There is already a Don’t be that guy campaign. Now it seems we need a counterpart: Don’t be that girl.

A reader sent in a link to her blog today. She is troubled because she can’t forgive her parents–her mom gave her money for an abortion when she was a teenager.

It’s a tough one, this idea of forgiveness. She meanders through her anger and thoughts. But concludes with this:

If I refuse to forgive, if I refuse forgiveness, the pain remains.  I’m still in love with the pain.  My journey has brought many wonderful and grace-filled things into my life. I’m afraid that if the pain goes, I have no more right to them. 

I thought that was an interesting concept: first that she is in love with the pain and second, that releasing herself from the pain by finding forgiveness might mean she no longer can access the good things in her life.

It seems to me that she may have problems with forgiving herself, not just her mother. Oftentimes people cannot forgive others because they cannot forgive themselves. They are exacting and demanding of others, because they are exacting and demanding of themselves.

I used to be like this. Maybe to a certain extent I still am, but as they say recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery… I used to be judgemental of others–but only as judgemental as I was of myself. I would wallow in guilt and self-loathing when I made a mistake, because my expectations of myself were perfection.

I was only slowly, slowly released from this attitude over a great deal of time. It took years. But today I can better embrace the imperfections in others because I can accept my own. (How this journey transpired is a faith story and is too long to tell here.)

Anyway, I wish this blogger and post-abortive woman every success on her journey. I think by writing this blog, she is likely already on the road to freedom.

A beautiful story. Rest in peace, Stacie Crimm and welcome, Dottie Mae.

We are creatures of control. I want to get married at this time, with this job and with this amount of money. I want to know where I’m going and with who. I want XX number of children, spaced YY years apart. I want to be comfortable. I want to be the master of my destiny. I don’t want to have to iron out uncomfortable wrinkles, I want to throw out the whole cloth. We are wholly and completely unprepared for anything that throws us for a loop, be it materially or emotionally.

This used to be called selfish, but today it’s called empowerment.

Those are my thoughts on this article about normalizing mothers who abort.

There’s a new campaign launching today at We Want the Debate.ca.  

I’ll let you guess what we might be debating. There’s t-shirts, if you want to wear one, I’m sure you can email and ask at that web site. I think this is a clever campaign because it peaks attention and because truly, debate is stifled in this country. Let freedom reign!

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More information: 

GUELPH, Ontario, Oct. 18, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ — A group within the educational pro-life movement is throwing down the gauntlet on what it claims is the current censorship and hostility toward any attempt to debate abortion. Known as the We Want the Debate Campaign, it challenges anyone wishing to defend abortion to an open, transparent and fair debate in front of the people of Ontario.

Over the next four months, the campaign will conduct a series of activities to highlight current contradictions and misconceptions that warp the public’s view of abortion. It will expose a systematic distortion by the overwhelming majority of the media of the facts of abortion. It will also denounce the Federal Government’s disregard of the majority of Canadian’s wish to allow a discussion on the future of abortion in our country.

“We believe that the suppression of any debate in a democratic society is unacceptable,” said Jakki Jeffs, director of the We Want the Debate Campaign. “We demand that the current censorship of the debate around abortion be ended, and that an open and informed discussion be held in public. The stifling of the debate over the past decades has prevented all Canadians from having access to the facts, and has left the issue completely ignored. In the coming months we will be addressing this lack of balance, and on the 7th of February 2012 we hope those who wish to defend abortion will join us in finally debating this before the people of Ontario.”

The story of a mother who will lose her son to a rare genetic disorder, likely before he turns 3. She talks about how parenting is all geared to the future, as indeed, much of it is. But her job is in the here and now, exclusively:

Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent, anywhere, that’s all there is.

It made me think that perhaps more than we think, all relationships are about the here and the right now, since we never know when we might breathe our last.

Something to be aware of: Errors in miscarriage diagnosis.

Hills Bro. Coffee heiress Harriett Hills Stinson is urging women to come forward and speak about their abortions, as she has done.

I want women to speak out as well, but the type of stories I expect to hear when women do start coming forward about their abortions are going to be a little different from hers. Unlike the wealthy Ms. Hills, when I have heard women recant their stories, they are told painfully and are not free of regret.

On the rare occasions when there has been a lack of pain in the retelling, the pain was replaced by something sinister, like minimisation or denial.

Harriett Hills Stinson may be surprised to find that many women whom have had abortions (forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level) may not have much in common with her story.

Harriett Hills Stinson, 85, a prominent member of the wealthy San Francisco family that founded Hills Bros. Coffee, says it took a push by GOP conservatives to cut funding for family planning and abortion services to move her to reveal a long-held personal secret: She once had an illegal abortion.

“I’ve never regretted it,” Stinson told The Chronicle this week. As a mother in her 20s with three young children, Stinson said, she came to the decision that “for the sake of my family, it was not right for me to have a fourth child.” Now, she said, “I’m hoping women who have had abortions will come forward.”

Desperate acts of vandalism continue across the state as the voting day (November 8) for personhood approaches,

Pelahatchie resident Buddy Hairston relayed that a 4 foot by 6 foot sign at his local church had been knocked over by the vandals. “It took some serious force to bend the metal posts,” he said.

A southern Mississippi gas station was forced to call the police when a woman attempted to destroy a large Yes on 26 campaign sign that had been erected on the property. “She just got out of her car, walked up to it, and started tearing it apart,” reported Personhood Mississippi Director Les Riley. “When police arrived, she told them that she was ‘exercising her First Amendment right to free speech.’” […]

“We welcome vigorous debate. That’s what this country was founded upon. However, theft, vandalism, and intimidation efforts are not acceptable,” stated Riley. “Perhaps, if those who would resort to such tactics would realize there will be consequences, they might not do it.” […]

“Planned Parenthood and the ACLU’s attempts to have the Mississippi Personhood Amendment removed from the ballot failed, and the pro-abortion proponents are showing signs of desperation,” said Personhood USA President Keith Mason. “They’re realizing that the abortion era is almost over, but our message that every human being is a person, and every person has a right to live, will not be silenced.”