Meet Sheila Harper!

If you have a copy of "All the King's Orphans", you will read the words of Sheila Harper on the back cover.  Sheila was so instrumental in helping this book become what it is today.

I am so grateful for her willingness to offer advice but more than hearing her thoughts on my book, I need you, my readers, to know more about this woman named Sheila Harper.  The life she has lived is one that brings tears and builds hope all at the same time.   Her testimony astounds and inspires me to love more and judge less.

Her story begins…  "At four years of age, my mother and I were in a tragic car accident. I was thrown through the windshield, she was killed instantly. Throughout my childhood years after this event, I endured sexual abuse, then a psychotic stepmother came in to the picture who hated me and made sure I knew it."

If you're like me and CANNOT stop here - go to her blog and read the rest of her story - a life bound by drugs, sex, abortion, debt and finally, attempted suicide.

Sheila didn't stay there though - and today, she is the Founder and President of SaveOne, an international outreach ministry for men and women suffering in silence after an abortion.

Sheila is also the author of multiple books - including “SaveOne- The Ripple Effect”. This book is for friends and loved ones of abortion survivors who are seeking a deeper understanding into the abortion issue. 

We all know someone who has had an abortion (we may not know they have had one, but I guarantee you that someone in your life has been affected by it in some way), and it is my belief that we need to educate ourselves so we can better understand how to love and encourage those who have made the decision to abort.

If you have had an abortion, or know someone who has, please visit SheilaHarperblog.com and take advantage of the help, support and love she has to offer.

Jesus has given her a beautiful life in exchange for her brokenness and Sheila's life is a living, breathing picture of God's desire to restore and redeem!




Lynette Carpenter is available for interviews and appearances. For booking presentations, media appearances, interviews, and/or book-signings contact lynettecarpenter@yahoo.com.

Buckle Up, Baby

I’m confused by a society that promotes women’s rights as heavily as ours, yet contradicts itself on so many levels.

I’m confused by a society that will grant my future teenage daughter the right to abort her child without parental knowledge or consent.  Yet this same society refuses to pierce her ears, loan her a movie, grant her an email address or hand her a library card without my John Hancock!

Then there are my personal rights. 

I have the right to carry a child in my womb, and then have it aborted during delivery.  The procedure would go something like this (yes, it’s graphic): 

“In a partial-birth abortion, the abortionist pulls a living baby feet-first out of the womb and into the birth canal, except for the head, which the abortionist purposely keeps lodged just inside the cervix.

The abortionist punctures the base of the baby’s skull with a surgical instrument, such as a long surgical scissors or a pointed hollow metal tube called a trochar. 

He then inserts a catheter into the wound, and removes the baby's brain with a powerful suction machine.  This causes the skull to collapse, after which the abortionist completes the delivery of the now-dead baby.”  -NRLC

I, as a woman, have the right to do that.  Yet, should I choose to give birth to this same child and one day find myself discreetly nursing this same child on a park bench somewhere, society is appalled!

Seriously?

Vice President Joe Biden said, "I do not believe that we have a right to tell...women they can’t control their body.” 

My body… my rights, right? 

Yet I do not have the right to drive myself to the abortion clinic without wearing my seatbelt.

But it’s my body!

Our culture demands that women should individually be allowed to choose what’s best for themselves, while on a daily basis, women are incarcerated for selling their own bodies for sex or pumping drugs into their veins.    

We live in a civilization that demands a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her body, but should that same woman repeatedly shove her finger down her throat, slice her wrists, or attempt to take her own life, she forfeits her freedoms for the four walls of a mental facility.  

But… it’s her body, her rights, right?

I’m tired.  Tired of watching people turn a blind eye to something so inconsistent and wrong in the name of ‘the right to choose’.   I’m tired of turning a blind eye to what abortion really is… and how it’s done.

When are we going to wake up and notice that the only difference between what a woman calls a “baby” or a “fetus” is entirely contingent on whether she wants to keep it or not?

When are we going to see the stupidity of a murderer going to prison for killing his wife and unborn child?  Yet abortion is legal? 

And no one sees the inconsistency?

What happens to a pregnant woman who shoots herself in the belly?  I don’t know.  I’m asking.

Do I hate women who have chosen abortion?  Absolutely not!  (See Erin’s story.)  Instead my heart hurts for their pain – because they do have it.  Abortions cannot be done without causing some measure of guilt and pain to the mother… and I hate that for them.

Laws can always be changed, and while I wish they would, that’s not my goal... laws don’t change hearts.  Instead, I’d rather see people recognize the lie we’ve allowed ourselves to believe. 

The lie that life does not begin until that squirming little body completely and fully enters the room. 

The lie that it doesn’t really matter… that it won’t affect me (the physical pain and higher percentages of miscarriages, infertility and breast cancer among woman who’ve had abortions speak otherwise).

The lie that life does not begin at conception – yet pro-life and pro-choice parents alike, giggle and awww over the squirming mass of cells they see thumb-sucking, yawning and kicking on the ultrasound screen.

Is it only a “baby” because it was planned?

  

As a woman, I have the right to choose whether or not I want to get pregnant.  That choice for me would be “no thanks”.  (But should I find myself with an unexpected pregnancy, I will then honor the rights of that child… baby… fetus… whatever you prefer to call it, and will grant it the same privileges I’ve been given by our country’s Declaration of Independence - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness… and one day I would hold their little face in my hands and wonder how I could have lived without him or her.)

And as a woman, I also have the right to choose to have my doctor insert a tube into my partially delivered child's skull and suck it's brains out.  I can choose!

I choose “no”.

As a woman, I have the right to ask my doctor to inject a saline (salt) solution into my uterus where the baby not only swallows the salt and has its skin burn away, but it also takes an hour for the baby to die.  I have that right.

My answer is “no”.

As a woman, I have the right to choose!  So choose, I shall.

But, by golly, I hope I don’t forget to wear my seatbelt.

On the Air With Eve!

This past summer, I received an email from Cathie Humbarger.  Cathie is the director of Indiana Right to Life and she was looking to get in touch with Erin Eve.  (If you're not familiar with Erin's story - it starts here.)  I put her in touch with Erin and to our excitement, Erin was invited to come to Ft. Wayne to be featured in one of Allen County's Right to Life radio broadcasts.

Outside the radio station

So, one day in July, Erin and I made the short trip to Ft Wayne.  I was planning on snapping pictures and eat me some Olive Garden, but after meeting Cathie and the standard introduction of "this is Marlin's Sister", she invited me to join the discussion as well!  :)

Kris Opper from Silent No More was the other guest that morning.  I so enjoyed meeting both Cathie and Kris.  Both ladies have a beautiful testimony of what has led them to making this their mission in life.  Their passion for women struggling with abortion is so apparent and I'm grateful for the work they do!

Cathie Humbarger, Erin Eve, myself and Kris Opper in the studio

That radio broadcast will be on the air today at 10 am on the Bott Radio Station 1090am. Other air
times are listed on our website @ www.ichooselife.org.  The link is towards the bottom of the page.


You can also listen to it here!