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Rally for Abortion Rights: Jessica Lenehan

catlan — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:10:17 +0000

Hello all! My name is Jessica Lenehan and I speak to you today as a student from La Trobe University, and member of the Campaign for Women’s Reproductive Rights.
We’re here today, all of us, because we believe in a woman’s right to choose.

Because we trust women.

And we know that real choice means the ability to terminate or go to term, although we know which has the more obnoxious lobby group. And to have the support that you need along the way. To then be able to raise your children as best you can, to access doctors, nurses, midwives, doolas; to do what you want to do.
To not be blamed if you can’t afford nutritious food. To not be blamed for being poor, stressed, and sad.
So I want to talk to you about education, and making these options a reality.

This means being able to choose the sex that you want.
This means understanding the consequences of your decisions. And this is supported by education – education is a reproductive right. Access to quality education is so important for women and for their families.

The TAFE cuts are worse for women. This will come as no surprise, and is reiterated in this report. We know that when there are education cuts, when austerity measures come in, when the pressure is on, we know that this burden falls on the most vulnerable.

Education doesn’t just help us get by in this society; it also teaches us how to transform it. With education comes confidence, and with confidence amazing things can happen. Like all of these people coming out today to protest the bigotry and hate of the right-wingers who want to deny women the right to choose. Through education we can learn the history of these struggles, and with education we can win. We won in 2008 and we are never going back! Thank you.

Real Choice, Divine Sway, and the Way Paul Lived

Rachel Duke — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:19:11 +0000

I wanted to share with you all a blog John Piper wrote on desiringgod.com, touching on the topic of the sovereignty of God:

One of the most influential passages in the Bible that God used to open my mind to his sovereignty over my will is Philippians 2:12-13.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

So my working and willing are necessary. They are real. But they are not first or ultimately decisive. God’s willing and working is decisively under and in my willing and working. The word “for” is crucial. I work because he is working in me. I will, because he is willing in me.

Believing this precedes understanding how it works. God says it. I believe it. Now I am spending a lifetime learning what it is like to live this way.

Paul did not just tell me to live this way. He modeled living this way one chapter later. He said in Philippians 3:12,

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

His pressing on to secure the resurrection from the dead (v. 11) is rooted in Christ’s decisively securing him for the resurrection from the dead. In other words, all Paul’s striving is real, and it is certain because Christ makes it certain.

He modeled the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

So abandon any anti-Bible intellectual baggage you have inherited from planet earth, and recalibrate your brain to embrace the paradoxes of real human choice and decisive divine sway.

Shalom,

Rachel B. Duke

17,000 Texans Welcome Barack Obama To Dallas

virginiadem — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:23:03 +0000