What pro-lifers need to do

I was embarrassed. After debating abortion for decades, I heard FOR THE FIRST TIME an important pro-choice argument. I pride myself on listening to other sides. Maybe I wasn’t listening up to the level of my pride. Have you heard it? Here it is: Pro-lifers do nothing to help special needs children and at-risk youth. They don’t let a Mom choose, and then they don’t help her when she’s stuck.

It stung. I was caught. Was I all talk and no action?

But after a day of meditating on this legitimate claim, it slowly crept over me: I AM doing something for the less fortunate. I teach for at a small Christian school where at-risk youth attend. I teach with no pay (although in some years, I have received salary). I am silencing the argument that conservatives ban abortion and shun helping needs.

So I am writing this post, not to the pro-choicer (whose opinion we treat respectfully) but to the pro-lifer: YOU NEED TO PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS and help with special needs and at-risk people. If you can’t volunteer for some program, make a donation. If you don’t know where, I suggest my school, the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica. You can make a tax-deductible, one-time or monthly gift to help teachers like me continue doing what you can’t.

Jordan Sheppard just graduated. His mother left the abortion clinic waiting room, hearing the voice of God telling her He would help her with her child. She didn’t even know God at the time.

By his own appraisal, Jordan says he’d been dead, in jail or en route to one of those options. He was falling into all kinds of trouble. His mother walked the streets late at night looking for him when he was in middle school. Then she looked for a place to enroll Jordan where Christians could help her, a single mom, raise her man. Today, Jordan has plans to join the Marines. We are super proud of him. You could be too if you take a stake in this ministry.

The 3 unhealthiest dim sum

There’s a urban legend among the Chinese that the tea washes away all the excesses of Dim Sum. They call it a cleanse or a detergent.

The truth of the matter is that Dim Sum is a comfort food (Dim Sum means “touches your heart”), like seven-layer dip with potato chips or shoe fly pie. Indulging shouldn’t be a daily or even weekly experience.

Here are the three Dim Sum you should avoid — or if it’s absolutely you’re favorite, cut back on the intake per category on other baskets you order!

Three Dim Sum items to avoid:

1. Chinese Pork Ribs: High calories

In terms of caloric intake for a single portion, nothing beats the Chinese pork ribs with sticky rice in black bean sauce. In 2005, the Public Health Branch of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department of Hong Kong analyzed 71 Dim Sum items and found that a portion of this tasty treat has a whopping 820 calories. And that was for a serving size of 100 grams — about half a cup (rice and beef). Who eats only a half a cup of this deliciousness?

The average adult needs between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day. One “portion” of this yummy food then is about one-third of your daily need for caloric energy. (If you don’t use up that energy, it gets stored as fat.)

2. Xiao Long Bao Soup: Too much fat

In the area of fat, there are many contenders. But the king is Xiao Long Bao Soup Dumpling with a staggering 80 grams of fat, according to My Fitness Pal’s ranking. These jellied meats inside of a flour dough wrapping are so bad that Men’s Health magazine in Singapore called on readers to “dump the dumpling.” Read the rest of unhealthiest dim sum.