More on personal power, plus media, abortion, and life…

Dear Therese,

Been reading some of your advice columns. I think your advice is so thought out and great. One question in particular I resonated with was the man asking where our leaders are and who do we follow. I really feel that is the question of my generation (30’s) and younger. I agree with you 100%,  but I just want to add a little. Your generation had real news (for the most part). It was opinionated and honest reporting, such as the hippie movement, Vietnam, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  My generation comes from filtered, agenda oriented, media. If there is an icon to follow, look to,  (such as the way many opinions were changed with MLK), our media makes them look like lunatics.  That is, if they even choose to do a story on them. If today was 1960, Neale would be main stream news with his new way of thinking. Hell no, you Google him today and he’s made to look like a crazy for saying God spoke to him. And that’s my point, anything to do with God is not news. The only news about Christians is about things like Westboro Baptist and how God hates fags (their word). Why? Because the news is that people who believe in God are insane. People who don’t believe in abortion are out of touch. My point here is that people like Neale don’t get face time anymore. I could go on here but my point is younger generations are lost.

Also, its about finding the pure courage and sacrifice for speaking up and finding a graceful way of demanding a better way. We are taught that the only heros are fiction. Anyway, the word “peace” and its meaning, and how to achieve it in ourselves and others around, is completely mutilated and twisted.

I also want to give you an example how what was taught to me, mainly through media, was so contorted and wrong. Woman’s right to choose. This act is to be empowering, it’s my body, I can choose to abort. Because I believed what I saw on TV, media, hidden messages in TV shows etc. I felt I was empowering myself as a woman to abort. Knowing what I know now, no, I was manipulated into this thinking and I chose wrong. I’m not empowered,  neither man nor woman has a right to choose this. Life can not be debated. A life is a life, period. If someone buys a gun, points it and kills someone, there is no debate, there is no empowerment. The man who held the gun and killed goes to prison. Why in the world have we bought into it’s ok to abort?? Let me be more clear,  why have we accepted it’s a woman’s right to kill a baby?? A woman who’s not in her right mind drowns her children in a tub  is demonized for the rest of her life for doing so. But it’s ok to rip a 6 month old fetus (in some states) out of the womb and break its neck and dispose of it??? It’s OK because the person doing it is a doctor?? And to think our country ALLOWS a person to choose killing babies on a daily basis as a PROFESSION??!! How twisted and numb we are toward life! My point is, I don’t feel empowered for exercising my right to choose, I feel like a killer and every woman who thinks twice about the decision will one day feel the same on some level. Or perhaps they won’t because they have chosen to bury the burden.

I chose to share my insight about this to show you how I didn’t think twice because of what was fed to me. Just think of how manipulated younger generations are now because its taught more and more there is no God, only government.

Georgia, in PA

Dear Georgia,

I left your letter pretty intact, because I believe these are important issues you raise.  I will not use this column to give any advice as to whether or not a woman should choose to have an abortion, but will address what I believe to be larger issues surrounding the specific issue, that may help you with the guilt you feel surrounding your decision to abort.  So…

If you believe in God, you have to define what kind of God you believe in.

I believe in a God who does not judge me or condemn me for things that I did when I did not have a fully formed opinion of God and Life.  Sweet lady, I don’t believe God would have any desire for you to have a moment of guilt beyond the point where it served you to think about something and form your own feelings about things.  Guilt harms our mind and our bodies, and God has no need for anything that harms us.  Her only desire is for our happiness.

I also believe, if one believes in God, that no life, no matter how short, is without purpose.  I believe that even the aborted fetus (child), chose to have that experience.  You see, just as the life of a brother murdered in a drive-by shooting, or a beloved grandparent dying, causes us to reflect on the meaning of that person in our lives, so, too, does the life of that unborn child.

My reflection on abortion has gotten me to the point where I don’t believe it is a matter of whether or not we have taken a life…because I don’t believe that life ever ends, and is, rather, something we will do again and again.  My reflection has me at the same point you are…why do we even think that this child isn’t Life?  Why do we value life, in general, so little?  Or is it something more?  Are we beginning to value ourselves, as women in particular, once again?  Inappropriately, to be sure, but just as the abused becomes the abuser, couldn’t it be that women, given choices now, don’t know how to make those choices very well sometimes?

Or is the choice of abortion, and the purpose of those children, greater than even that?  Is it so much about the child/mother, as it is about culture (government/big business/media…are they really separate?), and religion that got us to the point of even thinking that there is a need for this choice?

Let’s back up to before the point of making the decision to abort.  What would have to change in a woman’s life to change this decision?

I believe what would have to change is that no woman, married or not, would ever be reviled, or thought to be sinful or wrong in their choice to carry a child to full term.  Nor would she be made wrong for choosing to give that child up for adoption.  I believe that when every woman knows that they will not be thrown into poverty because they have a child, or be given, essentially, second class citizenship, they will have those children.  And if abortion is to be something that no one ever chooses, then we must believe, as I mentioned earlier, that we lose nothing when we die…so dying in the act of birthing would not be considered anything but a natural continuation of life…of the mother’s and the child’s.

I, with all of my heart, believe what CWG says regarding “right’ and “wrong”.  There is no right and wrong, only what works and doesn’t work.  Abortion IS working to get the conversation going…but it is NOT working as something we should choose once we have our moment of enlightenment on the topic, individually, then, hopefully, collectively.

These changes in our world can happen.  I believe that there are so many abortions now, because these little unborn souls are choosing to get this dialog going.  I think that extremists (political, religious) , are currently monopolizing this conversation, turning it into a distorted dialog…that is tied up in the larger agenda of money/control, and until the dialog turns to how we think about ourselves, in relation to one another and to Divinity, it will continue to be a point that will never be universally resolved.  The issue of abortion, for me, is also representative of how we are re-thinking the killing another human being…period.  If it is not okay to end the life of an unborn child, how is it okay to end the life of a “born” child…through war?  via the death penalty?  We are having to ask ourselves why is the temporal deemed so valuable as to justify offering up human lives to possess?

However, it is people like you and I, who will, ultimately, effect this change.  As I said in the column you referred to, I believe that WE are the leaders who will change the world, and we have to stop waiting for others to change it for us!  Change ourselves, change the person next to us, change the whole darn world!  (Shades of Mother Teresa and Ghandi!)

Georgia, this is a very timely topic, and one with which many struggle, especially those who have had an abortion.  I thank you SO much for your input about this.  My thoughts about abortion have been floating around for about a month, and now I know why!  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express them.  You might also consider that without your experience with abortion,  this column might not have been written, and others would not know your thoughts…and your thoughts could be part of the shift in this world we seek.

Oh, one last thing…I agree that today’s news is very skewed and full of agenda, but that might just be a good thing, because it is, at least, very transparent now.  We definitely know who is the liberal and who is the conservative etc.  My generation (baby boomer), had very censored news in its own way.  Neale might have gotten more “face time”, but I doubt he would have been accepted. (But I get what you are saying…take the more transparency and lay it over today)  The point of any of the generations is that we must think for ourselves, and the best way to “think” for ourselves, is to feel what any input does to our bodies.  “Truth” and “Lie” feel very different in our bodies, but we have been taught to ignore our body for a very long time…way before your generation or mine.  Now is the time to teach our own children something different, don’t you think?

Therese

(Therese Wilson is a published poet, and is the administrator of the global website at www.ChangingChange.net . She may be contacted at:                                                              Therese@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

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