What does it really mean to be “pro-choice” on abortion?
A lot of conservatives complain that Republicans don’t pass enough pro-life legislation when they hold the House, Senate and White House. The truth is, the House Republicans DID pass some pro-life legislation from 2016-2018. Some of it got signed into law, but most of it died in the Senate, because of the Democrats.
The Washington Times reports on a bill – Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act – that just died in the Senate:
An effort by Senate Republicans to enhance protections for newborns who survive abortions, spurred by New York and Virginia bills making it easier to perform late-term procedures, was blocked Monday by Democrats.
[…]“There are only two sides of the debate on the floor debate tonight: You’re either for babies, or you’re defending infanticide,” said Mr. Sasse in his floor speech. “That is actually what the legislation is that’s before us.”
[…]The Sasse bill would require medical practitioners caring for infants born alive after botched abortions to “exercise the same degree of professional skill and care to protect the newborn as would be offered to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”
“It also requires that the living child, after appropriate care has been given, be immediately transported and admitted to a hospital,” said the Sasse press release. “Currently federal law does not adequately protect a born child who survives an abortion.”
Unfortunately for the little babies, the bill did not pass:
Republicans said they would keep pressing for the bill, while pro-life groups denounced Democrats for standing in the way of the legislation.
“Senate Democrats had the chance today to prove they are not the party of infanticide, and instead they doubled down on extremism,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser.
It’s not unreasonable to request expedited processing for a bill that ought to pass unanimously. After all, who would vote against a born baby?
Here’s what “moderate” Democrat Dianne Feinstein had to say about infanticide:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, blasted the Sasse bill as “just the latest attack in the decades-long Republican effort to eliminate a woman’s right to control her own body.”
So, you make a bill outlawing infanticide, and 40 Republican senators co-sponsor it. But the bill dies anyway, because Democrats won’t support it.
The abortion debate was never about weeks or months or viability. Talking about when an unborn baby becomes a human being was just a rhetorical smokescreen to dehumanize unborn children, the same way that skin color was used to dehumanize slaves. Democrats always knew that unborn babies were human beings at every moment during pregnancy. They’re strong. The baby is weak. The baby is in their way. Who cares about reason and evidence? Who cares about right and wrong? If something gets in your way, just kill it, and then silence anyone who makes you feel bad about your selfishness.
I would be very careful about electing people who are willing to kill innocent children who get in the way of their pleasure-seeking. If they aren’t willing to control their hedonism to protect innocent children, they certainly aren’t going to put the brakes on for you.
I most recently spent half a year at a PCA church, and then another half a year at a Southern Baptist church. I attended Sunday services as well as Wednesday night Bible study. I am now looking for a new church. For now, I just look around for a sermon I like and listen to that. In this post, I’ll explain why I think men don’t like church.
There are three areas where churches fail to attract men:
Apologetics
Feminism, sex and marriage
Policy and current events
Apologetics
The PCA church discouraged me from becoming a member of the church because they said that conversion to Christianity due to reason and evidence was contrary to their teachings, and a “red flag”. Their words. I didn’t try to fight them on it, because they are Reformed Presbyterian, and this is their actual view. Their approach to apologetics was “pre-suppositional”, which is to say, they try to convince people to become Christians by asking them to assume that the Bible is infallible, without any argumentation or evidence. Naturally, this doesn’t work, so they aren’t trained to answer any serious questions from non-Christians. (1 Pet 3:15-16)
The Reformed Baptist SBC church is led by people like Russell Moore and Al Mohler, who take the “magic words” approach to evangelism. I.e. – they think that people become Christians just by speaking Bible verses out of context to them. So, when the atheist asks “do you have any evidence for God’s existence?” or “do you have any evidence for Jesus’ resurrection?”, their response is to quote Bible verses to the atheist, which have nothing to do with those topics. Christianity has lost so much influence in the culture under their approach, which is not even Biblical. (Mat 12:38–41)
These approaches to evangelism are not used in any other area of human endeavor. No one replies to questions about auto mechanics, or software engineering, or gardening, or cooking, by spouting Bible verses. In literally every other area of human endeavor, the laws of logic and supporting evidence are seen as assets when making claims to know something about the world to someone who disagrees with you.
Feminism, Sex and Marriage
First wave feminism simply asked for women to be given the same liberty and opportunity as men. That was good. But later versions of destroyed all distinctions between men and women. By destroying femininity, feminism directed women away from the traditional life plan of marriage, children and home-making.
Feminism changed how women voted. Today, about 75% of young, unmarried women vote for policies like taxpayer-funded birth control, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce, affirmative action for women in schools and in the workplace, taxpayer-funded daycare, public schools, single-mother welfare, social security, etc. These policies and programs raised tax rates, and grew government, making it easier for women to have children without having to choose a marriage-ready man she wasn’t attracted to. Instead, she could choose men she was attracted to, and just use government programs as a substitute provider if it didn’t “work out”. Thanks to feminism, we have a 42% out-of-wedlock birth rate, and it’s rising. Few female college graduates are debt-free. About 5% of women emerge from college as virgins.
Under feminism, the traditional male roles and virtues were deemed “sexist”. Women were shamed for choosing early marriage, large families, and stable men who were good at being husbands and fathers. Instead, women today chose men based on appearance. They spend their 20s and early 30s giving men who will not commit to them premarital sex. The men who are getting sex thrown at them have no interest in Judeo-Christian values, chastity, fidelity, commitment or raising children. Women mistake the men’s willingness to have sex and cohabitate as signs that they are close to marriage. But in fact, chasing the hot bad boys just eats up the chastity, youth and beauty that could have made them interesting to the marriage-minded men they scorned. Later on, they realize that they’ve wasted their 20s on bad boys, but by then they are not attractive for marriage.
What has the response been to feminism from pastors and churches? They accept the anti-male, anti-marriage policies, that came out of feminism. They accept the promiscuity, and the marriage-delaying that came from feminism. Today, pastors just try to bully the men who were passed over to marry the women who had previously rejected them, despite the higher risk of divorce caused by the women’s past behavior.
Policy and current events
Most pastors are anti-intellectual, and they believe that this is a virtue, since they are focused narrowly on what the Bible explicitly says. Because of this, they aren’t able to understand which laws and policies allow Christianity and Christian families to flourish. I agree that what the Bible speaks about is of the highest importance. But we need to understand how to achieve the goals that the Bible states, as well as how to counter the forces that threaten the achievement of those goals.
For example, Christianity thrives when marriage thrives. Christianity is passed on from parents to children. Anything that threatens marriage, or interferes with parental authority, weakens the influence of Christianity. So, policies like higher taxes, no-fault divorce, SOGI laws, all harm the Christian family, while policies like lower taxes, protections for Christian businesses, protection for Christian schools (statements of faith, moral codes), etc. are all good for Christian families. But most pastors never talk about policies or laws, because they don’t think about how to defend the Christian worldview, how to educate Christian children, how to promote marriage, how promote Christian moral values in the public square. Even protecting the right to life of unborn children is ignored.
As the churches lose relevance, it becomes tempting for pastors to accept what the secular left promotes as good and true and beautiful. The big one is pastors pushing for redistribution of wealth by the secular government as a solution to “poverty”, even though the Bible only sanctions voluntary charity. This diminishes the cultural relevance of the church and elevates the secular government. SBC leaders like Russell Moore champion amnesty for refugees and unskilled illegal immigrants, not realizing how it will harm Christian institutions and values down the road to import large numbers of people who will eventually vote for policies like higher taxes, bigger government, etc.
The attacker (pictured above) had never met any of the three victims
This story out of Australia is about a very controversial topic. Basically, a biological man pleaded not guilty because of insanity, after attacking three random people with an axe. Please be careful with your comments as well, as big technology companies censor anything written about transgenderism.
Australia News reported: (WARNING: article has graphic photos of one of the victims)
Transgender Amati, a trade union organiser, went prowling with the axe after storming out of a disastrous Tinder date hours earlier.
She was dosed up on psychedelic “love drug” MDA, antidepressants, cannabis, vodka and transgender hormones, the court heard.
Just after 1am she wrote online: “One day I am going to kill a lot of people”, and sent a message to one of the women she had been on a date with saying: “Most people deserve to die, I hate people”.
She listened to the dark-themed song Flatline by US metal band Periphery and changed her Facebook status to: “Humans are only able to destroy, to hate, so that is what I shall do.”
After doing a lap of the shop and attacking Ben she swung the axe at Sharon, who was at the counter buying milk.
Amati tried to hit her a second time as she lay sprawled on the ground but narrowly missed.
CCTV showed her then calmly walking away across the forecourt.
She also tried to kill a homeless man nearby, then feigned unconsciousness when cops tracked her down in the front garden of a house.
Her police interview hours after the bloody rampage showed her coldly refusing to answer questions.
In a steady voice, Amati says over and over: “I respectfully choose to exercise my right to remain silent”.
Her lawyers tried to claim insanity but that was rejected by the jury.
While on remand she spent time in three women’s jails where she bullied other inmates, reports news.com.au.
The Australia News article was one of the only ones to provide details of the injuries, and the impact to the victims.
Let’s look at the first victim:
A court heard the blade missed his brain by millimetres as it sliced through his nose and eye socket.
Plastic surgeons rebuilt his face with four titanium plates. He can feel the one round his eye moving under his skin when he touches it.
Ben, whose wife was pregnant, did not want cops to tell her what happened but later spoke to her by phone from hospital.
He was vomiting blood that was pouring down his throat from his mangled nose.
Ben spoke out today two years on from the January 2017 horror in Sydney, Australia, to hit out at Amati’s sentence.
He said she was “calculating” and “not remorseful”, adding: “She’ll do her time easily and get paroled in mid-2021. It’s played out perfectly for her, perhaps better than she expected.”
The attacker received a sentence far below standard:
Amati was handed a sentence of nine years with a non-parole period of 4½ years after being convicted of three counts of attempted murder.
A petition demanding a tougher sentence says the standard penalty for attempted murder is ten years without parole.
So the standard sentence is ten years without parole, and this person will serve less than half the minimum sentence prescribed by law. How did that happen? Who knows. The light sentence for this attacker certainly won’t deter any similar future attacks, which is bad for the future victims of similar attacks.
Also interesting is that carrying a defensive weapon of any kind is prohibited in Australia. So the victims were defenseless. They just had to call the police while bleeding out, and wait for them to arrive. If the victims had tried to defend themselves with a defensive weapon, they would have been arrested, and charged with a crime.
Possessing any object specifically for the purpose of self-defence, lethal or non-lethal, is a criminal offence. There are many women, raped and/or murdered, who would have been liable to prosecution had they been carrying anything that might have saved them.
[…]Prohibited self-defence items include pepper sprays, mace, clubs and personal Tasers. In some States carrying a pocketknife is illegal and even wearing a bulletproof vest is banned.
It was interesting to read reader comments about the attack, too. When I read the story on the radically leftist Buzz Feed, I noticed in the comments how one transgender person said that the victims of the attack were “OK”. A commenter replied and said that the victims were not “OK”. This comment – that the victims were not OK – was met with multiple responses claiming that the commenter was “transphobic” and “hateful” and unable to “understand words with more than 4 letters in them.” I thought that was interesting.
