Forty Days for Life®--And Mine

 Editor's note: This account is from 2020, but the 2021 Campaign for 40 Days is happening right now!

To learn more, visit https://www.40daysforlife.com. 

Something happened during one of our "40 Days for Life®" prayer shifts...in a mid-sized, San Francisco Bay Area town

It was very quiet, no foot traffic in and out this day, because the Planned Parenthood clinic was closed for an afternoon meeting. Another woman and I were praying the rosary off to the side: she was standing in a walkway between the building and the small parking lot, and I was sitting on a folding chair in the shade of a sidewalk tree. It was a warm and sunny afternoon in the fall, and we both needed our sunglasses. From my vantage point I could see along the front of the building, past the front door to the street corner. We held our rosary beads; I also held the large, scriptural prolife sign I’ve used for a long time.


I have taken part in the “40 Days for Life” international prayer vigils for several years, originally outside the small Planned Parenthood clinic in our county and now in front of their newer, more central location, where surgical abortions take place at least once a week. Our city is not very big and our 40 Days group is small, but it is a dedicated group.


The local organizers have a policy that there must be at least two people present during all vigil hours, for safety’s sake. We seldom if ever encounter the kind of opposition or violence that sometimes takes place in larger cities. Incidents do occur from time to time, however, and people sometimes gang up on a solitary person praying, so no one is ever to be there alone.


While we were in prayer that afternoon, a woman drove by on the opposite side of the street. She rolled to a stop because of the traffic light, then glanced out her window--and read my sign. She immediately leaned out her open window, gave me the middle finger gesture, and then yelled, "YOU should have been aborted!" I looked after her in disbelief as the light changed and she sped away.

Her reaction really struck me. The middle finger, cursing, thumbs-down signs--those don't really bother me very much any more. I’ve gotten used to those. But that sentence did bother me, for some reason.


I was still trying to process it as we finished our prayers. I told the woman with me what had happened and what had been said, because she hadn’t been facing the street at
that moment. She stared at me, astonished and shocked. We talked about it for a while and then sat in silence, but those words continued to bother me.


A short time later, a man in a motorized wheelchair came around the street corner, just beyond Planned Parenthood's front door. He stopped, leaned to the side, and looked as if he was talking on an in-ears headset. Then he started forward, toward us. As he came nearer I braced myself, wondering if he would get in our faces and harass us. People do, sometimes, when they see us praying. You get used to that, too, but it can be upsetting.


As he came closer, though, he looked right at me and started smiling. Because I was sitting on my folding chair we were at eye level with each other. He stopped close to me, only about a foot away, and said, "Every time I pass by here I lay hands on this building, and I pray that the women who come here will go somewhere else." As he was speaking, I took off my sunglasses and looked straight into his eyes. He ended with "God bless your work here." Then he started up his motorized chair and continued on his way.


As I watched him leave, a sense of peace and calmness washed over me. Under my breath I said, “And God bless what you do, too.”



It wasn't until days later that I realized why the "YOU should have been aborted!" shout bothered me so much.


The following week, during another prayer shift, there were three of us present, including one of the leaders. We were in the middle of our prayers when two young men stopped in front of us--one short, one tall, both very young (it became clear during the conversation that they were probably older middle schoolers).


The short one was the spokesman, while the other merely stood and listened. The speaker asked about my sign, an old “40 Days for Life” one, which says, " Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you -- God" [Jeremiah 1:5]. It was clearly his way of creating an opening for talking, which continued for about 15 or 20 minutes. He brought out all the usual talking points, but not in a belligerent way. It was more of an "I don't know anything else because this is all I've been told" kind of way. Each point was well-countered, mostly by the leader and the other woman present. After each response, he went on to the next talking point. But he listened, and the taller one really listened (I
watched his face). They were polite and respectful; they even excused themselves when they finally had to leave.


At one point, the speaker brought up the issue of "unwanted babies". I answered that one, by telling him that I was adopted--that my birth mother had resisted pressure to either abort me or marry my biological father. Instead, she carried me to term and gave me up for adoption, by a couple who could not have children: my mother and father (who went on to adopt other children). I told him that I was deeply grateful to my birth mother for the gift of my life.


After the young men left, I started thinking more about what I'd said to them, remembering the few, but important, facts I knew. My birth mother had cared enough for me to reject abortion. I was a real person to her, and she was adamant that I should live. She even gave me a name at my birth, a name which is on my legal adoption papers. It isn’t just a placeholder name, like "Baby Smith" or some such--she gave me a full, three-part, personal name that obviously had meaning for her. No one now knows that name except me and her--if she still lives--because my adoptive mother and father are both dead.


Pieces started falling into place then until the whole picture was clear to me. That woman's shout, "YOU should have been aborted!" hit me as hard as it did because I so easily could have been aborted. I so easily might never have existed.


Never born. Never having lived.


And that's why it bothered me so much, I believe. Because it had been so possible.

Copyright, 2019, by Mary M. Isaacs

(Previously published here 9/27/20)

Forty Days for Life®--And Mine

Something happened during one of our "40 Days for Life®" prayer shifts...in a mid-sized, San Francisco Bay Area town



It was very quiet, no foot traffic in and out this day, because the Planned Parenthood clinic was closed for an afternoon meeting. Another woman and I were praying the rosary off to the side: she was standing in a walkway between the building and the small parking lot, and I was sitting on a folding chair in the shade of a sidewalk tree. It was a warm and sunny afternoon in the fall, and we both needed our sunglasses. From my vantage point I could see along the front of the building, past the front door to the street corner. We held our rosary beads; I also held the large, scriptural prolife sign I’ve used for a long time.


I have taken part in the “40 Days for Life” international prayer vigils for several years, originally outside the small Planned Parenthood clinic in our county and now in front of their newer, more central location, where surgical abortions take place at least once a week. Our city is not very big and our 40 Days group is small, but it is a dedicated group.


The local organizers have a policy that there must be at least two people present during all vigil hours, for safety’s sake. We seldom if ever encounter the kind of opposition or violence that sometimes takes place in larger cities. Incidents do occur from time to time, however, and people sometimes gang up on a solitary person praying, so no one is ever to be there alone.


While we were in prayer that afternoon, a woman drove by on the opposite side of the street. She rolled to a stop because of the traffic light, then glanced out her window--and read my sign. She immediately leaned out her open window, gave me the middle finger gesture, and then yelled, "YOU should have been aborted!" I looked after her in disbelief as the light changed and she sped away.

Her reaction really struck me. The middle finger, cursing, thumbs-down signs--those don't really bother me very much any more. I’ve gotten used to those. But that sentence did bother me, for some reason.


I was still trying to process it as we finished our prayers. I told the woman with me what had happened and what had been said, because she hadn’t been facing the street at
that moment. She stared at me, astonished and shocked. We talked about it for a while and then sat in silence, but those words continued to bother me.


A short time later, a man in a motorized wheelchair came around the street corner, just beyond Planned Parenthood's front door. He stopped, leaned to the side, and looked as if he was talking on an in-ears headset. Then he started forward, toward us. As he came nearer I braced myself, wondering if he would get in our faces and harass us. People do, sometimes, when they see us praying. You get used to that, too, but it can be upsetting.


As he came closer, though, he looked right at me and started smiling. Because I was sitting on my folding chair we were at eye level with each other. He stopped close to me, only about a foot away, and said, "Every time I pass by here I lay hands on this building, and I pray that the women who come here will go somewhere else." As he was speaking, I took off my sunglasses and looked straight into his eyes. He ended with "God bless your work here." Then he started up his motorized chair and continued on his way.


As I watched him leave, a sense of peace and calmness washed over me. Under my breath I said, “And God bless what you do, too.”



It wasn't until days later that I realized why the "YOU should have been aborted!" shout bothered me so much.


The following week, during another prayer shift, there were three of us present, including one of the leaders. We were in the middle of our prayers when two young men stopped in front of us--one short, one tall, both very young (it became clear during the conversation that they were probably older middle schoolers).


The short one was the spokesman, while the other merely stood and listened. The speaker asked about my sign, an old “40 Days for Life” one, which says, " Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you -- God" [Jeremiah 1:5]. It was clearly his way of creating an opening for talking, which continued for about 15 or 20 minutes. He brought out all the usual talking points, but not in a belligerent way. It was more of an "I don't know anything else because this is all I've been told" kind of way. Each point was well-countered, mostly by the leader and the other woman present. After each response, he went on to the next talking point. But he listened, and the taller one really listened (I
watched his face). They were polite and respectful; they even excused themselves when they finally had to leave.


At one point, the speaker brought up the issue of "unwanted babies". I answered that one, by telling him that I was adopted--that my birth mother had resisted pressure to either abort me or marry my biological father. Instead, she carried me to term and gave me up for adoption, by a couple who could not have children: my mother and father (who went on to adopt other children). I told him that I was deeply grateful to my birth mother for the gift of my life.


After the young men left, I started thinking more about what I'd said to them, remembering the few, but important, facts I knew. My birth mother had cared enough for me to reject abortion. I was a real person to her, and she was adamant that I should live. She even gave me a name at my birth, a name which is on my legal adoption papers. It isn’t just a placeholder name, like "Baby Smith" or some such--she gave me a full, three-part, personal name that obviously had meaning for her. No one now knows that name except me and her--if she still lives--because my adoptive mother and father are both dead.


Pieces started falling into place then until the whole picture was clear to me. That woman's shout, "YOU should have been aborted!" hit me as hard as it did because I so easily could have been aborted. I so easily might never have existed.


Never born. Never having lived.


And that's why it bothered me so much, I believe. Because it had been so possible.

Copyright, 2019, by Mary M. Isaacs

Buy Doritos, Annoy a Feminist

Feminists could not see the humor in a Doritos lover in utero.

#NotBuyingIt - that @Doritos ad using #antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses & sexist tropes of dads as clueless & moms as uptight. #SB50

— NARAL (@NARAL) February 8, 2016

I had not planned on buying any Doritos this week, but if it irritates feminists that much, how can I resist?

#BuyDoritosAnnoyAFeminist

Pope and Change

"Life Sentence"
Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

Sally Jenkins is a Hoot!

Tim Tebow: Product of conception

Over at the Washington Post, a pro choice feminist with a sense of humor!

Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

I get the impression that she is not completely enamored of the gals over at NOW.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Great stuff! Read the whole thing here.

H/T Wizbang
Cross posted at Say Anything

Pro Life Ad Rejected by NBC & CNN

This ad was rejected by both NBC and CNN. A free lunch at a drive up window of your choice to the first person who can give me a good reason why.

H/T The Blog Prof

Peter Singer Doesn't Care if You Die

Peter Singer is a "bioethicist". This and fifty cents will get you a cup of really bad coffee! Singer has an op-ed in New York Times making the case for the rationing of healthcare. This puts him as a flak for Obamacare.

Governments implicitly place a dollar value on a human life when they decide how much is to be spent on health care programs and how much on other public goods that are not directed toward saving lives. The task of health care bureaucrats is then to get the best value for the resources they have been allocated. It is the familiar comparative exercise of getting the most bang for your buck. Sometimes that can be relatively easy to decide. If two drugs offer the same benefits and have similar risks of side effects, but one is much more expensive than the other, only the cheaper one should be provided by the public health care program.

Or, here's another scenario...same as above, but now, we'll give a kickback to one of the officials in charge of that life saving drug, and see which one is chosen? Like that would never happen! (John Murtha) Or maybe if stocks of the drug are limited, we can have the official allocate the drugs to those with the most political clout or connections? In all the history of the world, we've never had problems with elected or unelected officials making bad decisions, unethical decisions or acting out of incompetence. ...And I have a bridge I'd like to sell you!

The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities.

I don't know about you, but I've known some pretty snotty and worthless teenagers! And some 85 year olds saved our bacon on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima. I do not concede the point that all other things being equal, the death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, because all other things are never equal. Singer goes on to state a formula, which presumably government bureaucrats would use to determine that some anti-social teenage skinhead deserves X amount of healthcare, while an aging WWII vet would receive Y. He doesn't couch it in quite those terms, but if you read Pinheadese, you can figure it out! How else can Singer quantify your life? Try wading through this:

Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? We can elicit people’s values on that too. One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar.

Got it? You're not an individual to him, you're Spam in a can! He can trade two cans of Spam for a pudding pop and a box of Ho-Ho's to be determined later!

Some will object that this discriminates against people with disabilities. (Damn skippy!) If we return to the hypothetical assumption that a year with quadriplegia is valued at only half as much as a year without it, then a treatment that extends the lives of people without disabilities will be seen as providing twice the value of one that extends, for a similar period, the lives of quadriplegics. That clashes with the idea that all human lives are of equal value. The problem, however, does not lie with the concept of the quality-adjusted life-year, but with the judgment that, if faced with 10 years as a quadriplegic, one would prefer a shorter lifespan without a disability.

What one might prefer in an ideal world and how one might face reality are two different matters. While I might say, theoretically, that I would prefer living for only four years without my legs as opposed to ten years with them, that hypothetical is pretty meaningless when it comes down to making a decision based on the reality of the here and now, and not some pointy headed intellectual exercise as to what measures should be taken to maintain health and life. I want to be considered as an individual, not just another cog in the machine. Peter Singer is very much a cog in the machine kind of guy.

"because people are human does not mean that their lives are more valuable than animals." Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 185.

So, Mr. Singer, you cannot tell the difference between the value of my life and an animal's, and yet you want me to trust you and the government you advise to appropriately value the comparison of my life and health to a finite pool of healthcare dollars and make the correct decision? Yeah. Right!

This method of preserving our belief that everyone has an equal right to life is, however, a double-edged sword. If life with quadriplegia is as good as life without it, there is no health benefit to be gained by curing it.

Here in all his pointyheaded liberalness is the fallacy: The "quality" of life is not encompassed by one's physical wholeness. Who are you, Mr. Singer, as a pointyheaded liberal wonk to tell me that the quality of my life is dictated by the number of functioning fingers or toes I have, as long as my mind is active? What right has the government to decide whether I live or die (or lose more toes) on the basis of your flawed reasoning? Just how disposable are human beings, Mr. Singer?

He not only advocates abortion but also killing disabled babies up to 28 days after they are born. In his book Practical Ethics, he wrote, "When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.... Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Often, it is not wrong at all."

If this guy represents the way you think, then Obamacare may be for you! If you lean more towards the Descartesian "I think, therefore I am", then you should fight Obamacare with all your strength while you still have it! Cross posted at Say Anything

Infanticide in America

Ugly to say. Even uglier to do.

Infanticide is a crime so horrible that the press, at least the Associated Press, will not mention its name:

Fla. doctor investigated in badly botched abortion

"Badly botched abortion". Remember those words as you read this story:

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.

Only Renelique didn't arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

As sickening as the crime was, why must the AP euphemize the act? It was not a "botched abortion". It was the intentional killing of a living, viable baby girl. Shame on the murdering, money grubbing abortionist that killed that little girl, and shame on the AP for giving them cover by not reporting the ugly facts.

Hat tip Gene
Cross Posted at Say Anything

Moving Pro-Life Ad

Kind of a variation on "You just aborted Beethoven!"

Hat tip Gene

John McCain Is On His Game

"We Have Nothing to Fear, but Fear Itself!" - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The Buck Stops Here!" - Harry S. Truman

"That Answer is Above my Paygrade" - Barack H. Obama

Jennifer Rubin posted the text of Senator McCain's Saturday radio address. It looks like the gloves are off!

Here was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, asked for his position on one of the central moral and legal questions of our time, and this was the best he could offer: It’s above his pay grade. He went on to assure his interviewer that there is a, quote, “moral and ethical element to this issue.” Americans expect more of their leaders. There seems to be a pattern here in my opponent’s approach to many hard issues. Whether it’s the surge in Iraq that has brought us near to victory, or the issue of campaign reform, or the question of offshore drilling, Senator Obama’s speeches can be impressive. But when it’s time for straight answers, clear conviction, and decisive action, suddenly all of these responsibilities are — well, as he puts it, “above my pay grade.” As mottos of leadership go, it doesn’t exactly have the ring of “the buck stops here.”

At Saddleback, he assured a reporter that he’d have voted “yes” on that bill if it had contained language similar to the federal version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Even though the language of both the state and federal bills was identical, Senator Obama said people were, quote, “lying” about his record. When that record was later produced, he dropped the subject but didn’t withdraw the slander. And now even Senator Obama’s campaign has conceded that his claims and accusations were false.

So, Barack Hussein O'blurry, dodges the difficult questions, preferring to speak in clichés and obfuscation, while he hides his pro-infanticide voting record and slanders anyone who criticizes him.
That about sum it up? Oh, yeah!

Hat tip The Corner
Cross Posted at Say Anything

Obama - "Who are You Going to Believe? Me, Or Your Own Lying Eyes?"

Someone is lying.

Katherine Jean Lopez of The Corner points to a post forum interview last night, where Barack Obama pointedly "clarified" his vote on the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act". From the transcript:

Brody: Real quick, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I gotta tell you that's the one thing I get a lot of emails about and it's just not just from Evangelicals, it about Catholics, Protestants, main -- they're trying to understand it because there was some literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee. And they're basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill.

Obama: Let me clarify this right now.

Brody: Because it's getting a lot of play.

Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say --that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level.

The NRLC says otherwise. NRLC spokesman Douglas Johnson:

"Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion -- even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 -- denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions -- were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose."

A side by side comparison of the state and federal bills can be found here.

The funny thing is, Obama voted in committee in favor of the "neutrality clause" that the federal bill had that the state bill was lacking, and then led the committee to kill the amended bill 6-4 so that it would never see the light of day. Shades of John Kerry's "I voted for it, before I voted against it!"

The documents prove that in March 2003, state Senator Obama, then the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting in which the "neutrality clause" (copied verbatim from the federal bill) was added to the state BAIPA, with Obama voting in support of adding the revision. Yet, immediately afterwards, Obama led the committee Democrats in voting against the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4.

So, you have the copiously footnoted and documented claims of the National Right to Life Committee against the bald faced assertion of a neophyte politician running for office. Someone is lying.

Or perhaps, lying twice, when he lies about other people lying?

Cross Posted at Say Anything

"Above my Pay Grade" - Obama Ducks Human Rights Question

Do we really need a President who'll duck all the tough questions?

Obama, when asked when a baby gets human rights, Obama responded that it was "above my pay grade".
Above his pay grade? Or unwilling to commit himself to an answer that might alienate part of his constituency?
Obama has opinions about which supreme court justices he would not have appointed (the pro-life ones). He had an opinion when he voted against the rights for infants that survived abortion. Suddenly, he has no opinion? Yeah. Right!
McCain answered quickly, "At the moment of conception." At least one of the candidates is willing to speak his mind!

When that White House phone rings at 3:00 AM, let's hope there's someone other than some finger in the wind politician to answer it!

Cross Posted at Say Anything