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News

Texas governor Rick Perry has a strong pro-life record

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Texas Governor Rick Perry is pro-life
Texas Governor Rick Perry is pro-life

From Life News – an excellent re-cap of Perry’s pro-life record.

Excerpt:

“Every one of Governor Perry’s judicial appointees adheres to a strict constructionist style of jurisprudence; neither do they find a right to privacy in the penumbra of the Constitution, nor do they legislate from the bench,” Graham assures. “Governor Perry’s appointments have created the largest, most conservative judicial body in America.”

Joe Pojman, the head of Texas Alliance for Life, has also worked closely with the governor and confirms to LifeNews that “Perry has always been pro-life throughout his time as an elected official.”

“For many years, Perry has supported the fund raising efforts of pro-life organizations, including Texas Alliance for Life, and he has appeared several times at the Texas Rally for Life held at the state Capitol to commemorate the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision,” Pojman added.”We believe Perry has the right stuff to be president. If elected, he will aggressively defend innocent human life as he has as governor of Texas.”

Pojman pointed to a laundry list of achievements Perry can point to as governor that have advanced the pro-life cause. Most recently, he signed into law a bill that would revoke taxpayer funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion business. But going back to the beginning, as the Lt. Governor in 1999, Perry oversaw the passage by the Texas Senate of the Parental Notification Act, the most substantial pro-life law passed in Texas up to that point. In 2005, Gov. Perry signed the parental consent measure to increase parents’ rights and, in the years since the parental notification and consent laws have been in effect, abortions on minor girls have dropped by 32% per year.

In 2003, Perry signed the Prenatal Protection Act, a law that protects unborn children from violent crimes of murder and assault by expanding the definition of human life in Texas criminal and civil law to include unborn children “at every stage of gestation from fertilization to birth.” Texas’ highest criminal court has upheld convictions of criminals for the murder of unborn children several times, and several are serving life sentences.

In 2005, Perry signed a measure prohibiting abortions in the third trimester and, in 2003, Perry signed the Woman’s Right to Know Act in 2003, which required that abortion businesses offer state-created informational brochures to women considering abortion. That law also prohibits late abortions from being performed excepted in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers.

This year, Perry appeared to step up his push for pro-life laws even more and, in response to requests from the two Texas pro-life groups, made passing an ultrasound law among his top priorities.

“The bill he signed raises the standard of care for informed consent for abortion, for the first time, to the level of other surgical and medical procedures. It mandates a sonogram and gives women the right to see the image of the unborn child and hear the heartbeat. The bill also requires the physician who will perform the abortion to meet with the woman for an in-person consultation session 24 hours before the abortion to describe the procedure, its risks, and the alternatives,” Pojman said. “Abby Johnson, the former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood abortion facility turned pro-life advocate, believes that provision will “devastate” the abortion industry.”

Perry, this year, also signed a bill to create a “Choose Life” license plate to promote infant adoption as an alternative to abortion in the Lone Star State. Perry long promoted compassionate alternatives to abortion. Since 2005, Perry has signed budgets that include millions for pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life agencies that assist pregnant women.

Perry has also funded adult, not embryonic, stem cell research and treatments since 2005, and has spoken out against embryonic stem cell research.

This is what I like to see. Not rhetoric, but a record. A strong record with many different lines of engagement. We know what he would do, because we can see what he has done. That’s how you pick a candidate. You pick the one with the best record. You don’t listen to speeches read off of a teleprompter.

Contrast that pro-life record with Barack Obama’s radically pro-abortion record.

Excerpt:

November 5, 2008 – Obama selects pro-abortion Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel has a 0% pro-life voting record according to National Right to Life.

November 24, 2008 – Obama appoints Ellen Moran, the former director of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director. Emily’s List only supports candidates who favored taxpayer funded abortions and opposed a partial-birth abortion ban.

November 24, 2008 – Obama puts former Emily’s List board member Melody Barnes in place as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.

January 23, 2009 – Forces taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. Decision to overturn Mexico City Policy sends part of $457 million to pro-abortion organizations.

February 27, 2009 – Starts the process of overturning pro-life conscience protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.

February 28, 2009 – Barack Obama nominates pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.

April 14 – Obama administration releases document that claims pro-life people may engage in violence or extremism.

May 5 – Details emerge about a terrorism dictionary the administration of President Barack Obama put together in March. The Domestic Extremism Lexicon calls pro-life advocates violent and claims they employ racist overtones in engaging in criminal actions.

May 8 – President Obama’s budget eliminates all federal funding for abstinence-only education.

May 26 – Appoints appeals court judge Sonia Sonotmayoras a Supreme Court nominee. Sotomayor agrees that the courts should make policy, such as the Roe v. Wade case. Sotomayor is later opposed by pro-life groups and supported by pro-abortion groups and those who know her say she will support abortion on the high court.

July 14 – Obama science czar nominee John Holdren is revealed to have written before that he favors forced abortions.

August 4 – Information becomes public that Ezekiel Emanuel, an Obama advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, supports rationing health care for disabled Americans that could lead to euthanasia.

December 17 – Signed a bill that overturned the 13-year-long ban on funding abortions with tax dollars in the nation’s capital.

January 26, 2010 – Renominates radical pro-abortion activist Dawn Johnsen to a top Justice Department position.

February 8, 2010 – The Obama administration admitted it improperly conducted a threat assessmenton pro-life groups in Wisconsin who were preparing to rally against a new abortion center at a University of Wisconsin health clinic.

March 22, 2010 – Signs the pro-abortion health care bill into law that contains massive abortion funding, no conscience protections and rationing.

May 10, 2010 – Names pro-abortion activist Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court; she is strongly opposed by pro-life groups.

September 30, 2010 – Obama administration exposed as to how it partnered with leading pro-abortion organizations to host an FBI training seminar in August with the main focus of declaring as “violent” the free speech activities of pro-life Americans.

December 14, 2010 – Obama administration admits it is working to rescind conscience protections for medical professionals who don’t want to participate in abortions.

February 18, 2011 – President Obama weakens conscience protections for pro-life medical workers.

March 2, 2011 – Obama administration refuses to investigatevideos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls.

I just picked some of his record from that post on Life News. Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion President we’ve ever had.

Commentary

Should Christians divorce their faith from public square issues?

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I have had major problems with IVCF and Campus Crusade as an undergraduate student (IVCF) then as a graduate student (Crusade). Basically, they are totally driven by numbers and refuse to say or do anything that isn’t centered on privatized fideism. They refused to learn apologetics, take positions on economics or politics, or even to discuss the moral questions being discussed in the broader society – for fear of “offending” people. They do this because they think that being saved can be divorced from personal morality as well as engagement with society as a whole. Their focus is on “belief”, not on study, growth or practice. Whatever you believe about abortion, gay rights, environmentalism and socialism is totally fine with them, because Christianity has nothing to say about those kinds of issues.

Scott Klusendorf at the Life Training Institute assesses Campus Crusade for Christ’s decision to rename themselves “CRU”.

Excerpt:

Well, at Cal Poly SLO in May of 2008, the response of Christians to the abortion controversy did in fact turn-off at least one non-Christian, but not for reasons campus fellowship groups might expect. The ASB student leader responsible for organizing an abortion debate at that campus expressed her dismay that Campus Crusade would not attend the event or get behind promoting it with its members.

She asked me directly why I thought that was so. She thought for sure the Christians would show up and she was puzzled that they didn’t. Their refusal to get involved turned her off.

I didn’t know what to tell her. Perhaps CC had good reasons for not attending and I hold out hope it did, though it’s hard for me to imagine what those reasons might be. I suspect she is not the only secular student puzzled by CC’s non-involvement.

Indeed, according to a 2005 TIME Magazine piece, the overall trend is not encouraging. Instead of equipping students to confront the thought structures that determine culture in the first place, many of these groups help students nurture a very private and personal faith, a faith separate from the intellectual climate of the university. The TIME article states:

“But all the groups tend to go about their business quietly. “They kind of operate under the surface,” McKaig says. Josh Sanburn, editor in chief of the Indiana Daily Student, notes that the number of students in the fellowships is roughly the same as the school’s African-American student population, but unlike the Christians, “the black students on this campus are very good about making sure they’re heard.” Evangelical students, however, see their spiritual mission differently. Says sophomore CSF member Emily Hoefling: “We usually believe what affects people more than a newspaper article is to see people living Christian lives.”

Question: Since when does “living Christian lives” mean checking out of the real action on campus?

I fear that the message to Christian students and the campus at large couldn’t be clearer: Christianity is not relevant to the most pressing issues of our day. It’s fine as a personal life enhancement, but irrelevant to the real world of ideas, politics, morality, and law where the rest of the world lives.

Again, is that a good witness for Christ? As Charles Malik pointed out half a century ago, “If you win the whole world [for Christ] and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover that you have not won the world.”

As I’ve said before, Christian leaders have it all wrong. My own experience suggests that far from turning people off, a persuasive pro-life case, graciously communicated, suggests to non-believers that maybe, just maybe, the Christian worldview has something relevant to say to the key issues of our day. But when we fail to even put in an appearance at key debates, the message to non-Christians is that we simply don’t care about the big stuff.

Including the biggest issue of all, “Christ?”

This reminds me of an article I found on Life News about Michele Bachmann.

Excerpt:

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is one of the several pro-life advocates seeking the Republican nomination to face pro-abortion President Barack Obama and she cites Christian writer Francis Schaeffer as an influence on her pro-life views.

In a campaign stop to speak to local residents at a church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Bachmann shared her testimony and talked about the Christian faith she and her husband share. That faith, which has matured thanks to the writings of Schaeffer, has led Bachman to a pro-life view that has seen her compile a 100% pro-life voting record in Congress and adopt dozens of foster children.

“One thing that Dr. Schaeffer said is that [God is] not just the God of theology. He’s not just the God of the Bible,” Bachmann said, according to the Des Moines Register. “Since he is the Creator God, he’s the father of biology, sociology, of political science, of you name the subject. … And that altered our way of thinking, that God had something to say about our career.”

“Francis Schaeffer also said that life is the watershed issue of our time, and how we come down on how we view human life will impact all other issues,” she said. “And so Marcus and I decided we didn’t want to be pro-life only, just as speaking… We wanted to live a life of being about pro-life.”

The Register indicates Bachmann told the audience that, upon the encouragement to put her pro-life views into action, she and her husband began counseling and praying with single mothers and helping them get to pregnancy and adoption centers to provide further practical support instead of abortion.

One of the reasons why I started this blog is because of my experiences with the campus clubs when I was a student. In many cases, you would not find a dime’s worth of difference between the worldviews of secular leftists and these campus club organizations, at least in my experience. The ones I belonged to were thoroughly compromised by postmodernism, relativism, leftism and anti-intellectualism. They blocked me from introducing apologetics and debates every step of the way, for fear of “offending” people. I will never forget the empty-headed people who proclaimed themselves “Christian communists” or the ones who explained to me how blind faith was more genuine than rational faith, or the science student who told me that Christianity and science were completely separate, etc. Every week it was another testimony or a prayer walk. Never would they even let a scholar come in to talk about the evidence for the resurrection.

News

Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells present their research at a biology conference

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From Evolution News. (Written by Paul Nelson)

Excerpt:

Jonathan Wells and I presented our posters at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology this past weekend, and had a great time. For those who don’t know what a poster session is, the idea is simple: you summarize your data, experiment, hypothesis, whatever, in the space of a 6′ x 4′ panel, and then at a scheduled time (“poster session”), stand by your board and field questions from whoever stops by to talk. Jonathan presented his material on Saturday afternoon; you can download an abbreviated version of his poster as a pdf here. (The pdf is shorter than the poster itself because Jonathan omitted any copyrighted visuals.) I presented yesterday afternoon, and my full poster can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Neither of us faced any hostility, which (for Jonathan) was a refreshing change of atmosphere from the angry reception he received during his poster presentation at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. In fact, we met with friendly, open-ended questions, curiosity, and meaningful exchanges. One biologist at Jonathan’s session carefully read the main panels, then said to Jonathan, “Are you serious?” He and Jonathan then spent a long time going over the arguments and data in the poster — the opening question was an invitation for a detailed explanation.

This is good news. Maybe there is a gap between the Darwinian activists and the regular rank-and-file biologists, who are just interested in what’s true. It helps that Wells and Nelson are experts in this area of biology, so they can defend their views with authority.