Fearless Symmetry

By Helen Gordon

 

A whirl of chaos enveloped Orange Street in front of Femcare that morning: cars passing, pedestrians, utility bucket truck working overhead, a frequent opponent of our presence plopped in the middle of things, and through it all, a steady stream of mothers heading up the driveway.  One car stops as I approach, the father calm and quiet behind the wheel, the mother quietly distraught beside him. Their tender hearts show on their faces, in their eyes. I speak and question gently, but bluntly, about the reality of what they have come to do. So much time goes by with them frozen in the driveway, Lillian vigilant at the corner where they entered and a steady barrage of prayers from a young trio of siblings ascending through the chaos of street and sidewalk.

 

Finally, the father agrees to back out of the driveway and into the parking lot immediately next door.
 

I retreat from the side of their car to let them talk and, I hope, pray. Soon, our gentle Annie Lee walks up holding her signature rose, a white one this morning, a gift for the mothers that is rarely given away. She greets them at their car window to speak in their native tongue, Spanish. For a long time, Annie Lee listens and talks, but returns to us still holding her rose. "The mother is so upset, so afraid," she says. Then Sharon makes her regular appearance on the sidewalk. She, too, approaches their car speaking to them in her passionate Spanish.

 

Our prayer continues. The chaos continues in the street, on the sidewalk, as other mothers arrive with their babies scheduled to die.

 

A young woman exits Femcare and walks deliberately down the parking lot through our midst and up to the car in the neighboring lot with the mother and father still conversing with Sharon. She interrupts briefly, speaking to the mother in Spanish, and then retreats the way she came and reenters Femcare. Sharon calls to us that she has warned the mother that her situation is very dangerous. Without thinking, I ask Sharon to tell them we shall take them to the doctor. And now I pray ardently as I call his office that he will be there. Keen attention and enthusiasm are the response of those who answer my call and put me on hold to speak to the doctor. A flood of gratitude washes over me as I ready my car to lead them - this doctor and his staff always have hands and hearts ready to help, but how rare it is to find this same understanding of this life and death emergency when entreating others for help.

 

They follow closely (the mother clutching Annie Lee's white rose, as I learned later) as Sharon and I lead them to the doctor's office. We leave Femcare far behind and my thumping heart begins to still.

 

A quiet, warm welcome greets us at the reception desk and we are seated—what a sweet refuge in that little waiting room! Our troubled mother turns to me. She is showing me pictures on her phone of their other children. She is smiling and calm, her true self.  Fear has left her.

 

Very soon our mother and father are with the dear doctor. Sharon and I sit, joyous, grateful, exhausted. The nurse comes to assure us that all is well. As we stand and wait to leave, the father comes out into the corridor. He looks into my eyes and very firmly states, "I knew she would not do it. I knew when we got to that place there would be someone outside to help." My heart was pierced by his look, his words, his presence. I could say nothing, only blink back tears.

 

The battle had raged mightily all morning in the chaos of that place. And there had been victory for one tiny baby, and mother, and father, and four brothers and sisters through the merciful hand of God present in Lillian, and Annie Lee, and Sharon, and our trio of valiant young pray-ers, and in our utility workmen who had very kindly and wisely tightened the bolts of the overhead wires they were taking down so as to keep us safe. They knew we had to be present. One of them had said with a smile, "It won't work very well for you to be across the street, will it?" He knew we had to be close at hand.

 

 

Gladiolas

Glads at the Yoga Center, next door to the abortion place.  The land here once belonged to the abortionist, through the dba, Orange Street Properties.

Femcare. A sad, sorry person.

This person is a frequent escort at the killing center.  He also stood in front of our "ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN" banner, blocking it at the Mountain Moral Monday event.  Here he is pulling a few weeds at the abortion grounds.  I have to wonder, what is motivating him?  Exactly what is in his mind as he helps this place that kills small human beings?

 

Mountain Moral (Manure) Monday

Narrative, as promised...

August 5, 2013

When we got into downtown Asheville proper I immediately knew the Mountain Moral Monday would be bigger than had I expected.  People carrying signs were walking blocks to the location from their remote parking spaces.  We parked across from the abortion place on Orange Street.   It was just two of us, my wife and I, and we had to carry poles, signs, a banner, and a taller than life puppet, who was draped in a garbage bag.  A lot of stuff and we had six blocks to walk.

Four different groups of people offered to help us carry our material.  I’m not really sure how I should have responded, but in each case I told the people they really didn’t want to help us.  The first group was a family of three on Orange Street—Dad, Mom, and Junior.   Dad was all gung ho and said, “We believe in a good cause.”  I read him as a being a typical "liberal"—sort of generous, but ready to turn hostile in a moment.   When we told him we were “the opposition” he backpedaled quickly and the three of them hustled off, with him saying, “We’re different.”   

With the next guy who offered to help, I tried a different approach.   I said, “I need to ask you some questions first.  Are you prolife?”

“If you mean do I think abortion should be illegal, then no, I’m not.”

“When does human life begin?” I asked.

“Whenever the parents say it does.”

“Even if that’s five years old?”

“How often does that happen?”

“Biologically, an individual human life begins at fertilization.”

At this point the guy became angry and said, “It begins when the parents say it does. You know, I’m sick and tired of the right wing bxll shxt and I’m not going to debate with you.”

How often does it happen?  Parents murder their born children all the time, but that would be fine with this guy.  It was shocking how he could explode so dramatically after being all friendly.  And he gave me no credit for doing him a favor, from his point of view, by warning him of the horrible mistake he was a about to make.

When we arrived at the site I quickly saw how we couldn’t set up our 20 foot banner in the place I had scouted out a few days earlier, on a tier in view of the podium.  Too many people around.  We moved off to the side and higher.    I got out my puppet and it didn’t take long before some young women surrounded me with their little signs about “women’s health”.  The Shrunke family with three of their teens arrived from Morganton to help.  We got the banner up, then some pro-abortion choice folks took positions in front to block people from seeing it.   The puppet was much taller, so I decided to make it our focal point.  A lot of people took pictures of him.

One woman said, “You know it’s proven (according to a recent article in The Economist) that thousands of women a year die in Latin American countries because of illegal abortion.”  I said, “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t support abandoning legal protection for prenatal children.”  She then went on to talk about how women are not protected and supported, etc.  I mentioned the breakdown of the family and was about to talk about how liberals like those in Planned Parenthood have undermined marriage when she interrupted with “Are you married?  Are you married?”

I wanted to finish my thought and when she kept insisting that I answer her question, I referred to her interrupting me.  She said angrily, “It’s because you’re not making any ‘effing’ sense.”

I said, “Okay” and turned away.  The conversation was over as far as I was concerned.  I wonder though, where she was headed with the marriage question. It’s just that I refuse to make the conversation about me.   My personal marital status, sex, race, age etc. are completely irrelevant to the issue of abortion.

As I walked around, some of the young women followed me. This was annoying and eventually I took a loop through the crowd to look for a better place for the banner and find some police officers.   One of the girls followed.  I had already asked her not to follow me and claimed she was stalking me.   When I approached a group of officers, I asked one to ask the girl to stop it. She had passed the group and pretended to be on other business, but I pointed her out.  Eventually an officer asked her to not follow me and she complied.  

From there I moved to a different street corner.  One guy with a bicycle started asking questions.   He brought out the usual ad hominems and non sequiturs.   His main point seemed to be that I was a hypocrite.  (They always want to make the debate personal, as if the whole issue of abortion depends upon their perception of my apparent virtue.  If I am pure according to their values, then abortion really kills a baby and they will suddenly become pro-life.   Well, not really. Actually that approach is nothing but a ruse to fool themselves that they have a legitimate point.)

The fact of the matter is that I beat him soundly in debate. (You'll have to take my word for it.)  No surprise, since I happen to hold to the truth and have been doing this for years.   Whenever he got pinned, he changed the subject until he had nothing to say but, “You’re brainwashed” as a parting shot.

I went close to the front, on the side. It was a mob scene for awhile.  I was surrounded by angry people who all seemed to want to talk at once.  All of them offered slogans in the form of rhetorical questions, some they had just heard from the podium.   One old man asked me about cutting unemployment, or something.  I told him that he should go home and research the issue and study both sides.  He said, "Oh, okay," like that was a new idea for him. Four or five large black men (NAACP, no doubt) got chest to chest with me (or, should I say, belly to belly) and tried to gently force me to the edge.  When I suggested that they ask a policeman to get involved, they backed down.  Next, a person tried to hide the Femcare puppet behind an U.S. flag on a pole and someone else, a rainbow flag.  Both flags were hitting me in the face and I said, mildly, "That's battery.  If that flag hits me in the face again, I might give it a little yank."  One of the black guys asked me, "Are you threatening somebody?"  When I said no, but the flags were in my face, he persuaded them to move away from me.

At this point it was time to go.  As I walked back up to where the banner was located, “cigar man” approached.    As in other recent occasions, he had the stub of a cigar clamped in his teeth which he exhibited in a wild looking, abandoned grin.   He grinned like he had just somehow achieved some incredibly brilliant maneuver against me.  He said in his high pitched voice, “You know, Meredith, I called the DA’s office and told them that you had written down my license plate and a description of my car.  Do you want my address?  I’ll give you my address if you want it.”

I didn’t say a word.  I just looked at him, taking in the disturbing spectacle of a demented mad man, who quite possibly is under demonic influence.   This is the fellow I wrote about earlier who is obsessed with wondering if “one of our friends” will kill him.  I certainly wasn’t going to remind him of what he surely should have known—that I had been taking note of his info for a police dispatcher, who I had live on the phone.  I said at the time that he was following me, which he was.  It was Saturday morning, August 3, and he insisted on standing inches from us with his silly sign, and then when I moved away from him, he insisted on following us across the street.  When I said, “I’m calling the police” he said, “Call the police.”   But I’m not sure that he even was aware that when I called the police he quickly went to his truck to drive away.  Then when the police asked me for his identifying information and I trotted up to his car to read the plate, he stopped in the middle of the road and got out to tell me the license number and that his Toyota was green, all of which I could see for myself right there. 

As I said, his wickedness quite apart, what’s most disturbing about this man is his up-close-and-personal infliction on us of his profound stupidity.  And then, at the Mountain Moral Monday, he crossed the road to remind me again, with his crazy grin that he had called the DA to tell him I made note of his license plate number, so that if something happened to him, the DA would know “who was responsible.”   And as before, I said nothing, but thinking how foolish he was because I had been giving the police his license number!   I called the event, “Mountain Manure Monday.”  Maybe “Mountain Madness Monday” is also appropriate.

This event and the comments of people we encountered convince me again that there is something in people’s defense for abortion that is not reachable by reason.  In fact, for many it’s not reachable by anything, which leaves them open for harsh judgment as individuals, and we as a nation.
 

Scattered throughout the MM crowd were signs supporting Femcare.  Words endorsing abortion flowed from the podium including from Rev. Barber of the NAACP.  The close association between abortion, homosexuality and the other “issues” championed during Moral Mondays removes any credibility those other positions might have.  And from what I’ve researched on education funding, and understand how distorted the MM rhetoric is, I suspect that everything about MM is wrong.  Considering how much positive coverage MM is getting nationally, we are in for a tremendous battle for truth in North Carolina.

 

photo below by Eric Zetterholm

Femcare Closed

The odd thing is, these pictures were all made on Saturday, July 20 when the place was open.  Tall weeds everywhere, including in the cracks in the pavement.  The rusty dumpster in back.  The fire extinguisher on the ground next to the smokers.  The sign post eaten up with termites.

If the outside is any indication of the inside, of the quality of care and management, the place should stay closed forever.  How many thousands of children have been aborted here?

Like a back alley.

Universal Man @ Barnes & Noble

All three volumes of the novel are now available at Barnes & Noble as e-books that you can download and read on your computer or other device.  The price is $.99 each, which is the cheapest B&N allows.  These new editions feature a number of color photographs.  Click on the text Above to order.

40 Sorrowful Years

I sent this in to the Asheville Citizen-Times yesterday.
It should come out on the 21st or 22nd.

Guest Editorial by Meredith Eugene Hunt

40 years represents a mere turning of a clock—the earth moving around the sun.

      Time magazine’s January 14th cover story proclaimed, “Abortion-rights activists won an epic victory in Roe v. Wade. They've been losing ever since.”  This statement is wrong on the only scale that matters. 40 years after Roe, prenatal children are still being aborted “legally” in our country. 

      While abortion seems entrenched into our culture, in the realm of reasoned argument, the abortion-choice movement has lost the game entirely.  With the advances in observing the life of children in the womb, the work to educate university students on the true nature of abortion, and the logical arguments that demonstrate the humanity and personhood even of an embryo, abortion-choice rhetoric shows itself to be empty.  It’s strong on absurdities, non sequiturs, false history, and demonizing characterizations of pro-lifers.  If you add to our intellectual victory the network of non-profit agencies that serve women in a crisis pregnancy and confirm the compassionate heart of pro-life ideas, the defeat of the abortion choice “position” is total.

      The problems is, legal abortion isn’t dependent on sound jurisprudence or moral reasoning.  It never was.  “Pro-choice” efforts in those directions have been no more than gauze over the power to kill.  They’re an illusion to make the terrible seem less terrible—to comfort people so they can do what they want, and to mislead the desperate. 

      If so, then only a power in the opposing direction can counteract it.  I mean the power to save.  Am I talking about violence?  No.   We are entering an era for artists who communicate when people become deaf to reason, and martyrs who give themselves to saving the lives of others.

      We saw a shadow of the power to save in the Rescue Movement in the early 90’s when 34,000 people were arrested for peacefully blocking doors of abortion centers.  I see some hope now from young people who are impatient.  They’re behind personhood amendments in various states and they understand the principles of rescue, of intervening in a way that validates their belief that each abortion takes the life of a child. 

      On January 11 this year the Alabama Supreme Court recognized that “unborn children are persons with rights that should be protected by law.”  This ruling sets up yet another conflict between powers, one that someday will explode when a state refuses to back down, and instead decides to actually protect all people within its jurisdiction.

      Meanwhile, at a minimum, we need to maintain a prayerful witness outside the places where prenatal children are aborted, the same as we should if born children were being killed under the forceful shelter of government.

Featured Author at Wayman Publishing

My brother treated me to eight days in Rome, Italy a few years ago.  We stayed at a private apartment half a mile from the Vatican and walked everywhere.  Imagine, he a “liberal” from Berkeley and me, a “conservative” from North Carolina, wandering the streets of that city museum of civilization together, napping in the Pantheon, climbing above the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, savoring chocolate gelato as a street-side lunch.   The talks we had!

Much could be said about that marvelous trip, but for our purposes here, the most important part was barbecue sauce.  Stubb’s barbecue sauce.

At a certain alimentaria (Italian grocery) in Rome, I was amazed to discover bottles of Stubb’s on the shelf, and all the way from West Texas.  Stubb’s was once the favorite at the dinner table with me, my wife, and six children, and it seemed so out of place in Italy.  I guess Stubb’s gets around.

And it’s tasty enough you could slop some on roast possum and enjoy.  Possibly I exaggerate.

A picture of Mr. Stubblefield is printed on every bottle. He’s a handsome older man in a cowboy hat.   We share a lot in common.  His most famous quote is “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a cook” and   his second most famous quote is “My life is in these bottles.”  I like those quotes.  They’re inspirational.  So, following Mr. Stubb’s example, I will simply say “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a writer and my life is in these stories.”

Therefore, open up a bottle.  Read one of my stories, either true-to-life or speculative.  What they all contain, I hope, is fun entertainment that offers intriguing, maybe even unsettling perspectives.

Find me at www.chaoticterrain.com.  Then, go to Short Stories.


The orginal posting of this article can be found at Wayman Publishing.  The feature is regarding my story "The Gingerbread Puppet Boy", which will appear in Wayman's anthology, Open Doors: Fractured Fairy Tales, to be released on the first of December.

Protestors Outside Romney Rally

Image by Matt Johnson

Protestors gathered outside the Asheville Civic Center on Thursday, October 11 when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romeny came to town.   I am standing in their midst holding a sign that says, ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN.  We are facing a mass of people thronging inside the center.  Before this, I and several other people handed out about 1,200 flyers promoting the work of Life Advocates and the Ministry of Presence at abortion places.  The media and Romeny organizers estimated that 10,000 people attended the rally.

Here is a link to the video that contained the image above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVHWBIzBgok

Arrested at Biden Event



Photo by John Fletcher, Asheville Citizen-Times




By M. Hunt

On Tuesday, October 2 my wife Edie and I went to the campus of UNCA with a sign that said, “Abortion Hurts Women.”  VP Joe Biden was scheduled to campaign at the Justice Athletic Center.   My purpose in going was simply to take a stand against abortion with a truth that is difficult to rebut, one that should be a concern of politically liberal people

When we arrived on campus we drove around trying to decide where to be.  Edie dropped me off in front of the cafeteria so I could talk with the six or eight Romney supporters and anti-Obama/Biden protestors.  The area there is a longstanding “free speech zone.”  The protestors were not happy about being so far away from the event—the Justice Center was about three blocks away.  I decided to go down there to see if I could persuade police to let me stay and, if so, I’d call the other protestors to join me.  I noted the phone number of one of the protestors, a Romney supporter and also a student at UNCA.

Edie then dropped me near the Justice Center with my sign.  I stood on the sidewalk near the UNCA Bulldog mascot statue and the media trucks.  I was there a few seconds only when I noticed a man who appeared to be Secret Service walk down next to me and beckon to a police officer across the road with his finger.

My argument to the police was that the press and I both were present under the auspices of the First Amendment.  I did not prevail in convincing them that I had a right to be there on the sidewalk of a public university.   I did say, “If a Secret Service agent tells me to move, I will move.”  No Secret Service agent did so.  The one person who appeared to be Secret Service refused to identify himself as such, saying, “We’re not discussing any security arrangements we may or may not have.”

The police told me that where I was standing was a “secure area.”  I replied that they should allow the protestors to be there.  I offered to be searched.  Video from the Asheville Citizen-Times that I found later shows the Biden motorcade passing right by the location and moving toward the parking spaces that had been taped off.

The campus police chief arrived, talked with me, and then consulted with someone on the phone, probably an administrator.  He came back to me to say that it was University policy not to allow me to stand there with a sign.  When I respectfully declined to move to the designated free speech area, I was arrested, handcuffed, taken to jail, and charged with second degree trespassing.    After two hours of processing and waiting, I was fingerprinted and released on a signature bond.  First court appearance is set for December 4.

I hope people realize that my sign and its message probably had little to do with why I was told to move and why I was arrested.  I think anyone with any sign would have received the same treatment.  It’s likely that in those minutes prior to the motorcade arriving, the police would have prevented any non-law enforcement people from being there.  There also is the issue of trespassing on public property.  Yes, it was public property and yes it was a sidewalk, but it was on a college campus and the law for this kind of public property is somewhat different than it is in the rest of Asheville.  The difference is that the priority of the campus is serving students and university programs and not the public at large.  The general public does have access to the university, but the university is within its legal rights to limit or prohibit access that interferes with or disrupts university functions.

The problem is when the university suppresses free speech activity that does not interfere or disrupt university functions.   This unjustified suppression is common on campuses and not only of the general public but of a university’s own students.  Keeping students within a small artificial “zone” is a prime example.  The zone has an upside for non-university people in that they can just show up without notice, and by the way, without alarming campus police.  But it has a downside because it implies that the rest of the campus, the outdoor spaces, is off limits.

I have been engaged in free speech activity on perhaps 50 campuses across the eastern United States and as far west as Oklahoma and South Dakota.  I have seen numerous loud and raucous protests—against the display I helped bring.  Protest members are students and faculty as well as non-university people.   In each of these cases, the university allowed the protests to proceed, deciding that they did not interfere with the functions of the university, in fact they understood that the protests augmented them!  They encouraged debate and the interchange of ideas.  They encouraged social activism.

Last year at a major university in Virginia we set up our large prolife display (eighteen 4 x 8 panels) at a busy foot traffic intersection.  The university gave two spots for counterdemonstrations, one on each side of us—a gay rights group fairly close, and a Planned Parenthood group about a block away.   The police kept the PP group at a distance so to minimize conflict, as they thought.  We have enough experience to know that protestors near the display only increase the attention it gets, so we never encourage the university to keep protestors away, unless, of course, they put up large sheets so others cannot see  our signs. It has happened. By the second day, most of the PP and pro-abortion-choice students were in right in front of our display engaged in multiple, long and sometimes intense conversation.

In short, universities limit educational opportunities when they unnecessarily suppress free speech as does UNCA and also, by the way, AB-Tech.

One thing I told the campus police.  I had as much right to stand on the sidewalk in that location with my sign as Vice President Joe Biden had to campaign for himself and President Obama inside the Justice Center.  We both were using public university facilities for private purposes.  One difference is that Biden did disturb university functions.

Biden and the general public were going inside and the university should have made provision for me and the general public to express our opposition to Biden and his agenda, express it directly to those who support him.  There is no legitimate reason why they could not have set up a secure protest area in proximity to the Justice Center.

My stand that lead to the arrest represents a simple concept--that I as a citizen of the United States have certain rights.  I have a fundamental right of free speech.  I have a right to be on public property if I have not done anything that revokes that right.  I did not disrupt any university function.  I was not a security risk to anyone.   Consider this, what does it say about our nation when a person, even in the special circumstances at UNCA, is arrested for simply holding a sign on a sidewalk?

Oh, and by the way, abortion hurts women.  What does that say about our nation?

Welcome!

If you’re here now, you probably picked up a Life Advocates flyer at the Mitt Romney rally in Asheville on Thursday.

I’d like to give you a bit of introduction.  Life Advocates began in 1988 when a small group of people decided to organize a Pastors’ Protest Against Abortion in Asheville.  Two-hundred people rallied at what was then the City-County Plaza and afterwards we broke up to picket at four locations that performed abortion.  Fortunately, other than Mission hospital, we only have one abortion location now.  Two have closed.  Over the years we’ve had numerous rallies, pickets, and protests, including a Life Chain with 110 churches and 3800 people participating.

The flyer you received mentioned our Ministry of Presence efforts.  For 15 years we’ve had at least a minimal presence of one person at “Femcare” nearly every time people are coming for abortion.  When we offer help to women we call this Sidewalk Counseling.  We need more people to join us.  In addition to this outreach we maintain a 24 hour Pregnancy Helpline.  Visit our pregnancy care website, www.abortionAsheville.com.  For years we held an all night prayer vigil at the abortion site, with a number of churches participating.

Life Advocates has been involved in supporting legislation, both state and federal, that’s designed to protect women and children from abortion.

I as Director of Life Advocates engage in what I call, “literary activism” by writing fictional stories that depict characters who struggle with controversies of the day and the basic conditions of life.  Some of the stories are fantastical or speculative, that is, with the genre of Science Fiction or Horror.  My novel, Universal Man is a “contemplative thriller” that features people who carry their beliefs about abortion to their logical conclusions.  You can learn more about the novel at our website www.chaoticterrain.com.    Some of my short stories may be read free at www.chaoticterrainpress.blogspot.com.

Another focus has been reaching out to university students with the Genocide Awareness Project through the Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR).  GAP is a large mural containing images of aborted children juxtaposed with images of other historical atrocities.   I work with the CBR’s Knoxville office and have been on a team taking GAP to over 50 universities throughout the Southeast and elsewhere, including six of North Carolina’s major university campuses.  I’ve been as far west as South Dakota and as for Northeast as Rhode Island.  CBR’s national website is www.abortionNo.org.  Be forewarned.  The images are shocking.  The Knoxville office has a softer website at www.prolifeoncampus.com.

The rest of this blog contains articles and photographs from work of ours in the past few years.  I hope you will take a little time to look them over.  Even more, I hope that you will be moved to become involved in our Ministry of Presence and Sidewalk Counseling.  Politicians come and go.  Elections are won and lost.  But until our nation repents and we finally decide to protect children in the womb, this need will continue, week by week, month by month, and year by year.  We are committed for the long haul.  Will you join us? 

Thanks!

-Mick

lifeadvocates@earthlink.net
828-545-2284

When Earth Whispers

Short story.  An earthquake centered in Lynchville, California sets off a series of horrible, strange events.  A paranormal investigator who hosts a nationally syndicated radio program and a local Presbyterian pastor attempt to solve the mystery.  This is a story NO ONE would dare publish.

Go to "When Earth Whispers" at Chaotic Terrain Press.

Arrangements

Life is too short to face rejection after rejection, while your story collects digital dust and its freshness fades. Therefore, today I have published my first short story in years. It's about a widower who arranges flowers and something far more important. 

Go to "Arrangements" at Chaotic Terrain Press.

Julie's Story

Watch this short video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEtLrMp6EVc&noredirect=1

It's of a nursing student this week at the Genocide Awareness Project at the Unversity of North Florida. She tells how the project changed her life for the better when it first came to her campus three years ago. I was glad to be part of the GAP team there then. And more glad now that I've seen this. We too infrequently hear how GAP turned people around about abortion, and sometimes the story doesn't come to us until years later. A story like Julie's makes a person realize again how important and necessary this work is. We must keep going, no matter how hateful people are, or how dehumanizing they treat us.

40 Days for Life Kickoff, Asheville

About 100 people attended the Spring 40 Days for Life kickoff in Asheville on Tuesday afternoon, February 21. If you would like to participate, please call us at 828-545-2284.

40 Days for Life Asheville Kickoff, Second Group

This vehicle from Quest Diagnostics arrived. A couple weeks ago the driver, an older gentleman, told me, "I'm with you" meaning that he was prolife. On the way out I said he was serving the abortionist. He said he was not, but his company was. I disagreed and said that he could refuse to come. He insisted the company would fire him. I asked if it was worth having blood on his hands. He said he didn't and was sorry I felt that way. As he drove away I said that the place was open because of people like him and urged that he repent. This time, when I took his picture, he had raised his arm to block a clear image.

For the Record

Here is a link to a TOPIX discussion that I participated in following up on an Asheville Citizen-Times editorial or letter to the editor back in mid 2007. The original article is no longer available.

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/asheville-nc/TAFP8TU52GKLMM8CP

GAP at URI

Marie is a freshman at the University of Rhode Island where we set up the Genocide Awareness Project on November 7 & 8. Her shirt says "Rape Victim Pro-Life."
I also was on the GAP team at the James Madison University in Virgina during the previous week.

The Last Three Weeks

During the last three weeks I've been with the Genocide Awareness Project at Liberty University, Radford University, the U of TN in Chattanooga, and the U of TN in Knoxville. The photo is from Radford. The girls left and middle are sisters from Haiti. At Liberty, GAP was modified, as we were not actually on campus but on the perimeter. Debbie, on the right, is a volunteer for the Center for Bioethical Reform that puts on GAP.

Hunt's Press Statements Reacting to the Helpful Newly Enacted 'Woman's Right to Know Act'

Primary Statement
Abortion destroys an unborn child, a unique, individual human life, and this is what makes abortion difficult for women. Many pregnant women feel pressure into aborting a child by their circumstances, by parents, by the father of the baby, or by their own needs and goals They are nudged along by deceptive and incomplete counseling at the abortion centers, which stand to profit though abortion. The new law gives women every opportunity to know all the facts about abortion and how they can let their babies live. It will inform them about how they can find a better solution to their situations, even if they already have made a decision—because even after a woman walks into the clinic door, it’s not too late for her to change her mind.


Analysis
Most arguments against the Act are arguments for abortion, especially in the hard cases. If you believe abortion only eliminates a ball of cells or if the “fetus” is not fully human or not a person, you would think it bad to add “burdens” to a “simple, safe medical procedure.” But really, the bill is pro-choice. Why do “pro-choice” people oppose the bill? Maybe they’re not being honest—pro-choice may only be a useful slogan that they do not mean sincerely. Maybe the political pro-choice viewpoint really is pro-abortion. The Act occupies a morally absurd place where the State of North Carolina will make it easier for a pregnant woman to know that abortion destroys an unborn child at same time she retains the choice to destroy her unborn child, legally.


Overall Social Effect
The WRTK Act represents a transition from “abortion on demand” to “abortion under advisement” which is what some countries in Europe now have. Germany, for example, requires a three day waiting period after government specified counseling—far more intensive than the WRTK Act. Because of its past record on human rights, Germany understands the interest and role of government in protecting human life.


Arguments and Counter Arguments

There is the factor that the free standing abortion clinics in North Carolina do not provide an ordinary long-term relationship with a doctor. In Asheville, for example, at the abortion place on Orange Street, a woman does not get her own appointment. She arrives at the same time as a half dozen other women, and people are escorted inside the waiting room only after a security check. She stays four hours and leaves, maybe coming back for a checkup at a later time. Many people drive from out of town, even from out of state. An abortionist is not usually a woman’s personal doctor.

Planned Parenthood has four abortion centers in NC and all the other PP centers in NC do abortion referral. The other day, I looked at the website of PP of Central NC and when I checked to see what information it offered on abortion, it had a link to the PP Federation of America. I was amazed to see how much PPFA fudged the truth about the risks of abortion and the facts about pre-natal human development.

For example: PP says on its website, “The ball of cells develops into an embryo at the start of the sixth week.” That’s entirely misleading because the embryonic stage begins at fertilization, and a human embryo at six weeks is far more developed than a ball of cells.

Planned Parenthood’s assertions about the medical and emotional risks of abortion range from oversimplified to untrue.

This is why we need the Woman’s Right to Know Act: to protect women from the unethical, deceptive practices of Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses in North Carolina.

A Planned Parenthood advertisement that said it aborts children up through the 20th week in three of its North Carolina clinics. The 20th week! It's murder.

One abortion place in Asheville that closed in 1998 was at the outskirts of Biltmore Village. This place was the pits. It was surrounded by RR tracks. The waiting room was a bridge over a dirty creek. It had peeling roofing material for siding. Had bars and broken windows in the back. The abortionists drove up from Tennessee or South Carolina. I remember catching Dr. James Oliver sneaking down the RR tracks to let himself in by the back gate. He was wearing a U.S. Customs hat and pretended to be RR security. He worked at a Catholic hospital in South Carolina where he had pledged to give up abortion. They had no admitting privileges in a local hospital. The local abortion doctors at “Femcare” tried to close this place down because they were seeing women in the emergency room who had been hurt there. Some of the abortion places in NC are of the same sleazy type.

It’s true that certain basic information is required to be offered, but that in no way prohibits a doctor from presenting it in ways that are appropriate to the hearer, and addressing the woman about her own personal situation.

The Woman’s Right to Know Act requires the use of all of appropriate medically accurate information and likely will reduce the “need” for abortion as women better understand their unborn children and all the resources available to them.


For (pro-abortion-choice) information on the requirements of other states, see: www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_MWPA.pdf
and www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_RFU.pdf

Americans United for Life's Investigative Report on Planned Parenthood

Go to:

http://www.aul.org/aul-special-report-the-case-for-investigating-planned-parenthood/

One item from the report's Executive Summary:
"Willingness to provide women with inaccurate and misleading information. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates continually demonstrate a disregard for women’s health and safety through their willingness to provide inaccurate and misleading information regarding fetal development and about abortion’s inherent health risks."

To a Student at Shanghai American School on "Abortion as Genocide."

This letter is a continuation of our correspondence. The student is writing as part of an AP Language class. It began with an essay of hers in response to one of mine and one of Cathleen Kaveny, professor of law and theology at Notre Dame.


Dear Emily,

I appreciate the tone of your discussion. You might be interested to know that one of my sons, who was 18 at the time, spent last spring semester at the City University of Hong Kong and also traveled some on the mainland of China while he was there.

The original context of the [my] essay that appeared in the Opposing Viewpoints Series was a university student newspaper where I was answering specific criticisms, which limited the scope of the points I made.

A fundamental issue surrounding abortion is personhood. One similarity between abortion and more recognized atrocities such as genocide is the denial of personhood status to human beings. I think that you will find it almost universally accepted in the scientific/medical world that an individual human life begins at fertilization. The controversy centers on the philosophical/political question of when a human being becomes a person. “Pro-life” people say that a human being at whatever stage of development is a person, while “pro-choice” people make a variety of claims but generally say that a human being does not become a full person with a legal right to life until “viabilty” or birth.

Citing possible positive outcomes does not solve the ethical issues of personhood because one could also find such outcomes for the Holocaust, as an example. The creation of the State of Israel as a sanctuary for Jewish survivors was one positive result, and as morally absurd as it sounds, the Holocaust reduced the overall instance of crime among the Jewish populations, which had a net effect on crime.

(In any case, the positive outcomes you referenced, and the research are certainly contested. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime . )

I would like to address the other specifics that you mentioned, but time is limited, so I offer a referral to two books that represent the best pro-life apologetics I know, both by Francis J. Beckwith, a professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University. The books are: Politically Correct Death: Answering Arguments for Abortion Rights and Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice.

Both books, and editorial summaries and reviews, can be found at http://www.amazon.com/ . One item Beckwith raises is a difference between artifactual and biological development. An artifact, like a clock or a rocket, is put together piece by piece and is not functional as such until it is complete. A living being, however, begins all at once and in time its self-directed development shows us what it has been all along.

A final comment: I don’t think any word is adequate now to describe all that abortion is. “Foeticide” has as weakness the common use of the word “fetus” to dehumanize pre-natal human life. Fetus does not specifically apply to human beings, but to any mammalian species. Maybe we will just have to wait for someone like Raphel Lemkin, someone with a passionate intellectual interest in the law and in words combined with an overwhelming personal interest in the terribleness of the Holocaust, since most of his relatives were murdered. And perhaps we will have to wait for more of a consensus against abortion, since it’s not the words themselves that have power, but the weight we give to them.