Are You Fighter or Deserver of Equality?

If all you follow is secular media, you’ve missed what should be one of the biggest stories of this decade: Gosnell’s House of Horrors Abortion Clinic. Dare you to follow some of the links – and be brave enough to expose yourself to some of the truth of this situation. Mature women are not afraid of truth, even the hard cold kind, heinous and cruel. They don’t fixate or glorify it, but they are strong enough to face it head on. Sometimes sheltering our eyes from evil prevents us from understanding the depravity’s depth. This affects us all – and who will speak for those who cannot speak for themselves?

I’m not going to repeat the gory details here, but I will simply point out that many breathing, struggling newborns had their spinal cords severed – outside the mother’s womb. And there are women who were forced to carry out their abortions – after they changed their mind.

One woman died.

And the judge is dropping charges, one by one.

Many will claim that abortion and choice is a “woman’s right” and that it is a simple medical procedure.

I respectfully disagree.

Strongly.

This is infanticide – and it is the result of the normal progression of a lack of respect for life and God Himself.

Visible is disrespect for the privilege of motherhood as the honor it used to be considered. Equally visible is the lack of honor at the miracle of life – even as it is snuffed out while struggling in fight against death.

We women have our “rights” – in many ways we have gone from being cherished and considered worthy of protection to considered “equal” via a path walked by shoving opinions down others’ throats, landing some in abortion clinics to execute those rights and emerge permanently haunted, diseased, and confused. I think one could argue whether equality showed up in the abortion clinic, however, as there seems to be classicism occurring in the level of care received.

In the small, this “equality” results in “little things” like my son receiving a harsh retort from a 15 year old Christian girl when he tried to open a door for her heavily-laden self. “I don’t need your help!” she snipped at him. “Fine. Get the door yourself,” he replied. What this girl in her defensive, in-your-face harsh response failed to realize is that he would have opened the door for anyone carrying as much as she had in her arms. The fact that she is female was irrelevant to him. She could have been a male friend, his mother, an elderly man or woman, a little boy, or a little girl. Regardless of her demographic, she was just a person in need of help.

And yet, I grew up watching men open doors for women not because they couldn’t get them themselves, but because they cherished them. We have lost that. Some say the price has been worth it. I don’t agree. I see too many women each day who long to be cherished by their husbands.  Our culture used to hold this as a primary ideal. Equality in the work place is a good thing, but I know there are other ways, in fact, better ways, to garner respect, as did many women (like many of our past president’s wives, Abigail Adams, in particular) in history. These women carried themselves so well they received respect because they deserved it – and they gave it freely to others. They had prestige, power, and position. But the “equality fighters” don’t like to think about the “equality deservers” because the only tools in the EF’s tool box are hammers and maybe a megaphone. The Equality Deservers garnered what they wanted from their lives by being women of strength and dignity, not by shoving their opinions down others’ throats, but rather being wise in their communication. Yes, it is unfortunate that the work was necessary in the first place, but these women moved our society forward in a way that would have landed women with the best of both worlds – now we have in some senses been lowered in status by our harsh but quick acting methods.

Good job society, church, parents, for teaching our young women of today to disdain kindness and view it as demeaning because of gender.

As men in our homes need our help to learn some of the softer sides of relationship interactions, it is true that in our society, men of the past (and still today – and btw, know there will ALWAYS be immature sinful people to deal with, regardless of gender, race, or other demographic distinction – we live in a fallen, imperfect world) have needed help in learning how to treat women. While I am thankful women are considered “equal” in pay, I disagree with the methods we are still employing to be heard. I know from both personal experience and history of women like Abigail Adams, that they simply aren’t necessary, but I digress from the issues at hand today.

I am at a loss as to what to do, however, about this atrocity as it unfolds in Philadelphia. I would love to hear ideas.

For now, I will simply add my voice to the many out there speaking for “the least of these” who cannot speak for themselves.

Dare you to share, dare you to comment, dare you to believe our God forgives literally everything, even this, and in the midst of the horror, there is grace for those of us who have swallowed morning after pills, visited clinics as patients, and extinguished life at any stage. I know many women who are burdened by this, please know you can experience healing and an end to the haunting nightmares.

Double dog dare you to weep with me today, in prayer, beseeching the Father for His mercy and His justice in Philadelphia. My heart is overcome with grief at how far we’ve slid and how history repeats its atrocities. I tremble at the thought of His wrath over these horrors.

Dear God help us.

~Nina