Tomorrow, in Madrid, there will be a pro-life rally "Cada Vida Importa" (Every life matters). Most of my friends who can squeeze time into their schedule are heading there to show their support. It is especially relevant in Spain, where there is currently an ongoing battle to liberalize abortion, seeing it as a 'necessary step' to be fully modernized like the rest of Western Europe. I, like a few others, won't be able to make it but will support them with prayers and ask you for yours.
More info here and here (in Spanish).
Just to recap on the topic of the scourge of abortion:
Last year abortion killed 41.6 million (report by Guttmacher!!!)
And last, but not least, you have to read this profoundly sad but hopeful reflection by an abortionist, Lisa Harris, who aborted 18-week baby even as she felt her own 18-week baby kicking. Excerpts (read in full here):
With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick - a fluttery "thump, thump" in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a "thump, thump" in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes - without me - meaning my conscious brain - even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling - a brutally visceral response - heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.
...
I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother's uterus - but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and unspeakable.
...
[...] the psychological burdens second trimester abortion care lays upon its providers, including "serious emotional reactions that produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances (including disturbing dreams), effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish."
...
Harris conjectures that the needs of abortionists in this regard are not met because "frank talk like this is threatening to abortion rights." "While some of us involved in teaching abortion routinely speak to our trainees about the aspects of care I've described, we don't make a habit of speaking about it publicly. Essays like this bring the inevitable risk that comments will be misinterpreted, taken out of context and used as evidence for further abortion practice restrictions," she writes.
"We might conclude at this point that a provider who feels that abortion is violent is simply ambivalent, conflicted, is not really committed to women's abortion rights, and just shouldn't be doing this work," Harris writes. "'Pro-life' supporters may argue that the kind of stories and sentiments I've relayed spell the end of abortion - that honest speech acts regarding the reality of abortion will weaken the pro-choice movement to the point where it cannot sustain itself any longer.
As you may very well imagine, my first response was, "How could this woman not see?!" All that she wrote was contradicting each other; how can she maintain that the pro-choice position is tenable for the well-being for women when it must be obvious even to her:
(1) the incongruous, injustice of born-alive protection and legal status of abortion, and
(2) her own 'visceral response' which she tried to rationalize and explain away, and (3) the 'psychological burdens' suffered by 'second-trimester providers' is precisely because our consciences know the action cannot be defended morally ever. EVER.
I feel very sad reading the article, but at the same time hopeful that she, like many other abortionists, will come to see the inconsistencies in her position and recant from this kind of work.
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