Dating, sex and marriage. Great little video about “the long reach of a remarkable little pill.”

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1ifNaNABY#t=578]

Someone flipped me this Christianity Today article:

It sounds pretty basic. A lovely young couple wants children, and they want those children to prosper and grow. They want to do as much as they reasonably can to ensure that those children have good, full lives. Happy lives. Lives that are as free from suffering and pain as possible. The problem is that they run the risk of bearing children with a gene that will probably cause a slow and painful death, albeit a death many decades in the future.

What should they do? Never have children? Adopt? Take the risk and conceive, come what may? Take the risk, conceive, and then terminate the pregnancy if the gene is present? Or try preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which involves creating embryos and testing them for the problematic gene and only implanting embryos free of the gene?

The writer then proceeds to ask some tough questions – questions we should be reflecting upon as members of the pro-life community:

Is near-certain physical suffering a good reason to cut short a human life? Can there be value in suffering?

What are the larger social effects of these technologies? …

What are the larger spiritual implications of these technologies? In a world of instant gratification, diversion, and entertainment, what place is there for waiting, for longing, for the brokenness and potential openness to grace that can come with dreams deferred?

Identical quadruplets, born 13 weeks early. The fourth one was a surprise. Surprise! When there are people in the womb, not just one, it oddly becomes clearer that they are, er, people. Not nebulous at all. As you may have gotten the idea by now, I believe all abortions are tragic. But there is nothing more tragic than a “selective reduction.” Maybe that’s because I love my sister so much and can’t imagine what it would begin to mean to live without her. Maybe it’s because the search and destroy mission becomes all the clearer if you are taking the life one baby and not the other. Anyways, I wish this new family all the best and I hope they are getting tons and tons of help and support since four babies cannot be done on its own.

Really horrifying stuff:

North Korea forces women to undergo abortions and young mothers to drown their newborn babies, and has starved and executed hundreds of thousands of detainees at secret prison camps — atrocities that the chairman of a U.N. panel that documented the abuses compares to those of Nazi Germany.

“The world’s apathy to the daily atrocities in North Korea is only matched by the ineffectiveness of those who do know and care but are unable to do something about it.” So says someone who knows about these things, when I sent him this link. It’s depressing enough to make an atheist pray.

Make your views known, at this link.

My answer to the first couple of questions were as follows. Feel free to cut and paste, provided you agree. The more voices, the better, and I know not everyone can whip up a response in four minutes, as I did.

1. Do you think that purchasing sexual services from an adult should be a criminal offence? Should there be any exceptions? Please explain.

Comment: Yes, purchasing sexual services from an adult should be a criminal offence. This is because a high percentage of adults who are prostitutes are victims of drug and sexual abuse and are therefore do not have meaningful free choice. Purchasing sex contributes to human trafficking. Purchasing sex demeans men and women. The legal purchase of sex does not make prostitution safer for the men and women prostituting themselves. The availability of sex for purchase contributes to family breakdown. And family breakdown destabilizes our communities, country and by extension, our economy. Finally, when the purchase of sex is legal, it is almost impossible to clamp down on child prostitution, since youth can look like adults and few carry ID cards.

2. Do you think that selling sexual services by an adult should be a criminal offence? Should there be any exceptions? Please explain.

Comment: No. Selling sexual services by an adult should not be a criminal offence. This is because those selling sexual services are generally victims of drug and sexual abuse. Please follow the Nordic Model on clamping down on prostitution.

3. If you support allowing the sale or purchase of sexual services, what limitations should there be, if any, on where or how this can be conducted? Please explain.

Comment: I do not support allowing the sale or purchase of sexual services. It will result in the degradation of our communities. Will we have a red light district or will brothels be anywhere? Those who simplistically say “it’s the world’s oldest profession” and turn a blind eye are not considering the logistics of what this will mean.

The beautiful story of another woman who chose life:

I was once like you. “It will ruin your life,” they said. “You’re a child yourself”, they said. That’s the strangest. As I lie in this hospital bed, at risk of death, I have no fear. I am 26 years old, and have absolutely nothing more that I could ask for to make me happier. If keeping my son ruined my life, then why do I have everything I want? Why am I so content with my short life, if it was ruined the day he was born? The love and happiness I have experienced in my short life, is enough to feel fulfilled, complete. My life is beautiful, and my children were the ones that made it that way.

When I cry, my children burry their heads on my chest, wipe my tears with their tiny fingers. When I smile, they run to me, wrap their arms around me, lean back and giggle. What have they destroyed in my life besides all that was bitter, hateful and selfish? Besides all those awful parts of me they peeled away with their tenderness, and gentleness.

I’m sorry that when you terminated your pregnancy, you felt nothing, and I’m afraid that is where we are different.

So what does Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries do?

Rachel’s Vineyard weekends for healing after abortion are offered throughout the year in locations across the United States and Canada, with additional sites around the world. Rachel’s Vineyard is a ministry of Priests for Life.

The program is an opportunity to examine your abortion experience, identify the ways that the loss has impacted you in the past and present, and helps to acknowledge any unresolved feelings that many individuals struggle with after abortion. Because of the emotional numbness and secrecy that often surrounds an abortion experience, conflicting emotions both during and after the event may remain unresolved. These buried feelings can surface later and may be symptoms of post abortion trauma.

I just watched an interview with its founder Dr. Theresa Burke – and learned a lot about post-abortive care and engagement. Super interesting.

A documentary about this would be awesome:

After exploring the economics of childbirth in their 2008 documentary The Business Of Being Born, director Abby Epstein and exec producer Ricki Lake are reteaming to take a similar a look at another health issue affecting women all over the world. Docu Sweetening The Pill, which just launched production, raises questions about the safety and long-term effects of hormonal birth control and is based on Holly Grigg-Spall’s upcoming 2015 book Sweetening The Pill Or How We Became Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control. The feature-length nonfic pic will take a look at the dangers of the Pill and alternative options available in the wake of recent civil lawsuits over oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin, as well as health complaints over the Nuvaring which have been shown to cause fatal blood clots in some women.

Now what would the pro-life equivalent be? (Warning: If you are extraordinarily sensitive to sexual images you might not want to watch this.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-a8dAHDQoo”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-a8dAHDQoo]

I am totally serious, what would the pro-life equivalent be? We face the problem that the victims in our cause don’t talk. Or dance, as the case may be. And people seem to be oddly unmoved by the miracle of the embryo/fetus/baby.

I welcome any and all ideas on little videos that would be provocative and give viewers a shake, like this one did for me.

If I could summarize my own pro-life-ness, it might be to say something just like that. Awful. Beautiful. Life.

Another very touching look at Iver Benson.