Shauna, Jaron, Ruthy, and I are in Michigan! Yay! We had a silly ride up here...just ask Shauna about "blank" trees and Ruth about "hauling booty." Tonight is the Matrix. Yay!

Allow me to join this fair discussion. I am going to side with Kristen on this one. I too think this is an acceptable, and even desirable, change to our state constitution. On the contrary Shauna, I think just as much manipulation of children can happen in a court room full of people where the child has to sit face to face with the man or women that has (for example) sexually abused them and told them that if they ever mention what happened, that they would kill them. One piercing glare from an abuser can carry a tremendous level of communication.

Abuse is an extremely emotional event. Which would provide better access to the truth. A child that can explain what happened in an emotionally neutral situation, or a child sitting in front of their abuser (for example) having to look into the eyes that have controlled and manipulated them for (possibly) years.

I don't think those that oppose this amendment to the PA constitution need to get their shorts all knotted up over this. It is simply changing a few words from (and I think I am close if not exactly accurate) "meet their accuser face to face" to the words "be confronted with their accuser". It does not require that the medium be video...in fact it doesn't dictate any method in particular. It simply allows a young child to present their testimony in a emotionally neutral environment. This amendment simply brings PA's constitutional wording on this issue into line with the US constitution and the vast majority of other states in the Union. It is not some "drastic change" that is the beginning of a "slippery slope". The vast majority of states in the country have exactly the same wording as the new proposed wording in this situation.

While, as a conservative that looks cauciously (sp?) on any changes to our constitution, I think this is an acceptable change that provides a small level of decency and protection to some of the youngest in our society.

Kristen, i agree with Jon, this is a shame. very breifly: the window of opportunity this creates for maniputaion of children to get testimony is quite large. tough issue!!

I'll respond to that soon. Just not today.

Throwing this into the conversation to see what you all think of it. This is a true story taken from one of my favorite bloggers, ianua.org. She's an IT professional working for a Christian company while struggling through her own faith and doubt.

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My mother left our family when I was very young--3 years old. I shared her name, and for a lot of reasons (including the fact that my father was very perverted), I became my daddy's wife, sexually as well as emotionally.

I was a victim of incest for most of my child and young adulthood ... it went on, even up into my late teens. By my senior year in high school, my father had so convinced me of my disgusting worthlessness, my utter ugliness, and my standing as a total wretch in the eyes of God, I believed that I was lucky to be where I was, to have the "family" that I did, and that I was completely doomed -- I would never ever escape the tyranny of my father.

(there's much more to this, including my father's rabid public conservatism and evangelicalism which radically conflicted with who he was privately, but I won't get into all of that now)

At the age of 17, I became pregnant. At the time, I blamed the guy I was sleeping with, because I didn't understand fully the consequences of all of what the incest meant, (and I didn't dare think of the other alternative). Through time I have come to accept that it was probably my father's child. The timing wasn't right the other way.

At the time I knew enough about my father to know that if he found out about the "problem," he would abort it himself, he was just that way (and he was a frustrated doctor stuck in a lab).

I also knew that I believed in life, that I believed that the child in me was alive and a sacred creation, but I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what to do or who to go to.

I went to an episcopal priest under the rite of "confession," and he, being a staunch pro-life priest, told me that he didn't care if he got fired -- he believed that life was more important than anything, and he would tell my father if I pursued the abortion.

I was stuck. I felt like the baby would die if I did, die if I didn't.

So I went to the east coast (and met my mother, coincidentally), had the abortion there, then spent the next several years wandering around the country, living with people I met, sleeping in bus stations, trying to find some sort of peace with what I had done and who I was.

There's a lot more to this story, but what I want to tell you is this:

I don't think that -anyone- really wants to abort their child. I don't think that they have this murderous desire in them to take a life. It's not like they wake up one day and decide to get pregnant just to have an abortion.

It's that people don't know any better. It's that the people who can help often stand in judgement of them. It's that sometimes conservatives are so busy trying to save babies, they forget about the women who also (even more desperately) need to be saved. The rallying and the vocalism isn't where the change happens. The change happens in quietness--in love and in friendship and in trying to understand.

It's so easy to be loud and male and defiant. Planned Parenthood and other organizations enforce that by their own loud rhetoric (and sometimes, frankly, they have to scream because the opposition doesn't let them have a voice). But there are more lives involved in this then we often know (or want to accept). There are the lives of the women, the girls -- the people struggling with life and death decisions and feeling isolated and alone at this very important moment in their lives.

And there is so much life -- brilliant, fabulous life -- all around us. there is so much more we can do for all of life...

I do not believe in the death penalty. I do not believe in war. I believe in the sanctity of life on all levels—from birth to death. I believe in a form of mercy. I believe in a form of grace ...

... and I've learned that deadness is more than just what happens to an aborted child. It happens to a woman who feels so wearied from her life that she just doesn't care anymore.

I have been that woman. I have been dead and unable to care. And now -- on the other side of apathy, on the other side of death -- I have learned what it means to be truly alive.
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She writes this in a later post:

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a choice made,
but not my choice.

angry voices amplify the grief,
explanations given in powerpoint,
in heated rallies,
pro-life proclamations in half-lit church basements.

requiescat in pace

pictures of the dead on the side of trucks,
on sticks held by angry people standing on the corner,
"we will offend you enough to care,
shock you out of your complacency."

look at what you do - look at what you have done

i do not look.

the memories still live in technicolour,
still live in my dreams,
exposed on the table,
false promises,
the choice i couldn't make
but had to.
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