women s rights – Mama Needs Coffee

Bioethics, Contraception, Culture of Death, current events, Women's Rights

Rejecting fertility and rejecting God

March 19, 2019

The article begins like this: “A movement of women have decided not to procreate in response to the coming ‘climate breakdown and civilisation collapse’. Will their protest be a catalyst for change?”

I can hardly think of anything I would enjoy reading about more on a frigid morning in March, so I click.

What I read is predictable but still sad, peppered with photos of earnest looking young women who report being so traumatized by the current state of affairs, whether politically, or environmentally, that they’ve opted out of procreation indefinitely, until or unless things dramatically improve.

The pain these women express as having motivated their decision to forgo motherhood is real, and their concerns are sincere. But the conclusions they have reached are so vastly upside down, so diametrically opposed to reality, such a radical rejection of what it means to be human, that it is hard to read them without getting angry.

Because these women have been fooled. They have bought into the most fundamental lie of all, that we can be like God, can take matters firmly into our own hands, and that we can save ourselves.

Most distressing and ironic is that in rejecting the possibility of motherhood, they are choosing to reject the very thing that makes us most like God: the ability to bring new life into the world, formed in His image and likeness.

I can hardly think of a more diabolical or effective strategy than one which would seek to convince women that in order to save the world, they must forgo participating in the creation of humanity.

Is it any wonder that satan would invert the order of salvation, convincing women that though it was through one woman’s fiat salvation entered the world, now that humanity is all grown up, woke as we are, we find our salvation on our own terms and by our own hands, through the closing of our wombs?

I don’t fault any woman who falls into this trap; many of us have been relentlessly instructed as to the grave dangers of our fertility, almost from infancy.

Even if we received a different message at home or in church, the incessant drumbeat of the culture and the media are loud and clear: fertility is a liability, femininity is a disability, and motherhood is a degradation and a sometimes dangerous demotion.

In order to retain our autonomy and minimize our risk and, apparently, to save the planet, perhaps it is best we not give birth to any sort of future at all, save for one which we create ourselves, for ourselves.

At its heart, rejection of procreation is a rejection of eternity, a rejection of the future.

It is also an echo, however little those who speak it might realize, of the very first non servium uttered in all of creation. It mimics the father of death in his refusal to submit to a larger vision than his own, to participate in a plan outside of his own control and design.

Reject the framework you’ve been given by your Creator, reject the mission He has revealed for you, and it’s no great leap to reject the Creator Himself.

The most audacious and revolutionary thing that a woman can do is to nurture new life into existence in a world gone dim, whether she nurtures that life in her womb or in her heart.

This is the world-shaking, culture-shaping power of motherhood. Its fruits outlive any regime, and its impact outlives any policy or programming.

To speak fierce, radical life into this flaccid, decaying culture of death, to say that come what may, I will choose to shepherd more of God into this world, to stake my life, my livelihood, and my own comfort on the possibility that He has something bigger in mind. . . this is true activism.

Don’t let the world sell you short, women. This is our moment.

“And who knows but that you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.” – many of us are familiar with that line from the book of Esther. I think the line directly preceding it might be even more crucial: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish.”

We can’t let ourselves be fooled by what passes for wisdom in this day and age. God has something so much grander in mind for us.

Abortion, Bioethics, Culture of Death, NFP, planned parenthood, politics, Women's Health, Women's Rights

Defund Planned Parenthood and Give Women Real Power

February 27, 2017

Today we interrupt this little blogging sabbatical to bring you a guest piece from Janet Garcia, a smart, tough-minded nurse and mom of two, who has seen from the front lines the cost of our all-in cultural infatuation with Planned Parenthood and all that it entails. I hope you’ll pour yourself a cup and give her words a thoughtful read. She’ll be over on the Mama Needs Coffee Facebook page moderating the civil, respectful discussion that I invite you to participate in.

Last month, Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) introduced the “Protect Funding for Women’s Health Care Act” to the United States Senate. The bill would transfer federal funding from Planned Parenthood to other women’s health centers that do not provide abortion services. And, just a few weeks ago, the House of Representatives got rid of an Obama-era regulation which didn’t allow states to pull their funding from Planned Parenthood, allowing them to defund Planned Parenthood individually if they so choose. This movement to defund Planned Parenthood across our current Congress is in alignment with the views of most Americans: a poll released last month by Susan B. Anthony List revealed that most Americans are in favor of defunding the abortion provider, 56% in favor to 40% opposed.

Additionally, on February 11^th, rallies advocating for removing federal funding occurred at over 200 Planned Parenthood locations across the US.

Sens. Ernst and Lankford’s bill needs to become law in the United States, and Planned Parenthood must lose its federal funding due to the organization’s involvement in several different ethical scandals and the way that our tax dollars are continuing to fuel the cycle of incomplete, or even incorrect, sexual education of our young people.

In case there was any doubt about this Administration and sitting Congress’s need to pass legislation such as this, recently LiveAction, the non-profit organization led by pro-life pioneer Lila Rose, uncovered yet another scandal involving Planned Parenthood. This time, the abortion giant’s utilization of “quotas” for abortion services within their clinics was brought into the light. (http://liveaction.org/abortioncorporation/ ) Employees or clinics who meet or exceed these numbers have been rewarded with perks such as “pizza parties.” And yet, the Democratic Party that has insisted for years that they want abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” claims that we would be doing a great disservice to the women of our great country by taking away federal funds from Planned Parenthood.

The disconnect between what these politicians claim they desire for America and how, in reality, our tax dollars are being utilized by Planned Parenthood is staggering. Furthermore, last year, thanks to the Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden, we also know that Planned Parenthood clinics across several states were involved in the trafficking of infant body parts.

We have in America today a profound disconnect between what politicians claim to want regarding funding for women’s health care, and how this end is ultimately being carried out.

Practically speaking, Planned Parenthood is directly responsible for a large portion of the sexual education received by recent generations. Young women today who have been brought up on the sexual education of our public school systems, oftentimes provided by Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, are seriously lacking in a basic understanding of how their bodies actually work.

They are unaware of the potentially abortifacient effects of hormonal contraceptives.

They are unaware that hormonal contraceptives can cause several forms of cancer, as well as dangerous, or deadly, blood clots.

They are unaware that there are times in a women’s cycle when she can become pregnant and times when it is literally impossible for pregnancy to occur.

Planned Parenthood is feeding our youth with the lies of unrestricted, consequence-free sex, and then when this isn’t what these young women experience and they become pregnant, Planned Parenthood is there to offer their abortion services and perpetuate the cycle.

As a registered nurse, I have had the privilege of bringing education and truth to the minds and hearts of teenage and young adult women about the beauty and the truth of their natural fertility, and the option of Natural Family Planning (NFP). I have seen the shock on their faces as they are told the truth of their own fertility as well the disgust, when they learn about the dangers of the contraceptives they have been told, by the likes of Melinda Gates, are a necessity for their success as modern women.

The same case must be made in defense of our international sisters around the globe. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) decried President Trump reinstating the Mexico City Policy – something every recent GOP president has done within days of taking office – limiting funds to organizations that provide abortion services. IPPF, along with The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are champions of providing hormonal contraceptives and abortion access to third world countries around the world, in the name of bringing them out of poverty. Nevertheless, these dangerous hormonal contraceptives carry the same concerns around the globe as they do in the US. HIV/AIDS, various forms of cancer, and embolisms are all very real consequences of using contraceptives for these impoverished women.

These women, with less education and very little information at their fingertips, are at an even greater disadvantage and are more likely to be forced or coerced into contracepting and abortion as well, without any sort of “informed consent.”

We need not look any further than the recent “One Child Policy” of China to know that Pope Paul VI was chillingly accurate when he predicted in Humane Vitae that contraceptives would become a, “dangerous weapon… in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies.”

Is this kind of coercion the empowerment that modern day feminists want for themselves and their sisters around the globe?

So, where does this lead us? Obviously, women both here and abroad, deserve comprehensive sexual healthcare and education. If Planned Parenthood loses federal funding, there will be a hole left by the lack of their services. The most wonderful result of defunding Planned Parenthood will of course be the precious unborn lives that will be saved, by eliminating our tax dollars from the largest abortion provider in the US. However, I am hoping for a secondary consequence that will be the responsibility of the Women’s Health Centers, and in reality all of us who are advocating for defunding Planned Parenthood.

Mainstream, liberal, feminism claims to want female empowerment. One of the main principles of the recent Women’s March was “reproductive rights,” under which they ask for “medically accurate sexuality education.” These women claim that Planned Parenthood is a major champion in providing this sexual education; one need not look any further than Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s chic pink scarf to know how infatuated they are with Cecile Richards and her clinics. However, I would like to ask these women if their healthcare providers at Planned Parenthood ever gave them true informed consent regarding their artificial contraceptives: including the risks, alternatives and how exactly these hormones or devices work inside their bodies. I would like to ask them, “Has your healthcare provider explained to you the risk of very early-term abortions which are inherent to nearly all hormonal contraceptives?”

Of course, a portion of women will be unaffected by this information, however, what about those women who believe that when their unborn child’s whole genetic code is determined at the moment of conception, that the child is worthy of protection? Do these women not deserve “medically accurate sexuality education?”

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when women were not given a “seat at the table” or a place in the ballot box; we were not given information, so as to not burden us with it. If we are not teaching women the full truth about contraceptives and fertility, are we really so much better off than we were?

Women’s Health Centers need to become places where women can be educated about their fertility and its awesomeness. Of course, I know it is naïve to believe that a large portion of American women will become users of NFP as the result of the defunding of Planned Parenthood, however, my hope is that more women will be able to see the beauty in their fertility and feel empowered to make a truly informed choice, with complete education and understanding.

Because if our goal is to empower women, we need to explore ways to educate minds and sustain health. NFP can not only assist with preventing or delaying pregnancy, it can also help to achieve and sustain pregnancy through facilitating targeted hormone support ( http://time.com/4629589/miscarriage-progesterone-pregnancy/ )and identifying hormonal or dietary insufficiencies, among other things. Personally, I learned NFP while engaged to be married. Through charting my cycles, I was diagnosed with both hypothyroidism and low progesterone in the luteal phase. Both of these diagnoses carry with them a risk of infertility and miscarriage. I was able to reach maximum wellness in these areas through practicing NFP and do what I could to minimize these risks; how is that for female empowerment?!

All feminists, rightly so, demand that women have equal standing with men in our society. If knowledge is power, I hope that Women’s Health Centers will step up to the plate and help women reach this new level of true empowerment that Planned Parenthood has failed to provide for generations.

Janet Garcia, RN, BSN, is a “retired” registered nurse turned SAHM. During her nursing career she cared for extremely premature infants, patients on hospice and every beautiful soul in between. She enjoys sharing the truth of honest femininity, defending the most misunderstood teachings of the Church, being a political news junkie and binge watching The West Wing and Fixer Upper with her husband. Janet lives in northern Minnesota with her husband and two young children.

Find her on Instagram and Twitter.

Abortion, Catholic Spirituality, Contraception, Culture of Death, politics, pregnancy, Pro Life, Theology of the Body, Women's Health, Women's Rights

To my sisters who marched on Washington

January 23, 2017

I wanted to write something snarky. I wanted to dash off line after line of statistics and data supporting the appalling abuse committed against women and children in the name of “progress” and “equality.” I wanted to drop blistering one-liners about losing our bearings, rejecting our feminist roots and blowing past all the other pertinent issues surrounding women’s freedoms that don’t originate in the pelvic region.

But then I watched some of the coverage of the marches – the big one in Washington and the smaller ones around the country and the world. And I read real women’s stories and saw their tear-streaked faces and I recognized myself in each of them, pink hats notwithstanding.

Because we are all of us desperate for love.

The fire that burns in the eyes of a million demonstrators is not something to be dismissed or derided. However wrong I believe their cause, however appalling I find their tactics, I cannot dismiss the humanity of these angry, hurting people.

For 43 years we have lived a national nightmare. For a hundred years before that, the planks were being diabolically slid into place, building a foundation on rotted, wrong-headed principles that had little to do with true human freedom and everything to do with a new kind of enslavement, to an “enlightened” social order which utterly subjugates the least of these to the caprices of the ones in power.

It is the most clever and effective tactic hell has coughed up since that business in Eden, to turn a mother against her child, and to turn women against their own femininity. And of course, – of course – the Enemy would seek to desiccate the very source of our salvation, the openness of spirit and the willingness of heart and the heroic bravery of a young woman to step boldly into the plan of salvation history, opening her womb to receive the gift of Life itself.

Mary is the most feared creature in the history of all humanity. And the most powerful.

Her yes to God altered reality itself. And her willingness to set aside her own plans and to offer God her very life was key to His achieving our salvation. He could have asked anyone, in any time. He could have asked a man. He could have zapped Himself down to earth and appeared as a 30 year old carpenter, fully equipped to build tables and preach the Gospel without the pesky three decades of life in a dull little family unit in a dirty, backwater town in the Middle East.

But He did not.

He choose to come into our world through the womb of a woman, His mother. And as I scrolled through picture after picture of angry, frightened women wearing vaginas on their heads, carrying signs pledging allegiance to Planned Parenthood and swearing that any lecherous old white man who wanted to deprive them of their contraceptives would have to pry them from their cold, dead hands, my heart broke for the satanic effectiveness of this whole campaign.

As it ever was, from the beginning, the Enemy seeks to divide and conquer, pitting man against woman, mother against child. This modern iteration of “feminism” is anything but; a warped perversion of the profound and beautiful truth of the unique and earth-shattering dignity of femininity.

The culture deafens us with shouts about freedom and equality. What it means by that is that we are all reducible to the sum of our reproductive parts, that we are packages of pregnancy-vulnerable organ systems that must be shuttered at all cost, that our worth lies in our ability to forcibly extract financial support from society at large to keep us carefully sterile, effectively barren.

The modern argument for feminism is intimately tied up with abortion rights. The right for a woman to control her own destiny by killing her child is the highest held sacrament in this pseudo religion. The vow that no woman will ever be made bereft by the sexual caprices of a man who would ruin her life by impregnating her and then abandoning her, is paramount.

“NO” you might be shouting, a card-carrying feminist yourself. “It isn’t that at all! Women deserve equal opportunities that men have by birthright. We will not be enslaved by our reproductive systems, punished by a monthly cycle which persists with the damning threat of new life. Science has freed us from this drudgery, and the law and the culture must follow!”

But this entire system is predicated upon the belief, unspoken or unacknowledged for many though it may be, that something is fundamentally wrong with being a woman.

That women, as they are and as they were created and as they forever shall be recognized, are fatally flawed. And that achieving equality with the “dominant” sex requires the suppression and mutilation and utter rejection of our capacity to conceive and bear new life.

“NO!” I can hear the shouting revving up again. “IT’S THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE WHEN THAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR!”

And to that I say, we aren’t that powerful. And I don’t mean we as women, but we as human beings.

The freedom to choose whether and when you will take the life of another human being is no freedom at all; it is slavery of the basest sort. To proclaim that the rights of women are founded on the trampled rights of the child is no achievement of civil progress, it is a redistribution of pain and abuse, trickled down to the smallest and meekest ones. MLK would never have advocated for a freedom for blacks predicated upon the subjection of yellows or whites. His understanding cut to the heart of what it means to be human: that we are each of us created equal, in the image and likeness of God.

Each of us.

No matter whether we possess a penis or ovaries. No matter if our bodies are tiny and underdeveloped or wizened with age. No matter if we are beautiful and perfectly pulled together or disgusting and matted with the dirt and the grime of a lifetime of abuse and neglect.

Non of us can take away the dignity of another human being, given by God who sees in each of us the image of His Beloved son.

When we reduce our rights to a laundry list of procedures we ought to have access to, a list of medications which can protect us from becoming mothers, or can clean out the contents of our wombs should the timing or circumstances be tragic, we lose sight of what it means to be human, to be a person created to be in relationship with others, orienting us ultimately toward that greatest Other.

Abortion is not feminism. Sexual socialism, whereby the government subsidizes, with the funds of the populace, a preferred lifestyle of license and debauched freedom, is not feminism. Marching in the streets with self-defacing placards and self-abusing slogans of the vilest and crudest sort is not feminism.

I understand that there is fear. Fear of what a future unplanned and unexpected and unsafe could look like. But that fear is rooted in forgetfulness. We have forgotten who we are, and Whose we are. We have traded the truth for a lie: that we can be like God, choosing who lives and dies, utterly controlling our destinies during our lives on earth.

But perfect love casts out all fear. Perfect love raises up the lowly and the frightened and looks us dead in the eye and says, “you matter. You were created out of love, and for love, and I love you madly. I died for you, and I still suffer for love of you. Look at me and let me tell you who you are, and what you were made for.”

Don’t let Planned Parenthood tell you what it means to be a woman. Don’t let any NGO or government agency or corporation or worldview or popular cultural movement tell you what it means to be female. They didn’t write the manual on you, and they can never show you the depth of your dignity or the fullness of what you are worth.

It is a lie. And we have let our trust in our Creator die and have chosen it, time and again.

The truth is terrifying, but that’s because freedom – true freedom – is the most radical thing the world has ever seen.

You were made for more than this. You were made for greatness. You were made by love, for love. And so long as we rage against love, our hearts will ever be restless, angry, unsatisfied and afraid.

But we have a God who tells us constantly, untiringly,

Be Not Afraid.

You were made for more than what your body is, or what your body can do. You were made for more than casual sex, for more than abortion, for more than mutual masturbation. You are more than a receptacle into which sperm should be deposited and than evacuated. And anyone and anything that has ever convinced you otherwise has been a lie.

If you have never known God, or have only known a broken image of Him, I beg you to reconsider in light of this one question only: what does it mean to have been created a woman? What was I created for?

And let Him whisper the answer to you. Scream at Him if you must. He can take it.

But don’t settle for what this world wants to give you in terms of freedom, of feminism. It’s a counterfeit, and a cheap one at that. Walk past the knockoffs – they’re garbage, poorly made, and unethically-sourced anyway. But you already know that. Keep your chin up and your head held high, and do not settle for anything less than that for which you were made.

You are a daughter of the King, and His plans for your life far surpass those of any of the angry, agitated leaders whose screams echo from podiums or ring out into the vast echo chamber of social media.

You were made for more.

Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, Homosexuality, motherhood, Parenting, Sex, Theology of the Body, Women's Health, Women's Rights

About those bathrooms…

April 28, 2016

I read a great piece this morning on the Target situation du jour from local writer and friend who explained with great compassion and insight why she and her family would still be patronizing the Bullseye, restroom politics notwithstanding. And she took care to explain her position in such a way that I found myself nodding along and agreeing and, well, see for yourself how well thought out and nuanced it is.

I wholeheartedly concur with her assessment that the real threat implicit here is, first and foremost, the opening up of the (relative) safety of the women’s room to a host of unnecessary risks to women, who are naturally more vulnerable and more prone to violence.

And that’s why I’m angry.

Not because I hate transgendered people.

Not because I’m a backwards bigot who has never seen a cross-dresser.

And not because I want my children to live in a bubble of Stepford proportions, clad head to toe in Vineyard Vines and playing with their intentionally-curated pink Barbie houses and blue Matchbox cars. I happen to think that popular distinctions between the sexes are mostly BS, and mostly stereotypical. Playing with tools and cars does not a penis endow, nor does care for the garden or interest in the goings-on of a kitchen qualify you for membership in club uterus. But that’s a whole other post entirely.

No, I’m angry that the conversation has so completely shut out (for the most part) women’s, and particularly mother’s, concerns, and it seems to be more of the same, tired “business as usual, pretty little ladies need not bother themselves” from the mainstream media and on social media.

It strikes me as terribly dismissive – and ironic – that the legitimate concerns for the safety and privacy of roughly half the population (and Target’s bread and butter demographic) are being shoved aside to further a political agenda, on Target’s part, aimed to build their social capital as the unofficial Best Corporate Advocates for What is Currently Cool and Trending.

I think women, along with people in the trans community, are both being used in this equation.

Trans and gender-fluid individuals don’t want attention drawn to their plight the way it has been the past week, I have no doubt. The hatred and vitriol I’ve seen spewed across the internet on both sides of the issue has been breathtaking. And as someone who has written publicly about dog moms, I’ve seen it all, people.)

And on the other hand, concerned mothers are being marginalized and dismissed as hateful bigots because they don’t want creepy pretenders claiming sudden and terribly convenient gender-fluidity-for-the-sake-of-restroom-access using the toilet alongside themselves and their little, and not-so-little, girls.

How, precisely, a Target team member is to be expected to accurately vet the validity of a baseball-clad bro in gym shorts’ claim to a female mind and soul has yet to be convincingly explained to me. Because they didn’t think it through. They didn’t arrive at the logical conclusion that bad people will exploit a bad policy in order to do bad things.

The whole thing smacks of relativism and dismissive “progress” at the expense of, who else, women. Who are and will always be the perennial losers in the sexual revolution.

This move by Target? It was never about better care for people who lay claim to transgenderism. It was about making a political statement and garnering valuable corporate activism capital in the eyes of an increasingly secular marketplace and, even more so, in the echo chamber of social media and the mainstream news cycle.

And the outrage from the other side of the aisle? It was never about marking out or marginalizing or demonizing the “others.” At least not from where I’m sitting, clutching my own proverbial pearls and wondering whether or not my little girl will be safe when she’s in the restroom one day, without me there standing guard outside the stall door.

But now it’s become both of these, because we’ve lost our damn collective minds. And it’s hardly possible to order a coffee without offending someone, bumping up against a competing worldview or accidentally uttering a trigger word.

Listen, even if we disagree 110% on matters of human sexuality, it is still possibly to have courtesy and mutual respect for one another.

And maybe, for Target and for every other retailer-cum-social engineer out there in the fray, a simpler and more authentically respectful solution to all parties involved would have been the addition of single-occupancy family/individual restroom and dressing room to their stores. (Because you know dressing rooms are coming next.)

But that wouldn’t have been nearly as splashy or, therefore, nearly as sexy.

Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, politics, Women's Rights

Who are the Little Sisters of the Poor, and why should you care?

March 24, 2016

If you were totally avoiding the internet today, or if you live under a particularly pleasant and comfortable rock, maybe you don’t know that the federal government and a bunch of nuns are duking it out before the Supreme Court over birth control.

More to the point, they’re fighting over the Little Sisters of the Poors’ refusal to subsidize contraception and abortion-causing drugs for their employees via their health insurance coverage, all of whom, by the way, are mandated by the President Obama’s signature eponymous ~~government overreach~~ law to purchase their own health insurance.

Well, fair’s fair, right? I mean, the law’s the law. We’ve all got to play by the rules.

Except that fully one third of Americans – including major corporations like Exxon, Pepsi, and Visa – flipping Visa – are exempted from the mandate.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

(I’m being a little bit dramatic actually. Because the Little Sisters of the Poor aren’t actually nuns; they’re sisters. Nuns are cloistered women religious who spend their lives away from the world, physically hidden behind convent doors and engaged in lives of quiet contemplation, prayer, and sacrifices.)

Sisters, on the other hand, are women religious who have vowed to live out their vocation to serve Christ in an active apostolate. They still vow poverty, chastity, and obedience, but they work in the streets and in hospitals and schools. They can be doctors and lawyers and social workers and professors, but who are married to Jesus and His Church.

These specific sisters, the Little Sisters, have a commitment to serve the elderly poor. It’s the entire mission of their order, and they run homes and hospices and clinics all around the world providing dignified, life-giving care to those who have no one to care for them, and no means to pay for it.

Some of their employees are not consecrated religious women, but laypersons. And the federal government is taking exemption to the Sisters – the Catholic, celibate, married-to-Jesus sisters, not subsidizing contraception and abortion-causing drugs for their lay employees.

And if the good sisters refuse? A crushing fine, somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million dollars, annually, effectively destroying their ministry.

I’m going to try my hand at an analogy or two, but they’re all going to fall short in one way or another.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are an avowed atheist, and a school teacher. Your entire career is dedicated to opening and instructing the minds of children. You find the notion of God abhorrent, and even destructive to young imaginations. But the government disagrees with your personal position, and even though you’ve chosen to serve in a public institution of learning, you will now be forced to provide government-subsidized Bibles and rosaries for your students. And you’ll be asked to distribute them personally.

But, the government assures you, you won’t be directly responsible for the promulgation of religious mythology in your classroom, because they’ll see to it that a portion of your annual salary for is directly subsidized for “proselytizing materials.” Also, they’ll stock a shelf in your classroom with the religious materials for you, so you won’t have to touch them.

“But, you might rightly protest, “I’m still being forced to participate in something I fudnemtnally disagree with and find morally reprehensible!”

“No, don’t be silly!” Say the Feds. “We’re providing the money and buying the sacred items ourselves. You can just pretend it’s not happening.”

You: “but that’s not how reality works…”

Perhaps the Hallel butcher shop down the block being forced to accept SNAP and, as such, being required to carry non-hallal meats and food products is a better example?

Here’s the thing, and it’s essential that we keep this foremost in our minds: we are all the Little Sisters of the Poor.

And while we may not yet be called before a court of law to defend our rights and livelihoods before a government intent on seeking increasing control and punitive intervention, make no mistake, the day is coming.

If the Little Sisters of the Poor can be forced to choose between their life-giving mission of utter self denial and service to some of the poorest and most vulnerable among us, and their conviction to follow their properly formed consciences and the law of God, what makes any of us believe we won’t eventually be asked to do the same?

The irony of a bunch of celibate women being forced to plead their case before the highest court of the land over their refusal to fund condoms and Depo Provera during Holy Week is almost farcical. But we who dwell in the land of reality tv know that truth has indeed become stranger – and cruder – than fiction.

I am reminded of two quotes that I want to leave you with. The first, often attributed to Voltaire but more probably coined by a biographer of his, Evelyn Beatrice Hall:

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

And, this from Pastor Martin Niemöller, who did time in both Sachsenhausen and Dachau:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Will you speak for the Little Sisters? Get on social media and get the word out, using the hashtag #letthemserve.

And may God deliver to them a swift victory, and protect their mission to the elderly poor.

Contraception, motherhood, Parenting, Women's Rights

Adele and the shattering achievement of motherhood

February 17, 2016

It’s not shocking that the girl with the golden voice has all but dominated the news cycle the past week. From her Grammy nabs to her sound system snafu at the same ceremony to her stunning Vogue cover, the one-named wonder is everywhere.

Since there are no coincidences, I found myself last night blasting her latest album – track 4 is a particular favorite – at a level that was seriously testing the limits of ye olde Honda Odyssey’s sound system as I pulled into the garage last night. Dave joked after I walked in the door that he hoped I enjoyed my dance party.

I reddened only slightly, laughing, “you could hear me?”

He nodded and proceeded to mock me with a faux beat box.

I shrugged, laughing, “well it’s Adele. Listen loud or don’t bother.”

Then I asked him what he thought about using her name for a future (not imminent! <– disclaimer) daughter’s name.

The jury’s still out.

This morning I clicked open a thoughtful piece, despite the clickbait title, from the Federalist. The author wonders over the seeming incoherence of the modern feminist movement to find any common ground with women who experience profound and, to quote Adele, “ultimate purpose” in motherhood.

I think I know at least partially why that’s so hard for modern minds to swallow.

Because we’ve so effectively divorced sex and babies, both in a philosophical sense and in a biological reality, it’s now generally a matter of choice when – and if – a woman becomes a mother.

So for Adele to literally tattoo her son’s name on her skin, to bare her soul and her heart instead of her body on a magazine cover, announcing to the world that her little boy, not her record-smashing album, has given her an unprecedented sense of fulfillment? That’s pretty bold.

And yet it’s not surprising, I don’t think, to anyone who has ever herself become a mother.

There’s a critical difference that is too often lost, I feel, when discussing the roles of mother and father as possible identities in a line up of career choices.

Because to be a mother is to assume an entirely new identity. It’s a total reconfiguring of self, a radical overhaul of priorities and resources. And more than anything else? It’s a death.

Death to the autonomous self. Death to the person you were before you became a cooperating creative force in populating eternity. There are all kinds of careers – essential and good and necessary callings – that a woman can do.

But you don’t “do” motherhood.

It’s not something that you achieve, despite what our postmodern view of fertility and family strives to assert.

Motherhood is an entirely new state of being. And if that sounds too weird, consider that your very genetic makeup is permanently altered by becoming somebody’s mom. Your child’s DNA, discernibly different from your own, is now written into your very brain.

How’s that for mind blowing?

And yet for Adele, superstar that she is, to confess that she found her life before motherhood “lacked focus and meaning,” is controversial.

“How lovely it is, then,” writes Elissa Strauss for Slate, “to see someone like Adele appear so utterly unconflicted about the joys of becoming a parent, to be so high on motherhood without fearing that she might lose herself in it.”

But what if she does “lose herself” in it? What if 25 is, as she herself has predicted more than once, her final album? Does that discredit her incredible talent? Her haunting voice? Her lyrical genius?

What if Adele, packing up the trappings of fame and notoriety at the ripe old age of 27, decides to enter into the shadowy life of former celebrity and manages to find happiness – a happiness that she longs for, as is achingly evident on her brilliant record – with a man who wants to raise her son with her?

Or maybe she does keep writing and recording. But she manages to find the elusive balance between work and home life that, as a single parent, must be an even tighter and more excruciatingly fine line to walk.

If she continues to shatter records and sales numbers but maintains that her motherhood, as her son grows, is still more fulfilling?

Will that be okay with Salon and Vogue?

I propose that a different sort of double standard exists for women today.

If in ages past, women were shackled to their cookstoves and conscripted into domestic servitude by their compliant ovaries, today’s women are torn by opposing forces that seek to bind them both to home and office, tightening the chain on the one when the other loosens. A new baby allows for some slackening from the work side of things, but at 6 weeks postpartum the tension ratchets up again and she’s pulled into her “real” career.

Get too comfortable in either world and you’re liable to be labeled either a brainless homemaker or a cold hearted careerist.

So which is it for Adele? Why can’t she, of all women, “have it all,” so to speak?

I would venture to say it’s because motherhood really does belong to a fundamentally different category. And motherhood, fully embraced, will absolutely result in the loss of self. But what emerges from the trappings of that former self is nothing less than a beautiful redefinition of your very being.

If that sounds dramatic, it’s because it is dramatic

Motherhood is one of the most powerful forces for good in this world. And for a woman to take up that power and wield it justly and generously is an act of incredible cultural and historical significance. Making art is probably the only other thing I can even compare it to, on a human level, in terms of impact and longevity.

But even great art pales in comparison to what it means to bring a child into the world, to become mother.

There’s something striking about a culture that has forgotten, on such a fundamental level, the truth of this: that of course it isn’t possible not to “lose oneself” in one of the most profound relationships of love and self giving that can exist.

But how telling, too, that it would be turned into some kind of accolade rather than an observance that a profound truth has been forgotten on a fundamental level. For you cannot love anything, not even a pet, without being wrung out and shattered a bit in the process. Another brilliant Brit taught me that.

I wish Adele all the best as she forges new territory in the public eye and fights to strike the balance, as all moms do, between what she does and between who she is to that little boy.

And you know what sister? I think you’re onto something.

{Join the conversation on Facebook}

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, motherhood, pregnancy, Theology of the Body, Women's Health, Women's Rights

Well, that escalated quickly

February 5, 2016

I mean, I guess if you’re going to break the internet, you might as well do it talking booze and birth control. Two things near and dear to my heart if ever anything were.

If anyone is coming late to the party, hai, glad you’re here, might want to pop over and get the backstory. I’ll wait.

Now that we’re all on the same page, I want to offer a few further thoughts on the situation of the federal government making an official, taxpayer-funded recommendation that women of childbearing age be either completely abstinent from alcohol (not sex, mind you, because that’s like, impossible.) or be continuously contracepting to ensure maximum protection from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Here’s a painfully obvious caveat: FAS is a terrible, preventable condition. Do not binge drink during pregnancy. Actually, I’m going to go a step further and say DO NOT BINGE DRINK EVER. IT’S TERRIBLE FOR YOU, knocked up or not.

(Do not smoke crack, either, even though one intrepid commenter helpfully pointed out it’s, like, way safer than wine. I’m still not 100% on that…)

The overwhelming response (and it was delightfully overwhelming, so thank you!) was fist bumps and high fives. And a few precious messages from my more liberal leaning and even, in one case, pro abortion female readers expressing solidarity with me on this position.

Which is awesome. Just awesome. Because how amazing if government overreach on recommending contraception is what unites women from both ends of the political spectrum in the effort to overhaul and reclaim authentic feminism?

Would be cool. Just saying.

But a few people were very, very concerned that I might be agitating for pregnancy benders. Let me be quite clear when I say, again, FAS is terrible. And you will not give your baby FAS if you drink a glass of wine at a dinner party.

But there have been studies!! I know, I know there have been. But there have been other studies, too. And none of the studies seem to be able to agree on a “safe amount” of alcohol, so it’s easier for the FDA, the CDC, and the other 3 lettered agencies out there to just slap a do not on it and call it a day. Because most women will only be pregnant for 18 perfectly planned, spaced and executed months, anyway, when they go off the pill or have their IUD removed. So it’s no big thing.

This is crazy for 2 reasons.

First, there are plenty of things that are fine in moderation and terrible in excess. I might venture so far as to say that applies to everything. And this applies to pregnant and non pregnant humans alike. And if we’re to believe that the entirety of human history up until this point was dramatically wrong, and that all of Europe is still wrong, and that one drink will doom your child to a life of misery, then…I don’t think there’s anything I can say to convince you otherwise.

Please understand, I’m not encouraging pregnant women to get lit. I’m not even saying they should drink.

But women who either drank before they knew they were pregnant or have the occasional adult beverage during the 10 months when baby is on board do not need another thing to obsess over. They don’t. There are enough crazy things women already believe about the tenuous grasp on control they pray they have over their lives and the lives of their children. A new year’s eve champagne toast or a Guinness with dinner does not need to be on that list.

Here’s the second crazy thing about the CDC recommendation: it presupposes pregnancy as a predictable, planned, and finite occurrence in a woman’s life, occurring when and where and how she wants it. Once, maybe twice. And then never again. And we can make sure that happens.

Our culture has shifted so dramatically since the advent of the Pill that the above statement doesn’t raise an eyebrow for most modern minds, I’m guessing.

But that’s crazy.

And it’s also the very opposite of “openness to life.”

I think this is where it got weird for some people in trying to understand the outrage from Catholic women, and indeed all women who embrace their fertility and the potential for new life: not as a fearful, high-risk gamble we take once or twice, crossing our fingers and holding our breath, but as a natural extension of our maturation and growth as women and wives and mothers.

If you’re open to life, you’re probably going to spend more time being pregnant. That’s just how it works out. And even while you’re pregnant, life happens. Pregnancy isn’t a horrifying disease or debilitating (well, usually) condition. It’s a natural phase in a woman’s life. And yes, she’s more susceptible to certain ailments and no, she probably shouldn’t be skiing double black diamonds at 8 months along, but for the most part, your life kinda does just go on, just a bit heavier.

So for the government to point a finger at women, the only people capable of conceiving and bearing new life, and say to them “you need to either shut that down or shape up and teetotal,” yes, it was incredibly disturbing and incredibly demeaning.

Because the message is twofold: you’re too ignorant to understand your own (inconvenient!) body, and you’re too reckless to be trusted to behave yourself.

It’s a patronizing, deeply misogynistic message of incompetence and belittlement.

(But then, so is the push to get all women from 13 to 50 on some form of birth control. And we’ve been living that dream for 40 + years.)

I long for the day when all women, regardless of whether they believe in God or practice any religion or even like the taste of beer, recognize that in our bodies we have an intrinsic genius which is uniquely feminine, and it doesn’t need to be turned off or shut down.

It isn’t broken.

We aren’t broken.

But our culture is.

Abortion, Bioethics, Contraception, Culture of Death, motherhood, NFP, reality check, Women's Health, Women's Rights

Women, know your limits!

February 3, 2016

I’m just so thankful to be an American with a uterus today, because federal agencies have really got all the bases covered for me. (Which is a relief because who has got time to use reason? Also, science is hard. Let’s go shopping.)

The CDC issued a nuanced, thoughtful report this morning with the brilliant recommendation that card-carrying members of the x-chromosome club ought to either be using contraception throughout the entirety of their childbearing years, or teetotaling.

Thankfully, being a simple suburban housewife with little capacity to make reasonable, well-researched choices for my own health and wellbeing and that of my offspring, I can rely on my government to recommend that I pump my tricky, dangerous female body full of class one carcinogens for 3+ decades so that my children aren’t born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome as the direct result of the tequila shot I took on my honeymoon or the glass of Pinot Noir I drank last week with dinner.

#Becausescience.

Silly me, I thought that part of adulthood was learning self control, temperance, and even reading the odd bit of medical and sociologic research to back my parenting and lifestyle decisions. Also, all of recorded human history before the year 2016 led me to believe that enjoying a beer during the Super Bowl was probably safe. (And might actually be good for the national birthrate. Who knew?)

But let me be quite certain I understand the issue at hand.

The Center for Disease Control, worried that all women are secretly binge drinking and endangering the lives of their unborn …. fetus …. things… has decided to issue the sweeping recommendation that actually, women have been screwing around with the odds for much too long, and the safest bet is for every woman between the onset of menstruation until the end of menopause to be either sterilized, buying stock in Trojan, or regularly ingesting class 1 carcinogens in the form of oral contraceptives if they’re going to be drinking alcohol. Ever.

I’ll go a step further and draw the logical conclusion that for those fetus things conceived while mommy was enjoying a bottle of wine with daddy, the reasonable expectation would be to abort, since the eventual human might be “defective.”

I’m guessing there’s another layer of causality we can peel back here, because according to the statistics that FAS could be responsible for ADHD and we have something like 1 in 20 children with the latter diagnosis, could it be those irresponsible, unfit females went and became mothers and caused their children’s miseries?

Yeah, let’s definitely put that idea into women’s minds: that you are the reason your child is “imperfect.”

And pro-lifers are the ones who get accused of telling women what to do with their bodies?

What about empowering women to understand their fertility from the ground up, and inviting them to make thoughtful, adult choices about whether and when to engage in sexual activity and how to consume – or not to consume – alcohol?

That would require, of course, seeing women as capable, competent individuals with minds of their own. So maybe better to issue fearful government bulletin.

And what about stepping back from the precipice of This!Life!Is!So!Risky! and admitting that perhaps we don’t have complete, autonomous control over every aspect of our lives, of our children’s lives, and of the ordinary risks of being on planet Earth? Maybe a little nod to all of recorded human history prior to the 20th century is in order, too? Bueller?

I’m just so sick of hearing that the benign gods of government agencies – Planned Parenthood among them – have women’s “real” best interests at heart, when of course it’s all about increasing control, all too often achieved by cranking the volume on fear.

This is propaganda, pure and simple. And it’s damned misogynistic to boot. Women can be trusted to make the right decisions with their bodies, and choosing the right means doing no harm.

I’m sick to death of hearing the line “trust women” getting hijacked by the abortion special interest groups.

How about we trust women to know their own bodies? To know what’s best for their children? To rely on their own brains and consciences and adult intellects to make healthy, reasonable choices?

Women, know this: you are being manipulated at every turn by a culture that doesn’t trust our bodies or, apparently, our brains.

It’s time to take back the mic. Authentic feminism is long overdue for a renaissance of its own.

Bioethics, Culture of Death, euthanasia, Pro Life, reality check, Women's Health, Women's Rights

Boiling frogs and silent lambs

July 15, 2015

The last thing I want to write about, now that my belly is proceeding me into every room by approximately 2.3 seconds, is wholesaling baby parts. But dammit if that’s not what’s trending in my newsfeed these past 24 hours.

But you and I both know that Facebook has fundamentally myopic tendencies, meaning it caters to your specific likes/beliefs/interests/sexual preferences/cat food brands/etc., and that you won’t see something you disagree with, most of the time. Because you’ve probably unfriended and distanced yourself from anyone with whom you disagree in real life.

I’ve never personally unfriended anyone for such a thought crime, but I’ve been jettisoned from quite a few former college classmate’s lists myself, so I know how it works. And I know that without their presence in my own little echo chamber, things sound a lot more homogenous.

Which is hardly helpful for the purpose of debate and ongoing discussion. But I guess it reinforces our little bubbles. And I guess it’s part of why I was not at all surprised to see that although every other hashtag in my social networks yesterday was #ppsellsbabyparts, it was nothing but crickets from CNN, MSNBC, ABC and the like (oh, but this gem from Cosmopolitan is rich). I even forced myself to stroll through 30 minutes of Anderson Cooper last night on the treadmill, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to cover the story. But I had to see for myself.

Before I go any further I want to confess this: I’m disgusted, first and foremost, by my own deep apathy for the situation. When the news broke yesterday that Planned Parenthood had fallen victim to yet another undercover investigative journalism sting, this one featuring a high-ranking medical officer in the company discussing selling dead baby parts for profit over a leafy kale salad and red wine lunch, my blood pressure was unchanged.

My first reaction, internally, was something like “well of course they’re selling human organs for profit. Why wouldn’t they?”

Blase. Utterly unsurprised. And the longer I sit with the news, the more disgusted and disturbed I am by my own emotionally-neutral state. For God’s sake, I’m 9 months pregnant. I should be sobbing when I listen to testimony about “carefully crushing above the neck and below the pelvis, to keep abdominal organs intact;” because I can’t even get through most bedtimes without tears, lately.

But there’s nothing.

Sure, I’m disgusted on an intellectual level. But the gut reaction of horror, pain, and revulsion is notably absent.

And I blame myself as much as I blame our violent, twisted, sadistic media – both news and entertainment.

When I was a young teenager, maybe 13 or 14 years old, I saw my first real horror movie: Silence of the Lambs. (I’m almost 100% sure without my parent’s knowledge.) It horrified me on such a deep level that I honestly cannot, to this day, look at Anthony Hopkins in photographs or in any other movies. The evil he so convincingly portrayed in the character of Hannibal Lector was so profound that I was shaken to my very core.

My developing teenage mind was assaulted by the idea that a anyone could eat human beings, that this man could be so intellectually superior to the average person and yet ensnared by such demonic evil as to be able to casually remark about “nice chianti and Fava beans” whilst dabbing traces of his victim’s blood from his lips with a fine linen napkin.

Fast forward 15 years or so and we find ourselves immersed in such a culture of violence, both on the news and in our so-called entertainment, that I doubt Hopkin’s performance would push any envelopes or raise any eyebrows today.

Cannibalism? Yawn. Saw that on CSI last week. Scalping and skinning? Ho-hum, isn’t ISIS doing that in Siberia or somewhere right now?

And that’s why this can happen. That’s why a corporate behemoth like Planned Parenthood can continue to gobble up tax dollars and butcher up babies all while convincing the public of their benevolent generosity towards “underprivileged” women and minorities.

Feminism, my ass.

Turns out it might be closer to cannibalism, of all the possible isms it could resemble. And that even when such a story breaks, the news rolls upon deaf ears and hardened, calloused hearts, worn weary by decades of daily doses of demonic violence and evil emanating from our screens and from our newspapers.

Shame on us. Shame on a world that, when news of the trafficking of tiny human hearts and livers hits 1% of the mainstream news, good men and women don’t take up arms and rush to the defense of the defenseless. Don’t start a revolution.

When I was younger I used to wonder about the German people and why nobody tried to get out ahead of Hitler, how an entire nation could have fallen under his evil spell.

Now I know. Now I see, firsthand, that none of us are immune to the horrors of our day. And that as the temperature rises, the frog slowly cooks, oblivious to his own imminent peril as the mercury creeps ever upward. And that at a certain point the human mind, when confronted with such appalling and obvious wickedness, shuts down or short circuits in cowardice or fear or apathy or, or, or …

I’m still searching for my “or.” I’m still trying to figure out why I’m not physically standing in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic this morning, blocking the doorway with my enormous pregnant belly so that not one more woman, not one more child is destroyed at their hands.

Instead I’m writing this up in a coffee shop, my own unborn collection of human parts rolling around beneath my too-tight skin, kicks visible to the nearest barista even through a layer of fat and muscle and spandex.

And I don’t understand.

Abortion, Culture of Death, Women's Rights

Is it really about the children?

February 26, 2015

There has been much discussed about immigration in the news cycle of late. 5 million granted amnesty, amnesty revoked, bills vetoed, legislative vs. executive branch showdown…it’s a hot mess.

There are millions of young people who want to be living here in the US of A. Whatever your politics, that fact stands. And both sides of the debate seem to have settled on the youth narrative as a good place to start from. Because 45 year old drug runners or convicted felons make less compelling subjects, and old people are boring, I guess? I think that’s the line of reasoning, anyway.

So the children. Both pro amnesty and anti amnesty groups point to the kids as the reason we need to fix the system/open the borders/streamline the process, and they’re right. The kids are the reason. They have as much dignity as the little people you have tucked up under your own roof each night, slumbering peacefully and securely.

Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but this piece casts a rather disingenuous pall over the motives of some of those within the Department of Health and Human Services working so earnestly to secure residence for young illegal immigrants. And it smacks of the worst kind of eugenic elitism.

Sure, send us your poor, your huddled masses … and we’ll welcome them and abort their children.

Is there not rather an abrupt break in the narrative, at that point, if it is indeed supposed to appear as though the primary concern in the forefront of everybody’s generous heart is the children?

I guess, then, it still boils down to a prejudice of geography. Children running across deserts and fording rivers are welcome, but the stowaways within their wombs will be executed upon arrival, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

And yes, sure, it specifies that the abortion services will be extended to those children who were sexually assaulted during their crossing, but with the amount of trafficking occurring on our borders right now, that casts a wide net indeed. I wonder who decides whether a pregnant 14 year old girl has been assaulted and is therefore “entitled to” (read: has it forced upon her) abortion. Perhaps even against her will.

But then, it’s for the good of the children.

Violence upon violence.

This is the fruit of the assault on religious freedom, on purging goodness and truth from the public square. When we lose our voices and our rights to exercise our consciences, everybody suffers. And government bureaucracy is no replacement for the human heart for determining good from evil.

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