Tag Archives: Social Conservative

5,300 UK teens who aborted a baby in 2010 had at least one prior abortion

Dina sent me this disturbing article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Pro-life campaigners said young women were being ”let down in an appalling way” after it emerged three of the 38,269 teenagers who had a termination in 2010 had undergone the procedure at least seven times.

NHS figures released to the Press Association under the Freedom of Information Act show another two teenage girls had their seventh abortion in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, while four more teenagers had a termination for the sixth time.

Fourteen teenage girls had their fifth abortion in 2010, 57 teens had a termination for the fourth time and 485 women aged 19 or under went through the procedure for a third time.

Rebecca Mallinson, of the Pro Life Alliance, said: ”There is something seriously wrong with a country where teenagers are having even one abortion, let alone repeat abortions to this extent.

“We are failing these young people in an appalling way, and storing up serious sexual health problems for the future, whether the direct issue of sexually transmitted diseases, but also the effects that multiple abortions can have on future fertility.

[…]Of the abortions carried out on teenage girls in 2010, more than 5,300 were on teenagers who had already had at least one termination.

In the UK, taxpayers are forced to provide free abortions as part of their government-run socialist health care system. Many Christian voters are OK with subsidizing abortions because they think that wealth redistribution is a good idea. They think that people should be able to live any way they want, disregarding morality, and then have someone else violate their conscience in order to pay for the messes that result. It’s just wrong, but many Christians who care more about feelings than economics support it. They think that paying for someone else’s murders is “fairness”.

Christians should support individual charity, and the best way to support that is to let people keep more of their own money and give them tax deductions for charitable contributions. Whenever you get a secular government involved in helping others, it quite often just makes it easier for them to sin and to do harm. Thoughtful Christians should not support that. When you make sin “free” for someone by paying the costs, they will sin even more. We should never make it easier for people to sin. The first rule of sound economics – which Christians should know – is that when you subsidize a behavior, you get more of that behavior.

If you want to help someone in trouble, then use your own money – don’t take someone else’s money through taxes. People who make mistakes learn not to make them when they are accountable to the person who bails them out of it. There has to be oversight over how charity is being done at the individual level – not everyone deserves charity just because they are in a jam. Only if they have learned their lesson should they get it – go and sin no more, as Jesus says. That’s why individual charity is morally superior to government-run social programs. In a very real sense, Christians who claim to be pro-life can actually be pro-abortion in practice when they make it easier for women to have abortions.

In a previous post, I also wrote about how Christians should not tell women that premarital sex is a valid pathway to marriage – that men can be shamed and coerced into marriage after recreational sex with slogans like “man up”. That’s another mistake that many pastors make that increases the number of abortions. We have to start thinking things through if we are going to stop abortion.

Republicans ban taxpayer-funding of abortion in Arizona

ECM sent me this story from Fox News.

Excerpt:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a bill to cut off Planned Parenthood’s access to taxpayer money funneled through the state for non-abortion services.

Arizona already bars use of public money for abortions except to save the life of the mother, but anti-abortion legislators and other supporters of the bill have said the broader prohibition is needed to make sure that no public money indirectly supports abortion services.

“This is a common sense law that tightens existing state regulations and closes loopholes in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund abortions, whether directly or indirectly,” said Brewer, a Republican. “By signing this measure into law, I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the use of taxpayer funds for abortion.”

Arizona has said a funding ban would interrupt its preventive health care and family planning services for nearly 20,000 women served by the organization’s clinics. The organization has said it will consider a legal challenge.

The measure targeting funding for Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services was one of several approved by Arizona’s Republican-led Legislature related to contentious reproductive health care issues during a 116-day session that ended Thursday. Brewer is a Republican.

Other approved Arizona bills include one generally banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which Brewer has already signed, and one loosening a state law that generally requires health care plans to cover contraception.

This is good news for pro-lifers in Arizona, but we are facing some setbacks in Ohio and Texas.

Related posts on Planned Parenthood

Iain Duncan Smith’s defense of traditional marriage in the UK

Dina sent me this article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Iain Duncan Smith will make the Coalition’s most explicit official statement in favour of parents marrying and staying together.

He will say that children from such homes are most likely to end up with a good education and a job.

The Work and Pensions Secretary will make the declaration as he announces an Early Intervention Foundation to raise millions of pounds from private investors to help disadvantaged children.

The Social Justice Strategy Paper will set out plans to tackle the causes of poverty and disadvantage.

It makes clear that the stability of parents’ relationships is a key factor in children’s prospects.

Marriage is particularly good for children, the paper says. The Government is “concerned” by the long-term trend away from marriage, it says.

Mr Duncan Smith will say the strategy marks a change in the approach to marriage. Successive governments have done too little to promote stable families, he will say.

Mr Duncan Smith has had a long personal interest in family issues but the main paper he will publish today constitutes a government commitment to promote marriage.

The command paper quotes evidence showing that “children tend to enjoy better life outcomes when the same two parents give them support and protection”.

Children who have experienced the breakdown of their parents’ relationship are “more likely to have poor cognitive development and education and employment outcomes than those who have lived with both birth parents”.

“Outcomes” are better for children when parents stay together, the paper says. Research shows that about one in three cohabiting couples splits up before a child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in 10 married couples.

“This Government believes marriage often provides an excellent environment in which to bring up children,” it says. “The Government is clear that marriage should be supported.”

Mr Duncan Smith said he was not “lecturing” parents on how to live, merely setting out the facts on the advantages of marriage and commitment.

I keep expecting to hear more statements like this from thoughtful conservatives here and abroad. There are so many conservatives, but very few of them are willing to make a case for marriage using the evidence.