Do All Lives Matter? (Part 4: Beating Hearts)

SLAVERY & NAZIS

In 1787, Constitutional Convention delegates came to a "Three-Fifths" compromise when deciding how many representatives each state should be allowed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Southern states wanted to count their slaves. Northern states didn't think they should. Thus the three-fifths rule that said each slave could be counted as three-fifths of a human being. Seventy years later, in 1857, a slave named Dred Scott petitioned to buy his freedom because his owners had moved from a slavery state to a free state. In what is largely seen as the most horrendous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, the court said that residing in a free state did not entitle Scott to his freedom and that, furthermore, African Americans were not and never could be citizens of the United States. 

Roughly seventy years after that, Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, espousing the idea that some races are inferior to others, including blacks and Jews, whom he painted as human parasites. This ideology led to World War II and the systematic slaughter of millions of Jews. Hitler wasn't the only one who believed in superior and inferior races. Someone he admired, Charles Darwin, who had written On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life back in 1859, (one year before Abraham Lincoln would be elected president) also believed in the superiority of some races over others. Though Darwin is revered by the science community today (and His book's second subtitle has been conveniently edited out of most text books), his writings about "favoured races" inspired Hitler to begin his genocide in Europe.

And another strong supporter of eugenics (the systematic weeding out of "inferior" beings) was born in 1883. Her name was Margaret Sanger, and here are some of the things she said: 

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." 

“How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds.”

The Mother of Planned Parenthood

If you look Sanger up on Google, you will mostly find people apologizing for her, suggesting that her words "while poorly chosen" were taken out of context. (You'll find similar results when you research a link between Hitler and Darwinian beliefs, by the way). But why do they want to defend someone who clearly believed some races were better than others? 
Because Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood. And no matter what all that ^^ history has taught us about the evils of defining certain groups of humans with terms meant to diminish their very humanity, we still haven't learned our lesson. We are still denying the existence of human beings with heartbeats, fingerprints, and unique DNA -- all in the defense of our own wants and needs. 
I've been talking about LIFE for the past several weeks, and this post wraps up my series in the most horrific number I will share with you, directly from Planned Parenthood, who reported 328,348 abortions in 2015. That's almost 1,000 a day, dear readers, making all the other deaths I've shared from healthcare, warfare, guns and terrorism, poisonings and roadway accidents pale in comparison. 
And here's the saddest thing of all: these deaths are celebrated. They are sanctioned by our government and they are forcible funded by your tax dollars ($555 million in 2015 to this organization that is designated as a "non-profit" while holding a cool $127 million in surplus (profits)). 
And do the Powers That Be care one whit if you have a problem with that? No, they don't. If you have a problem with Planned Parenthood, then you are a part of the War on Women.
But here's the hypocrisy: If you won't go to war because you "conscientiously object," you can become a hero. Maybe they'll make a movie about you. But conscientiously objecting to abortion will get you nothing but derision and hate, all while they call you hateful. 
If you stand in solidarity with someone on death row, championing their right to life and railing against the inhumanity of lethal injection, you will also get a movie. Susan Sarandon will play you and win an award for it. But if you stand in solidarity with the unborn, if you dare to remind people that a baby's heart begins to beat only 3 weeks after fertilization, or that unborn babies feel pain by at least eighteen weeks, when they are about the size of your palm, and that common abortion procedures are likely excruciatingly painful to the baby, you will get nothing but smear tactics and labeling. 
Like Pharaoh hardened his heart against the cry of his Israeli slaves, abortion advocates are unmoved by such facts as beating hearts and pain receptors. They don't care because their cause is more important to them than human life.

I don't think they understand the sad irony of this tweet.

Why? Why are they so cold-hearted? To understand, I researched the "pro-choice" point of view online, and I learned the trick to their convictions: 

Deny Life and Follow the Money

Seriously, that's it. If you look at their beliefs, they only make sense if you deny that life exists inside the womb, no matter what settled science tells you. But they MUST hold to those beliefs, otherwise they'll lose power and the money that goes with it. 
But with their denial of TRUTH and their desperate clutch for cash, they keep missing the irony and hypocrisy of their own position, as demonstrated in this tweet from last month. 
Freedom from violence? Really? These people who perform painful abortions? Can you even imagine what it feels like to have your arm or leg ripped off? To be doused in a caustic liquid that boils you to death? To have your brain stabbed? If I suggested those same procedures be used to put a violent terrorist or rapist to death, these people would be horrified, yet they REFUSE to acknowledge that they are doing the same thing to these unborn children. 
And how do they respond? By calling conservatives Nazis, all while THEY exterminate human beings by the thousands. And by pretending that the opposite of legal abortion on demand is the world of The Handmaid's Tale, where fertile women are forced to conceive. These people are delusional monsters.
And they will do anything to win their argument, including constantly changing the conversation. Lately, pro-abortion advocates have decided to attack the pro-life movement by claiming we don't care about children after they are born. An acquaintance shared this meme on her Facebook post last year, to which I simply responded: "They do." A friend of hers challenged me. What do you mean? she asked. So I told her institutions that are pro-life tend to be religious, which are also very active in feeding the poor. I also told her of the countless people I know who have fostered and adopted, or given money, clothing, diapers, etc. to foster care or adoption agencies, to young mothers (both those who are married and those who are not). She didn't believe me, asking "how do you know that those people are pro-life?" Again, it baffles me how far people will go to deny a truth they are not comfortable facing. 

But why are they like this? 

Our societal obsession with sexuality, for one thing. Sexuality has become priority number one for the human experience. Your sexuality defines who you are in modern society. It is the one pleasure we should all seek with reckless abandon, never mind the consequences. Think about it. If you love food, you still need to show restraint, or you'll die of some kind of obesity-related illness. If you love to drink, you still need to show moderation, lest you develop cirrhosis or kill someone as a drunk driver. If you love your job, you still need to take days off now and then. If you love to shop, you still need to spend in moderation so that you don't accumulate huge amounts of debt. These measures of moderation are widely accepted and encouraged.

But sex? That's your freebie. Feel what you want, do what you want. Let your drive DRIVE you ... and we'll deal with the consequences later -- getting the taxpayers to pay for it. And if anyone dares to suggest temperance, moderation, boundaries, truly safe practices? They are prudes! Stuck in the 1800s, frigid, inhibited, repressed. I now understand why the Apostle Paul called it idolatry.

But it's not Fair!

We also have to consider the selfishness of humanity. A human fetus grows to maturity inside another human being. There is nothing like it in the world -- that's why it's frequently called "the miracle of life" even though there is nothing miraculous about it at all. But we humans are very individualistic. Especially in America. I am my own person and I make my own decisions and I have a right to privacy and all decisions regarding my own body!

I actually understand that -- I understand that some women want to undo an unintended pregnancy. That they don't want to be a parent, that they don't want to carry this child to term, that they feel caught and trapped and -- let's face it -- it's not FAIR! A man never finds himself in this vulnerable position! He never has to make these decisions and live with them the rest of his life. For centuries, men have been walking away from pregnant women, leaving them vulnerable and tied down, which takes away their opportunities for the same kind of freedom enjoyed by men. And it makes you so ANGRY, you are willing to do anything to make it not TRUE! So you deny the truth that is painful and inconvenient. You cling to it desperately and you vow that you will not be suppressed, or held down or tied to any kind of commitment that would not ensnare a man.

I'm sorry. I understand. The way human reproduction works does not feel fair when you are not interested in parenthood. It is definitely not equal and I can't change that with my words.

But here's the thing: you can't change that with your laws either. And as much as my feelings gets riled up thinking those ^^ kind of thoughts, I must calm down and remember that none of my feelings on this matter change the truth. If a child is conceived, that child is alive! If that makes me feel trapped, I have options. (Wouldn't it be wonderful if we treated birth mothers like the heroes they are? Women who are brave enough and strong enough to hand over a child they cannot raise to a woman who desperately wants a child, but can't have her own? If you are one of those women, God bless you!) But even before a child is conceived, I have options, don't I?

Because women are smart enough to understand biology -- and if we are FAILING to educate young women in biology, then let's rectify that so that fewer of them will ever consider an abortion. 

Here's how I would explain it: your body behaves as if sex is always about procreation, even if that's not what you want. Your body doesn't know the difference. Just like you can't tell your body, "this doughnut's just for fun, so no adding it to my calorie count, m'kay?" you can't tell your body, "hey, this sex is just for fun." The only sure way of not getting pregnant is celibacy. If you will not be celibate, find an effective form of birth control and use it AS IF SOMEONE'S LIFE WAS IN YOUR HANDS. 
I could go on and on about this issue -- and I also don't know what else to say. This entire post seems almost pointless. I don't expect it to change anyone's mind. Other people have argued this more eloquently than I, and little has changed -- in fact, those who have exposed the disgusting behavior of Planned Parenthood employees are now being charged with crimes themselves in an egregious example of political persecution.
If stopping a beating heart doesn't change your mind, if taking a life in the most excruciating way possible is not something you're willing to give up, what can I say? I have nothing else to say, but I will share a quote with you from an amazing woman who was once part of the pro-choice movement, and did change her mind. Her name is Frederica Mathewes-Green, the author of Real Choices:

"The pro-life cause is perennially unpopular, and pro-lifers get used to being misrepresented and wrongly accused. There are only a limited number of people who are going to be brave enough to stand up on the side of an unpopular cause. But sometimes a cause is so urgent, is so dramatically clear, that it’s worth it. What cause could be more outrageous than violence — fatal violence — against the most helpless members of our human community? If that doesn’t move us, how hard are our hearts? If that doesn’t move us, what will ever move us?" (Read the rest of what she says in the National Review)