Thumbs Up!

(warning! very graphic!)

As a treat for Paige on her birthday, we were heading out to the Mall. The plan was while at the Mall, we would also meet up with friends, and bring two additional kids back with us.

Arden was in the van attempting to remove glass from a trinket box, and cut her thumb.

Caleb came over and showed us his bruised hand!

Live Bait

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

One of my facebook 'friends', a self-described radical right wing conservative and radical christian, posts daily anti-choice statements, anti-president statements, anti-healthcare statements, along with hymns, scriptures, and snippets from radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. She recently attended a WV for Life event.

From the WV for Life website:

"WVFL ... works with legislators to... defeat pro-choice legislation."

When pro-choice activists work with legislators, they work to protect the free choice of women. They are not trying to take away any options. They do not try to pass laws that would ever require a pregnant woman to terminate a pregnancy.

On the other hand, WV for Life wants to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, and either raise those children in whatever health they are born with, in whatever environment they are born in, or abandon them into state care, where they will likely receive neither a loving home, nor the treatment/ services they need.

"WVFL's primary purpose is to educate through the presentation of detailed and factual information about fetal development, abortion"

This statement is found on their "About Us" page. Elsewhere, on their "Abortion Basics" page, we read:

"More than one in every four unborn babies in the U.S. dies from abortion."

This statement may lead the reader to believe that 25% of the pregnant women in the US choose to terminate their pregnancies. This is deliberately misleading. In medical contexts, the word "abortion" refers to any process by which a pregnancy ends with the death and removal or expulsion of the fetus, regardless of whether it is spontaneous or intentionally induced. According to wikipedia,

Between 10% and 50% of pregnancies end in clinically apparent miscarriage, depending upon the age and health of the pregnant woman.^[3] Most miscarriages occur very early in pregnancy, in most cases, they occur so early in the pregnancy that the woman is not even aware that she was pregnant. One study testing hormones for ovulation and pregnancy found that 61.9% of conceptuses were lost prior to 12 weeks, and 91.7% of these losses occurred subclinically, without the knowledge of the once pregnant woman.^[4] Prospective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies are miscarried by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's Last Menstrual Period).^[29]

So by using the clinical term abortion, WV for Life is using deception (that's a nice word for lies) on the very site where it claims to provide "detailed and factual information about... abortion".

I want to respond.

I want to explain that not every girl who is pregnant is white, middle-class, and has supportive parents. I want to point out that her "every child has a right to life" rhetoric may seem okay when one is thinking about a blonde, blue-eyed baby born into a ranch-style house in a good neighborhood. What about a baby born prematurely with severe disabilities that the parents cannot afford the care for? What about the baby that is neglected in a carrier, and no longer bothers to cry? What about a baby being born into a slum, roaches crawling in their ears at night? A baby born to a mother who drinks heavily and does drugs? A baby born to a mother who brings home stray men for a night? A baby born to a mother who can't remember to pay the electric bill, much less remember to feed an infant or seek medical care when it is sick?

Do these children have the 'right' to this kind of life? These are innocent children. Why put thousands of children through such horrible experiences? Is it better to be aborted at 7weeks gestation, or to be raped by your drunk mother's one-night-stand at the age of six?

Do not bring up adoption.

Judging by the thousands of children growing up in state care, vs the millions of dollars Americans pour into infertility treatments, it is obvious that adoption is seen as a 'last resort' to most couples. And even then, they want a cute little baby. It appears no one dreams of adopting a minority-race first-grader with special needs.

I want to attend a WV for Life event and poll the attendees and speakers. I want to find out how many have adopted these kids that so desperately need families. I want to find out what they are doing to improve the lives of those children who were not aborted and are already here.

In short, I want to take the bait, and call out the liars and the manipulators, and the folks who use their time, energy, and freedom trying to restrict mine.

But I'm not going to take the bait.

I'm going to look the other way, and smile and wave.

Halloween Decor 2009

The console table in the kitchen. We actually use this table to hold our cd's and the radio, and a basket of cloth napkins, so all had to be incorporated into the theme. I bought wooden bookends from goodwill for $3/pr to hold the cd's. For my birthday, I had received a teacup candle in a small hatbox. Ron painted the hatbox black for me, to help create the black and white pumpkin display. Skeleton hands were a gift from my sister. The white 'snakeskin-looking' material under the objects is actually perforated paper that came in a shipping box

Shown here with basket of napkins and tealight candles.

Harrison couldn't wait to start playing with the Halloween stuff in the box.

This large skull was $20 at the local party store. I bought it at Michael's for less than half of that! Harrison added the eyes. The skull is now resting in the front flowerbed, by the fountain.

Harrison took it a step further and added smaller skulls for eyes.

Dresser in the living room. There's a lot going on, here. I'll highlight a few items. First, the lamp. The shade was already torn and peeling, so I just ripped it off and strung 'spider webbing' on it. The framed art on the left was a birthday gift, and the large glass cloche was an anniversary gift.

A small jar of actual teeth that have come out of my children.

Perhaps the scariest thing on the dresser- all the casts, impressions, palate-expanders, and retainers from Sadie, Paige, and Tess.

Clipped to the lamp is a laser-cut picture that was part of a christmas card sent to me about 15 years ago. I paired it with a stray 5x7 mat, and let the light from the lamp do the rest.

Leather boxes, Walmart and Michael's clearance aisles, and print by Eddie Spaghetti. Life-size skull, eBay find, 3/ $10.

The print was something I found online and played with, printed out on vellum, and put it in a discount frame that I got for $3 because it had no glass. Spider came from the Michael's trinket bin, 2/ $1. Glass cloche was a $1 vase to which I glued a cabinet knob. Bird nest and eggs found in the floral department of Michael's.

Some of you may remember Suzie Q, carved from an apple last year. Cloche is a $.50 votive holder. Base is a $.50 terracotta tray, painted black.

Large glass cloche was a gift from my sister. On the knob are two silver anklets, given as a baby gift by a friend from Thailand. I was told that Thai babies wear them and the attached bells tell the mothers where the babies are in the house. All of my babies had very fat legs, and so the "baby cowbell" idea didn't work out. Inside the cloche is a wax casting of Harrison's hand, and two interesting moths he found outside, already dead.

The next part is the fireplace mantle. Here we have gargoyles, crows, spider venom, and branches Tess brought in from outside. This is obviously a before photo. I will post a completed shot soon.