I Grieve for Us, Our Ill Society

I just had an email exchange with my mother-in-law. I mentioned a story in the news about quadruplets who survived a year against the odds given by the doctors who had advised some or all of them be aborted. The story was a triumph, and a caution to weigh carefully the decision to end a life. My MiL (clever abbreviation for mother-in-law?) saw this as an attack on "women's rights", the "right to choose", and "reproductive rights".

MiL is a churchgoing woman. She takes her grandsons to church with her most Sundays. She signs them up for Sunday school. She is a christian. But she is so full of self righteous hatred for the male establishment, that she considers anything less than total freedom to kill a fetus up to the moment of birth to be an invasion of the rights and freedoms of all women, childbearing or not. Any restraint on abortion is tantamount to slavery, to her.

I'm a christian, too. But that's about all we have in common. I don't hate the male-dominated establishment. I see it shifting away from male domination, pushed like a sail by the winds of guilt. Centuries of domination mean that males today inherit responsibility for what our predecessors have done. Never mind that these despicable men were also ancestors for the women of this era. We are tainted by their bigotries. So, we are cowards. When confronted with "women have a right to decide what to do with their own bodies," we sheepishly say, "it's your womb, and we have no right to an opinion."

Those babies being aborted by the millions every year, they're our babies too. But the wombs they got started in are under the control of people who may not have the best interests of their tenants in mind. When having a baby might require making massive changes in their lives, and someone is waving a "solution" that is quick, mostly painless, and commonplace, it's much harder to say no. And if any germ of anguish or doubt crosses their gaze, well, damn it, you can't judge! It's only a bit of tissue! It's not murder!

The thing is, I'm a Christian, remember? I believe in a day of Judgement, where we face God, and He decides our eternal fate. And I see millions upon millions of people for whom an unborn child is not worthy of a moment's thought. No effort to let that child live is worth the time, effort, and trouble it takes. So, we, my society, my culture, treasure the "rights" of living, voting, consuming women over those of dependant, vulnerable, utterly helpless unborn...people. All that potential is simply tossed out in a medical waste bag.

Some of you reading this will think I'm a fascist, enslaving, heartless monster for wanting to damn all those women to either give up recreational sex, or be punished with the horrific specter of life with a child. But you who defend the "right to choose", what are you damning all those women to? Will you stand by them, and share their fate on that day of Judgement?

The slaughter goes on, and it's not going to stop because of one pitiful little blog. And I grieve.