Choose life, choose a family

Columns

February 16, 2013

Choose life, choose a family

By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Sat Feb 16, 2013, 07:00 AM CST

PICAYUNE — On the morning of the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, I felt a chill, and it wasn’t the bitter cold. After Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, some 500 or so New Yorkers walked through the streets of Midtown Manhattan, in front of God, man and Grand Central Station, praying for life, love and mercy. Our prayers were not in judgment of others but that humanity may do better: that women and men may see better options than abortion and that God may forgive us for letting anyone think that she is alone and has no other choice than the death of her child.

The chill was the knowledge that some of the people nearby know the pain of abortion all too well. It was the certainty that someone, on her morning commute, was thinking that was her only option. It was the sharing in a community’s pain, guilt and sorrow.

We tend to live our lives masked in a veil of the self, pretending we live alone. But as solitary as we might sometimes feel, our actions affect others.

Now is the time to take a few steps back — not to turn back the clock, but to reflect.

Our problems won’t be solved through legislative actions. And legislative solutions, to the extent that they are effective, can’t be maximized without a fuller context. We can’t simply hold a vote to defund Planned Parenthood in order to send a political message and assume that the culture will change, that people will suddenly see the poisonous eugenics upon which the organization was founded and see adoption as the brilliant and generous option that it is. A congressional vote is not a magic trick. There are so many more steps involved.

In a new book, “Fill These Hearts,” author Christopher West asks us to “Consider the idea that our bodies tell a story that reveals, as we learn how to read it, the very meaning of existence and the path to the ultimate satisfaction of our deepest desire.”

West makes the point that our bodies and souls are not separate things, and that our very physical design speaks to our creation and destination. “In the biblical understanding, there exists a profound unity between that which is physical and that which is spiritual,” he writes. “This means that our bodies are not mere shells in which our true ‘spiritual selves’ live. We are a profound unity of body and soul, matter and spirit. In a very real way, we are our bodies.”

The general acceptance of the notion that our bodies are more than a conglomeration of biological functions is no longer something we can take for granted. Not when our federal health-care policy treats women’s fertility as a disease, as a roadblock to a confused misunderstanding of freedom and equality. Not when we are sending women into combat.

The world-famous former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, just died. He was good friends with the late Cardinal John O’Connor. They collaborated on a book, “His Eminence and Hizzoner,” in 1989 in which Koch wrote: “The future of our nation depends on our ability to inculcate a strong sense of morality in our young people. That moral sense should be based on philosophical, ethical and religious teachings, which are the underpinnings of conscience. The way to oppose abortion is by challenging the conscience of those who advocate it. If the battle cannot be won at the level of conscience, it cannot be won.”

But what is conscience? What constitutes right or wrong? If we do not agree there are answers to these questions, we’ll never have a constructive policy or cultural debate about abortion. That is the basic work we need to address. No election is ever going to be better without it. No culture is ever going to be renewed without it. No lives are going to be truly saved and redeemed without it. We won’t start making sense again without it. The dark bitter cold of winter will be warmed by the renewal that comes with embracing life, living life lovingly, supporting life, letting someone know they are not alone.

(Kathryn Lopez can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com)

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Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
June 15, 2013
Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
June 8, 2013
A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist

After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.

May 25, 2013
Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
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