#alllivesmatter

I know I said I was going to write about my school plans for this year, and also it’s Friday, so there ought to be quick takes, but then, this came across my screen this morning and I just can’t deal. I’ll put up my school stuff tomorrow as learning notes, and have a brief holiday from quick takes, because I won’t be able to get through the day if I don’t take a couple whacks at this insanity.

So, if you’ve clicked on the link, and made it all the way through the article, well, that’s amazing, you should stop and go have an aspirin, as I just did. The irony of the author’s name, Mary Elizabeth, is almost too much for me. But let’s cope with just a little bit of what she says. And, remember, this is Salon.com, it is almost the lowest hanging Internet fruit there is, so we won’t be so worried about higher thought, like nuance, or morality. She opens with a real gem,

Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life.” Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of … not-life? That’s why the language of those who support abortion has for so long been carefully couched in other terms.

I think the word she’s groping around for is ‘death’. It is grim to say out loud that you’re on the side of death. That’s why we get famous “Christians” tweeting that they’re on the side of the born, the one who made it out alive. Anyway, I’m so glad that she goes ahead and brings up Satan in the first few words. It’s nice to have him right out there on the table, for everyone to see, as we’re picking through all the parts, little tiny baby lungs and hearts. Satan is all over this mess. He’s there in the clinic, in the families and friends of women who encourage her into the clinic, in the culture, in this article, in the heavy, horrific cloud that is hanging over and dulling everybody’s ability to think and care. This is the triumph of Satan. The only point he hasn’t won is that we still do have use of the word life, as she bemoans. All she can do is call me ‘anti-choice’. Ouch. That stings. I mean, no it doesn’t, and she knows it doesn’t, and that’s why she’s so mad.

But I’m mad too and when I’m mad I start railing on about the cross, which I will do in a moment. Let us carry on, skipping a lot of stuff because she repeats herself quite a lot.

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal.

And there we have it. All life is not equal. Except that this whole nation was made, conceived if you will, under the idea that all life was equal. Everyone was going to have an equal shot at it. Everyone got to have life. That this wasn’t honestly carried forth we have a war and a hashtag, #blacklivesmatter, to show for it. But we know that black lives don’t really matter because abortion is heavily targeted toward black communities. A careless search of the internet will produce this information if you doubt me. And we know that the life of the baby doesn’t matter because we so freely slaughter it and cut it up into little bits. I’m glad she says it straight out. I’m glad. It lets us all see where we really stand. She continues on,

That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

Yes, Mary Elizabeth, saying that all lives are not equal does wind up making you sound like a storm trooper. Your elevation of your rights over the non-autonomous–some other words for that are helpless, needy, dependent, without recourse, silent, voiceless, other–is ugly, ghestapo ugly. Appalling. Barbaric. She may be the boss, and mothers usually are, but the twisting of authority to be a matter of life and death is barbaric. If a man, a big mean man with an army, does this the word we use is ‘totalitarian’. That’s so evil, we say, totalitarianism is bad. Hitler is bad. Eww. But when a woman, who isn’t brandishing an Uzi, but is just quietly “removing” something that doesn’t suit her or her, and this has to be said more often, family or boyfrined’s life style, it’s called Choice.

This culture, and I’m sorry that I can’t employ beauty or nuance or anything nice here, has elevated the life of the woman into the place of God. The word we’re all searching for is Idolatry. And where there is an idol there is usually the shedding of blood to appease wrath and guilt. Which brings me to the last bit. She writes,

And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

As a Christian I’m attuned and attentive to the use of the word ‘sacrifice’. A sacrifice is at the center of my faith. I know that I want to be God, that I have usurped his authority and place, that I am an ugly storm trooper of death, and that if I am not taken down or taken out, I will destory everything. But God had a more merciful way than killing me. He himself became the sacrifice, the being who was killed, whose blood was poured out and whose very body was broken, indeed, we remember it’s brokenness every week as we break it and break it and pass it down the line, bringing it into our own selves, our own broken bodies. And through the shedding of blood, I was allowed to live. My life was allowed to matter and carry on because of shed blood. The life of the baby is worth it. It has already been sacrificed for. It doesn’t need to die because Jesus died both for the mother and the baby and the abortion doctor and the boyfriend and even for Mary Elizabeth.

I feel an altar call coming on so I’ll stop. As with everything, anger abides only for a moment, but the grief of so many lives, so many people being executed, sacrificed on the altar of demonic idolatrous totalitarian choice will carry me all through the day.