Dear Reader,
I heard from several of you in response to last week’s newsletter titled, “Pro-Life, Pro-Woman.” I print what comes in, so here are five letters from last week:
“Great Job, Craig! I know it took a lot of research, collating, and organizing to put together this argument! Someday maybe you’ll be the ‘mainstream media’ for truth!”
Appreciate the vote of confidence, but in the absence of media bona fides, this little newsletter will have to do. Plus, I’m not sure there can be a “mainstream media” anymore; the past 30 years of cable news and the Internet have pretty much destroyed the concept of “mainstream.”
“You’re so blessed to have the inspiration and insights on tough topics. This is one of your best Second Drafts yet (in my opinion). My younger sister—who was chronically ill, dealt with addictions, had four children already, was in an abusive marriage situation, and was very poor—convinced my older sister (who by the way had the same chronic illness they were both literally dying from day by day) to ‘loan’ her the money for an abortion. I still suspect the unborn child did not belong to her husband. She had the ‘procedure’ and mourned that child the rest of her life. I have a niece or nephew in Heaven that I would have welcomed into my life and home. I can’t get over the heartbreak of this event and never will. I didn’t even have the abortion and it’s affected me forever.”
Thank you for sharing your story of the tragedy that so often surrounds abortion. I’m sorry for what you and your family have gone through in the aftermath, but grateful for your willingness to talk about it. As painful as they are, the world needs to hear more such stories of regret.
“What a brave man you are tackling this issue! That said, I am pretty anti-abortion. I have still not gotten my head around certain cases of incest and rape. Previously, my naivety thought that upon a rape, the female could take the morning after drug, and I would be okay with that. (Technically the egg and sperm could have already gotten together, and that tiny tiny being is by definition no different than an almost to term baby.) However, I have come to realize that many rape victims don’t report the rape anywhere near that soon. And in cases of incest, those poor things are so beaten down, they are probably months along before it comes to light.
What baffles me is the whole argument of ‘My body, my choice.’ I am sorry that our dear Lord created us as one of a species where the next generation is housed in a female for 9 months. But we are talking about someone else’s body once fertilization occurs. Different set of DNA. Often different blood type. Different color eyes. Half the time a different sex.
I 100% get the fact that it ‘takes two to tango.’ And in many of the situations where an abortion is wanted, the female is left dealing with the decision on her own. And where her life is forever altered, but potentially not the father’s life. So, the whole thing seems unfair. But aren't many things in life? Too bad that there wasn’t a solution so that there were consequences for the male as well. Maybe that way, there would be more responsibility all around.”
Abstaining from sex before marriage is the solution, but too many women give men what they want without marriage’s legal protections. Some men are more than happy to play along as boyfriend or partner until a baby comes along; it’s not right, but it’s reality. This is what happens when we walk away from God’s best of sexual abstinence before covenant marriage.
“Like you, I asked myself, do we have to talk about abortion? I’m forwarding on a website just for reference, and perhaps your church might even be interested in this ministry. The founder of ProGrace…has a message for Christians and churches to help them consider the beauty of God’s design in pregnancy, that the life and needs of the mother and child are always intertwined and so we must care for and consider both as we look at the abortion issue. She offers new language and approach to unwanted pregnancies and to abortion, using the label not of ‘pro-life’ but of ‘pro-grace.’ I encourage you to check out her other writings and minimal website. She has helped me approach this issue with more compassion and mercy than my evangelical zeal in the 90s. Appreciate your thoughtful conversational writing.”
Love this site and their vision for helping churches help women. Glad to share with readers!
“Pro-life people tend to focus on the baby, while the pro-choice crowd puts the spotlight entirely on the woman. They often turn out to be the proverbial ships passing in the night where neither side is listening, much less understanding, the other. Pro-life folks would do well to ask clarifying questions to fully understand the position of their pro-choice friends.
The main argument I'm hearing from my own pro-choice friends is a classic bodily rights argument, summarized by ‘My body, my choice.’ The shift has been tectonic, though, where pro-choice people are now willing to actually concede that the fetus is a human being, but because the unborn is inside the woman's body, she is free to do whatever she wants with it (Catholic apologist Trent Horn calls it ‘the Sovereign Zone’). I found the resources supplied by the Equal Rights Institute to be enormously helpful. One particular blog post that is relevant to bodily rights arguments is found here.
With all that said, I’m no longer convinced that solid arguments alone can ‘put a pebble in someone’s shoe’ to get them to consider their own reasoning for being pro-choice. My own experiences at the hands of men who should've provided, protected, and supported me left me initially with a gaping hole in my heart, which God has beautifully redeemed for sure, but I still have a scar covering those old wounds from my sad past. One could even call it a "trough" because no human (not even my star husband, who won my heart with his own compassion 30 years ago) will ever be able to fill it perfectly; only Jesus can do that. And that keeps my eyes focused on Him and away from placing enormously unjust expectations on human men.
Alongside intellectually robust and winsome pro-life arguments, there must be an authentic posture of compassion, patience, humility, and an attitude of, ‘Friend, I'm deeply interested in your views and how your story has shaped them. Please tell me more.’ In our rush to be ‘correct’ and try to win someone over, we as Christians especially tend to forget these honorable traits (and ones exhibited perfectly by Jesus, especially when he was speaking with women).”
A powerfully good summary, as well as another helpful link shared. Watch for the messaging shift from “My body, my choice” to “My body, my decision” coming soon—bet on it.
Thank you, readers, for your thoughtful feedback. As always, thanks for reading Second Drafts.
Craig
Programming Note
For paid subscribers, look for the Second Drafts podcast for May in your inboxes tomorrow. In this month’s podcast, Peaches and I sit down with friend and fellow church member, Lynlea Hart, to talk about her experience as an adoptive mother and her insights into how the Church can continue to come alongside mother and baby alike for the sake of life.
For those who have yet to subscribe, just $5/month gets you full access to past and future podcasts and book reviews. Decide it’s not worth it? Cancel anytime, no questions asked.
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Hot Takes
“Pelosi Encourages Protesters’ ‘Righteous Anger’ in Marching Illegally in Front of Justices’ Homes” - I usually try to find articles that purport to report the news neutrally, but I chose this more editorial one instead because it tells the story while basically saying everything I’ve been thinking regarding the matter. It starts:
“U.S. Code § 1507 states that ‘any individual who ‘pickets or parades’ with the ‘intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer’ near a federal court or ‘near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer (emphasis mine)’ will be fined, or ‘imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’
It’s no surprise that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice hasn’t lifted a finger to arrest anyone obviously trying to interfere with a Supreme Court decision. It’s also not particularly surprising that Joe Biden’s U.S. Marshals Service hasn’t been tasked with protecting the homes of conservative justices who are under threat.
But the biggest non-surprise of all is that Biden doing nothing about prominent Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) all but encouraging and justifying violence against the justices.”
As per normal, the hypocrisy of the Democrats knows no bounds, but (also as per normal) no one is calling them to account. But that’s not even the real story here.
The big picture is that the Supreme Court “leak” of the February draft of the Justices’ potential repeal of Roe vs. Wade, and Pelosi’s (and others’) endorsement of potential violence concerning it are not unconnected; if any news organization worth its salt were to do their jobs and investigate, I would bet dollars to donuts that you could trace both back to a common coordination source. But don’t expect an investigation:
“This should concern Attorney General Merrick Garland. But the man who wanted to sic the FBI on parents protesting at school board meetings — a purely local matter — is predictably quiet when federal judges are under threat from a hysterical mob of left-wing crazies.”
Sorry, folks, but there’s no other way to view this: the protestors are breaking the law.
“A Cause, Not a Cure” - Another pseudo-editorial piece, this one critiques the recent New York Times article lauding that more kids are going (and staying) transgender.
“Last week, the New York Times reported on a ‘first of its kind’ study purporting to show that a “vast majority” of ‘transgender children’ continue to identify as transgender five years after they begin their ‘social transition.’ According to the study’s lead investigator, Princeton University psychologist Kristina Olson, only 2.5 percent of the children tracked over that period reverted to the sex they were ‘assigned at birth.’ An additional 3.5 percent identified as ‘nonbinary,’ leaving 94 percent who persisted in their cross-sex identification.
But far from supporting the narrative that there are ‘transgender kids’ out there who need to be ‘affirmed’ to enjoy basic ‘mental health,’ the Olson study actually lends support to those who criticize the practice of disfiguring and sexually incapacitating children as a means of offering them temporary relief from puberty-related distress—a practice known euphemistically as ‘gender-affirming health care.’”
In other words, in society’s preoccupation to ensure that kids express their “true selves” in order to be happy, what might be keeping them from being happy may have little or nothing to do with their gender (they are, after all, children).
“What the Times does not tell its readers is that the high rates of mental-health comorbidities among teenage referrals creates a potential for ‘diagnostic overshadowing.’ This happens when practitioners mistakenly interpret one of several co-occurring symptoms as the cause of the others. In simple terms, a teenage girl may express her distress in gendered ways—for instance, by insisting that she is really a boy. But if the cross-gender ‘identification’ is not the cause of her distress, then using her proclamations to justify hormonal intervention and surgeries will not solve her problems and will likely make them worse.”
As friend and former seminary buddy, Timothy Padgett, Managing Editor of BreakPoint.org with the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, tweeted this week in response to this DailyMail article, “Top Psychologist with 16 years’ Experience in Child Mental Health Says Over Half of Her Patients Now Identify as Transgender,”
“It is statistically implausible that so many adolescents are ‘naturally’ becoming trans at the same time, but the harm we’re doing to these young souls by pushing this folly will haunt us all for years to come.”
I agree and keep coming back to Carl F. Trueman’s words that transgenderism will eventually burn itself out, and 100 years from now, people will look back with a “what were we thinking?” perspective, much like we do considering lobotomies today:
“Transgender advocacy is taking on too many enemies—nature, feminism, athletics—all at once, and I wouldn’t be surprised in 20 or 30 years to hear of kids suing their parents, doctors, and insurance companies for the irreparable physical damage done to them in the name of being transgender.”
For the sake of our kids, I hope we don’t have to wait that long to see the lies go away.
No Feature Article This Week (Sorry)
I had a hard time landing on a topic for this week’s feature, and by the time Thursday rolled around, I had nothing worth reading. So, I’ll take a break and make it up to you next week, but first I’ll leave you with a photo of Peaches and me that sums things up.
Post(erity): “Ten Years of ‘Being Social’ Online”
Each week, I choose a post from the past apropos of something in the newsletter.
This week’s Post(erity) post, “Ten Years of ‘Being Social’ Online,” could be retitled to “Almost Twenty Years of ‘Being Social’ Online.” Originally published in December of 2013, this was a reflection on what online interaction had been up to then. An excerpt:
“Back in the day, blogs were THE social media; we used them for posts, but also for those communiques that Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (and about a dozen others) are now used—short sentence updates, interesting articles or links, and the ubiquitous personal opinion.
I miss those days, not because everything was in one place (though that was nice), but because there was usually actual interaction; it was enjoyable to read a comment thread that had some actual comments and didn't just let one get away with the generic ‘Like’ or ‘Favorite.’”
Fresh & Random Linkage
“‘Succession’ Actor James Cromwell Super-Glued Himself to a Starbucks Counter as Part of PETA’s Vegan Milk Protest” - Away to me, pig…er, PETA.
“A Quick Guide to Cheese Rolling, England's Strangest Sport” - A nine pound round of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled and chased from the top of a hill.
“Video: Australian Woman Develops Irish Accent Following Tonsil Surgery” - I loves me some Irish, but it’s too bad it wasn’t God’s Scottish accent.
Until next time.
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