Tag Archives: Abortion

News

9th Circuit CA says Christian pharmacists must dispense abortion-causing pill

23 Comments

Earlier today, I posted about how to respond to the pro-abortion argument that states that abortion is OK because babies are parasites and women should not be obligated to carry them for 9 months.

Pharmacies forced to dispense the morning-after pill

I noticed this (left-wing) LA Times article on Hot Air.

Excerpt:

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the “morning after” contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Wash., failed in a bid to block 2007 regulations that required all Washington pharmacies to stock and dispense the pills.

Family-owned Ralph’s Thriftway and two pharmacists employed elsewhere sued Washington state officials over the requirement. The plaintiffs asserted that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills, which can prevent implantation of a recently fertilized egg. They said that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion.

Notice the important distinction made by Ed Morrissey here:

There have been two different issues in the legal fight over Plan B.  In one group, pharmacists not working for themselves — for instance, at chain pharmacies — objected to dispensing the pill and wanted job protection despite their refusal.  Those cases hardly stand up to scrutiny.  The owner of the pharmacy has the right to decide on his own inventory and what to sell, and the employees of that pharmacy either should follow that policy or find a job somewhere else if it offends them.  It falls into the same category as a cashier who refuses to handle meat at the checkout counter because he’s a vegetarian.

However, this is something else.  The owners of the pharmacy do not want to stock the pills for their own reasons.  Even apart from religious grounds, that still seems to be their decision in the marketplace.  If they don’t want to sell aspirin, or Ginsu knives, or inflatable life vests for swimming pools, that should be their decision, too.  If their customers object to their policies, they will find other pharmacies to patronize. The government has a public interest in telling retailers what they cannot sell for safety reasons (like dynamite, as an example), but should not force business owners to sell something they do not want to sell.

Let’s have the facts: The “morning after” pill kills an unborn human person.

(UPDATE: that link is for RU-486! My mistake, but Plan B can also cause an abortion in some cases by preventing implantation, see the comments below)

And this is another reminder why it was crazy for “Christians” to vote for Obama to steal the money from their rich neighbors. When you vote for left-wing socialists because you covet other people’s money, do not be surprised when the socialist comes after your Christian beliefs soon after. There are a lot of people in church on Sunday morning who need to be reading about economics and capitalism on Sunday night.

Commentary

The worst pro-abortion argument ever!

2 Comments

From Neil Simpson.

The challenge:

Some pro-legalized abortions take the view that technically speaking the unborn are parasites and that they are fair game for destruction because they are dependent on the mother and consume some of her resources.  As weird as that argument is I actually like when they present it.  I think that middle grounders will immediately realize what a horribly wrong attempt it is to de-humanize the unborn.

The response:

By that line of reasoning, a woman would be totally justified in killing her baby a day before its due date.

That absurdity aside, their analysis fails (at least legally, if not morally). While you are never responsible for keeping someone else alive, you are responsible for doing so if you created the situation in which they are dependent upon you. The classic example is a person who is drowning in the ocean. You, as a boater with a life preserver, are under no obligation to help them out of the water. If, however, you were the one who chucked her overboard, then watched her drown, you can bet that a jury would convict your immoral butt for murder, not for ruining her clothes by getting her wet.

Likewise, you are under no obligation to give a dying person a kidney to save his life, but, if you ripped his kidneys out of his body, you would be charged with murder if he died from those injuries. If the only way to avoid his death is to give him your kidneys, you can bet that your options are to fork over an organ or be charged with murder.

I find it scary that people think of little babies as parasites in the first place!

News

Are teacher unions interested in helping your children to succeed in life?

1 Comment

This is a great article from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Club for Growth)

Excerpt:

In her weekly “What Matters Most” newspaper column, Randi Weingarten recently bid the Big Apple farewell. Ms. Weingarten has been elevated to president of the national American Federation of Teachers from head of its New York City affiliate, and she had some notable parting words: “One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things.”

Well, it could be, if it weren’t for Ms. Weingarten’s union. Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York’s public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost and the cap now is 200.)

Ms. Weingarten was also against merit pay for individual teachers. She supported a law that bars school districts from linking teacher tenure to student test scores. In return for even the mildest pension reforms, Ms. Weingarten recently won a concession that teachers no longer need to work on the two days before the start of the school year. Meanwhile, she has fought to ensure that the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool keeps allowing teachers whom no principal wants to hire to receive their full salaries. New York spends an estimated $150 million on this and on Teacher Reassignment Centers (for instructors who have been accused of misconduct) alone.

Speaking of money, Ms. Weingarten has long been among the union leaders claiming that more cash will fix public education. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has paid for the modest reforms he’s been able to implement by increasing spending to $22 billion from $13 billion, much of that in teacher salaries. The four-year high school graduation rate in New York City is now 56%. In union politics, results like these are how you win a promotion to national leadership.

I blogged before about the NYC teachers removed from their duties who are still being paid.

But there’s more to it than that. My Christian readers should also be aware that teacher’s unions, like most unions (but not all!), are also very interested in promoting left-wing, anti-family social programs. (Weingarten herself is openly gay)

If you missed my post about Obama’s appointment of a gay activist to be the director of “safe schools”, check it out here.

The take-home lesson for you is not to vote for Democrats just because they say they will spend more money on education. What Democrats really mean is that they will spend more money on teacher’s unions, so that the teachers can turn around and advocate for leftist policies, like abortion and same-sex marriage, using union dues.