Monday, July 27, 2015

Sadness of Loss

The news has been filled with the Planned Parenthood Undercover Video sting.  The left is outraged and scrambling to explain why this organization, founded on a hatred of women different from the White Intellectual Elite, should continue to receive about 15.00 of my money in tax support every year.

I have, I think, a unique perspective because I was a willing participant in the murder of four of my children through legal abortion.  I was assured that my choice was my right and that I was only getting rid of a blob of tissue.  I knew it was wrong at the time, but I was frightened.  I was young, I was sexually active for all the wrong reasons, I was increasing my use of alcohol and drugs to numb the pain I felt from being me.  No one, including the family member who helped me, ever sat me down and said, "What the hell is going on here, Girl?  Why are you doing this to yourself?"  No one at Planned Parenthood ever looked over my chart and wondered why the Girl with the Tear Streaked Face kept showing up, shaking, sometimes with bruises, in the same 'predicament' time after time. 

For me, it took losing everything and having to flee Los Angeles to get out of the hell I had so willingly walked into - all in the name of freedom.  However, it was many years before I could face what I had done; to myself, to my family and to my children.  Losing a child to miscarriage years later was the straw that broke this camel's back.  I reacted to that loss by plunging deeply into the alcohol and drug scene, bloating up to 300 pounds so no man would ever want me, and then not really trying to kill myself but, instead, wanting to just wake up dead.

Listening to the pundits on both sides of the aisle this past week has stirred up a lot of old emotions for me.  Nothing horrible.  No bad dreams.  No crying jags.  No reaching for the bottle after 23 years of successfully battling my demons (one day at a time).  Nothing quite that dramatic, I'm afraid.  Rather, the emotions that have stirred have caused me to reflect deeply on how grateful I am today for the life I have right this minute.  I am grateful for the journeys of healing and recovery of which I have played a major role and I am even grateful for those who have chosen to walk away from me for being "too Catholic".  I am grateful for the occasional bouts of loneliness and I am grateful for the vast freedom that is mine, unfettered as I am by husband or children.   I am grateful that the pain I feel is pain that is real and that I can accept unflinchingly my responsibility in my past life and blame no one for the choices I made.  I was, and remain, an adult.  I had been raised right.  I had been given a loving a merciful God and I had been given the pathway to Him through the Sacraments.  I was the one that walked away because I was attracted by the glitter of potential fame and possible fortune.  I was the one that let that man into my life and chose sexual pleasure over faithfulness to God.

Because I take full responsibility for my life I do not blame anyone or anything - including Planned Parenthood - for not protecting me from myself.  However, I think it is funny that I live in a country that is up in arms about no kill shelters for animals and would never, NEVER stand for the dismembering a kittens in order to sell them for testing or research somewhere but actually DEBATES whether it is okay to do this for humans.

Now look....I love my animals.  I absolutely love my newest dog, Shaw's Rob Roy MacDuff (Robbie) who, by the way, is a Rescue Scottie from a No Kill Shelter.  I accidentally stepped on Robbie's paw last night and I don't know who felt worse, the dog or me.  I understand the value of animals and I always point to St John Bosco as having his Guardian Angel manifest as the Grey Dog. 

What I am acutely aware of is this:  we have, as a society, lost any idea of the value of human life.  We have already put ourselves on the same level as animals.  We are no longer Creatures made in the Image and the Likeness of The Creator.  Because we are not that important anymore to each other, we cannot see the irony of having more laws in place to protect the eggs of a California Condor than a woman living in California.

What Planned Parenthood has done is a natural extension of how society has come to view itself - we don't really matter.  Black lives, Brown lives, Female lives, White lives, Children's lives - all in all none of us really matter and so who cares if a doctor carefully crushes the skull of an infant inside the womb and then sells the liver for profit?

Why I love being a Christian is I have been given a reason to exist.  Why I love being a Catholic is I have been given the fullest way possible to worship God as a Christian.  Because of that alone, I now know that I do matter and so it makes me sad and stirs up old feelings of grief when it becomes clear to me how little society as a whole cares about itself.

Today, let's think deeply about why we are outraged when a dog or cat is abused and why those photos and videos that show these animals being restored to health give us such a wonderful feeling.  Let's ask ourselves why we are not outraged over the words uttered by that doctor about dismembering children for profit and let's examine if becoming outraged over that would REALLY be a betrayal of our Right to Choose. 

After all, do we really have the right to choose this kind of horror?

1 comment:

Rod Coffey said...

Very beautiful witness Leslie