I Slumbered Too Long

I am guilty. I have been intentionally fasting from media, staying withdrawn from society. This had felt restorative in recent years as I healed from the death of my husband and the emotional trauma of being suddenly un-coupled. 

I awoke today, June 24, only to find I'd slumbered too long, that America as I'd known her had violently changed course. And, a tide of self-righteousness had eroded a freedom I'd known all my life: choice. 

Tears, then anger, then the memory of standing silent, voiceless, at the statue of St. Agnes* on display at the United Nations Headquarters. The history reads: "The damaged statue of St. Agnes found in the ruins of a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. The Cathedral was completely destroyed when the atomic bomb exploded about half a kilometre away. The charring and mottling are the result of the intense heat and radiation." 

The charring and mottling are so severe that her back is without form, the sculptor's detail erased by the blast. I weep in the presence of the statue. I weep as she comes to mind today. 

Disgust grows within me at the continued rancid quest for domination, the inhumanity of humanity. The St. Agnes before me in memory is reminiscent of the Scourging at the Pillar or the brutality unleashed on human beings by American slave-owners and profiteers.

My memory now leaps to the 1993 when Michael Griffin shouted, “Don’t kill any more babies!” before shooting Dr. David Gunn three times in the back. Following the protest organized by Rescue America at Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic, the  organizers' response sickens me: “While Gunn’s death is unfortunate, it’s also true that quite a number of babies’ lives will be saved,” said national director Don Treshman. [more] We were living near Minneapolis at the time. In a Letter to the Editor, I wrote of using our resources toward caring for the children and parents already here, instead of spending it on this pro-choice/pro-life war. The hate mail arrived in droves from those identifying themselves as pro-life.

Years later when my children were teenagers, demonstrators gathered along Hastings Way holding posters of aborted fetuses, grotesquely enlarged to six feet in height for maximum impact. There were families with much younger children in the cars around us. Had the pro-life contingent gone mad?

Today I ask, has the pro-life contingent made a plan? Are the pro-life voters prepared to welcome the 625,346** infants this coming year? Ready and willing to provide the $14,800*** per child for a typical two-child household? Is there a commitment to cover this $9.2 billion in the first year of life? 

Will someone who is celebrating a victory, please share with me the plan for this parenthood?

I remember a Women of Faith conference at the Xcel Energy Center when the speaker asked us to stand if we'd miscarried, suffered the death of a child, or had an abortion. Women stood together -- nearly all of us -- united by the sorrow, not giving voice to individual stories, simply standing there for a moment, acknowledging the pain and loss of so many.

I believe: life begins at conception and that every life is precious.

I believe: choice is the free will God offers to all humanity.

I believe: we cannot legislate and enforce morality, and in using shame-based tactics we do more harm than good.

On March 13th, 2009, I launched this blog as "a woman ... tentatively exploring the Creator who intelligently and divinely grants her the dignity of free will while laying out a plan for every breath of her life before she was a heartbeat in a living womb."  

As I look into the faces of my granddaughters and grandson my eyes brim with tears. My heart longs for peace, if not for me, then please, Lord, for them. 

Rw

* Statue of St. Agnes images from Wiki Commons

**CDC figure annual abortions

*** US News & World Report