Born in the same year, Mrs. Clinton and I have lived through the 1960’s/70’s women’s liberation movement, with its reciprocal impact on artificial birth control/abortion. And it is our divergence on the abortion issue that provides the second reason why I cannot in good conscience vote for Hillary.

Without a doubt the abortion issue is simultaneously very complex (from the adult perspective) and very simple (from the child’s perspective). It is the latter aspect of the paradox that this blog focuses on. Simply put, abortion kills an innocent life. The simple reality for the child is that the child’s life is brutally ended.

To be totally honest, as a determined “women’s  libber,” for many years after abortion became legal, I believed–of course!–that every woman had the absolute right to choose life or death for her enwombed offspring. …And then something happened that changed my mind.

Quite unexpectedly, I saw a pro-life video that showed infants in the womb moving to escape the scalpels that invaded their enclosed world–scalpels–in abortion settings– meant to dismember them. And I saw the hideously scarred remains of babies, retrieved from garbage pails, that had been burned alive in their mothers’ wombs by saline solution. And I was literally sickened.

Wait! When I initially believed in the mother’s right to choose an abortion, didn’t I do so because it was just blobs of tissue being sucked out of a woman’s womb–not a baby in development?

In subsequent years before seeing the video, how did I miss the scientific developments? The sonograms? The in utero videos?…The irrefutable neurological “proofs” that fairly early on preborn babies feel pain? How did I miss new information that from the nanosecond that egg unites with sperm, a person is a person, and everything that person ever will be that is DNA-determined is encoded in one cell.

In retrospect, I think about how my “adult” thirst and satisfaction for “women’s rights” had clouded my better adolescent judgment. When I studied ancient history in high school, I remember feeling mortified that some ancient peoples left their  unwanted babies on a mountaintop to die. Surely those people were not civilized, I thought, no matter what kinds of classical arts they created.

Then, too, how nauseated I was when I learned about “uncivilized” peoples sacrificing babies to their gods. How did I get off thinking that killing unwanted babies–sacrificial victims to a woman’s right–before they were born was any less civilized? While we have never indulged in sacrificial infanticide in the ancient sense of offering children to gods, when it comes to using abortion as a means of birth control, I would think that we have made into gods our selfish, self-centered preoccupations and our needs, and we have used abortion to create our infanticide victims.

Surely, even today!, if there were a dictatorial regime anywhere on Earth which caused breach deliveries so that a full term baby’s spinal cord could be cut and its brains sucked out before its head was fully delivered (which would constitute a live birth) I daresay Americans would be indignant–would decry such brutal barbarism. Please learn about partial birth abortions, for that is what I have just described.

Perchance, do you remember, as I do, seeing the iconic photo of the firefighter lovingly carrying in his arms a burned toddler, victim of the domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City? As expected, Americans were heart broken to see that child’s burned body. No surprise! We Americans are sensitive; we are protective of our children; we recoil when an innocent child is hurt.We have zero tolerance for those who would abuse our children. And well we should….Why, oh why, do we not feel that same protectiveness toward babies in the womb? …Truly, if we saw abortion-in-action videos, I have no doubt that we would!

Admittedly, there are many democratic justifications for a woman’s freedom of choice regarding abortion; there are many reasons why and circumstances when women understandably feel compelled to terminate a pregnancy. But the simple truth is that terminating a pregnancy is brought about by murdering the most innocent of our American brothers and sisters. Although it is beyond the purview of this blog to substantiate all the documented, proven ways that abortion harms the mother and really is not in her best health interests, the bottomline focus in this reflection solely is on the preborn child.

In that regard, then, I challenge Mrs. Clinton to stand on her strong advocacy for women by protecting the lives of the absolute youngest women–the preborn women whose birth gender is established from their one-cell existence. Let us assume that one-half of all the abortions kill baby-women. Should we permit the abortion of the other half of the babies–of the male babies? Of course not! equal rights and equal protection under the law demand that men-babies’ lives be protected, too.

Simply put: ALL LIVES MATTER. That means that male and female, alike, ALL PREBORN LIVES MATTER!

As long as Mrs. Clinton and the political party she represents take a cavalier attitude toward the killing of children in the womb, as long as they speak and act as if the adult woman’s rights were the only rights, I will not and cannot in conscience vote for her or any members of her party.

I pray for all the women who feel pressured in any and all ways to go against themselves, against their own offspring to become their children’s executioners. I rejoice that there are many programs that offer mercy and assistance to women recovering from the emotional and spiritual devastation of having taken their children’s lives, and I applaud all those programs that offer every type of crisis pregnancy support, including abortion alternatives.We must support women who feel abortion is their only choice.

For mothers to love their initially unwanted babies, the mothers themselves must feel loved–a tough love that says, “Please don’t harm your child. Please let us love you; let us help you love your baby into the fullness of birth.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”–let us offer to mothers and babies, alike, those democratic inalienable rights that come from God; from God Whose children include both the mother, as well as the child who comes from Him through the mother. God loves them both.

Abortion kills more than the life of a male or female baby. It kills the life-loving sensibilities of the Nation. Mrs. Clinton, please lead a 21C. Women’s Liberation Movement. Please lead women into realizing that true liberation is the freedom to love and to be loved by the children who grow and develop within their very bodies.

Surely, Mrs. Clinton, as a mother and grandmother, you can wish to extend to other women the blessings of motherhood you have known for yourself. Thank you, Mrs. Clinton, and God bless you!

Meanwhile, thank you, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence, for committing to protecting all life, especially the lives of the preborn American children, who are counting on you and the pro-life party you represent. Praise God for you!