PIttsburg is on the map

 Pittsburg is on the map

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have a friend in Philadelphia who sends me news stories he thinks I might be interested in.  Most are about mathematics and mathematicians, but a recent one that he sent me was about Pittsburg, Kansas, my home, and for my Pittsburg readers, our home.  It was from the Associated Press and was concerning the new abortion clinic in town.

One of the themes of the article was that this is a small town, you know everybody, and you are going to see the people you disagree with. In reading the article I noted that I knew people on both sides of the controversy. I don’t need to mention their names because they know me too. This is a small town.

That there would be an abortion clinic in our town was not a surprise.  Indeed, from a particular point of view, its arrival was almost certain. This is because of the juxtaposition of two events.  The first was the reversal of Roe v. Wade which sent abortion laws back to the states.  This decision, I believe, was part of the impetus for the attempt to pass the “Value Them Both” amendment to the Kansas Constitution.

The second event was the subsequent defeat of the “Value Them Both” amendment. Its defeat solidified, in a political sense, Kansas’s very permissive abortion laws for the foreseeable future. It was defeated so decisively that it will take a while for its proponents to regroup. The current legal situation in our state is stable and possibly set in concrete.

Given those two events, human nature, economics, and geography, the establishment of an abortion clinic in this part of Kansas became something that was going to happen, a fait accompli. 

Full disclosure: I am pro-life, so I take no pleasure in the new clinic in town. 

Am I angry?

I’ve reached the age where events like this simply make me sad. The 1st verse of the 9th Chapter of the Book of Jeremiah hits tragically on the mark: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”

But, regardless, the clinic is here. In our town. In my town.

What’s going to happen?

Yes, that is the question.

As the AP article pointed out, there have been times in Kansas where this state of affairs has not been handled very well.

I don’t want that for my town. For our town.

For those of us who are against abortion, what do we do?

In a small town, just ignoring it is not an option, not even if that option was acceptable to your conscience.  For my part, my personal physician and the pharmacy that I use are just a stone’s throw from the clinic.  I will be reminded of the clinic and what is going on there every time I have a checkup, everytime I get a prescription refilled, both of which happen with alarming regularity because I am old.

I can’t tell you what to do. You might be pro-choice and just be happy with this. You might be pro-life and getting guidance from your church on what to do.  

What I am going to do is pray.  

Prayer seems to have become more a theme of these columns recently.  I don’t know whether it’s because I am getting old and wise or simply old and irrelevant.

I think we need to pray for the women who are going through this. Please give me a moment to make my point.

Men are traditionally supposed to be brave, but women are the brave ones. Historically, childbirth was probably the number one cause of the death of women. Yet consider the story of Rachel from the Book of Genesis who was absolutely desperate to have a child. She eventually did have two and died while having the second one. 

In that world, the women knew the risk; they had all seen other women die in childbirth; had been there as it happened; and yet they continued.

That is bravery.

I know that there are those who will disagree with me, but I believe nature has planted a desire in women to become mothers. For a woman to come to a point where she believes that killing her baby is a way out is in tension against that nature. 

It’s tragic.

But right now at this point in time, I believe prayer is just about all I can do.  Pray for the women; pray for their children. Pray that the men who fathered these children would step up and be men. Pray that these women will be able to find another way out.

God help us.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.