Knowledge is Power: Fetal Development

"Prior to the earliest abortion, the unborn already has every body part she will ever have. At eighteen days after conception the heart is forming, and the eyes start to develop. By thirty days, she has multiplied in size ten thousand times. She has a brain and blood flows through her brains."

By the conclusion of the third month in the womb, the unborn baby has developed every body part and organ required to live.

"For the final six months, nothing new develops or begins functioning. The child only grows and matures."

Source: Randy Alcorn's ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments

Quote of the Day from Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat pens a great opinion piece that juxtaposes the burden of infertility with the burden of abortion. And it gives us the quote of the day:

"This is the paradox of America's unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed."

Knowledge is Power: The Case for Life

Education is key in the pro-life movement. We must reason with love, logic, and facts. To that end, I'll highlight excerpts from the gold standard book, "ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments".

Today's excerpt:

If there is uncertainty about when human life begins, the benefit of the doubt should go to preserving life. If you're driving at night and you think the dark figure ahead on the road may be a child, but it may just be the shadow of a tree, do you drive into it, or do you put on the brakes? If we find someone who may be dead or alive, but we're not sure, what is the best policy? To assume he is alive and try to save him, or to assume he is dead and walk away?

Shouldn't we give the benefit of the doubt to life? Otherwise we are saying "This may or may not be a child, therefore it's all right to destroy it."

MTV Can't Hide Truth of Abortion Trauma Despite its Best Efforts

Jill Stanek makes several good points in her post about MTV's "No Easy Decision" episode of 16 and Pregnant. Here is one point I should have spent more time unpacking in my post from yesterday, because it is a central takeaway from the episode:

But there was no getting around how disturbed the post-abortive mothers were in its aftermath, despite their rhetoric.

I discussed No Easy Decision with a single young woman who also watched it. She is pro-life, but I was still surprised by her take. She said she had always focused on the fact that abortion was murder but never took the aborting mothers into account. “I just thought they had their abortions and got on with life,” she told me.

But when she saw the pain abortion leaves behind – how “you remember, you can’t forget,” as Markai said… how, despite Katie stating, “I didn’t have a lot of regret or sentimental feelings,” she still cried and admitted she has trouble being around her young nephew now – my friend said she was saddened for them and got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I never ever want to be in that situation,” she told me. That was her take-away.

Thus, although MTV and its backers tried their best to promote abortion as acceptable, common, and for the greater good, the reality that what abortion does and the aftermath it leaves behind still came through.

As they say, do read the whole thing.

Lessons & Thoughts on MTV's Abortion Episode: "No Easy Decision"

On December 28th, MTV aired an episode of 16 and Pregnant in which a teen mom finds herself pregnant again. Ultimately, she chooses abortion. There are myriad ways to unpack this episode but I'll focus on two:

Lessons for Sidewalk Counselors

If you are a sidewalk counselor and you haven't seen this episode, you really must. It gives you an inside look to the decision making and thought process of an abortion minded woman. This is crucial in our work.

Here's my key takeway from the episode:

You often read in training documentation for sidewalk counselors not to use the word baby, at least initially. I've been thinking for some time this is wrong-headed and this episode tends to prove this out.

It's clear from the episode that this couple is either not informed or in denial about fetal development. Case in point: the boyfriend makes a comment to his pregnant girlfriend, Markai, that if he "did see 10 fingers and 10 toes, I wouldn't be able to do it" (the abortion). He also says not to think of that "thing" as a baby. The abortion facility counselor also told her not to think of it as 10 fingers, 10 toes, and a forehead. And to think of it as it is, a clump of cells. Markai was 6 weeks pregnant. Does this look like a clump of cells to you?

Live Action has documented over and over again the lies that abortion clinics tell their clients about fetal development. Planned Parenthood instructs its employees not to use the word baby in the clinic. It is a forbidden word. Because PP knows that they can diffuse the risks of the abortion and the ugly post-abortive pictures but what they cannot do is break the bond of mother to baby. So they won't use the word. It's tissue, a blob of cells, a mass. It's anything BUT a baby.

Pregnant women considering abortion may not be informed about the current state of development of the child they are carrying but what was also evident from the episode is the women did know that the supposed clump of cells does become a baby should the baby be carried to term.

Markai, post-abortion, pointed to her 1st daughter and told her boyfriend, "nothing but a bunch of cells can be her". Another post-abortive woman, who they featured in their discussion panel after the episode aired, said that she stayed at a hotel after the abortion because she knew that she could not go home and be around her sister's baby. Then this wounded soul started to cry. More on that later.

So, sidewalk counselors - use the word BABY. Use it early and often. Re-establish the bond. Make the baby real. Find out how many weeks pregnant she is and tell her about her baby. Remind her about the outcome of a pregnancy - a full, human person. Planned Parenthood doesn't want to use the word baby. Do we need any other evidence on why we should use the word?

Another lesson: Never in the episode do you hear the couple think about what is best for the baby. They think of the impact to their 1st child and to their lives but never about the impact to the baby. Help the mom think of the baby's rights and considerations as you counsel her.

MTV Gives Unbalanced View on Abortion...Duh.

Between the episode itself and Dr. Drew's commentary, it was obvious that MTV wanted to minimize the impact of abortion on the woman. The episode failed to adequately balance its commentary with the risks inherent in the procedure and did not discuss to any real extent the life long trauma many, many women have after the abortion. The episode didn't discuss Pregnancy Resource Centers or invite on their panel a post-abortive woman who openly regrets her abortion. And there are many. I will give MTV credit for not editing out Markai's pain. It accurately demonstrates the heartache women feel about abortion. And why this pain? Because in the end, a woman knows she is ending the life of her child.

Finally, Markai made a comment that has stayed with me. She said, post-abortion, "I wonder if we could have made a better one (decision)." Yes, my dearest, you could have. And this is why I sidewalk counsel: to tell these women they are strong enough. They are courageous enough. And I and others will help you.