I just saw this and I think it is really warped.
Kids: The New Voice In The Abortion Debate
The bell rang and the eighth graders jumped up, eager to compare notes.
“I named my baby Kyle Patrick,” one shouted.
“Mine is Antonio!”
At the urging of an antiabortion activist, they had each pledged to “spiritually adopt” a fetus developing in an unknown woman — to name it, love it from afar and above all, pray daily that the mother-to-be would not choose abortion.
“Maybe one day you’ll get to heaven and these people will come running to you . . . and say, ‘We’re all the little children you saved,’ ” activist Cristina Barba said. She smiled at the students in their Catholic school uniforms. “Maybe you really can make a difference.”
Thirty-five years after Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, opponents are pouring resources into building new generations of activists. Young people are responding with passion.
Today’s students and young adults have grown up in a time when abortion was widely accessible and acceptable, and a striking number are determined to end that era.
Pew Research Center polls dating back a decade show that 18- to 29-year-olds are consistently more likely than the general adult population to favor strict limits on abortion. A Pew survey over the summer found 22% of young adults support a total ban on abortion, compared with 15% of their parents’ generation.
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Here are some suggestions for those kids that might actually be more helpful than what they are doing:
- Learn more about how to NOT become pregnant. This is called sex education. The real stuff that includes contraceptives and how to use them. Prayer might be less effective than condoms. Just sayin’.
- Help change this country so that women who want to have babies can get daycare and healthcare and jobs that pay them enough to raise the babies.
- Spend your time opposing war, capital punishment, drunk driving, cancer, heart disease, child abuse and all of the other things that kill people.
- Help get national health care for the United States so that women who know their fetus will be a baby with health problems will be more likely to choose to have the baby.
- Focus on the choices you want to make for yourselves, but let the rest of us make OUR own choices.
Political Teen Tidbits 
January 22, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Beautiful post, Cassie. Eloquently said.
January 22, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Bravo, Cassie. This one merits forwarding to your state representatives in Texas. And the head of the state department of education, for that matter.
January 22, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Right! I fully agree with you and I’m glad to wrote on such an important topic.
January 22, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Good post.
What annoys me so much is these kids are being used as mouthpieces by others. Give them all the information on the issue, then if they want to pray for fetuses or whatever, that’s their prerogative.
But just teaching them this is wrong on so many levels…
January 22, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I can’t really add that much to what you say, Cass. You pretty much say it all.
To add onto #5 above, though, might I reiterate that what a woman decides to do with her body in this situation is a private matter, between her and her physician. This is really what Roe v. Wade is all about–PRIVACY.
BTW, spiritual adoption per se is not a bad idea (i.e., I can spiritually adopt and pray for a friend’s unborn child), but its true meaning is lost in the context of this article.
S.F.
January 22, 2008 at 9:50 pm
That really makes me angery. That is political brainwashing at its finest. I feel bad for those students, because they will never know true self-determination. Their poltical views will always be skewed by the political brainwashing that their parents began at such a young age.
This was almost as bad as the scare tactics anti-abortion activists have used in Nebraska. The “genocide awareness display,” trucks plastered with pictures of aborted fetuses and T.V. ads of woman that probably never had abortions saying it was the worst choice they ever made.
January 22, 2008 at 9:52 pm
“Genocide awareness” should include pictures of children killed in wars or children who die because they can’t get health care.
Think there are any women who DON’T regret the choice? Of course! But it should be A CHOICE!
January 22, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Nice work Cassie. As usual!
January 22, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Congratulations on the wisdom you show on this very sensitive issue. Conversation and dialogue are so much more productive and informative than bombast and confrontation [although some of that once in a while doesn’t hurt *g*]
The local bishop in Fargo is very aggressive in leading young people in “pro-life” activities, so when a homeless man froze to death this week on his doorstep, there was a barrage of people questioning his hypocrisy. The sad part is, nobody wins that situation, and a tragic life is still gone.
http://www.in-forum.com/archive/index.cfm?page=archive_article&id=405179
January 22, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Good points all my feminist friend.
January 23, 2008 at 12:16 am
I used to see this bumper sticker a lot in the ’80s: “Oppose abortion? Don’t have one.”
The indoctrination continues at some Catholic colleges, too. I had to meet someone at one a few years ago and there were all these little crosses in the library yard. I asked the professor I had gone to interview what they were for, and he said, “The students named aborted fetuses and had a special Mass for their souls.” I think this was after the church eliminated limbo for unbaptized babies, so the students must have believed they had sent those unborns straight to heaven.
Thank you for blogging for choice, Cassie.
January 23, 2008 at 8:49 am
If they put as much time into talking about sex and protection…sad sad sad.
January 23, 2008 at 9:14 am
Thanks for this, Cassie.
Have you seen the cover article in the latest issue of The Nation? It’s all about the mythical effects of post-abortion syndrome — on men. Unreal.
January 23, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I liked that you connected healthcare issues so strongly with abortion.
Thanks Cassie for being the intelligent, articulate, passionate person that you are. Keep shining your light!
January 26, 2008 at 11:42 pm
[…] for Choice day, the 35th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion, I wrote a post for my other blog about anti-abortion eighth graders at a Catholic school. That post was read on the air and […]
January 27, 2008 at 11:41 am
[…] for Choice day, the 35th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion, I wrote a post for my other blog about anti-abortion eighth graders at a Catholic school. That post was read on the air and […]
March 15, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Amazing…amazing…amazing…so, this means that I can kill my parents, right? I mean, really, this should be my choice. Right? That’s what you’re saying to me. These children DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE. Why should we take theirs away? The other thing to keep in mind is this: universal health care would keep your child waiting in a line 20 hours long where she would die in the emergency room. Try reading up sometime on the places that have it. It’s not as ‘great’ as you think it is.
April 2, 2008 at 5:32 pm
[…] themselves trying to stay healthy. I wrote about teen pregnancy and sex education previously here and here and […]
April 10, 2008 at 9:07 am
Wow, so the almost 49 million babies that have been killed since Roe V Wade are a good thing, right? You liberals really are funny. You complain about war, but have no problem with the war on the unborn. You have no problem with millions of babies being put to death so they won’t inconvenience the parents, but feel it’s wrong to put to death murderers, rapist and killers. What planet are you guys from anyway? All of this is because of the things you guys(liberals) wanted in the first place. You wanted morality out of sex and abstinence first sex-ed taken out of the picture all together, and what has it got us? Our society is in turmoil, our families are falling apart, 1 in 4 teen girl have STD’s now, teen pregnancy is at an all time high. All this, not to mention the 48 to 49 million destroyed lives from abortion, is the direct result of liberals and their policies and views on sex and sex-ed. How can you think these people(from the posted story) are stupid for trying to stop the decline of our society.
May 3, 2008 at 11:58 am
FOR ARNOR KYLIA! THIS ACT OF ANTI-ABORTION EVIL WILL NEVER PREVAIL?
TEEN PREGNANCY IS HIGH BE CAUSE THEY JUST TEACH ABSTNENCE. THEN WHAT HAPPENS.
YOUR MORALITY IS AN EVIL PATH OF REPRESSION!
IS “MORALITY OUT OF SEX” A HINT-HINT AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS, WHO ARE JUST AS LOVING AND HOLY AS OURSELVES?
THE “IMMORAL SEX” IS RAPE OR ASSAULT, NOT VAUGELY DEFINED BARRIERS BASED ON A *SINGLE* RELIGION, OF WHICH I AM A MEMBER
NOT TO MENTION THAT AN EMBRYO (A FETUS IS AN ALMOST-FORMED CHILD) HAS LESS INTELLIGENCE AND LESS “LIFE-NESS” THAN A *CATERPILLAR*
SAVE HUMANS FIRST, ANIMALS SECOND, AND NON-SAPIENT FERTILIZED EGGS LAST!
September 8, 2008 at 8:37 pm
we are anti sin. homosexuality is sin. the killing of the unborn is sin. stealing is sin. GOD sent HIS SON JESUS TO BE THE SPOTLESS SACRIFICE FOR US WHO ARE BOUND TO HELL BECAUSE OF SIN. IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF SOME RELIGION I PRETY SURE IT DOES NOT SUPPORT THE KILLING OF INNOCENCE. THE EMBRYO YOU DESCRIBED AS BEING AN ALMOST-FORMED CHILD, THAT HAS LESS INTELLIGENCE AND LESS LIFE-NESS THAN A CATERPILLAR WAS ONCE YOU. YET SOMEONE LOVED YOU ENOUGH TO CARRY YOU FULL TERM AND EVEN THOUGH I’M SURE THE PREGENCY WAS NOT ALWAYS PEACHES AND CREAM. BEING SICK AND UNCOMFORTABLE. FINANCE WERE NOT ENOUGH FOR YOUR MOTHER TO THROW YOU AWAY. AND IF YOU WANT TO SAVE HUMANS FIRST, START IN THE WOMB.