Merry Christmas.

Andrew Tallman from Townhall.com discusses what pro-life message we could possibly receive from reading the Biblical account of the Christmas story:

“The Bible says nothing directly about abortion.” Have you ever heard this claim before? I know I have. And the uncomfortable truth is that, in a certain sense, it’s accurate. The deliberate termination of a pregnancy is not directly addressed anywhere in scripture.

On the one hand, this could mean that the practice is merely a matter of personal choice, having been left alone by even God Himself. On the other hand, this could also mean that the culture for which the Bible was written was so deeply affirming of childbearing that the idea of aborting a baby would have been literally inconceivable to them. After all, there are no commands in the Bible to breathe, presumably because Jewish culture is staunchly pro-air.

But even if the Bible doesn’t quite give us a definitive proclamation on the overall question of abortion, that doesn’t mean it says nothing relevant at all. One of the key points of contention in this debate is whether the fetus is a person and, if so, when in gestation this occurs. Most pro-lifers believe it’s at conception, but those who believe abortion is morally acceptable think this happens at some later stage of pregnancy such as implantation, quickening, viability or birth.

Until the other day, I would have said the Bible was somewhat indeterminate on this issue. But now, I would be as bold as to say that it plainly teaches us that a fetus is a person at most within the first four weeks of gestation and, more likely, even within the first few days after conception. If so, then Christians who haven’t previously realized this would have to acknowledge that even early term abortions end the life of a person. And this would, in turn, affect the advice they give to others who might currently be contemplating abortion, even perhaps their own daughters. Let me show you what I found for the first time the other day.

I was reading the Christmas story in Luke 1 and 2 when I made what were for me several new observations. First, I noticed that Luke (a doctor and scholar) specifically tells his audience (Theophilus) that he has thoroughly investigated everything he is about to write and that he has decided to “write it out for you in consecutive order” (1:3). Unlike the other Gospel writers, Luke will tell us his story in the form we modern readers best comprehend: chronologically. This means we can rely heavily on the order of things in any of our conclusions. I know this may not seem very important, but stick with me for a moment and you’ll see why it matters.

Reading on, we learn that Elizabeth (Mary’s cousin) has become pregnant and secluded herself for five months, hiding her very late-in-life first pregnancy from everybody, even her close family (1:24). Then Luke tells us that the angel Gabriel makes his famous visit to the engaged virgin Mary in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (1:26). These time references are no coincidence.

Continuing to read, Gabriel tells Mary that she is going to give birth to the Messiah and name him Jesus (1:31-33). In the process of answering her rather understandable question about how this may be so, Gabriel uses the not-quite-as miraculous pregnancy of her elderly cousin Elizabeth as evidence that this can really happen. And once more, as if for emphasis, we have the time reference as he declares that Elizabeth is in her sixth month of pregnancy (1:36).

After his departure, Mary immediately went as fast as she could (1:39) to the hill country to see her cousin, presumably to both verify the news (remember Elizabeth’s seclusion) and to share her own story. When Mary comes close enough to greet her, Elizabeth feels her baby (John the Baptist) leap in her womb with joy at the presence of his Messiah and Mary (1:41-44). By any reasonable standard, this shows that the fetus, John, is a person at this moment and nothing less.

But John is close to his third trimester by now, and even the most strident pro-choice person will usually concede that third trimester abortions are heinous for essentially this reason. Roe v. Wade even affirmed this idea. So nothing observed thus far is particularly persuasive on the subject of abortion. But that’s when I saw something that I hadn’t ever considered before.

Whose presence is John leaping at? Well, obviously the (much younger) fetus, Jesus. Yet Jesus must be only in his first trimester when John recognized him through the Holy Spirit.

But perhaps the trip from Nazareth to the hill country took a while. A terrain map of ancient Israel would lead us to think this journey take a few days at most, plus the text clearly says she went “with haste” (1:39). But perhaps some longer time frame is involved here that might extend the likely age of fetal Jesus. Luckily for us, we needn’t guess. The text itself answers these questions if we just keep reading.

After Mary sings the Magnificat (1:46-55), Luke tells us she stayed with Elizabeth for about three months before returning home (1:56). Immediately after she departs, John the Baptist is born (1:57). In the following chapter, the much more famous narrative of Jesus’s birth is told. But the key facts have already been laid out with the precision that only a medical doctor would include.

Working solely with the calendar of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Luke has told us that Jesus was a person with sufficient individual identity that His cousin could recognize him through the assistance of the Holy Spirit (1:41-44). But Luke has also told us that when this occurred, Jesus could only have been a maximum of four weeks old and probably was much younger than that.

Gabriel announced the conception to Mary in Elizabeth’s sixth month (1:26). Thereafter, Mary traveled to the hill country (1:39), where she stayed for about three months (1:56) before leaving prior to John the Baptist’s birth (1:57). This means that fetus Jesus must have been less than four weeks old when she arrived, a maximum given the parameters. But, given the fact that she went immediately and in haste (1:39), a much more likely reality is that He was only a few days old (perhaps not even implanted yet) when John recognizes Him. Mary certainly wouldn’t have even been able to know by ordinary means that she was pregnant yet.

So the pressing point of all this analysis is not that John (in his third trimester) was a person in the womb when he leapt for joy. The unavoidable and much more forceful point is that Jesus was in the very earliest portion of His first trimester when He was recognized by John as a person. And unless Jesus is not a human child, this means that all children are people at this early stage.

I realize that all of this will be of very little interest to those of you who either do not care about the Bible or else do not care whether the fetus is a person. I also know this doesn’t really do much to address the question of the legality of abortion, since the basis of my investigation is a faith text.

But for those tens of millions of Christians who every year celebrate this story and also believe that early term abortion is compatible with their faith, the point seems embarrassingly clear: It is no longer honest to say that we can’t know whether the first trimester fetus is a person.

So as we prepare to celebrate Christmas and the birth of our Savior this year, I have a simple question. Since we now know that Jesus was somewhere between a few days and a few weeks gestation when he was recognized in scripture as a person, then who or what is it in the young woman’s womb today if not a person—and somebody’s grandchild?

Other Options

The doctor told her she wasn't sick, she was pregnant. So after she lost over forty pounds and started hallucinating, she aborted her baby boy.

When she was told abortion was her only option for the extreme morning sickness she had, she made the biggest mistake of her life. If only she had known there were other options.

Happy Holidays from Planned Parenthood

Give the gift that really counts this Christmas season: Abortion Gift Certificates!





And last but not least, Planned Parenthood and the overwhelming evidence of cover-ups for minors getting abortions, rape cases.

In the following video, Lila posed as a (blonde!) 13-year-old who had been impregnated by her 31-year-old boyfriend. The nurse actually goes as far as to suggest that she lie about his age and instructs her on how to go across state lines in order to obtain an abortion.


Indiana Planned Parenthood Covers Up Sexual Abuse of 13-year Old - The top video clips of the week are here

More and more of these are popping up everywhere:

How Obama Got Elected

From howobamagotelected.com

eHarmony Sued Into Being Gay

eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family but now Online dating service eHarmony has agreed to create a new website for gays and lesbians.

This is all part of a settlement with a gay man in New Jersey, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General said on Wednesday.

The website will provide a dating service with "male seeking a male" or "female seeking a female" options, the Attorney General's office said in a statement. The settlement was the result of a discrimination complaint filed by Eric McKinley against eHarmony in 2005, which will be dismissed under the settlement agreement.

Obama Won't Fulfill Dream

This past week, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece said the following in an article at Lifenews.com.

"The battle for equal rights has reached a major milestone, but Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of full equality remains just a dream as long as unborn children continue to be treated no better than property."

She is hopeful of the future however and suggests that we keep on praying and maybe in time the unthinkable may occur, that the unborn will be protected under U.S law.

"We must pray with persistence and love that, in God's time, what is now deemed unthinkable will become reality - that all our brothers in sisters, from conception to natural death, will be protected in law and welcomed in society," King concluded. "The elections are over. The pro-life battle begins anew.

Also, Day Garner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, sent Jill Stanek an email with insight into how she is handling the election. I thought I was depressed about the election until I read her reaction. But she also comes to the realization of hope (real hope) and states this at the end of the email:

"I am happy God has chosen us to serve in this fight, this great mission."

Child Witches

This should enrage Evangelicals around the world as Christ's name is being used to abuse, abandon, and murder innocent children of all ages. The witchcraft scare has been spreading in places like Nigeria where a form of Evangelical Christianity, paganism, and extreme superstition has combined into a finger-pointing religion where every problem you face can easily be blamed on witchcraft. More specifically, on the child witches. "Prophets" and "Prophetesses" are the only ones who are able to tell if a child has become a witch and they are the only ones who can exorcise them for a hefty price (about a year's income). If the exorcism fails, the child is then killed or abandoned. A news story from the Telegraph:

During the "deliverance" ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they "confess" to being a witch...

Some Nigerians blame the increase on one of the country's wealthiest and most influential evangelical preachers. Helen Ukpabio, a self-styled prophetess of the 150-branch Liberty Gospel Church, made a film, widely distributed, called End of the Wicked. It tells, in graphic detail, how children become possessed and shows them being inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families and communities.

Mrs Ukpabio, a mother of three, also wrote a popular book which tells parents how to identify a witch. For children under two years old, she says, the key signs of a servant of Satan are crying and screaming in the night, high fever and worsening health.

October Recap

Sorry there haven't been any posts in a few weeks. My time was stolen by a certain young gentlemen.

This is the culprit:

I am expecting to post a few times a week from now on. So let's get started...

What you may have missed this past month:

-An unusual field trip had first graders attending a lesbian wedding.

-Christian Wire partnering with Pink Cross Foundation in order to better tackle pornography.

-The issue of spanking was in the news again when a pastor was accused of spanking his son with a wooden spoon for lying to him.

-A funeral was finally held for Shanice Osbourne, a baby that was born alive during an abortion but was then allegedly killed by abortionist Belkis Gonzalez. Her body was thrown onto the roof of the abortion clinic when police were called to investigate. 27 months later her body is finally being put to rest.

In news for November, obviously the election is over. And now as Obama ends his campaign, conservatives are looking for hope, trying to regroup, and more importantly "get through" an Obama presidency.

We have a lot to think about, a lot to do. Now is not the time for bitterness. Jill Stanek said it best:

A guy interviewing me on radio yesterday asked, "If Obama wins, you know he's coming after you, right?" That had never occurred to me. The concept is so presumptuous.

Actually, the opposite had occurred to me, and that's how I responded: "No, if Obama wins, I'm coming after him."

It is the time to fight for what is most important and not give up.

Who is Checking the Facts?

In Jill's latest article, "Fact-checking Factcheck.org on Gianna and Obama ads" is calling out FactCheck.org for its misrepresentation of Gianna Jensen and the BornAliveTruth.org's ad.

---

"On September 24, FC posted an article supposedly fact-checking BornAliveTruth.org's Gianna ad as well as Barack Obama's retaliatory attack ad.

There was no excuse for Jessica Henig's hit piece, at times deliberately deceptive and at times woefully ignorant. We know this because we provided every bit of documentation she requested and some she didn't think to request in the days before she posted her liberal spin...The title of Henig's piece gives its bias away: "'Born Alive' baloney. " I wrote Jackson that Henig's article was wrong from the very first word, indicative of shoddy work to follow. Henig should have started with "An," not "A," and 3 days later it's still wrong. But that was nothing..."

---

Michelle Malkin calls it "Garbage, pure garbage" in her article "Tell All Your Friends FactCheck.org is Useless."

Does Sex Sell? Are We Buying It?

Gianna Jessen on Hannity and Colmes

Just How Pro-Choice is Obama?

After this ad started popping up on media websites and of course on YouTube, Jill Stanek said on her blog:

We're hearing from the media Obama's people are telling them they have no comment on the Gianna ad, that Obama didn't vote for Born Alive because it would undermine Roe. Even if that were true, which it is not, am I hearing Obama admit he supports infanticide if it would otherwise interfere with legalized abortion?

You can find more information about Gianna, who survived a saline abortion at a Los Angeles abortion Clinic on her website.

"Gianna's biological mother was 17 when she had a saline abortion in her third trimester...After being burned alive for approximately 18 hours in the womb from the saline solution, Gianna was delivered alive in a Los Angeles County abortion clinic. Her medical records state, "born during saline abortion"...this is what caused her Cerebral Palsy."

MLK was a Republican

A message from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Junior's niece:

Part I: The New Age Woman

This week an interesting article came out suggesting that women are abandoning the church and turning to pagan practices, specifically Wicca.

Martin Beckford, a Religious Affairs Correspondent writes:

“The report claims more than 50,000 women a year have deserted their congregations over the past two decades because they feel the church is not relevant to their lives.”

The report's author, Dr Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Derby, said: "In short, women are abandoning the church...Over the past decade, women have been leaving churches at twice the rate of men. In addition, the census is said to show that teenage boys now outnumber girls in the pews for the first time.”

However, on notconformedthoughts.com Matthew Cochrane wrote back in Feburary

“The need for the church to reengage men has never been more apparent. The recent decline of male participation in church has been well-documented and is now much more than a demographic aberraion. Evangelical churches, once almost evenly split along gender lines, now consist of 60% female membership and, as one west coast pastor would say, the other 40% are “chickified church boys.”

Whether its the men or women leaving the church, one thing seems certain, overall church attendance is declining. I don't believe Wicca is the culprit, yet. But I think I agree with Dr. Aune on one thing.

“She believes many women have been put off going to church in recent years because of the influence of feminism, which challenged the traditional Christian view of women's roles and raised their aspirations.”

Yes I believe feminism is yet again to blame. And guess what feminism leads to...paganism. Feminism and the New Age culture go hand in hand.

Baby Animals

This week in the news were two big stories that saddened people across the world:

A gorilla mourns the death of her baby:

And a lost infant whale was euthanized.

What is it about animals caring for their young that pulls at our heartstrings? The story about the gorilla who wouldn't give up her dead baby was the most heart breaking, as it was obvious she was in denial. It makes us think about how we relate to animals and relate stories like these with our own young.

What these news articles also made me wonder was why they were such big news when other horrible things are happening to our own human children:

http://www.cwfa.org/articles/15648/BLI/dotcommentary/index.htm

http://www.cwfa.org/articles/15526/MEDIA/life/index.htm

Although stories about dead baby animals and distressed animal mothers saddens me, I am more disturbed that human babies are being murdered all the time, but we don't shed a tear.

And don't forget about the "poor" little polar bears fighting for survival.

A Brave New World For Our Children

I didn't think it was possible but Planned Parenthood has sunk to new lows.

Their new website, takecaredownthere.org, is not just disturbing, its downright disgusting.

From male on male oral sex to masturbation and videos with titles like "Bring Your Sister" and "Threesome," its obvious they are taking a stance against abstinence.

I know it's Planned Parenthood, but I really don't know how they can get away with these messages.

It just doesn't get any worse than this. Or does it? There's a new underwear line Disney has made for young girls. A grandmother was outraged when she found the words "Dive In!"on the high school musical underwear she had just bought for her seven year granddaughter.

What kind of messages are we sending to our children?

More on Birth Control Pills: What the Doctor Didn't Tell You

Many considered Birth control to be the liberation of sexuality, becoming available to women during the "free love era" of the Sixties. Nowadays, we really don't know how we ever lived without our little box of pills, but its becoming harder and harder (even for the liberals) to deny the negative outcomes we are just now becoming aware of (or are we??).

I'm so glad there are websites out there for our kids, like KidsHealth.org which states the following about birth control pills:

"The birth control pill is a safe and effective method of birth control. Most young women who take the Pill have none to very few side effects. The side effects that some women have while on the Pill include:

* irregular menstrual bleeding
* nausea, weight gain, headaches, dizziness, and breast tenderness
* mood changes
* blood clots (rare in women under 35 who do not smoke)"

Blatant underage sex promotion aside, they left a few things off their little list that I'm sure every "kid" would want to know:

*increase risk of , breast cancer, cervical cancer..etc.
*fertility problems once off the pill
*environmental effects, such as contaminating our water with Estrogen (see earlier post).
*Oh.. and of course the possible abortion of a fertilized egg (a.k.a human being).

And then there's new studies such as this one reported in the U.K called: "The Pill May Change Women's Choice in Men," which suggests that the chemicals in birth control pills can affect a woman's natural instincts. I think its funny how so many liberals want everything to be "natural" and yet birth control is one of the most unnatural things we can do to our bodies.

It Must Be Something in the Water

Jill Stanek posted today on Iain Murray's recently released book, The really inconvenient truths: seven environmental catastrophes Liberals don't want you to know about - because they helped cause them. One of his chapters focuses on the very relevant issue of hormones being dumped into our water systems. Murray writes:

"Why don't we have more outcries about hormones, and campaigns to save the fish populations? Why aren't environmentalists lobbying on Capitol Hill to keep these chemicals from being dumped into our rivers?...

"Maybe because the source of these chemicals is not some corporate polluter, but something a little more dear to the Left: human birth-control pills, morning-after pills, and abortion pills."

The contraceptive pill has fundamentally changed American life, making sex more casual, morals looser, husbands and wives more distant. Its messed with women's fertility. In short, it has been a game-changer, in some fundamental and not-so-good ways. And because its introduction came 40 years ago, at a time when American culture was enamored with Woodstock, feminism and free love, prescient warnings and cautions.."

Jill goes on to suggest a liberal motive for turning a blind eye to this problem. She says:


"If the pill feminizes male fish, what does it do to male children? It must do something - decrease fertility? feminize boys, i.e., create gays?

I'm sure the Left is not touching this pollutant for all the reasons Lopez and Murray
noted.

But could there be an insidious motive for allowing estrogen to remain in the human
water system?"

Although I personally wouldn't argue that hormones in the water are indeed making our boys gay, I have to admit something is affecting the fertility of women in the U.S. Consider the fact that more girls are being born than boys and that girls are reaching puberty at younger ages. You have to wonder. As more and more problems are linked to birth control pills, the liberal left has to face the fact that God's original plan of marriage and reproduction is always the best way.

"I Kissed a Girl"

Warning: Provocative Material (Video not suggested for the young-lings. And if you do watch it, no need to watch the whole thing, it's pretty easy to get the idea in the first couple of seconds).

I haven't listened to the top 40 in a long while, but if you have you probably would noticed this catchy song by Katy Perry titled "I Kissed a Girl" released in the U.S. early May. The chorus of the song goes as follows:

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don't mind
it It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

So just who is this Katy Perry and what is she trying to say? That seems to be the big discussion as both conservatives and liberals don't seem to know what to do with her. Wikipedia says the following about her early career; "Her burgeoning music career led to her being named "The Next Big Thing" in October 2004 in Blender Magazine, where Perry stated she wasn't "a typical Christian", mentioning that she had done "lots of bad things" during her adolescence." I guess she isn't holding onto that "christian" image any longer.

When you really start looking at the lyrics of this song closely and consider the culture that promotes this kind of bi-sexual experimentation, you'll realize that it isn't just a song promoting the gay lifestyle. The song is also defining the sex culture of the heterosexual youth. The video portrays this perfectly, looking more like a pornographic stage set complete with silky corsets and erotic postures (made to look appealing to the young male culture than anything else).

The Rolling Stone says "the supposedly rebellious "attention-grabbing" lyrics are "a vanilla recounting of her chick-on-chick exploits" and that this "acting out" is "just to get a dude's attention."

I think they've hit the nail on the head. Something I have always had a hard time understanding is why other young women like to act flirty with each other in club scenes and at bars when really all they are looking for is a male's attention. I believe now it is because of two things. One: peer pressure. And two: they think they can get a guy's attention if they act out in this way (and usually they do).

The thing is, bi-sexuality is becoming more and more popular with the youth but surprisingly this is not just because of the acceptance of the gay and lesbian cultures. No, I think you can trace this right back to pornography. The pornographic addiction of our society (both males and females) is influencing heterosexuals to be part of a sex culture that not only accepts bi-sexuality but promotes it. Katy's song brings us into that culture, and declares "I liked it!"

The lyrics near the end of the song just about sums up just how we are suppose to feel about it,

Ain't no big deal, it's innocent.

This Burning Woman

What does it mean?

I wanted my title to be passionate. I wanted something that described my frustration with the relevant feminine issues in America today such as abortion. I thought that the image of fire portrayed this accurately so I went with "burning."

I guess I could also argue that the image of a true biblical woman in America is "burning" away. So I put together "burning" and "woman."

Dead Baby Pictures

This past week I came across an article written by Canadian pro-lifer, Dorothy Cummings. In her article, "Enough with the Dead Baby Pictures," Dorothy debates whether the pictures of burned and dismembered fetuses are harmful to the cause. I highly disagree with her. Assuming such pictures are used appropriately I believe they can be very effective.

I did not always feel this way though. When I was sixteen I can remember watching pro-life activists outside my high-school toting their large signs around while parents dropped their kids off. Being that this was my first experience with the whole issue, I was quite offended myself. I didn't see the benefit in showing such pictures to kids like me (especially in a school system that still strictly taught abstinence). I didn't know what they were trying to say to us - to me. I don't think I ever really "looked" at the pictures until I got older and felt like I could handle it. In this situation I would suggest photography from the amazing ultrasounds we can do now.

Nowadays I am very comfortable with the more shocking signs, especially when being used in front of an abortion clinic where a woman considering an abortion might see them. I have read many testimonies where women were affected by the pictures and decided not to go through with their abortions.

Dorothy Cummings still thinks these pictures do more harm than good. Her solution?

"I suggest showing pictures of really, really cute little newborn babies instead."

I watched the movie "Juno" this past week (review coming) which deals with a pregnant teen who considers getting an abortion. At the clinic she runs into a high-school acquaintance carrying a sign of a cute smiling baby which reads, "No babies like murdering." She is chanting, "All babies want to get borned," and tries to convince the pregnant teen that her baby "might" have a heartbeat and "probably" has fingernails. Nothing is certain. No facts are given. Even the picture doesn't say anything meaningful to a pregnant teen.

A picture of a smiling baby isn't going to shock anyone or make someone consider the consequences of their actions.

However, a picture of a dead baby shows the very real, undeniable truth of abortion.

The New Planned Parenthood

The new Planned Parenthood, setting their sites on the more fortunate, "Sex and the City" types.

Introduction

I'm a conservative twenty-four year old woman living South Carolina with my husband and two children. I have lived a lot of different places in my life, though the majority of it has been here. I graduated from the College of Charleston. My job has nothing to do with my degree and I would much rather be a house wife.



I believe every human is born into sin.

I believe the only ticket out of hell is through Jesus Christ.

I believe life begins at conception.

I believe strongly in the sanctity of life, but also support the death penalty.

I believe men and woman were made to be different, though equally important.

I believe true femininity is being destroyed by feminism.

I support abstinence in our schools.

I support Intelligent Design being taught in our schools.

I support homeschooling.

I support the right to bear arms.

I support the right to be a stay at home mother.