Rebecca Warner's Blog, page 5

September 19, 2014

MORAL INFIDELITY FREE ON AMAZON 9/21 to 9/24!

MORAL INFIDELITY by Rebecca Warner


POLITICS…LUST…LIES…BETRAYAL


When his mistress becomes pregnant, pro-life Florida Governor Michael Romano finds himself embroiled in a moral dilemma that threatens to shatter his marriage, his career and his reputation. His mistress wants him and his baby, and she will publicly destroy his carefully-constructed life if he doesn’t meet her demands.


Caught in the nightmarish consequences of his deceit and duplicity, Governor Romano must make choices that will test the strength of his moral fiber to its limits…But will his choices lead to his salvation, or his ruin?


From September 21, 2014 to September 24, 2014, the MORAL INFIDELITY eBook version will be available for FREE on Amazon. You don’t need a Kindle to read it, because the Kindle app allows you to download it on your tablet, iPhone, iPod,  desktop, laptop, android, mac–wherever you enjoy reading your eBooks


Go to www.moralinfidelity.com and click “Buy the Book” (free on the above dates) or get it on Amazon.


MORAL INFIDELITY has received 30 Five-Star reviews!  Here are excerpts from several of those reviews:


“The characters, the intrigue and the emotions are palpable.”


PG| 9 reviewers made a similar statement


“It is a well written story with intrigue, character development and a surprising outcome.”


Jo-Ann Rauch| 8 reviewers made a similar statement


“There were many surprising plot twists and turns!”


Cheryl C. Stewarrt| 7 reviewers made a similar statement


“I would recommend this book to anyone. Don’t be afraid of the abortion issue; this is a book for anyone, anywhere along the range of abortion opinions. Skillfully done!”   ~ Karen J


“You won’t want to put this book down until you reach the very end. After that you will be thinking about the characters and their choices for quite some time.”   ~ Sandra S. Spooner


“The story is a tale of romance, deceit, and mystery that is wonderfully and intelligently rolled together. If you want a smart read, this is for you.” ~  RSM

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Published on September 19, 2014 11:14

September 15, 2014

WENDY DAVIS’ HEART-RENDING SHARE

WENDY DAVIS SHARES POWERFUL, HEART-RENDING PERSONAL CHOICE STORIES


“We are our choices.”   ~Jean-Paul Sartre – French existentialist philosopher and pioneer


“The hardest choices in life aren’t between what’s right and what’s wrong but between what’s right and what’s best.”   ~ Jamie Ford, Author, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet


WENDY DAVIS, candidate for Governor of Texas, has publicly shared two deeply-moving and impactful events in her personal life.


In her book, Forgetting to be Afraid, she reveals that she had an abortion in 1996 after an exam revealed that the brain of the fetus had developed in complete separation on the right and left sides. She sought opinions from multiple doctors, all of whom told her the baby would be deaf, blind and in a permanent vegetative state, if she survived delivery.


Mrs. Davis also describes terminating in 1994 an ectopic pregnancy, in which an embryo implants outside the uterus. Such pregnancies are typically terminated because the fetus generally cannot survive, and the mother’s life is at risk.


Senator Davis felt so strongly about keeping abortions legal and accessible that she stood in front of Texas lawmakers on June 25, 2013 and filibustered—for almost 13 hours without a bathroom break—the draconian abortion legislation that was to be voted on in that session. Though she was successful that day, the legislation was passed during a special session called by Governor Rick Perry for just that purpose, and signed by him on July 18, 2013.


(The effects of the passage of that law can be found here: http://www.lilithfund.org/new-laws/)


Her opponent in the Texas Governor’s race, Greg Abbott, has taken the high road and stated, “The unspeakable pain of losing a child is beyond tragic for any parent. As a father, I grieve for the Davis family and for the loss of life.”


It is difficult for even anti-choice politicians to find fault in having a medical procedure that saves a mother’s life and terminates a fetus that will never be viable outside the womb.


WENDY DAVIS’ SECOND PERSONAL DISCLOSURE revealed that her mother almost killed herself and her children because of depression after divorcing her husband—Wendy’s father.


At the time, Davis’ mother was in her 20s, with three children, aged five and under.


Her mother became depressed after Wendy’s birth and when, after the divorce, her husband remarried. Wendy’s mother felt all alone.


“She almost took her life and ours,” Mrs. Davis told Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts this morning (9/8/2014.)


She told Robin that her mother put her children in the trunk of the car because “she couldn’t imagine leaving the world and leaving us behind….She had intended to start the car in the garage,” Wendy said. “And an angel came into our lives that day. A neighbor who had never come to our home before rang the bell. And he sat in the living room. He held my mother’s hand. He talked to her for quite a long time. And by the time he left, she was through it. And she came and collected us from the car and put one foot in front of the other and pushed on for all of us, and did a beautiful job of it.”


If you have had any such personal “angel” experience, you know how powerful and life-transforming it can be. How wonderful that this was the case in Wendy’s mother’s life, because today we have Wendy Davis, an indefatigable, sympathetic, resourceful, courageous Harvard Law School graduate fighting for women’s continued right to make their own choices about their reproductive health.


Thank you, Wendy, for sharing your story about your mother’s choice to live and to let her children live.


And thank you for sharing the poignant story of your own choice to terminate two life-threatening pregnancies.


Quality of life really is all about having the freedom to make choices, isn’t it?

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Published on September 15, 2014 12:49

September 2, 2014

KOCH BROTHERS’ BOTTOMLESS COFFERS: CAN MY PUNY $25 HELP LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD?

Another email lands in my inbox. The subject: “Rebecca, we need your help.”


I think, Well, sure…What can I do?


Donate. Donate again.  And again. “Your $10 makes a difference,” I am assured in the hundreds of emails I have received from the myriad Democratic fund-raising organizations.


Because I want to change the face of Congress so that Republican lawmakers are addressing serious issues, instead of pushing for a 20-week abortion ban, trying to roll back access to birth control, or working to limit low-income women’s insurance coverage for abortion, I did donate to a number of Democratic candidates during the 2012 election cycle.


Since then, my inbox has been inundated with pleas for more donations.


Some are really effective, like this one I received last year:


“News just broke that Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan snuck off to the Koch brothers’ infamous secret gathering of right-wing millionaires.


You can bet that Cantor and Ryan are lining their pockets with money from the Kochs and some of their closest friends. All of that cash will go toward obstructing President Obama’s agenda at all costs.”


I will admit this information caused a stab of anxiety. Cantor and Ryan lining their pockets with seemingly unending sources of Koch money gets my ire up. And when my ire is up, my credit card becomes vulnerable.


Okay, so I donated…But did it help? Maybe.  After all, Cantor is history.


Fast forward to this year, and we learn that the Koch brothers held another super-secret retreat of millionaires and billionaires. Invitees included the most powerful Republican Party leaders, and the most important Republican candidates. All came running, of course.


It has been reported that Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate Minority Leader, speaking of the Republican Party, said at this retreat, “I want to start by thanking you, Charles and David, for the important work you’re doing. I don’t know where we’d be without you.”


No doubt I will soon get another email from many Democratic organizations—and probably even President Obama—telling me we have to fight back against the Koch brothers and other millionaires who are buying elections. And again, it will get my ire up, and I’ll probably donate.


Somehow, the DCCC and the DNC know this. But what do they know about me? I know they keep records of how much I donate, because I just got an email summing up my 2014 donations, with a request for another donation. So then I wonder, do they have some kind of software that is able to identify what particular emails elicit a donation from me?


Do they know what tone, what issues, what names provoke a keystroke that adds to their coffers? Or do they just shotgun emails to me, along with 40 million others and count on a certain percentage to respond? My guess is the latter, and suspecting that, I have determined I can ignore these emails and they just won’t notice or care. But it doesn’t diminish the onslaught.


Hundreds more emails from the DCCC have come in since June, 2014. This particular one prompted me to write this blog:


“This is a real problem :


Speaker Boehner is throwing everything he’s got at re-electing his House Republican majority. And if he wins, we’ll be stuck with another 2 years of Tea Party Republicans trying to destroy everything you and President Obama have worked for.



This may sound harsh — but the truth is that if we get outraised, we won’t win the House this year.”


Fear.  Anxiety.  Despondency. Defeat. Resolve. Every now and then, Hope slips in.


The emails are masterfully crafted, succinct, and appealing. They push my buttons, hoping I’ll push the “Donate Now” button. I can’t block them all, and I don’t particularly want to, because I do like to see what the Republicans and the Koch brothers are up to.


But I never saw it as my responsibility to beat back the Koch Brothers’ attacks. I never accepted it as my role to keep John Boehner from wreaking havoc. I have a hard time believing that I can save Social Security. And I’ve never thought I could personally be effective in shaping government.Yet I’m assured that “even $10 (up from $3 last year) will make a difference.”


I didn’t enable the “one click” option for the lightening-quick donation site, Act Blue. If I had, I would be able to donate with alacrity, and my credit card would become more stressed than I.  But my donations are tempered by my having to get up and go get my credit card. This is deliberate on my part. There’s a bit of time for reflection during that exercise, and it often saves me from myself.


So what is the upshot of my donations? How effective are they? Finding exact numbers is not easy, but from sunlightfoundation.com I learned that, “More than a quarter of the nearly $6 billion in contributions from identifiable sources in the last campaign cycle came from just 31,385 individuals, a number equal to one ten-thousandth of the U.S. population.”


In other words, 1% of the 1%.


“One sign of the reach of this elite 1% of the 1%: Not a single member of the House or Senate elected in 2012 last year won without financial assistance from this group. And 84 percent of those elected in 2012 took more money from these 1% of the 1% donors than they did from all of their small donors (individuals who gave $200 or less) combined.”


Since I gave nowhere near the minimum amount of $12,950 that would qualify me as 1% of the 1%, am I to conclude that my donations had no affect whatsoever on election results? If not a single member of the House or Senate elected last year won without financial assistance from this 1% of the 1%, what does that say about the effectiveness of my $25 to $200 donations?


Really, who can say? But the bottom line for me is, I’m not ready to stop donating altogether, despite how insignificant my donations may seem. Somehow, I still want to believe I can make a difference with my dollars. I want a voice that is louder than the voice that my single vote casts.


Am I deluding myself?  Possibly.  But I know that when I do give into the impulse and I do donate, it is done with the hope that my $25 might fuse with one million other $25 donations, and that the resulting $25 million might, just might, help level playing field.


 

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Published on September 02, 2014 13:01

August 20, 2014

COMMON-SENSE QUOTES RE: WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Last week’s MORAL INFIDELITY blog featured some of the most outrageous quotes ever made by men regarding women’s reproductive rights. From rape to abortion, clueless men offered their ignorant, misogynistic assertions.


This week, I would like to counter those crazy quotes with intelligent, realistic, common-sense quotes.


After the Hobby Lobby decision, some of our most admired reproductive-freedom advocates had some choice words for the Supreme Court’s decision.


SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBERG:


“Contraception protection is something that every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny,” Ginsburg said. “I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no Constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don’t share that belief. I have never seen the free exercise of religion clause interpreted in such a way.”


~


HILLARY CLINTON, former United States Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady of the United States:


“Many more companies will claim religious beliefs. Some will be sincere, others maybe not. We’re going to see this one insurable service cut out for many women,” she said. “This is a really bad, slippery slope.”


~


SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN (D) MASSACHUSETTS:


I was stunned by last week’s Hobby Lobby ruling.


Stunned that we live in a world where the Supreme Court of the United States of America would even consider putting the interests of big corporations before the fundamental rights of American women.


Stunned that the Court would establish precedent for one enormous slippery slope on letting employers deny individuals health coverage for any medical treatment.


~


BEFORE HOBBY LOBBY: OTHER NOTABLE QUOTES


 


JOYCELYN ELDERS, Former Surgeon General of the United States:


“We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.”


~


KATHA POLLITT, American feminist poet, essayist and critic:


“Young women need to know that abortion rights and abortion access are not presents bestowed or retracted by powerful men (or women) — Presidents, Supreme Court justices, legislators, lobbyists — but freedoms won, as freedom always is, by people struggling on their own behalf.”


~


KRISTIN LUKER, Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley:


“Pro-choice and pro-life activists live in different worlds, and the scope of their lives, as both adults and children, fortifies them in their belief that their own views on abortion are the more correct, the more moral, and more reasonable. When added to this is the fact that should ‘the other side’ win, one group of women will see the very real devaluation of their lives and life resources, it is not surprising that the abortion debate has generated so much heat and so little light.”


~


AYN RAND, American novelist, philosopher, playwright (author of ATLAS SHRUGGED)


“One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living.”


~


FREDERICA MATHEWES-GREEN, Eastern Orthodox author and speaker on the subjects of religion and abortion


“No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.”


~


ARISTOTLE, Greek philosopher and scientist


“(T)he line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.”


~


GAYLE FORMAN, New York Times bestselling author


“Mom was adamantly pro-choice. She had a bumper sticker on the car that read, If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”


~


DENNIS MILLER, comedian, talk show host, political commentator


“And by the way, my belief is that if men were the ones getting pregnant, abortions would be easier to get than food poisoning in Moscow.”


~


MARGARET SANGER, American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse


“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”


~


AND MY PERSONAL FAVORITE:



HILLARY CLINTON, former United States Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady of the United Statesformer NY Senator and former Secretary of State


“I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion.”


 

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Published on August 20, 2014 17:35