The Witness of Lila Rose

The current issue of First Things includes a powerful article by Lila Rose on the lies perpetrated by Planned Parent. Below is but a short snippet. I encourage everyone to read the article and, if there is any doubt, check the facts - it's so accurate it's frightening.

When I was thirteen I wrote in my journal, “God, it’s time I actually do something about abortion.” I began to research online and think about what I could do to tell other people about this terrible crime being committed even in our own neighborhoods. A friend and I wrote a letter to the community of Almaden, where we lived, exhorting people to vote only for pro-life candidates. We put up copies of the letter around the local shopping center. When I was fourteen I began planning a “Pro-Life Club.” Within months it became Live Action. It began in my parents’ living room, with a meeting of about a dozen of my closest friends, all whom I had convinced to come.
...
I posed as a young, scared, pregnant girl, fifteen years old, the victim of a twenty-three-year-old statutory rapist. The Planned Parenthood staff told me, into our hidden cameras: “Figure out a birth date that works.” Lie about your age on the paperwork. Say you are older than you really are. We will give you a secret abortion, and no one will ever know.
...
I remember seeing that and not being able to look away. I knew I was looking at the meeting of two cousins separated by just inches of flesh—and one of them, a little boy or a little girl, would be violently killed by abortion that very day. It reminded me of another meeting, one between two unborn cousins, when Mary, the Madonna, visited her cousin Elizabeth. And how could it not? We had named the Mona Lisa Project after these two women.

Read the entire article here.

Children, Adults, Abuse and Experts

Offered for your consideration: two links to provoke reflection on the state of Western society.

Both deal with children and 'progressive' dystopic interference with their childhood development. We all know that physical, psychological and sexual abuse of children is immoral (or do we? See the second link). However, we should also be on guard against the societal abuse of children.

The first is from the New York Times: A Best Friend? You Must Be Kidding

From this piece consider the following:

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

The second link is from the always poignant MercatorNet: Troubling theories about childhood innocence

And from our second witness:

In a paper on this theme, “Kiss and tell: Gendered narratives and childhood sexuality”, Mindy Blaise, a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, describes how she tested this theory on some three- and four-year-old children in an Australian childcare centre.

It is worth looking at this is some detail to understand her method.

Using a popular picture book aimed at 6- to 10-year-old children (Clarice Bean, That’s me by Lauren Child) Blaise focuses on a page where Clarice’s older sister Marcie is sitting on her bed reading a fashion magazine. The researcher points and reads out to the children (4 girls and 3 boys) thought bubbles saying: Do boys give you the dreamy eye? Are you a flirt? Have you ever kissed a boy?

Beyond the deadly serious issues both articles raise (and make no mistake, these reveal very serious matters, indeed), I am also led to ask the more prosaic questions:

Why do children need to 'schedule' playtime?

Is this not already a sign that something is seriously wrong with Western society's approach to child rearing?