next generation of men, a generation I thought was all but obliterated by 24/7 streaming porn and a culture of hook-up sex. I should warn you though, he's got a girlfriend who he completely loves and more than that totally respects... so you're not allowed to fall for him as you read this, even though you're probably gonna want to.

So picture this: we're at a "pro-life dance party." Yeah, that's a thing, swear. And while the club was packed with us crazy anti-choice fanatics the music was still pretty regular, the booze was a flowing, and HOLY. CRAP. the ladies behind the bar were nekkid. Like NEK-KID. One forgot her pants, while the other forgot her shirt. So even if you morphed them together they'd still be wearing less than Tim Curry had on as Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture show. And I seriously think the shirtless one must've had her nipples surgically removed or something, because I have no idea how I was NOT seeing them with that much titay hangin' out. 

So Dave and I walk up and immediately he swings his head around. Like Linda Blair fast. I quickly realized why. I'm always one for helping my brother not to stumble, so I figured I'd get their attention, we'd order and get out of there. Only problem, these women were working for tips so they didn't want to serve me (a non-bewb ogling dude). FORTY-FIVE minutes we stood there. We made small talk, brought up the fact that it was far too cold in DC for anyone to dress like that, and I ranted about something feministy and ranty as I do when wine's being withheld from me, and then suddenly I noticed Dave kinda had his hand up... like physically blocking himself from seeing these women. I asked and he said something to the effect of, yeah, I'm a guy, of course I likes boobs, but that doesn't mean I have to be a dog and stare at them. Wow. I didn't know there were still fellas like that around. (Side note: I assume my husband's one, but thankfully we've never been faced with a fuzzy navel flinging fembot before.)

I was just amazed, and so filled with hope. This guys gets it, like gets it gets it.

The night before he had mentioned how his parents did not let him date in high school. They said you only date with the intent of marrying someone, and at that age he wasn't ready. Way to set the bar high, Dave's parents. It is so vital that our children understand their bodies. That they are educated on how they work and what they will respond to so that they know how to guard themselves from that type of stimuli until they are ready for it.

I can only hope this is the sign of more righteous dudes to come, who will respect and appreciate a woman's beauty and will preserve her dignity even if she's naively trying to sell it. This is the type of man we should want our sons to be and our daughters to marry.

Dallas March For Life '13

Why Sometimes I Hate My Brain....

***So I got this e-mail today. It was the continuation of a very rational, calm conversation I was having with a reader who was explain how a particular chapter in the book Freakonomics had softened some of his views on abortion...

"Good Day Destiny:

Here is MY summary and take on Chapter 4 of Freakonomics entitled "Where Have All the Criminals Gone?"

First the disclaimer.  This is my view of the chapter and I would expect other people to get views that would be somewhat different.  I think I got the gist, but everyone should read it for themselves.  I have not checked what the authors have presented, but what they say makes sense to me.

The fundamental bases on which they explain the dramatic lowering of crime in the United States that began in the early 1990's is Roe vs. Wade, January 22, 1973, which said that abortions are legal.  

They simply took the following known information and connected the dots;  criminals begin their serious career during their late teens, the vast number of criminals come from broken homes, are not wanted as children, and the very large majority of abortions are from low income single women who, for all kinds of reasons, do not want the children they were carrying.  Thus, when abortions became legal the supply of potential future criminals was severely curtailed and the crime rate correspondingly decreased.

The crime rate drop was an unintended consequence of the Roe vs. Wade decision and in this case I view it as positive.

So, this has had a profound effect on MY "abortion position" which is the following:

1.  An abortion is the killing of an unborn person.  On this I cannot compromise.  In a abortion the most innocent and least represented of all the parties involved has no advocate.  Their are no police, no grand jury, no indictment, no trial, no judge, no jury, no defense attorney, and no appeal! 

2.  And thus I do not believe that abortion is the woman's decision alone.  Their are other people involved, principally the unborn person, the father of the child, parents of the mother and father, etc., but also society as a whole.

3.  But because so much damage can be done to society as a whole by the unwanted children aborted I live, very uneasily, with abortion.

I do not pretend my position is one of which I am overly proud and absolutely strongly feel that among the aborted children there undoubtedly was/is a Lincoln, an Einstein, a Shakespeare, etc., but I justify it by feeling that there was/is also a Hitler that we will not have to endure.

There is also additional fallout from this position two of which are the following:  if we can accept abortion, which I feel is the killing of the most innocent person of our society, can we not accept the assisted killing of the elderly, who exist only, or diseased people with no hope of recovery.  To me by accepting abortion, which in the US there is close to 1,000,000 a year, how in the world can anyone get upset over the death penalty, which is the killing of a person, who has been given all the things denied an aborted unborn child and found guilty of a hedious crime.  

Indeed my position on abortion rests on a very slippery slope."

***And then I went kinda nutzo....my reply...

   

So we've replaced criminals with legalized murderers?

photo ©2009 elle moss

I do not use that word lightly, and honestly can say I have never once called a women that (until now I guess), but it seems necessary in order to make my point here. We are saying that by murder 55 million children, just in the US alone since Roe v. Wade, it is ok because we've seen a decrease in crime? I guess I don't think we have. We're just choosing which criminal to prosecute and which crimes to legalize. Perhaps I need to read the book in order to get a clearer picture.

To me abortion has created a whole culture which devalues life. Everything is "me-centered" and I come from the generation where it's the worst. We tell them, "Sweetie, as long as you did everything you could by trying to kinda use the condom or thinking about maybe, perhaps getting on the pill, then this is not your fault. You're too special and talented to let a baby ruin your life." It's like a perfect sh*t storm, pardon my language....it's just way worse than a regular storm. We all think we're so damn special we can't see past our own noses; we think as long as we "tried" not to get pregnant than that counts and trumps any life that was created; we're told it's a blob/a right/liberating, and that raising children is below us, bad for the economy/our almighty self esteem/and overpopulating the planet. And it's the one instance in society where we are given a total get out of jail free card. There is NO consequence for ending a human life in the name of "choice."

Why? Money of course. IMO, it's one of the hugest and most blatant conspiracies out there. The federal government can not afford to raise your broke/mooching/non-voting kid for the next 18-years because by then the current administration will be over, and no telling if your product of conception will still even like us. There's no instant payoff and a lot of upfront investment. So kill 'em!....oh and tell people it'll keep criminals of the streets so they'll all be ok with it since it'll make them safer. Nobody cares more about them than them, oh and us, so that spin might even buy us votes. 

But what about the woman, post-abortion? What about when she realizes something in her has changed and a little piece of her has been stolen with a lie? She certainly can't tell anyone, she'd sound too "un-liberated" by her experience, not to mention crazy, since she's mourning a blob. So she doesn't. She suffers in silence, acts out in anger, grief, and guilt. But society's better because there's less crime out there...as long as we don't count the 55 million womb invasions. Our streets are safe....even if our classrooms aren't...or our malls, places of worship, and movie theaters. Couldn't have anything to do with the culture we've created though because we aborted *most* of murders by murdering them first....

This is a rant, and I'm sorry for that. Half way through I started writing for myself and completely forgot I'd either have to press send or delete. :) I think I'm just through with rationalizations. They never end. If we A-bombed the 5 poorest states in the US it'd probably do great things for our federal budget, but oh yeah, it would cost us our souls.

It may not seem like it, but I try sooooo hard not to be a fanatic....to speak other people's languages, and understand where they're coming from. But when do we just say enough is enough? There are some absolute truths. It's possible to be opinionated without being judgmental, I firmly believe that. All it takes is speaking in love. And my heart breaks for my post-abortive friends. I cannot even imagine what they've gone through. I will do anything I can to help them heal, with one exception. I will not justify or rationalize abortion. It is the taking of a human life. Somethings are black and white. And we must shout those things from the rooftop. Because there are 55 million people who are not here today, that can't. 

...

Also, if this is true, than we better hold on to our hats because we're reaching insane numbers of single parent homes. Some women choose not to abort, so what next? Forced abortions and sterilizations in the name of societal safety? Slippery slope in deed....

P.S. That last little bit of alliteration was too much, even for me. My apologies.

For Life,
Destiny

************************************************************

Post by Destiny

Let’s have an informed debate on abortion, put women first

Originally published in the Dallas Morning News

“I was pregnant this summer, too,” she said as she sat down across the cafeteria table from me. “Was?” I thought. And then I realized what she was trying to tell me.

We were both juniors in high school, but while I returned from summer break with a bulbous belly, she did not.

My silence was becoming an unintended form of judgment.

“Oh. So how far along were you?” I sheepishly asked. She pretended to do the math in her head then looked off saying, “I dunno, like 12 weeks or something.”

Without thinking I blurted out the only random factoid I knew from a fetal development email I’d received my previous trimester: “Twelve weeks … fingernails and toenails, right?” As soon as it flew out of my mouth, I knew it had stung. She looked at me, her eyes filled with tears, slammed her fists down on the table and swore at me. I mumbled off an apology, but she was already storming out of the cafeteria.

I was born a decade after abortion became legal, and admittedly I knew little about the pro-life movement aside from the stereotypes I’d seen portrayed in movies — the screaming outside of clinics, the bullhorns and giant images on poster boards. I know times were different back then, but to me that never made any sense.

I didn’t have to raise my voice at the girl in the cafeteria or show her graphic pictures. I meekly rattled off a factoid. In that moment I discovered how powerful information was. That is the most powerful tool we have as activists, as humans, as women.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Both sides of this debate have come a long way in that time. The anti-abortion side used to predominantly focus on the child, but four decades later they’re seeing the humanity in taking care of the woman first. They’re realizing that so many of the reasons women feel the need to abort can be eliminated when we acknowledge their very legitimate concerns and assist them by providing basic needs for them and their children.

The pro-choice side has always cared about the woman first, which I greatly admire, but my fear is how they seem to be focusing more on her immediate emotional needs the long-term effects an abortion might have on her.

We see them contesting sonogram bills all across the nation right now because they say they are simply there to pull at a woman’s heartstrings and guilt her into carrying her fetus. But it’s not as though her emotions will go away as soon the pregnancy is terminated. Keep in mind, the sonogram will be preformed either way by the practitioner to determine gestational age, and the woman still has the right to refuse to look it.

However, if a woman has all of the facts and still chooses to abort, at least she knows exactly what it is she is terminating, and I have to assume her psyche will be a lot better for it. Facts empower us. Information and resources empower us. Both sides need to realize we are strong enough and capable enough to have them, all of them.

Let’s all put the bullhorns down. No one makes the decision to end a pregnancy lightly, and we certainly do not want to inflict unnecessary emotion pain on women, but let’s also not assume keeping them from it now means saving them from it later.

It’s been 40 years. If we truly want abortion to be safe, legal and rare, perhaps we should all focus more on facts, information and resources.

Destiny DeLaRosa of Richardson is a pro-life feminist blogger and will be speaking at the March for Life in downtown Dallas on Jan. 19. Her email address is destinydelaro@gmail.com.

Why We Need Pro-Life Feminism

 A guest post by Helen Gorman

Sometimes it seems as though there are two kinds of people in the world today: feminists and pro-lifers. The feminists want women to not be oppressed, and the pro-lifers want to stop abortion. Feminists think pro-lifers hate women; pro-lifers think feminists hate babies and/or men.

Now, before I started calling myself a feminist, I knew that not all feminists were anti-man and/or -motherhood. But I still thought most of them were—or, rather, that if I called myself a feminist, people would think I was all that plus pro-choice. Being pro-choice is, in many people's minds—in the minds, I think, of the general population—the sine qua none of feminism. I didn't want to associate myself with that.

I grew up steeped in the pro-life message. I used to beg my mother to take me to the March for Life. We prayed for an end to abortion a lot. The phrase “pro-choice” had hugely negative connotations. When my mother was pregnant, she would get out A Child Is Born and show us photos of what the baby looked like. (I still remember when my brother looked like a blue monkey.) It was only natural that I should choose to be pro-life.

That the choice between being feminist and being pro-life is even seen to exist shows how  much feminism has been corrupted. Enter New Wave Feminists, taking back feminism. But a good question to ask is, why bother? Why bother calling yourself a feminist? If the important thing is to save babies; if pro-lifers know that birth is empowering and abortion is oppressive; if they can tell women this while they help them save their babies--then why bother talking about feminism?

There are actually a lot of answers to this question. The main one is that pro-choice feminism doesn't make any sense. If you really sit down and think about what it means to believe in equal rights, what it means to believe that might does not make right—then you will be unable, not just to be pro-choice, but also to make pro-choice-ness part of feminism.

I would actually love to go into more detail about this, and maybe someday I will write such an essay. But right here I'm going to talk about the practicality of pro-life feminism. To put it simply: it'll work.

To put it less simply:

Being anti-feminist is, in a lot of people's minds, like being racist: wrong, unenlightened, simply not done anymore. If people see something as being contrary to feminism—even if they themselves do not specifically identify as feminists—they will assume it is bad. That's how institutionalized feminism has become in this country.

Which means, of course, that when people are faced (or rather, when they think they are faced) with the choice between being pro-life and being feminist, most of them will choose to be feminist.

When people realize that pro-lifers are in truth not fighting against the feminists, but for the feminists; when they realize that the pro-lifers are the feminists, then we will have made one more step towards eradicating both abortion and misogyny.

Um, chill....

My Story....

“We’re not all crazy!” Sometimes I just want to yell that at the top of my lungs, although I know it would only hinder my argument.

So I remain silent, as I stand shivering on the corner -- hanging my head as if in a drug-induced dazed. I lean against a cold concrete pillar as the sky cracks open and its celestial tears begin to beat down upon my face. Great, just what I needed… another heavenly cleansing. The icy rain begins to sting, so I turn my gaze downward and lose myself in thought, while I stir some loose gravel with the tip of my shoe. A car rumbles by and the driver tosses a lit cigarette out the window, seemingly aimed right at me. I step back to avoid a direct hit, and it skips across the sidewalk. My kind are always treated like garbage out here, so this is nothing new. At least he refrained from honking and waving an obscene gesture as well. That’s more than I can say for most of today’s traffic. So back to my thoughts I go. As I look up at the walls of the abortion clinic that stands before me, I know my selfish choices are what brought me here, yet again...