10 Favorite Blog Posts from 2011

I thought I’d join the blogger bandwagon and finish up my week of year-end lists with a list of my top blog posts from 2011. Because this blog is only two weeks old, I’m including links to five favorite posts from each of my former blogs. I should note that these are a subjective choice. Each of these posts got a lot of response from readers in one way or the other—comments, shares on Facebook and Twitter, page views, etc.—and is also one of my favorites.

I wish you a Happy New Year! Looking forward to lots of good conversation in 2012.

Five Favorite Posts from “Choices That Matter” on Reproductive Ethics

1. What if Abortion Lost Its Power as a Divisive Issue? — After having avoided writing lots about the abortion issue per se in my several years of writing about reproductive ethics, I suddenly found myself defending my pro-choice views publicly when Christianity Today editors told me I could no longer blog for them because I had stated my support for abortion rights on my personal blogs. That was the beginning of some hard lessons in the power of the abortion issue to drive a powerful wedge between Christians.
2. Jewish Perspectives on Reproductive Technology, part 1 and part 2 – Despite sharing some fundamental tenets of faith, Jews and Christians tend to evaluate reproductive technologies, especially preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), quite differently.
3. A Troubling Cascade of Choices — I had a visceral reaction to a New York Times article on the selective reduction of twin pregnancies, which are often the result of IVF. This phenomenon perfectly illustrates how one reproductive choice influences many other choices down the line.
4. Beating on the Chest of God — My friend Mary Caler, a sociologist who has studied infertility professionally and dealt with it personally, wrote this beautiful essay about typical Christian responses to suffering.
5. Myths and Analogies series of posts — I did a series early in 2011 on various myths that pop up in media coverage of reproductive technology (such as the idea that, because IVF leads to happy parents and healthy babies, we no longer have to be concerned with ethical questions).

Five Favorite Posts from “Five Dollars and Some Common Sense” on Faith, Family, and Disability

1. Why I’ll Never Be a Tiger Mother…Or a Best-Selling Author — Like many other writers, I was disheartened by how effectively extremism sells books.
2. One Ring to Rule Them All — The story of how I ended up with a new wedding ring in our 14th year of marriage.
3. My Cancer Playlist — I looked at the songs I chose for the iPod playlist that I listened to obsessively while undergoing breast cancer treatment in early 2011, finding in it clues for how we humans deal with adversity.
4. In Defense of Blogging: A Wordy Blogger’s Manifesto — This is a good old-fashioned rant against all of the complaints and accusations non-writers make about bloggers.
5. A Reminder of All I Have Forgotten — No matter how many pictures we take or how often we remind ourselves to take note of our growing children, most of our days will them will ultimately be forgotten. We can’t change that, but we can still pay attention.