{"id":8291,"date":"2003-12-21T00:20:59","date_gmt":"2003-12-21T00:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html"},"modified":"2003-12-21T00:20:59","modified_gmt":"2003-12-21T00:20:59","slug":"threatened_by_the_helpless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html","title":{"rendered":"Threatened by the Helpless"},"content":{"rendered":"

A piece by Joanna Jepson, the British curate who has successfuly moved a court to review its decision not to prosecute a doctor who aborted a child with a cleft palate<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a tragic paradox here: that sometimes we seem to be most threatened by those who are most vulnerable. Herod, for all his might and authority, could not abide the possibility that he might one day be supplanted by a child. The deplorable exercise of his power revealed only his pathetic insecurity. So, too, in our own age, I wonder whether our readiness to refuse life to those who are less than physically perfect lays bare our own darkest fears and sense of inadequacy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A piece by Joanna Jepson, the British curate who has successfuly moved a court to review its decision not to prosecute a doctor who aborted a child with a cleft palate There is a tragic paradox here: that sometimes we seem to be most threatened by those who are most vulnerable. Herod, for all his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThreatened by the Helpless - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Threatened by the Helpless - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A piece by Joanna Jepson, the British curate who has successfuly moved a court to review its decision not to prosecute a doctor who aborted a child with a cleft palate There is a tragic paradox here: that sometimes we seem to be most threatened by those who are most vulnerable. Herod, for all his…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2003-12-21T00:20:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Threatened by the Helpless - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Threatened by the Helpless - Via Media","og_description":"A piece by Joanna Jepson, the British curate who has successfuly moved a court to review its decision not to prosecute a doctor who aborted a child with a cleft palate There is a tragic paradox here: that sometimes we seem to be most threatened by those who are most vulnerable. Herod, for all his…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2003-12-21T00:20:59+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html","name":"Threatened by the Helpless - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2003-12-21T00:20:59+00:00","dateModified":"2003-12-21T00:20:59+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/threatened_by_the_helpless.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Threatened by the Helpless"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}