Jean Ann Esselink: “Tiffany Bredeck — The Stork Who Delivered”
The group convened in front of the Wausau Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) Wednesday afternoon. It is an odd place to go to renounce abortion, since FPHS in Wausau not only doesn’t perform them, its workers are forbidden by the terms of their state grants to so much as make a call to help a woman find a clinic where she might exercise that legal option. But in the Lifers defense, it is 100 miles from Wausau to the nearest actual abortion provider. I would imagine it’s hard to persuade many of the elderly participants, prone to prostate trouble and bladder issues, to travel two hours in order to confront the genuine article, especially when there are so many local sexually active women they can shame and still be home for an early supper. So, even though it’s a little like marching to reinstate Glass-Steagall in front of a sperm bank, this group of Catholics from the 40 Days for Life campaign, has chosen to make their stand, twice a year, on the sidewalk in front of a place pregnant women of modest means come, not to end their pregnancies, but to get prenatal care, and healthy food through the WIC program, because they want healthy babies. I think this is known in Catholic theology as the transitive property of interchangeable vaginas.
Libby Anne: “Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Abortion Wars”
Another car pulls in, and then another. Some cars park closer to the protesters than others, and some of the cars have crosses hanging from their rear view mirrors. Ashley and I take turns walking women in, studiously ignoring the yells of the protesters. Sometimes women arrive alone, but more often they have someone with them: a significant other, a friend, a parent. Their reaction to the protesters varies.
Jeff Dunn: “Quitting Christians”
So why does Smokey, an adamant non-Christian, “get it” when it comes to love, but most every Christian I know doesn’t? Why is it that when I am struggling, like I am right now, I can’t get my brothers and sisters in Christ to show love without a court order, but those like Smokey and other employees and customers I work with will show love in their words and deeds? How is it that those in whom Love Himself lives bottle up love and refuse to give it while those who do not know Love are very free with their love? I really don’t get it. I am ready to quit Christians, or at least quit hoping Christians will do what Jesus commanded and love each other. Christians don’t get it. Agnostics and atheists do. Something is really screwy here.
Rob Tsinai: “Gracie, no one is trying to take one of your parents away”
See, Gracie, those of us who believe in same-sex marriage also think if you’re lucky enough to have two parents who love you, then you have every right to say you need them both. In fact, I wish every child were lucky enough to grow up in a safe, stable home with loving parents. And Gracie, that’s why I support same-sex marriage.
Kristen Rosser: “‘But That’s What the Bible Says'”
And this is the sad thing. That we’d rather live with cognitive dissonance, believing that women are somehow equal but yet somehow lesser — or that they are to be restricted for no reason, but that God is still just — than to believe it’s possible we’re misreading our Bibles.
We’d rather restrict women and have the Bible be “clear” than admit that we just might be wrong.
Certainty is more important than female humanity.
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