Posts with the tag 'Culture of Life'
Scott Ott of Scrappleface nails the contrast between the pro-life side and the pro-abortion side:
Obama Begs Palin: Don’t Punish Bristol with a Baby
As news broke of the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s eldest daughter, Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama pleaded with the GOP vice presidential candidate not to be too harsh with her daughter, who plans to marry the father of the child.
“Gov. Palin,” said Sen. Obama addressing himself to her personally, “you tried to teach your daughter about morals and values, but she made a mistake, and she shouldn’t be punished with a baby.”
As a goodwill gesture, Sen. Obama offered to pay for Bristol Palin’s abortion “at any time between now and the scheduled moment of birth.”
The fundamental divide is over the issue of life…in the end, there’s no other conflict in the United States.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, humor, John McCain, liberal lies, Sarah Palin
September 3rd, 2008
And, also, answers all of those who seek the name of “Catholic” while supporting in any way, shape or form the horribile, anti-human practice of abortion.
In last week’s Gospel we heard Jesus’ words to Peter:
I say to you, you are Peter [Rock], and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
But this week we find the incredible thing that happens right after that, as Jesus tells Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.”
How does Peter go from being called the “Rock” of the Church to being compared to “Satan”?
First of all, see how Jesus tells Peter about the keys in response to Peter publicly proclaiming: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But Jesus chastises Peter after Peter spoke to Him in private; Scripture says: “Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him.” The keys relate to Peter’s public proclamation, the rebuke pertains to Peter’s private, personal words to Jesus.
Also, we see that Peter’s public proclamation was about a dogma of faith: that Jesus is the Christ and Son of God. But his private rebuke was about his personal desire for Jesus’ safety: “God forbid [you be killed in Jerusalem].”
And again, when Jesus gives Peter the keys, he blesses Peter for listening to God: “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.” But when he chastises Peter he says: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
In all this Jesus teaches us that although many Popes would be less than perfect as individuals He, Christ, would always protect them in the public proclamation of the truths of the Gospel. Because of that all Catholics are bound, by Christ, to follow the definitive teaching of the Popes, And when do not hold ourselves bound by the Pope’s teaching the gates of hell will inevitably prevail against us.
Of course this can mean personal disaster: sin. But it can also mean social disaster.
Do read the whole thing.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, Nancy Pelosi
September 2nd, 2008
Michelle Obama goes Orwellian on the abortion issue:
Speaking of her husband, Michelle Obama said: “He’ll protect a woman’s freedom of choice, because government should have no say in whether or when a woman embraces the sacred responsibility of parenthood.”
So, parenthood is a “sacred responsibilty”, but if you decide to kill your unborn child you’re not violating anything sacred nor denigrating the status of parenthood? Only in the weird and depressing world of the left could anyone apply the word “sacred” to a defense of killing unborn children…
If you read further into the linked news story, you’ll also see how the gathered pro-abortion fanatics listening to Mrs. Obama were angered over President Bush making it possible for medical professionals to abstain from abortion on matters of conscience - to the pro-abortion fanatics, this denies the right of women to obtain an abortion…which means, of course, that the pro-abortion people believe that medical professions have an obligation to perform a task for another human being. Only in the Left’s alternate universe could a human right (which they claim abortion is) require the participation of other people against their will.
Words to describe this: Stupid. Hateful. Anti-Human. Insane.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, John McCain, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin
August 30th, 2008
Showing you can be liberal in a lot of things and yet remain committed to the intrinsic, God-given value of each human life:
The Democrats for Life town hall meeting on Wednesday in Denver, in addition to policy proposals and cultural analysis, examined the consequences of abortion, naming the abortion-related risks of domestic violence, infertility, and cancer as reasons to advocate abortion reduction programs.
Colorado State Senator Debbie Stafford, a former Republican with a background in religious ministry and domestic violence counseling, discussed the relation of domestic violence to abortion while Rev. Clenard Childress, pastor of the New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey and president of the Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN), discussed abortion’s devastating effects in the African-American community.
“No woman will abort unless she has a sense of abandonment and rejection,” Stafford said. Domestic violence doesn’t “just happen,” and pregnant women are 25 to 50 percent more likely to be abused than a non-pregnant woman, she explained.
Stafford added that sometimes a woman undergoes an abortion just to please her partner.
“When a pregnant woman involved in an abusive or destructive relationship finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy, one of the ways that she believes she can maintain what we call the ‘traumatic-emotional bond’ with her abuser is to allow her baby to be aborted.”
Further, she has discovered that “men hurt too,” and can come “literally unglued” because their pregnant partner used the possible abortion of the baby as a “wedge” between them or as a way to punish the man.
“It took two people to create that child,” she said, noting that both men and women in abusive relationships need support.
Rev. Childress discussed the negative consequences of abortion especially as related to the African-American community, claiming abortion affects African-Americans “more than any other ethnic group in the country.” He cited CDC statistics showing that one in two pregnant African-American women choose to abort.
The African-American birth rate, he said, is at 1.97 children per women, less than the 2.1 replacement rate. African-American women now lead the country in miscarriages due to “using abortion as a contraceptive,” which weakens the uterine lining.
“When they want to have a child, they cannot,” Rev. Childress explained with sadness.
Margaret Sanger - the racist, eugenicist founder of Planned Parenthood - woud be pleased; her plan is working to perfection; black people are breeding less, thanks to abortion. What still staggers the mind is that black Americans have a strong belief that GOPers are racist and that liberal Democrats are on their side…when what liberals are really doing is destroying the black family, and butchering unborn black children. We won’t break this in 2008 - with a completely understandable sense of pride that one of their own has risen to the top, black Americans will go nearly universally Democrat in November…but, win or lose, the opportunity is there for both the GOP to gain black adherents in later years, as well as for black Democrats to force their party away from their hateful, despairing - and functionally racist - attachment to abortion on demand.
Future generations of Americans will look back at our time and stand aghast that we, once upon a time, allowed tens of millions of our fellow Americans to be murdered before they were born. As today we puzzle over how some Americans once upon a time considered it good to enslave other Americans so, too, will our grandchildren puzzle over our tolerance of a practice which is never necessay and always harmful to two human beings - the murdered child, and the violated mother. And I pray that what will really start the ball rolling towards an end to legal abortion is the recoil of honest liberals away from the pro-abortion position…a growing understanding even on the left that each human life is precious in and of itself.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, pro-life Democrats
August 29th, 2008
If you can’t even vote to protect children outside the womb, then there’s not much chance that anyone pro-life will be able to justify a vote for you:
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new Gallup poll finds pro-life Democrats are abandoning Barack Obama now that more evidence has been presented that Obama takes a hardcore pro-abortion position. The drop in his support from pro-life Democrats also comes as John McCain has been more active promoting his pro-life views.
As the election draws closer and more voters are paying attention to it and learning where the candidates states, a Gallup poll finds pro-life Democrats are less inclined to support Obama.
The Gallup survey shows Democrats who say they are conservative on issues like abortion supported Obama at a 72 percentage point clip in mid-July.
Now, that level of support has fallen to just 63 percent — dropping steadily since then during a time Obama has come under fire nationally for his opposition to a bill to provide medical care for newborns who survive abortion.
Our issues are many in 2008, and each of them takes a piece out of the Obama narrartive. On life issues, Obama is an out-of-the-mainstream supporter of the most extreme, pro-abortion position. On foreign policy, Obama has absolutely zero experience. On defense policy, Obama has absolutely zero experience. On the War on Terrorism, Obama not only has no experience, but has also been proved absolutely wrong on the surge. On economic policy, Obama has nothing but the failed policies of a liberal past. On energy policy, Obama has mostly set aside those concrete steps we can immediately take to ease prices and set the stage for alternative fuels. Each of these issues works against Obama, and each of them will be used - in various ways at various times - against Obama from now until November.
Obama has the money, the friendly media and an anti-GOP sentiment in the nation at large - and yet the chances of him winning are, right now, no better than 50/50. We owe this amazing fact to good campaigning by McCain and the GOP, and the fact that the Democrats nominated the weakest man to be President.
UPDATE: Here are some stories which show why Obama is losing pro-life support:
Denver Bishops on Church’s Stance Against Abortion
Archbishop Wuerl on the Church and Abortion: It “Is the Same Teaching as It Was 2,000 Years Ago”
Cardinal Egan’s Comments on the Unborn: “They Are Human Beings With an Inalienable Right to Live”
Democratic National Convention: Obama Receives Ringing Endorsement from Planned Parenthood Action Fund President
US Bishops: Speaker Pelosi Got Church Teaching Wrong, Misrepresents Catholic Understanding of Life
Democratic National Convention: Abortion Leader Rails against McCain
Biden Selection Pleases Delegates, Abortion Activists
Tags: abortion, Barack Obama, culture of death, Culture of Life, John McCain
August 28th, 2008
And, no surprise, its Nancy Pelosi:
Meet the Press this morning:
Brokaw: …“I if [Obama] were to come to you and say ‘help me out here, Madam Speaker, when does life begin,’ what would you tell him?
Pelosi: “I would say that as an ardent practicing Catholic this is an issue that I have studied for a long time, and what I know is over the centuries the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition. And St. Augustine said three months. We don’t know. The point is it that it shouldn’t have an impact on a woman’s right to chose.”
It shouldn’t have an impact? Tell that to parents looking at sonograms. Look, it’s obviously alive. Nevermind. “Shouldn’t have an impact.”
Err, no…Nancy, you might want to check things out a bit more given that since the 1st century (and that, for you lefties out there, is from the year 1 to the year 100…which means this goes back to before the year 100, and thus very swiftly upon Christ’s ministry on earth) the Church has forbidden absolutely the intentional taking of an innocent human life from conception to natural death. Basing itself upon Scripture and the teachings of the Church Fathers, the pro-life opinion is well known, easily ascertained and absolutely obligatory on Catholics, and trumps the absurd notion that there is a right to an abortion. Next time you decide to study something about our mutual faith you might want to shy away what pro-abortion fanatics say about Catholic teaching and actually, ya know?, check with what the Church has to say…
The sad thing about this is that Pelosi is putting herself at horrific risk just to provide a dodge for Barack Obama’s cowardly answer on the question of when life begins. Sad, too, is how Obama is essentially setting it up so that confused Catholic women like Pelosi are forced to go out and defend him…
Tags: abortion, Catholic Church, culture of death, Culture of Life, Nancy Pelosi
August 24th, 2008
I missed all of Obama and part of McCain, but the part I saw of McCain was very good - clear, humorous at times, willing to stake out strong positions. While I don’t want to comment too much until I have a chance to read the transcripts, I thought this news report interesting in the contrasts between the two men:
DALLAS - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama side-stepped a pointed query about abortion on Saturday by “mega-pastor” Rick Warren during a televised forum.
Asked at what point a baby gets “human rights,” Obama, who strongly supports abortion rights, said: “… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade.”
He went on to reiterate his view that it was important to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who followed Obama onto the stage of the nationally televised event, was more blunt and more emphatic.
He said a baby’s human rights began “at the moment of conception … I have a 25-year pro-life record.”
Sorry, but that was a bit gutless on the part of Obama - he either believes an unborn child has no rights (and thus that elective abortion is ok), or he believes that the unborn child has rights (in which case he would have to switch to the pro-life side, and thus not be nominated in Denver). Obama’s dodge on the issue is a disgusting bit of political gamesmanship - he doesn’t want Joe Average to understand the fanatic pro-abortion positions he’s staked out but he also doesn’t want to give even a hint of pro-life opinion for fear of angering that tiny, but noisy and well-funded, minority in the Democratic party who view abortion as some sort of sick sacrament in the Church of Liberalism.
McCain, on the other hand, went right at it and told everyone where he stands - you might disagree with McCain (and he’d be the first person to say thats ok with him), but you can never oppose McCain because you are unsure of what he believes. In my view, always take the man who has the courage to stake out a position - even a wrong position is better than refusal to take a position.
UPDATE: Mark Hemmingway over at NRO’s The Corner chimes in:
I don’t want to get to overheated about what occurred tonight, but I do think McCain had a clear and decisive victory over Obama. It all comes down to something that Phil Bredesen, the Democratic governor of Tennessee recently said about Obama: “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”
By that standard, McCain did extremely well and Obama did very poorly. McCain’s answers were direct, confident and, most importantly, serious. When asked about what leaders he would consult as president, he first suggested Gen. Petraeus, architect of the surge, who he correctly praised as one of America’s all-time great military leaders. By way of contrast, Obama suggested he would seek out the advice of a typical white person, er, his grandmother and his wife Michelle, who’s still trying to decide whether she’s proud of her country.
When asked “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?,” McCain answered “At the moment of conception.” Obama’s answer here was flaming-dirigible bad:
Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade.
That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There’s not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States.
As I said, I didn’t see any of Obama - anyone here see Obama and have a comment on his performance?
Tags: abortion, Barack Obama, culture of death, Culture of Life, John McCain, Saddleback Church
August 17th, 2008
Linda Hirshman gives is a shot - first noting that the Democrats have come out for federally funded abortion on demand:
The Democratic Party platform of 2008 finally dropped its old abortion language (”safe, legal and rare”), which had asked that women not have abortions unless they absolutely must. The 2008 platform, just announced, says instead, “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.” Should a woman desire to bear her child, the Dems advocate prenatal care, income support, and adoption programs to help her there, too. But in the world of the new Democratic platform, it’s the woman’s decision to make.
She then winds up her argument by figuring that the reason abortion is viewed with distaste is the unwillingness of pro-abortion people to argue in favor of abortion, as an act, in relation to the conception that a woman’s happiness is dependent upon her ability to killl her unborn child at will:
In the absence of a robust description of the value of women’s lives—their ability to develop their capacities through education, to use them to achieve economic independence and political citizenship, to take on only the relationships they can manage—there is no moral argument for their “choice” to have an abortion. Set against the sound of nothing, the smallest moral claim of the potential human life looms large. Such an immoral act, moral thinkers conclude, must always be a mistake, the product of incomplete information or logic, and, in time, must produce regret, depression, and loss of self-esteem.
The wrong question will always lead to the wrong answer. Not coincidentally, the founding text of the Post-Abortion Syndrome movement is called “Making Abortion Rare.” The Democratic platform of 2008 offers an opportunity to put an end to this self-destructive cycle of Safe, Legal, and Rare, otherwise known as regret, depression, and self-denigration. In its place, it can finally argue for the value of women’s lives.
I guess as we argue for the value of women’s lives we will conveniently ignore the women we abort - their lives having no value unless, I presume, they are capable of having an abortion. There is something exceptionally nauseating in all this - the final plunge into the depths of the Culture of Death, the Orwellian transformation of a right to life into a right to kill. Hirshman, elsewhere in the article, stands aghast at the thought that a majority of people would ban abortions except in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother - and entirely fails to draw the conclusion that if a majority are so disposed, then there must be some substantial number of women (who, under Hirshman’s definition, cannot be free unless they are also free to kill their children) who believe that abortion is wrong in all or most cases (few pregnancies are the result of rape or incest, and the number of women who risk their lives by giving birth grows vanishingly small these days). There is no understanding on the pro-abortion side - just a bloody-minded determination to keep the practice legal and enshrined in law as a human right. This probably stems from a very large number of very guilty consciences on the pro-abortion side.
Hirshman, like all the secular liberals, fails in her worldview because she doesn’t understand what life is for. For people like Hirshman, life is for personal gratification. That which is irksome or difficult is to be shoved aside and the individual is to enjoy maximum resources to alllow for a maximum of self-gratification and anything which stands in the way of this is inherently a violation of the rights of the individual. But that is not what its for - our purpose here, on this world in the here and now, is to live.
Yes, I know, seems pretty simple - but living means living life as it is, not as one might wish it to be. One might wish that in life it rained beer, but the facts of life are that you’ll either have to make beer or go buy it, and the very fact that you have to do one of these two things in order to obtain your beer means that you’re life has a limitation - and this would be only one of ten thousand we each have. Some woman might not have wanted a pregnancy to result from that tawdry affair, but if one results then that is part of the life she is to live - and a wonderous, glorious thing it is, if taken with the right perspective. Once, you see, you decide to have a tawdry affair you also accept all that may result from that tawdry affair…death, jail, bankruptcy, lawsuits, venereal diseases, pregnancy, what have you. We’ve grown too fond of the notion that anything difficult is wrong - that what is right and good must be what is easiest and most pleasant…so fond of this notion have we grown that there are amongst us those like Hirshman, who advocate a permanent - dare we say, “final”? - solution to a temporary condition.
I feel sorry for Hirshman and those like her who have mired themselves in this mindset - there is not much I can do in the way of argument to reach them, all I can do is have pity and, of course, work to end abortion. This will be a great relief - not least to those who have locked themselves into advocating the practice.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life
August 14th, 2008
Social issues are driving it:
The latest Associated TV/Zogby International poll reports a significant change in Catholic support for the leading presumptive presidential nominees of both major U.S. political parties. Zogby analyst Fritz Wenzel explains that the shift amongst Catholics is due to increased concern about “social values.”
In mid-July, Catholics polled by Zogby International favored Democratic Sen. Barack Obama by 11 percent. The latest poll now shows they favor Republican Sen. John McCain by a margin of 50 to 34 percent.
Zogby International said in a Tuesday press release that McCain leads Obama among all voters by 42 to 41 percent, as measured by a telephone poll of 1,011 likely voters. The poll, commissioned by Associated TV and conducted from July 31 to August 1, claims a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
On the other hand, an Associated Press/Ipsos poll conducted between July 31 and August 4 finds Catholic support evenly divided between both candidates.
Fritz Wenzel, a Zogby Polling Analyst, gave CNA a statistical breakdown of the 269 Catholic respondents’ answers.
About fifty percent of the Catholics favored McCain, while 34 percent favored Obama. Twelve percent were undecided, while two and one percent favored third-party candidates Bob Barr and Ralph Nader, respectively.
“Catholics vote largely on a set of conservative values and on social values. On social values McCain has a natural advantage because of his pro-life stance, compared to Obama’s pro-choice stance,” Wenzel told CNA.
“This is a dominant issue in voting for Catholics because of the balance of the Supreme Court. The other issues are also important. When you start thinking about the conditions in the Iraq War, that was a concern for Catholics earlier. It’s becoming less so, so voters are turning to other, more domestic concerns.”
The push is rapidly coming to a shove and I think that, in the end, a very large majority of devout Catholics will give their votes to John McCain. There’s just too much riding on this election to think that Obama is the man for the times. While a lot of Catholics very much want large increases in social spending (heck, in a way even I do - though I don’t want to pour it into the failed, liberal programs; I have other ideas), with the Supreme Court in the balance and the Culture of Life poised for some real victories under continued Republican government, the thought of a few more billion for social spending drops in the scales of relative values. Lets first save life, then we can worry about what to do with the life once here.
There is also in Obama that very off-putting arrogance and self-centeredness. While we’re not better than anyone else, there is in Catholic attitude a demand of humility, and the higher you go the more humble we want you to be. As Obama rises, so does his ego, and Pride isn’t a deadly sin for nothing, you know?
All in all, this year is shaping up to have a lot of surpises in store, and the fact that the Catholic vote might go decisively for McCain - and perhaps hand him the White House - is just one of a dozen oddities…but it is good that my fellow Catholics are wise to the needs of the day.
Tags: abortion, Barack Obama, Culture of Life, John McCain
August 9th, 2008
Some have said that life issues won’t be important in Campaign ‘08 - that all we care about is how audaciously hopeful Obama makes us. Don’t count on it:
Colorado for Equal Rights, an organization backing a measure on the Colorado ballot that would define a person in the state’s Constitution as “any human being from the moment of fertilization,” has released a list of over 70 physicians and pharmacists from around the United States who agree that a person includes any human from the moment of conception.
“We are honored to have received these endorsements from such respected physicians,” stated Kristi Burton, head of Colorado for Equal Rights. “Science clearly proves that life begins at the time of fertilization. We are secure in the fact that we have science and reason on our side, and we are pleased to have the medical community supporting our efforts.”
“As support for Amendment 48 accumulates, we are very encouraged as we get closer to November’s election,” Burton said. “Every human life should be protected, and the endorsements we continue to receive prove that our easy to understand amendment is one that all Coloradans can support.”
The group needed to collect 76,000 signatures to put the amendment on the ballot in November and succeeded in doing so on May 31 with 103,000 signatures.
The defense of human life from the moment of conception to the natural end of life - that is what pro-life is all about; we’re all human beings here, good people, and if we can’t respect those who are entirely at our mercy, how are we then to really respect anyone, including our selves?
I know all the pro-choice arguments - some of my closets friends adhere to them, including some of my fellow Catholics (we’re working on that). But all of them ring hollow because, in the end, an abortion is the permanent disposition of a temporary condition. Pregnancy lasts for 9 months, while the agony of abortion - for the mother - lasts a lifetime. It is a false promise - a work of Hell, if there ever was one - to say that an abortion solves anything. To think that killing an unborn child is equal or even superior to giving birth to a child is anti-human in the extreme. It is a point of view which I might have understood at one time, but only because I was too ignorant to understand how monstrous a crime abortion is - these days, I just can’t fathom the pro-choice position…this bizarre idea that killing is a solution. It might have been a Final Solution, once upon a time, but one hopes we pass by such barbarities and move forward.
Tags: abortion, Colorado, culture of death, Culture of Life, right to life
July 30th, 2008
Demonstrating that its really all about keeping abortion legal, everything else be damned:
Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute (PRI), has charged that American feminists are refusing to address the problem of sex-selective abortions, a phenomenon in which unborn children of an unwanted sex are aborted. Mosher claims that over 100 million girls are missing, primarily due to parents who use ultrasound examinations to choose whether or not to abort the unborn child.
Speaking in PRI’s latest YouTube video, Mosher says the disparity is particularly noticeable in East and South Asia, but also in American groups of Asian descent.
In China, India, and other Asian countries, there is a strong preference for boys,” Mosher says. “This combination of a preference for boys and modern technology—the ultrasound machine—has proven deadly for millions upon millions of baby girls.”
The PRI video cites a recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences.
“Where are the feminists when you need them?” Mosher asks…
The lesson here is that if you want justice, liberty, etc you can only get it if you apply it to everyone - exclude the unborn or the sick elderly, and the injustice you allow will just breed more. Abortion, in and of itself, is unjust - sex selection abortion just doubles down on it…and the feminists - except for a relative few with wisdom over at Feminists for Life - stay silent about this destruction of the next generation of women.
Do you want to live? Then you have to defend everyone’s right to life. Do you want to have a fair shot in life? Then everyone who comes into life must also have a fair shot. Do you want to be respected as an individual? Then you have to respect all individuals. Can’t have it both ways - you are for Life, or you are for Death…and most feminists are for Death.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, sex selection
July 29th, 2008
So says Kate Sheppard over at In These Times, by reason of McCain’s pro-life stance - calling a it “war on women”:
McCain’s campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters.
But the suggestion that women — and feminist women, at that — will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain’s record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.
In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: “[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane.”…
…the number of progressive or even moderate voters who would seriously consider voting for McCain is much smaller than the media would have you believe. Unfortunately, McCain’s propaganda seems to be working, at least on those who aren’t aware of his record on issues of concern to women voters.
A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don’t know McCain’s position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld — though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.
These moderate, often suburban, middle-class women could be critical swing voters this election. At the time of the Planned Parenthood poll, Obama held only a 5 percentage-point margin over McCain with its swing-state demographic, 41 percent to 36 percent.
Planned Parenthood concludes that these findings suggest “that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.”
All of that predicated on a theory that women are so in love with abortion that the mere fact of McCain’s opposition will doom him - such theory being a standard on the left every election cycle with the only flaw being that it never comes out that way. We GOPers are always warned that our pro-life stance will destroy us at the polls and yet we manage to win from time to time (like 7 out of the last 10 times - and the times we lost it wasn’t because we’re pro-life). Be that as it may, does McCain’s pro-life view make him a sexist at war with women?
If you’re a leftist, it does - because for the left, abortion has become a sacrament in the Church of Secularism. As a Catholic views Annointing of the Sick (”last rites” for you non-Catholics out there), so the leftist views abortion - a thing not done all the time, but vital to the overall health of the organism. To be opposed to abortion on the left is akin to being opposed to forgiveness of sins in Christianity - it just isn’t done. So entrenched is this view that even someone as kooky as Kucinich was forced to drop a lifetime of pro-life views when he made his quixotic run for the White House. Calling McCain a “sexist” is just liberal-speak for saying “he disagrees with us on abortion”.
And thus the real battle is joined - in the end, Iraq, Afghanistan, oil prices, inflation and the rest are all secondary: the dividing line in America is over the issue of Life. The Culture of Life battles the Culture of Death, and eventually America will become all one thing or all the other. That is, all Life or all Death.
The particular issue, abortion, won’t be on the ballot - but the mindset which allows abortion and the mindset which seeks its end will be, and in this year of 2008 the stakes are very crucial as the judges who will either overturn or uphold Roe for another generation are likely to be appointed by the next President. It will be one battle in a long war, but for those of us who fight for Life, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, Feminism, John McCain, Planned Parenthood
July 23rd, 2008
Fr. Neuhaus, in an address to the National Right to Life Committee, lays it out:
Some say it started with the notorious Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 when, by what Justice Byron White called an act of raw judicial power, the Supreme Court wiped from the books of all fifty states every law protecting the unborn child. But it goes back long before that. Some say it started with the agitation for “liberalized abortion law” in the 1960s when the novel doctrine was proposed that a woman cannot be fulfilled unless she has the right to destroy her child. But it goes back long before that. It goes back to the movements for eugenics and racial and ideological cleansing of the last century.
Whether led by enlightened liberals, such as Margaret Sanger, or brutal totalitarians, whose names live in infamy, the doctrine and the practice was that some people stood in the way of progress and were therefore non-persons, living, as it was said, “lives unworthy of life.” But it goes back even before that. It goes back to the institution of slavery in which human beings were declared to be chattel property to be bought and sold and used and discarded at the whim of their masters. It goes way on back…
…The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called “A Life Worth Living.” He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one’s potential. These were among the measures of what was called “a life worth living.”
And I remember vividly, as though it were yesterday, looking out the next Sunday morning at the congregation of St. John the Evangelist and seeing all those older faces creased by hardship endured and injustice afflicted, and yet radiating hope undimmed and love unconquered. And I saw that day the younger faces of children deprived of most, if not all, of those qualifications on Prof. Montagu’s list. And it struck me then, like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of lightning that illuminated our moral and cultural moment, that Prof. Montagu and those of like mind believed that the people of St. John the Evangelist—people whom I knew and had come to love as people of faith and kindness and endurance and, by the grace of God, hope unvanquished—it struck me then that, by the criteria of the privileged and enlightened, none of these my people had a life worth living. In that moment, I knew that a great evil was afoot. The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed.
In that moment, I knew that I had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.
I can’t identify the moment that vividly where I switched from acquiescence to the Culture of Death to opposition…but I do remember the moment when I became a pro-life absolutist, a happy warrior for the Culture of Life: it was when I was honored to listen to some women who had been victimised by abortion, and heard them urge me - a man - to stand tall for life and in the defense of women and their unborn children. It became so entirely clear to me that the issue of life transcended everything else - that there really was no more important issue. If we can’t respect the dignity of our fellow human beings - from conception to natural death - then all talk of “rights” and “liberty” was so much nonsense. People have to be alive for us to be concerned about them.
The title of Fr. Neuhaus’ speech is “We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest” - speaking to the fact that once recruited to the pro-life cause, one never gives up and never gives in. We are sustained by the knowledge we are backing basic decency - and the knowledge that in spite of all lies designed to throw dust in everyone’s eyes, the basic fact of our nation - the Declaration of Independence - proclaims what we proclaim, that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, including - most importantly - the right to life, with no quibbles about whether or not a pregnancy 6 months along or a 96 year old alzheimers patient are really alive. They are. We know it. The Culture of Death knows it, too. We just act on that knowledge, the Culture of Death ignores it because, for humanity, cowardice and evil are the easy course of action - doing wrong or just ignoring wrong is much easier, and seemingly safer, than doing right or opposing wrong.
I, too, shall not weary nor shall I rest in this battle - not only am I not discouraged, there is no way to discourage me on the issue of Life vs Death. As I live so do I battle for Life, and as long as I live - which, after all, is actually forever - I shall fight for Life against all of those who hold that Death is the better alternative.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life, Fr Richard John Neuhaus
July 13th, 2008
The news story:
A coalition of African-American pastors and other pro-lifers marched on the headquarters of both major American political parties in Washington on Thursday to demand that the party committees and party candidates for office refuse the $10 million that Planned Parenthood has said it will spend to influence the 2008 elections.
Decrying what they called its “philosophy of prenatal murder in the black community,” the marchers also demanded that Planned Parenthood be stripped of its $350 million in taxpayer funding it receives each year.
The marchers visited the headquarters of both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. They were led by Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union and Dr. Alveda King, who is a niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pastor Stephen Broden of Fair Park Bible Fellowship, speaking at a press conference, described the goal of the march:
“We find it a conflict of interest that Planned Parenthood receives federal funding and with that funding it contributes to Republican and Democratic candidates who support their philosophy of prenatal murder in the black community. Congress gives money to Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood in return gives the money to pro-abortion candidates. There’s something rotten in the halls of Congress.”
And just which party do you think will give a more open-minded hearing to these demonstrators? Given that since 1990 pro-abortion donations to politics have never been less than 61% to the Democrats and are so far 91% to Democrats in 2008, methinks this protest against pro-abortion donors will fall on deaf ears over at the Democratic National Committee.
I bring this particular news story up because it highlights two things:
1. The African-American community in large measure shares the social values of conservatism, especially Christian conservatism.
2. There are a lot of cross-currents going on out there, some of which may not be showing up in polling.
Now, don’t get me wrong - with Obama as the nominee, I can’t see him getting less than 95% of the black vote in November; even a lot of conservative blacks are considering Obama because, lets face it, just like with Catholics and Kennedy in 1960 and Jews and Lieberman in 2000, there is something deeply satisfying in one of your own making it to the heights…especially if your people are or have been a despised minority (and Catholics, Jews and blacks all have a legacy of bigotry against them - though, of course, black Americans had it by far the worst). But the fact that these voices are being raised in direct contravention of core Democratic principles shows that there is a means for the GOP to eventually make inroads into the black vote. Not in 2008 - but in 2012 and beyond. It goes on issue after issue - black Americans favor school choice; black Americans favor restrictions on abortion; black Americans oppose gay marriage. All we need do is break down the wall of distrust between black Americans and the conservative movement and we’ll be on to great things. That wall was partially created by the conservative movement (when we largely wrote off the once strongly GOP black vote), partially created by a careful and very cynical policy of the Democratic leadership to heighten fear of the GOP in the black community by slanderous attacks on the GOP over race issues - breaking down this wall won’t be easy, but it must be done.
While we have many goals as a movement, the primary purpose of conservatism must be the destruction of the left. We know that the left’s entire worldview is based on a lie backed by a series of subsequent lies. It is a baleful influence on any activity it tries to involve itself in - and the sincerity of its adherents must not blind us to the necessity of destroying the left, as a political force, for good and all. We can’t do it as long as the left is able to reach outside of its urban fever swamps and get the votes of, say, union workers and black Americans who have absolutely nothing in common with left other than a shared fear of the GOP. Take away the fear, and union voters (other than public employee unions) and black Americans will stream into the GOP in ever rising numbers. Reduced to a few kooky places on the map, the left will then be marginalised and we can procede with the certainty that even under a liberal government the people running the show will be animated by a love of America rather than, as the left is today, animated for a hatred of America, and especially its Christian elements.
Some on the left - including here on this little blog - have tried to tell us that the abortion issue doesn’t matter. Actually, it matters more than people imagine. Not because it will, in and of itself, change the election results but because it puts such a stark contrast between left and right, now divided into the Culture of Death and the Culture of Life. Abortion is a piece of the puzzle on how to destroy the left, and we’d be worse than fools to refuse to avail ourselves of the strength the pro-life movement brings to conservatism and the GOP.
Tags: abortion, culture of death, Culture of Life
June 28th, 2008
A Wall Street Journal editorial via Catholics in the Public Square lays it out:
Miss Jessen is an exquisite example of what antiabortion advocates call a “survivor.” Well into her third trimester of pregnancy, Gianna’s biological mother was injected with a saline solution intended to induce a chemical abortion at a Los Angeles County abortion center. Eighteen hours later, and precious minutes before the abortionist’s arrival, Gianna emerged. Premature and with severe injuries that resulted in cerebral palsy. But alive.
Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital, where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator, then, months later, in foster care.
Gianna survived then, and thrives now, because, as she told me recently with a laugh, “I guess I don’t die easy.” Which is what the abortionist might have thought as he signed his victim’s birth certificate. Gianna’s medical records state that she was “born during saline abortion.”
As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed legislation to define as “persons” babies who survive late-term abortions. Babies like Gianna. Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother’s wombs are “persons,” and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
A federal version on the same legislation passed the Senate unanimously and with the support of all but 15 members of the House. Gianna was present when President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002.
When I asked Gianna to reflect on Mr. Obama’s candidacy, she paused, then said, “I really hope the American people will have their eyes wide open and choose to be discerning. . . . He is extreme, extreme, extreme.”
“Extreme” may not be the impression the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have bought Mr. Obama’s autobiography have been left with. In “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama’s presidential manifesto, he calls abortion “undeniably difficult,” “a very difficult issue,” “never a good thing” and “a wrenching moral issue.”
He laments his party’s “litmus test” for “orthodoxy” on abortion and other issues, and even admits, “I do not presume to know the answer to that question.” That question being the moral status of the fetus, who he nonetheless concedes has “moral weight.”
Those statements are seriously made but, alas, cannot be taken at all seriously. Mr. Obama has compiled a 100% lifetime “pro-choice” voting record, including votes against any and all restrictions on late-term abortions and parental involvement in teenagers’ abortions.
OBama is, indeed, extreme on the issue of abortion - but the real problem is that this extremism is entirely mainstream in the Democratic party. The article goes on to note that Obama has pledged to sign the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act“, a monstrous bit of pro-death legislation which would undo no only the federal ban on late-term abortions, but also the various common-sense regulations placed on abortion at the State level over the years. This is pro-abortion fanaticism in action, and Obama is hip deep in it.
I cannot take at face value anyone’s claims to care about people if they can’t care about the most helpless amongst us - there is a cold hearted indifference to suffering in the actions of those who work to protect abortion; from those who just use honey-coated words to cover up what it really is, to those who actually seek to ensure that more abortions are peformed. Obama talks a great game about helping the helpless, but when the real helpless have arrived in front of him, he’s slammed the door in their faces, more interested in garnering pro-abortion donations and pro-abortion political support for his blinding ambition to be President of the United States. Abortion is wicked; evil to the core - only the rankest sort of ignorance and cowardice can excuse any support for it; there is just never, ever a valid reason for seeking the termination of an unborn human life.
While many issues will be discussed during this campaign and while abortion won’t register with more than 5% or so as the most vital issue of the election, the central issue or our time has been, is and will be the abortion issue. As long as we permit this barbaric and inhuman practice - a veritible human sacrifice on the altar of the secular god “Selfishness” - just that long will we remain a nation divided against itself, and unsure of its place in the world. Just as we were riven by the stresses of trying to reconcile chattel slavery with our sublime Declaration of Independence so, too, are we riven by the attempts to reconcile cold blooded murder with the right to life our Founders fought and died for. This terrible poison, abortion, must end - and we will not end it by electing as President a man who will talk a lot about how sad abortion is, but who will in practical terms do all he can to advance the cause of abortion in the United States.
In the end, if one has any sense of the sanctity of human life - all life, even that unborn - then John McCain is the only possible candidate for 2008. A man of unscotchable pro-life record and a clear view of the value of life (probably built up by his inhuman treatment at the hands of the North Vietnamese), who is pledged to appoint judges who understand that the US Constitution isn’t a plaything for the latest liberal fads.
Tags: abortion, Barack Obama, culture of death, Culture of Life, Freedom of Choice Act, John McCain
June 15th, 2008
‘Cause its a bit messy, on that side of the aisle:
A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure.
Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant.
Percival’s first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys — which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby — and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported.
“I was on the (birth control pill) when I became pregnant,” Percival, 25, said. “Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn’t cope with the anguish of losing another baby.”
A short time after the abortion, Percival felt a fluttering in her stomach. She went to the doctor for a scan and discovered she was 19 weeks pregnant.
The news story concludes by stating the baby is expected now to live a normal life - in other words, the baby they tried to kill today over worry about tomorrow, is goinng to be fine. How many women abort a baby for this reason? And how many of them would have turned out fine.
You see, life isn’t a cut and dried thing - and, also, none of us are even promised tomorrow, so there isn’t too much advantage in worrying about it. We should deal with the things of today, today; deal with tomorrow’s problems, tomorrow. From what we can gather the preganancy, itself, was low risk…going along just fine. And each day that the pregnancy was fine, the only thing which should have concerned the parents on that day was to keep it going fine. They could not more control the next day than they could control the stars in the heavens. The strong, modern desire to control tomorrow, however, nearly resulted in a murdered child, who has turned out fine.
Choose life - its for the best, always.