Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Achieving Peace in the Abortion War

Recommended reading. Here are a few excerpts from Chapter 1:
Having gone through the exercise of listening to the real-life experience of doctors and nurses involved in providing abortion in the United States, I have come to the conclusion that the abortion business is too fragile to last. .... Though more study and the passage of time will tell whether this is right, I will risk making the following prediction: the abortion business is weakening, this downturn can't be stopped, and the American public for the most part will not be sad to see it go. Politics won't settle the issue. Achieving peace doesn't mean scoring a victory over opponents. Only when everybody's well-being is realized will we get peace. And peace is coming.

....

The reaction to the work itself is examined in an article written in the American Medical News ... which reports on a meeting of the National Abortion Federation. It says that the discussions "illuminate a rarely heard side of the abortion debate: the conflicting feelings that plague many providers . . . The notion that the nurses, doctors, counselors and others who work in the abortion field have qualms about the work they do is a well-kept secret."

....

If abortion is the taking of a human life ... then certain psychological consequences could be expected among those who perform abortions. .... If we find no such aftermath, the case that abortion is not violence at all is strengthened. If those reactions can be found, what then? Can the United States, with its abundance of abortions, provide evidence for such a problem? Are there other negative emotions that also interfere with the smooth functioning of the practice, and account for its oddities? If so, it could help to explain a decline and predict an eventual fall. The rest of this book will be making a case for the prediction that this has started to happen, will continue to happen, and probably can't be stopped.

I hope that my readers will follow along with reading and discussing this important book, available in full online.

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