Why the Planned Parenthood “Sale of Baby Parts” isn’t the story that matters?

The pit-in-your stomach, heart stopping agony at seeing a tiny, severed arm being picked up by a pair of tweezers is truly indescribable and the farthest corners of my vocabulary cannot begin to explain the sorrow in my soul as I witnessed it, even on screen it was devastating.  The tiniest of hands that only a few years from now could have waved cheerfully from a window like that of my 3 year old nephew when I come for a visit, the smallest of little feet that could have one day traveled the world, a teeny pair of lungs that never had the chance to breathe air, and an almost inconceivably small eye that was never able to see the smile of someone who loved him, all a bloodied, muddled mess in a petri dish being picked through like pieces of chicken on a butcher’s block.

Looking at the shattered pieces of that little boy my mind immediately went to what could have been.   What was that man destined to do?  Who was he to be?  Now, some of you may dislike my use of the word “man,” but that is ultimately what we are talking about here right?  The precious, little, soul attached to those now wretched limbs was meant to grow into a man, to experience and live life, to be shaped by his childhood joys and traumas, have dreams, ambitions, and passions to chase.  But, this man wasn’t allowed any of it, every chance and choice was stolen from him and in a moment that must have been pure hell he was literally ripped limb from limb.  Now to add insult to the highest of injuries this man’s organs are being picked through for usefulness, given a market price and sold.  Does it make a difference to you to think of the little being as a man rather than a fetus?  It shouldn’t…

At one point we were all in the place of that fetus, anyone in my generation or those since should count him/herself blessed to have made it out of that prenatal war-zone alive, that their foxhole wasn’t stormed, and they were granted safe passage into the world.  Many were not so lucky and our world is changed because of it. 

Maybe we lost the great leader of nations who would help guide America back to her glory days or the brilliant scientist with a mind built to discover great feats of medical advancement.  Maybe there are now fewer Average Joes: hardworking, family types, who are the foundation of middle class America.  Or maybe, we kept a few homeless off our streets, or cells empty in our prisons.  In truth, even though we often use these arguments it doesn’t matter what that life would have amounted to, the cost of the loss is equally and utterly devastating.  Every chance that little being had to grow and change and choose was stolen and our world is a darker place because of it.

Human worth is not dependent on what you do, how much you make, your contribution to society, or any other arbitrary factor.  It is simply granted by being human, as soon as the sperm tunnels into the egg you are a chasm of untapped potential, potential that is uniquely you and will never be duplicated.  Whether or not you meet this potential does not affect your inherent worth.

It is no wonder that as adults so many of us believe love must be conditional, that our worth is dependent on how good we are, how smart we are, or how much we are wanted.

As I scroll down my facebook feed on almost any given day I can see pregnancy announcements, gender reveal party pictures, or descriptions of the size of the unborn child as compared to fruits and vegetables.  All of these “fetuses” have one thing in common, they are wanted.  So that begs the question, are these children inherently more valuable than others because they are desired?  Certainly not, but somehow we treat them as such.

Nothing in the child is different between the one blessed to be in the womb of the woman who excitedly opens a box and dodges pink or blue balloons as they flutter past her smiling face, and the one whose mother feels helpless, alone, and unable to continue on the road she has found herself.  Yet, we treat them so differently.  We are willing and ready to celebrate with one family and shrug off the removal of an unfortunate accident for another.  Until we resolve this within ourselves, we will never have peace or rest in our society on this issue.  So what is the answer?

Love! And yes I know how cheesy that sounds.  In fact, as I type this I am hearing The Beatles “All you Need is Love” running through the back of my head and my inner voice is gagging on the gigantic cheese puff I just offered you.  Unfortunately though, sometimes the truth is cheesy.  No one ever came to Christ because you beat them with a Bible, called them names, or yelled in their face.  We absolutely should be excited with our “expecting” friends, we should rejoice over the new life at every opportunity.  And the broken, sad woman on the way to the abortion clinic?  Love her too!  She may need and appreciate it more than your friend on facebook.

We will never win the abortion battle if our strategy is judgement and anger.  Love, compassion, and understanding are the only tools that matter.  To the mother of the little boy in that dish, I don’t hate you.  If you weep, I weep with you and for you.  It breaks my heart to think that you may have felt you had no other option and I want all women in your shoes to know how deeply loved they are and their great worth in the eyes of their Heavenly Father.  I want them to feel empowered to face the road ahead of them, no matter how utterly terrifying life may seem.

We often do this very well in the pro-life movement, there are so many crisis pregnancy centers with volunteers willing to listen with love and help where and when they can, there are programs to give pregnant women in crisis housing and support through the pregnancy and birth, as well as charities whose heart is with single mothers throughout their child raising years.  We know how to win with love and do so daily in little ways.  It is when these scandals appear that we sometimes forget.

The church, the pro-life movement, the world is filled with imperfect people doing our best in an imperfect world.  We cannot let anger fill our hearts and judgement leave our lips, especially when the control of it is most difficult.  Why would Mary Magdalene change her life and follow Christ?  Love.  Why would Peter walk away from his livelihood?  Love.  Why would a man allow himself to be nailed to a cross for sins the rest of us committed?  Love.

It is ok, appropriate even to be devastated by the loss abortion has brought upon this country.  Allowing love and sadness to replace judgement and anger in our discussion of abortion and Planned Parenthood seems small, but it is vital to appropriately help the suffering women and allow our country to understand our heart and hurt where abortion is concerned.  Anger is easy…and when was the easy road really the best road?

An Unexpected Hero: My Take on Pixar’s Inside Out

I don’t go to movies in the theater often…hardly ever actually.  Recently though, I saw the new Pixar movie “Inside Out” and I would highly recommend it.  I know what you are thinking: “That’s a kid’s movie…why on earth would Theresa write a post on her bioethics blog about a kid’s movie?”  Well, it is a kid’s movie to be sure, but I am convinced that a psychology student could write their dissertation on the film.

The movie has a definitively adult level and a message that is desperately needed in our society.  It opens at the birth of the main character, Riley.  Inside Riley’s mind we meet Joy, a vivacious and enthusiastic little emotion ready to tackle life alongside Riley.  Within seconds, Joy is joined by another, less vivacious emotion, Sadness.  We follow Riley through her first decade of life quite quickly and along the way we meet our final three emotions, Fear, Anger, and Disgust.  These 5 emotions run the control panel inside Riley’s head, most of the time Joy is in control, so Riley is a generally happy kid.  Along the way we see Riley form many memories including 5 core memories that make up the fundamental parts of her personality (goofiness, love of family, love of friends, honesty, and love of hockey).

When Riley is 11 her family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco, and this move comes at a high emotional cost for our little heroine.  Through a series of events, Joy and Sadness get tossed out of the control panel and have to find their way back through the deepest corners of Riley’s mind.  During this adventure Joy, who has always been annoyed and put off by Sadness, realizes the important role Sadness actually plays in Riley’s life.

The most prominent theme in the movie for me, is an illustration of the importance of sadness and suffering in our life.  Sadness can help temper our other emotions, allow us to experience true joy, and help us process through the sufferings in our life.  This is not a new idea certainly and there have been scores of books and motivational speakers who have tread this path time and again.  What I loved though was seeing this idea so brilliantly illustrated in a kid’s movie.  Teaching our children (and their parents) that sadness has a place and makes us grow.

As Americans we often think there should be no suffering, no death, no pain or hurt of any kind.  Our primary goal in life becomes avoiding pain and hiding the hurt whenever some suffering sneaks through.  This type of life isn’t healthy or fulfilling, but many people don’t realize what their life is missing until they allow themselves to enter the suffering and deal with their sadness on a real level.  It seems counter intuitive that sadness leads to joy, but understanding and accepting the sadness and loss helps us to better understand and appreciate life’s joys.

Outside of this counter-cultural understanding of sadness, the movie also had an extremely wholesome family message.  At one point Joy and Sadness are recalling the same memory, the loss of a hockey game.  They each reflect on how this is a good memory for them (i.e. the memory is both sad and happy).  A few scenes later, Joy finds the memory and watches it from the beginning, seeing how the devastation of losing the hockey game is changed to joy when Mom and Dad come to comfort Riley.  Joy is surprised by this realization and remarks (something to the effect of) “Mom and Dad make the pain go away.”  This idea is profound in our culture: Mom and Dad are right?  They have wisdom?  They can solve problems for their children? 

The ideas of honoring your father and mother and submitting yourself to their wisdom and love often are presented as old school in our culture.  Our society tends to play into the idea that Mom and Dad are stupid, their experience is useless to teach children anything, and kids probably know more than their parents do anyway.  My home is not immune to this societal influence, the idea that I have gained wisdom from my experiences and want the best for him is battle I fight with my 18 year old on a daily basis. 

It was wonderful to see a different narrative in this movie.  In almost all cases, Mom and Dad desperately want what is best for their children, they want to share their wisdom and experience, protect their children, and show them love.   I absolutely adored seeing this reality on the screen in Inside Out, it was refreshing, wholesome, and heartwarming.

I could likely go on and on about this movie and I am sure that each time I watch it new revelations will arise from its depths, but I will stop for now, with a strong endorsement of the film as one of the most family friendly I have seen in a long time.  It is well worth your money and support of the filmmakers.  If you haven’t gone to see it, please do and if you already have, see it again!

HELP NEEDED...

Hello Everyone,

My mom and I are embarking on a new journey and we are requesting your help.  Our hope is to design a website that will be a resource for people with disabilities and their families.  As many of you know, our family has personal experience with disability.  My father lost his battle with ALS in October of 2013 after years in a power wheelchair as a result of the disease.

While sick, my dad made the journey to upstate New York to attend my Master's graduation.  It was important to him that he be there for me, and he was willing to move heaven and earth to make it happen.  His effort and determination touched my heart and is a constant reminder of how much he loved me and how important my successes were to him.

As any one who travels with disability knows, it is a constant challenge in creative thinking and physical exertion.  On our trip, Mom, Dad, and I discussed how useful it would be to have a web resource with details about hotels and disability access.  Even though most of these hotels meet the specific requirements for handicap accessibility, there are often little surprises here and there that it would be best to prepare for ahead of time.  Mom and I were revisiting this idea and decided to give web design a try.

The greatest challenge when talking about disabilities is that their are countless types of disability and needs to help those people.  With this project we are trying to catch as many specific needs as possible in an organized and controlled environment.  To do this in the best possible way we need some help from our friends...namely you dear reader.

So, what do we need?

1) Feedback on our hotel assessment form.  Please follow this link (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0u4tibbMiF2UGJFNE0xTnkyMms&authuser=0), we have done our best to capture all of the needs we could think of but are definitely looking for feedback and input.  We are particularly looking for feedback on vision or hearing impairment needs and anything else you feel we have missed in our form.  Please leave a comment below with your thoughts.

2) Please share this article on your social media sites.  We are looking for a lot of feedback and help.  The more people who hear about this project, the most experiences we can gather, and the better our results.  Please, please, please 

tell your friends and share this post, we want as much involvement as possible.

3) Help assessing!  Once we have finalized our assessment form we will be looking for people to visit hotels (either in your local area or on your travels) to assess their accessibility and return the completed form to us so the data can be entered onto the website.  The more hotels we can assess, the more helpful the site will be to disabled travelers and their families.

4) We need a name! We want a catchy name that will also express our mission of helping people travel more easily and successfully when dealing with disability.  Please leave your suggestions in the comment area.

Thank you all for your help and support with this idea!  I look forward to working on this with you and seeing it develop by the grace of God.

Please remember to share this post and leave your feedback in the comments!