Abortion

I'm working on an abortion essay for a contest. While doing some research about the true nature of this bloody industry, I came across a lot of disgusting pictures. Instead of posting any of them, I think this one captures the nature of 99% of abortions fairly well.
I think it's pitiful that abortion has lasted for 30 years in the USA. Maybe it's because, unlike other human rights' issues, the people who are victims cannot speak out. They have no votes, no political sway. The mothers who want to get abortions (or fathers who force them to) are the ones who control the situation.
Moreover, the industry of abortion is huge - millions of dollars fuel a giant practice of slaughter. (I am still looking up figures, I'll post the whole essay when I'm done.) It's like trying to take down gambling. The casinos and those addicted to gambling will fight with all their power to keep the casinos open. And sadly, most of those who don't gamble are apathetic towards it; they don't want to tell others how to live their lives.
Yet the Bible does give us instructions on how to live, and I think that the government has a responsibility to outlaw sinful practices. Its purpose is to punish wrongdoers and protect the nation from invasion. I believe that there is a lot of wrong being done through the Roe v. Wade decision in this country, and it's time to change it.

P.S. more on this later, when I finish my essay. I will get some facts and refine these crude arguments, which are more like appeals to emotion than anything else.

Two Quotes About Diligent Work

Well, my apps are in; we'll see what happens. Stanford, Caltech, MIT, Stevens and Cornell now know as much as they could find out about me, and hopefully they like what they know.

I'm still thinking about diligence and trying to discipline myself more. Here is a quote from James V. Schall in On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, pg 109:
"The object of self-discipline, then, in the best sense, is not the self. That may sound strange. The classical writers used to relate self-discipline to liberty. The person who was most free was the one who had the most control over himself. The person who was most unfree was the one who was ruled by pleasures, money, or power."
This is so true - sin likes to portray itself as freeing, if only we would give ourselves over to it. Really, it would bind us tighter and tighter and never let go. Is a man addicted to alcohol really free? Could he give it up if he had to? Often not. True freedom comes (as the Puritan would say) by doing what you ought. Only by doing what is right are we free - sin is an enslaver.

The second quote I'm stealing from Maria's blog, so the credit goes to her. This paragraph is brilliant and reminds me that every day matters. There ought not to be any excuses for slacking "just this once;" because hard work is a habit that must be established through repetition.

"It was while rereading The St. Andrew's Seven tonight that it struck me. Here is the quote:

'...if at all ambitious of a name in scholarship, or what is better far, if ambitious of that wisdom that can devise aright for the service of humanity, it is not by the wildly...irregular march of a wayward and meteoric spirit that you ever will arrive at it. It is by a slow but surer path - by a fixed devotedness of aim, and the steadfast prosecution of it - by breaking your day into its hours and its seasions, and then by a resolute adherence to them; it is not by random sallies of him who lives without a purpose and without a plan - it is by the unwearied regularities of him who plies the exercise of a self-appointed round and most strenuously perseveres in them (p. 33).'