Today, I Defend Life

Being a liberal in my life, and recently re-converted back to the religion of my birth - Catholicism, only for real this time..  I have not taken a public stand on abortion but today I was compelled to.  Speak up or let the world run roughshod over life..

A small "Great Decisions" discussion group, where we read foreign policy issues and watch a DVD about a topic every other week.  Today's topic - humanitarian intervention and U.S. policy.  Absolutement, and why the heck aren't we doing something in Syria??

But the conversation turned to women, the treatment of, and several participants in the Unitarian Universalist basement decried the return to traditional values, and how "their bodies" were not respected.  A man jumped up and down and wondered how women in "red states" could vote against their interests.

ok, final straw, time to defend my faith.  When it was my turn to speak, I said this is not a gender issue - if you believe, as stated in the Bible and in my faith, that life begins at conception, if you defend life in this way, then you might want to make this the law of the land.  Or, you might want to allow a secular society.  But, to assume all women would be pro-abortion, well let me set you straight on that.

Did I change any minds?  Maybe not.  But I remember the first haunting time I heard a Republican candidate speak about in-womb babies having fingers, a heartbeat separate and unique.  It hit me then, but took a few years and a Catholic conversion to get me there.

So maybe just maybe some of the things I decided had to be said, and I had to muster the courage to say them, maybe they will hit some of these people down the road.  When the shadows of their political ideas are wiped away.