It tolls for thee

Today is my mom's birthday. She died of cancer. But her legacy lives on.

Things I get from my mom:
Love of cake
Speaking truth
Love of ice cream
Hospitality
Milking goats
Doing what needs to be done
Making cheese
Saying what needs to be said
Pea soup and johnny cake
Defending the unborn
Cake and ice cream
Serving God, not man
Daily ice cream

My mom did not sit back and let life go by. She grabbed it and steered it. She did not just lament the poor children in foster care. She became a foster mom. So did my sister. I became an adoptive mom.

My mother did not just shake her head and say 'that's terrible' when confronted with the reality of abortion. She made signs, bought t-shirts, stood by the side of the road, and traveled to our nation's capitol to defend the children. She did not sugar coat this issue, even to her children. My brother named his little goat "Ana Rosa" after a little girl who survived a 32-week abortion in 1991. I almost never shut up about abortion.

My mother's legacy is that her children don't just sit back and let the world go to hell. If there is something that needs to be done for someone who cannot do it for themselves, we know to do it.

These 31 Days of Opening My Mouth are a fulfillment of how my mom raised me. And, one of the issues closest to her heart was China's one child policy and forced abortions there. This is just the most recent story, not the most heart-wrenching. There are worse stories. Did you hear me? This is not the worst story!
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‘Baby, I’m sorry’: Chinese dad takes photos of dead son after brutal forced abortion at 6 months

by John Jalsevac

Oct. 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Yet another Chinese couple has stepped forward to tell of undergoing a brutal forced abortion at the hands of the country’s family planning officials, and this time the couple has photographic evidence, including photos of the fully formed body of their dead baby son.

In an emotional video interview with Sky News, Liu Xinwen described how a group of 20 officials burst into her and her husband’s home at four o’clock in the morning about a week ago. While her husband, Zhou Guoqiang, was restrained, she was taken to the People's Hospital of Fangzi District in Weifang City, where she was injected with abortion-causing drugs.
Once Mr. Zhou was able to track his wife down at the hospital, he recalls asking her, “Have you been injected?” She answered “yes.” He then asked if the baby was still moving. “Not much,” she replied.
The couple’s baby, a little boy at six months gestation, was expelled from Liu’s body, dead, a day later.
Mr. Zhou took photos from inside the hospital room, including of their son in a bucket beside her bed. Sky News did not provide those latter photos, which it described as "almost indescribably graphic."
“His nose, ears, mouth, and hands…they are all there,” he says, beginning to sob. “It is my baby that I have lost.”

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Her baby is in that bucket.
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"I miss him," Liu told the Sky News team, as she lay on her side, sobbing in bed. "I didn't get to see him. I would be even more upset if I had seen him.”
"Baby, I'm sorry. We were not meant to be. You rest in peace in heaven. We will pray for you. We hope your next life is better."
Liu’s baby was aborted under China’s One Child Policy, which allows most couples to have only one child. Those who violate the policy are subject to crippling fines, and forced sterilizations and abortions.
“Our hearts are broken for this couple in the violent loss of their child,” said Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, a human rights group that fights the One Child Policy.  “Their experience demonstrates once again the violence of China’s One Child Policy – having their door kicked in by more than a dozen Family Planning Officials, dragged off in the middle of the night and forcibly aborted at six months of pregnancy.
“Sadly, they are not alone.  The Chinese government will forcibly abort women up to the ninth month of pregnancy. These forced abortions are sometimes so violent that the women themselves die along with their full term babies.  Forced abortion is official government rape.”
Littlejohn said that while a handful of couples have managed to tell their stories publicly, there are undoubtedly thousands, if not millions more “who suffer the same fate silently.”
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I know some of you are thinking that this is a bit far removed from you. I cannot soften your heart, only God can do that. But I can give you something to think about. Ponder this quote from John Donne:
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

Matthew 25: ⁴⁴ “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ ⁴⁵ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ ⁴⁶ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”


Pray. Speak. Defend. Lend your aid.