Abortion Archives

Becoming Pro-Choice

Becoming pro-choice is not something that happens often. Heck, switching sides is rare enough, regardless of where you’re going from or to. But J. L. Pattison, in a blog post entitled, “10 reasons why I’ve decided to become pro-choice”, makes some points that really are worth checking out.

In fact, he’s almost convinced me, which, if I may be so bold, is saying something. I’m not sure I’m completely on board – not all of his points are equally good – but he made me consider this.

The link is in the show notes, in case you want to find his arguments, but I want to highlight the first one here, just to give you an idea of his power of persuasion.

1). Although I am personally opposed to the practice, I do not want to impose my moral values upon others. So if someone else wants to hunt lions, then who am I to judge? My motto is: If you don’t like lion killing, then don’t kill one.

OK, you can exhale now. You really do want to check out the link to this in the show notes. The other 9 “reasons” do basically the same thing; turn abortion pro-choice arguments on their head and expose the inverted priorities of a society that values the life of a lion in a country they probably couldn’t pick out on a map, over the millions of babies killed since Roe v Wade. I call them “babies” because that’s what Planned Parenthood calls them when referring to their organs, harvested for profiteering. Also, because that’s what they are.

Oh, and in the 3 weeks from the beginning of the release of those videos exposing Planned Parenthood, the media have reflected, and some might say “supported” or “egged on”, those inverted priorities. During that time, the 3 broadcast networks spent 92 minutes on Cecil the Lion, and 20 minutes on the videos and subsequent political fallout. Yup, that liberal media.

Free Speech Rights and Pro-Life Teenagers

Last March, two pro-life female high school students, in a free-speech zone [sic] on the campus of UCSB, had their display board stolen right in front of them by an associate professor. They were then assaulted as they attempted to retrieve their property. In August, the professor was convicted and given a slap-on-the-wrist sentencing (imagine, if you will, the results if it had been a conservative professor assaulting two underage gay-rights protesters).

You can see video of them following the professor at the following link. Note the sophomoric attempt at logic some of the university students hurl at the girls (e.g., “you don’t attend this college” or “you don’t pay to attend here”).

Take off your cultural blinders… This is the thinking of the next gen.

#prolife #freespeech #abortion

I don’t know how much the Vatican’s Chief Justice holds sway in terms of official church policy, or how much his opinion reflects the position of the Catholic church, but I thought I’d pass this along.

In an interview with Polonia Christiana magazine –and transcribed by Life Site News — Cardinal Raymond Burke said that Obama “promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”

“It is true that the policies of the president of the United States have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies,” Burke told the magazine.

The former archbishop of St. Louis stated that Obama is trying to “restrict” religion.

“Now he wants to restrict the exercise of the freedom of religion to freedom of worship, that is, he holds that one is free to act according to his conscience within the confines of his place of worship but that, once the person leaves the place of worship, the government can constrain him to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions,” Burke said.

Burke took a swipe against Obama’s Affordable Care Act over the law’s birth control mandate, saying “such policies would have been unimaginable in the United States even 40 years ago.”

“In a democracy, such a lack of awareness is deadly,” Burke told the magazine. “It leads to the loss of the freedom which a democratic government exists to protect. It is my hope that more and more of my fellow citizens, as they realize what is happening, will insist on electing leaders who respect the truth of the moral law as it is respected in the founding principles of our nation.”

Since this was transcribed by Life Site News, you know there’s an abortion angle, and there’s just a bit more at the link.

The freedom of religion vs. freedom of worship is a distinction that I’ve heard elsewhere, and it’s good to hear it given voice by someone at the Vatican. These days, it’s almost like you lose that First Amendment right upon leaving the church building. You don’t, even if you own a business (i.e. Hobby Lobby). This is a serious concern.

Equality

No doubt, this is fallout from the Kermit Gosnell incident.

The Arizona Daily Sun reports the ‘Women’s Health Protection Act’ or HB2284 pro-life bill has passed through the Arizona state House by a 34-22 vote on Tuesday. This came after an hour of debate on whether legislation is needed to make unannounced inspections at abortion clinics.

The Center of Arizona Policy states abortion clinics are the only health care institutions in Arizona that the Department of Health Services (DHS) can’t immediately inspect when a violation is believed to have occurred. In order to have an inspection, a warrant must be obtained by government authorities. In addition after a clinics initial inspection when licensed and follow-up inspection a year later, no further inspections are mandated for the next two years.

This is most certainly not a “restriction” on abortion or the availability thereof. It’s simply protecting women from unscrupulous abortion providers, and brings them in line with other health care institutions.

Denying Communion to Pro-Abortion Politicians Gets a Higher Profile

This issue has been in the news before, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen an opinion from this high up in the Catholic church.

To deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians who are Catholic, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “makes perfect sense” because it is a discipline that goes back to St. Paul, “the very first years of the Church,” said Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis and now the chief justice at the Vatican’s highest court.

In an interview with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on Dec. 13, Cardinal Burke explained that it is necessary to protect the Sacrament, the Communion wafer offered at Masses, from “being profaned, being violated by someone receiving unworthily,” someone “who knows that he or she is unworthy and yet presumes to come forward and to take the Holy Eucharist.”

For our Catholic readers, what’s your take on this?

An Inconvenient Life

The Kermit Gosnell and Cleveland kidnapping stories have been raising some questions when it comes to the issue of abortion. Gosnell, certainly (and where it was actually covered), definitely brought back to light the issue of the fine line between abortion and infanticide., at least as abortion supporters define those terms.

And the Cleveland kidnapping story is doing it again, from another angle.

The problem, once again, is that at the heart of the Gosnell nightmare were the reports that he was DELIVERING late-term fetuses and THEN killing the infants — after delivery. In other words, these infants were no longer “fetuses,” according to the dictionary, when the abortionist snipped their spinal cords.

Now, were are seeing some interesting, and related, issues emerging in Cleveland, where prosecutors are preparing to throw the book at the alleged kidnapper and torturer Ariel Castro.

The issue is that the state prosecutor may seek the death penalty.

Now, from the perspective of the journalists defending a consistent use of the term “fetus,” even when the term is inaccurate (see Gosnell coverage), here is the hard-news question of the moment. If the prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for Castro in this case, who did he kill? What human persons with full dignity and legal rights, under this nation’s current legal regime, died during these alleged crimes?

The Get Religion blog takes the angle of how (or if) the reporters "get religion", and it highlights good and bad examples. However, in the Gosnell case, the bad examples were legion. It’ll be interesting to see how the media deal with a death penalty in the Cleveland case.

Kermit Gosnell, the abortion quote-unquote “doctor” who regularly carried out illegal abortions in Philadelphia and killed already-born babies by cutting their spinal cord, among other horrors, was well-known to other abortionists who routinely referred women to him from up and down the eastern seaboard. His reputation preceded him. So those other abortion doctors knew what he did, but didn’t report him.

The women who were his victims did report him, but that still didn’t get anything done. His clinic went 17 years without an inspection, even though there were inspection-worthy complaints in the interim. Various state agencies did nothing even after victims’ lawyers contacted them.

And another group turned a blind eye to this; Planned Parenthood. President and CEO of Planned Parenthood SE Pennsylvania Dayle Steinberg said that her organization knew about this but did not report it. Instead she said, “We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health.” The buck doesn’t stop here. It doesn’t even stop for a rest. And of course, the Department of Health was one of those delinquent state agencies.

I have complained that the media have ignored this story, and they have, but even before they tried to sweep it under the rug, Planned Parenthood, various other abortion doctors, and various state agencies all turned a blind eye to what was going on here. If there is a war on women, the abortion industry is on the front lines.

An Inconvenient Truth, Ignored

There’s a murder trial going on in Pennsylvania. A doctor was arrested in 2011 for killing 8 people, and the trial has been going on since March 18th. Accusations of beheadings, special treatment for whites, severed feet in jars, 15-year-olds administering anesthesia, unsanitary clinic conditions that spread STDs to unsuspecting women, and multiple state agencies made aware of this but who chose to ignore what was going on.

“What?”, you may be asking. “Why isn’t this front-page news?” Indeed, the fact that it isn’t strains credulity. It’s so unbelievable that the popular Snopes website that debunks (or in some cases, “bunks”) urban legends, felt compelled to let its readers know that, yes, that story you see being passed around in e-mail or on Facebook is, indeed, true, and not some made-up legend.

Kirsten Powers wrote an opinion piece asking the obvious question of why this isn’t front-page news. The answer, I think, is because all this happened at an abortion clinic. Kermit Gosnell, who has been performing the cheapest and fastest abortions he could possibly perform for over 30 years, finally was arrested, but not after so much damage had already been done.

And where is the media in all this? Well, they say they covered the arrest in 2011, so at this point it’s just a local crime issue. Right, like Aurora, and Sandy Hook, and Littleton. As the facts come out, there’s no need to cover that. Rather, let’s talk about a basketball coach behaving badly. Hey look! Rush Limbaugh said something shocking! That doesn’t happen often, right, it must be news!

Let’s not talk about babies born alive and having their spinal cords quote-unquote “snipped”. Let’s not talk about deliveries in toilets. Let’s not talk about this little abortion shop of horrors.

Why not? Well, as James Taranto wrote, that just might make people think hard about their stance on abortion. They might start to change their minds, two examples of which Taranto mentioned. Oh, let’s make sure they think hard about their stance on guns, or immigration, or whatever else they need to hear about to come to the liberal way of thinking. But the realities of abortion? Doesn’t fit the narrative, so the media ignore it. That’s advocacy, not just in how something’s reported, but whether it’s reported at all.

If Kermit Gosnell had killed those women and babies with an AR-15 rifle, you know it would be national news. Or if he were a Christian. Or if he had killed abortion doctor George Tiller. Instead he was performing what the law has contorted into a Constitutional right that the Left enshrines in their political platforms. When what used to be called back-alley abortions are being done right in an alleged clinic, both the government and the media turn a blind eye to it.

It doesn’t fit the narrative, and it might (well, it is) changing some minds on this liberal sacrament of abortion. I am of the firm belief that the politics of the issue is directly affecting its coverage. Oh, oh, that liberal media.

Abortion — Some Remarks

Well I’ve come to a point where I’ve been far enough from the abortion debate, which the Philadelphia kerfuffle has brought back to the front burner, that I feel I can’t muster a coherent argument for abortion at all. So, what I’m going to try to do here is mention the two or three points/arguments that I know for that case and see if anyone out there can fill in the gaps or offer argument not mentioned that are stronger. Read the rest of this entry

"Children, Obey Your Parents." But What If…

I believe that, generally speaking, parents have both the right and responsibility to determine the health care of their minor children. The case of abortion, however, adds a additional life to the equation and makes it more difficult.

A pregnant teenager in Houston, Texas, is suing her parents, claiming that they are trying to coerce her to have an abortion. The 16-year-old, who is reportedly two months pregnant, is being represented by the Texas Center for Defense of Life (TCDL), a pro-life legal organization. For now, the girl and her unborn child are protected by a temporary restraining order, but the battle is far from over.

Here’s a poser: The Bible exhorts children to obey their parents. The parents are telling the child to have a legal medical procedure. As the child, you want to obey your parents, and yet don’t want to abort your baby, both Biblically-based beliefs. There are times when we disobey the civil law to follow the moral law, but these are two moral laws.

Tough decision, but I think I support the 16-year-old. What do you think?

The "Consider This!" Podcast, Episode 28

Maybe this is why I’ve not been blogging much. Well, it’s certainly a contributing factor.

The latest episode covers the fight of North Carolina pro-choicers against a license plate that advocates a choice, and a rundown of how well the Washington, DC gun ban reduced homicides (hint: it didn’t).

Click here for the show notes, links to articles mentioned, and ways to get your voice heard on the podcast. You can also listen to the show right on the page, or subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher or the Blubrry network.

Media Ignore "March for Life"

Tens of thousands marched in a huge anti-abortion protest in Washington, DC. You’re forgiven if you didn’t know about it. ABC and CBS couldn’t be bothered to mention it at all. NBC gave all of it 15 seconds. But for less than 1,000 protestors who came out for more gun control, CBS managed to find time for them.

In print, the NY Times has ignored the march for the past 5 years, but this year, while it finally realized that something was happening, they managed to frame it just the way they wanted.

This year, the 40th anniversary of the March, the Times broke its streak with a so-so 815-word story by Ashley Parker that made the bottom of the front of the paper’s National section, on page 9.

What made the top of page 9? Here the Times showed some nerve, as religion reporter Laurie Goodstein’s used some liberal Catholic activists to chide pro-lifers supporters for not also being anti-gun It’s almost as if the paper acknowledged the march so as to be able to criticize it.

Oh, that liberal media.

"Happy" Anniversary

Forty years and 50 million lives ago, Roe v Wade was decided, and the Supreme Court federalized all state abortion laws, by somehow finding a right to kill your unborn child in the Constitution. Justice Byron White said as much in his dissent.

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

Fifty million children. If they had died from gunshots, the Left would realize the tragedy. As it it, it’s just "choice".

Links for Monday, 31 December 2012

Exporting the “old and sick” to another place

But don’t worry – I’m sure it’s for “the common good.”

From The Guardian,

Growing numbers of elderly and sick Germans are being sent overseas for long-term care in retirement and rehabilitation centres because of rising costs and falling standards in Germany.

…with increasing numbers of Germans unable to afford the growing costs of retirement homes, and an ageing and shrinking population, the number expected to be sent abroad in the next few years is only likely to rise. Experts describe it as a “time bomb”.

Germany has one of the fastest-ageing populations in the world, and the movement here has implications for other western countries, including Britain, particularly amid fears that austerity measures and rising care costs are potentially undermining standards of residential care.

Something to think about as we travers the road towards nationalized healthcare.

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The Last Radicals
From the National Review,

There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional.

The author contends that opponents to homeschoolers have three core reasons.

The first is that progressives by their nature do not trust people as individuals and feel that, whether we are applying for a credit card or popping into 7-Eleven for a soft drink, Americans require state-appointed overseers.

The second reason for this hostility is that while there is a growing number of secular, progressive, organic-quinoa-consuming homeschool families, there remains a significant conservative and Christian component.

A third reason is that the majority of homeschool teachers are mothers. A traditional two-parent family with one full-time breadwinner and one stay-at-home parent is practically built into the model.

Long live independence!

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Safe, legal and… rare?
From Touchstone Magazine,

The Federal Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) released a report on the eve of Thanksgiving showing that there was an historic drop of five percent in the abortion rate, the most in a decade. The data is from 2009, the latest year available, and shows that there were only 789,000 abortions. [emphasis in original]

The author states that data from California was not included, so the number of abortions most likely was over 1,000,000.

As for the demographics, this unsettling note,

Approximately 85 percent of women who aborted their babies were unmarried. The majority of abortions are performed by the eighth week of pregnancy. White women had the lowest abortion rate, at about 8.5 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age; the rate for African-American women was about four times that; and the abortion rate for Hispanic women was about 19 per 1,000.

The liberal mantra of being there for the disadvantaged seems to get turned on its head.

And to put some perspective on the killing of 1,000,000 unborn children every year, it’s like having 137 Sandy Hook mass killings EVERY DAY.

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A belated Christmas Light Painting link for you all
Here’s a great example!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

© Michael Ross

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Doctrine vs. Methodology?
From The Gospel Coalition,

Pastors constantly face temptation to devote more time and energy to methods rather than to doctrine. If that includes you, then give heed to Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 4:16: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

Following the imperative to keep watch on himself, Paul further instructs Timothy to keep watch on his doctrine. My observation, however, is that most ministers aren’t doing this. They don’t talk about doctrine. They don’t read it. If they’re paying close attention to anything, it is their methods and psychology. What’s the result? Less biblical fidelity. Less interest in truth. Less seriousness. Less depth.

Neglecting doctrine results in less capacity to offer a compelling alternative to the thinking of our generation. I often hear the excuse that pastors aren’t studying theology because they’re too busy trying to reach more people. Ironically, this pursuit of identification often comes with a corresponding loss of communication. We put forth all this effort to make people feel comfortable and at home so they don’t feel the difference between life in Christ and life without Christ. Problem is, it is supposed to be different when you come to Christ. That is the point.

[emphasis added]

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From Radicals to Oddballs
Oh, those homeschoolers,

There are two facets to educating a child well. The first is to recognize that education is not merely the accumulation of facts, but that it has an unavoidably moral aspect. A suitable education must do more, therefore, than simply teach facts, even moral facts. Education must seek to cultivate the moral imagination of the child, for reducing moral education to a list of rules is bound to fail.

Election Post-mortem; The New Normal?

Same-sex marriage is approved in Maine. Colorado legalizes recreational marijuana. And (not, I think, coincidentally) Barack Obama wins re-election.

Is this the new normal?

ObamaCare will not be repealed, with its requirement that employers, even those that disagree on moral and religious ground, provide for abortions. And if we lose any Supreme Court justices, there’s no doubt that we’ll get replacements with the same disregard for the least of "the least of these".

In addition, ObamaCare comes with, using the term of one former Illinois Senator’, "massive, job-killing tax increases". In the short term I’m sure the folks will love it. So did the folks in the countries of Europe, where they’re going broke, running out of money to pay for the same sorts of things. Ask Germany, who will have to bail them all out, how much health care costs when it’s "free". Anyone in the US thinking "but this time it’ll be different" has their eyes tightly shut to their surroundings.

Financial guru Dave Ramsey tweeted this: "Expect the rich to dig in to survive big taxes rather than invest in the economy. Hope I am wrong. Good luck on new jobs."

And to my Christian friends who voted for Obama, this whole appeal to short-term thinking is, I believe, part and parcel to how the social issues came out in the election. How many of you really believe that abortion is what amounts to a civil right, and endorse same-sex marriage in spite of a clear Biblical definition of it? If you do, we have a whole set of other issues between us, but if you don’t, why would you vote for a party that does? If you believe charity is an issue of personal responsibility, why would you vote for an ideology that eschews person giving for the power and inefficiency of taxation? Did you buy into the lie that Republicans want to do away with the societal safety net?

A friend of mine tweeted, "Has it ever occurred to u that our party platform endorses the protection of innocent life & Dems end up demonizing us w/ impunity on issue?" And I would add, "and some Christians support such anti-life Democrats?"

My questions are not ones of frustration so much as they are out of confusion.

But Barack Obama did indeed get out the vote, with a good ground game (as I hear) and the American people have spoken. They also spoke and put Republicans back in charge of the House of Representatives, so I’m not sure exactly what they were trying to say. Essentially, we got the same government we had yesterday.

So "Forward!". Or something.

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