I suppose I should have seen it coming. As I sat listening to Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores’ compelling, raw testimony during an April 1 hearing on a comprehensive sex education bill (AB230), I should have paid closer attention to the gasps of horror that came from the opposing side. I should have recognized it as the epicenter of a grand shock-wave that had yet to hit. Because that was the moment when Flores, Nevada’s first Latina assemblywoman, announced publicly for the first time that she had an abortion at age 16.
“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Flores tearfully said as she began to tell the story of her unplanned pregnancy. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”
When Flores found herself pregnant at 16, she went to her father to get money to have an abortion because, she said, she saw how difficult circumstances were for her sisters, already mothers so young. Flores’ story is just another thread in an amazing story of redemption that found a former gang member turn good by getting her GED, then law degree, and who now works as a state legislator. She credits her parole officer with helping change the course of her life, already marked by a juvenile record.
In her testimony on AB230, Flores described being raised — one of 13 children — by a single father after her mother walked out when she was nine. Flores described the hardship that she saw her sisters go through as teen parents and said she was determined to change the cycle of poverty so common among young parents. In fact, a child of teen parents is nine times more likely to live in poverty.
“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” Flores said. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”
It was a surprisingly sincere moment from a politician who risked public scrutiny in order to champion an update to Nevada’s current, abstinence-based sex education law, originally passed in 1980. With the Silver State ranking fourth in teen pregnancies (down from second in the nation just a few years ago), according to Guttmacher Institute, a lot is riding on this second bid in as many sessions of the Nevada Legislature to get medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education passed.
Within hours of the hearing, Reno Gazette-Journal political reporter Ray Hagar posted a story about Flores’ testimony. As far as I can tell, Hagar was the only mainstream journalist to cover the announcement, with his story posting about an hour before my re-cap of the hearing, here on The Sin City Siren. But just days later, local television producer Dana Gentry broke the news that Flores had cancelled her scheduled April 4 appearance on the political news show Ralston Reports after receiving death threats stemming from her abortion story.
Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages. Cancels Ralston Thur.
— Dana Gentry (@DanaGentryLV) April 3, 2013
I can’t help but wonder if Hagar and I share some indirect culpability in giving greater exposure to the kind of information that has been shown to incite anti-choice news outlets and organizations. But I refuse to let the anti-choicers dictate this news cycle. They would like nothing better than to steal focus from important reforms to Nevada’s current sex education law by throwing this political-grenade into the mix — distracting everyone with a drummed-up controversy about abortion using the age-old tactics of slut-shaming and blatant scare-tactics.
After all, haven’t we been here before, circa 2011, when Rep. Jackie Speier announced on the House floor that she had an abortion? Or when Michigan House Rep. Lisa Brown was silenced for using the word “vagina” while debating a women’s health care bill last year?
Those opposed to reproductive health care — lest I remind you that abortion is a legal form of health care — and those opposed to comprehensive sex education share the same goal: To silence and shame women. They seek to demonize human sexuality.
The real story here should be about Lucy Flores’ bravery and determination to not be shamed or silenced by the threats of an incredibly loud opposition, who is actually in the minority. Polls show that regardless of religious affiliation or political party, the majority of Americans support comprehensive sex education over an abstinence-only curriculum. And, on this year’s 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Pew Research Center released a poll stating that 42 percent of Americans find no moral objection to abortion, while only 25 percent do (the rest were a mix of other opinions). An NBC Poll that same week found support for abortion rights at an “all time high” with 70 percent of Americans saying they do not want to see Roe overturned.
But while the anti-choice folks have made hay with headlines declaring, “I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby,”* it is disturbing that any person or persons have threatened the Nevada lawmaker with violence. As a Christian and a mother, I pray for her safety. When I tucked my toddler into bed tonight, I hugged her that much harder as I struggled to hold back tears thinking about Lucy Flores, not because we should condescend to characterizing even highly educated, powerful women as simply “somebody’s daughter,” but because Lucy is a fellow human being living with fear tonight. I have empathy for the worry she must feel.
It is this complete lack of empathy that is at the core of the opposition to women’s autonomy, and their access to legal forms of health care, or even the education that can help them establish healthy relationships, healthy sexual experiences, and healthy futures. Rather than live and let live — or even turn the other cheek, as Jesus might say — the anti-choice movement cannot see the humanity in any person not living their life as a man in a heterosexual man’s world. Because if you are anything other than a heterosexual, cisgender man you are cast as unequal, weak, or even deviant. I daresay the only humans who come close to having equality with men in their patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic, and often blatantly racist world-view are the fetuses they fight so hard to legally classify as “persons.”
So, today, right now, I propose that we show our own personhood, so to speak. I propose that we take the #IHadAnAbortion meme of a few years ago and we publicly stand with Lucy Flores. Regardless of whether or not you have ever had an abortion, we need to stand with Flores and all the countless women she represents. Because she represents many who may be too afraid to come forward with their stories because of the same bullying, terrorist threats that Flores is confronted with right now.
“I don’t regret it because I am here, making a difference, at least in my mind, for the young ladies and letting them know their options. They can do things not to be in the situation I was in, to prevent it,” Flores said at the hearing about her decision to have an abortion. “How do we prevent this? We prevent by education. We prevent by giving them the information and the resources they need, so they don’t have to go their dad and say, ‘I need $200 for an abortion.'”
Today, I am asking you to join with me in standing up with Assemblywoman Lucy Flores. Let’s light up twitter with the hashtag #FierceFlores to honor the lawmaker’s honesty and her work championing the reproductive freedom and education of all Nevadans.
As a survivor of sexual abuse, I understand the power of speaking the truth even when others are afraid to hear it. So often, the only way to end stigma is to end the silence that allows shame and fear to fester. I am not ashamed of being a survivor of sexual abuse. There are many in our society who try to shame me into staying silent. But I am not going to stop talking about it. I speak for myself, and all those who have not yet found their voice. Our stories humanize the experience.
And it is no different for those who have had an abortion. No matter how much the opposition wants to frame it as a moral issue, or force the message that there are only certain kinds of abortions that are okay (hint: rape and incest) that trickles down into a meme that requires women to couch their reproductive decisions in socially acceptable terms. It doesn’t matter what the reason was that someone had an abortion because there is no reason to be ashamed of having an abortion.
Thank you, Lucy Flores, for your act of bravery and speaking out for all those who are silenced. Thank you #FierceFlores for speaking out to make a difference in Nevada!
* I do not link to anti-choice propaganda sites. I refuse to give them more traffic.
UPDATE: Because of the unexpected popularity of this meme — THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING LUCY FLORES! — please be patient with me in approving comments. WordPress locks any newcomers in limbo and I have to go through them by hand. Alas, The Sin City Siren is just a one-woman operation. Be patients, my lovelies!
The Sin City Siren 
Congratulations to Lucy Flores for her courage to tell her abortion story if we want to remove the stigma from abortion the more of us come out the better. Pro-lifers are not pro-life, they are pro-birth, pro-suffering, pro-torture, pro- soul murdering, pro-war, pro-death penalty, they really are pro-death masquerading as pro-lifers.
People that idealize their childhood and parents they will keep having limitless craving for scapegoats on whom they can avenge themselves for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears. Because of society stigma on abortion, pregnant poor vulnerable women that had an abortion or seeking an abortion make the perfect scapegoats to take revenge for the wrongs done to them by their own mothers or care givers when they were defenseless little children. Pro-life people suffer and secretly enjoy seeing others suffer too; they want others to have the same fate as them. We need people with courage to stand up to stupid laws politicians unconsciously create to suppress people the same way their parents or care givers suppress them when they were defenseless little children. It is NOT PRO-LIFE when people defend zygotes, not even a fetus, and despise women who decide in favor of abortion, whereas the same “pro-lifers” have no problem with spanking children or abusing them in any possible physical or psychological way AFTER birth, as many of them come from a religious/Christian background with, as we know, often brings on the weirdest kind of fanatic ideology. Indoctrination is child abuse. What we need are more laws to protect BORN LIFE, such as finally banning paddling and other awful, “legal” ways of child abuse from schools and homes and more money to support women who like to carry their pregnancies to term an give birth to new beings, instead of hypocrisy and moralism. Pro-lifers want to protect unborn life, but discard the ones already born. The pro-lifers hypocrisy is epic and knows no bounds. Pro-lifers says having an abortion is murder and mutilates our soul, I see it the other way around: carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being that we are not able to take care of and protect, THAT, is soul mutilating and soul murdering, and robs poor vulnerable women the chance at freedom and I talk from experience, knowledge is experience, everything else is just information and my experience has taught me that most information out there is misleading information and lies. I know without a doubt if I had carry a pregnancy to term when I was not ready, my soul would have been mutilated and would have been soul murder by bringing a new being into an abusive vicious circle and my soul would not have become whole and free like it is today. I was able to liberate a soul instead of contributing two more mutilated lost and confused souls into this world and continue the painful vicious circle. Pro-lifers fight so hard for the un-born beings because unconsciously and compulsively they want an endless supply of innocent powerless beings to use, exploit and project their disowned parts. Carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to new being we are not ready to nurture, take care of and protect, THAT, is soul murdering and contributes to the destruction of the world. Pro-lifers are soul murders disguised as pro-lifers and destroyers of life that is already born.
Please everyone click and read my story on CNN and at the bottom of my story on the left click on the button that says: “This belongs on CNN”
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-924935
I HEAR stigma everywhere! One of my missions in life is to help remove the stigma from abortion and put it where it belongs, because if should be stigma somewhere it should be on the people that unconsciously and compulsively coerce, manipulate vulnerable women to bring new life into this world that are in no position to take care of and protect emotionally and physically and because of these unresolved childhood wounds when they grow up put life on this planet in danger.
IT is so much larger than abortion. IT is about having control over our own bodies and person-hood. Our own futures and the futures of our families. I stand by Lucy Flores and all the other women who have been faced with this choice throughout history. I can only imagine the struggle that goes before the act or after it.
We need sex ed and again I am in favor of adult sex education too. We need to be clear about what constitutes rape. We need to be educated about std’s and AIDS and birth control and every possible outcome. We have choices. We need to keep them. We need to support each other. We need to stand together.
WE LOVE LUCY!!! I was so moved by our Assemblywoman Flores sharing her very personal story to support women and THEIR choices and to help make women and keep women strong! Thank you, ASSEMBLYWOMAN, LUCY FLORES, WE SUPPORT YOU!
Reblogged this on Musings of an Angry, but Inspired Educated Black Woman! and commented:
We need to appreciate and celebrate those champions who take a public stand for the tough issues!
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Wow i remember Lucy from Junior high and high school, I can relate as i too have changed the course of my life for the better through a challenging upbringing, I did marry at 18 and birthed y first child at 19 we are still married and live a good comfortable life together. Thank god for the Mentor he put in your path to lead you to where you are today, Lucy i commend you for sharing this story i am certain that there are many that can relate and you may also help change the course of there life. Many Successes!
I agree with the comment about our choices and the need to stand together. In a state where all forms of violence against women is one of the highest in the country it’s critical that all women continue to speak out at every opportunity. We may believe a woman chooses an abortion or recognize it as a medical procedure that is the inevitable next step in a series of horrific events initiated by an unknown or (frequently) known perpetrator. Or we may know that whatever the circumstances WE would never take that path. Despite our differences women must continue to support each other in whatever our decisions may be.
If you have taken one small action that was denied or challenged in the life of your mother or grandmother you can pay that debt forward by supporting other women such as Lucy Flores. You can support entities providing services such as those provided by Planned Parenthood, Rape Crisis, Safe House, the UNLV Women’s Center or Safe Nest.
Years ago the concept of “the personal is political” was the barometer for, or the filter through which many women considered the many actions they would take in their everyday lives. It would be a good thing for us to renew our efforts around that idea and for other women to consider adopting it in their lives. We absolutely must support courageous young women like Lucy Flores. Donate your energy, time or money to honor the risk she took in speaking out.
I had a medically necessary abortion due to a tubal (ectopic) pregnancy. The baby was wanted and planned for but because of it’s location was not viable. This was my first pregnancy and after I recovered, my husband and I went on to have 3 lovely, brilliant children. I mentioned this once to someone and was met with an unexpected reaction. I was informed I was a horrible human being to have chosen to live and have more children. I was told I should have died on the operating table and they wished I would burn in hell because I had a medically necessary abortion. Evidently, the person believed that it was better for me to die with the first baby than to live and go on to have more children. I couldn’t get over that reaction. I don’t regret the decision to live and have other children, but that person made me wonder what kind of world we live in, where one person would rather see you die a horrible death than have an abortion to save your life. It makes me wonder how they would react if faced with a similar situation.
I hear you, Shannon; I’m sorry you had to go through the loss, and I hope you gave hell to the thoughtless selfish kook.
I used an IUD for birth control; it perforated my uterus; I became pregnant and didn’t know it because I was spot bleeding. A high fever took me to a doctor, who admitted me to a hospital for a therapeutic abortion. A nurse who identified herself as Catholic to me in the prep room of the hospital actually told me that she would not assist me because she disagreed with my decision to have an abortion and thought I should risk hemorrhaging to death! Another nurse reported the religious freak for harassing me, and my angry (female) doctor dismissed that Catholic nurse on the spot and told her to stay away from all her patients. There are good sane Christians in this world, and there are absolute loony tunes religious wingnuts. Unfortunately, too many of the latter have been elected to public office.
not only would you have died, but your baby would have died as well. so that idiot said it would be better if you and the baby had died as a result of the tubal pregnancy. what a cruel ignorant beast. bless you for the choice you made, you did the right thing
Remember all sides are pro choice. The word anti is too often used and mis-used.
Shannon made an agreement with a soul that was coming through her and due to medical physical circumstances, the soul who could be one of the three came at a later time or chose another mother to come through. when you re-realize that the soul is eternal or that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, life becomes easy and there is no death; only transition. We all get to planet earth because of free-will and all of us must come through a mother. This is the ultimate choice! Thanks for letting me share. Permission to print by Tom Kelly
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I’m a little shocked at these comments. I absolutely think that sex ed. should be part of education. If teens/adults are able to obtain condoms etc. then I’m sure it would help. I do not on any possible level believe in abortion as a form of birth control though… “Shannon” you are not evil and should not have died on a table.. that person who said that should be ashamed. So I’m not commenting on a medical need at all… but to use it as a back up??? I can’t be the only woman out there that feels if we teach our children better then how can we say it is okay and is just an extra method? The emotional turmoil of an abortion is extreme and shouldn’t be overlooked. I have a few friends who say the “don’t regret it” comments are crap. Not only do they regret it they struggle not because of public scrutiny but because they are human and it is emotionally painful. So come on with the “it’s okay” comments. Birth control should be free and accessible.. But abortions? I’m a woman and I’m not okay with this thread of bravery.. whatever.
So, I wonder how many of these friends of yours if they were back in time would really choose differently. Who is saying abortion is being used as birth control here? I’m not shocked at any of the comments. I think abortion needs to remain a safe medical procedure for women.
You are aware that 60-80% of fertilized eggs in sexually active women do not imbed in the uterus and get flushed out during the monthly menstrual flow? I’ve learned that ignorant bible thumpers think that only unfertilized eggs go out with the menses. 50% of those fertilized eggs that do manage to burrow into the uterine wall miscarry–that’s a spontaneous abortion. Lo, “God” is aborting millions more “babies” than the medical profession. A woman owns her own body and the cells within it; my rights don’t vanish should I become pregnant and all rights go to that fertilized egg, which Personhood Amendments enact. The bible thumpers disgust me–especially those that want to force a raped woman to bear a criminals’ child if she doesn’t want to–women are not slave brood mares.
I agree with you. This has to do with woman’s rights as constitutional entities, as humans and also as citizens. are we so damaged as women that we cannot make our own decisions regarding conception, and if we are who’s fault is it? it is rather pecular, ironic in a devastating sense that men who do not give birth, or conceive, and are the actors in almost all violent acts against women, feel “entitled” to make these decisions. Perhaps one reason for this renewed hatred of women has to do with women gaining more economic and education based success than men do. we are the majority we should act like it!
Sarah, because you know a few women who regretted choosing abortion, it suddenly means the majority of women who say they don’t regret their decision are full of “crap”? I feel sympathy for women who may feel regret or loss after having had an abortion, and I think a range of feelings after such an emotional decision is totally normal, especially when women are being constantly shamed and stigmatized for that decision. But I know so many women who do not regret having had an abortion, who still know it was the right decision for them at the time in their circumstances, and who are so glad they had the right and ability to access safe, legal abortion care.
Abortion isn’t a “back-up”, and shouldn’t be seen as a form of BIRTH CONTROL, like condoms or birth control pills. Its a medical procedure, and is offered as a last resort CHOICE. As long as they are performed within the first twelve weeks, they are completely safe. They are not cheap. WOMEN who don’t want to have a child for what ever reason, should be allowed to use this option, Its their CHOICE. Abortions are a medical procedure, which in and of itself does not include “EMOTIONAL TURMOIL”. That happens as the result of a persons core values and belief system, and the “stigma” placed on the process by people, like religions and PRO-LIFERS, who seek to remove the choices of others, which is a form of oppression. Believe it or not, it is possible to have an abortion without any emotional turmoil attached to it. I have had two. And i do not have any qualms about either one. Part of being a responsible person/ parent is knowing that having a child for any reason other than purely “WANTING” that child, is only going to make all of the lives involved more difficult. This world is difficult enough already without bringing another child into it, for any reason other than purely loving and wanting that child. That would add more “emotional turmoil” than terminating the pregnancy, besides, Its no-one’s business other than the person having the procedure as to the “why”. Birth control should be free and accessible for all women and girls after the age of 13. And abortions should be recognized as a medical procedure and option for those women who choose it. I do not agree with any abortions performed past the first trimester or twelve weeks, since anything past that point, the fetus starts developing more. And any abortions that are performed past the twelve week limit should only be done so by a doctor who deems it medically necessary. @ Sarah- maybe you should believe your friends who say they don’t regret it, instead of thinking they are somehow emotionally and mentally challenged and only lying to you about it, and let them speak for themselves. If your not ok with it, that’s your business, and your CHOICE. Everyone is different. But people should have as many options available to them in order to make the right decisions. Life is about CHOICES!!! That kind of reasoning was given to us as human beings by god. People should value THAT!!! Especially since groups like the Pro-Lifers only seek to have it taken away.
When we stand with the brave, powerful words of our
Assemblywoman, Lucy Flores, we are standing with our mothers, our sisters, our aunts, ourselves, and especially with our own daughters and granddaughters—they will have a better, safer, more secure future if they receive the education that will help them to make informed choices about their lives. When Lucy is personally attacked, these cowardly, judgmental people are attacking all of us. We must stand up to them.
Sarah, I’m not saying I am not sad at having lost the first baby. As I stated above, it was planned and wanted. However, my choice was to have an abortion or die, simple as that. When faced with a lost pregnancy or death, I chose to terminate the pregnancy. My reasoning was that I can always make more children – because I survived. No more children will come if I’m dead. I do not regret deciding (and the doctor gave us the choice) to terminate. I am sad for having to do that, but in a life or death situation no decision is easy. Having no regrets about a making difficult decision is not the same as having no sadness for the lost pregnancy. I do not regret making the choice to survive.
If they take away abortion from everybody, then those of us whose lives are endangered by situations such as a tubal pregnancy will be left on the tables to die, just like that person wished for me. Then we will ALL be horrible people for letting that happen.
Sorry I really meant that I not only understand your situation but I support it also. But in general for the purpose of birth control I can’t support it. Life and death choices are different and not easily disregarded.
I’m pro abortion, because I’m pro choice. If you are against, ok. Everyone has it’s opinions. Her story is such a brave one, she has my total admiration and support.
Shannon, according ti Torah law, the life of the mother takes precedence over the life of a fetus, so in your case, an abortion would be permitted in the Jewish religion.
Lucy you are a strong young lady and I admire you for doing this. There will always be haters and people will always talk. No one knows what it feels like to be 16 and lost. I wish you the best today and everyday and keep going on strong. Much love and respect your friend always Leslie.
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I stand behind you, and thank you for standing up. I can’t judge you – no one can.
Sarah! and I am shocked by your comment, because your comment is full of stigma and you are part of the problem. You have a problem with abortion don’t have one, but to say people that had an abortion live in emotional turmoil is a lie. The only turmoil we feel is of people like you that unconsciously and compulsively transfer their unresolved guilt feeling into us. Having a child we are not ready to take care of and protect THAT would have me living in emotional turmoil for eternity. I don’t see any problem with abortion as a backup. The only repercussions of abortion are the ones people create in their own heads, but the repercussions of having children we are not ready to take care of and protect are massive!
The words below by Alice Miller could not be truer: “In disbelief, one asks oneself: Is it possible that the people behind such actions really are so clueless? Do they not know that no less than one hundred percent of all seriously abused children are unwanted? Do they not know what that can lead to? Do they not know that mistreatment is a parent’s way of taking revenge on the children they never wanted? Shouldn’t the authorities do everything in their power, in the light of this information, to see to it that the only children who are born are wanted, planned for, and loved? If they did, then we could put an end to the creation and continuation of evil in our world. To force the role of a mother on a woman who does not wish to be mother is an offense not just against her, but against the whole human community, because the child she bring into the world is likely to take criminal revenge for its birth, as do the many (mis)leaders threatening our lives. All wars we ever had were the deeds of once unwanted, heinously mistreated children. It is the right to lived life that we must protect wherever and whenever it is threatened. And it should never be sacrificed to an abstract idea.
Not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms. Many seek refuge in religious beliefs. In their weakness, they place their trust in “relics,” awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves. Anyone who claims to be a strong and knowledgeable authority for such people, and to be acting on their behalf, has the duty to be conscious of the appropriate facts. If they aren’t, if they ignore or neglect that duty, clamming instead that their palpable lack of information and their abstract conceptions of “life” are sanctioned by God and practiced in the name of humanity, they are acting against life, by misusing the weakness and trust of the faithful and dangerously confusing them. The injunction against abortion goes even further: Consciously or unconsciously, it represents support for cruelty against children and active complicity in the creation of unwanted existences, existences that can easily become a liability for the community at large.
When I see the passion with which Catholic priests – men childless by choice – fight against abortion, I can’t help asking what it is that motivates them. Is it a desire to prove that unlived life, as perhaps their own destinies suggest, is more important and more valuable than lived life? Was that, perhaps, how the parents of those passionately committed to stopping abortion thought, though they expressed it in different ways? Or is it a case of seeing to it that others share the same fate as oneself? Both are possible. Both are dangerous, when people are driven to blind and destructive actions by the dead hand of their own repression.
It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life. Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children. But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer: the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.
It is above all the children already born that have a right to life – a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of “the right to life” remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction.”
Read more: http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/protecting-life-after-birth.html
WOW!!!!! THAT WAS AWESOME!!! SYLVIE SHENE YOU ARE A TRUE HUMAN BEING….BRAVO!!! =)
Thanks! 🙂
The stigma of abortion can’t and shouldn’t be removed. You are taking the life of an innocent child. While I might agree that it is a legal right women have (with limits), I will never agree that it is an act that isn’t worthy of condemnation in some circumstances. Obviously abortion in the case of rape or health issues is different than people using it when they are irresponsible with their bodies. I find it hard to believe a 16 year old doesn’t know about the existence of condoms.
Also, the “don’t like abortion, don’t have one” is so inappropriate and misses the heart of the disagreement over abortion. Would you ever say “you don’t like murder?, don’t murder people.”? I hope not.
Thank you… I was starting to think I was totally on my own.
Amazing you haven’t tripped off a cliff and killed yourself with the blinders and narrow-mindedness of view you have there. There is a much larger world view you are missing entirely, but I rather have the idea it would be useless to waste the air. Good luck to you and all that befalls you. I hope your decisions are always so easy for you to make and that they turn out to be as perfect as you seem to believe they will. Because life is funny that way.
Thanks Lucy, and I am so sorry that your courage was met with such ignorance and HATRED! On behalf of the REST OF US…. THANK YOU, BLESS YOU!
I’m proud of her. She shared something very personal to educate, not to be discriminated againist, & not to receive death threats. Can anyone answer for me, if your pro-life, how death threats go hand and hand? What has this country come to? Ms. Flores thank you for your courage, please continue to be inspiration to those who will listen w/ an open heart and mind.
Brava Lucy and all who stand for what is rational and loving in this difficult world! May there be many more of us to stand up to those who would defile and degrade us, and then turn their backs on our struggles! Or worse yet, jeer or threaten. Those who truly love life have more compassion than that!
Lucy, I applaud you! Not only for having the courage to tell your story but for having the courage to have the abortion (hopefully early in your pregnancy) and becoming a useful, productive part of society! I wish people would mind their own business and live their own lives rather than try to dictate to others!
Yes, it’s totally safe and you shouldn’t feel bad??? Whatever. Use something.. don’t get pregnant? How can it be this obvious. Obamacare provides free birth control.
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Abortion-Drug-May-Have-Delayed-Baby-Deaths-OB-201134641.html
Bravo, Lucy!!
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Condoms break. Accidents happen-even under the best circumstances. No birth control is 100% effective. Some of these comments above indicate they think a person just goes out and gets pregnant and says to themselves ‘I’ll just have an abortion.’ Sounds to me like these folks don’t know anybody ever in a broken condom situation OR perhaps they don’t know anybody who’s ever had an accident that resulted in pregnancy.
So what you’re saying is that even if someone uses a condom and it breaks and the girl becomes pregnant she’s being irresponsible and should therefore be excluded from being able to terminate the pregnancy through a non-surgical method? Is the irresponsibility the fact that she had sex or the fact that the condom broke. Please tell me where using a condom is irresponsible?
They used precautions, tried to prevent the pregnancy but the method failed them. And I suppose the man in this situation is completely absolved of the shame you rain down on the female because he’s not the one carrying the fetus? How about a man that refused to wear a condom. Many men refuse. I don’t understand that. She used protection, and it failed, but somehow she’s irresponsible. Have these folks never had a birth control method fail them? Perhaps they’re lucky. Or perhaps they really haven’t ever walked in someone else’s shoes and would prefer to make judgments about someone’s character based on a broken condom.
Except she never said that she used protection and it failed. You want to absolve her of responsibility for her decision and say there should be no shame. I disagree. It is shameful to kill an innocent child when you could have used protection instead. While I certainly don’t believe anyone should threaten her for sharing her story, I’m not going to applaud her for making the decision to end the life of a child. That wasn’t brave; it was cowardly. That said, she is the only one that has to answer for her decision, so I leave it at that. She has a right to do what she wants (within legal bounds). I just wouldn’t expect people like me to think she is courageous.
I, too, wouldn’t expect a person like you to think she was courageous, either.
Nice comment. ❤ Education is really everything. Not legislating women's reproductive rights. Thank you.
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If a woman’s pesonal, private womb, an integral body part, is under the control of the state should she become pregnant, rather than in her own control, that woman is no longer a sovereign person. The most elementary, basic principle in our jurisprudence which swept away slavery – the right to own one’s own body organs – would cease to operate for the pregnant woman.
There are protections for viable fetuses in law.
As a married woman of faith I cannot imagine how anyone would presume that a state legislature (!) should get between a woman and her conscience, her dialogue with her God, her dialogue with her husband if she has one, her conversation with her doctor.
As for people who threatened her with death? Ah, “pro-life”, of course. Silly me.
Awesome comment, Katherine. Thank you. Eloquently put.
Been there, done that, have three daughters that have had the dubious pleasure as well. We survived. It was a blessing and I have 6 wonderful grandchildren that are wanted, loved, and taken care of. Had they or I not had this opportunity in our time of need then things would have been much more grim. Blessings on you for your courage to stand up to the ignorant and the superstitious haters in this country. You are supported by women EVERYwhere. You are wonderful. Thank you.
And to those who would condemn her for it…you weren’t there. Judge not, lest YOU be judged. There is NEVER, in a woman’s life, a more hurtful and desperate decision to ever be made unless it is to lose a child already here. She NEVER makes these decisions lightly, nor without great deliberation. No judge or jury on earth can do to her what she has chosen to live with herself. There are simply circumstances where there has to be a decision for the greater good. These are not easy ones. You haven’t a right to judge others. Only yourself.
Our authority is God and he says “Thou shalt not kill.” He judges us and to kill another human is wrong. Our response needs to be repentance and to look on Jesus who covers our sin with his precious blood.
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Christine, the only person should feel ashamed here it’s you, that because of the stigma on abortion in our society gives people like you, the opportunity to use abortion unconsciously and compulsively, as the hook and with the aid of hypocrisy, the free reins to transfer your own unresolved feelings of shame and guilt caused by your own traumas in your own childhood, but in order to keep your illusions of a loving image of your parents intact, women that had an abortion or seek one make the perfect scapegoats for you to use as object of transference, so who is the coward here, if someone is a coward is you hiding behind the mask of love for fertilized eggs and fetus, but does not show any love for real children that are already born and does nothing to help children being abused and tortured all around the world. So tell me again who is the coward? Flores is a courageous and responsible woman, that became aware of the responsibly of carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being and saw that she was too young and in no position to take on such a responsibility at the time and made a very wise choice by not contributing to one more lost and confused soul in our society and because of it, she is now a productive honest member of society. We need more true honest and courageous people like her in our society that changed their destiny and fate and became an example how to break free from the traps and lies society puts in front of you
Roe v. Wade should be overturned, or at least replaced, but not because it allows abortion. If this country wants to allow abortion, they should write and pass laws that make sense.
The problem with Roe is that it allows the definition of human life to legally vary based on the whim of an individual. Take the Scott and Laci Peterson situation as an example. Scott Peterson sits in prison convicted of two murders, that of his wife Laci and their unborn son Connor. The prosecutor decided that Connor was a human life and the court found Scott guilty of two murders, therefore legally determining that Connor was a human being. Yet under Roe, Laci could have legally aborted Connor at any time and Connor would have then been legally considered to be a “non-viable tissue mass.”
Here’s a hypothetical that further illustrates the problems with Roe: Two pregnant women at identical term duration are at Planned Parenthood deciding whether or not to abort. One decides her fetus is a baby and she’ll deliver, the other decides it is mere tissue and will abort. The two then exit P.P. together and are assaulted by a thug. Both are injured resulting in the loss of their pregnancy. Both sue the assailant for wrongful death. In both cases, the fetuses are now legally considered to be human. The women who was going to have an abortion changed her mind and decided her fetus was a human baby and legally, the fetus went from one legal definition to another.
Personally, I think early abortion should be legal and become increasingly more restricted as gestation progresses. The idea of human life somehow being legally instilled as a baby passes through a birth canal is quite illogical and any law that says that is bad law.
If you are completely “pro-choice” without restriction, then be honest with yourself and in your arguments. Take to the streets, proclaim that you think the termination of the life of human infants should be legal and get yourself a law saying so. But don’t call the rest of us names, who think that unrestricted abortion is a serious sociological problem.
Here here P. Knox!! My thoughts exactly!!
Removing the “stigma of abortion”?!! An abortion kills human life–that’s murder. Our authority is not ourselves but God and he commands us: “Thou shalt not kill.” Lucy Flores may have made something of her life but she was wrong to abort her baby and no amount of good will change that.
P. Knox, you make no sense whatsoever using your intellect by going around in your head creating a smoke screen to confuse yourself and others. Any women that don’t want to be pregnant will terminate her pregnancy in the early stages of pregnancy before a fetus is viable. And if women terminates a pregnancy later in pregnancy is because of very special circumstances like something went very wrong with pregnancy that might put the life of the woman in danger or is an abnormal fetus. Scott Peterson’s case she was close to her due date and could have survived outside of womb, so if she had not have been murder that baby was supposed to be born, so you are comparing fertilized eggs and fetuses that cannot survive outside of the womb with real formed babies that can live outside the womb. Today if I was in loving relationship and I woke up pregnant I would try to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to a new being, because I know without a doubt I could be a conscious mother and I would raise a conscious loving human being, but I would not do it in Arizona, because Arizona don’t allow abortions after 20 weeks and if a doctor a long my pregnancy would tell me my life would be in danger or the fetus was deformed I would abort because I would not bring into the world a being with physical and mental handicap that would not be able to live ever an independent autonomous life.
The word handicap above should have been “disability” I apologize for my English, but I am extremely dyslexic and plus English is not my first language and I am also tired right now. 🙂
Hilary, just because you think abortion is murder doesn’t make it so. I don’t share your beliefs and your religion. I am an autonomous person standing on my own two feet without the need of crutches, especially the crutch of religion. The stigma from abortion will be removed one person at the time, when one in three woman have an abortion in her life time, probably your own mother or sister or friend have had an abortion, but they keep it as a secret from you, because you are a judgmental religious nut and they don’t want to deal your BS. It’s humorous to me that people like you try to use their god and religion as an emotional straitjacket to control others and keep them chained in the emotional prison of religion with the reins of fear, shame and guilt. You live by your own beliefs and religion, but it doesn’t give you the right to push your beliefs into others. When it comes to making decisions regarding to my own body, it’s not up for debate and I don’t care what religion or beliefs you have. I don’t care what you think!!! I am going to do what is best for me and I don’t give a f what anyone thinks, if I did! I would not be here right now! Happy, joyous and free standing on my own two feet! 🙂
“The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu knew nothing of the way he suffered as a child from having been pent up in one room with ten brothers and sisters in a state of extreme neglect. As an adult living in the monomaniacal opulence of luxurious palaces he repressed all explicit memory of it. But implicit (body) memories of his childhood suffering remained, and they incited him to take vengeance on a whole nation. Like his own mother, the women in this dictatorship were not allowed to have abortions. Like his own parents, most couples in Romania were forced to have more children than they wanted or were able to take for. As a result Romanian orphanages were full to bursting with youngsters displaying severe behavioral disorders and disabilities caused by extreme neglect. Who needed all those children? No one. Only the dictator himself, whose unconscious memories spurred him to commit atrocities and whose mental barriers prevented him from recognizing them as atrocities. “ taken from the book “The truth Will Set you free” by Alice Miller
“It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life. Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children. But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer: the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.
It is above all the children already born that have a right to life – a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of “the right to life” remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction.” From the book “Breaking Down the Wall of Silence” by Alice Miller
The pro-lifers see a fertilized egg (zygotes) as a person, whatever, but that is not reality. The reality is a fertilized egg is nothing but a fertilized egg (Zygotes).
“Unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exist as a rule also a huge amount of people who were “wanted” indeed, but only for playing the role of the victims that their parents needed to be able to take revenge on. They were wanted to give their parents what the parents never had gotten from their own parents: love, adoration, attention and so many other things. Otherwise, why would so many people have five or more children when they have no time for them? Why do they adopt children if their body refuses to give them what they apparently “want?”
The never acknowledged, never felt pain of their childhood calls for being avenged. They go to church, they pray, they honor their parents, forgive them everything – and they mistreat their children at home, often in a very cruel way, AS IF THIS WERE THE MOST NATURAL THING, because they learned this so early. Their children learn this perverted behavior, also very early, and will later do the same; and so this perverse behavior continues for millennia. Unless people are willing to SEE the perversion of their parents and are ready to consciously refuse to imitate it.
Very few people dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.” Alice Miller
Pro-lifers says having an abortion is murder and mutilates our soul, I see it the other way around: carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being that we are not able to take care of and protect, THAT, is soul mutilating and soul murdering, and robs poor vulnerable women the chance at freedom and I talk from experience, knowledge is experience, everything else is just information and my experience has taught me that most information out there is misleading information and lies. I know without a doubt if I had carry a pregnancy to term when I was not ready, my soul would have been mutilated and would have been soul murder by bringing a new being into an abusive vicious circle and my soul would not have become whole and free like it is today. I was able to liberate a soul instead of contributing two more mutilated lost and confused souls into this world and continue the painful vicious circle. Pro-lifers fight so hard for the un-born beings because unconsciously and compulsively they want an endless supply of innocent powerless beings to use, exploit and project their disowned parts. Carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to new being we are not ready to nurture, take care of and protect, THAT, is soul murdering and contributes to the destruction of the world. Pro-lifers are soul murders disguised as pro-lifers and destroyers of life that is already born.
Please everyone click and read my story on CNN and at the bottom of my story on the left click on the button that says: “This belongs on CNN”
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-924935
Dear Sylvie,
I completely agree that your examples used to support abortion are horrible and should never be but they can not be an excuse to kill children. The horribleness we see around us is the result of sin—we live in a fallen world and sin can be seen all around us and even within us. So what is sin? Well, sin is the things we do but more so it is the state we are in and in that state we can not approach a holy God. So, what are we to do? What should our response be? Both you and I need to repent before a Holy God and that is the Good News!! God provided a way of salvation through Jesus Christ His Son. Christ came willingly to earth to suffer under the wrath and curse of God on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin so that we who look to Jesus are cleansed through His blood and can stand before God righteous. God forgives and heals in Christ—all of our iniquities! Psalm 103:3 “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases” How wonderful and awesome that we through Christ are no longer in a state of sin!! It doesn’t matter what we have done —Christ covers all our sin! John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Romans 8:8 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Please consider my words but search the scriptures on your own. The Gospel of John and the book of Romans would be a good place to start.
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Hmmm..so those who purport to be “pro life” issue death threats? How very hypocritical…regardless of your stand on this issue.
Pro-choice = a euphemism for the choice to murder an unborn baby.
Pro-life = a euphemsim for the accepting of one’s responsibilities.
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Pro-life = pro-soul murder and pro-suffering.
Dear Hilary,
You took a long time to respond, but I did not finished reading it because you are a little child lost in an emotional prison of religion and you would love to bring me into your emotional prison with you, but it will not work with me, because there is no hooks in me for to hook the reins of guilt and shame to pull me in into your emotional prison. No matter what you or anyone says fertilized eggs and fetuses are not children. Just like Alice Miller says: “It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life. Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children. But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer: the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.
It is above all the children already born that have a right to life – a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of “the right to life” remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction. “
Read more: http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/protecting-life-after-birth.html
But facts is something people like you is not interested in. People who delegate their own responsibility to a god or higher powers always ignore the facts; they don’t care about truth and facts. So I know very well people like you will never be able to open their eyes to see and feel and I am not writing for people like you that their eyes have been cemented with the aid of hypocrisy and religion, but I am writing to help vulnerable women and be a support to them in making the best choices for them and their families and not let themselves be manipulated and coerced by shame and guilt feelings projected into them by unconscious people like you masquerading with the illusion of love for the unborn to carry pregnancies to term and give birth to children they are not ready for. The pro-lifers hypocrisy is epic. Pro-lifers says having an abortion is murder and mutilates our soul, I see it the other way around: carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being that we are not able to take care of and protect, THAT, would be mutilating my soul and would be soul murdering, and would have robbed me the chance at freedom and I talk from experience, knowledge is experience, everything else is just information and my experience has taught me that most information out there is misleading information and lies. I know without a doubt if I had carry a pregnancy to term when I was not ready, my soul would have been mutilated and would have been soul murder by bringing a new being into an abusive vicious circle and my soul would not have become whole and free like it is today, and I was able to liberate a soul instead of contributing two more mutilated lost and confused souls into this world and continue the painful vicious circle. Pro-lifers fight so hard for the un-born beings because unconsciously and compulsively they want an endless supply of innocent powerless beings to use, exploit and project their disowned parts. Carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to new being we are not ready to nurture, take care of and protect, THAT, is soul murdering and contributes to the destruction of the world. Pro-lifers are soul murders and destroyers of life that is already born.
It’s amazing to me how people refuse to pass laws to protect real children already born, because that would be interfering with parents rights how to raise their children’s, they say, but have no problems in passing laws interfering with the women’s rights to body autonomy. They care about fertilized eggs and fetuses, but once children are born, they do nothing to protect real children’s rights. Their hypocrisy is sickening. This is just a façade to control and keep women down.
Also pro-life = Irresponsible, because what could be more irresponsible than bringing children into the world we are in no position to care of and protect.
“The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu knew nothing of the way he suffered as a child from having been pent up in one room with ten brothers and sisters in a state of extreme neglect. As an adult living in the monomaniacal opulence of luxurious palaces he repressed all explicit memory of it. But implicit (body) memories of his childhood suffering remained, and they incited him to take vengeance on a whole nation. Like his own mother, the women in this dictatorship were not allowed to have abortions. Like his own parents, most couples in Romania were forced to have more children than they wanted or were able to take for. As a result Romanian orphanages were full to bursting with youngsters displaying severe behavioral disorders and disabilities caused by extreme neglect. Who needed all those children? No one. Only the dictator himself, whose unconscious memories spurred him to commit atrocities and whose mental barriers prevented him from recognizing them as atrocities. “ taken from the book “The truth Will Set you free” by Alice Miller
Dear Sylvie,
I’m sorry that you did not read my previous reply and I do hope that you will read this post in its entirety. It does contain my Christian worldview, just as your reply contains your worldview. A side note: The Church/religion and the Bible are two different things. The Bible is the Word of God not the Church or religion.
We come from two polar-opposite viewpoints. I believe in God (the one, true God) and you do not. I believe that God is the authority over all and you believe authority comes from within our autonomous selves. If authority comes from within ourselves this issue over abortion will never end: Someone will always want to push the definition a little further: a child isn’t life until it’s lived 6 weeks out of the womb, a child isn’t life until it’s self-sufficient, etc. They can use the same “soul mutilation” argument. My goodness, you can even use the “soul mutilation” argument for a reason to murder a disabled person: their mutilated soul needs to be released/ liberated from their suffering. My point is this: if there is no ultimate authority then who decides where the line is drawn that defines life? There has to be a reference point. Without a reference point all kinds of questions are raised and if I follow your logic the answers change depending on who you ask! Who decides since everyone is an autonomous person? When does a fetus that is “not life” get life? Is the acquiring of a soul life? When does a fetus get a soul—while still in the womb or only when it breathes air? You’ve said that souls are liberated through abortion. If a woman liberates those souls through abortion, isn’t she a soul murderer? Is a “soul life” that breathes air more important than the “soul life” that breathes amniotic fluid? Who decides? What constitutes violence against children? What about failed ate-term abortions? Do those children then act out because of that violence done to them? Should those children instead be grateful for their mothers who tried to release and liberate their souls? There has to be a reference point and that reference point is God.
What you are ultimately recognizing is that the world has a problem. But the world’s troubles are not caused by repressed memories of childhood cruelty and the world’s problems will not be solved by aborting children. Even more so, you believe the problems in this world is outside of us—projected feelings, repressed memories of cruelty and actions based on what is not remembered consciously and I believe the problem is within us. The problem is sin. Women feel guilt for aborting their children because they have broken God’s law not because pro-lifers coerce, manipulate and project feelings of guilt onto them. Nicolae Ceausescu did wrong things because he was evil and completely immersed in his sin not because he “knew nothing of the way he suffered as a child [and] he repressed all explicit memory….whose unconscious memories spurred him to commit atrocities.” If I accept your definition of responsibility then EVERYTHING is somebody else’s fault. Responsibility for children born that are not wanted is with the men and women who want to please themselves sexually without consequences. Responsibility for abused and abandoned children is with men and women who are selfish and refuse to take responsibility for the life they were given to care for. Responsibility for children conceived in rape is with men who deny God and give in to their base desires. Responsibility for all the children who are born and do not know God is with the men and women who deny God and do not teach their children the truth. I do not delegate my responsibility to God but rather my faith informs the truth and facts in this world—and the world’s problems confirm the Bible—we live in a sinful and fallen world. It is because I believe this and I know that I have been saved from my sin by Jesus Christ that it increases my responsibility—I now act in thankfulness for the gift God has given me in Christ. God tells us what that life of thankfulness looks like through the Bible.
Alice Miller admits that abortion is evil but she thinks it is allowable because it prevents another evil: abused, abandoned children. An evil action (abortion) is not an ethical, moral or appropriate approach to correct a previous evil action (abuse). Children will continue to be abused, women will continue to abort their children, rulers will continue to be cruel because we live in a fallen world and humanity denies God. The answer to the world’s problems is not to look within ourselves because that is where the problem is. We need to repent and be saved through Christ.
What vulnerable women and women who are experiencing guilt from an abortion need to know is that Jesus saves. He takes our life and makes it new, Jesus saves. He gives us freedom from sin, Jesus saves. It doesn’t matter what you have done, Jesus saves. It doesn’t matter who you are, Jesus saves. It doesn’t matter where you are, Jesus saves. All you have to do is look to Jesus who redeems our life from the pit. There is Good News in Christ. Please consider reading the Gospel of John and the book of Romans for yourself. They are a good place to start to understand who God is and what he has done for us in Christ.
Hilary
I had two abortions. The first one I didn’t feel guilty about. Then I had a baby, which was the most wonderful experience of my life. The second abortion I had was when I became pregnant when my baby was a year and a half old. I got talked into it by a relative who told me that my baby was too young and it would take away his one on one time with me. Later, I became religious and learned about the concept of babies being gifts from God. I met new friends who had big families and I saw first hand how great it was and how the children flourished. I really wanted to have another child so that my son would have a sister or brother, but unfortunately it was not to be. I prayed often for forgiveness for making the mistake of not viewing my pregnancies as the gifts that they were. Recently, a wonderful thing occurred. My son and his wife had twin baby girls. Thank God, I am a grandmother!
We don’t know what God has in mind for us, but if we have faith that he put each of us here on earth for a unique purpose, then we will understand that each new soul is precious. We are the caretakers of our children and that is a holy mission that should not be taken lightly. An abortion may be necessary in the case when there are medical complications and the mother’s life is in danger. There may also be extreme psychological reasons, like in the case of rape. However, most people fail to understand the true spiritual implications of having an abortion because this information is not available (as in my case). Had I heard an alternative viewpoint, I would not have had the abortions. The blatantly anti-religious aspect of the women’s movement does a disservice to women.
Dear Hilary, you are classic case of someone living in denial taking refuge in the bible and God and Jesus as lid to keep your painful feelings at bay and unconsciously and compulsively looking for scapegoats to project your disowned feelings into. And of course I did not read all your BS. People like you are just making noise to hide the facts from themselves and others trying to push their beliefs on others so they don’t have to feel their own painful repressed emotions of the child they once were. Most people falsify their true feelings and like robots go into the world expressing feelings they don’t have in order to be accepted by the people around so they don’t have to face and feel their own fears of being alone. You are probably the product of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, now, you want to manipulate others to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to new beings they are not ready for, reenacting your own childhood drama, unconsciously and compulsively doing to others what once was done to you. Pro-lifers are driven by the head hand of their own repression to do to others what once was done to them when they were defenseless little children, they suffer and make others suffer, and unconsciously they want others to have the same fate as them.
Alice Miller’s words below could not truer: “Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can—depending on the decree of government or party—be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.
This is the case with people who had the good fortune of being sure of their parent’s love even if they had to disappoint certain parental expectations. Or with people who, although they did not have this good fortune to begin with, learned later—for example, in analysis—to risk the loss of love in order to regain their lost self. They will not be willing to relinquish it again for any price in the world.
The artificial nature of moral laws and rules of behavior is most clearly discernible in a situation in which lies and deception are powerless, i,e., in the mother-child relationship. A sense of duty may not be fruitful soil for love but it undoubtedly is for mutual guilt feelings, and the child will forever be bound to the mother by crippling feelings of guilt and gratitude. The Swiss author Robert Walser once said: “There are mothers who choose a favorite from among their children, and it may be that they will stone this child with their kisses and threaten… its very existence.” If he had known, had known on an emotional level, that he was describing his own fate, his life might not have ended in a mental institution.
It is unlikely that strictly intellectual attempts to seek explanations and gain understanding during adulthood can be sufficient to undo early childhood conditioning. Someone who has learned at his or her peril to obey unwritten laws and renounce feelings at a tender age will obey the written laws all the more readily, lacking any inner resistance. But since no one can live entirely without feelings, such a person will join groups that sanction or even encourage the forbidden feelings, which he or she will finally be allowed to live out within a collective framework.
Every ideology offers its adherents the opportunity to discharge their pent-up affect collectively while retaining the idealized primary object, which is transferred to new leader figures or to the group in order to make up for the lack of a satisfying symbiosis with the mother. Idealization of a narcissistically cathected group guarantees collective grandiosity. Since every ideology provides a scapegoat outside the confines of its own splendid group, the weak and scorned child who is part of the total self but has been split off and never acknowledge can now be openly scorned and assailed in this scapegoat. The reference in Himmler’s speech to the “bacillus” of weakness which is to be exterminated and cauterized demonstrates very clearly the role assigned to the Jews by someone suffering from grandiosity who attempts to split off the unwelcome elements of his own psyche.
In the same way that analytic familiarity with the mechanisms of splitting off and projection can help us to understand the phenomenon of the Holocaust, a knowledge of the history of the Third Reich helps us to see the consequences of “poisonous pedagogy” more clearly. Against the backdrop of the rejection of childishness instilled by our training, it becomes easier to understand why men and women had little difficulty leading a million children, whom they regarded as the bearers of the feared portions of their own psyche, into the gas chambers. One can even imagine that by shouting at them, beating them, or photographing them, they were finally able to release the hatred going back to early childhood. From the start, it had been the aim of their upbringing to stifle childish, playful, and life-affirming side. The cruelty inflicted on them, the psychic murder of the child they once were, had to be passed on in the same way: each time they sent another Jewish child to the gas ovens, they were in essence murdering the child within themselves.”
From the book: “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence” By Alice Miller
Read more: http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/06/where-there-is-no-love-there-must-be.html
Dear Sylvie,
Thank you for writing me back so quickly. Thank you also for this opportunity to to verbalize my beliefs. After I read your reply, I did ask my father if I was unplanned and I was very relieved to find out that I was very much wanted and planned for because my parents suffered from infertility. Although, now I do wonder what happened during my childhood that was so traumatic and cruel that I have repressed it and now act on those implicit (body) memories which have incited me to take vengeance on others by making them feel shame in guilt for behavior they did themselves. Sylvie, you have ears but you do not hear and you have eyes but you do not see.
Hilary
Here’s an interesting article.
http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/why-dr-kermit-gosnells-trial-should-be-a-front-page-story/274944/
Dear Hilary,
A lot of people unconsciously and compulsively go to extreme lengths to create new beings so they can have an available object to project or transfer their disowned painful repressed feelings.
Poisonous Pedagogy— The pedagogical conviction that one must bring a child into line from the outset has its origin in the need to split off the disquieting parts of the inner self and project them onto an available object. The child’s great plasticity flexibility, defenselessness, and availability made it the ideal object for this projection. The enemy within can at last be hunted down on the outside. Peace advocates are becoming increasingly aware of the role played by these mechanisms, but until it is clearly recognized that they can be traced back to methods of child raising, little can be done to oppose them. For children who have grown up being assailed for qualities the parents hate in themselves can hardly wait to assign these qualities to someone else so they can once again regard themselves as good, “moral,” noble, and altruistic. Such projections can easily become part of any Weltanschauung. Alice Miller
“Unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exist as a rule also a huge amount of people who were “wanted” indeed, but only for playing the role of the victims that their parents needed to be able to take revenge on. They were wanted to give their parents what the parents never had gotten from their own parents: love, adoration, attention and so many other things. Otherwise, why would so many people have five or more children when they have no time for them? Why do they adopt children if their body refuses to give them what they apparently “want?”The never acknowledged, never felt pain of their childhood calls for being avenged. They go to church, they pray, they honor their parents, forgive them everything – and they mistreat their children at home, often in a very cruel way, AS IF THIS WERE THE MOST NATURAL THING, because they learned this so early. Their children learn this perverted behavior, also very early, and will later do the same; and so this perverse behavior continues for millennia. Unless people are willing to SEE the perversion of their parents and are ready to consciously refuse to imitate it.Very few people dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.” Alice Miller
This is why I would never bring a child into the world and give it up for adoption for others to use for theirs projections. Sorry you cannot have my unborn children for you to use. Pro-lifers need to stay out of women’s uteruses go be a dictator somewhere else.
The pro-lifers see a fertilized egg (zygotes) as a person, whatever, but that is not reality. The reality is a fertilized egg is nothing but a fertilized egg (Zygotes).
“The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu knew nothing of the way he suffered as a child from having been pent up in one room with ten brothers and sisters in a state of extreme neglect. As an adult living in the monomaniacal opulence of luxurious palaces he repressed all explicit memory of it. But implicit (body) memories of his childhood suffering remained, and they incited him to take vengeance on a whole nation. Like his own mother, the women in this dictatorship were not allowed to have abortions. Like his own parents, most couples in Romania were forced to have more children than they wanted or were able to take for. As a result Romanian orphanages were full to bursting with youngsters displaying severe behavioral disorders and disabilities caused by extreme neglect. Who needed all those children? No one. Only the dictator himself, whose unconscious memories spurred him to commit atrocities and whose mental barriers prevented him from recognizing them as atrocities. “ taken from the book “The truth Will Set you free” by Alice Miller
“It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life. Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children. But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer: the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.
It is above all the children already born that have a right to life – a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of “the right to life” remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction.” From the book “Breaking Down the Wall of Silence” by Alice Miller
In the spirit of closure, I am going to ask Hilary and Sylvie to move your conversation elsewhere. While this post and this blog is a space to have discussion, I feel yours would be better suited in a forum dedicated to your own needs. Thank you for sharing your spirited opinions. And thank you for keeping things civil and respectful. Good luck!
Sin City Siren, thank for the opportunity to share ourselves and I don’t want to impose, because I don’t want to be here if I am not welcome, but I just like share a few words about the link Hillary suggested for me to look at and will be my last comment here, but if you don’t accept this last comment I understand. At first I was not going to open the link Hillary suggested, because I thought was pictures of dead babies like most pro-lifers like to send me, which, these pictures are misleading because most abortions happens in the earlier stages of pregnancy when is just a fertilized egg (Zygotes) very far from being a formed baby and late term abortions are very rare and if they do happen is only because something went very wrong with the pregnancy, but this morning I decided to open the link and I remember seeing this story on CNN. The crimes of Dr. Kemit Gosnell committed against those women and babies that came to him for help are appalling, because every baby born alive should be protected and care for. But of course this horrific tragedy could have been avoided if these very vulnerable women had found the help they needed at the right time. It’s sad pro-lifers exploit this tragedy to push their agenda and mislead the public.
Again thank you for the opportunity and good luck to you too,
Sylvie
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Does your blog have a contact page? I’m having a tough time locating it but, I’d like to
send you an e-mail. I’ve got some ideas for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great site and I look forward to seeing it expand over time.
All my contact information is on the Contact/Follow Me page.
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