Learning to Accept No

I have been discussing an article about a gifted child with my brother-in-law.  Now, I'm not sure what my opinion on the article in question is, since I believe that we really need more information about why the professor is denying the kid the class.  There may be reasons we're not being told.  However, on the surface, I am in support of this kid being able to take the class in question.  Of course, my brother-in-law disagrees with me.  That's no surprise, we usually disagree.  I'm okay with that.  If I agreed with everyone on everything, life would be very boring.

However, my brother-in-law said something that I had read in the comments of the article which, on its surface, seems like a good idea.  He said that the child needs to learn to take no for an answer.  For some reason, this really bugged me.  Since I am one of those people who expects immediate obedience from my children, I could not figure out why this bothered me.  After all, I expect my children to accept no for an answer.  Why shouldn't this kid accept no for an answer?

After mulling this over for a bit, I gave my brain free reign, while I played video games.  Suddenly, it hit me.  We live in a country where everyone is encouraged to go after what they want, and so long as it is moral, ethical and legal, there is no reason for them to not reach for it.  Yet, we're frequently told to accept no, or accept that our instincts are not as good as some other person's.

Where, then, do the achievers come from?  Do you think they're taking no for an answer?  How many books do you know of that are written specifically for the purpose of getting past no?  In fact, there's even a book specifically titled Getting Past No.  We spend all of our children's formative years telling them they have to learn to accept no for an answer, then we try to get them to stop accepting no.  What a conundrum.

Pro-Choice could be Pro-Life

We all know that I'm very pro-life.  I'm very anti-abortion.  The idea of a child's life being snuffed out, just because a woman doesn't want to have a baby, is totally outside my thought process.  I just can't get past the idea that we wouldn't let her kill the baby after it was born.  Why do we let her kill it before it is born?  This is not a fight I fight on a regular basis.  I truly believe that legislation is not going to stop abortion.  T believe that it will take a change in our culture to be able to stop abortion.  It will take women not being so selfish as to be willing to kill a baby so that they don't have to go through a pregnancy.

The other day, a friend said something to me that threw me for a loop.  Ever since she said it, I just can't get my mind off it.  This particular friend is pro-choice, but a huge fan of babies.  (Like I said- culture change has to happen there.)  She said, "The ultimate medical breakthrough will be when they can take a baby out of the womb of a woman who doesn't want it, and put it in the womb of a woman who does."  Wow.  That is so profound to me.

So, here is my proposal.  What if even half the money that was spent in the abortion battle, was instead spent on medical research to make that possible?  What if all the money that was spent on trying to convince pro-choicers that abortion stops a beating heart (they all know that, people), was instead spent on finding a way to transfer that baby to another woman's womb?  What if all the money that was spent lobbying congress and for ads to keep abortion legal were instead spent on medical research?  Would this be possible?  Could we perhaps find that common ground that seems impossible right now?  Could we save those lives and give women who want babies new hope?

I know it seems like a medical impossibility.  But, surely we could do it.  It would be worth the research.