Tag Archives: Abortion

News

UK doctors who refuse to perform sex changes can be banned from practicing

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Dina sent me this alarming article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

The General Medical Council has issued guidance warning that it would be “discriminatory” for doctors not to prescribe either the pill or morning-after pill because they disagree with people having sex before marriage.

[…]The draft GMC guidelines, entitled Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice, stipulate that doctors “cannot be willing to provide married women with contraception but unwilling to prescribe it for unmarried women”.

“This would be a breach of our guidance as you would be refusing to treat a particular group of patients,” the document adds.

It also warns it would be illegal for doctors to refuse to carry out “gender reassignment”, because it would also amount to discrimination.

“Serious or persistent failure to follow this guidance will put your registration at risk,” the guidelines warn.

[…]Bishop Tom Williams of the Archdiocese of Liverpool claimed the advice discriminated against “certain groups of doctors” and risked creating an “atmosphere of fear” in which doctors would be “prohibited from ever expressing their own religion”.

Dr Peter Saunders, chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a former surgeon, said the rules would “marginalise Christian health professionals in Britain”.

He told the Daily Mail: “The problem is that 21st century British medicine now involves practices which many doctors regard as unethical.”

In other secular left regimes like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, conscience rights for medical professionals were similarly frowned upon. For a socialist, whatever the state wants is right, and who cares about the individual’s freedom?

Many Christians today in the United States, and especially in socialist countries, think that it is a good idea for the government to provide medical care to everyone, regardless of their lifestyle choices. It doesn’t matter if some people are freely choosing lifestyles that expose them to higher medical costs, like promiscuity or homosexuality. These socialist Christians think that individuals and their employers should be taxed in order to pay for abortions, sex changes, HIV treatments, and so on. The secular left things that birth control pills, which can cause abortions, are “health care”, and socialist Christians agree with them.

A dollar can only be spent one way. It can be spent on an apologetics book, or it can be spent on a sex change. It can be spent on private Christian school tuition or it can be spent on a partial birth abortion. What would God prefer? Would he rather that people who are sinning face higher costs for their sins, so that they think twice about committing them? Or would he rather that people who are sinning have the costs paid by someone else who isn’t, so that the sin becomes cheaper? Well, when I talk to socialist Christians, especially in Canada, they think that God is happier with a bigger secular government, so that sinful people have lower costs and government approval. That doesn’t make sense to me, though.

News

New Gallup poll: 50% of Americans now pro-life – only 41% are pro-choice

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I found this article at Secondhand Smoke. (H/T ECM and J Warner Wallace)

Here are the poll results:

The 41% of Americans who now identify themselves as “pro-choice” is down from 47% last July and is one percentage point below the previous record low in Gallup trends, recorded in May 2009. Fifty percent now call themselves “pro-life,” one point shy of the record high, also from May 2009.

[…]Since 2001, the majority of Republicans have consistently taken the pro-life position, but by a gradually increasing margin over “pro-choice.” That gap expanded further this year, with the percentage of Republicans identifying as pro-life increasing to 72% from 68% last May, and those identifying as pro-choice dropping to 22% from 28%. Still, Republicans’ current views are similar to those found in 2009.

[…]The percentage of political independents identifying as pro-choice is 10 points lower today than in May 2011, while the percentage pro-life is up by six points. As a result, pro-lifers now outnumber pro-choicers among this important swing political group for only the second time since 2001, with the first occurring in 2009.

[…]Democrats’ views on abortion have changed the least over the past 12 years, with roughly 60% calling themselves pro-choice and about a third pro-life. Democrats’ identification as pro-choice was above this range in May 2011, but has returned to about 60% in the current poll.

Why are the pro-lifers winning?

Wesley J. Smith explains:

When you look at the poll, the pro life side has been the plurality/majority view for several years.  The question is why? Here’s my take:

  • The pro life movement has science on their side. A fetus is a human being in the gestating stage. He or she isn’t a parasite nor a tissue mass.
  • The pro choice side became too strident and absolutist–as in fighting the bans on partial birth abortion and insisting on making abortion available to minors without parental consent.
  • Just as in the gay rights issue, familiarity breeds acceptance.  Many people know pro life activists and understand they are not the kind of uncaring people the media and pro choice activists like to paint.
  •  America remains a generally religious nation. Not all pro lifers are religious, to be sure, but the power of faith as a motivator on this issue can’t be denied.

Saying one is pro life isn’t the same thing as saying abortion should be outlawed.  But it does show, I think, that those who work indefatigable to value the lives of the unborn are respectable and mainstream.  And that means the incremental approach activists have taken on this issue for decades is slowly working.

I think that pro-lifers, especially groups like CCBR and LTI who are able to do two-hour formal debates, do the most good. Show the pictures of abortions does a lot of good. When you see red blood next to a miniature human, you know that abortion is wrong. It is wrong to spill the blood of another human being without justification. And what possible justification could there be for hurting a little baby?

News

Democrat-connected PR firm gets $20 million taxpayer dollars to promote contraception/abortion mandate

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded a $20-million contract to a Democrat-connected public relations firm, which will promote awareness of Obamacare’s “preventive services” mandate.

Under that mandate, all health-care plans must cover — without any fees or co-pays — all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, as well as sterilizations.

The public relations firm hired to conduct the PR campaign, Porter Novelli, is a global firm whose leadership team features former Obama campaign surrogate and Democratic operative Catherine “Kiki” McLean.
http://www.porternovelli.com/about/leadership/catherine-kiki-mclean/

McLean appeared on television on behalf of the Obama campaign in 2008. She also worked as a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as well as the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

The $20-million taxpayer-funded public relations campaign is mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an HHS official told CNSNews.com.

“Section 4004 of the Affordable Care Act required the department to conduct this effort as one way to encourage utilization of preventive benefits and services,” the official said.

“This public education campaign is part of our ongoing education efforts that will inform the American people about the steps they can take to prevent disease and illness and stay healthy.”

Section 4004 of the legislation requires HHS to conduct an “education and outreach campaign regarding preventive benefits,” using radio, television and online media in a campaign that, among other things, “explains the preventive services covered under health plans offered through [ObamaCare].”

The campaign also “promotes the use of preventive services” including those covered under the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate, HIV screenings for “at risk” youth, and diet and obesity prevention services for children.

I’m not sure if anyone remembers, but this is the same kind of scandal that brought down the Liberal Party in Canada in 2006.

Excerpt:

The sponsorship scandal, “AdScam”, “Sponsorship” or Sponsorgate, is a scandal that came as a result of a Canadian federal government “sponsorship program” in the province of Quebec and involving the Liberal Party of Canada, which was in power from 1993 to 2006. The program was originally established as an effort to raise awareness of the Government of Canada’s contributions to Quebec industries and other activities in order to counter the actions of the Parti Québécois government of the province that worked to promote Quebec independence.

The program ran from 1996 until 2004, when broad corruption was discovered in its operations and the program was discontinued. Illicit and even illegal activities within the administration of the program were revealed, involving misuse and misdirection of public funds intended for government advertising in Quebec. Such misdirections included sponsorship money awarded to ad firms in return for little or no work, which firms maintained Liberal organizers or fundraisers on their payrolls or donated back part of the money to the Liberal Party. The resulting investigations and scandal affected the Liberal Party of Canada and the then-government of Prime Minister Paul Martin. It was an ongoing affair for years, but rose to national prominence in early 2004 after the program was examined by Sheila Fraser, the federal auditor general. Her revelations led to the Martin government establishing the Gomery Commission to conduct a public inquiry and file a report on the matter. The official title of this inquiry was the Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities. In the end the Commission concluded that $2 million was awarded in contracts without a proper bidding process, $250,000 was added to one contract price for no additional work, and $1.5 million was awarded for work that was never done, of which $1 million had to be repaid.

Keep in mind that Canada is about one-tenth as big as the USA, for things like population, budget, etc. So their scandal was about the same amount of money as ours, if you correct for that.

That was the election that brought Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper into power. The Liberals also gave taxpayer money to Liberal-connected ad firms. When the truth came out, the Liberals went from having 135 seats in 2004 to 34 seats in 2011. So this is the kind of story that can bring down an entire political party. Using taxpayer dollars to promote your political party is serious, and when you put it together with Barack Obama already campaigning in swing states at taxpayer expense, it’s even more egregious. This is America, not some banana republic.