Mary Sargent, a Unitarian Universalist seminarian, invokes the "spirit of love," gives out platitudes along with shiny colored rocks, and "washes her hands between patients."
The Lady Macbethian hand-washing, we're told by reporter Jill Tucker, is "a ritual. A cleansing, allowing [Sargent] to move on to the next person."
This blather/rinse/repeat style of abortion-clinic counseling fits the situational ethics of Planned Parenthood's national chaplain, United Methodist minister Ignacio Castuera, who doesn't even pretend to care that abortion takes a human life. When he gives an example of why he believes abortion is necessary, he bypasses the usual mother's-health excuse. Instead, he says simply that unborn children should be killed if their mother can't afford them—and never mind the possibility of adoption.
Here's Castuera's argument, via reporter Tucker:
[F]or abortion-rights advocates, the moral and spiritual questions raised aren’t so clearly defined.Considering Castuera's a pastor, you'd think he'd be more concerned with helping women follow the one who really earned His stripes. But that doesn't mesh with the Planned Parenthood theology—a theology that tells women that they are God. Or so it sounds from the lips of Chaplain Sargent, as Tucker writes:
Take a single parent, mother of four with limited means, posed national chaplain Castuera.
Say the pill failed. Or the condom broke.
"Is a fetus valuable? Yes, of course it is," Castuera said. "Is the fetus as valuable as a mother with four children?"
What if she can’t afford another child?
"That’s where everybody earns their stripes, making those tough decisions," Castuera added. "Anybody who paints that as an easy decision has never spent a second with those women struggling with what to do."
[Sargent] says she doesn’t believe God and abortion are at odds.That's not Christianity, that's Wicca. Or, rather, it's Satanism, as espoused by the Aleister Crowley maxim, "Do what thou wilt."
"As a Christian, I believe in a God who loves me unconditionally and who at the same time has expectations of me in the world," Sargent said.
The idea is to tune in to those expectations and stay on that path. Sometimes, that means having a baby, sometimes not.
Look at it this way: If someone says that God "expects" them to take a job or not, or to take a husband or not, we might allow that they're being guided by the Holy Spirit. If someone says that God expects them to kill their child, there's no wiggle room. They're just insane.
Sargent continues:
"God has dreams and visions and hopes for us, much like a parent for a child," she said.Well, I hope God doesn't have "visions" for us in much the same way as abortive parents do for a child—or we're in big trouble.
[Sargent's] message to patients is simple: "Your life is important to God."Translation: "Your" life is important to God. Your baby's is not. Here, take a nice, shiny rock.
