A private group is opening the first abortion clinic in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland is not governed under the UK’s Abortion Law and the group will only be able to provide abortion services during the first nine weeks of pregnancy to comply with the country’s abortion laws.
Anti-abortion groups are calling for the group’s clinic to not be allowed to open. Continue reading
Moroccan authorities at the port of Smir have blocked the “Abortion Boat” from being able to dock in their country. The entire harbor was blocked by authorities to keep the boat from docking.
Moroccan health ministry officials said on Wednesday they would prohibit the ship from operating within the nation’s waters. They have also called on the government to enforce the nation’s laws against abortion on anyone connected to the boat. Continue reading
A Dutch organization is taking a boat to Morocco with the intention of allowing Muslim women within the nation to have abortions.
“Women on Waves” has been operating the boat for the past 11 years visiting nations where abortions are illegal like Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain. The organization takes women on the boat into international waters, performs the abortion and then returns them to land. Continue reading
Uruguay’s lower house of Congress has given approval to a bill that would allow abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. The Uruguayan Senate approved a similar measure last December and will soon vote on the new bill. President Jose Mujica said he will approve the law if passed.
The bill would make Uruguay the most liberal country in South America for abortion. Continue reading
A British woman who induced an early birth of her full-term baby and then claimed the baby was stillborn has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Sarah Louise Catt, 35, buried the body of the child and has refused to tell authorities of the baby’s location. Continue reading
Early August 1998
“The next year, 1977, I got pregnant again. Jesse and I had moved to Farmington, New Mexico. I remember we drove there the night Elvis died, pulling a small trailer with everything we owned. Jesse was working a lot of hours as a boilermaker for a power plant there. We rented a double-wide mobile home, and it was one of the nicer places we lived. I fixed it up, and I was the typical little housewife—except that I smoked pot all the time. We weren’t doing major drugs then. My grandma Graham died, and when I flew to Phoenix for the funeral, I made a doctor’s appointment. I needed to have a cyst removed, and since I had just found out I was pregnant—and Jesse didn’t want the baby, of course—I decided to have an abortion at the same time. That was the only abortion that was done in a hospital.”
Chris and Jolene asked a question now and then to prod my memory, but mostly they just let me talk.
“Jesse and I separated for a while, and he had a girlfriend. When we got back together, we moved to Pinetop, up in the mountains; it was very beautiful there. Because of Jesse’s work we moved a lot, little towns all over Arizona and New Mexico. I once counted fifty different apartments or houses or hotels where we had lived in the ten years we were married.
“We went to Prescott for the fourth of July. It was wild there in the ‘70’s. The Hell’s Angels would ride into town, and the police would close the streets for the holiday. Prescott is a quaint little town with antique shops, and there’s a street called Whiskey Row with a bunch of saloons. Jesse and I were doing Quaaludes and partying in and out of the bars. I was so spaced out, I was offering Quaaludes to cops; there was no way they could control the drugs and alcohol, so they simply tried to keep the peace. We were in front of the courthouse, in the center of town, when Jesse went nuts and started hitting me, and the cops had to pull him off of me.
“Jesse screamed, ‘Just get the ______ out of my life. Go find somebody else.’
“I literally took him up on it. I turned around, walked across the street, went into a bar, and met a man. Paul took me to his cabin, and I spent the night there with him. We had an off-and-on relationship for the next couple of years. Whenever Jesse beat me up, I called Paul; he came and got me and nursed me back to health. He was a very gentle guy. I don’t think he ever wanted me to leave Jesse to marry him, but he was always there for m. Jesse never knew about him.”
…..more to come.
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 1
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 2
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 3
Early August 1998
We had a beautiful suite with a separate bedroom and a kitchenette off the full-size living room. From the moment we walked in, I felt the presence of God, and I began to realize that something truly supernatural was in store for me that night.
Because I knew it would be an emotional time, I went to the bathroom, took my contacts out, and washed my face. While I was putting my pajamas on, Chris and Jolene prepared the living room. They placed boxes of tissues in various spots around the room, and they decorated one of the tables with a white linen tablecloth with lace trim. Continue reading
Early August 1998
That summer, my new friends Chris Harper and Jolene Dreisbach had been to a post-abortion healing conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’d never even heard the term post-abortion before that time, but I knew God was dealing with me about the abortion issue, and I knew that’s why he had brought Chris and Jolene into my life. I also knew it was time to leave Master’s Commission but did not yet know what I would do after that. Pastor Barnett had asked me to go to L.A. and help start the LAIC, the outreach that eventually became the Dream Center. Jack Wallace, who had been teaching the singles’ class the Sunday in 1989 when I made a commitment to Christ, was now pasturing a church in Detroit and wanted me on staff there. It would be a paid ministry position, and that would be a first for me.
As I prayed for direction, God started putting all the puzzle pieces together, and by August, Chris, Jolene, and I had decided to start a ministry to help bring healing to women who’d been through abortions. Before we formalized our plans to start Truth Ministries, the girls had told me they wanted to hold a memorial service for me. They’d been working on the ideas they’d learned at the Milwaukee conference, which had been not just for helping women heal emotionally after abortion but also after miscarriage and SIDS. “If we incorporated the Holy Spirit into the memorial,” they told me, “incredible things could happen.”
“Lori, think of it this way,” Chris said. “You never had a baby shower or did any of the things that would commemorate having a child. That’s what this memorial will do.”
“Or think of it this way,” Jolene added. “If you’d had a still born child or even a miscarriage, friends would have consoled you, and you would have mourned. But women who’ve had abortions—women like us—actually had the same kind of loss, yet we never had the experience of grieving for our children.”
I thought the idea of holding a memorial service for me sounded kind of strange at first, but they persisted.
“This is a way to deal with the abortions once and for all and to bring closure on the past,” Chris said.
Jolene agreed. “Please let us do this for you, Lori.”
We scheduled the memorial for the last weekend in August, right before my birthday. The week prior to that, God started softening my heart. I had always been the strong one, the one people came to with their problems. That week I became mush. Pastor Barnett rarely mentioned abortion from the pulpit, but that week he mentioned it twice, Sunday morning and Wednesday night. For some reason it was on his heart; he didn’t know I was that reason. He preached that abortion was wrong, but he also expressed compassion for women who had felt they had no other alternative.
On Wednesday night after church, Chris and Jolene told their families good-bye, then we drove to neighboring Scottsdale, where they had rented a one-bedroom hotel suite. We planned on staying until Friday night, so the fact that Chris and Jolene’s husbands were taking care of their kids for two days so we could be free to do this was a big deal to me. I didn’t think I deserved it. I was always telling people that God had great things in store for them, but I didn’t believe I would ever have the great things of God because the sin I had committed—abortion—was so horrible. I felt I would have to live with the pain and the emptiness, the loss and the shame, no matter how great a Christian I became. As we drove to Scottsdale, I sensed God saying to me, “Let these people minister to you.”
…..more to come.
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 1
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 3
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 4
“Jamie Charles Bakker was born December 18, 1975.” Jim was pretending to narrate a biography of his son.
The four of us— Jim and I, Jay and Amanda—were traveling from L.A. to Muskegon, Michigan, for the Bakker family reunion, and Jim was using the occasion to fill me in on some of the family history. Jim continued his story, but my mind stopped and focused on that date. December 18, 1975.
“Lori, you sure got quiet,” Jay said after a few minutes. “Are you carsick? Or just mesmerized by our life stories?” The others laughed.
“No, I…Sorry, Jay, I just had a major reality check when I heard your date of birth.” I swallowed hard. “You’re the same age my firstborn son would have been.” That realization had hit me like a ton of bricks. If I had carried my first pregnancy to term, the baby would have been born in late December ’75 or early January ’76.” I was looking at a flesh-and-blood son—soon to be my son, or at least my stepson—with his arm around his girlfriend, and he was the same age my firstborn would have been. “You guys could have been really good friends,” I said wistfully.
The moment passed awkwardly, Jay didn’t know what to say, and Jim simply looked sad. He reached over and took my hand. As much healing as I have had, the old, familiar grief can still reach out and squeeze my heart in a split second. IT doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is very real. Every time I looked at Jay for the next few hours, I thought of the son I never had because of my own choices. Gradually those thoughts faded.
Such thoughts, while painful, no longer overwhelmed me because of a deep inner healing I had experienced in 1994. That event remains the single most precious moment of truth in my life.
…..more to come.
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 2
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 3
Joy Came in the Morning – Part 4
Despite an overwhelming majority of Representatives voting in favor, a bill to curtail abortions in the nation’s capital failed because special rules were demanded that forced a 2/3 vote to pass. The bill’s 220 votes were well short of 2/3 of the chamber.