Thank you Cardinal Ouellet
I wanted to post this earlier but just did not have the time. I’m sure you all have heard the Cardinal Ouellet statement that abortion in the case of rape is still wrong (aside: A Catholic clergyman saying that abortion is wrong in all cases…what a shocker to the media!). Needless to say, he received a lot of criticism in the media. However, there is one woman at least who has thanked Cardinal Ouellet: Angelina Steenstra from Silent No More. Next week I will do more of a detailed post on Silent No More but for now I just want to post the quotes that she stated to Lifesitenews:
I wish I had heard his message when I was a teen and was raped and then aborted my daughter…I am deeply grateful to the Cardinal for proclaiming the truth that abortion, even in the case of rape, rather than helping the victim of rape, actually adds a second victim – the unborn child.
I was told abortion was no big deal. That it would solve my problem…finally I caved into my fears and made the phone call that would end the life of my child and begin a lifetime of suffering and regret.
The saleswoman on the other end of the phone skillfully confirmed all my fears. The fear of being ridiculed, rejected, a bad example to my siblings, of losing the love of my immediate and extended family, of being a single mother, of my inability to care for another, of not finishing school. She told me to find some friends to lend me 250 dollars and to drive me to the abortuary.
Abortion did not fix anything. It killed my daughter Sarah Elizabeth and killed a part of me…abortion did not liberate me. It enslaved me to a living hell.
Honesty is what brought me relief from the years of suffering…when I confessed my sin to a priest my journey of healing and integration began.
I just want the Cardinal to know that he is truly being a shepherd and a herald of the truth, the truth given in love, because it is the truth that sets us free. I want Cardinal Ouelett to know just how healing it is when priests and religious speak the truth. It may be hard to take, but like a surgery, it hurts, but then it liberates, and then healing can come.
I take issue with your statement that you aborted your “daughter Sarah Elizabeth”…how can you determine what the sex of the child was. When you had this abortion back in 1972 there would have been no way of knowing definitively what it was in the first trimester. Today it would be more appararent and could be determined what the sex of the fetus is. This goes directly to the veracity of your experience. Naming the fetus makes it seem more of a “story” than truth, an affirmation of what you think and feel….not what the bare facts are…
Do you think her experience would be more authentic if she’d said son/daughter?
I know someone who lost a child to miscarriage, and named the child something gender-neutral, because she didn’t know her child’s gender. But if the woman quoted in the post went with a gut feeling or flipped a coin… do you really think her experience would be different if her child was actually a boy?
What are the bare facts that she’s glazing over with her story?