However, I signed up to participate in something other Virginia ladies need to be doing, and, I'm told, have slacked off doing, called "Encourage a Legislator."
This post contains three separate parts: about "Encourage a Legislator," about my reservations, and the prayer. Prayers can't include every possible point of view, but this prayer is worded to include any Messianic Jews who choose to join in it.
About "Encourage a Legislator"
Although it's organized by a group that does make political statements, the whole point of "Encourage a Legislator" is that it's not political. This is how it's supposed to work:
1. You are a Christian in Virginia (and presumably a lady, although I see no way to prevent men from doing this in aid of their mothers etc. etc., nor reason to discourage them).
2. You already know who your State Senator and Delegate are, and they already know where you're likely to stand on issues currently online at http://lis.virginia.gov/181/lst/LS532090.HTM . If they seem to be in doubt or in need of an actual tally, you have their phone number and e-mail address. (If you don't, it can be found at lis.virginia.gov.) Blogging, Tweeting, e-mailing, or letter-writing, about how pleased or displeased you are with your elected officials is entirely optional.
3. You know you have no right to try to influence other State Senators' and Delegates' decisions, but as an act of Christian charity, just to balance the hatespews they may get from wingnuts in their districts, you feel able to pray for them and encourage them to do the right thing for their constituents. (Remember when P.J. O'Rourke
reported that only about 1% of his Congressman's mail was encouraging?)4. So you allow the Virginia chapter of the Concerned Women of America to match you with an "adoptive" elected official. You relinquish any choice as to whether it'll be one for whom, after you read his or her collected works at lis.virginia.gov, you want to pray that s/he will be encouraged to stay in politics or to get out of politics. You are just sending benevolent wishes in their direction.
5. You agree to pray for this person, and send him or her one of the red-white-and-blue postcards CWA will send you, in the mail each week during the legislative session.
6. You do not add any political or legislative bias to whatever you write on the postcards, because you are not a constituent and the office staff are supposed to throw out the postcard if it contains political content. You only remind the elected official that church ladies (and their families) are praying for him or her.
7. If your "adoptive" legislator does something you particularly like, your blog or social media might be a good place to mention that. If you don't totally agree with CWA about everything, your blog or social media might be the appropriate place to go into that.
About My Reservations
For example: Nobody should ever expect me to endorse any claim that surgical abortions represent any substantial number of "women's choice." There are rare situations in which reasonable women should choose, and ethical doctors should recommend, abortion--as when a dead fetus has failed to self-abort and is going septic. What I've observed firsthand are situations in which women don't "choose" abortions, or encourage abortions in any way, because they want babies, but their fetuses self-abort instead of ever becoming babies anyway. What I've observed secondhand is that, because that kind of thing tends to happen to women with the celiac gene, some tactless doctors actually say things like, "So, you're pregnant; better have it out now, before you get attached to it." I myself was sterile when young, and am no longer young, so I seldom think about pregnancy problems at all. When I do, I'm inclined to focus on reducing the incidence of procreative acts among people who don't want babies, and on improving the prospects for mothers and infants, as ways to keep abortion "safe, legal, and rare"--and cheap, as advocated by Joycelyn Elders.
(Page 350, for those who don't remember.)
Specifically, on behalf of celiac women who want babies, we could try banning #glyphosate ; that would allow all celiacs to be healthier, whether female or pregnant or neither, and just might extend other people's life expectancies as well. And that would reduce the incidence of abortions performed on women who are thinking, and may be saying, "But I'm already 'attached to it' and I want to be a mother."
But e-friends (like +Lyn Lomasi Rowell , back when she was "the Mommie to Lots" on AC) who've actually counselled with young women report that, more often than not, abortion is the selfish man's choice. This is an abomination. Also, though it may be decreasing, abortion is often the "choice" social workers try to make for, or even force upon, young, poor, and/or ethnic-minority women. My only concern with trying to make abortion illegal in this kind of situation is that reducing the incidence of abortion-as-man's-choice would probably raise the incidence of first-degree murder.
Women's choice would obviously be to start fewer, healthier, better-provided-for babies. I can think of some ways government could help with this, but I don't imagine a law mandating one sterilization per abortion would be very popular...women probably need just to grow a backbone. If more young women would stop thinking of themselves as helpless rape bait, and try looking their dates in the eye and saying "I'm not on The Pill and I don't believe in abortion," they might be surprised at how much more creative and enjoyable their dates would become.
About twenty years ago, the late George Peters prodded me to look for fresh useful facts that might add some actual light to the heat in the never-ending, never-solved, time-and-money-wasting "abortion debate." I found some that looked promising, at the time. Incubation technology had advanced to the point that self-aborted fetuses that appeared to be even just five months along could be incubated until they at least looked like tiny, puny, yet viable babies. If I'd read that even one of those babies had graduated from high school by now, I'd be actively campaigning for incubation (at the father's expense, whether or not he has any further contact with the mother or baby) to replace surgical abortion. (Need it be mentioned...surgically aborted fetuses are in theory more likely to survive incubation than self-aborted fetuses.) Unfortunately, incubation technology has, so far as I know, never yet made a self-aborted fetus strong enough to live to age 15. So far as I know all babies incubated before the seventh month of gestation have died young. This could change, and Heaven speed the day...
Meanwhile, although "life" is obviously the nicer "choice," I can't join the pro-lifers either because of the probability that their focus on abortion alone could lead to more murders (and accidental deaths) of living human beings. My vote would be to back off any legal challenges directly to Roe v. Wade and work on ways to make it easier for prospective mothers to "choose life."
And Now the Prayer *
O Holy One, today we ask Your blessing on our Virginia General Assembly.
We particularly ask for Your guidance and a double portion of wisdom for my lawyer, fellow-townsman, and distant cousin, Delegate Terry Kilgore of Gate City. We ask that his family and all his constituents, from his role model, Delegate Quillen, to those whose sole and whole political act is to be sure they vote for any Kilgore on any ballot set before them, may experience peace, health, and wisdom, such that all of us can support Delegate Kilgore in carrying out Your Perfect Will for our Commonwealth. We ask that You guide our Delegate to do that without provoking distraction or discouragement from those of us who will be watching him during the legislative session.
We also particularly request Your guidance and a double portion of wisdom for our respected State Senator "Bill" Carrico of Grayson. We ask that his constituents may likewise be able to support him in carrying out Your Perfect Will for our Commonwealth, and that he also may be able to do this without provoking distraction or discouragement as we watch him during the legislative session.
And we request Your guidance and a double portion of wisdom for this web site's "adoptive Delegate," Matt Fariss of Rustburg. As officials this web site has identified as our "team" retire, may we be able, in good conscience, to welcome Delegate Fariss onto the "team" that support good proposals and oppose bad ones, with public spirit above party spirit.
These blessings I ask on behalf of all members and readers of this web site of mine, in the name of Jesus our Messiah.
Amen.
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