by Carla Stream
Lead moderator at JillStanek.com and blogger at Operation Outcry Wisconsin

I had an abortion 23 years ago. I have written love letters to my daughter Aubrey, sometimes around the date of my abortion, September 5th – sometimes because I have to feel what I feel and type it out.

Over the years I have gained perspective. I carry the regret of paying someone to end my daughter’s life.

I do not have to Google “letters from post-abortive mothers” for inspiration, and I do not read what others might have written and shared to see if something might “resonate.” I do not surf the web watching for something that might “speak to me.” I sit in the silence and stillness of my own soul and write from a place of deep longing and love.

My motivations for writing have always been the same:

1) to educate others that abortion hurts women
2) to share that there is help and hope and recovery after abortion
3) to share with other mothers who chose abortion
4) to help these mothers realize in the depths of their being that they are not alone – that someone “gets” it… that someone has felt what they feel.

And to honor the memory of my daughter who should be here… who would be 22 years old.

Sadly, one of my letters was plagiarized last week. Someone stole my words to my daughter. She stole several sentences – including ones that contained my Aubrey’s name – and inserted her son’s name instead.

This letter was published by several news outlets and was shared thousands and thousands of times. I saw it in my Facebook news feed and set aside special time to read it, because a post-abortive mother doesn’t just pop some popcorn and decide to do a little light perusing when reading a love letter from a post-abortive mother to an aborted child.

When I began to read, I immediately felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I knew those words. I knew those phrases. I knew because they came from my soul. And it hurt. It hurt me deeply. And it was wrong. Stealing is wrong.

I am now sharing my letters here, my feelings and thoughts put into words, which have been published on my blog since 2008. These are a legacy of love to a daughter that I one day will meet.

At this time, it feels like the right thing to do to honor my daughter and her memory, to share the journey of regret after abortion, and to stand in the face of an injustice like plagiarism and have the originals.

Below is the full text of the letter to Aubrey from which parts were stolen, followed by links to the rest of my letters and writings to her:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008

My Girl

Dearest Aubrey,

You should be here. You should be 18 years old. Driving, working, studying, babysitting your siblings. Laughing with me. Loving me. I picture you with long, brown hair like your sisters and big, blue eyes. On September 5th, 1990 you died. I was distraught even as you grew. I was distraught before the vacuum suctioned your body from mine. I was distraught after. Regret hardly conveys the depth of my emotion. A grief and a sorrow that consumes me at times. I can hardly bear it because I did not fight for your life. Fight to protect you. Fight for your right to live and grow and be. I did not place your life before my desperate thoughts of self-preservation. I was deceived into thinking you were a clump of cells, tissue, you were nothing, you were not even a baby.

I know what I have done. I carry it. I own it. I live with it. I would give anything to go back there though, and tell them all to go to hell, walk out that abortion mill door and embrace your life.

The grief I feel is hardly as big as the love, Aubrey. The love I have for you knows no bounds. The joy I have in knowing that I will see you one day. The hope I feel in telling others about you.

You are my daughter and I will honor your short life in every way that I can, as long as I live.

I love you, Aubrey,
Mommy

“Aubrey” (2008)

“Love Letter” (2010)

“My daughter” (2011)

“Dearest Aubrey” (2012)

Two poems, here and here.

by Hans Johnson

Tough guys (and gals) don’t like seeing the little guy being picked on. And that describes abortion to a tee. Mark Crutcher’s Life Dynamics recently began Bikers For Life.

Another group is Pro Bikers For Life, which has great support from the  Sisters of Life, who they may well call “the leader of the pack”.

The pro-life movement is as wide and varied as the young lives they stand up for, all having in common belief in Dr. Seuss’ saying: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” This is from the March For Life 2013:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDPomhqSaEQ[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

The Girl Scouts have had a disturbing, well-documented relationship with the abortion lobby for a long time.

The organization finally overplayed its hand this past December by giving its stamp of approval to two infamous pro-abortion women, Wendy Davis and Kathleen Sebelius. This drew a boycott of Girl Scout cookies, called CookieCott2014.

Yesterday the American Heritage Girls, a faith-based alternative to the Girl Scouts, announced a new Respect Life Patch, which ”reinforces the organization’s commitment to honoring life from conception to natural death.”

How to earn the patch? From the press release:

Troops representing more than 30,000 girls in 48 states can earn the patch by participating in an event that brings attention to respecting life or by providing a service project for an organization whose mission/purpose demonstrates a desire to respect life, such as pregnancy resource centers, pro-life groups and hospices.

That’s awesome. Now, how could the Girl Scouts find any fault with that? This badge would seem like a natural fit between its babysitter badge and women’s health badge….

Such a badge would launch the Girl Scouts on a healthy and constructive path back from the abortion abyss. How about it, Girl Scouts?

(Frontier Girls is another faith-based alternative to the Girl Scouts.)

by Kelli

The truth hurts, but liberals need to hear it. One of progressivism’s — aka modern liberalism’s — greatest ironies is that abortion on demand is nigh impossible to reconcile with the rest of progressive theory. As I’ve written before here and elsewhere, the “right to choose” is the glaring exception to nearly everything the left believes.

In economics, health care, education, gun use, environmental regulation, and even religious faith and political speech, progressives make the individual’s choices and desires subservient to what they consider the greater good of those in need. Despite the rising popularity of the absolutist “bodily autonomy” defense these days, more often than not it’s the only form of autonomy its proponents recognize.

To believe in involuntary wealth redistribution for the poor and sick, forced subsidization of contraceptives, and compulsory participation in private ceremonies (just to name a few) — while not believing that a mother owes the neediest and most helpless of all the simple mercy of letting him or her live — is a sick joke. This “radically inclusive” ideology is “constantly looking” for new pockets of society the rest of us must sacrifice to assist, but thinks the deepest possible familial bond is meaningless.

~ Calvin Freiburger, Live Action News, February 10

[Comic (click to enlarge) via commonsenseevaluation.com]

UPDATE 2/11, 9:40a: Thomas More Society, on behalf of Pro-Life Action League, filed a formal complaint with the Illinois Dept. of Professional Regulation requesting an investigation of Planned Parenthood.

2/10, 3:17p: Late last week came the news that Planned Parenthood of Illinois, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation have agreed to pay $2 million in a wrongful death settlement to the surviving young son of a woman who died after an abortion at a Chicago Planned Parenthood in 2012.

On July 20, 2012, 24-year-old Tonya Reaves, pictured right, died after a late-term abortion at Planned Parenthood’s Loop Health Center from uncontrolled bleeding, according to court documents.

Other reports have implicated a 5+ hour delay by the Michigan Avenue PP in getting Reaves to Northwestern and more delays in getting treatment there. At the hospital Reaves was allegedly found to be suffering from an incomplete abortion and perforated uterus.

Reaves’ son is now 3  years old and will receive $1,479,571.39 after attorneys get their cut. Payment will be dispensed to him beginning when he is 18 as follows (click to enlarge):

(An attorney friend explained in an email that the delay in payments to Reaves’s son “is so he can make the decision how to spend it as an adult, which is not that unusual with large sums. Too many times it is spent by guardians and nothing left for child.”)

At any rate, this is huge news, no? Were this a settlement to a family whose loved one died because a hospital refused her an abortion, it would be broadcast everywhere.

And the plot thickens in this case because abortion clinics in Illinois are completely unregulated. What a tie-in to all the legislation being proposed, passed, and sued in the states requiring that abortion clinics be regulated and inspected! What a counterpoint to pro-abortion protests that these regs are unwarranted!

Oh, but wait. This story thwarts the pro-abortion agenda in so many ways, doesn’t it. Any news organization reporting on it would look too fair and balanced.

Never mind. Carry on with your cutsie condom fundraisers and Vine videos, Planned Parenthood.

by LauraLoo

Students from Immaculata Classical Academy, a school in Louisville, KY, together with a Down syndrome advocacy organization called Angels in Disguise, have a mission to incorporate children with Down syndrome into the classroom. The group took part in the March for Life in D.C. this year. Here is their story:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBPVVpvq4jg[/youtube]

Special thanks to Jared Meyer, who not only sent in the video but teaches at the school and produced the film.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

by Carder

Such a good baby. You guys have no idea. I don’t even know how I could be so lucky.

I was not connected to this second pregnancy like I was when I was pregnant with Isaac, but as soon as this little human being was born it’s like every feeling and anxiety I had was reversed. I swear to you this baby boy doesn’t ever cry unless he’s hungry and even then I hate letting him get to that point.

I really cannot express the love I have for my Lincoln.

~ Teen Mom 2 star Kailyn Lowry-Marroquin (pictured above with her boys – click to enlarge), gushing over her second son, Lincoln,  Yahoo! Celebrity, February 7. Backstory from the same article:

Lowry gave birth to her son Isaac Rivera in January 2010 on season 2 of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant. At the time, she was dating Jo Rivera, whom she currently shares custody of Isaac with, but after they split, Lowry met [Javi] Marroquin and the couple married at a courthouse in September 2012…. And in November 2013, they welcomed their first son together, Lincoln Marshall.

Happy Sunday! Here were my top five favorite political cartoons this past week. Be sure to vote for your fav in the poll at the bottom of this post!

by Glenn McCoy at Townhall.com…

 by Lisa Benson at Townhall.com…

 by Henry Payne at Townhall.com…

 by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com…

 And finally, for good measure, the clichéd liberal explanation for the recently reported downturn in abortion numbers, along with a clichéd poke at pro-lifers, by Dan Wasserman at GoComics.com…