This is not about the past nor shaming or condemning women. My comments are not to refute the woman’s rights dialogue. I am interested in looking forward and instilling ideas into minds of those who may not have looked at it with this viewpoint.
Neither do I need to have a conversation with people with closed minds. If you do not agree with me, you just do not have to read this. If you have an open mind and are curious about rationale for Pro-Life Voting, read on.
Abortion targets the infirm, the weak, the less desirable, people of color, and harms women. For many women, it is not really a choice, it is the only option she is given. It is pressure from family, friends, society and possibly the father. It is born out of fear of the unknown.
Millions of women have babies and go on to see their dreams come to fruition. However, there are no guarantees in life, and we cannot predict the future, including after abortion. In other words, abortion is not the magic pill to make a woman’s life better.
Top Ten Reasons Why I Vote Pro-Life
I tried very hard to get pregnant.
While I was acutely aware of thousands of abortions happening all around me. All I wanted was at least one child. Through adoption – I was blessed with 2 – but that is another story.
The Genetics and the DNA of a human is solidified immediately at the moment of conception.
That is not about religion – that is about Science.
The embryo and the fetus are simply early stages of development of a human being.
Is it acceptable to stop the development of a teen because they are not yet an adult and cannot live on their own, supporting themselves? Is it acceptable to stop the life of a toddler because they are not yet a school aged child and cannot dress and feed themselves or walk to the school bus? Then neither is it acceptable to stop the beating heart of a fetus because it is not capable of living outside of the womb.
All Lives Matter – but in the case of abortion, the statistics overwhelmingly show more black abortions than white.
So do Black Lives Matter less than Whites? Where is the outrage for systemic or institutional racism in the case of abortion?
I have cared for hundreds of children who were born at early ages of gestation (as early as 23 weeks) who have survived, thrived, and gone on to become full functioning members of society.
I have cared for thousands of children who were born with a birth defect, genetic abnormality, trauma in utero, among other health issues, who are wonderful people and have enriched their parents lives not to mention others in the world around them.
I have cared for hundreds of children with Down syndrome.
Have you ever met a person with Down Syndrome? Aren’t they very special, happy, love filled individuals? Some countries like Norway and Denmark abort nearly all of the babies with Down Syndrome and claim they have eradicated the disease. The US also accepts Down Syndrome as a reason for abortion.
There are many other “choices”.
Adoption, Parenting, Abstinence, Birth Control to name a few.
I was born with a Cleft Lip and Palate.
Great Britain is reviewing its laws that allow aborting babies solely because they have a cleft lip and palate as well as Club Foot. (All treatable conditions.) I know other countries – such as China – already actively abort for these reasons. If I was conceived in today’s world in a certain country (even in this country), I would be aborted on that fact alone. Even my own gynecologist suggested to me when I was concerned about my chances of having a baby with a cleft, that we could do an ultrasound and if the baby was affected – I could abort. Let that sink in.
Our only hope is to enact laws to protect our most vulnerable.
This issue is far reaching and is not simply a “One Sided View”.
Many women who have had abortions have gone on to support the Pro-Life cause and champion for change based on their own personal experience and possibly preventing other women from making the same choice.
Individuals who survived abortions, share their stories to promote Pro-Life laws.
Babies born into a poverty situation have the chance to break that cycle when they grow up. Babies aborted because of poverty, will never have that chance.
My statements are not meant to be blaming or cause another person grief about their own choices they have made in the past.
My statements reflect an alternate viewpoint to the rationale for abortion.
My statements are about the future and the possibilities for hope, healing, and forgiveness.
The beauty of Life is – while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it, and Change. ~author unknown
I suppose I can write volumes about this movement in general, but I am going to refrain most of my comments to the issue of this blog/web site.
Life
Yes, Black lives matter and that should mean ALL black lives. Long before this recent movement, I did some searching on abortion statistics and I was blown away by how many more abortions were performed on black women than white. In fact, it seems that it was even more than what is reported now. Maybe someone is playing with the numbers so black people do not learn the truth.
I recently saw a tweet that misquoted and misrepresented a bible passage – Luke 15: 1-7 (8-32) – giving the illusion that people who respond “ALL Lives Matter” when they hear the words “Black Lives Matter” are criticizing the importance of that movement. The tweeter went on to analogize the lost sheep (or the coin, or the son) of Christ’s parable to the black lives in question. He was saying that when people talk about black lives mattering, they are not worried about the other 99 they are concerned at that moment about the 1. I pointed out to him that the 1 lost sheep represents the repentant sinner. From my limited knowledge of scripture, this passage was meant that we do not need try to find all of the sheep, because these sheep were not “lost” and therefore not in need of repentance. Again, he analogized that it’s not that we shouldn’t care about the other 99, because those are not the ones “in danger”. And again, the Bible passage is referring to those who are in danger of sinning so I am not sure how this passage applies.
Therefore, I will stick to the concept of ALL Black lives that matter rather than the movement called Black Lives Matter which seems to be focusing only on Black individuals who were killed by cops. We won’t discuss whites killed by cops or blacks killed by other blacks, or whites killed by blacks or blacks killed by whites, even though this is the basis of the statement that ALL Lives Matter.
Since ALL black lives DO matter, I want to bring attention to the millions of black lives that have been lost to abortion. And that is only counting the low ball numbers reported to the CDC and some states since the beginning of legalized murder by abortionists. There is probably no true record of all of the black lives killed with abortion before Roe Vs Wade. The CDC has been tracking abortion statistics since the 60s. There are no mandated reporting laws so the numbers from the CDC are, at best, sorely UNDER reported. I am not sure how under reported they are, so I will present these numbers at face value, knowing that there are many more children (who by the nature of physiology would have gone on to become adults) who are being denied LIFE through the atrocities of abortion.
I am still at a loss as to why there is NOT mandated reporting when so many other aspects of health care reporting is mandated. Then we would know the stark truth.
In addition, the Guttmacher Institute has their own method of reporting. This is problematic since this Institute is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, so it is difficult to know how valid this information is.
There are other sources of statistics such as the Kaiser Family Foundation, but looking at these numbers only serves to show that there are no exact numbers.
I found another source – the Johnston’s Archive: Data on Abortion by Race This Data is compiled by a research scientist whose education is in astrophysics. What better person to put together data than a research scientist! You can go to his site www.johnstonsarchive.net for a wealth of data related to abortion statistics.
I love numbers and math, and as my accountant father used to say: “I’m a numbers (wo)man”. I feel that numbers cannot lie. However, anyone who has taken a research or statistics course knows how easily data can be skewed. The numbers themselves are not to be disputed, but the interpretation of these numbers is what is often in question.
For the purpose of this blog, I will focus on the disparities in racial equity when it comes to abortion and present these numbers as mathematical truth.
Here are some statistics: There is a numerical decline in the amount of abortions from year to year. That is good news, right? However, if you delve deeper into those numbers, you will see that there was a major decline between 1997 and 1998 when there was a drop in reporting areas to the CDC from 52-47. That means that less states were reporting data and caused a significant drop in the total number from 1,186,039 to 884,273 which is a total of 301,766 whereas the year before, the drop was from 1,221,585 to 1,186,039 which was only a drop of 35,556. All years previous to 1997 there was a steady increase until 1990 and then a steady drop of 30,000 to 40,000 per year and subsequent to 1998 the drop is only between 1,000-29,000 each year. So, although it is dropping, the rate at which it is dropping is less than before 1997. In Addition, the most significant drop is due to less reporting. These statistics are from the CDC.
The Guttmacher Institute wants people to believe that the rate of decline is related to the decline in actual births or even pregnancies, and not related to the change in laws from state to state or the overwhelming change in peoples belief that abortion itself should be abolished. That’s so they can give fodder to PPA that there is no reason to change the abortion laws, because abortion is by default going to drop on it’s own. This is how the data is being skewed and misinterpreted. They make a headline statement that the rates of abortion are decreasing and if people do not take the time to read the article, or even look further into the statistics, (as I will present later) this is the sound-bite they believe.
Let’s take a more specific view at this picture by race; the only pregnancies and births (and therefore abortion) that are declining are those in the white population. Overall birth rates for the Hispanic population are skyrocketing as well as the abortion rates. Looking at the numbers that Dr. Johnston compiled (you can read his explanation of where he retrieved this data from his site, but mostly from the CDC and the states), the rate of abortion in black women compared to the rate of live births is about 50%. To repeat: That math tells us that half (1/2) as many black babies are being aborted as being born. In the white population that number is 1/8th. The rate of abortion compared to estimated overall pregnancies in the black population is 35%. In the white population that is 12%.
Now, if you look at the overall number of total abortions, it is almost equal between blacks and whites. In fact, in 2013, the absolute number of black women having abortions surpassed those of their white counterparts and has been equal or greater for the next 4 years for which there is data.
There are two very striking concepts about these statistics. One is that the rate of abortion to live births in the white population has decreased by about 7% in the last 20 years. The rate of abortion to live births in the black population has stayed relatively the same, but has slowly increased by about 2%. Why are the numbers of abortions between blacks and whites not dropping at the same rate? The second statistic is related to what is so readily quoted in the national media about the disparities between the two races. The black population makes up about 13.8 percent of the total population. So why is it that their abortions make up about 34-35%? Circling back to the Guttmacher Institute report that pregnancy and abortion rates are dropping, do they only mean white people? Are the white statistics the only ones that matter to the Guttmacher Institute? See their skewed explanation here: Drop in Abortion? Not one place in this article do they mention race. They do however mention “Self-Managed abortion” which is NewSpeak for abortifacients and only highlights the underreporting of the number of abortions in the US.
We will leave the discussion about the racist philosophies of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, for another blog, but it seems to me that the systematic elimination of the black population before they even have a chance to appear on this earth, is an undercurrent of the pro-abortion movement. Not sure if in many of these cases it is a true “Choice”.
I saw a tweet recently (presumably by a pro-choicer) that actually said: And you want to force “them” to give birth and complete the systemic poverty cycle. “Them” refers to black and impoverished people as the tweet was referring to an article posted by National Right to Life regarding a much higher rate of abortions in impoverished and minority communities (they used the phrase “people of Color”). This rebuttal tweet was posted by a person whose picture badge is a Blond Barbie Doll (not the name). I tweeted back that she obviously didn’t know that pro-life people work to help women who choose life to find resources, and do not abandon them after they have their babies. I also tweeted asking her to clarify if she implies that a black life is not worthy to be born if all that is going to happen is they will be born into the poverty cycle? Her comment only underscores the sentiment of Margaret Sanger that the only answer to poverty and ridding the world of “less desirables” (Margaret Sanger’s sentiments – not mine) was to eliminate and reduce the population through abortion. Sorry – I did say I would put that in another blog, but I digress.
To that end, I do believe that Black Lives Matter, but not in the same context that the famous movement is explaining it. A black life is important no matter how it is threatened. And ALL Lives are precious in the sight of God. If only the enormous amount of energy and resources that are being spent on protests and riots and violence and destruction of property and overarching negativity were spent on the Right To Life cause, we would be living in a very different world indeed.
Please feel free to check these statistics yourself. I have represented here only with the same amount of accuracy that can be gleaned from a faulty collection system. Rather than these numbers being over represented, it is well known and well documented that these data are under represented. I can only assume that these are underrepresented at the same rate between all of the races, but we may never know.
I have included the absolute numbers of abortions and some math, so you can decide for yourself. I could only find data for the Guttmacher Institute for every 3 years, but included these limited data to show the differences in numbers between the various collection methods. Keep in mind, that these are overall statistics across the US which do not take into account state to state statistics. For example these ratios and percentages are going to be much different in New York City than they are in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. You can find that data on the web.
*Data from the Johnston’s Archive, CDC, Guttmacher Institute.
*Data from Johnston’s Archive. Calculations by author.
There is a national campaign by the big abortion company (or at least it is happening in Chicago), to send workers into the streets to get people swayed over to “their” side. I have been approached several times by young, shiny faced innocents wanting to happily tell me all about why this institution is such a good thing for women. Even though I was hurrying to catch a bus or a train or whatever mode of transportation would get me home, I took the time to stop and to explain to each child in the purple, well logoed t-shirt why this company is so bad. I start by telling them that they really do NOT want to talk to me, because I am strongly Pro-life and the company they are representing kills babies.
It’s kind of like talking to a person hawking their religious beliefs at your front door. They have a script and by Gosh, they are going to stick to that script!
The young man I saw yesterday tried to convince me that his company was OK, because after all – Abortions are “only” 3% of what they do. 3% huh? I did a simple internet search and found a site that disputes that fact. https://www.liveaction.org/learn/3percent/
Beside that, even if they want to pretend that they only spend 3% of their services in the business of killing babies, they still perform 100s of thousands of them every year. It’s a big corporation, so they deal in large volumes.
So I told this young man, really just a baby himself, that he should not quote statistics to me – I have statistics. He interrupted me and said “We (as if he is the doctor with the suction machine) provide “safe abortions”. I quickly replied, “There are no safe abortions, because someone gets killed”. He said “that’s your opinion”. I looked at him directly in his innocent blue eyes and said “no it’s a fact”. What I wanted to say was “what if your mother had chosen an abortion, would it still be my opinion?” I didn’t have a chance, because he walked away, all the while telling me to have a nice day. I think I got to him though and the truth was too much for him to argue about it with me.
What I feel bad about is that I did not actually have all of the statistics; if I had, I could have really had a conversation with him. I think I have some homework to do.
vote prolife party 