Heresy in Hartford

Grab an emesis basis before you read. This is one of the creepiest, most revolting things I've read in a while: My Choice (Originally on the Hartford Courant web page)

I am a 58-year-old white woman. I had an abortion 19 years ago. I am not bragging, nor am I apologizing.

.... I am an ordained Christian minister.

So, this is how a minister lives out the Imitation of Christ? Does this ordained minister ever crack open a Bible? Has she never read the words expressing the value God places on each of us even before birth? Did she never notice anything the Bible says regarding the sanctity of the individual, even strangers, or of how to deal with a crisis?

Jeremiah 7:6 "...and do not shed innocent blood in this place..."
The blood of the fetus, who is about as innocent as you can get, is irrefutably shed in abortion. Where on this earth can a Christian say is an appropriate place for a Christian to shed innocent blood? There is no hospital, clinic, or doctor's office where God is not present, where His eyes do not see and His heart does not grieve. Does the fact that abortion takes place outside a church building make the shedding of innocent blood any less abominable?

Matthew 25:40 "...whatever you did for the least of one of these my brothers and sisters, you did for me."
How much more "least" can one be than a tiny fetus in the womb? Do not Christ's words tell us that the very smallness and helplessness of the fetus compel us even more to see Christ, and to treat our unborn brethren as we would our Savior?

Romans 12:1 "...offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God..."
Is making one's womb a place where a creation of God's is torn into little pieces in keeping with this scripture? Likewise, is abortion, the tearing into pieces of God's handiwork, a suitable act for inside our bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit?

1 Peter 4:9 "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling."
How hospitable are we being when we deny our own offspring the safety of our wombs? If we refuse to love our own children, sheltered in our bodies, how can we claim to love our brothers and sisters who seek refuge in our homes?

Did this ordained minister not attend seminary? Did she not study the original meanings of the words within the Scriptures? Strong's Bible Concordance and Lexicon, which ought to be on any clergyperson's bookshelf, informs us that the two Hebrew words for womb derive from the Hebrew word for compassion. Yet this woman, with no evident awareness of blasphemy, feels confident that she has every right, as a Christian and as an ordained minister, a shepherd of the flock, to deny compassion to the child in her womb?

Isaiah 49:15 "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?"

I'm wondering how Jesus led this woman into an abortion clinic His path is of sacrifice for others, not of sacrificing others for self. That's a purely heathen approach, one that this particular ordained minister nevertheless embraces.

When I got pregnant with the child I call 'Alma,' which means soul, I was not interested in a fourth child. I chose, with some searching, to exercise my constitutional right and ended her birth. .... I did what was right for me, for my family, for my work, for my husband and for my three children.

Again, the sacrifice of other. Why? She wasn't interested. She simply chose not to care, like the priest and the Levite that walked past the injured traveller in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Did this ordained minister ever read this story in her perusal of Scriptures? Did she forget it? Or did she somehow think that the priest and the Levite were the role models Jesus had in mind? "Who is my neighbor, Lord?" This woman excludes own unborn child.

I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to.

Um, don't they cover the Ten Commandments in seminary? Does this ordained minister think they're just suggestions? That God wasn't serious about the "Thou shalt not kill" business? Strong's Concordance says this word means to murder, slay, be it premeditated, accidental, or as an avenger. It's a no-no. Remember "do not shed innocent blood in this place"?

I did what I think men do all the time when they take us to war: They choose violence because, although they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives. The 'just war' theory assumes that human beings get caught in terrible choices all the time.

Here we get to the heart of the matter. This ordained minister is angry that soldiers get to kill, but she doesn't. It's not fair! Well, it seems as if becoming a soldier might be a more Scripturally sound way to slake a blood lust. After all, at no point did Jesus order soldiers to lay down their arms. He healed the Centurion's servant without any critique of the man's martial occupation. If, as a Christian, this woman finds it unfair that men get to kill but women don't, she could have joined today's Army. She need not have brought war and bloodshed into her own body.

This freedom is not just for men; it is for women also.

She seems to think that men have the freedom to simply kill anybody whose presence troubles them. War is not an exercise in freedom to the men participating. It's a time of brotherhood and terror. It's a time to kill or be killed -- or to see your brothers blown to bits. Where did she get the idea that war is some time of giddy freedom for men to go about killing at will? And why does she think that soldiers obeying orders, acting against enemy combatants, somehow gives women the right to carry out raids on the helpless noncombatants in their own bodies? Doesn't the Geneva Convention forbid the killing of helpless civilians? If she wants to equate abortion with war, she's going to have to recognize that even by her own analogy, she's guilty of the worst of war crimes: slaughtering innocent, unarmed, children. Honey, that's not combat; it's an atrocity, regardless of the sex of the person doing it.

When I made my choice to end one life on behalf of other life, I was terribly troubled. I was in a double bind. I prayed and anguished. Then I made a choice.

There would have been no double bind, no anguish, had she simply chosen to follow her Savior.

.... Instead, it is about women and sex and about women and maturity. .... When I made my choice to end life, I was behaving as an adult. I did not shrink from the responsibility of making a choice. .... The unprotected sex I had with my husband while nursing our twins had a consequence that neither of us desired. It was a human life. That's why we named her, wept for her, wanted her but also knew we did not want her enough.

She shrank for her responsibility to nurture her child, to practice Christian hospitality, to refrain from shedding innocent blood. She shrank from every responsibility a Christian can have to other people.

Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices, birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history. They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational.... That is good news....

Where in the Bible is recreational sex lauded as a great good? I've not done an extensive study on sexuality the way I have of abortion, but still, this one puzzles me. Casual sex seemed to be frowned on in Scriptures.

[Abstinence] is immoral to its core.Obviously, protected sex is the most moral thing of all. Unprotected sex is adolescent, immature, sometimes life-threatening and always stupid. Women are mature enough to handle that. We are not babies. Sometimes, in the battle over killing our babies, I hear the echo of people wanting to kill women's maturity and sexuality. .... That's why I am breaking my silence about who I am.

How she equates killing babies with being responsible adults boggles the mind. I thought the whole idea of being an adult was of being responsible for caring for one's offspring, not offing them because we can't be bothered.

Well, I have to leave for work, with this woman's appalling embrace of violence against children echoing in my mind. Pray for us all. Because if this is how an ordained minister approaches abortion, there is a great cancer in the Body of Christ.