There is an interesting article on World Press Review about how a number of countries are struggling to deal with an aging population and a decreasing birth rate. Their struggle lies in the fact that they can see that as the population ages there will be fewer people in the work force to contribute to the pensions that support the aging. A large part of the problem is that many woman are starting to opt not to marry early and are opting to have fewer children when they do marry. It has only been recently with the advent of birth control and wide spread availability and acceptance of abortion that the desire to not have children has been feasible. Until recently if a woman wanted to marry or have sex she knew that motherhood was almost inevitable.
It doesn't surprise me that the western world is starting to have trouble with this shift in priorities. Of course when woman are faced with whether or not to raise a large family many will choose not to. Motherhood is difficult and independence, money, and success are appealing. I think that God designed woman to be mothers and to stay home and raise them rather then shipping them off to daycare. I recognized that some woman are forced to send their kids to daycare and in that case I don't think that it is wrong but I think that it's less then ideal.
If the countries mentioned in the article were really interested in solving their problems they would quit killing their children before they were born. One statistic that that I saw for the US in 1996 was that one in five pregnancies ends in abortion. In 2001 in Canada approximately one in four pregnancies ended in abortion. As you can see without abortion the birth rate would be significantly higher. As much as making abortion illegal isn't the easiest solution to the problem it is certainly the best solution.
On a final note, please realize that the only reason that I think that abortion should be illegal is because it kills a human being. I'm not anti-abortion because it cause societal problems; I'm not anti-abortion because it increases a woman's chance of breast cancer; I'm not anti-abortion because it screws woman up; I'm anti-abortion because I'm anti-murder.
Yesterday my husband and I were a part of the University of British Columbia's pro-life club's biannual large scale abortion protest. I left the kids with a babysitter, put on my long underwear and joined about 15 other people for four hours of peaceful protesting. What we do in the protest is set up 5 large signs that graphically compare abortion to past genocides in history. Our material all comes from the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform. You can see their US sister site here. The point that we are trying to make is that abortion takes a human life and our society is currently participating in the largest genocide in known history. We set up the display and then the volunteers distribute pamphlets that more clearly lay out our argument and answer and questions that people might have. I had a lot of good discussions and I probably handed out over 100 pamphlets.
As much as I enjoy protesting abortion (although I'd love to never have to do it again) I also found the experience very frustrating. During our protest we had to deal with a group of counter protesters. They wrote slanderous things about us on the area around the display and did all that they could to block our display with banners. Their goal is to have us banned from the campus completely or to marginalize us to the point that we have no voice. They attempt to silence us by encouraging the university to put restrictions on our club. It is very frustrating to deal with this because I know that the restrictions are unjust. If our club was more powerful and more organized we could have the restrictions overturned. The unfortunate fact is that not very many people are willing to help us. 15 young students don't have a very big voice. It's particularly frustrating because I know that this is the biggest, most important protest in Vancouver and it only occurs twice a year. I itch to have my voice heard, for people to know that babies are dying. I'd love to see the club stand up for it's rights rather then allowing itself to be bullied and repressed.
So where are the rest of you? I'm also a part of a weekly smaller protest. That group only has a pool of about 20 volunteers. Why in a city of 2 million people can we only find a group of 20 people who are willing to take this message to the streets? We're not wing nuts; we're simply try to educate the public about what abortion really is. If you call yourself pro-life I challenge you to evaluate whether you are doing enough to change the situation at hand.
1) Go to www.Google.com.
2) Type in (but don't hit enter) "weapons of mass destruction"
3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky button", instead of the normal Google search button. 4) READ CAREFULLY - what appears to be a normal ERROR message is not.
It's funny. Trust me.
Our church is trying to compile a document of what we envision the ideal church to be. We're doing this so that we don't get trapped into simply avoiding things that we dislike in the traditional church without moving on to bigger and better things that God might have for us. I've found that this task is harder then I thought that it would be at first. I've had a fuzzy idea of some things that I wanted to see emphasized and pitfalls that I wanted to avoid but I'm finding it difficult to picture what I think God wants in the ideal church.
Some of the difficulty in this task is that I'm forced to work within human limitations. What I'd really like is to be in heaven where there won't be any more sin, interpersonal conflict or short-sightedness. Unfortunately (and fortunately) I'm still on this side of heaven. I'm trying to think through ways in which God's laws and expectations for us can be practically obeyed without blind legalism or simply skirting around the command.
What are your visions of the perfect church? The document that our church has compiled thus far can be viewed here. Please note that it is a very rough work in progress.
I found an interesting news story on BBC about Belgium. Their supreme court just put to death a political party that was gaining power on the basis that it was racist. I think that this is an interesting example of how our culture's strict adherence to being politically correct has the power to erode democracy. From the sounds of the article the courts probably had some legitimate concerns but I think that it is crazy that courts of unelected judges have the ability to strangle democracy. Even if the party was neo-Nazi I don't think that any court should be able to prevent the populace from voting into power those that they want in power. If they have this power and exercise it how can they reasonably claim to be a democracy.
I see that this could happen in Canada or US easily as well. I think that the underlying problem has to do with the government being able to decide what values for our countries are unalterable. If I want to stand in opposition to an agreed upon value it can be criminal. For most people the laws that protect their values are seen favorably. If I am a Neo-Nazi you're probably comfortable with any expression of that being illegal. The problem is that people are comfortable until it's a value that they want to stand in opposition to. Speaking against homosexuality in Canada can now have charged with hate crimes. Maybe next it will be abortion. The laws could easily be changed so that it was considered a fundamental right for a woman to choose to be able to have an abortion just as homosexuality became protected. What would be next? It could be anything that you are opposed to. I don't think that there is anything within our laws to prevent the governments from degrading into a fascist state.
My proposal is that we all work to protect the freedom of speech, even the freedom to say things that we disagree with or consider downright evil. In a true democracy everyone should have the right to attempt to shift public opinion in whatever direction they want. While I don't think that this could actually be a workable model I think that is better to aim that way then to continue going down the path that we are currently on. I think that our current course is headed towards a more oppressive law that will be created in the name of political correctness.
I just read an article put out by the human rights watch about how activists that are using the internet through blogs and other venues to get their message out are being arrested in Iran. As much as I complain about how awful our society is I'm very thankful that for the most part we still have the freedom to express our disgust.
For those of you that don't know, I've got two toddlers that I'm staying home to raise. Eventually I'm planning on homeschooling my kids. I've recently started thinking about being more intentional about teaching them some academic things like shapes and colours. I was discussing this with my husband and he made a very good point. He pointed out most of the focus in our society is to teach children academic things and we tend to under teach constructive inter-relational skills. I think that this is very true. I think that part of the reason for this is that academic skills are quantifiable. I can look and see that Faith now knows what the moon is or that Paul is counting. We can measure our progress. With inter-relational skills and emotional skills progress is harder to notice or quantify. We can't easily determine how our child measures up to other children. I think that it is a lot more difficult to focus on this because our insecurities feed our desires to see our kid as the best and so we naturally fall into trying to make our children the brightest on the block. For myself I know that I struggle to realize that I don't need to buy my kids fancy educational toys or craft supplies in order have them grow into healthy intelligent adults. A loving stable environment will take them miles further than these aids would. I'm going to try to pour more attention into building my children up emotionally.