This post may sound somewhat political but I hope what I say also makes an impact...
I confess I watch a lot of TV shows. Code Black, Chicago Med and Blue Bloods are my favorites. The other night I was shocked with how Chicago Fire ended. Jimmy has had a lot of issues going on, thanks to losing his brother and I hate what happened to him.
To this....
The most common comment I kept reading about what happened to him was "Now he's Two Face" "He looks like the Phantom" "He was cute but now he's ugly" "What an idiot, he asked for that."
The show of course is fiction but reading comments and even hearing some Christians talk like that shows the state of what we think. I am a mother to two kids with a craniofacial syndrome, one also has chiari malformation and a few related issues to that. Both are/have developmental delays to varying degrees as well. Cruel things have been said about them but most of that is nothing compared to what many of these kids face.Too often they are looked at only for their diagnosis and nothing more.
There is a family that their son was made into a cruel meme. I made a blog post on here about that a while ago back. Look at this little boy, do you see ugly in that? The meme compared him to a pug. This kind of thing happens too often. On a slightly different line, a majority of the pictures of people who are ill (especially children) that encourage you to like/share/say amen to are pictures that have been stolen from a genuine person, who is probably totally unaware that their picture is being used. Jameson didn't do anything to deserve this. There's more on the inside that just what you see and everyone is beautiful in their own way. Jameson and so many other kids don't deserve to be treated badly. God created these gems, so who are we to call HIS gems ugly? Who are we to tell a parent they can't have more kids because of a risk of facial defects? Are they really DEFECTS? I don't think so. Yeah, doctors are required. Surgeries are required yet how we all look is what makes each and every one of us unique. Instead of telling shining gems they are ugly or they should have been aborted or whatever else, why don't we instead help them shine? Polish them so they shine even brighter. It is those with "special needs" who are the rarest of gems and who are often the gentlest of souls that has not allowed the world to harden them.
Look up the book Wonder, it has brought to light about the craniofacial world but there is so much farther we need to go in the rights and treatment of those around us.
"Life is the right of every child. Not a special privilege for the fortunate, the planned and the perfect." Rebekah Peterson
Bible Study Wednesday night we were going over one of the chapters in the book we are doing. Here are two of the biggest parts I highlighted.
(1) "position in society — a pecking order, if you will. Money is certainly a component of that, because that’s what we most often use to keep score. For most of us, it’s a key ingredient to success, but it’s not just about money. It’s about prestige and clout. It’s about respect and recognition. It’s about having the right seat at the table, the right space in the parking lot, the right title on the business card, and the right clothes in the closet. It’s about getting the watch, the trophy, the promotion, or the award."
― from "Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart"
(2) "Success is a word we use to speak of something that we have done and accomplished. The circumstances of your life can be the same, but the word blessed is an indication not that you have done something, but that something has been done for you. Let me put it this way: success is when we achieve; blessed is when we receive. If we say “I’m successful,” we are giving the glory to ourselves. When we say “I’m blessed,” we are giving the glory to God."
― from "Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart"
Let's talk about number (2) for a second. The last thing I said before class let out was that when my son was born, I was told by someone within that "You must not be blessed because you were born with yet another child with issues. I'll pray for you." The looks on their faces...... I also told them what my retort was: "You know, I actually am blessed with my kids because by facing medical issues, I'm forced to stay humble and rely on God as we are supposed to do." That person has never said a word to me since. Many count on successes to get them anywhere but maybe, just perhaps it's blessings too.
Let me tell you though too, through the thick of it, it's hard to cling to that. Often I feel like I'm at the bottom or near bottom of the totem pole, the bottom of the pecking order as (1) put it. I always have been. That's not okay honestly but I am finally starting to just accept it. I'm starting to like staying as a hermit at home instead of being out in groups of people being reminded, usually in silent communication, where my place is socially here. (Silent being obvious silence, where they sit vs me, social life, etc) Yet what I'm about to talk about may lower me on the scale but I don't care. I have been told often by a few that I'm way too outspoken and bold and that I just need to learn to be quiet. Yet what I need to say here, needs said......
If we are going to preach pro-life, all lives matter, disabled lives matter and all of that, then what I'm going to say needs to be taken into account too. We can't just say "I'm pro-life because God says lives matter." We have to be more than that.
"Life is the right of every child. Not a special privilege for the fortunate, the planned and the perfect."Rebekah Peterson
Back to (2) I also want to share the following. Forgive me if I sound a little political but this part of the POTUS debate the other night really bothered me. Please read all of this. I talk about abortion, adoption and foster care. I went through many links to try to find the most neutral when it came to abortion. I wanted facts and only facts..... This will be hard to read but please..... I do give facts and information about adoption and also about foster care. If we are going to say we are pro-life or pro-choice, I want all of the facts out there. I have lost a baby through missed miscarriage before and had to have a D&C and especially since that, I have had a much harder time understanding how people can view things the way they do sometimes..... My world crashed March 19th, 2013 during my first ultrasound. Days after seeing P.O.D again for my daughter especially. Utter silence and stillness on the ultrasound..... My baby had died two weeks before. One of the things said to me that stuck out that day wasn't the "I'm so sorry" that so many said, (Thank you) but the "Maybe the Muenke was just too much for this one."
Yeah...... I did find out later what I believe the cause was and craniofacial had nothing to do with it. It was really an odd thing actually I had never heard of before. Even the craniofacial surgeon said Muenke would not have caused my baby's death.....
The silence in the room during my ultrasound even now hits me. Cori would have been days away from being three now. Boy? Girl? Two songs were stuck in my head for a while after this. Especially Hold Me Now by RED.
More of my story on that here. That's why I also was so heated, she was so flippant and almost proud of those that abort... I can never approve of abortion but what I share here goes sooooo much deeper than that..... And it makes me see why some do, though I can't agree......... It's all heartbreaking....
https://www.facebook.com/amandaleighroach/posts/1142246772530177
Here's a few facts about abortion I want to put out here. (source)
"Twenty-one percent of all U.S. pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. (AGI)." Miscarriages and stillbirth are NOT part of these statistics.
What types of abortion is there that clinics do?
(I honestly had tears reading some of this..... I also tried to stick with neutral sites, facts only.)
There are several types. There is surgical abortion where sometimes a D&C is done usually first trimester, D&E which is what many think of with partial birth is done in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters, late term abortion where sometimes a D&X is done in the 3rd trimester and there is a pill one that can be done early in pregnancy that basically causes a forced miscarriage. There is also a FB post that explains late term abortions. This guy shares about abortion as well. He's an OBGYN. I have the types highlighted with links that explain what and how those are done but I will not get that graphic in here.
(Sorry, had to take a break after reading all of that....)
WHY DO ABORTIONS OCCUR?
. On average, women give at least 3 reasons for choosing abortion: 3/4 say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities; about 3/4 say they cannot afford a child; and 1/2 say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner (AGI).
. Only 12% of women included a physical problem with their health among reasons for having an abortion (NAF).
. One per cent (of aborting women) reported that they were the survivors of rape (NAF)
. In 2009, the average cost of a nonhospital abortion with local anesthesia at 10 weeks of gestation was $451 (AGI).
. Abortions are very common. In fact, 3 out of 10 women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old. (source)
. It is estimated that that since 1989, 70 percent of Down syndrome fetuses have been aborted. (source)
. Over a third of women getting abortions are white. Over half are 20-somethings. Almost half make incomes under the federal poverty level. Most are already mothers. Cost matters to many of these women and while states can’t ban abortion outright, they can — and do — pass laws that make it more expensive.
Imagine how many other "disabled" babies have been......
I'm going to share a somewhat long post but really think on this one.
"Each year in America fewer and fewer disabled infants are born. The reason is eugenic abortion. Doctors and their patients use prenatal technology to screen unborn children for disabilities, then they use that information to abort a high percentage of them. Without much scrutiny or debate, a eugenics designed to weed out the disabled has become commonplace.
Not wishing to publicize a practice most doctors prefer to keep secret, the medical community releases only sketchy information on the frequency of eugenic abortion against the disabled. But to the extent that the numbers are known, they indicate that the vast majority of unborn children prenatally diagnosed as disabled are killed.
Medical researchers estimate that 80 percent or more of babies now prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. (They estimate that since 1989, 70 percent of Down syndrome fetuses have been aborted.) A high percentage of fetuses with cystic fibrosis are aborted, as evident in Kaiser Permanente's admission to The New York Times that 95 percent of its patients in Northern California choose abortion after they find out through prenatal screening that their fetus will have the disease.
The frequent use of eugenic abortion also can be measured in dwindling populations with certain disabilities. Since the '60s, the number of Americans with anencephaly and spina bifida has markedly declined. This dropping trend line corresponds to the rise of prenatal screening. Owing to prenatal technology and eugenic abortion, some rare conditions, such as the genetic disorder Tay-Sachs, are even vanishing in America, according to doctors.
"There really isn't any entity that is charged with monitoring what has been happening," says Andrew Imparato, head of the American Association of People with Disabilities. "A lot of people prefer that that data not be collected. But we're seeing just the tip of the iceberg. This is a new eugenics, and I don't know where it is going to end."
"I think of it as a commercial eugenics," says Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the International Center for Technology Assessment. "Whenever anybody thinks of eugenics, they think of Adolf Hitler. This is a commercial eugenics. But the result is the same, an intolerance for those who don't fit the norm. It is less open and more subtle. Try to get any numbers on reproductive issues. Try to get actual numbers on sex-selection abortions. They are always difficult to get."
Intellectual arguments in favor of eugenic abortion often generate great public outcry. Princeton professor Peter Singer drew fire for saying, "It does not seem quite wise to increase any further draining of limited resources by increasing the number of children with impairments." Bob Edwards, the embryologist who created the first test-tube baby through in vitro fertilization, has also drawn protests for predicting that "soon it will be a sin of parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children."
But these comments, far from being unthinkable, reflect unspoken mainstream attitudes and practice. Only through political gaffes (and occasional news stories) is eugenic abortion ever mentioned, such as the time in 2003 when a blundering Hillary Clinton objected to a ban on partial-birth abortion because it didn't contain an exemption for late-term abortions aimed at the disabled. Women should not be "forced" to carry a "child with severe abnormalities," she said.
In a Spectator interview, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania recalled his 2003 exchange with Clinton on the Senate floor in which she endorsed eugenic abortion. "It was pretty revealing. She was saying there had to be an exemption for disabled children being aborted as opposed to healthy children being aborted," he says. "When she realized what she was advocating for, she had to put in the general niceties. But I don't think you can read her comments and come to any other conclusion than that the children with disabilities should have less constitutional protection than children who are healthy."
He added that "the principal reason the Democrats defended the partial-birth abortion procedure was for pregnancies that have 'gone awry,' which is not about something bad happening to the life of the mother but about their finding out the child is not in the condition that they expected, that it was somehow less than wanted and what they had hoped for."
What Clinton blurted out is spoken more softly, though no less coldly, in the privacy of doctors' offices. Charles Strom, medical director of Quest Diagnostics, which specializes in prenatal screening, told The New York Times last year, "People are going to the doctor and saying, 'I don't want to have a handicapped child, what can you do for me?' " This attitude is shared by doctors who now view disabled infants and children as puzzling accidents that somehow slipped through the system.
University of Chicago professor Leon Kass, in his book "Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity," writes that "at my own university, a physician making rounds with medical students stood over the bed of an intelligent, otherwise normal 10-year-old boy with spina bifida. 'Were he to have been conceived today,' the physician casually informed his entourage, 'he would have been aborted.' "
The impulse behind prenatal screening in the '70s was eugenic. After the Roe v. Wade decision, which pumped energy into the eugenics movement, doctors scrambled to advance prenatal technology in response to consumer demand, mainly from parents who didn't want the burdens of raising children with Down syndrome. Now prenatal screening can identify hundreds of conditions. This has made it possible for doctors to abort children not only with chronic disabilities but common disabilities and minor ones. Among the aborted are children screened for deafness, blindness, dwarfism, cleft palates and defective limbs.
In some cases, the aborted children aren't disabled at all but are mere carriers of a disease or stand a chance of getting one later in life. Prenatal screening has made it possible to abort children on guesses and probabilities. The law and its indulgence of every conceivable form of litigation have also advanced the new eugenics against the disabled. Working under "liability alerts" from their companies, doctors feel pressure to provide extensive prenatal screening for every disability, lest parents or even disabled children hit them with "wrongful birth" and "wrongful life" suits.
In a wrongful-birth suit, parents can sue doctors for not informing them of their child's disability and seek compensation from them for all the costs, financial and otherwise, stemming from a life they would have aborted had they received that prenatal information. Wrongful-life suits are brought by children (through their parents) against doctors for all the "damages" they've suffered from being born. (Most states recognize wrongful-birth suits, but for many states, California and New Jersey among the exceptions, wrongful-life suits are still too ridiculous to entertain.)
In 2003, Ob-Gyn Savita Khosla of Hackensack, N.J., agreed to pay $1.2 million to a couple and child after she failed to flag Fragile X syndrome, a form of mental retardation caused by a defective gene on the X chromosome. The mother felt entitled to sue Khosla because she indicated on a questionnaire that her sibling was mentally retarded and autistic, and hence Khosla should have known to perform prenatal screening for Fragile X so that she could abort the boy. Khosla settled, giving $475,000 to the parents and $750,000 to the child they wished they had aborted.
Had the case gone to court, Khosla would have probably lost the suit. New Jersey has been notoriously welcoming to wrongful-birth suits ever since Roe, after which New Jersey's Supreme Court announced that it would not "immunize from liability those in the medical field providing inadequate guidance to persons who would choose to exercise their constitutional right to abort fetuses which, if born, would suffer from genetic defects."
According to the publication Medical Malpractice Law & Strategy, "court rulings across the country are showing that the increased use of genetic testing has substantially exposed physicians' liability for failure to counsel patients about hereditary disorders."
The publication revealed that many wrongful-birth cases "are settled confidentially." And it predicted that doctors who don't give their patients the information with which to consider the eugenic option against disabled children will face more lawsuits as prenatal screening becomes the norm. "The human genome has been completely mapped," it quotes Stephen Winnick, a lawyer who handled one of the first-wrongful birth cases. "It's almost inevitable that there will be an increase in these cases."
The combination of doctors seeking to avoid lawsuits and parents seeking burden-free children means that once prenatal screening identifies a problem in a child, the temptation to eugenic abortion becomes unstoppable. In an atmosphere of expected eugenics, even queasy, vaguely pro-life parents gravitate toward aborting a disabled child.
These parents get pressure from doctors who, without even bothering to ask, automatically provide abortion options to them once the prenatal screening has diagnosed a disability, and they feel pressure from society at large, which having accepted eugenic abortion, looks askance at parents with disabled children.
The right to abort a disabled child, in other words, is approaching the status of a duty to abort a disabled child. Parents who abort their disabled children won't be asked to justify their decision. Rather, it is the parents with disabled children who must justify themselves to a society that tacitly asks: Why did you bring into the world a child you knew was disabled or might become disabled?
Andrew Kimbrell points out that many parents are given the complicated information prenatal screening yields with little to no guidance from doctors. "We're leaving parents with complete confusion. Numerous parents are told by doctors, 'We think there is some fault on the 50th chromosome of your child.' A number of polls have shown that people don't understand those odds."
"There is enormous confusion out there and nobody is out there to help them," he says. The new eugenics isn't slowing down but speeding up. Not content to wait to see if a child is fit for life, doctors are exploring the more proactive eugenics of germline genetic engineering (which tries to create desirable traits in an embryo) and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, which is used to select the most desirable embryos after extensive genetic testing has been done before they are implanted in mothers' wombs.
"The next stage is to actually start tinkering genetically with these embryos to create advantages such as height," says Kimbrell. PGD is a "gateway technology" that will advance the new eugenics to the point "where children are literally selected and eventually designed according to a parent's desires and fears," he says. (Meanwhile, doctors are simultaneously reporting that children born through in vitro fertilization are experiencing higher rates of birth defects than the average population, suggesting that for every problem scientists try to solve through dubious means, they create multiple new ones.)
Many countries have banned PGD. But American fertility clinics are offering it. Two-thirds of fertility clinics using PGD in the world are in the United States, says Kimbrell. "Reproductive technology is an unregulated Wild West scenario where people can do pretty much anything they want and how they want it," he says.
Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, coined the term eugenics in the 1880s. Sparking off his cousin's theory of evolution, he proposed improving the human race through eugenics, arguing that "what nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly and kindly." As eugenics passes through each of its stages, man is indeed playing God but without any of his providence or care.
Andrew Imparato of AAPD wonders how progressives got to this point. The new eugenics aimed at the disabled unborn tell the disabled who are alive that "disability is a fate worse than death," he says.
"What kind of message does this send to people living with spina bifida and other disabilities? It is not a progressive value to think that a disabled person is better off dead.""
Now you may disagree with me and that's fine..... Yet if we don't value life, then how are we to teach others to value the lives that are here, despite social status, appearances, gender, etc. On the flip side though to this, there are so many kids who are alive who feel unwanted, unloved, different...... Look at the numbers of those in foster care... This talks about that. I used to work in juvenile corrections and also used to work at a children's emergency shelter. It's heartbreaking what you see and hear. I can't divulge but I'll just say between the childhood I had and these stories I have seen and heard over the years, this country has more than just a pro-life/pro-choice crisis.
Let's keep going: Let's talk about options beyond abortion and even keeping the child that was born, healthy or not.
So how much does adoption of one child cost? source
"Costs for an adoption vary widely from $0 to $50,000 depending on the type of adoption pursued. It generally costs from $0 to $1,000 to adopt a child from a County Foster/Adopt program. These children are often older, but sometimes infants are placed.
A voluntary adoption of a newborn through a non-profit agency will generally cost between $25,000 and $40,000. Attorney adoptions of newborns generally run from $35,000 to $50,000.
How long does it take to adopt?
To adopt an infant domestically in the United States it takes about 12 months with most placements happening between six and 18 months. This is the time between "going on the books" when your home study is completed to the time when a placement is made.
The wait time can be affected by many factors, one of the largest being how open the adoptive family's profile is. For example, a family only prepared to adopt a child of one ethnic background could potentially wait much longer than a family open to a child of any background.
And finally, these are all averages, and there is no way to predict how long it will take for any particular family to find the birthparents they were meant to match with."
Now, that's for the adoption costs themselves. Almost everything that is needed to do the adoption (cribs, food, strollers, carseats, etc.) falls on the family to buy. That can costs hundreds to thousands depending on the needs of the children and how many.
I think that's part of our issue here. An abortion costs 500 and often there are people who don't pay for them. But look at these costs for adoption. Here talks about why.
"The cost of private infant adoptions varies widely from a low of about $15,000 to as much as $50,000. Non-profit adoption agencies like the Independent Adoption Center (IAC) tend to be on the lower end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, it is still extremely expensive to adopt.
Many people ask why it costs so much to adopt. Why should you have to pay to help provide a home for a child? First, there are no government funds for a baby voluntarily placed for adoption, as there are for children removed due to abuse and neglect. However, the state does regulate agencies setting standards and oversight requirements for adoptions, which the IAC supports.
Therefore, both to comply with state regulations and to ensure best practices there are many costs associated with adoptions. An agency must pay highly educated social workers (at least Masters level) to write home studies, as well as provide counseling, termination of birthparent rights and post-placement supervision.
Agencies, like the IAC, also provide families with educational materials and resources. In addition, most agencies do outreach to potential birthparents. This requires marketing staff to develop materials, maintain websites, and buy advertising, which is also an additional expense. Furthermore, administrative staff are required to answer the phone, provide accounting services, comply with non-profit laws, ensure families are notified how many times their birthparent letter is mailed or saved online. There are also the costs any business has, such as rent, phones, Internet, and insurance.
As non-profit organizations, many agencies, including the IAC, receive both private donations and grants, but these are usually for special projects to enhance our services and do not cover the basic costs of an adoption. As a result, most of the costs to do an adoption are borne by the adoptive parents. IAC tries to help by providing a sliding scale fee structure, but even with this accommodation it is often a stretch for families to find the funds to adopt.
This is where financial aid, like adoption grants, can come into play and help more families fulfill their dream of adopting a baby."
Let's talk about the homestudy for one second. The cost for that alone based on this one site is $2,600, that the family has to pay. It takes a few months on average to complete. I'm sure costs and times vary but there is a lot to be done.
I know a few families who have adopted, fostered to adopt. Their biggest complaint is time and money. The third was the requirements. Here is one page that really goes into details. The basic requirements include: doing a homestudy (this includes interviews, background / fingerprinting checks, home inspection and review of your financial status) and going through a series of educational classes. The home inspection will check to see that your home is clean and safe. Each child (Foster/adopted/birth) is required to have so much space per person. This also determines how many children your home can be licensed for. When they do a background check they are making sure you have not been charged with or convicted of a felony. This would also include any other person 18 yrs or older who would reside with you. Therefore if you date someone and they spend most of their time at your home or live with you they too have to undergo the screening. As for your financial, they want to make sure you can meet the basic living needs and have life insurance for yourself. The educational classes will help you better understand how fostering works and what you need to do as a foster parent. It is solely up to you once you are licensed who you take for in a placement. Beware though if you are only interested in infants or toddlers you are more apt to get a lot of requests for emergency placements.
So there you have that..... I just don't understand how it is that an abortion is so easy to get and costs as little as it does yet adoption costs so much.... As to the cost of abortion, look at this.
"Low-cost clinics, including some branches of Planned Parenthood, charge patients on an income-based sliding-scale fee.
There are also funding organizations that subsidize or cover the cost of abortions for women who can’t afford to pay."
(source) For some women, they can get an abortion at no cost. Yet adoption is so expensive....
What's wrong with this picture????
What's even more sad is how many kids are in foster care.... Here are some statistics on that.
"The latest statistics from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) data for FY 2014 (link is external).
415,129 children were in foster care on September 30th, 2014, a 4% increase from 2012
264,746 children entered care - that translates to a child entering care every two minutes in the United States
238,230 children existed foster care
107,918 children waiting to be adopted on September 30th, 2014
60,898 children waiting to be adopted whose parental rights (for all living parents) were terminated
50,644 children adopted with public child welfare agency involvement"
Half a million children, 17 and younger.
Now, what happens to these kids? Look at this These are just for violence against children cases, they don't touch the many other kids that are in foster care for other reasons, often of it being drug related with the parent(s) addicted to and or selling drugs.
"It doesn't make sense not to extend care," says Amy Dworsky, Ph.D., at Chapin Hall, a research and policy center at the University of Chicago. "When biological children turn 18, we don't expect them to be totally self-sufficient. Why would young people who've been traumatized be able to make it on their own?" For information on how to help, go to YVLifeSet.
Why 1 in 3 Foster Kids Will Be Homeless
Every year, about 22,000 foster kids age out of the system and are on their own. In 2008, federal legislation was passed to allow states to claim reimbursement for foster youth until age 21, but less than half do it. Without extended care, one-third of former foster kids will become homeless by age 26; only half have a job at age 24; 71% of girls will be pregnant by 21; and many end up in jail. (source)
"But I can't afford to adopt!" Well I can't because of the space we have, money and how often we travel. Yet I can share about it, I can encourage others. I can share posts like this where even though I'm sure I opened a can of worms, if you really read this, you have thought much already about it. One thing we can do though also is to call our congressmen and women. We elected them, they are supposed to work for US. Supposed to.... Go out and volunteer at a shelter, or something. Call your local DHS office and ask what you can do. Look into BACA (Bikers Against Child Abuse) Stand up and do something!
How You Can Make a Difference
Not everyone can become a foster or adoptive parent, but there are many ways we all can help. If you have...
One minute: Fund a foster child's wish (a new doll, for instance) at One Simple Wish.
One hour: Put together a "first-night kit" for a foster kid: a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a stuffed animal, a small flashlight and a book, suggests Reverend Amy Bezecny, a Hope and Healing Institute Fellow in Adoptive and Foster Care Parenting in Houston. Call a local foster care agency first to see what it will accept; find one at National Foster Care & Adoption Directory or the National Foster Parent Association.
One day a week: Tutor or mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters, Foster Care to Success or National Mentoring Partnership.
A weekend: Hold a fundraiser or collect school supplies, toys and suitcases to donate to local foster care centers.
Flexible time for a year or more: Become a volunteer for CASA — Court Appointed Special Advocates. After training, you're appointed by a judge to watch out for a child as he makes his way through the court system — you may visit his foster home or talk to teachers to see how the child is faring. "A child who is taken away is thrown into a system that's unfamiliar and scary," says Tara Perry, National CASA CEO. "The CASA volunteer works with the child until there is placement in a new family or reunion with the birth family." Time required: about 10 hours a month.
A lifetime: Foster or adopt. It takes four to 12 months to become licensed, including undergoing a home evaluation and attending training. If you're considering it, contact a local adoption or foster care agency and ask if you can talk to other parents about what it's really like. Also, check out the North American Council on Adoptable Children or AdoptUSKids. By registering on the latter site, you can search a national photo listing of over 5,000 children in foster care who are adoptable.
The saddest stories are not those children who grew up and survived hell, it isn't their stories. The saddest stories are those children who survived that only to have everyone else fail them too. Those are the children who learn that nobody is there for them.
Now, I know I'm going to really stick my neck out here but think on this: Our country wants to allow in thousands of Syrian refugees. Our country promises to take care of them and get them everything they need. WHAT ABOUT OUR OWN?????
Why does so little get done about our own? Our children, our homeless, our VETERANS? Our mentally ill, the "rejects" as we always heard "them" called growing up Why? Does all of that go back to (1) "position in society — a pecking order, if you will. Money is certainly a component of that, because that’s what we most often use to keep score. For most of us, it’s a key ingredient to success, but it’s not just about money. It’s about prestige and clout. It’s about respect and recognition. It’s about having the right seat at the table, the right space in the parking lot, the right title on the business card, and the right clothes in the closet. It’s about getting the watch, the trophy, the promotion, or the award."
― from "Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart" is that what it all goes back to? We value some lives because they fit into the mold we want them to and those that don't fit in that mold are then worthless?
So, do we really value life? Are we all really pro-life or we just anti-abortion and forget about the rest? Are we really all about #ChooseKind #AllLivesMatter and all of that or are we only when it fits our agenda?
"We want a world freer, happier, cleaner—we want a race of thoroughbreds. We want to make America the leading nation of the world physically, mentally, and spiritually." Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (source)
"What Sanger failed to recognize was her own limited perspective, short-sightedness, biases, and lack of understanding. She believed the human race would be better if only we could eliminate the genetic variants that make us vulnerable to weakness. How would we do this?
By eliminating the weak." (source)
"Humanity is part of a delicate ecosystem. No human is intellectually or morally qualified to determine who gets to live and who doesn't. Like Sanger, we will always be limited by our own perspective and understanding." ~ Jennifer Cortez ~
Until we really value life in all stages, from conception and beyond, we can't say we are pro-life..... Until we acknowledge that we have people in our country in need and not getting, how can we promise those who are not citizens here those rights? Until we acknowledge that those with disabilities, no matter how severe are seen as sub-par to the rest of the population AND do something proactive beyond killing bullying, abusing and neglecting, we are not really ALL pro-life.... Until we acknowledge the foster care crisis this country is in and ALL of the reasons for it, we can't keep claiming we are pro-life.... Until we stop looking at the "ugly" or the "dirty" or the homeless like they are worthless trash, we can't keep claiming we are pro-life. Until we deal with bullying in schools AND quit punishing the victims, we are not really pro-life. Until we get to the point where no matter what race, gender, orientation, "social status" or anything else someone else is, that their life matters too, we are not really pro-life.... When we look down on others because to you they "sin worse so therefore they are worse than you" that makes you think you are God and you are not. God says that He created EVERYONE and that EVERYONE sins and that He sees ALL sin in the same light. WE are the ones that categorize it in severity.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be discipline or consequences for things. If we didn't do that, we would be in anarchy..... However, HOW are you treating others? HOW are you projecting YOUR attitude and biases toward others?
So in reality, does #AllLivesMatter REALLY matter to you?
Hard words.... Ones I have had to swallow too....
Now those of you that are pro-choice and rejoicing that I didn't jump on you any, not so fast. I hope that you have learned something in this post. I hope that before you tell people that you approve of abortions, you remember what was said here. Also, what are you doing to better the world we live in? If you are for abortion simply for the reasons in here, I pray for your heart and mind that you will see things from all angles. I pray that you are doing something about those I talked about here. Don't preach about equal rights when you are not giving others equal rights as well. Contrary to what Clinton says, babies do feel pain in the womb and beyond.
"As early as eight to ten weeks after conception, and definitely by thirteen-and-a-half weeks, the unborn experiences organic pain…. First, the unborn child's mouth, at eight weeks, then her hands at ten weeks, then her face, arms, and legs at eleven weeks become sensitive to touch. By thirteen-and-a-half weeks, she responds to pain at all levels of her nervous system in an integrated response which cannot be termed a mere reflex. She can now experience pain."
Surgeon Robert P. N. Shearin
So what are we going to do? Where will your footprint be left?
Go do something to impact the world in a POSITIVE way.
Blessings!
~ Special Momma ~
