Tag Archives: Right to Life

Commentary

Canadian columnist David Warren on abortion evasions and euphemisms

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This column from Canada’s 3rd best columnist is pure candy. Yum! (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

I have before me a packet of cigarettes with a Health Canada message in capital letters that reads: “Cigarettes hurt babies.” The text underneath this begins, “Tobacco use during pregnancy reduces the growth of babies.” Since an accompanying photograph further shows a pregnant woman smoking, it was unnecessary to specify “unborn.” Similarly, when we are discussing abortion, it is unnecessary to specify that the babies in question are “unborn.”

Indeed, the refusal to use plain language, the substitution of euphemisms and rhetorical evasions, is an infallible indicator that a speaker or writer feels uncomfortable with the truth.

Consider for instance the proposition, “a woman’s right to control her own body.” Not even men believe this, and a pregnant woman, who actually believes that the baby she is carrying is part of her own body, should wait for it to kick. Perhaps she has an astoundingly primitive notion of biology; but I should think even a woman of subnormal intelligence would understand the difference between what is in that bump she is carrying, and what is in the rest of her flesh. To wit: a different person.

I have myself had the experience of sitting inside a car. And yet even in the moment I was doing so, I did not consider myself to be a car, or part of a car. Nor — had the car the mind of a pro-active feminist — would I consider it had the right to do what it wished with its own body, if that involved tossing me out on the highway.

You know, if an unborn baby really were part of the woman’s body, then she would have four eyes, four arms, four legs and two noses! And imagine if it were a male baby! What then?

It makes no sense to talk about a woman have a right to control her own body when the unborn has a completely different DNA signature than the mother. The time for controlling her own body was before she consented to have sex with a man who was not fully invested in having a child to take care of. There are lots of things for men and women to do to express love without taking unnecessary risks with other people’s lives.

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News

Obama administration investigates Wisconsin pro-lifers

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From Life News. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

The Department of Homeland Security admitted today that it improperly conducted a threat assessment on pro-life and pro-abortion groups in Wisconsin. The assessment came before an expected rally last year in response to the University of Wisconsin Hospital board decided to allow abortions.

In February 2009, pro-life advocates planned to protest the hospital’s decision to open up a new Madison Surgery Center doing abortions.

The Associated Press reported today that the department said in a memo that it “destroyed all of the copies of the assessment after an internal review found it violated intelligence gathering guidelines about ‘protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security.’”

AP indicated the assessment was reportedly only shared with the director of Wisconsin’s intelligence-sharing center and local police in Middleton, Wisconsin, the site of the rally.

[…]In response to an open records request by the Alliance Defense Fund and Pro-Life Wisconsin, the Middleton Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security all refused on February 4 to release copies of the threat assessment.A few months later in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights concluded the investigation was an improper use of department resources.

The conclusion said the department inappropriately directed against activities protected by the First Amendment, in which law enforcement inappropriately engaged in “the collection, retention and dissemination of U.S. person information regarding protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security and… violated [DHS] Guidelines.”

I guess that dissent is all of a sudden not patriotic any more, now that the fascist left is in power.

And did you see this story from Life Site News?

Excerpt:

In what critics are calling an unprecedented act of bias, pro-abortion Ohio House Speaker Armond Budish (D-Beachwood) has denied Shelby County teen Elisabeth Trisler a routine legislative honor, evidently because he objects to Trisler’s pro-life values. Budish is refusing to allow Trisler on the House floor to accept a legislative resolution, authored by Rep. John Adams (R-Sidney), which honors Trisler’s accomplishment as the National Right to Life Oratory Contest winner.

[…]”Surely Speaker Budish can put aside his partisanship for 10 minutes to honor the accomplishments of a talented and optimistic teenage girl,” said Ohio Right to Life Executive Director Mike Gonidakis.  “Perhaps his real message to Ohio’s teens is that excelling in public speaking isn’t worth being honored if their views are different than his.”

[…]However, on January 29th, the House Clerk informed Rep. Adams’s office the presentation would not take place because the Speaker “had a problem with the subject matter.” The clerk advised the representative’s staff to take the matter up with the Speaker. Speaker Budish supports abortion.

The good news is that the Speaker changed his mind after being pressured by citizens.

News

Pro-life backlash against abortion in Mexico, South Korea and China

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Mexico

Story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Abortion-rights activists dreamed of legislative victories across Mexico after its Supreme Court last year upheld a Mexico City law allowing abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Instead, the opposite has happened. In state after state, antiabortion forces have won changes to local constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and explicitly granting legal rights to the unborn. In all, 17 state legislatures have approved such measures, often with minimal debate, since the August 2008 court decision validating Mexico City’s law. The Gulf Coast state of Veracruz in November became the latest state to do so. Its measure also called on the Mexican Congress to consider a similar amendment to the nation’s constitution.

[…]After the Mexico City rule was approved, lawmakers in many states “began to debate it and concluded that abortion goes against the rights of the person, against the woman,” said Jorge Serrano Limon, who leads an antiabortion group called Pro Vida.

The drive for stricter abortion laws has featured the Roman Catholic Church and the National Action Party of President Felipe Calderon. The party, known as the PAN, has a strong religious tilt and favors conservative social policies.

I’m a strong supporter of Felipe Calderon, especially his strong opposition to criminal gangs and unions. Good behavior doesn’t just “happen”, government needs to make sure that no law that is passed discourages people from working hard, following the rules and attending to their own families and communities.

South Korea

Story from Bio Edge. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For perhaps the first time, South Korea is debating abortion, to the great discomfiture of its gynaecologists. Unlike the US and other Western countries, abortion has not been framed as a moral issue in Korea, despite the growing number of Christians. And with a vigorous government campaign to reduce the birth rate, the number of abortions annually is about 340,000. Yet paradoxically, nearly all of them are technically illegal. Abortion is only permitted when the mother’s health is in serious danger, or in cases of rape, incest or severe hereditary disorders. All abortion over 24 weeks are illegal.

The problem is that the government’s campaign has been too successful. Liberal attitudes towards abortion have helped the South Korean birth rate to plunge to 1.19 children per woman. Now the government is desperate to boost it, lest the rapidly ageing population drag down the economy. President Lee Myung-bak has called for “bold” steps to increase the nation’s birthrate. Amongst these, apparently, is a crack-down on illegal abortions. “Even if we don’t intend to hold anyone accountable for all those illegal abortions in the past, we must crack down on them from now on,” the minister for health, welfare and family affairs, Jeon Jae-hee, told the New York Times.

The government is even sponsoring public service announcements and billboards. “With abortion, you are aborting the future,” says one of them.

Totally apart from the moral argument against abortion, there is a prudential argument that has more force the more the state forces retired people to depend on younger workers for pensions and/or health care benefits.

China

Story from the UK Telegraph. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, with sex-specific abortions a major factor.

A study by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences named the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country’s population of 1.3 billion.

“Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas,” where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were “complex”.

[…]The study said the key contributing factors to the phenomenon included the nation’s family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children citizens may have, as well as an insufficient social security system.

The situation influenced people to seek male offspring, who are preferred for their greater earning potential as adults and thus their ability to care for their elderly parents.

The Global Times said abductions and trafficking of women were “rampant” in areas with excess numbers of men, citing the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Illegal marriages and forced prostitution were also problems in those areas, it said.

More on this story here from LifeSiteNews. (H/T Andrew)