Interdimensional Compassion

Ben’s the baby of the family, but don’t try calling him that. Even with a limited vocabulary he still knows how to clap back. “BIG DUDE” he’ll insist, referring to himself. Then the follow-up under his breath: “POO,” -a curse word ‘round these parts - which we usually humor with a dramatic gasp. He loves it. Of course, the effect is more impactful if everyone in the room stops what they’re doing to be collectively offended.

Having someone with Down syndrome in your life is like having stepped through an interdimensional gateway. Things are different here. Before I arrived, I was aware that people with special needs were “out there” but they were probably being cared for by someone infinitely more benevolent than myself -- like angels or something, the kind with fluffy wings and halos. They lived in a separate place that I could only imagine. I always just thought, “Good for them!”

But now everything has shifted. I’ve been allowed to crossover into this dimension. Ben’s dimension.

In this separate place the world is brimming with hurt, healing, and more purpose than I know how to handle. I didn’t know I could feel this much and I didn’t know there were so many people who needed me - who I also needed. Benjamin was my family’s little “interdimensional gateway,” and since we stepped through things have never been the same.

When Ben gets up in the morning he's a zombie, which makes getting him ready for school an adventure for my mom. He'll fall asleep while eating breakfast or flop back in bed right before the bus arrives. (Lots of fun. My mom loves that...) Yesterday, three and a half minutes before the bus was going to pull up my mom was running around the house calling his name and panicking. That's never a good thing to hear with little siblings. I jumped out of bed and flew down the stairs to ask if she’d found him. He was downstairs in our basement, showing our pet snake his homework. My dad is a science teacher. We like weird pets. Ben had his little "Letter S" print off from the day before up against the glass. "SNAKE," he instructed. Now when we don't know where he is, we check the basement.

One time someone told my mom aborting a child because they had Down syndrome was totally justified. Ben just happened to be sitting there on her lap at the moment. I was floored. I had never been so baffled. Instinctively, I needed to get my brother as far away from that person as possible. Mom cried. I cried. We drove to a park and Ben scratched away with chalk on the Buffalo city sidewalk next to my siblings.

“He’s ours. Ben is ours.” I told mom, because seeing her cry is never a good thing. “He could have been someone else’s, someone who wouldn’t want him. But he’s all ours. We get to love him.” She hugged me.

Ben is small but his world -- this dimension we’ve found ourselves in -- is growing.

To say that people with special needs don’t deserve a shot at life is to say that Ben has no value. And nothing could be further from the truth. Not only do we need to protect people like Ben, but we need to celebrate every moment they’re here with us.

Mom and Dad told us when he was born that things were going to be... different. How different? None of us knew.

We were scared. Mom cried -- and like I said, when mom cries it’s weird. The apocalypse could be vacuuming the final vestiges of habitability from the planet and my mom would be sitting there in the fruit cellar handing out freeze-dried ice cream and canned beans while maintaining some semblance of “cool” and assuring everyone that it was gonna be okay.

It might as well have been the apocalypse with how we carried on.

How long would he live? Would he be... happy? We googled furiously for answers, as if an extra chromosome could possibly affect how much love we were willing to offer. We were experiencing the shift – taking those first few steps into Ben’s dimension.

Now, on the other side, we’ve emerged with a better understanding of what it means to love.

I call it empathy but my sister calls it Down syndrome radar…. (It actively takes every cell in her being not to pounce on special needs classmates and cover them in hugs and kisses.) Our compassion vocabulary is expanding rapidly. And there’s a mischievous wink we get to share with special needs families. “You’ve made it here too, huh? Good news, we understand you! And guess what? We’re here for you.”

And it doesn’t stop there. Our world is bigger. There is a burden for those who hurt, for those who cannot speak for themselves. We wouldn’t give that up for anything.

We are privileged. We are so very privileged. Not everyone has the chance to step through this little gateway. In fact, most actively deny that journey. They slam the portal shut and lock it tight. They tell people like Ben that since there’s a chance what he has to offer isn’t “good enough,” they won’t have any part of it.

“You won’t have a quality life. You’re going to be different. We’re probably both going to suffer, so let’s just not."

Pre-birth screenings are the reason that most Down syndrome children will never have the chance to take their mothers by the hand and guide them through that gateway. Our capacity to show others unconditional love is being traded for a false sense of emotional safety. Does showing compassion hurt? Hell yes. In fact, I think now that I’m living in this other “dimension,” where special needs kids are no longer invisible, life aches more. That ache is what drives me to love them harder. They need it. They want it. And they deserve it.

I get to witness their potential firsthand -- through Ben. And sometimes I see that potential snuffed out. And it hurts, but I have purpose now - learning how to love deeper.

This world needs to heal. But who will heal us and who will teach us how to heal others if we are eliminating every opportunity to step outside of our comfort zones? We don’t need more locks on our interdimensional gates. We need more Bens to let us know that we are strong enough to give our time and our blood and guts to those who desperately need unconditional love.

One last story… Ben went through a phase where he would, well, randomly kiss things when he was in a good mood. We’re still trying to figure out where this came from. I guess if he got comfortable enough with his environment some rogue synapse in his little head would fire more rapidly than usual and induce a desire to show affection by giving whoever (or whatever) was closest, a peck. It was actually really cute. But we found out this habit wasn’t limited to just kisses on the face -- the target had to be eye level for him. At 8, he’s a bit short for his age, around 3 and a half feet tall.

So one day we were out shopping and Ben was walking alongside mom, helping out because he’s a big boy. Suddenly, he started to pucker up. The nearest target: a complete stranger’s... um, posterior. He was gentle and brief, like powdering a macaroon. Mom would have been mortified if the unassuming victim of Ben’s affections hadn’t seen the humor in the situation. I’d like to say we learned a lesson that day, or that we taught Ben something, but we figured it was best to just leave it alone. There’s not really any use in telling someone that they’re showing too much love.

I’ve found that is something that rings true in both dimensions.

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Post by Jake Romano

Pro-Choices

Had the pleasure of speaking at a 40 Days rally this morning and as I was leaving this gentleman stopped me. He said a few years ago he heard me speak at an event about my teen pregnancy. I mentioned how no one could've made me feel any worse than I already felt for putting myself (and now an innocent child) into that predicament at 16.

If I would've been met with shame or anger, I would've welcomed it oddly enough, because it's what I felt I deserved. I hated me. And I thought everyone else should hate me too.

But to my surprise, no one did. They loved me. They supported me. They offered me options. They cut through my self-loathing with love. They helped me eliminate the crisis, not the pregnancy.

I know how lucky I was to have had that. Not a day goes by that I take it for granted. ALL WOMEN deserve that kind of support.

He said my story impacted his activism, and that's when I read his sign. Then suddenly realized how bad my allergies had gotten and excused myself.

This is the Prolife movement, y'all.

Can you imagine a world without abortion?

What would it look like? Pro-choicers want us to believe it would be filled with hemorrhaging women, self-aborting and dying in the streets, but I'm not buying that. 

When I imagine what the world would look like if our fertility were treated as the super power it is, and the life of the unborn human given the respect it deserves, I see a place that's a whole hell of a lot more pro-woman than what we have now. 

Think about it. Currently when a low-income woman gets pregnant (or a young woman, or a single woman, or really any woman who doesn't have a life deemed “suitable” by society to bring children into) she is met with all types of hostility. Simply for having the audacity to, ya know, actually have the kid that clearly already exists inside her womb.

She basically has to make her case for why she should be able to STAY pregnant and how she plans on supporting said child with the least amount of inconvenience to society as possible. 

Her partner resents her; her boss resents her; her community resents her. She and her child--whose life is considered "a choice" (and because she CHOSE to keep the baby this is all her responsibility of course)--are now a burden to others. An inconvenience. This makes the fertile female person a liability to employers and partners. 

But what if we lived in a world that realized that once a new life had come into existence, the time for "choosing" whether or not it existed, was over? What if we lived in a world where that woman, no matter her age, income, or status, was accommodated rather than resented? 

Because more than 50 million unborn children have been aborted over the last 43-years, we can't know how society would have accommodated women if such a high number had continued with their pregnancies. 

Had the unborn person not been viewed as disposable, the world would've had to adjust.

Our culture and our corporations would have had to accept that--guess what!--women sometimes grow new people in their bodies and it's freakin' amazing. And not only should we respect the hell out of that, but we as a society might want to help a sister out a little bit more because without happy healthy women, society screeches to a halt. 

Unfortunately, we don't live in that world though. We live in a world where if you experience an unplanned pregnancy you are expected to work twice as hard to make up for you fertility. That child is not a blessing, it's a burden. It's not a person, it's a problem. 

Because abortion is an option, when a woman doesn't "choose" to terminate her pregnancy, by default she's choosing to burden her employer, her partner, her community. 

And we hate her for it. 

Abortion creates a world that is undeniably anti-woman. 

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Post by Destiny

We cannot compete with Planned Parenthood. 

It's time we admit that.

     There are thousands of pro-life groups who are doing great things individually and offering pieces of what PP does, but I've yet to come across one nationwide entity that is offering comparable services, sans abortion.

     Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are the closest thing we have to that, and let's be honest, they're more like the DMV than PP. So if a woman does not have a strong conviction against going to an abortion provider for her healthcare she is going to pick Planned Parenthood every time. She can schedule an appointment there, get all of her well woman services in one place, and get in and out in a timely manner.

     I can hardly blame women for being defensive when we talk about taking that away, without replacing it with something better.

     That said, I wonder what would happen if we stopped putting all of our efforts into "defunding" Planned Parenthood and instead started actively working to create an alternative. Pregnancy Centers are great resources for PREGNANT women, but guess what, women still need healthcare even when they're not pregnant. And letting uninsured, low income women go without annual breast exams and cervical screenings is not pro-life.

     I say this as an uninsured woman myself. I've been able to experience this lack of options first hand.

     However, I'm not one to complain about a problem without offering a solution. And it's worth noting that it took Planned Parenthood 100 years and millions of dollars in blood money to create the monopoly they currently have on women's "healthcare."

     Pro-life outreach usually COSTS us money, so we're going to have to get creative. The services already exist, the main thing we're missing is the network that links these resources together.

     Five years ago I felt called to start an app that would help uninsured and underinsured women find healthcare.

     It would be similar to "Around Me," but instead of showing you nearby bars and coffee shops, it would drop pins for Maternity Homes, Pregnancy Resource Centers, Pro-life Doctors who offer free/low cost services, FQHC, WIC offices, Free Sonograms, etc.

     The fact that this type of app doesn't already exist honestly blows my mind, and as a movement we should be ashamed that we haven't created it yet.

     THIS is how we take down Planned Parenthood. We offer COMPARABLE alternatives through a vast network of pro-life resources, in turn giving women real options and practical support.

     It would not be as easy as "Around Me" since we couldn't simply hook it up to a Google algorithm. The resources would have to be vetted, up-to-date, and entered into the network manually in order to guarantee that they are all life-affirming facilities. But it could be done if different pro-life groups adopted cities or states and committed to do this for the women and unborn children (and born children!) in their communities.

     Most sidewalk counselors already have this information gathered. It's usually in a big, bulky box that they haul around when offering alternatives outside of the clinics. But could you imagine being able to offer those same resources to women not just at the clinic, and from the palm of your hand?

     For me this is personal because I encountered a young woman 3-years-ago and wasn't able to help. I had already had this idea when I found myself in a Walmart bathroom, washing my daughter's hands over the sink. I looked up into the mirror and noticed an empty pregnancy test box on the floor of the stall behind us.

     You aren't in a good place when you're taking a pregnancy test in a Walmart bathroom. I knew I could help her but I didn't know how to without invading her privacy. I knew what the resources in my area were but I didn't know how to get them to this complete stranger locked in the stall behind me, without crossing quite a few boundaries.

     Could you imagine if I had a simple business card that read, "Help Assist Her - Women's Healthcare Resources In The Palm Of Your Hand" that I could've slipped under the stall door?

     I can, because I imagine it quite frequently. Such a simple act could've saved a life. I don't know whatever happened to that woman or her child, but I want to make this app for her and all of the women like her that we could reach.

     I don't know how this is going to happen, but I know there are enough of us here who are sick and tired of being against Planned Parenthood and are ready to be FOR something better.

     So if you think you can help, or know someone who could, please contact us. It's high time that Help Assist Her became a reality.

Pro-Life IS Pro-Woman

On a college campus in Texas, a prolife group put up a display of 2,904 crosses - one for every abortion that occurs each day in the United States.  The display was vandalized. The students put it back up. The next day a video surfaced... In it, a male pro-choice student expressed outrage that each cross merely represented “an aborted fetus." He went on to speculate about what else each cross might represent, such as a woman who was able to go on to become a politician or doctor because she wasn’t saddled with the burden of motherhood...  Perhaps each cross represented a woman who was raped and wasn’t “forced” to bear the “result of her assault?” As women we found this incredibly condescending.

So in true New Wave Feminists fashion, we’ve decided to enlighten our "white knight" on what these crosses actually represent...

They represent the 64% of women who attend post-abortion counseling each year and say they felt coerced into abortion by their partner, parent, or abuser.

They represent the women who were lied to and told that they’d be crushed by the financial responsibility of raising another child… when in reality there are so many local outreaches that strive to help women in unplanned pregnancies with:

-Housing

-Daycare

-Medical bills

-And so many more resources. All for free.

They represent the social justice warriors who convince women that without abortion they won’t be able to become politicians, or doctors, or innovators. Because nothing screams “feminism” like a man telling us what we CAN’T do, right ladies?

They represent a world that tells teenagers their lives will be destroyed if they have a baby at 17, 16, 15… that they can’t let their child live because they aren’t strong enough… instead of creating a culture that tells women THEY CAN….

They can have their child and finish school….

They can keep their baby and still reach their goals….

She can choose life at 16 and her future will hold so much more love and joy than she ever imagined.

Each cross represents a child that had to die because rather than eradicating poverty and hunger; we decided the poor are better off dead.

These crosses represent the women who were raped and then told that they couldn’t carry the “result of their assault” to term and that they must abort. They were the ones that no one bothered to empower with the truth that… This is YOUR CHILD TOO. 

No, because instead of doing that people continue to use “rape arguments,” listen to that, “RAPE ARGUMENTS!” These women's worst nightmare has become nothing more than a talking point to promote your political agenda. 

And so we are seldom able to hear, through all of the rhetoric, about the heroines who CHOSE LIFE ...and PS, they are disgusted by the way you use their stories to promote even more violence rather than celebrating their victory over their victimization.

These crosses represent the unborn men and women who unlike the amazing Rebecca Keissling’s and Ryan Bomberger’s of the world, were not allowed to live since we’re all still horrifyingly comfortable with this patriarchal construct that says because of their father’s transgressions it’s okay to callously refer to these HUMAN BEINGS as “rape babies,” and dispose of them like garbage. Victim blame much?

What if each one of these crosses represented a campus predator, an abusive boyfriend, or a flat out douchebag who knew that abortion was his best friend because it would allow him to use and exploit women for his pleasure without any consequences? Well, at least not for him…. Right?

But someone pays. And we, as females know, it’s always the unborn child and often the woman who has to live her whole life knowing that she bought into a lie that she couldn’t live her dreams without sacrificing her child’s life.

That’s bullshit and we’re not buying it anymore.

Look, we believe in bodily autonomy. We actually believe in it so strongly that we think you should be in control of your own body from the moment it first exists. From the moment your unique DNA is created within your mother’s womb at conception, to the moment your heart starts beating just 18 days later.  

No one can force you to choose life just like no one should be able to force you to have an abortion. We just want you to know that we are here no matter what you decide with the support and resources you need. 

To any students on campus who have had an abortion, this display was not done to hurt you, quite the opposite. We want you to know that we are here if you ever need to talk. You might not regret your abortion, but if you do come talk to us. No one should have to live a life filled with shame and guilt. We’re here to listen and get you help, no judgment.

Abortion Slacktivism And The White Savior Complex

The documentary film After Tiller is a fascinating look at the abortion industry, but it's also a fascinating piece of propaganda. It delves into the issue of late term abortions, a topic too grisly for most people to consider. 

The film focuses on a few of the few - the tiny percentage of abortionists who will do the procedure all the way into the third trimester of pregnancy. Only four doctors to be exact.

Dr. Hern is one of them. Most days he commits late term abortions in Boulder, Colorado. However, when reminiscing about how he got his start in After Tiller, he talks about his peace corp days in Brazil... 

What most people will conveniently overlook as he pulls at our heartstrings, is that he was looking at this community through a lucky set of eyes. A very lucky set of eyes. He chose to go to this impoverished country. He was not born there and forced to live there, like these women do day in and day out. He chose to tend to these underprivileged children for a set amount of time. He was not forced to conceive and care for them his entire life like the women of this village who he claims he was simply attempting to help. He chose to offer "safer" abortions as the "solution" to these women's problems, because he doesn't have to live with the fallout of the many more unplanned pregnancies and subsequent terminations that will continue to plague these mothers, sisters, and daughters since the real problem was never actually addressed at all. Meanwhile, he has flown back to the comforts of his American life and now uses their circumstances to justify his living extinguishing other human lives.

The pregnancies are only a symptom of - and abortion merely a BandAid for - the real problem: that women in many communities the world over live in a deeply patriarchal society where they have zero power, autonomy, freedom, or opportunity. We hear phrases like "baby machines" bandied about in the U.S., but here it might actually apply. Most of these women are going to grow up, be impregnated, and bear child after child, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Reproductive rights mean nothing if you ignore the fact that these women have no control over whether or not they will reproduce in the first place. And rather than addressing the true oppression these women are facing, Dr. Hern simply offers them an abortion after their rights have already been sufficiently trampled on. 

That is lazy activism from a privileged man who wants to pat himself on the back when really he's only compounding the problem.

I wish this were a unique story, but unfortunately this is how the west tends to treat most people not lucky enough to be born here in America (and of course those unlucky ones here who had the audacity to be born poor). Here's some pills, if they don't work, we'll kill your children for you. It's not that we don't care, it's just that we think these sorry excuses for "help" are the answer, when the real answer is to encourage economic health and self-sufficiency. "Give a man a fish..." We all know the saying.

Meanwhile, when we discuss abortion, we often hear the argument "But what about a woman's choice?" The response is pretty simple: "We are all for a woman's choice, but by the time there is an innocent human life inside her, the choice has already been made."

But what about the truly poor women of the third world, who don't get to choose whether or not they get pregnant, or raped by their husbands for that matter? Can your magical Western pills stop that from happening? I didn't think so...

It's difficult to see clips of a poor Brazilian woman, sitting outside a hut, no running water, no electricity, only the food she can grow or kill, with seven children playing around her in the dirt, and no say whatsoever in whether or not she has more. The ones she has are already hungry. Who on earth would say it's a good idea for her to keep having child after child she can't feed?

To the slacktivists, the answer is, of course, is birth control and abortion: send a (probably male) doctor over there to pat her on the head and scramble her baby up in her womb and suck it out and dispose of it and send her back to her life with a few hormone altering packets of class 1 carcinogens, where she will continue to have no power or control or real choice. Then if she gets pregnant again, and he'll go suck her next baby out, and so on and so forth. She'll still be poor and helpless, and he'll be a savior... to some. But certainly not to her. 

That is a sorry excuse for a solution. 

The answer, of course, is to advocate globally for women's rights, and for economic opportunity, which is the only way women will be able to access those rights. A world in which every girl can decide for herself what kind of life she's going to have; every woman can choose to marry or not marry, be a mom or not be a mom; every woman can wake up in the morning and have power and autonomy over her own body and her own life, from the moment it first exists.

Maybe it's just a dream, but that's the kind of world we are working toward.

These "saviors" in After Tiller do nothing but perpetuate the victimhood of women. They don't actually solve any problems. They just help keep a repulsive system running by propping up a patriarchy that preys on poor women.

After Tiller is absorbing, fascinating, and seductive. But it's propaganda. Don't let it fool you. Women - all women, everywhere - deserve much better than the desperate, wounding abomination of abortion. They deserve true liberation. 

Bodily Autonomy, you say?