LifeMinded: Think Life

What are you doing on January 22nd? (hint: the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton)

lynne — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:12:23 +0000

March for Life in Washington DC

I just wanted to encourage everyone who supports the sanctity of life to get involved in some way on this saddest of days. There are many opportunities: marches, rallies, prayer vigils, etc. It’s important that every life minded person show their solidarity for this cause on a day when we basically have the microphone (the issue gets national and local attention). If you live in Michigan, RTL of Michigan has a list of state-wide events sorted by city or affiliate: https://secure.rtl.org/apps/affiliate_events/listing, and I’m sure every other state has them listed as well.

Any way, let’s all of us get up and get out and speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed – and this includes the mothers and fathers.

If you get a second, tell me what you’re doing on January 22nd.

Want to learn how to defend your pro-life views? Join us at lifeminded.org.

Do you know Roe?

lynne — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:25:48 +0000

Apparently, many Americans do not know what Roe v Wade actually did. I just read an article posted on the Right to Life of Michigan Blog discussing the results of a July 2011 National Gallup Poll showing:

87 percent of respondents favored laws requiring doctors to tell women about the possible risks of abortion
71 percent favored parental consent laws
69 percent favored a 24‑hour waiting period before an abortion
64 percent favored a ban on partial birth abortion
50 percent favored a law requiring women seeking abortions to be shown an image of their ultrasound
71 percent thought abortion should be illegal in the second three months of pregnancy
90 percent favored making abortion illegal in the third trimester

Yet a 2010 CBS News poll found that 58 percent of Americans thought Roe v. Wade was a good decision. So how can so many Americans favor a policies which can’t happen because of a ruling 58 percent of Americans think was good? The answer is Americans don’t know Roe. A great follow-up to the question of whether they thought Roe was a good ruling would have been: “What did Roe v. Wade do, exactly?” A high number of responses would start with “Ummm…” and end with “I don’t know.”

Do you know Roe, or any of the other legislation on this important topic? Are you informed and have you actually educated yourself? Can you defend your position on the facts? On the science? On the evidence? Lives are at stake. What are you waiting for? Join me at lifeminded.org and learn how to articulate the pro-life position in a knowledgeable, respectful and persuasive way.

Keep the conversation going

lynne — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:30:14 +0000

Speak out against abortion

No one really wants to think about abortion, much less talk about it. And because so few are talking about, it’s that much easier to forget. As someone who hates to be confrontational and is a peace maker by nature, I totally get it. It’s hard to bring up an unpleasant and controversial topic.

But we must keep the conversation going if we ever hope to influence hearts and minds. I don’t mean be obnoxious about it, but rather be deliberate and be creative and of course, always be gentle and respectful. But equally important, be knowledgeable. Learn how to articulate the pro-life position at lifeminded.org and sign up for a free course that will train you in the art of pro-life persuasion.

The Problem

lynne — Sat, 07 May 2011 01:01:36 +0000

The Problem we face is that the word abortion has lost almost all of its meaning for most Americans, but there is a way to restore it.
There are three reasons the word abortion has lost its meaning in our culture:

First, because we think and learn visually with pictures and images. Pictures influence us by stirring our emotions and of course this profoundly affects how we resolve moral issues. And this by the way is one of the reasons that graphic images have been a standard means of moral education. You want to educate someone in a powerful way and quickly – a picture is worth a thousand words.

The second reason the word abortion has lost all meaning to most Americans is because people are moved by stories more than facts. You can just look to your own experience to realize this is true. Someone can cite facts all day long and our eyes glaze over, but insert an anecdote or support your facts with an illustration and the whole thing comes to life.

There’s a third reason why the word abortion has lost its meaning. First because we think and learn visually, second because people prefer stories over facts, and third because we live in a culture that wants our difficult problems to just go away.

Actually, the root idea behind most abortion advocacy is narcissism. Abortion is a symptom of a much deeper problem: we don’t want to assume personal responsibility to solve our own problems. We think we have the right not to be inconvenienced. We think we have the right to demand that difficult problems just go away. And this is the mentality that drives the abortion industry and it is very effective.

Want to learn how to defend your pro-life views? Attend one of our workshops. Join us at lifeminded.org and we’ll let you know when the next workshop is scheduled.

An Overview of Abortion in Five Minutes

lynne — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:28:15 +0000

I recently discovered a new video produced by abort73.org, which is an excellent pro-life website geared toward high school and college students. I think this video is going to be a really useful tool for pro-lifer’s like us because it is a more balanced approach to abortion graphics than some of its predecessors (i.e. “Harder Truth”, etc.). It contains some of the beautiful images of fetal development, many hard hitting facts and abortion statistics, and only a handful of the harder to look at (but absolutely necessary) images of aborted babies. Abort73.org allows anyone to download and redistribute the video, so I’d like to share it with you now. I’d also love to get your feedback.

What is the unborn? A blob of tissue or a human being?

lynne — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:04:05 +0000

When you get right down to it, “what is the unborn?” is the only question that really matters in the debate over abortion. If what is being aborted is nothing more than a blob of tissue, then abortion is the moral equivalent of pulling a tooth and no justification is necessary. But, if the unborn is a living, developing human being (the smallest, most helpless and most innocent among us), then abortion cannot be justified for any reason – not poverty, not privacy, not hardship, not even rape. As emotionally difficult and scary as these situations can be for a woman, they are still not just reasons for killing her unborn child.

But the hardships, emotional and otherwise, these women are experiencing are real. And the younger they are, the more terrified. That is why we, you and me, need to do everything in our power to support them- to be there for them in a tangible way. They need to be embraced by their communities – not shunned. They need to be told the truth about all of their choices – not just the so-called easy way out (which is not easy at all). How can you help these young women? Get involved! There are many opportunities, including supporting and volunteering at your local Pregnancy Resource Center. If you live in Midland as I do, that would be the Mid-Michigan Pregnancy Resource Center.

These non-profit volunteer organizations provide material, emotional, educational and spiritual support to any woman facing an unplanned pregnancy.

Ending Abortion Webcast: Great Training Tool

lynne — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 23:21:48 +0000

I am so glad I went through my unread email from this past week! That’s when I learned of the 8 hour web cast going on today by over 30 of the most well know pro-life leaders and organizations. Every aspect of the pro-life movement is covered including topics such as “The Case for Life”, “The Abortion Crisis”, “Planned Parenthood’s Abortion Empire”, “Pro-life Youth Advocacy”, “Influencing the Culture” and more.

The entire web has been recorded and is available to you (free) to download or listen on line by going to http://endingabortion.com/

“If you don’t save the mother you aren’t going to save the baby!

lynne — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:04:58 +0000

The phone rang at the Frontline EMC Pregnancy Center in Brooklyn, NY, this week, and the director assumed it was another call from a woman needing crisis pregnancy counseling. This phone call stopped the clinic director in her tracks. It was a credit card company who was excited about the new health law.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Linda Marzulla, director of the EMC Pregnancy Center in Brooklyn, stated. “He said they were now doing credit cards for girls who wanted to get an abortion and could put the cost of the abortion on the credit card. He was excited because he said ‘This was something new we’re offering’.”

The credit card representative thought he had called an abortion clinic. Marzulla’s Pregnancy Help Center sits on the top floor of an office building that also houses two abortion clinics on Court Street in Brooklyn. They had called the wrong place by mistake.

The marketing tactic is to have abortion clinics offer credit cards to women who can’t afford to pay cash for their abortions. “They are going to have a low interest rate credit card to give to the girls who have an abortion and have them pay as they go. It’s like the credit cards they give college students. Unbelievable!” Marzulla noted.

Marzulla asked if this had something to do with the new health care law. He told her yes, they have to move forward to give women what they need.

The 11-year veteran of counseling women and men then tried to talk the credit card employee into leaving his job. Marzulla thought he sounded like a nice man, but he should quit this job. “I told him, ‘Don’t you realize you are fostering abortion? Why are you doing this?’ You know what he answered me? He said, ‘They have a choice’.”

Marzulla didn’t waste a second to inform the credit card man what that choice was all about.
“They have a choice? A choice between life and death is what we’re talking about. You are making it easier for women to choose death for their babies!” Marzulla told the man on the phone.
What the pro-life counselor couldn’t believe was how fast this was happening with the abortion health bill just being signed into law.

“This just happened and you’re jumping on the band wagon to make more money off these poor women!” Marzulla told the man.

Talk about a wrong number! When the call with the credit card rep ended, Marzulla called Vitae Foundation to give her accounting of the incident. Vitae has partnered with Frontline EMC Pregnancy Centers by placing ads in subways and busses in the Burroughs of New York City. The ad campaigns have been tremendous, saving over a thousand babies last year.

“When the Vitae ads were on the subways and busses, it really helped. Having that advertising, you have no idea! These kids were coming in droves, there was such turnout,” Marzulla explained. “If you don’t save the mother you aren’t going to save the baby! Forget it!”

Marzulla told Vitae how we as pro-lifers need to mobilize now and be in the media. “We just have to mobilize because all these credit card companies are going to be sprouting up like a grassroots thing because he thought I was Planned Parenthood, that’s why he called me. We’re in the same building and a lot of times the numbers get crossed,” the pro-life counselor explained.

The girls are looking and longing for help, according to Marzulla. “I’ve never really met a girl who wanted an abortion. They’re just backed up against the wall. The kids today know what they are up against so the abortion clinic people tell them, ‘The economy is bad…you aren’t going to be able to afford it…the baby is going to ruin your life.’”

Men shouldn’t have a say about abortion…What?

lynne — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:02:03 +0000

“Men shouldn’t have anything to say about abortion – it’s a woman’s issue.” This ad hominem attack ignores the issue of abortion and attacks the gender of the pro-lifer. This attack is hardly relevant, since arguments and ideas don’t have sexual organs. Gender has nothing to do with the validity of an argument. This reply, usually heard from the most militant and out of touch baby boomer feminists, is sexist, pure and simple. If this statement were valid, then should women be silent when men molest children? Interestingly, the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand in 1973 was decided by male judges…”who shouldn’t have a say because they don’t have to carry the baby.” It’s also interesting that most abortion providers are men. The argument that men don’t have the right to hold or speak their opinion on abortion, has no substance. (Excerpted from “Making Abortion Unthinkable: the Art of Pro-Life Persuasion”)

Want to learn how to defend your pro-life views and answer pro-choice rhetoric? Join me at LifeMinded and learn from the best materials available: “Making Abortion Unthinkable: the Art of Pro-Life Persuasion” by Greg Koukl and Scott Klusendorf

It is only a potential life

lynne — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:35:22 +0000

Pro-abortionists commonly dehumanize the unborn in order to justify abortion by referring to the unborn as a “potential life.” But calling an unborn child a “potential life” is just a clever rhetorical trick. There is no such thing as a “potential life.”

There are two options. First, we can potentially create life, that is, create a potential for life. When a man and a woman get married and have sex, there’s potential in their conduct for life to be created. Second, we can create a life with potential, one that has the possibility of developing into something good or noble. But that’s the end of our options. We either potentially create a life or we create a life with potential. We never create a “potential life.”

This line of thinking is the same as saying, “I just had a potential thought.” What could that possibly mean? You either had a thought or you didn’t. You could have the potential for a thought, or you could have a thought with potential. But you never have a “potential” thought. In the same way, pregnancy doesn’t create a potential life. If it did, then the problem of that potential life could be solved simply by having a potential abortion. Since a real abortion, not a potential one, is needed to end pregnancy, a real life must be involved, not a potential one. (Excerpted from “Making Abortion Unthinkable: the Art of Pro-Life Persuasion”)