Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Evaluating Sotomayor’s views on abortion and gun ownership

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The article by Wayne Lapierre is from the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

After the first day of confirmation hearings, gun owners have good reason to worry. Those of us who respect the Second Amendment are concerned about the case of Maloney v. Cuomo, which reviewed whether this freedom applies to all law-abiding Americans or only to residents of Washington. If it’s incorporated, the Second Amendment prevents the states from disarming honest Americans. If it’s not, the Second Amendment is meaningless outside of our nation’s capital.

Judge Sotomayor was on the U.S. 2nd Circuit panel that decided the Maloney case in a short, unsigned and clearly incorrect opinion. The fact that the Maloney panel misread precedent in order to avoid doing the 14th Amendment “incorporation” analysis required by the Supreme Court is troubling to say the least.

Equally troubling is the fact that Judge Sotomayor said she wasn’t even familiar with the Supreme Court’s modern incorporation cases. There are few issues more important for a judge to understand than whether the fundamental guarantees in the Bill of Rights apply to all Americans. Our First Amendment right to free speech applies to all Americans. Our Fourth Amendment protection from illegal search and seizure applies to all Americans. It’s hard to believe that a potential Supreme Court justice wouldn’t be familiar with those cases.

Despite that judicial amnesia, Judge Sotomayor co-authored an opinion — in January — holding that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. So that leaves two options: Either she failed to follow the Supreme Court’s direction in Heller that judges are required to analyze the modern incorporation cases or she actually did review those cases but came to an incorrect conclusion. Neither option gives gun owners much confidence in her view of the Second Amendment.

Issues, Etc. did a podcast with pro-lifer Charmaine Yoest. Sotomayor is apparently a radical pro-abortionist, as well.

Video from Fox News:

You can read more about Charmaine’s challenge to Sotomayor in this Washington Post article.

Excerpt:

Yoest is a calm, articulate, smart abortion opponent — the kind who gives abortion-rights supporters nightmares. Since virtually the moment Sotomayor’s name surfaced as a possible Supreme Court candidate, AUL has been conducting vigorous opposition research. It has set up two Web sites, including Sotomayor411.com that compares Souter to Sotomayor on a variety of issues, including abortion, end-of-life issues and the rights of abortion demonstrators. Suffice to say that Sotomayor doesn’t fare too well. And it has also has AskSotomayor.com, which lays out 10 questions that it says senators need to ask her.

I am so glad that we have someone intelligent and articulate to speak for us at Sotomayor’s hearings. A lot of people are pro-life, and are not really informed about it. But Charmaine is going to go out there and make a solid case in the little time she has available!

Commentary

Does legalized abortion reduce crime rates?

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One of the reasons given by pro-choice people for legalized abortion is that it reduces crime rates. But does it really reduce crime rates?

Let’s take a look at a two-part series by economist John Lott, writing for Fox News.

Here is the first article.

Excerpt:

Academic studies have found that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion.

In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5 percent of all births from 1965 to 1969 to more than 16 percent two decades later (1985 to 1989).

Here is the second article.

Excerpt:

What happened to all these children raised by single women? No matter how much they want their children, single parents tend to devote less attention to them than married couples do. Single parents are less likely than married parents to read to their children or take them on excursions, and more likely to feel angry at their children or to feel that they are burdensome. Children raised out of wedlock have more social and developmental problems than children of married couples by almost any measure — from grades to school expulsion to disease. Unsurprisingly, children from unmarried families are also more likely to become criminals.

This material is exposited more fully in Lott’s book “Freedomnomics“, which is one of my favorite books. I bought it for 3 of my friends as part of their Christmas present bundle, including Andrew and Jen, the smartest married couple in the world!

About the author

John R. Lott, Jr. is a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland. Lott has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. Lott has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He is the author of six books including: “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws”, “The Bias Against Guns”, and most recently “Freedomnomics.” Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He has appeared on such television programs as the ABC and NBC National Evening News broadcasts, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and the Today Show. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.

Commentary

CRISIS! Science czar advocated forced abortions, mass sterilizations and totalitarianism

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Report here by ZombieTime, featuring quotations, page scans and photographs of the actual pages from the book. (H/T Hot Air, Michelle Malkin)

The report linked above is a MUST-READ. It is important that we understand the thinking of people on the secular left. We need to understand why they oppose traditional morality, religion and capitalism. We need to look at the writings of the most committed secular leftists, environmentalists, feminists and environmentalists and ask ourselves whether we should be voting for these people.

Here is the book cover:

The book authored by John Holdren, Obama's science czar
The book authored by John Holdren, Obama's science czar

Here are the main points in the parts cited at ZombieTime’s report:

  • Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
  • The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
  • Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
  • People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
  • A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

When you’re done reading the report, come back here I will explain how people born and raised in this country of liberty can even think things like this, much less advocate for them in public.

Michelle Malkin’s post had this video that explains where Holdren’s views came from:

And left-wing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg has similar views.

She says this in a New York Times interview:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

This is the mindset of the secular left. The secular left doesn’t want to have too many babies of a certain color or gender, so they kill them. Because there is no purpose to life except to be happy, and the strong need to be happy even at the expense of the weak.

The denial of God matters

If there is no God, then survival of the fittest is true. Those who are deemed unfit by the secular left elites may be culled by abortion or eugenics so that they do not use too many of the world’s resources. This way, the happiness of the strong can be maximized. And that is the purpose of life on atheism – to maximize your happy feelings at the expense of others weaker than you.

The nihilism of the secular left makes them try to prevent future crises by seizing control. There are no human rights in an accidental, materialist universe, so there are no objective restraints on their exercise of power. In contrast, Christians believe that God is in control of history, and that other people have human rights and were made to freely respond to God, if they want to.

The job of Christians is to make sure that everyone has a chance to respond, and that means other people need to have liberty, prosperity and security to give them time to respond. People have value because they can respond to God. And even those who can’t or won’t respond have a human rights. The needs of others give Christians the opportunity to exercise love instead of selfishness. We were made to be good.

In Christianity, Christians are admonished not to compare themselves to others, and especially not to think that they are better than others. Christians are only allowed to voice their disagreement, set an example and try to persuade others. It is actually the worse sin (pride) to compare yourself to others and look down at them. In Christianity, everyone is equally loved by God, and having different views doesn’t change their value.

Secular leftists are different. When they turn away from God (and ultimate purpose and meaning), they feel a tremendous pressure to do something important in the world in order to maintain the illusion of having meaning and purpose. As they carry out their plans, the pride of comparing themselves to others grows, until they start to think they should really be controlling others, and even killing those who are “unfit”.

There is all the difference in the world between a Christian and a secular leftist.

Further study

I wrote an entire series here about how the worldview of the left, which begins with the denial of God, does not provide an adequate grounding for human rights, human dignity, moral values, free will, ultimate significance, and moral accountability.