I believe that man is the major cause of this problem. So why would you even want to hear what a man has to say?

Well, this man has heard what many women have said, and stands with them.   And I believe that if more men had this perspective, then there wouldn't be as much of a problem.   The support system we've created has become fully dysfunctional.

Just because you may belong to a very small percent, that does not make you any less significant.

I can't believe how something mostly entered into with hopes and dreams, could suddenly turn sour.  But I'd say it probably has something to do with a man.  Though acknowledging the other small percent, those cases are entirely the result of a man, and don't start out with dreams and aspirations, but with a nightmare.

I'm not talking about attempting to find some sunken treasure, only to encounter unforeseen difficulties ...and then having to decide whether or not to abort the mission.

Nor am I talking about a NASA mission, judging whether weather conditions are favorable, and if not, the lift-off is postponed.   It's more like a rocket leaving earth for a space station, with vital supplies needed for the survival of those already there.

It was many years ago; I think I was only a year or two out of college.  I read of a law that supposedly existed within a certain judges jurisdiction.

Are we united on this one?

I remember how totally insane I felt the law was ...and I found it disturbingly difficult to even believe that a law like the one described in print before me could even exist in such a civilized society such as the United States.

The law stated that if a person was under 18 years of age, and had committed a crime, the judge could excuse him from any obligation and dismiss the charges against him ...if it was judicially decided that the person was presently working towards an education to achieve a goal of employment in an honorable position in society.

Of course, what do I expect?   It seems vague laws are written for the sole purpose to manipulate and perpetuate these sort of injustices ...which are opposite in nature to what they should be written for.

The more I read about this particular case, the more upset I became.

The judge was using a vague law where very specifically it was to apply to someone under the age of 18, yet this judge was applying it to a (less than) gentle man, who was over 19 years of age.

The judge had ruled to excuse the 19 year old student of the rape, stating that the student had an honorable career ahead of him because he was trying to fulfill his course requirements to become a police officer.

I became furious!!

What honor is there in having a police officer with the kind of character that participates in violent criminal behavior; the very behavior he is supposed to be committed to arresting.

In this case, who was taking any real consideration for the truly violent act that had taken place?

I'm retired now.  My last job was working for the Department of Corrections, within the Department of Mental Health.

I've been watching the Presidential primaries ...and a few of the televised debates.

The question came up, whether one of the candidates was in favor of abortion in the case of rape.  There were several people in the room in front of the TV watching the debate with me, so I didn't fully hear the candidate's answer, as there was so much discussion in the room.

I believe everyone is in bed now, and so I am left with just my many thoughts.

If some angry person, for some reason punched one of my daughters in the mouth and she lost a tooth ...I would attempt to have that person prosecuted.   What I would not do, is take her to the dentist to have the dentist remove all the rest of her teeth, so she wouldn't be reminded of the one tooth she had lost.

I know it's not the same, but I really feel that it is errant to believe that having an abortion would help get rid of the thought of such a horrible act.  Your feelings are extremely important, yet let's not confuse the importance of ridding ourselves of bad thoughts, and making that 'one and the same' with ridding yourself of the baby.  That thought of getting rid of a baby is a much worse thought to have to cope with.

"I'm not going to have my daughter subjected to the constant reminder of that monster!"

Many dads say this when their own emotions overwhelm them, even though they would typically say they are against abortion.

I'm a guy, and I can't know how you feel ...and that is absolutely correct, I don't know.

If I hear of, or see an injustice, I often get upset.  Some of you may get more upset if it happens to you, than if an injustice is done to another person.  Often I do better if it's done to me, than if it's done to someone I know ...but it's always better if this kind of grief doesn't happen at all.  I make mistakes all the time, but I just know that if I commit a huge injustice against another, I feel lousy a long time, particularly if there's little I can do to reconcile it.

I think many of you are like I am, and would feel guilty if when you were emotionally out-of-control (despondent, depressed, angry, or frustrated) you committed a huge injustice.  What should we do??  Learn from mistakes, have a resolve to change things as a result of that learning, and set ourselves on the right path.

If we do wrong, we admit the wrong and find forgiveness and reconciliation through helping others overcome.

There is no healing form violence through committing more violence.

One who is raped, has a unique circumstance where you are allies ...you and the baby, that is.

If you become pregnant, together you can stand against violence.   You can replace violence with love ...and love that child.  If you are devastated by the rape, and I don't know how you couldn't be, and you want to erase that horrible memory, how does one erase a violent memory by replacing it with another violent memory?

To say, you should not be expected to live every day, looking at your baby and being reminded of the monster who raped you.   Your baby will look at you every day, and hopefully will be reminded of your love ...and your child will likewise grow.  Your baby does not know the monster and his cruelties ...so will not grow up like him.  Your child will grow within your love.

The only affect the baby feels of any monster, is the one who carries out the violent killing.  The baby is never a part of the discussion leading up to it ...the baby is totally oblivious to the fact that someone is going to suddenly violently intrude upon that nurturing and loving environment of the womb.  The baby has no knowledge that there are those compelling this loving Mom to kill.  The poor defenseless baby is as unprepared for this as we would be if we were having a quite evening at home ...and suddenly someone entered into our home, and killed us.  We have compassion upon a cute little puppy that wanders out into the road. We have compassion for seals, thousands of miles away, which we feel are subjected to our careless misguided economy which causes global warming.  The puppy's death was accidental, the seal's death could be classified anywhere from nature's cycle to man's carelessness ...but how do we classify deliberate deaths?  What opinion do we have of our misguided economy ...the extent of abortion mills that subject our world each day with thousands of  innocent deaths?  Only you can save your baby!  It is easy to find a doctor somewhere, and it is easy to find a multitude of people to encourage you to do it ...but the bottom line is, you have the final say, only you can call for the execution.  And only you can order a stay of execution ...and let your baby stay in your womb.

What if you have a baby ...and later find out, or decide the daddy is a monster?   How do you remedy that situation?

I say we remedy it in the same way ...by prosecuting the monster, and by loving your baby.  It's in those situations, your baby needs you most!!

Looking at a less popular 3:16, beginning at first Kings 3:16; two women had a newborn, but one died. They both claimed the living child was theirs, and Solomon had to decide what should be done. When he requested that the child be cut in half, the one Mom immediately protested,"Please, give her the child ...do not kill him!" With Solomon's wisdom, he realized this was the true Mom, and gave the child to her. How absurd it would be if he would have said that it was too much stress for either woman to not have the child, so he will just proceed to have the child cut in half. That's not too far off from what it appears this article is saying, which was in the Journal of Medical Ethics (Law, Ethics, and Medicine)...a study of Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. The article referred to fetuses and newborns as "potential persons" ...and, as for the mother putting her child up for adoption, her emotional state should be considered a trumping right ---if it is determined she may suffer psychological distress from giving her child to someone else, then after-birth abortion should be considered an allowable alternative. The people who wrote this, and those who allowed it to be printed should have a court-ordered psychological evaluation. If this is not insanity ...it is blatant evil, and they dare list it as ethics? Aren't ethics what we've always called moral principals ...and morality, defining right and wrong? What has happened to us? It's clear to some of us, that this all eventually comes about because people feel they can effectively remove God out of the discussion. They believe they can decide right and wrong, not God.

Once we do something that we should have thought through more thoroughly ...some things can be reversed, and others things can't.  But though things often can't be reversed, attitudes can.  It may be too late to change an event, but we can resolve to not repeat a mistake.  A mistake repeated, often makes it easier to repeat again. And things that are ignored, often grow so rapidly, by the time we realize it ...things are hopelessly out-of-control.  Things seemed this way in 1942, within the depths of World War II, and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was this same year that Arthur Gordon wrote a short story entitled, "Dialogue in the Dark" ...Which was later reprinted by the title of "The Bargain".  In his book, Through Many Windows, Arthur writes an introduction to this story, which I'm including here:

"The whole culture was different then.  Movies were simplistic, almost naive.  Musical comedies were mostly tuneful nonsense.  Book were nonexplicit.  Even the theatre was fairly restrained.  It all changed drastically ...maybe male-female relationships most of all.  It's hard to say exactly why.  Maybe in the name of honesty and candor and freedom from hypocrisy --good motives all --we opened the door first to casual sex and then to indiscriminate sex and finally to pornography with all its dreary camp followers.  Most of us watched in troubled silence, not knowing what to do about it.  A sense of outrage is a fragile thing; it crumbles under a succession of shocks until finally it vanishes, leaving us accepting almost automatically what once we would have despised."


Yes, once we remove God, we remove any standard ...and we remove conscience.  We have come to accept the promiscuity of our teenagers, and feel we should provide them with contraceptives ...anything to mask the problem, and our schools can teach anything as long as it's not abstinence. So an act that is condoned, leads to what?  We know the problem of promiscuity exists, but we remove it from our mind ...until something happens to the body.  The next thing is to remove it from our mind by removing it from the body.  But it is not an it that is removed ...a living human being, the most innocent and defenseless human being is removed.  But also a bit of the conscience, a bit of our own humanity is also removed.  And it leaves us defenseless in a way, defenseless to further breaches of conscience.  We remove the standard, and we put our image of God into a deceptive chasm of our own guilt, which we refuse to acknowledge.  We invite this guise of fear, but we mostly childishly accept that we've become less than we are, based upon a false rejection which allows our mistakes to define us ...and we say it is who we are.  This compels us to embrace the cause of the pain, distancing ourselves from the available redemptive love that would ultimately free us from the tightening vise (or vice) that eventually squeezes us to the limit, not merely leaving a residue, but a metamorphic change creating a duality within us ---a sentinel, forbidding entry of past emotions; and a warrior bent not only on presenting an angry defense, but an offensive assault bent on the annihilation of conscience. If we get bit by a deadly snake, or let's say, a stonefish --- we may scream in pain, begging to cut off a limb; we can simply take the antivenom; or we can stubbornly allow the poison to take its course ...and die. I contend that the poison has taken its course ...and our dignity, our integrity, and even our sanity has been affected.  But unlike a venomous bite, it has affected others also ...like an contagious infection, it has reached epidemic proportions.  You'd think we'd be willing to give an arm and a leg to stop this senseless killing of babies.  Stubbornly, will we continue to refuse the antivenom?  Will we refuse to acknowledge the slow death to our conscience?  Yes, there appears to be a step-by-step climb, down into the depths of denial.  Missing the first step, we tumble into promiscuity ...and quickly fall down the remaining steps, until we reach bottom.  But if we also take a moment to reach into the depths of our soul, the bottom of our heart ...we can climb back out.  Don't choose abortion as an option!  What so many don't realize, is that choosing abortion is choosing to take life ...but it kills more than one innocent life, it also kills the realization within the hearts of others; those who will also be faced with that same heart choice.  And we see how the heart of some have already traveled ...now not just considering taking a baby's life after the baby is born, but so wickedly trying to justify and defend those evil views.  And we see how verbally vicious the proponents are ...doesn't that prove what I've already presented here?  The contrast presented is Pro-life, or Freedom of Choice.  Yes, we all have the choice to either join the ranks of the angry mob that is quickly gathering much strength, or we can gather every ounce of strength within our heart.  Whatever choices have been made in the past ...are past.   But God's forgiveness is not past.  God is not merely waiting for us at the top of the stairs --He knows we will stumble, and perhaps fall back --but he has sent His Son, and Jesus came to pick us up; and help us walk one step at a time.