Category Archives: Abortion

What It Means to Be a Woman

September 24, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

This year at Smith College, in the Connecticut River valley of western Massachusetts, according to their website, a “world-class faculty of scholars are fully engaged with their students’ intellectual development, and an open curriculum encourages each student to explore many fields of knowledge.”

At this nation’s largest college for women, 24 course offerings explore what it means to be a woman.  The “Seminar on Gender and Social Change” sums it all up:  students explore “the intersection of race, class and sexual orientation” as they are revealed in “case studies [to] include feminist, lesbian and gay, right-wing, self  help, anti-abortion, and pro-choice movements.”  In short, being a Smith kind of woman requires a motherly embrace of abortion.

Whether it is Smith College or Harvard or Columbia or any American university, young women…and men…are being taught that abortion is the ultimate feminist right that guarantees the ability of women to succeed in life.  If you are pro-woman, you are required to be pro-abortion.

Woe to any student who might enter college holding a reverence for life.  This is the kind of “mistaken notion” that will cause the ire and ridicule of professors to fall upon on her, doom her to Cs and lower on papers and deny her access to fellowships and faculty positions.  In most cases, these women will survive.  They will be converted.

Battered from every side, our college daughters will eventually come to believe that no self-respecting woman could ever claim to be pro-life.  In a curriculum closed to real academic inquiry, they will never hear the truth about Elizabeth Cady Stanton who wrote feminist papers opposing abortion and infanticide in The Revolution, a newspaper she published with Susan B. Anthony.

Neither are college professors likely to disclose Stanton’s letter to Julia Ward Howe, the creator of Mother’s Day, where she wrote, “When we consider that woman are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to dispose of as we see fit.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is not the only woman college professors choose to neglect.  Not surprisingly, their slate of “undesirables” includes all women who embrace the life-giving capacity inherent in the very nature of being a woman…Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Pearl S. Buck, Dorothy Day…and many others.  The curriculum at Smith College may be advertised as “open”, but not that open.

Luckily, college is not the only place where one can get an education.  Thanks to modern feminists who are reclaiming the definition of what it means to be a woman., it is possible to join the company of real feminists, both past and present, who affirm the value of every human life, no matter how small or humble it may be.

Like those who paved the way before them, Feminists for Life has refused to be controlled by the politics of abortion.  Believing in the strength of women and the potential of every human life, FFL President Serrin Foster has built a strong force of women reaching out to women with information and support.  We deserve better than abortion…we deserve better choices.

This year Feminists for Life has gathered a group of eloquent women speakers who tell it like it is…what it means to be a woman.  Traveling to university campuses around the country, they are truly engaging the students’ intellectual development, presenting case studies which illustrate the feminist case against abortion.

Finally, our daughters entering college do not have to accept the status quo dished out by college professors who want to indoctrinate with a pro-abortion bias.  Feminists for Life has paved a way to truth.  We can help.

Think of the young women in your life who are in college.  Tell them about Feminists for Life  and the full range of resources they offer to college students:  helping with abortion research projects, providing pregnancy resources and leading campus workshops and lectures.

Taking heart from women who have paved the way, it’s time for freshmen entering Smith College…and any other college…to teach their professors a thing or two.  Considering what it means to be a woman…when you are talking about abortion…we deserve better.

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When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society – so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.    

                         Mattie Brinkerhoff, The Revolution, 1869

King of Lies

September 17, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

In one of the greatest public relations scams of modern times, America is being duped by the King of Lies.

From the inception of grassroots programs in the 1990s bringing abstinence education to teens, Planned Parenthood has fought to extinguish the abstinence message.  In the first years, they were very direct with us.  They hated abstinence education.  Why?  Because sex was a natural right…even for teenagers.  If teens wanted to have sex, they were merely exercising their natural born right to enjoy having sex.

But with escalating birth rates and a new generation of sexually transmitted diseases, parents and public officials were hard-pressed to accept this line of reasoning.  Planned Parenthood and its friends needed to find a new tactic. Putting on their creative hats, they added water and stirred, creating…“medical accuracy.”

Knowing that you only need to repeat a lie often enough for people to accept it, Planned Parenthood has led an unrelenting campaign to convince people that abstinence educators base their programs on bad medicine.  It is a catch-phrase that has caught on, even as this idea is promoted by the one organization in America that has survived by avoiding medically accurate information at all costs.

On their website, Planned Parenthood offers the basics of fertilization of the human egg.  Oddly, passing over medically accurate and captivating modern films of real sperm and eggs creating a living and cell-dividing zygote, they opt for a crude cartoon starring a penis named Peter (Yes!) wrapped up in a tan trench coat.

Peter stars on The G Spot with a nameless Vixen complete with cleavage, the voice of Mae West and a fur-lined dress in the shape of the vagina and vulva.  In their crass comedy routine, where “the genitals tell it like it is,” fertilization of the egg by the sperm ends with Peter inviting Mae West back to his place…because all this talk “really got him going.”

If Planned Parenthood wanted to entertain a six-year-old with cute sperm playing cards poolside as a pearl ovum floats by on a lily pad, they have succeeded.  If they wanted to use the one website in the world that could really promote medically accurate information on how life is created, this cartoon is a dismal failure.

Once Planned Parenthood explains “How Pregnancy Happens,” their next offering is a page titled “Pregnant, Now What?”  In a long-winded, ho-hum, resigned acknowledgment that you must be pregnant, nowhere is there the hint of the joy of conception for a couple who “planned parenthood.”

Nowhere is such a happy couple invited to see a real zygote implanted in the womb developing into a human life.  Instead, shifting attention to all the problems of being pregnant…the missed period, the difficult decision, raising the child by myself…the list of “choices” offered by Planned Parenthood is enough to create clinical depression in an amoeba.

Depressed?  No worry.  The cure for your depression is offered in the next sentence… “You can choose to end the pregnancy.”

But first…

…just to make sure you never encounter any medically accurate information about the “cells attached to the uterus,” Planned Parenthood makes sure to alert you to “so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that are “anti-abortion”. These “fake clinics”, they warn,       advertise free pregnancy testing to “lure women into their anti-choice agenda.”

What Planned Parenthood would rather you not know is that crisis pregnancy centers rely on medically accurate ultrasounds to give women medically accurate information for considering “the choice” being sold to them on a website that prefers cartoons to truth.

On the Planned Parenthood website, looking for just one 4-D ultrasound, I type in fetus on their search engine.  The first offering?  An article listed by Planned Parenthood, “The Bible Is Silent on Abortion,” is written by Rabbi Dennis S. Ross.  Just below, an article, “The President Signs the Dangerous Unborn Victims of Violence Act,” clearly denounces any attempt to create “legal personhood for the fetus.”

And just to make sure you never consider the “personhood” of the fetus they offer to abort, the next article listed by their search engine offers Planned Parenthood’s medically accurate version of fetal development reduced to six lines:

We know that the embryo or fetus cannot feel pain before 20 weeks of pregnancy. Nearly all — 99 percent — of abortions are done before 20 weeks. It is even possible that a fetus is unable to perceive pain at any time during pregnancy. If, however, the ability to feel pain does develop before birth and consciousness, it is likely to happen only after the 28th week of pregnancy, when abortion is performed only for rare, unusual medical situations.

Partial-birth abortion?  It’s never mentioned by Planned Parenthood in medically accurate terms that would lead a person to understand what is happening to the fetus…or baby.  The actual gruesome “procedure” is carefully cloaked by Planned Parenthood behind this banal statement, “The fetus and other products of conception are removed from the uterus with medical instruments and suction curettage. This procedure takes about 10-20 minutes.”  Not one word about stabbing the baby and sucking out the brain from the cranium.

Ultrasound?  A search of Planned Parenthood’s information base gives you the assurance that an “ultrasound can also be used to help locate an Intrauterine Device (IUD) inside a woman’s uterus.”  Pictures offered of a  baby in the womb?  None.  Pictures of an IUD…just follow the Planned Parenthood hyperlink.

Try as one may, using the search engine on Planned Parenthood’s website, there is not one picture of a “bunch of cells” developing in the uterus…the cells at the heart of the choice they will abort for $500 cash, a choice that impacts 1.6 million women and babies every year.

Planned Parenthood leading the charge of a campaign to offer medically accurate information is enough to make a person laugh.  No wonder they fight every legislative effort to enforce Informed Consent.  If only it weren’t so tragic.

Can anything good come from having the King of Lies set the standards for truth? No.  Not one good thing.

Planned Parenthood Opposes Choice!

July 2, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

I know it’s hard to believe.  Planned Parenthood opposing choice?  Never!

Ever since Roe v. Wade, over thirty years ago, Planned Parenthood has rallied its forces around the banner of CHOICE.  The ultimate insult, by extension, has been anti-choice.  If you are an enemy of Planned Parenthood, the banner is hoisted high in the sky and voices rise in shrill chants, “Anti-choice, anti-choice, anti-choice!”

Thus, it is a momentous occasion when Planned Parenthood has adopted the tactics of the enemy.  Planned Parenthood is ANTI-CHOICE!  Yes, it is.  Really!

If choice mattered, politicians funded by Planned Parenthood would listen to parents.  And parents have clearly set out what they want for their children.  A 2007 Zogby poll of parents of children age 10-16 showed the following:

  • 9 out of 10 parents agree that being sexually abstinent is best for their child’s health and future, with 8 in 10 strongly agreeing.
  • 8 out of 10 parents think it’s important for their child to wait until they’re married to have sex, with 6 in 10 strongly agreeing.
  • 8 out of 10 parents think sex education in public schools should place more emphasis on promoting abstinence vs. contraceptive use.
  • 2 out of 3 parents believe that promoting alternatives to intercourse (such as showering together and mutual masturbation, which are presented in some comprehensive programs) encourages sexual activity.
  • 6 out of 10 parents think more government funding should be given to abstinence education vs. comprehensive sex education.  Only 2 out of 10 want more funding for comprehensive education.

Planned Parenthood would have you believe otherwise.  They have spent years trying to convince parents otherwise.  They have confounded, confused, manipulated, exaggerated, engineered, maneuvered, exploited…but all to no avail.

Once the truth is revealed, once parents understand the core content and message of abstinence education, by a 3 to 1 margin parents want government funding of sexual abstinence education that promotes abstinence until marriage as the best for their child’s health and future.

Planned Parenthood has reached the end of the road.  The truth cannot be denied.  Thus it must be faced head-on.  Planned Parenthood is finally ANTI-CHOICE.

Planned Parenthood and its allies have clamped down on Congressional members.  They don’t care about the choice of parents who choose abstinence education.  Choice?  They’re against it!

In the greatest ANTI-CHOICE campaign of the year, Planned Parenthood has mustered its full force to deny parents and their children the choice to have abstinence education programs.  And Congressional members who receive campaign donations from Planned Parenthood are all too willing to be a part of this campaign.

Until June 30, federal funding under Title V paid for the choice that parents want…abstinence education.  Even with this funding, the educational choice of parents received only one-tenth of the money given to condom-promotion education…much of that condom pushing money going to Planned Parenthood programs.

But nine-tenths of the money tree isn’t enough for Planned Parenthood.  No.  They want it all.  Choice?  Hang Choice.  Forget Choice.  Kill Choice.

July 1, is a watershed date.  It is the line in the sand.  It is the time when parents must finally take things into their own hands and demand that their choice be heard.  They must gather their voices and rattle the phones of the Congressional representatives who are supposed to represent them.

If not, Planned Parenthood will have ten-tenths.  And our children will have nothing.  This is clearly the goal of Planned Parenthood in its fierce campaign…ANTI-CHOICE!

Technically Speaking

October 9, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

MS Magazine has once again given cover placement to a story about abortion.  Its October 10 issue is a megaphone for women who are announcing, “We Had Abortions.”

Ironically, this new effort to defend abortion points out the failure of the pro-abortion movement during the past thirty years.  As Kathleen Parker points out, past arguments defending American abortion policies have focused on the technical aspects of abortion.

Eleanor Smeal, publisher of MS Magazine, loses no opportunity to point out the obvious to Tucker Carlson.  Technically speaking, she reminds him that abortion is “a medical procedure, that’s obvious.”  She can point to a long list of technical terminology that has been crafted to describe the indescribable.

The litany of techno-talk is, “It’s a woman’s right to choose a medical procedure that removes a small clump of cells from her own body…a simple surgical procedure, the D & E, dilation and evacuation, where the physician extracts the products of conception from the uterus.”  And, technically speaking, they have described abortion.

In a natural progression, much of the dialogue describing the sex that leads to the product of conception that leads to the surgical procedure…all of this talk about sex…has also turned technical since Roe v. Wade.  Sex education, as liberal abortion proponents would have it, is all about technique.

Going into the classroom with boxes of condoms and things to put condoms on, they have reduced sex to technique…ways that children can be taught technically how to have sex and be somewhat, moderately, possibly and hopefully saferrrrrrrrr.

If humans were cars, and if we were installing a muffler on a child car, perhaps we could let these educators get away with it.  But we are not.  And children are not.  Cars, that is.

Cars are things.  Humans are living things.  Living, breathing, hoping, dreaming and loving.  We are not meant to be handled by technoids who describe invasive “procedures” and erotic “actions” with detached language devoid of emotion.

My mind is seared with the memory of a Planned Parenthood educator who demanded allegiance to the language of technique.  Speaking to a friendly National Organization of Women (NOW) audience, she decried the national acceptance of the “medically inaccurate” term partial-birth abortion.  “That’s not what it is!” she declared.  “It’s a D&E.  That’s the accurate medical terminology.  There is no such procedure as partial-birth abortion.”

In the next breathe, she launched into a speech against abstinence education.  “Those programs are terrible…talking about differences between men and women, emotional consequences of sex and promoting marriage.”  Technically speaking, she demanded a return to procedural instructions on how to install a condom on a teen.

Technically speaking, the rationale of the past thirty years is that we only have to perfect the technical aspects of having sex without consequences and then describe that technique in a perfectly technical way.  And it works…as long as you have a heart that is unmoved by a single human tear or the love expressed in a kiss on the cheek.

Why else would MS Magazine, Planned Parenthood, and NOW work so hard to ignore the real pain of people who bought into the false promises of “safe sex”?  Where are the articles describing the experiences of women who refused to be “Silent No More,” the women abused by an abortion industry that hides behind technique?

Already, commentaries responding to the MS Magazine article are pointing out the obvious.  Technique is never well-used to deal with matters of the human heart, the matters of sex…and love…as people have known them since Adam and Eve.

The magazine has invited women to open their hearts.  And as the women describe why they “chose” abortion, readers are asking the many obvious questions that the editors left unasked…and unanswered.

Technically speaking, describing a medical procedure and the events of my life leading up to the surgery, leaves the most important questions unanswered.  How did I close my eyes to the product of conception that could have held my hand and given me a hug?  Where is the man who promised me love and protection?

Great women of courage have told this story.  But you won’t read about it in MS Magazine.

Willing to deal truthfully with what sex and the consequences of sex are, courageous women have humbled themselves to reveal the lies of technical lingo.  They lead important national movements on college campuses, in state legislatures, and in sex education programs.

This, Ms. Smeal, is a story worth telling.  Consider it for your next issue.  Technically speaking, though, I’m not holding my breath. 

 December 26, 2005 –  Small Acts of Courage

June 6, 2005 –  Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

  See Archives for past editorials.

 

Expiration Date on Parents

October 2, 2006

 It always happens.  Every time our daughter arrives with a medical malady, it’s always the same.  Last time it was a headache.  Jamie dragged herself in the front door and asked me if I had any aspirin.  “Sure,” I said, “in the bathroom.”

Dropping her purse to the floor, she made a beeline around the corner.  From the kitchen, I heard loud sighs, harrumphs, and plunks as she threw one bottle after the next into the waste can.  Stomping out of bathroom, she grabbed her car keys.  I didn’t have to ask where she was going.  I knew.

Throwing her purse over her shoulder, she knew I knew.  But she told me anyway…just to make a point.  “I can’t believe it.  Don’t you know you’re supposed to throw medicines away after they expire!”

Expiration dates are a big thing in my household only because my children are the official expiration cops who write me up.  Grown now, and on their own, they have their work cut out for themselves when they come for a visit.  Everything is suspect.  No family dinner is safe until the fridge is detoxed of outdated cans and boxes.

Expiration dates are also becoming a big thing in America… impacting more than aspirin and cheese.  Much more.

One day…the day they bring their precious baby home from the hospital, parents are in charge.  They are expected to watch over every detail that might impact their children…sugar content, child seats, exercise habits, television, homework, playmates and transfats.  Parents are in control.

Then one day…one undefined day, when they aren’t aware of anything being different, parents expire.  They don’t expire because they are tired of being parents.  They expire because society is tired of listening to parents.

Case in point, the Senate heads home this week after failing to bring Senate Bill 403 to a vote.  It is a sign that parents have passed their expiration date.  Once allowed oversight over the health of their children, parents are no longer deemed necessary for oversight of a major life-impacting surgery performed on their daughters, abortion.

The Child Custody Protection Act would have reaffirmed the parent’s right to oversee the healthcare of their daughters.  It supported state parental notification laws already in existence.  But the Senate, in their wisdom, noted the expiration date on parents and declared that they were irrelevant.

Parents are passing their useful life all over the country.  You can’t tell it by looking at them.  Neither can you tell it by talking with them.  The easiest way to tell that they have reached their expiration date is by noting the actions of those who would thwart their involvement in the lives of their children.

In Mesa, Arizona, a presenter announced the opening of a health clinic specifically targeting teens.  She said they had set a sign out on the sidewalk so that kids on the way home from school would have to literally step over it.  She said, figuratively, that clinic workers were so anxious to reach teens that they might even go out to the sidewalk themselves to “get” the teens.  Where were the parents?  Expired.

Around the country, Planned Parenthood offices and other like-minded organizations reach out to students with “confidential” birth control.  The parents?  Expired.

Then, when the “confidential” birth control fails, children may purchase an abortion.  In Arizona, Governor Napolitano this year vetoed a bill requiring notarized signatures on parental consent forms. Once again, she tuned her ear to the cries of Planned Parenthood.  In spite of convincing testimony from parents that signatures are easily forged or falsified, the Governor ignored the will of parents in Arizona.  She must have noticed their expiration date.

Around the country, parents’ efforts to stay connected to their children is under assault.  As the number rises for states passing laws providing for parental consent and notification, so, too, rises the number of assaults on these laws.

Now, thanks to the U.S. Senate, even when an effective parental notification law is in place, it doesn’t matter.  It should matter.  But it doesn’t.  Anyone can transport a minor across state lines to circumvent the law that upholds a parent’s right to be involved in an abortion decision.  Expired.

I get a headache thinking about the next time Jamie might arrive with a headache of her own.  It’s been over a year since she bought my last bottle of aspirin.  It’s probably expired by now.

It could be worse.  Thankfully, she is grown and safe from the social engineers who are redesigning America.  I hate to think what she would do if she knew her mom had passed the expiration date for parents.

 

December 26, 2005 – Small Acts of Courage

June 6, 2005 – Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

 See Archives for past editorials.