Sunday marked the 39^th anniversary of Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. If you’re one of my eight regular readers, you know that I am adamantly against abortion. I’m also pro-choice (the decision happens at the sex part, not the pregnancy part), pro-birth control, and pro-women.

My heart breaks for women that have had an abortion, and now have to carry around the weight of what they’ve done their entire lives. I wish I could take that pain away. Since my M.O. when I can’t think of something eloquent and perfect to say is to shove scripture at you (God always says it better than me anyway), I’ll just tell you what Psalm 103:12 says:

As far as the east is from the west, 
 so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

God loves you. And I love you too. And I have the deepest gratitude for the ladies that have come forward and shared their stories about how ending their pregnancies brought them anything but peace and freedom.

A good friend of mine, who has asked to remain anonymous, wrote the following. She is one of the loveliest women I know; strong, smart, capable, compassionate, a wonderfully devoted wife and mother … the list could go on. I cannot imagine her as this scared girl with how I know her today.

I hope that her story can change one mind about carrying to term. I hope that it brings hope to another post-abortive mama, that she is not alone in her sorrow. I hope that it brings perspective to anyone that condemns the mother instead of the culture in this pro-abortion era we’re living in.

Thank you for writing this, my beautiful friend.

I was 23.  I’d just gotten out of my first serious relationship, which lasted 5 years and was very physically abusive by the end.  Anyone who’s been through that will understand how I was left in a very emotionally weak and confused state.

I started a relationship way too fast with a really great guy who had baggage of his own.  I was enjoying my freedom and finally sowing my wild oats.  We were both responsible employees who worked really hard at our jobs, and we were playing hard on nights and weekends.  Too hard.  Less than 3 months into the relationship I was pregnant.

Maybe it’s a coping mechanism.  Maybe I really have changed.  Maybe it’s both.  I can’t wrap my brain around who I was and what I did then.  Not because it was so evil, but because it was so weak.  Almost immediately, and without really considering any other choices, my boyfriend and I decided I would have an abortion.

The reasons seemed simple and valid on the surface, but I now see they were complicated and based in distortion.  The reasons I listed to the few people I told (who happened to all be people I knew would tell me I was doing the right thing) were that I was worried the baby was already messed up from the partying I was doing before I knew I was pregnant (if I’d stopped then the baby would have been fine) and that I couldn’t take the time off work.  I didn’t know how I would support the child.

I didn’t want to hurt my mom more than I already had.  That turns my stomach now, and it’s why I remain silent.  Not because she would judge me, but because she would love and forgive me, grieve for her lost grandchild and be mortified at the notion I did this for her.  No, this secret will at least go to her grave.

Nevertheless, the reason I had an abortion has nothing to do with my uterus, my blood-alcohol level, my bank balance, my age or my boyfriend’s character.  The reason I had an abortion is that I didn’t feel I was worthy or capable of motherhood.

I saw myself as trash, so I trashed my baby.

The truth is it would have been hard, but we would have been ok.  I wouldn’t have lost my job, my family would have rallied around me and my first child would be where she belongs… with me.  And if I didn’t have that support system she could at least be with a family worthy of her and I wouldn’t be haunted by the ghost within me.  I would be MORE free, and I would be MORE empowered had I chosen life.   I know this.

But that’s not what happened.  What happened was one cold, dark January morning I prayed for the first time in a long time.  I asked God to intervene if this wasn’t His will (what an absurd statement).  Then I heard the familiar clunk of my boyfriend’s boots coming up the stairs to my apartment, followed by his knock.  Those sounds usually brought a smile to my face, but they never would again.

We had to travel to another town.  When we stopped for gas halfway his truck died.  He had jumper cables, but the person we asked to help flat out refused .  No one does that.  No one does that unless you prayed for sign from God to not have an abortion.

They really are mills.  There was a security guard at the front door where we signed in and showed id.  It must have been a very important tooth I was having pulled.  Then the regular clipboard paperwork.  The waiting room was packed.  Only one other woman had a male accompanying her.  After a while I was called back for a blood draw, then sent back to the waiting room until the next thing and the next thing.  I can’t remember the whole pre-op process, but mark my words — we were cattle.

I eventually got the “counseling” I had promised.  I was handed pill after pill interrupted by a stack of waivers to sign.  The administrator asked if I was sure I wanted to do this.  I said, “I guess.”

I was sent to the waiting room one more time until the drugs kicked in.  You’ll forgive me and probably be relieved I’m not going to go into too much detail here.  A man I refuse to refer to as a doctor proceeded to suck my child and a piece of my soul out of my body with the shop-vac from Hell, then left.  A nurse stayed.  I think they gave me some more drugs and about a half hour later we were ushered out the back door.

I went home and watched Stella Got Her Groove Back.  The next morning I woke up and returned to my life as if nothing had happened just like the pretty pamphlet said I would.

It worked for a while, but a couple of years later I just started unraveling.  Reality hit me.  What I’d done.  What I’d lost.  What was permanent.  I was drinking way too much, and I sabotaged my relationship.  At this point I had come to the realization that I had indeed killed my own child and would have to live with it for eternity.

Those who “supported” my choice were scarce and uninterested in what I was going through now.  No baby, no loss.  However, if I’d miscarried at the same stage of pregnancy the loss would have been valid.  This is where post-abortion syndrome is born.

A post-abortive woman has the burden or karma of having to grieve for their child, but they often do it alone.  On top of that they have to process their hand in it.  These feelings are often attributed to the guilt the pro-life movement puts on post-abortive women, but when this started I was pro-choice and remained so for a long time.  This is a real loss.  If you care about women, if you trust women as George Tiller claimed to you won’t minimize it.

The last shreds of denial and escape were aborted when I married my husband and had my first child.  Thank God something compelled me to share my experience with him early in our relationship.  There are so many women carrying this around and NO ONE in their life knows.  He educated himself on what I was going through and is still loving me through it today.

I finally found an online message board where I practically lived for over a year.  I went through the grieving process just as if I’d lost one of my living children today.  I will never go to a place that dark again, and yes, I considered suicide.  I’ve now healed and forgiven myself as much as I ever will.  I wish I could go back, but I can’t.  There’s no place to go but forward, so I’ve done my best.  I’m also loathe to give that darkness one more iota of time or energy.

The pro-life community provided hope and love and dried my tears, while the pro-choice community told me I was imagining things.  Thanks for nothing, sisters.

Nowadays, I’m not so much concerned with winning the argument over when life begins and whether abortion should be legal or not, as I am that women are making serious, permanent decisions without knowing what they’re in for, be it physically, emotionally and/or spiritually.

Just a heads up for them.  I’d give anything to go back and get one for myself.

So this is late. I try to post these weekly round-ups on Sunday or Monday, depending on how my weekend goes, and it is now Wednesday night. So late on Wednesday night, in fact, that’s it’s actually Thursday morning on the East coast. What can I say? It’s summertime, which in Mom World is crazytime. The kids are home all day long. They are hungry all day long. They are bored all day long. Actually, kids in my house are never bored, or at least they never voice it, because if they do, they find themselves staring at toilet with a scrub brush in their hand. Nothing cures boredom quite like scrubbing a toilet!

And that’s the kind of mom I am. Interestingly, I just got off the phone with a single girlfriend, with whom I shared a story from the beach today. One of my kiddos was carelessly kicking sand on people, and needed to be corrected. “See?” She said, “This is why I can never have kids. I’d probably kick sand on them and ask, ‘How does that feel?’”

“Um … what do you think I did?”

And that’s the kind of mom I am. The kind of mom whose kids don’t carelessly kick sand on other people.

Anyway, I wrote some stuff last week! And you should totally click on it and maybe even read it. Otherwise you might find yourself staring a toilet with a scrub brush in your hand.

President Obama gave a little speech about the debt limit. It was riddled with blatant untruths. I narrowed down the top nine.

Speaking of President Obama, do you know that he signed a bill that authorized $50 million of your hard-earned money to put guns in the hands of dangerous Mexican drug lords? Because he totally did. Oh, and Attorney General Eric Holder lied about it.

I also mocked global warming scare tactics and possibly polar bears. Because polar bears would totally eat me, given the chance.

Happy reading!

California is releasing tens of thousands of inmates after a ruling by theSupreme Court on Monday. No, they haven’t been wrongfully imprisoned and suddenly found innocent due to some new DNA technology.

It’s just that the prisons are overcrowded.

A sane solution would be to build more prisons. Unfortunately, there’s apparently not enough money to build more steel bars. So, we should totally tax the rich, because even though they pay the vast, vast majority of our taxes, they still aren’t paying enough, because new prisons aren’t getting built!

Another logical option would be to spend less money per prisoner, so that the savings could go toward building new facilities. The average prisoner in the State of California costs over $48,000 annually, with about $16,000 of that going to health care, mental health, and dental costs.

Prisoners, convicted felons, probably have better health care than you do.

Seriously, does your health insurance cover free hormone replacement therapy for you if you happen to be transgendered? California prisons do. And soon, they may even provide gender reassignment surgery as well.

Read the rest at The Stir

What’s with all the Christmas hate? Everywhere I look, Christmas is destroying corporate America, or getting banned, or being mocked by American Atheists. Heck, even Christmas carols are now offensive — quick! Cover your children’s ears before they hear “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer!” They might never recover from the emotional damage!

Political correctness is robbing the joy right out of the season. School children are banned from celebrating Christmas, and their teachers are instructed not to use red or green in their classrooms. Not even Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is safe from the PC police. Christmas trees? Can’t have those in public. Merry Bleeping Christmas!

Why must celebrators of Christmas downplay their holiday cheer so as not to offend anyone, yet we’re told that we must be tolerant to other cultural practices? As a Christian, I’m not offended by menorahs or Kwanzaa. I’m not even offended by those that celebrate a Santa-Christmas instead of a Jesus-Christmas.

Read the rest at The Stir

Thank God for incompetent terrorists. A jihadist suicide bomber succeeded only in injuring two people and killing himself last Saturday in Stockholm when he detonated two bombs.

Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly has been credited and heralded as the perpetrator of the attack on a busy shopping street in Sweden’s capital city by the terror group al Qaeda. On a Yemeni website, Abdulwahab was praised for his actions: “It is our brother, mujahid Taymour Abdel Wahab, who carried out the martyrdom operation in Stockholm.”

A Mujahid is a Muslim engaged in radical Islam.

Abdulwahab was born in Iraq, but was a Swedish citizen living in the England town of Luton. Luton has seen its share of contention in recent years, most recently being the site of a protest by Islamists picketing returning British soldiers from Iraq. The extremists held up signs accusing the men of being “butchers” and “baby-killers.”

Moments before his death, Abdulwahab sent an email containing an audio file to the police and to a Swedish news agency. Apparently, he was ticked off by Sweden’s military presence in Afghanistan, as well as the country’s silence over an image by a Swedish artist that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a dog.

Read the rest at The Stir

Parenting is hard. The modern mom is supposed to do it all: Help pay the mortgage, bake the cookies, and raise socially conscious, compassionate children. We are supposed to purposefully expose our progeny to all religions, lifestyles, and backgrounds in the name of diversity. And we’re not supposed to let them play with evil toys like stick ponies, Barbies, or trampolines.

Tree houses? Forget about it. They’re super-duper dangerous and should be torn down immediately.

Forbes recently published a list of dangerous toys that were recalled in 2010 for safety reasons. The list includes a stick pony (long reins could strangle a child), plush asparagus (wire could poke through and cause abrasions), and a pogo stick (falling risk). Obviously parents are too stupid to check over their kids’toys for loose or broken parts, or understand the “falling risk” associated with pogo sticks.

While we’re busy cutting up our kids’ hotdogs, we are supposed to broaden their worldview and encourage their minds to open into tolerant little sponges of acceptance. We’re not supposed to care that Kevin Jennings, Obama’s Safe School Czar, promotes the sexual education of children as young as five. That’s not morally deplorable, that’s progressive!

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog

Conservatives, especially conservative women, can take quite a beating. Just ask Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, Christine O’Donnell, Michele Bachmann, or Michelle Malkin, just to name a few that deal with constant attacks on everything from their politics to their parenting to their femininity.

Mashed up bag of meat with lipstick, anyone?

Sure we conservatives like guns and babies and the founders, but liberals have taken some of the core principles of conservatism and twisted them into something untruthful.

Allow me to clarify, and explain the reality behind some of thoseConservative Truths you think are so awful.

1. Conservatives Love Religion

Freedom of religion, that is. Crosses, menorahs, the Ten Commandments, and even those “COEXIST” bumper stickers don’t offend us. What is offensive is the left’s attempt to push around anyone that chooses to participate in religious rituals or traditions. They’re not “holiday” trees, people, and nobody is forcing you to decorate one, let alone celebrate the birth of Christ.

2. Conservatives Don’t Believe in Welfare

The problem with welfare is that it’s a system comprised of involuntary redistribution of wealth and rampant fraud. As earners are taxed more and more heavily, their ability to give to charity, expand their businesses, or even just purchase cool stuff (creating manufacturing and retail jobs) shrinks. Which means more people on welfare, to be supported by fewer earners. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with welfare is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

3. Conservatives Think Men and Women Should Be Treated Differently

Equality does not mean sameness. Whether it was God or evolution that created us, conservatives understand that men and women are inherently different, and that we complement each other. At the same time, our gender doesn’t hold us back. Women have already achieved workplace equality, and we don’t need to open our own doors to prove our self-worth.

4. Conservatives Don’t Care Who’s Gay

Or more specifically, conservatives don’t care whether someone is gay or straight. We’re all about freedom of choice and expression on the right side of the aisle, and we truly believe all men were created equal. Sexual orientation doesn’t make one person better or worse than another, it just makes them different. Remember, equality does not equal sameness.

5. Conservatives View War as Necessary

The left labels Conservatives as warmongers, but this simply isn’t true. I don’t think anyone actually likes war and violence (aside from sickos like Chelsea King‘s murderer John Gardner), yet conservatives recognize the need for it at times. There are some seriously bad people out there that would destroy us without thinking twice if they had no fear of retaliation. War is a necessary evil in the fight for peace. I seriously doubt Osama bin Laden would’ve called off the 9/11 attacks if only President Bush had sat down for a chat with milk and cookies with him.

6. Conservatives Hate Abortion

Anti-abortion and anti-woman are not synonymous. Conservatives empower women to make their own choices, especially about their bodies, and then empower those same women to overcome any negative outcomes that those choices might result in. Women have a right to choose whether or not to have sex, and children (even unborn ones) have the right to live. Isn’t every baby a blessing — especially to adoptive parents?

7. Conservatives Like Money

Why not? Money makes the world go round, after all. Conservatives are capitalists, which means that we understand that it’s in man’s basic nature to want bigger and better things. To some people that’s a life of luxury, and to others it’s a life of philanthropy, but both take money. Getting back down to that conservative value of free choice, we believe that it’s up to the individual to decide how to spend their money, even if we don’t agree with it.

8. Conservatives Don’t Believe the Government Is There to Ensure Health and Prosperity

The preamble and article 1 of the Constitution refer to the “general welfare” of the people, and the government’s role in promoting it. When did this become a directive for the government to provide all sorts of welfare programs? The founders came from oppressive governments, and did not believe in a system that gave special treatment to privileged groups or individuals in society. The government is there to protect our rights to life, liberty, and property, not to provide a lifestyle.

9. Conservatives Believe Liberals Just Don’t Get It

Winston Churchill said, “If you are young and not a liberal you have no heart, and when you’re old if you are not conservative you have no brain.” Liberals truly want to help people, and their tender, bleeding hearts believe that government is the one to provide that help. As they grow and mature and gain wisdom through the years, they begin to understand that welfare and big government and peace talks with terrorists just don’t work.

10. Conservatives Have Legal Sex

I guess we don’t need to throw anything illegal (Drugs? Hookers?) into the mix to have crazy sex. We’re hot enough as is, in both looks and personality.

(To hear the other side of the story, read 10 Biggest Lies About Liberals)

Cross Posted at The Stir

Some days I marvel at the backwards world we live in. Earlier this week I read about Ines Sainz, Mexico’s Hottest Reporter, becoming distraught because virile, athletic men wolf-whistled at her as she romped around their NFL locker room in a tight blouse and even tighter jeans.

The horror! How dare those men treat Ms. Sainz like an attractive woman obviously showing off her beautiful body in the men’s locker room? According to so-called-feminists like Joy Behar, grown women who choose to dress provocatively, post pictures of themselves in bikinis on their employer’s website, and traipse through an NFL locker rooms need to be protected from men’s raucous wolf-whistles.

Meanwhile in Michigan, a 6-year-old has been kicked off her cheerleading squad because her parents didn’t want her to participate in chanting a risqué cheer. The questionable cheer was, “Our backs ache, our skirts are too tight, we shake our booties from left to right.”

Jennifer and Duane Tesch’s daughter Kennedy was unanimously voted off the Madison Heights Wolverines flag football cheerleading team on Tuesday night, after they voiced concerns over the suggestive words of the cheer.

“I don’t even have the words,” Jennifer Tesch told FoxNews.com. “I can’t believe their solution to this was to remove my daughter from the team. She’s going to be devastated. She’s going to be crying.”

Let me get this straight. On one hand, we have 32-year-old sexpot Ines Sainz crying foul at men whistling in a complimentary way at the sensual look that she works hard to project, and we’re all supposed to come to her rescue. On the other hand, we have 6-year-old Kennedy Tesch getting kicked off of her cheerleading squad because her parents didn’t want her to wet some pedophile pants with a suggestive cheer, and we’re called prudes if we question it?

Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this picture?

How backwards is our world that grown women who freely flaunt their sexuality are afforded more protection than little girls on a cheerleading squad?

Cross-Posted from The Stir

On Monday night, members of a Community Board in New York Cityvoted 29-1 in support of the construction of an Islamic mosque atGround Zero. The Manhattan project plans to open its doors onSeptember 11, 2011, the 10-year anniversary of the deaths of 2,996 people in the name of Islam.

Yeah.

Frankly, I can’t think of anything better than building a place of worship for the religion responsible for every single terrorist attack on America in recent history. Wait, maybe I can. How about not building it?

Islam is not cool. I’m all about free choice, so I have no problem with people choosing to believe whatever they want to believe. If someone wants to be part of a community that oppresses women and encourages violence, then they are welcome to join it. I just hope they never change their minds, because the penalty for leaving Islam is death.

Read More (And be sure to check out the comments! I’m everything from a hero for bringing this to light to the cause of the 9/11 attacks.)

I just found out about CTAP today.

The California Telephone Access Program (CTAP) distributes telecommunications equipment and services to individuals certified as having difficulty using the telephone. CTAP is a California State mandated program, under governance of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Equipment and some network services are available at no charge to eligible consumers.

Californians who are deaf, hard of hearing, speech-disabled, cognitively-disabled, blind, or who have low vision, or restricted mobility, are eligible to receive equipment with certification by a medical doctor, a licensed audiologist, a qualified state agency, or a hearing aid dispenser.

CTAP is funded by a small surcharge that appears on all telephone bills in California. The money collected from this surcharge pays for both the California Telephone Access Program (CTAP) and the California Relay Service (CRS). This surcharge appears on your phone bill as “CA Relay Service and Communications Devices Fund.”

No wonder California is broke as a joke. No denying that being blind, deaf, or having fingers too fat to dial on a regular keypad are all tragic conditions. But why do the rest of us have to buy you a phone?

It’s almost as ridiculous as forcing tax-payers to pay for other people’s TV converter boxes.

PS- This picture makes me giggle.

"Your call could not be completed as dialed. Your fingers are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."