Document: pub/resources/text/breakpoint: BPT.94.03.09.TXT ---------------------------------------------- Note: Prison Fellowship has recently asked that email transmission of the BreakPoint commentaries be suspended until they decide how they wish to proceed with that matter. However, I have been given permission to email special noncommentary items like fact sheets and urgent announcements. Write me for the recent posts about transmitting BreakPoint over email. You have my permission to forward these posts ONLY if you are being sensitive to and respectful of the recipients' views and you KNOW that these posts will not be a threat to or abuse of their ideals, only if the copyright notice (if present) is retained, and only if there is no profit involved. If you've missed a post, you may get it from the USENET newsgroup bit.listserv.christia. This is an UNOFFICIAL transcript made from the radio broadcast. Mistakes in it are mine, not Mr Colson's nor Prison Fellowship's. Comments, corrections, questions are welcome; send to . * Wednesday, March 9, 1994 BREAKPOINT with Chuck Colson Julie Mackama is a completely ordinary young woman with a loving husband and family. But the Clinton administration has recently suggested that people like Julie should never have been born. You see, Julie was the result of what we might call a "problem" pregnancy. According to a new federal directive, all women who experience this problem ought to get an abortion, and for poor women tax payers should even pay for it. The problem I'm talking about is ... rape. Thirty-one years ago Julie's mother was sexually assaulted and became pregnant as a result, but instead of having an abortion she carried the baby to term and gave her up for adoption. Today, mother and daughter have been reunited and travel across the country speaking against abortion. But the Clinton administration has just lent its support to the idea that children conceived through rape should not be allowed to live. A directive from the National Medicaid Bureau has decreed that in rape cases abortion should be considered "medically necessary in the light of both medical and psychological health factors." The assumption here is that having a child after rape endangers a woman's psychological health - that it prolongs the trauma of the assault. But someone ought to tell the Clinton administration that that assumption has already been tested and proved false. Julie Mackama is the founder of a group called Fortress International which surveyed hundreds of rape victims. The survey found that women who have an abortion actually reported more pain, guilt, and anger. As one rape victim wrote, "The rape was a violent crime against me, but the abortion was the violent murder of my child, and I was the willing participant." Far from assuaging the pain of the assault, abortion made it worse. But the rape victims who carried their babies to term told a completely different story. For them having a baby meant that the horror of being assaulted had at least one positive outcome - a child to love. These women view their children as innocent victims of the crime just as they themselves were. Having an abortion, they say, would only have compounded the crime. Julie's own mother puts it starkly. "Having an abortion," she said, "would have meant giving Julie the death sentence for the sexual assault crime her father committed. That would be neither justice nor mercy." Tragically, the federal government seems to be paying no attention to the empirical evidence like these surveys. Instead, in a display of raw power, the administration has simply announced that henceforth all states must pay for Medicaid abortions in cases of rape and incest. States that prohibit or limit Medicaid coverage of abortion are seeing their laws simply bulldozed by the federal government. So, why don't you call or write your governor or state representative and urge them to fight the new Medicaid directive that redefines [abortion for] all pregnancies from rape and incest as "medically necessary." Otherwise, you and I are going to see our tax dollars pay for a procedure that only intensifies the trauma of rape and sexual assault. Rape is a horrible crime. But abortion does not reverse it. It only adds death to injury. BreakPoint is copyright (c) 1994 by Prison Fellowship. To talk with Prison Fellowship about emailing BreakPoint write or call: Prison Fellowship (800) 497-0122 PO Box 17500 (703) 478-0100 Washington, DC 20041 (703) 834-3658 fax BreakPoint (800) 995-8777 ----------- David S McMeans amUous Mind Puzzles Dayton, OH BreakPoint with Chuck Colson