Compassion and Education

After my last post I have been thinking about compassion. I don't want to be so far on one side that I offer no compassion to the other. My prayer for the Obama family and the leaders of this country is sincere. I want them to be successful in leading our country because when you get down to basics they have the same goals as their opponents - to make the country a better and safer place.

Like I said yesterday, I think people should concentrate on facts. While in college, I wrote a paper about a controversial topic in the 1920s - birth control. I wrote about each side and found a common ground between them. One of the biggest compliments I got as a historian was actually a question. At the end of my presentation, a professor asked which side I agreed with. I was able to lay out the facts without harping on one side and making one side look perfect. To me, that is a type of compassion - honoring the opposing side enough to just state the truth and not turn them into a villain.

I don't think the pro-life movement is perfect and neither is my work with Natural Family Planning. One of the biggest criticisms is education - people just don't know what resources are out there. Planned Parenthood does a pretty good job of making sure people know what options are available. On their website they even talk about Fertility Awareness methods of birth control which Natural Family Planning teaches. Information is out there if people are willing to look. I truly believe if people become more aware of the pro-life movement and the resources available abortion will not seem like the best solution anymore. I also believe that if more people knew how amazing Natural Family Planning is they would be more inclined to learn it. Speaking of education...

Norma McCorvey is better known as Jane Roe. She brought the abortion case to the Supreme Court when she was faced with an unplanned pregnancy. The judicial process was too slow and she became a mother and recently became a prominent leader in the pro-life movement. I think she should be mentioned as often as possible. There must be a reason why the leader of the pro-choice movement switched sides right?

In regards to a more recent event, it is a lack of education that results in the majority of Catholic senators voting to rescind the conscience protections for health care workers. Nothing has officially changed in that regard, but it is still making forward progress. How can we say we offer religious freedom when workers could be forced out of a profession or forced to do something they find morally wrong? I know there are enough doctors and nurses that will prescribe birth control and perform abortions, why bully those that won't? Again, this will not be solved by complaining. Education is key. Natural Family Planning doctors know a lot about fertility and how to achieve pregnancy (since all you do is reverse rules if you want to avoid pregnancy). If leaders understand that, can't they find a loophole? We could call those doctors fertility specialists and refer couples that are seeking a larger family to those doctors? Then I would still be able to go to the doctor I chose.