The author of one of my favorite series of books has passed away. I usually don't say anything about the passing of a celebrity because I don't know them personally, but this saddened me a bit.
Madeleine L’Engle, you will be missed. I will share your work with my children and my grandchildren. I will carry your memory in my heart. You made my life brighter and I am sad that you are gone.
I remember with clarity the first time I read "A Wrinkle in Time". I remember how excited I was when I finished it. I remember rushing to the library to get the next book. I remember feeling that same rush of excitement last month when I read it again.
Madeleine L’Engle did what I hope to do as a writer some day, she inspired imagination. She sparked creativity and a passion for dreams. Madeleine L’Engle was a builder of worlds and an architect of futures.
If you have never read her books I encourage you to do so. If you read them as a child I encourage you to read them again. Read them to your children. Read them to your grandchildren. Read them to your nephews and your nieces and your neighbors children. Volunteer at a local school and read them to a classroom full of wide eyed fourth graders. Share this marvel with a whole new generation.
Madeleine L’Engle you will be missed.
9.07.2007
A topic I seem to discuss a lot.....
Since I started college again, I haven't really been doing a lot of blogging. Today, I was reading over at CUSS and at the end of the post Suzanne asks that anyone that supports Planned Parenthood blog about it. I think I will.
Planned Parenthood is a good program. If it received more funding and wasn't restricted by so many nonsensical things it could do more good. People who make the assertion that giving away free condoms will urge teenagers to have sex are just morons. There's no other way to say it. Teenagers are going to have sex, teenagers have always had sex. Not giving them birth control isn't going to make a sixteen year old boy who's about to get some go, "Oh, wait. I should stop and consider what this might do to my future." (As I type this I am making a very unladylike noise...you know the one, the *phtt* "AS IF" noise...)
Planned Parenthood often does what most REAL parents are not willing to do. It talks to teens about sex. More importantly, it provides services to more than just teenagers.
Now.....
Earlier in the post, Suzanne talks about how the "pro-life" groups amount to nothing more than terrorists. On one level I agree with her. The people you read about in the paper and see on the news are horrid people, concerned more about their own political or religious views than they are about doing any real good for anyone. But it is important to remember, that just like the fact that the picture painted of "pro-choice" groups in the media isn't accurate, the picture painted of the other side is blown out of proportion a bit as well.
I have met some of these "save the baby, no matter what" people. I know they exist, but I also know several people who are right to life because they firmly believe that those children would be loved by a family, even if it isn't the woman who gives birth to them. They believe that these women should be given adequate access to health care during their pregnancy. Emotional support should be made available and that they should be given financial support if it is necessary. They also believe that education, to prevent another unwanted pregnancy from occurring, is vital.
Calling ALL pro-life individuals terrorists, is like calling people on the pro-choice side murderers. I could make a case for that. It wouldn't make it accurate or true, but I could make a strong, fact based, rational argument for it...using things I've seen in the media and examples from personal experience. It boils down to this: Not everyone is a fucked up as the people you see on the news.
Still not done......
I'm really, really hoping that the portion of Suzanne's post where she talks about the unborn being easy to care about because they're quiet was meant to be slightly sarcastic. If not, it's highly offensive. I've had children. Five of them. Two were planned, three were not. One was in my teens. One in my twenties. And the last three in my thirties. I know exactly what being pregnant will do to your body at most stages of life. I know it's a hell of a lot easier being pregnant at 18 than it is at 35. I also know that just because a child is unborn, doesn't make it "quiet". Unwanted or not, it's a human being. Unwanted or not, it is a CHILD.
I want everyone reading this to know that I'm firm in this belief. It's very easy to talk clinically about "when life begins". Bravo for advanced society. What I don't hear anyone talking about is the fact that we have dehumanized the killing of a person. There, I said it. If you were to read in a newspaper or see on the news about some person hunting down and cutting unborn children from their mother's wombs, you would think, "murderer". I have heard people, time and time again, make the argument that if a person kills a pregnant woman they should be charged with the murder of the unborn child as well. Why? Because someone WANTED that child? Is that what it takes to make the difference between "ending a pregnancy" and "murder"?
When you denigrate human life by saying that abortion is okay because it's "not really" a person, you steal humanity from us. Throughout history I can point you to cases where horrible atrocities have occurred using that very same argument. Our own nations history is peppered with them. "It's okay, they don't really count." It demoralizes our society, it makes it easier for our young people to rationalize bad choices and it is, at it's core, an empty argument. There are those of you reading this that are poised and ready to type,"It isn't the same thing. Those were..." Go one, finish the sentence...those were... "people". So are the unborn. They may not be able to walk among us, but they are people. And the choice we talk about so freely is never given to them. While we are in such a rush to protect the woman who didn't want to be pregnant...while we're in such a hurry to protect her right to have sex when she wants, with whoever she wants, as often as she wants...with no responsibility...we have stopped giving a DAMN about the child no one wants.
Except there are plenty of people who do want them. There are literally thousands and thousands of families out there waiting for some woman to be kind enough to provide them with the one thing they can not get for themselves...a child. I never hear anyone talk about adoption. I hear plenty of, "who pays for the diapers? who pays for daycare?" Who says she has to KEEP the baby? Where is that option? In the grand argument for choice? Where is THAT argument? No where to be found.
It boils down to, a woman shouldn't be "forced" to be pregnant. Fine. If you want to be pro-choice, great. Be pro-choice. I've said before that as long as it's a legal option, women should have access to it. But do NOT insult those of us who have chosen to give our children life. Do not dare to even whisper that those babies were less human. Part of the choice in "pro-choice" is taking responsibility for the fact that you are ending a human life. You can't have one without the other. You don't get to be all comfortable and safe and say that you aren't really supporting "that". You are. And if you're okay with it, for whatever reason...fine. But be big enough to stand behind it.
I have had three unexpected pregnancies in my life. Each time they disrupted my life. Financially, physically, emotionally. Each time I have had long standing, far reaching consequences. And each time I have made a CHOICE. I chose to give my children life. I chose to find a loving family for my children. I was a mother first, a woman second.
I take great offense when I hear people talk about the unborn as though they have no value. It angers me. It hurts me. It makes me want to scream. And it makes me cry.
The unborn are not silent. The unborn are not less valuable than the person sitting next to you. It makes me sick to my stomach that our society cares more about it's animals than it does about it's children. Don't believe me? I can point you to hundreds of "animal cruelty" websites designed to prevent me from eating that poor helpless cow up the street, but when I try to point out that abortion ends human life? Suddenly I'm an evil anti-woman throw back that wants to prevent women from having free choice over their own bodies. Chew on that one for a while.
Planned Parenthood is a good program. If it received more funding and wasn't restricted by so many nonsensical things it could do more good. People who make the assertion that giving away free condoms will urge teenagers to have sex are just morons. There's no other way to say it. Teenagers are going to have sex, teenagers have always had sex. Not giving them birth control isn't going to make a sixteen year old boy who's about to get some go, "Oh, wait. I should stop and consider what this might do to my future." (As I type this I am making a very unladylike noise...you know the one, the *phtt* "AS IF" noise...)
Planned Parenthood often does what most REAL parents are not willing to do. It talks to teens about sex. More importantly, it provides services to more than just teenagers.
Now.....
Earlier in the post, Suzanne talks about how the "pro-life" groups amount to nothing more than terrorists. On one level I agree with her. The people you read about in the paper and see on the news are horrid people, concerned more about their own political or religious views than they are about doing any real good for anyone. But it is important to remember, that just like the fact that the picture painted of "pro-choice" groups in the media isn't accurate, the picture painted of the other side is blown out of proportion a bit as well.
I have met some of these "save the baby, no matter what" people. I know they exist, but I also know several people who are right to life because they firmly believe that those children would be loved by a family, even if it isn't the woman who gives birth to them. They believe that these women should be given adequate access to health care during their pregnancy. Emotional support should be made available and that they should be given financial support if it is necessary. They also believe that education, to prevent another unwanted pregnancy from occurring, is vital.
Calling ALL pro-life individuals terrorists, is like calling people on the pro-choice side murderers. I could make a case for that. It wouldn't make it accurate or true, but I could make a strong, fact based, rational argument for it...using things I've seen in the media and examples from personal experience. It boils down to this: Not everyone is a fucked up as the people you see on the news.
Still not done......
I'm really, really hoping that the portion of Suzanne's post where she talks about the unborn being easy to care about because they're quiet was meant to be slightly sarcastic. If not, it's highly offensive. I've had children. Five of them. Two were planned, three were not. One was in my teens. One in my twenties. And the last three in my thirties. I know exactly what being pregnant will do to your body at most stages of life. I know it's a hell of a lot easier being pregnant at 18 than it is at 35. I also know that just because a child is unborn, doesn't make it "quiet". Unwanted or not, it's a human being. Unwanted or not, it is a CHILD.
I want everyone reading this to know that I'm firm in this belief. It's very easy to talk clinically about "when life begins". Bravo for advanced society. What I don't hear anyone talking about is the fact that we have dehumanized the killing of a person. There, I said it. If you were to read in a newspaper or see on the news about some person hunting down and cutting unborn children from their mother's wombs, you would think, "murderer". I have heard people, time and time again, make the argument that if a person kills a pregnant woman they should be charged with the murder of the unborn child as well. Why? Because someone WANTED that child? Is that what it takes to make the difference between "ending a pregnancy" and "murder"?
When you denigrate human life by saying that abortion is okay because it's "not really" a person, you steal humanity from us. Throughout history I can point you to cases where horrible atrocities have occurred using that very same argument. Our own nations history is peppered with them. "It's okay, they don't really count." It demoralizes our society, it makes it easier for our young people to rationalize bad choices and it is, at it's core, an empty argument. There are those of you reading this that are poised and ready to type,"It isn't the same thing. Those were..." Go one, finish the sentence...those were... "people". So are the unborn. They may not be able to walk among us, but they are people. And the choice we talk about so freely is never given to them. While we are in such a rush to protect the woman who didn't want to be pregnant...while we're in such a hurry to protect her right to have sex when she wants, with whoever she wants, as often as she wants...with no responsibility...we have stopped giving a DAMN about the child no one wants.
Except there are plenty of people who do want them. There are literally thousands and thousands of families out there waiting for some woman to be kind enough to provide them with the one thing they can not get for themselves...a child. I never hear anyone talk about adoption. I hear plenty of, "who pays for the diapers? who pays for daycare?" Who says she has to KEEP the baby? Where is that option? In the grand argument for choice? Where is THAT argument? No where to be found.
It boils down to, a woman shouldn't be "forced" to be pregnant. Fine. If you want to be pro-choice, great. Be pro-choice. I've said before that as long as it's a legal option, women should have access to it. But do NOT insult those of us who have chosen to give our children life. Do not dare to even whisper that those babies were less human. Part of the choice in "pro-choice" is taking responsibility for the fact that you are ending a human life. You can't have one without the other. You don't get to be all comfortable and safe and say that you aren't really supporting "that". You are. And if you're okay with it, for whatever reason...fine. But be big enough to stand behind it.
I have had three unexpected pregnancies in my life. Each time they disrupted my life. Financially, physically, emotionally. Each time I have had long standing, far reaching consequences. And each time I have made a CHOICE. I chose to give my children life. I chose to find a loving family for my children. I was a mother first, a woman second.
I take great offense when I hear people talk about the unborn as though they have no value. It angers me. It hurts me. It makes me want to scream. And it makes me cry.
The unborn are not silent. The unborn are not less valuable than the person sitting next to you. It makes me sick to my stomach that our society cares more about it's animals than it does about it's children. Don't believe me? I can point you to hundreds of "animal cruelty" websites designed to prevent me from eating that poor helpless cow up the street, but when I try to point out that abortion ends human life? Suddenly I'm an evil anti-woman throw back that wants to prevent women from having free choice over their own bodies. Chew on that one for a while.
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