A Study in Contrasts

I was struck this week by a study in contrasts. The contrast? Our new president.

I was very glad when President Obama made executive orders involving Gitmo. I think that our nation's stance on abusive interrogation and unsubstantiated arrests without a speedy trial are unjust, immoral and a nasty scab on the face of our nation. I never really had a problem George W., but I sure had a problem with his administration and their views on this. I think that George W. went wrong when he chose his running mate and the majority of his cabinet. Their counsel led to so many of the international issues we face today, and the fallout from Gitmo is one of the worst. Totally ungodly. Totally wrong. They made us as bad as the bad guys, but then justified it.

So, I was so very glad to see President Obama move in the right direction.

However, I was so confounded that one individual could be so vibrantly focused about the value of one group of humans' lives and yet so blinded to the value of another. How could Obama make life-giving decisions with suspected criminals and terrorists, and yet be willing to remove a ban on monies going to snuff out the life of innocent ones?

I understand that the debate on abortion centers around the idea that not everyone believes human life begins at conception. Even if you can look past the fact that embryos have the same DNA as us, heartbeats, and the ability to feel pain among other things, what if you're wrong? What if they are, in every sense of the word, human? At what cost does that decision come? Our society and our world is only going to be as strong as our willingness to take care of our weakest members. So, with each abortion we've weakened our ability to flourish.

People can talk to me about the suffering of children with this, and they have. Most of those people have never set foot in an orphanage, so they really don't have a clue. Even if they have, though, I know that the solution is not to snuff out a life. The solution is to embrace their lives. To provide homes for them. To spend our money on giving them life, rather than spending our money on SUVs. That solution gives life to not only the "unwanted person" but to the parent as well.


Instead, like Bush's administration, we, as a society, choose the low road and then make ourselves the same as the bad guys. Only we justify it.


People have tried to convince me that it's okay in the case of rape. Yet, I personally know people whose conception happened as a result of rape. Both they and their mothers argue differently.

People have tried to convince me that their is a quality of life issue. If a person is severely disabled then it would be better if they weren't alive. I can only feel sorrow for a person with such a misunderstanding of life, and such a shallow understanding of humanity's ability to over come.

I live each day with 3 beautiful people that many in our world would have thought were "better off aborted". They live life to the fullest, with total disregard to the shallowness of most people's understanding. They are more human than the lot of humanity, and the world is a better place because they were not snuffed out, but instead given the opportunity to live.

So, these "human rights" groups that practice abortion? I've pondered how a group that is dedicated to the rights of humanity could find in their solutions the option to kill. All I can think is that this is where human rights cross the line into self-rights. It's no longer about the rights inherent to a human, it's about what an individual is allowed to do to themselves, or more correctly, for themselves.

So, what would prompt President Obama to have this dichotomy in thinking? Politics? Perhaps, as he owes his successful bid to office in part to those who prosper from abortion and those who champion it as their cause. However, I would like to believe that it has more to do with his blindness. As all people, he is blind to the dichotomy in his own thinking. What he sees as compassion, he has indoctrinated himself to see that way.

So, as I pray for myself that God will remove the blinders that hold me in my schizophrenic thinking, I will pray for President Obama that God will as well.

In the meantime, I will mourn that humanity is will lose more of it's human-ness and around the world so many people will lose the opportunity to love and be a part of a story where someone over comes.