A pox on Mother's Day?

Just when you think pro-abortion activists are at least acknowledging that killing the unborn is wrong, new exhibitions and articles remind us that the Bible’s account of our natural depravity is sadly true.

Example one: The pro-abortion showcase in the main lobby of Lane Hall, the University of Michigan’s women’s studies building. As Vivian Hughbanks of Hillsdale College reported on a feisty webzine, The College Fix, you can relish through May 29 dozens of artistic and bright posters celebrating “4000 Years of Choice.” Abortion, according to a U of M web page, is “a deeply personal and life-sustaining act existing through all of human history.”

Throughout history, yes, but “life-sustaining”? The poster-maker, Heather Ault, writes online of abortion continuing to “the good of ourselves, our relationships, and our families.” Oh. One poster compliments the ancient Egyptians for placing crocodile feces in vaginas, and another, titled “Rejoice Fumigation,” proclaims that “women have been fumigating their vaginas with contraceptive vapors for thousands of years.”

Funding for the exhibit came in part from the U of M’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which sponsors The Program for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice. Michigan taxpayers who support the university, rejoice! Ault sells her posters for $20 and also sells for $5 each little notecards with messages designed to salve consciences: “Abortion is a gift from God. … Abortion is a blessing. … I didn’t see it as killing a baby—I was simply giving the life within me back to God to protect and hold onto until the right time. … I am an ordained Christian minister and have had two abortions. I am very glad that I did. I feel that I served God in these hard decisions.”

As G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1908, “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” Thanks to Ault, students at U of M and around the country can view new evidence. They can realize that “anything 46 million women do every year can’t be immoral.” They can cheer the wisdom of a great-grandma who boasts, “I am 85 years old and I had four abortions … and I am not sorry.”

Heather Ault has talent. We can be disgusted about her propagandizing or we can feel compassion for her, praying that she use her talent to glorify God rather than the selfishness that dominates us unless God shoves it out. And here’s an even bigger test: Can we pray for rather than hate Amanda Marcotte, a Texan-turned-Brooklynite who wrote on March 14 the foulest defense of abortion I’ve read in 30 years? (The competition is stiff.)

Marcotte wrote in The Raw Story, a webzine “celebrating 10 years of independent journalism,” that “The Real Debate Isn’t About ‘Life’ But What We Expect of Women.” Marcotte oddly felt the need to use a four-letter word for feces at almost every opportunity as she asked whether opponents of abortion should be “given the privilege of having everyone treat their s___ arguments like they have value in free-wheeling discourse, or if they should be shunned on the grounds of being s___ arguments.”

Her article’s only redeeming social value is its undermining of the case that abortion is not evidence of sin but merely evidence of the need for societal restructuring—that income redistribution, free day care, and different work schedules would make abortion obsolete. Marcotte wrote: “let me just put a stop to this s___ right now. You can give me gold-plated day care and an awesome public school right on the street corner and start paying me 15% more at work, and I still do not want a baby. I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly … time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. No matter how flexible you make my work schedule, my entire life would be overturned by a baby. I like my life how it is, with my ability to do what I want when I want. … I like sex in any room of the house I please. I don’t want a baby.”

On the pro-life side we talk about compassionate alternatives, but they are stillborn in Marcotte’s soul: “Adoption? F___ you, seriously. I am not turning my body over for nine months of gaining weight and puking … so that some couple I don’t know and probably don’t even like can have a baby. … I like drinking alcohol and eating soft cheese [and] not having stretch marks. … Given the choice between living my life how I please and having my body within my control and the fate of a lentil-sized, brainless embryo that has half a chance of dying on its own anyway, I choose me.”

Marcotte is not oblivious to how she comes off: “Don’t I sound selfish? Hedonistic? Isn’t there something very unfeminine about my bluntness here? … I feel zero guilt about it, but I know that saying so out loud will cause people to want to hit me with the Bad Woman ruler.” She sounds as if she’s been hit with that ruler many times, and she now wants to come across as so Bad that others will declare her incorrigible and leave her alone. But the prodigal son came to his senses as he was feeding pigs, and maybe this prodigal daughter will tire of assaulting pigs and fall into the arms of a Father who is running to her, even though she can’t see Him now.

March mercy

On Saturday evening, March 15, while returning from the National Christian College Athletic Association Division II tournament in Ohio, the Arlington Baptist College (Arlington, Texas) basketball team bus suffered two flat tires. The team was stranded on a dangerous stretch of interstate highway near Memphis.

Numerous wrecker services and emergency services personnel were unable or unwilling to help, but Bellevue Baptist Church (Cordova, Tenn.) sent a bus. Church members took the team to breakfast, then to Sunday school and morning worship. While the players worshipped, church members repaired the team bus.