[Beliefnet, September 28, 2000]
Observers of the abortion debate disagree about nearly every topic, but for the last decade, one prediction has won pretty near consensus: when RU 486 arrives, it will change everything. Now that the FDA has approved the “abortion pill,” we'll get our first experience of an all-chemical abortion--what some pro-lifers call a “human pesticide.” Previous methods involved a direct surgical removal of the child, but RU 486 will be an inside job.
[Citizen, July 2000]
She wrapped her baby boy in a crib bedsheet covered with tiny balls and bats. He wore an angel necklace and a felt diaper. Carefully she laid him where someone was sure to find him, near a parked car, 200 feet from the entrance to the Indianapolis Community Hospital.
[Beliefnet, February 1, 2000]
You have to imagine, first, the seven babies curled and fitted around each other like puppies in a basket. Each has his or her separate water-filled sac, and within these sacs they rest or exercise, sometimes jostling their neighbors.
[Beliefnet, January 24, 2000]
When I saw the pink earplugs in his hand, I felt older than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I had been invited to be a speaker at an all-day rock concert, and the host had warned me in a prior e-mail that the groups following me would be pretty loud. The afternoon bands, I was told, were “kind of mellow -- my mom likes these bands.” (Reading that sentence was the second oldest I’ve felt.) But “the bands at night are hardcore, which is very loud and the lyrics are basically screamed out.”
[Focus on the Family, January 2000]
Susan B. Anthony is a hero of the feminist movement, and with good cause; she was a trailblazer in the women's movement of the late 1800's. A Quaker who never married, Anthony devoted her energy
[Religion News Service, October 3, 1995]
When Jane's fiance, a tugboat engineer, disappeared at sea, there were many theories about the cause of his death. When his best friend suggested that he had been murdered after stumbling across a drug deal, the idea electrified her.
“It caused such a rage it was almost a physical reaction,” she told me.
[Policy Review, Summer 1991]
The voluble cashier wears a locket containing her toddler's picture; coming through her checkout line is brightly entertaining, like rejoining a show already in progress. You know that she works another job, that her landlord is a jerk, that she has a weakness for ice cream, that her little girl loves Big Bird. You suspect that her immigrant status may not be entirely in order. One day she is pale and subdued; another baby is on the way, and she loves babies, but how can she ever manage? With a stricken look she whispers, “But how could I have an abortion?”
[Christianity Today, January 12, 1998]Wanted: A New Pro-life StrategyJanuary 22 marks a grim anniversary: 25 years since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. A generation has passed since the first wave of unborn children fell, and the accumulation of each year’s toll totals nearly 37 million. During those years one child was aborted for approximately every three born. Their names would fill the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial wall over 700 times.
[NPR, “All Things Considered,” May 8, 1996]On the issue of abortion, I’ve been around the block. At one point, I believed that abortion was necessary to set women free from the burden of unplanned pregnancy. But gradually I changed; I realized that abortion is at root an act of violence, killing children and violating women’s bodies--and their hearts. As such, I couldn’t accept it as a legitimate way of solving social problems. Unnecessary surgery that kills your own child is a cheap substitute for providing women with life-affirming alternatives.
But perhaps because I’d been on both sides of this issue, I still had sympathy for my pro-choice friends.
[Religion News Service, August 22, 1995] Quick, how many genders do you think there are? Two? Three, if you count Richard Simmons?
Such stingy thinking is scorned by some of those preparing for the Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in Beijing next month.
