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Inauguration Day for Kids

I'm actually doing a music theme this week. It's crazy being a former music teacher and knowing that your kids are actually getting very little music training. But now that the pregnancy symptoms seem to finally be easing up a bit (hopefully it wasn't just another short stretch of decent days that just get my hopes up before smashing them), I'm hoping to get music lessons back on track. More on the music stuff later...


We're breaking for a bit of Inauguration stuff on Tuesday. Some TV viewing, though I have to admit it's more to watch Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman than Mr.Obama - see a music week tie-in!- just kidding. Seriously, he's swearing in on the Lincoln Bible, which my kids will find very cool. Of course, we have the possibility of snow being on the ground in the morning, in which case all bets are off about any viewing or doing of things inaugural. All of you out there that are snowless or sick of snow will have to use these links instead. :^)


Without further ado:

1. Time for Kids is our first stop. They have their teacher guides available online with some great worksheets for younger (K5-1st) and slightly older (2nd-5th grade) students. And another one on the White House here.
2. A linked schedule of Inauguration Day events
3. Scholastic has some really nice worksheets as well as lesson plans.
4. This is a great page of links . I recommend the links to streaming news sites for the inauguration, coloring pages, and a pretty nice powerpoint on the inauguration in lew of a lower elementary book on the topic. And actually the 44 Presidents rap song, while irritating, has really nice portraits of all of the presidents. If you already know their names, maybe you could watch it on mute. :^)
5. This is an interesting Obama Inauguration Q&A page. It includes information about the first daughters that my kids will be interested in.
6. National Geographic Kids has an interactive Inauguration Trivia Quiz. I scored only a 70% - see if you can do better.

Don't forget to let your voice be heard in the fight against the Freedom of Choice Act. Millions of children will thank you.

Tony Perkins Asks Barack Obama: When Does Life Begin?

Their stance on LIFE - in their own words

Another side of the story

Are these truth or myths?

A reader recently wrote:

you are sadly misinformed, and only flaunt your ignorance by biting the bait and perpetuating this nonsense.NOBODY WANTS to get an abortion, PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION IS A MYTH, and you should probably just make decisions for your own body. period.

My response:

I personally find promoting partial birth abortion as a myth to be as ignorant as promoting the Holocaust as a myth.

If you don't want to murder someone, you typically don't do it. This does not imply that the person receives pleasure from their choice, but it is not in involuntary action. It requires want, or will. I realize that this decision is usually a painful one and women do not go skipping into and out of abortion clinics, but that does not justify their actions. If their child were seven days old instead of seven weeks gestation, no one would even try to justify it. And somehow there would be another solution. I know that some situations must surely seem impossible, but we do not have the right to end an innocent life.

Women should make decisions for their own body, but they should not have the right to dismember or otherwise slaughter the body of the child that they carry.

The unborn entity within the pregnant woman's body is not
part of her body. The conceptus is a genetically distinct entity with its own
unique and individual gender, blood type, bone-structure, and genetic code.
Although the unborn entity is attached to its mother, it is not part of her (http://www.christiananswers.net/q-sum/q-life009.html)

One of the government's actual duties is to protect life. If every life is not sacred, soon no life at all will be sacred. It is not difficult to trace this path in other societies, even recent ones like Nazi Germany or modern day Holland.

When abortion becomes acceptable, so will euthansia. And then forced abortions. And then infanticide and not treating children born with handicaps. And then involuntary euthansia, choosing when people should die so as not to burden society. All you have to do is read a little history to see this pattern. It's a slippery slope.

For specific questions about a Christian view of abortion go here.

For more information on several topics of bioethics go here.

To find an abortion recovery center near you, go here.

Most importantly, what does the Bible say about abortion?

A Vote for Obama is a Vote for Infanticide

I don't love McCain, heck, I don't even like him - but this guy is sick, heinous. How could anyone support this practice?! This is not ancient Sparta or Nazi Germany. And this is not a good man.

If you vote for Obama, this is what you're voting for. This is the kind of change you will get.

And you will deserve it. But I pity your children and grandchildren. Especially the ones you will never know.

That's all I have to say.

Obama's support of live abortions

Okay, I never supported Obama, but after reading the article, Why Jesus would not vote for Barack Obama , I no longer feel that he would perhaps not be as bad as a Clinton. Indeed, "anyone but Hillary" doesn't even sound funny anymore.

"As a nurse at an Illinois hospital in 1999, I discovered babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in soiled utility rooms. I discovered infanticide.

Legislation was presented on the federal level and in various states called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. It stated all live-born babies were guaranteed the same constitutional right to equal protection, whether or not they were wanted.

BAIPA sailed through the U.S. Senate by unanimous vote. Even Sens. Clinton, Kennedy and Kerry agreed a mother's right to "choose" stopped at her baby's delivery.

The bill also passed overwhelmingly in the House. NARAL went neutral on it. Abortion enthusiasts publicly agreed that fighting BAIPA would appear extreme. President Bush signed BAIPA into law in 2002.

But in Illinois, the state version of BAIPA repeatedly failed, thanks in large part to then-state Sen. Barack Obama. It only passed in 2005, after Obama left.

...Obama articulately worried that legislation protecting live aborted babies might infringe on women's rights or abortionists' rights..."

by Jill Stanek, WorldNetDaily, read the rest here

Pro-Life Activist Norma McCorvey ('Jane Roe' of Roe v. Wade)

Endorses Ron Paul for President !

Life is not optional

Okay. Gotta write this post. There a value voters and then there are other kinds of voters. Should everyone in America have to follow your own personal values? A question to think on. Would you want their's if their man's elected next? Hmm.


But the real point of this post is that often when people decide that moral issues are no longer their main focus, they often lump abortion into the "value voter" category and remove it from the top of the list. I submit to you that voting pro-life is not just a right wing, value voter thing to do, it is necessary to the intelligent functioning of a free society. The Declaration of Independence speaks of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as basic human rights. They ought to be.


Now we have candidates running for office with national health plans. Plans that may be mandatory. And if they're like Romney's Massachusetts plan, plans that cover abortions. Now think with me where this is headed. Oh, now, don't think too hard. China is an obvious example. If the government has it's hand in our health care, and the people we put in charge of our government are not staunchly pro-life, than how hard do you think it is to slide from there to recommended abortions, then required abortions. Or choices like the ones they make in Holland where newborns with severe disablities are euthanized, someties without parental consent. It is a slippery slope that you tread on. Do you think that most of the people in Germany in 1930 had any clue that some of them would soon be forced into something like this?


Life is valuable. If it is denied that value on any level, it endangers everyone. This goes beyond "conservative" voting. This is a fight for the Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness for future generations of Americans. This is why we have a United States of America. So please stop thinking that this is optional. Changing people's hearts and morals is the duty of the Church. But protecting life is a duty of the government as well. So don't just go to church and honor life with your heart and lips. Honor it with your vote as well.


Now that I've gotten off my soapbox, here's another practical way to honor life.

Let's join Mary in buying blankets for destitute mothers and their new babies in Ethiopia.

Surviving abortion

I'm sure that most of you have already seen this article, but my husband e-mailed it to me today and I thought about it again.

I think that one thing Christians should take away from this is that the gospel is of utmost importance in the fight against abortion. Preaching the "right to life" or the "sanctity of life" is not enough. The saddest thing to me is that the mother seemed seemed to truly love and want that child, yet had no concept of God and his right over life. To me that was the bottom line. If there is no God then life and death responsibility would fall to parents and doctors. She really felt that it was necessary to save the life of at least one and she had no God to trust in. It is breathtakingly sad. If people do not believe that there is a God that is over all and in control of all then even those who would say that they believe in life would feel that it was necessary to make these kind of decisions that belong only to God.

And yet a sovereign God intervened and let what should have brought death make life thrive instead. I'm going to pray that He captures that family for himself - what a story that would be!

Supreme Court upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act

"WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure today - handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench. The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion." Read the rest of The Salt Lake Tribune article here.

Blogs for life

• One of the greatest national tragedies to ever befall us at Biblical Womanhood
• When Is Abortion Racism? at Desiring God (John Piper's sermon of the week, not exactly a blog, but it fit the theme...)
• Nick Cannon: Can I Live at The Rebelution
• Sober Thoughts Today at Life in a shoe

How sacred is the life of the unborn?

This week is sanctity of human life week. I'm afraid I could get on about twenty different soap boxes, but I'll start with just this one. While I would definitely agree that abortion hurts both mother and child, I simply find some people to be overly compassionate in their treatment of this topic, afraid to condemn the choice to take a life. If a lady came to me personally wanting to find hope and forgiveness, then certainly I would compassionately show her the Way to true Life. Some have made this decision not fully understanding the consequences of their actions, and they have my sympathy. But I find it difficult to understand why people feel the need to allow other people to "make bad choices" in this area. I personally think that we still have too sterile a view of what's happening. 43% of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45. In 2003, 43% of women that had an abortion in the U.S. had already had at least one other abortion. (Thanks to Focus on the Family's Citizen Link for those stats.) If your next door neighbor chose to violently murder her 2 year old, I doubt that most of us would say, " I'm sorry that she made that decision, but we should treat her with compassion and not judge her." And I venture to say that that murder would likely have been less painful and horrific than the typical abortion. Do we choose to view it as the horror that it is only if the government declares it illegal? That sounds very similar to what the German people living near concentration camps did. That is the defense given by Nazi doctors who experimented on Jewish twins and nurses who euthanized the elderly and handicapped gave as their defense. It was legal. We, as a society judge people for their crimes all of the time. There is no sin that Christ cannot forgive, and we should always offer that hope with compassion because none of us are without sin, but until we start being shocked and appalled and calling sin by its name, why should anyone seek that forgiveness? Do I think the answer is to launch an attack against against women choosing abortion or the doctors performing them? No. I believe that the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. Christ is the only lasting solution to any problem. Proverbs 28:13 says He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. But we must speak the truth in love.


WARNING: The following video is VERY GRAPHIC and should not be viewed by children.

Abortion: The Facts

WARNING:VERY GRAPHIC
NOT TO BE VIEWED BY CHILDREN