Posted on 09/05/2008 11:46:50 AM PDT by pissant
You're very close, but I don't think most of those people believe, whether at the intellectual or gut level, that repentance is the path to atonement. Instead they believe, at the gut level, (and possibly the intellectual level as well) that the only path to atonement is to make abortion not be wrong. They insist that abortion be considered "okay" because they believe, in the strongest possible way, that they absolutely, positively, urgently, and critically need for it to be "okay".
Were it not for the fact that some "pro-life" people would almost certainly mess things up, I would suggest that t-shirts saying "I regret my abortion" could trigger a major sea change. In practice, I'd be very worried that people wearing such shirts would get harassed as evil-doers by people who call themselves "pro-life", but if pro-life people would refrain from such harassment (or even excessive unsolicited efforts at consolation), I would think it could start a movement that would totally bury the "pro-choice" camp.
If the "pro-life" people were willing to support the wearers of such shirts when asked to do so, but otherwise refrained from bothering them, I would think many wearers would quickly found that the shirts made them feel better. They would no doubt be attacked by so-called "pro-choice" people, but if they were warned of such attacks beforehand and told that braving such attacks by evil people is a mark of honor, I would think those that stood firm could find themselves freer of guilt than they'd been for years.
And when bright smiling people wearing such shirts are asked by others who have had abortions why they're smiling so much if they're plagued with guilt from their abortion, they could reply that their shirts brought them a freedom they'd been searching for but never found.
Note that there's no need to bring religion into this. Religious teaching can be offered if requested, but keeping the shirts secular would avoid triggering the "anti-religion" reflex of the people who most need redemption.
Sarah and Elizabeth have the distinction of being the only two names to make the Social Security Administration's top-ten list for girls in both 1880 and 2000. Elizabeth made the list in 1900, but Sarah did not. Emma made the list in 1880 and also in 2002 and every year since, but did not make the list in 2000 or 2001. Sarah has not made the list since 2002; in 2007 it was #18. Elizabeth has been on the list intermittently since 2000; in 2007 it was #10.
I never understood lumping the "rape or incest" exception into one catergory either. You can't use just "incest" by itself to justify abortion -- if someone is having a consentual relationship with their own cousin and ends up pregnant as a result, they wouldn't get an OK from me to kill their own kid. Anyone who's dumb enough to sleep with their own cousin and doesn't use protection has only themselves to blame.
And in the extremely rare example of a girl getting raped by her father and a pregnancy resulting, why bring up incest in the first place? The fact she was raped already places it into the "unconsentual sex" category.
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