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News

New study finds that 86% of doctors unwilling to perform abortions

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Wes from Reason to Stand sent me this article from the Freakonomics blog.

Excerpt:

A new study released by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, from main author Debra Stulberg, surveys 1,144 ob-gyns (1,800 were initially approached) to see how many provide abortion services. Though legal, abortion is much harder to come by than one might expect: while 97% of ob-gyns reported having encountered women seeking an abortion, only 14% said they were willing to perform the service.

And here is the breakdown by religious affiliation:

  • 40.2 percent of Jewish doctors say yes, compared with
  • 1.2 percent of Evangelical Protestants
  • 9 percent of Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox
  • 10.1 percent of Non-Evangelical Protestants
  • 20 percent of Hindus
  • 26.5 percent of doctors who said they had no religious affiliation

Naturally evangelical Protestants (like me!) are the best.

I do not recommend the Freakonomics book for learning about economics, and I would recommend John Lott’s book “Freedomnomics” as an antidote to anyone who has read Freakonomics, particularly on the issue of whether abortion reduces or increases crime rates. The authors of Freakonomics are liberal, while John Lott is conservative. You can read a popular article about his refutation of Freakonomics here, or read the research paper here.

But the main thing is that Democrats do not like the idea that you would be allowed to stop them from being happy by having a will of your own. For Democrats, you exist to serve the will of the state – both by paying taxes, and if necessary by killing babies. You are not there to have your own plan and your own family and your own life, as Republicans believe. And they really don’t like you making them feel bad by resisting what they think of as good. They don’t want anyone to say that what they are doing is wrong. They would just like everyone to pay for what they are doing and to help them do it and to help them feel good about doing it after they’ve done it – and they don’t care what you think.

Now consider this 2009 article from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

During the last months of the Bush administration, the feds adopted a new rule that could allow health-care workers to refuse to provide birth control on moral grounds. Now the Obama administration is moving to reverse that rule, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Existing federal law allows health-care workers to refuse on moral grounds to provide abortions. The new rule strengthened and extended those protections. While some groups, such as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, supported the move, many others, including several state attorneys general and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposed the rule.

There have been recent reports of women being denied emergency contraception, which is federally approved for use within 72 hours of intercourse, the Trib says.

The Obama administration will start the process of reversing the rule today. Final action won’t be taken until after the public is allowed a 30-day comment period.

The Democrats went on record in 2009 as being opposed to conscience protections.

Excerpt:

The Senate on Thursday night rejected an amendment from a pro-life senator that would have provided conscience protection on abortion for doctors and medical centers. The amendment comes at a time when President Barack Obama is considering overturning further protections.

Sen Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, sponsored an amendment to the Senate budget bill that would protect the right of conscience for health care workers.

His budget amendment was to “protect the freedom of conscience for patients and the right of health care providers to serve patients without violating their moral and religious convictions.”

However, the Senate rejected the conscience amendment on a 56-41 vote with most of the chamber’s Democrats voting against it along with a handful of pro-abortion Republicans.

Three Democrats joined most of the Senate Republicans in voting for the Coburn amendment.

[…]The amendment comes at a time when Obama is considering rescinding the Provider Conscience Clause that further protects the rights of health workers.

President Bush put the provision into place to provide more enforcement for the three federal laws that make it so medical professionals and facilities are not required to do abortions.

However, President Obama has proposed overturning those conscience protections and will likely do so after a 30-day public comment window expires on April 9.

Earlier this year, Obama succeeding in overturning many of Bush’s protections for individuals whose morality differs with the morality of the government.

Excerpt:

After two years of struggling to balance the rights of patients against the beliefs of health-care workers, the Obama administration on Friday finally rescinded most of a federal regulation designed to protect those who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on moral or religious grounds.

Be careful who you vote for. If free enterprise and capitalism strike you as unfair, then pick up a book by Thomas Sowell or Arthur Brooks and read about it until it makes sense to you. Don’t vote to violate your own conscience because you have a mistaken view of which economic system helps the poor most. Similarly with foreign policy. If opposition to war causes you to vote Democrat, then pick up a book by Frank Gaffney or Douglas Feith and learn about how a strong military is needed to prevent war. Don’t vote to violate your own conscience because you have a mistaken view of which foreign policy helps peace most.

News

What could Stephen Harper teach Michele Bachmann about winning elections?

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Michele Bachmann should adopt Stephen Harper's plan
Michele Bachmann should adopt Stephen Harper's plan

Michele Bachmann is soliciting questions for her townhall meeting on her Facebook page. Please “like” her page and then like my question, so that it will be asked.

The post that she is asking for questions in has this text:

Excited to join Tim Scott for Congress for a town hall live on Facebook from Charleston, SC tomorrow at 7PM ET, where we’ll be taking questions from our community of constitutional conservatives. Have a question? Please ask in the comments below:

My question is reproduced below:

Mrs. Bachmann, in the 2011 Canadian federal election, Stephen Harper, a conservative, managed to win a majority in a country that is only one-third conservative. He did this by creating N-point plans that clearly laid out his plans for each term.

The reason I think this is important is because he was able to neutralize the attacks of the media and the three left-leaning political parties because they were not able to accuse him of having a “hidden agenda”. My question for you is, have you considered laying out a clean, specific N-point plan for what you would do as President of the United States? You could even have 3 plans, one for social issues, one for fiscal issues, and one for foreign policy.

If you like my question, please like the “TeamBachmann” Facebook page, and then go to her post asking for questions, and like my question.

Here are the Harper plans:

2006: (won minority)

  • Cleaning up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act
  • Cutting the GST (the national sales tax)
  • Cracking down on crime
  • Increasing financial assistance for parents
  • Working with the provinces to establish a wait-times guarantee for patients

2008: (won minority)

  • The minister of finance and the Bank of Canada will constantly monitor financial markets and the impact of developments in other countries.
  • The global financial crisis will be discussed at the Canada-European Union Summit, which Harper will attend on Friday.
  • Parliament will be summoned to meet this fall and the minister of finance will table an economic and fiscal update before the end of November.
  • Canada will be represented at the meeting of G-20 finance ministers scheduled for early November in Brazil. Canada has also called for a second meeting of G-7 finance ministers.
  • Government spending will be focused and kept under control as the strategic review of departmental spending — now in the second year of a four year review – continues.
  • Harper will hold a first ministers meeting on the economy to discuss with premiers and territorial leaders a joint approach to the global financial crisis.

2011: (won majority)

  • Creating jobs through training, trade and low taxes.
  • Supporting families through our Family Tax Cut and more support for seniors and caregivers.
  • Eliminating the deficit by 2014-2015 by controlling spending and cutting waste.
  • Making our streets safe through new laws to protect children and the elderly.
  • Standing on guard for Canada by investing in the development of Canada’s North, cracking down on human smuggling and strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces.

Actually, Canadian conservatives are much more liberal than we Republicans are – they are soft on social issues. Harper himself is an evangelical Christian, though, but his hands are tied when it comes to social issues. He tries to support stronger families as a way to reduce abortion and to ensure that children grow up with mothers and fathers. Even Stephen Harper is not able to do anything about same-sex marriage and abortion, which are both legal in Canada.

I think Michele would do well to pretend that she was running for office in Canada, and then create her plans that way. All the conservatives already know that she is a solid evangelical and a Tea party stalwart. What she needs to do is come up with a list of specific smart policies that will win over two-thirds of the independents.

Some things I would like to see: transparency in government, sensible spending cuts, tort reform, cut employer payroll tax to 0%, cut federal funding for abortion/Planned Parenthood, increased tax credits for MARRIED couples, matching grants for states that create voucher programs, etc, a federal right-to-work law, a tax credit, usable at any time in the future, for all salary income earned by young people under the age of 22. Etc.

News

Academic researchers gather for conference on… pedophilia?

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From the Daily Caller. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013.  Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists.  According to the conference brochure, the event will examine “ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process” and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be among the panelists at the conference.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. “The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.”

The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in the August 17 conference. “The DSM should meet a higher standard than that,” Kline continued. “We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about.”

My previous article (see below for link) along these lines talked about how arguments are now being made to advance polygamy, using the same reasoning that was used to push for same-sex marriage. Social conservatives always get a bad rap for being party poopers and raining on everyone’s fun and “liberty”. I wonder if things will ever go far enough to where normal people realize that children need to be protected, and that can sometimes mean telling grown-ups NO.

Right now, it seems as though society is in a place where moral judgments have been outlawed, because it makes people feel bad to be judged. It seems to me that the people who say that there should be no moral boundaries are winning.

Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with the Obama administration’s laws restricting speech on controversial topics.

UPDATE: My friend ECM just linked this story on Facebook and also put this post by Robert Stacy McCain as a follow-up.

Excerpt:

Since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the Freudian concept of “repression” has been hijacked by the advocates of liberation, who insist that it is an infringement of civil rights to expect people to resist sexual urges. I’ve sometimes called this the “Desire Is Destiny” theory of sexuality, but you could also think of it as a particular manifestation of the Veruca Salt Syndrome: I want what I want and I want it now!

Given the high-profile status of the Official Gay Rights Movement as a loudly influential constituency of the Democratic Party, we most often encounter this liberationist argument in association with homosexuality, and most people never even notice how this dangerous idea — the belief that we are entitled as a matter of right to the satisfaction of our erotic desires — is well-nigh ubiquitous throughout our society.

When you see a businessman divorce his wife of 30 years in order to marry his receptionist, or when Mary Kay LeTourneau wrecks her life to pursue a taboo romance with Vili Fualaau, these are manifestations of the same basic concept at the root of the gay-rights lobby’s “born that way” argument: Desire is destiny, and of all the happiness that we are free to pursue, no pursuit is more important than a sexual partner who fulfills our deepest longings.

When a belief so pervades a culture as this one has pervaded our culture, it becomes impossible for most people to understand it rationally, for they have no other frame of reference. We might compare it to liberal bias in the news media. As I’ve often said, most journalists don’t notice liberal bias for the same reason fish don’t notice water — it’s everywhere, and it’s all they’ve ever known.

So, too, with the Desire Is Destiny theory of sexuality, promulgated so relentlessly (first by Kinsey, then by Hugh Hefner, and then by damned near everybody) that we cannot think about sex in any other terms. What is overlooked is that this liberationist theory denies the power of human will and human choice. If we desire someone, the liberationist argument would have us believe, we must act on that desire or else suffer psychological trauma as a result of the (harmful) repression of our desire. The only “moral” standard by which any such pursuit may be judged is whether the resulting sexual encounter is between consenting adults.

Stacy wrote a lot about this in that post. I recommend reading the whole thing. Although he is a popular conservative blogger, Stacy is not afraid to take on these cultural issues. In fact, I am linking to him on another topic in the 6 PM post.

Related posts

If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013.  Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists.  According to the conference brochure, the event will examine “ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process” and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be among the panelists at the conference.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. “The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.”

The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in the August 17 conference. “The DSM should meet a higher standard than that,” Kline continued. “We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about.”

APA spokeswoman Erin Connors told The Daily Caller in an emailed statement that her organization was not participating in the conference and would not comment on its aims.