Fighting abortion with violence

There is an essay on American Thinker by Dr. Frank Rosenbloom about the murder of abortionist George Tiller. Dr. Rosenbloom was no fan of Dr. Tiller but nevertheless condemns his killing.

My initial reaction was one of shock, which progressed rapidly to anger. Shock because despite the ongoing efforts of those who seek to destroy it, this is still the United States of America, where differences in views are settled according to the rule of law, not by vigilantes roaming the streets or ambushing helpless people in church pews.

[. . .]

He was detested by pro-life advocates, including this particular pro-life advocate. I must admit that I would not have been personally saddened had he died by slipping on a banana peel, but I am profoundly saddened and truly mortified by his murder. This killing was not the act of a pro-life supporter. It was the act of a person who profoundly misunderstands pro-life principles, democratic ideals and further, had no self control.

Dr. Rosenbloom argues that it is wrong to kill men like Dr. Tiller for two reasons. One is purely practical, this kind of murder damages the pro-life movement.

The other reason is moral.

I have in the past noted that pro-life advocates must promote the right to life of every innocent human being. We need consider not only moral innocence, but innocence legally as determined by our system of law. Dr. Tiller was certainly not, in my view or in the view of most pro-lifers, morally innocent. His supporters would no doubt agree that a person living in Nazi Germany would have been morally justified by violently interceding on behalf of the innocent people being slaughtered in concentration camps. Actions such as this would have been justified even if they resulted in the deaths of the perpetrators. Therefore, how can we reconcile this apparent dilemma? How do we in the pr-life community conclude, while maintaining logical credibility, that in defense of the unborn we cannot kill a person who is guilty of repeatedly killing babies in the past and had planned to do so in the future?

Reconciliation of this dilemma is possible precisely because we do not live in a country like Nazi Germany, a regime founded upon the principles of hate and violence. That system of government itself was intrinsically evil and therefore morally decent people had no obligation to respect the laws allowing and in fact supporting those atrocities. Standing up and violently fighting the regime itself, the agents of that regime and the actions of that evil regime was justified.

The United States, for all of its perceived faults, was founded based upon the principles of liberty and justice and its laws are passed by legislation adherent to the constitution. This country is basically and intrinsically good and its system of government is representative. We are therefore morally bound as citizens to obey its laws even if there are certain laws with which we disagree, since the laws were passed by a majority in the spirit of liberty and democracy. We have the right to protest against laws we find repugnant and we can vote our consciences. If we find that we cannot by our own actions obey a law we find morally reprehensible, we must peacefully refuse to do so and accept the legal consequences. We have no right to use violence against others or, heaven forbid, kill as a protest against lawful, though immoral acts.

I'm sure that most readers have spotted the fatal flaw in Dr. Rosenbloom's argument. Abortion on demand did not come to the American republic because the American people acted through their elected representatives to make it so. Legal abortion came to the entire nation through an act of judicial activism in which a simple majority of a nine judge panel exercised a power which the framers never intended for them to have and issued a decree from the bench.

The American people did not choose a nationwide abortion law and can only change it by electing presidents who will appoint Supreme Court justices (when there are vacancies) who they can only hope will rule to overturn Roe (and as Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter prove that process is hit-or-miss).

So am I arguing that it is moral to kill abortion providers? After all the national abortion policy was illegitimately imposed on the nation by an unelected branch of government using authority which was usurped from the legislature and the people. Roe vs. Wade has no more genuine legitimacy (using Dr. Rosenbloom's reasoning) than the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany.

Be this as it may I do NOT argue that it is permissible to kill men like Dr. Tiller.

As a Christian I am bound by the New Testament's command to obey the secular authorities. The apostle Paul clearly spelled out this policy in the thirteenth chapter of Romans. If Christians are instructed to submit to the rule of a beast like Nero I can find no justification for rebelling against any other secular government - even evil governments like the Nazis of Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Of course the Christian is not bound to obey laws which command what God forbids or forbid what God commands, but resistance must be passive rather than violent.

To the non Christian I can offer no argument against killing abortionists other than the purely practical. Killing an abortion doctor will not stop abortions. Strike one down and another will simply take his or her place. Of course they deserve to die, they are mass murderers of children. But killing them will only cause the law to view you as a murderer and you will be used as a means of discrediting the pro-life movement.

If violence directed against abortion providers and abortion facilities becomes common the government will treat it as an insurrection rather than as isolated incidents of crime. Pro-life organizations will be regarded as no different than al Qaeda or the Taliban. The state, especially under a president like Obama, will use anti-abortion violence as an excuse to ban firearms and suppress Christian organizations. Any speech critical of abortion will be legally regarded as an incitement to violence and will therefore not be considered to enjoy First Amendment protection.

And not one abortion will be prevented.

Abortion mills will be moved into reinforced concrete bunkers (at taxpayers' expense) and women seeking abortions will be brought to them in armored personnel carriers. Security will be provided by a specially created federal agency and anyone wishing to protest, conduct a prayer vigil or reach out to women seeking to enter the clinic will not be allowed to get close enough to even see the place.

And not one abortion will be prevented.

The backlash against the violence will cost pro-life persons their First and Second Amendment rights and abortions will only become less expensive and more easily obtained.

It simply isn't worth it to kill these bastards.

Governor Palin speaks

Governor Sarah Palin (By the grace of God the next president of the United States) gave a speech to the Vanderburgh County Right to Life banquet in Evansville, Indiana. This is what Mrs. Palin sounds like when she isn't constrained by McCain campaign talking points.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4

Helping people to death for 87 years

From IdahoStatesman.com:

Planned Parenthood of Idaho officials apologized Wednesday for what they called an employee's "serious mistake" in encouraging a donation aimed at aborting black babies.

They also criticized The Advocate, a right-to-life student magazine at the University of California-Los Angeles, for trying to discredit Planned Parenthood employees in seven states in a series of tape-recorded phone calls last summer.

The call to Idaho came in July to Autumn Kersey, vice president of development and marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho.

On the recording provided by The Advocate, an actor portraying a donor said he wanted his money used to eliminate black unborn children because "the less black kids out there the better."

Kersey laughed nervously and said: "Understandable, understandable. ... Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited and want to make sure I don't leave anything out."

On Tuesday, The Advocate released transcripts and audio recordings of this phone call and another to fundraising representatives in Ohio.

The student editor-in-chief of The Advocate said she's not surprised by Planned Parenthood's response and that the unedited recordings speak for themselves. The activist students think Planned Parenthood targets minorities and minority neighborhoods.

On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood of Idaho "firmly and unequivocally" denounced racial bias, admitted making a mistake and said the group had taken corrective action.

"A fundraising employee violated the organization's principles and practices when she appeared to be willing to accept a racially motivated donation," said CEO Rebecca Poedy in a written statement. "We apologize for the manner in which this offensive call was handled. We take full responsibility for the actions of the fundraising staff member who created the impression that racism of any form would be tolerated at Planned Parenthood. We took swift action to ensure that each of our employees understands their responsibility to communicate clearly with donors about the fact that we believe in helping all individuals, regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation, make informed decisions about their reproductive health care."

A spokeswoman for the organization would not say whether further disciplinary action was taken against Kersey, saying that was a personnel matter.

Go and read the rest here.

Here is a video produced by The Advocate:



What do you want to bet that the "corrective action" consists of telling their employees to inform callers that they need to keep their motives to themselves.

The truth is that Planned Parenthood was founded by a genocidal racist who intended to use the organization to eliminate the inferior colored races from the US. That the organization is still willing to perform that task should really surprise no one.

Notice how they say that they want to help all people regardless of race? To Planned Parenthood consists of chopping up their children and sucking the pieces into a jar. By those standards Adolph Hitler was the most helpful person the Jewish race ever met.

Abortion rate goes down

The number of abortions in the United States fell to the lowest level since the procedure was made legal some 35 years ago, according to a national study released Thursday.
The Guttmacher Institute, which researches issues pertaining to reproductive health and sexuality, said there were about 1.2 million abortions in 2005 -- 25 percent fewer than in 1990, when the number of abortions was about 1.6 million procedures.

In 2005, the US abortion rate was 19.4 abortions for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to figures compiled from surveying abortion providers. The 2005 figure represented an eight percent drop from the number of abortions in 2000.

The finding underscores a continued a downward trend that started after the abortion rate peaked at 29.3 procedures per 1,000 women in 1981, according to the institute.

Despite the drop, slightly more than one pregnancy in five ended in abortion in 2005, the Guttmacher Institute said.

"Our policymakers at the state and federal levels need to understand that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy, so we must redouble our efforts towards prevention, through better access to contraception," said Sharon Camp, president and chief executive officer of the Guttmacher Institute.

The last time the numbers were lower was in 1976 -- three years after abortions were legalized in the United States -- when 1.18 million abortions were performed.

Any forward progress on abortion is good news, but still 1.2 million deaths per year is unacceptable.

The best reason I've heard so far to support Ron Paul, the ass-clown

Yesterday I was listening to Sean Hannity's show when Bill Bennett came on as a guest. Both Hannity and Bennett are Roman Catholics who have made their opposition to abortion very clear in the past. However the likely prospect of ardently pro-choice Rudolph Giuliani gaining the Republican nomination had them both backpeddling as fast as they could.

The two hypocrites vied with one another to see who could blow off the issue the fastest.

This is not an isolated phenomena on the right either. On his blog Michael Medved posted an entry called Abortion's shades of gray where he said this:

Candidates and voters should properly answer two questions about abortion:

* Are you pro-abortion or anti-abortion?

* Are you pro-choice or anti-choice?

On this matrix, all the Democrats would count as both pro-choice and pro-abortion: They consider "a woman's right to choose" a sacred guarantee in the Constitution, they work closely with strident "abortion rights" organizations, and at the last Democratic Convention hundreds of participants wore T-shirts declaring their pride in their own past abortions.

Most important, Clinton and her colleagues may decry abortions as a "tragedy," but they still favor the use of taxpayer money to pay for the procedure. In other words, they not only back government sanction for abortion, but also (unlike Giuliani) government sponsorship.

On the other hand, nearly all the Republican candidates are both anti-abortion and anti-choice: They not only characterize abortion as immoral, but they also want legal bans on the procedure except in special circumstances, such as threats to the life of the mother.

Among the major candidates, only Giuliani stands in the middle: identifying a position that is, in fact, simultaneously anti-abortion and pro-choice. He backs policies designed to discourage or even sharply limit abortion, and he opposes the use of public money for abortions, while leaving final decisions to women and their doctors in most circumstances.

Bill and Hillary Clinton both say that they regard a woman's decision to obtain an abortion as tragic. Most elected Democrats since Roe v Wade have said that they want abortion to be "safe, legal and rare". Pro-life people have always said that position was, pardon the vulgarism, bull shit. You either believe that an abortion kills an innocent human being or you don't. Pro-choice/pro-abortion is a distinction without a difference.

Religious conservatives like practicing Catholics Bennett and Hannity and observent Jew Medved used to understand this. The truth is they still do but now there is a pro-abortion presidential candidate to protect.

It would seem that support for the unborn runs a mile wide but only an inch deep in some conservatives. Because - they say - the war on terror is the "real" issue. That is what we need to base our vote upon.

This is what makes me (almost) wish for the Ass-Clown to win the Republican nomination. It would be so much fun to watch these same Republicans (I will no longer call them conservatives) have to flip-flop back and explain why we must elect the pro-life but anti-war Republican over Hillary, who says that we need to keep troops in Afghanistan and even some in Iraq in order to fight al Qaeda but supports partial birth abortion.

Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Another warning about Giuliani

I came across this post by Joe Carter on The Evangelical Outpost and thought it fit in very well with what we have been disusing here regarding the wisdom, or lack thereof, of nominating and then electing Rudolph Giuliani to the presidency:

There are two broad political camps in the pro-life community: the incrementalists and the absolutists.

The absolutists are political idealists. They want a "Human Life Amendment" and a Federal ban on all abortion. Some of them don't even want Roe overturned since it would give the power to the States.

Incremenatlists, on the other hand, are political realists. They know that the issue of abortion won't disappear when Roe is overturned. Their position is that the best that can be hoped for is that the issue be returned to the people and to the individual states.

Once in the states, they will have 50 separate fights, some of which they will win (Louisiana, South Dakota) and many they will lose (New York, California). It's a fight that will take several decades, perhaps even a century, before the moral issue is completely resolved.

I am a political realist, which is why I am an incrementalist. Because I'm a political realist, I also believe than in the long run electing Rudy Giuliani will be even more detrimental to the pro-life cause than would a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Before I explain my reasoning, let me clear up one of the most common counter-claims that is used to justify Giuliani as the "lesser evil." Many well-intentioned pro-lifers believe that it doesn't matter if Giuliani is pro-abortion so long as he appoints judges to the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe. That point was raised yesterday in a post by my friend Justin Taylor:

I think there are good reasons to believe that Giuliani would appoint constructionalists and originalists, as he has promised to do--in part because I think he will want to placate the Republican base. (Even if he does this for only one term in order to win reelection, which I think is doubtful, then the next point still stands.)

I completely agree and think that Giuliani will indeed appoint "strict constructionist" judges as he understands the term. Pro-lifers hear that term and assume it means a justice that would overturn Roe. But Giuliani has been clear--crystal clear--that this is not the case.

Back in April, Giuliani was interviewed by CNN reporter Dana Bash on this topic:

BASH: And many people see that as code to conservatives who say that means
that he is giving me a wink and a nod saying he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Do you want to overturn Roe v. Wade?

GIULIANI: Dana, I don't wink and nod. I'm a very direct person. I tell people what I think. Sometimes I get in trouble for it.

BASH: So what is the direct answer?

GIULIANI: The direct answer is, a strict constructionist judge can come to either conclusion about Roe against Wade. They can look at it and say, wrongly decided 30 years ago, whatever it is, we will overturn it. They can…

BASH: But what is your personal deal on Roe v. Wade?

GIULIANI: They can look at it and say, it has been the law for this period of time, therefore we are going to respect the precedent. Conservatives can come to that conclusion as well.

If Giuliani gets elected, pro-lifers can't complain that he lied to them about appointing "strict constructionist" judges. He'll be able to say that as he understands the term a judge can be a strict constructionist and still believe--as he does--that a woman has a constitutionally protected right to abortion.

Any pro-lifer who thinks Giuliani's position on judges makes him the "lesser evil" is only fooling themselves. (Pro-lifers should keep in mind that Justice Alito can't necessarily be counted on to overturn Roe either.)

During that same interview, Giuliani also restated that he believes in public funding of abortion:

BASH: So you support taxpayer money or public funding for abortions in some cases?

GIULIANI: If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right, yes, I mean, if that the status of the law, then I would, yes.

Giuliani supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion. He supports public funding of both abortion and embryo destructive research. Giuliani is unapologetically in favor of the right to end the life of the unborn. His position is almost indistinguishable from that of Hillary Clinton.

Anyone who thinks that Giuliani would disregard his deeply held commitment to abortion rights to placate a constituency who he despises doesn't know the former Mayor of New York. He will relish sticking it to social conservatives, a group that will have done nothing to help him get elected. He will reason that his socially liberal positions will help win over enough Democrats to help him during his reelection efforts. And besides, if conservatives were willing to compromise and vote him in as the "lesser evil" in 2008, why would they do otherwise in 2012? Will the Democratic candidate be any better?

So on the issue of abortion, there will not be a shred of difference between Clinton and Giuliani. What will be different is that Clinton and the Democrats are already members of what Ramesh Ponnuru calls the "party of death":

The party of death should not be confused with a conventional political party: It has members (and opponents) within both of America's major political parties, although it is much stronger today among Democrats than Republicans.

However, if Giuliani is elected everything changes. Despite what a plank in the party platform might say, when the de facto leader of the GOP is pro-abortion then the party has crossed the line over into the "party of death."

A pro-abortion Republican President would be devastating, leaving the pro-life movement without a viable political party. As a friend of mine recently wrote in a personal email:

No more cynical notion can be imagined than the idea that a President has nothing to say about abortion policy. Theodore Roosevelt coined the phrase "bully pulpit." And the ability to communicate directly to the American people has been the hallmark of every successful President since.

People who make this false argument must have been asleep during the Reagan Presidency. President Reagan chose to defend unborn children in his State of the Union messages. Those addresses are delivered to the broadest audience imaginable. People who pay no attention to politics at least watch that. And they heard their President siding with them on this fundamental question of justice.

President Reagan did not stop there. He regularly addressed the Right to Life March. He issued a host of Presidential Proclamations defending the sanctity of human life. He wrote hundreds of letters affirming his commitment to unborn children.

He appointed hundreds of pro-life officials to his administration. He thereby legitimized an entire social movement that the academic/media/juridical elites were desperately trying to marginalize. There was even a pro-lifers' Inaugural Ball in 1985. If people are policy, Ronald Reagan made pro-life people policy makers.

Reagan was the first sitting President to publish a book of any kind. The President chose to write "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation." It was not to him simply an issue among issues. It was a question of simple justice. A nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal cannot long endure if it denies those great principles upon which it was founded.

Even worse than Rudy Giuliani's stance on the great questions is the bottomless cynicism of those who say it doesn't matter. If it truly does not matter, then politics--democracy itself--does not matter.

During the past year that I've been in D.C. I have noticed the attitude among Republicans to the pro-life cause veers between apathy and scorn. Even the "conservatives" in this town tend to become more exercised over "earmarks" than they do the destruction of human life in the womb.

Still, I am shocked that Republicans are willing to signal their utter disregard and disrespect for social conservatives by considering Giuliani as a tenable candidate. They used to think we were a force that had to placacted. Now, they have gauged our resolve and realized they can treat us with impunity since we will set aside our principles in the name of pragmatism.

Recently, several Christian conservative leaders attempted to fire a warning shot by making it clear that Giuliani is a completely unacceptable candidate. And how did the social conservative movement respond? By denouncing these committed pro-lifers and reassuring the GOP that, though we may not like it, we'll willingly vote for a pro-abortion candidate since he is the "lesser evil."

I can only speak for myself but I want to make the message clear: If Republicans choose to spurn the field of pro-life candidates, chooses to spit on the values of social conservatives, and chooses to remake the GOP into the "party of death", they will do so without me. This isn't a bluff; it’s a statement of principle. I'm a pro-life conservative who will never cast a ballot for a pro-abortion liberal.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. And God help this country if social conservatives aren't willing to stand with me.

I can only speak to my fellow Christians on this. If you believe that there is no God or that he is powerless to intervene in human affairs or that he is the cold and distant god of the Deists who will never bestir himself to aid his creation then I can understand your fear and desperation over the subject of keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House for she is well and truly evil.

However I do not believe that I am on my own in a dark and lonely cosmos. God is real and he is not far away and if we do not break faith with him he will not break faith with us. This does not mean that if we all vote against Giuliani that God will miraculously keep Mrs. Clinton out of the White House. It does mean that if we do the right thing that no matter the outcome of the election that God will be with us.

The fact is that God is sovereign and has already decided who the winner of next year's election will be. In fact he chose the winner of that election and every election before he laid the foundation of the world in eternity past. All that he requires of us is that we hold fast the principles which he has laid down for us in scripture and trust that he will honor his promise to cause all things to work together for our good, even if we have to wait till we are standing before him in heaven to understand how all the pieces fit together.

A possible breakthrough on stem cells

From The New York Times:

In a surprising advance that could sidestep the ethical debates surrounding stem cell biology, researchers have come much closer to a major goal of regenerative medicine, the conversion of a patient’s cells into specialized tissues that might replace those lost to disease.

The advance is an easy-to-use technique for reprogramming a skin cell of a mouse back to the embryonic state. Embryonic cells can be induced in the laboratory to develop into many of the body’s major tissues.

If the technique can be adapted to human cells, researchers could use a patient’s skin cells to generate new heart, liver or kidney cells that might be transplantable and would not be rejected by the patient’s immune system. But scientists say they cannot predict when they can overcome the considerable problems in adapting the method to human cells.

This is really going to piss off the embryonic stem cell crowd because for them it was never about curing disease and easing human suffering. Embryonic stem cell research for them was all about dehumanizing the unborn.

The abortion debate has been shifting toward the pro-life side for at least the last 15 years. A majority of the public now believes that an unborn child is a human being and a majority will now accept restrictions on abortion. This is a major turnaround from the 1970s when nearly three quarters of the population would not support any restrictions whatsoever.

The pro-abortion forces know this and are worried. If opinion continues to move in the direction which it has been going it will not be too many more years before the people will insist on significant restrictions on abortion. Both the feminists who support unrestricted abortion on demand out of principle and the abortion industry which makes billions of dollars from the procedure are desperate to turn around the debate.

The best method they have found to date is the hope that embryonic stem cell research will lead to cures for a large number of human ailments. They have been so successful at building up public expectations for stem cell cures that a majority of people in the US now believe that stem cells hold out hope for people who suffer from Parkinson's Disease, even though researchers have explained over and over that Parkinson's is not the kind of condition for which stem cell research holds any hope of a treatment at all.

If it becomes possible to turn a person's own skin cells into stem cells and then grow replacement tissue, or even whole organs, the need for embryonic stem cells will evaporate and the pro-abortion ghouls will have to look elsewhere for a rug to pull over the public's eyes.

Backlash? I don't think so

There is already talk of a "backlash" from the Supreme Court's upholding of a ban on partial birth abortion. This is unlikely for two reasons. The first is that the ban is supported by a broad cross section of the American people. Republican and Democrat, male and female, young and old a substantial majority of each group supports the ban on that abominable procedure.

The only group not supporting the ban, other than the clinic operators who are making money on it, are the hyper radical feminist Moloch worshiping death-cultists.

Clarice Feldman posts a quote from the blog Red State on The American Thinker reminding us of the second reason.

Red State comments:

The Supreme Court's partial birth abortion opinion rejects a facial challenge to the statute but leaves open the possibility of challenges in the future by particular mothers who claim a health necessity for such an abortion.

It's important to remember that this bill was a bipartisan effort with a House vote of 281-142 and a Senate vote of 64-34. Specifically, these Democratic Senators were supporters of banning the unpopular Partial-Birth Abortion Procedure: Sen. Minority Leader Daschle and Sens. Biden, Lincoln, Pryor, Miller, Breaux, Landrieu, Conrad, Dorgan, Nelson, current Sen. Majority Leader Reid, Hollings, Johnson, Leahy, Byrd, Nelson (NE). John Edwards, fittingly enough, didn't show up for the vote.

The list of Democratic House supporters is longer, and includes famous names such as John Murtha, John Dingell, Patrick Kennedy, Ted Strickland, James Clyburn, Harold Ford, and David Obey. Remember those lists if anyone tries to tell you that this is all about outside-the-mainstream right-wingers.

Too many Democrats voted for the law banning the procedure. If the Democrat candidates try to make an issue of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law it would put too many Democrats (some of them very prominent) in the crosshairs.

Not to mention all the Democrats who were elected this past November who ran as pro-life conservatives, like North Carolina's Heath Schuler. It is going to be hard enough for the Democrat Party to explain away Hillary Clinton's unreformed Marxism. They are not going to be saddled with attempting to explain why delivering a perfectly formed, healthy and totally viable baby all but the head and then sticking scissors into his/her skull to make a hole then sticking a vacuum hose onto its cranium and sucking out its brains is something that the Democrat Party needs to make a signature issue.

There is an unsigned editorial in today's Washington Post in which the writer attempts to cast the procedure as a medical necessisity:

But the 5 to 4 ruling, whose result is most easily explained by a change in the court's membership since it overturned a similar statute seven years ago, will certainly prevent some women from choosing the abortion procedure that their doctors believe would be safest in their individual cases.

[. . .]

Tell that to a woman whose doctor believes that performing the partial-birth procedure would provide a better chance of allowing her to bear children in the future.

What the editorial writer misses, no what the editorial writer deliberatly attempts to obscure, is that the partial birth abortion procedure is only performed on a late term (eight or ninth month for those of you in Rio Linda) infant. If the mother's life or health is threatened by carrying the baby for the extra four to six weeks then why not, after the doctor has delievered the baby all but the head, go ahead and withdraw the head from the birth cannal and let the child live?

You see the point of the procedure is not to save the mother it is to kill the child. Let me repeat. This is not a medical procedure whose purpose is to protect the mothers life or health. It is an aboriton whose sole purpose is to end the life of a child which has reached the state of development which allows it to live outside the womb.

Remember this when you hear that "Christian fundamentalists" have launched an attack on women. That "attack" was a bipartisan act of congress, supported by a very large majority of the American people, to close a loophole in the law which allowed the legalized murder of fully viable infants.

Supreme Court upholds ban on partial birth abortion

From The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how _ not whether _ to perform an abortion.

See, I told you so. We are winning and now is not the time to surrender by choosing a pro-choice liberal to be the Republican nominee for the 2008 presidential race.

And to give credit where credit is due, thank you George W Bush for putting two good originalist justices on the Supreme Court.

This decision may well provide a good indication of the ideological direction of the court with its new makeup. With the retirement of O'Connor, who possessed the instincts of a legislator not a judge and therefore sought to be a balancing influence on the court by acting as the "swing vote", the court may become consistently conservative in its judicial outlook.

If this is true it would bode well for the prospects of firearms rights with a Second Amendment case headed for the high court in relation to the D C gun ban which was recently overturned by the D C Circuit Court of Appeals.

Victory is possible

From The Washington Post:

The largest mass shooting in U.S. history forced reluctant Democratic leaders in Congress yesterday to confront an issue that divides their party and holds considerable political peril: gun control.

Advocates of stricter gun laws, such as Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), met with Democratic leaders, determined to resurrect an issue that has been dormant since the shootings at Columbine High School near Denver in 1999. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) elicited a pledge from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) to hold a hearing on the shootings.

"We need to stand up and do something," said McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a gunman's rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.

But Democrats on both sides of the issue were skeptical that the 33 deaths at Virginia Tech would change a political equation that has turned in the favor of gun rights advocates. Even after Columbine, no major gun-control laws passed Congress.

Since then, restrictions on guns have eased, with the 2004 expiration of President Bill Clinton's landmark assault weapons ban, passage in 2005 of legislation shielding gunmakers from lawsuits, and a 2003 measure preventing local enforcement agencies from consulting police in other states on firearms traces.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) boasts of a favorable rating from the National Rifle Association, which lobbies against gun control, and House Democratic leaders are in no rush to jeopardize conservative freshmen elected from Republican-leaning districts in Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas.

"Unless we get some leadership from the White House, we're not going to take this kind of political damage bringing up something that would never become law," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a gun-control advocate.

Such hesitation underscored how dramatically the issue of gun control has changed since the shootings at Columbine eight years ago. They drew immediate congressional reaction: Bills were introduced to bolster background checks, force the inclusion of trigger locks with gun sales, and close legal loopholes that allowed firearms to be bought from gun shows without full background checks.

But the NRA helped scuttle those measures, and some non-partisan political analysts gave the gun lobby's campaign credit for the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000.

The gun control issue proves that fundamental change in the political environment is possible. From the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 till the second Clinton term it would have been axiomatic than an event like this would have led to a new round of gun control laws. Even as we speak the forces opposed to human freedom are rising, like the stench from a ruptured sewer line, to call for more of the laws which kept the Virginia Tech students unarmed and helpless before their murderer. But they face an uphill fight against an unwilling legislature and an educated public which has rejected their fundamental premise.

The credit for this sea change in the political climate is due to the tireless efforts of national organizations like the NRA, The Second Amendment Foundation, The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership along with state level organizations like NC's own Grass Roots North Carolina.

Thanks to patient efforts to educate the public and an unwillingness to give up no matter how hopeless the task seemed and no matter what setbacks were suffered an alteration to the national consciousness was achieved.

Of course the cultural debate never ends and gains once made must be defended with the same vigor that went into their achievement, but the initiative is with the pro freedom forces and that makes our task vastly easier.

Of course it was enormously helpful that the facts and simple morality were always on our side. Trying to keep people safe by creating disarmed victim zones is profoundly stupid and denying people the means to protect their own lives is profoundly immoral.

The lesson here for conservatives is, to quote Sir Winston Churchill, "never give up, never give up, never give up. . ."

We are winning in so many areas. Look at the abortion question. Back in the early 1970s almost three quarters of the American public agreed with Roe v Wade without reservation. Now in 2007 a clear majority of the American people support restrictions on abortion with an outright ban on the more grizzly procedures and over 60% will consistently agree with the survey question "Abortion is murder".

The shrill cries from abortion advocates to the Republican Party to "get past" social issues like Abortion masks their deep fear that this election cycle marks their last chance to derail the pro-life freight train before it crushes them.

Illegal immigration is another issue which is swinging in our direction. The last congress passed a no-amnesty, no-"guest worker" border fence bill in 2006 because they knew they were losing in the polls and needed to be seen doing something popular. It almost worked. The president, who wanted a blanket amnesty and an open borders policy has changed his goals to a much more strict plan which would require illegals to go back to Mexico and pay a large fine before being allowed back in to the US. This is still not acceptable, but it reflects a seismic shift in his expectations.

A shift in his thinking which is due to the refusal of real conservatives to compromise on an issue of fundamental importance. As Margaret Thatcher said, "now is not the time to go wobbly". Not when we are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.

Some questions about the abortion question

All of this talk about Rudy Giuliani's position on abortion and the fact that he changed it from anti to pro when he ran for mayor of New York City (see this New York Times piece) and now seems to be drifting back toward the anti position started me thinking about the whole issue and I came up with a couple of questions.

Some people want to overturn Roe v Wade and throw the entire issue back to the states were it was before Roe. If this were to happen then some states would allow unrestricted access to abortion, some would outlaw it all together and most would allow it, but with some restrictions.

My questions are these:

Is the above scenario acceptable? What is the difference between each state having its own policy on abortion and each state having its own policy on slavery? If the Negro in South Carolina before the Civil War was just as "human" and therefore just as deserving of all the protections of the Constitution and the ideals of the American founding as the Negro of New York then why is not the unborn child of New York just as deserving of the protection of the law as the unborn child of Utah?

Here is the other question. Most people who favor restricting abortion would allow an exception in cases of rape and incest. Is this moral? The Constitution of the United States specifically disallows the concept of the "corruption of blood". This means that it is unconstitutional to hold the children responsible for the crimes of their parents (as was sometimes done in Europe). The argument for the rape/incest exception would be that the mother did not become pregnant through any choice of her own and should not be forced to endure the resulting pregnancy.

This makes sense, except that if we are to take it as a legal principle then we are saying that the rights of the mother are categorically more important than the rights of the child and in that case what business do we have placing ANY restrictions on her "right to choose"?

The same can be said in the case of abortion due to the child having some defect such as Downs Syndrome or Spina Bifida. Since we do not euthanize persons who have made it out of the womb who suffer from these conditions then why should we kill children in the womb who have them? To allow these unfortunate individuals to be killed just because they have not yet exited the birth canal again implies some categorical difference in our perception of the humanity of an unborn child. And again if we make that distinction why then do we tolerate any restrictions on abortion at all?

In short I believe that the only positions on abortion which are logically and morally consistent and defensible are either complete prohibition (except when the mother's life is in danger because we all retain an absolute right to use deadly force in self defense) or no restrictions whatsoever except for minors who should have to obtain the same parental consent for an abortion that they would for any other medical procedure.

Another reason to hate the EU

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Life Site, 9 February 2007

Representatives from the European Union are increasing pressure on the government of Nicaragua to reverse its recent law which unilaterally forbids abortion under any circumstances. According to a report from the Catholic News Agency, the EU representation has threatened to withdraw economic assistance to the country if the abortion law is not reversed. [...]

Marc Litvine, the EU representative to Nicaragua, said that the EU regards legalized abortion as “linked to aid programs against poverty and to the rights of women”. He expressed hope that “the new government will be capable of opening the debate and discussing it outside the passion of the electoral season.” [...]

Litvine commented on the new government and its support of the pro-life legislation saying, “That’s where I see one of the contradictions of the new government; it claims to be progressive, very modern, and it is going backwards because for us [the pro-life law] is a step back.”

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Isaiah 5:20 (NASB)