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Polemics

What can Christians do to prevent abortion?

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WARNING: This post is extremely opposed to Democrats, feminists and the postmodern/relativist/universalist church. Please do not read if you are easily offended.

Consider this account of an abortion. (H/T Mary, The Other McCain)

Excerpt:

My biological father abandoned my mother while we were toddlers.  He was a charming rogue of a gambler who came and went in our lives, leaving a wake of debt and infidelity.  My mother had been encouraged to get an abortion (illegally) by more than one family member when she found out she was expecting me, (the middle child).  Thankfully she gave birth to me and later to my younger brother, and was a loving mother. When Daddy’s gambling debts caused her small teaching salary to be garnished, she filed for a divorce.  Even after the first divorce she had been a good mother, taking us to church, reading us the Bible in the morning before school, singing to us at night, and praying with us for our wandering father.  She was gentle and supportive and I always knew I could go to her for help.  When mother remarried my first stepfather, (who was an alcoholic) things became difficult.

A devastating trauma struck our family in the summer of 1971 when I was 13 years old. My younger brother was killed in a car accident on our way home from a camping trip with our grandparents. He was 10 years old. My grandfather was also killed, my grandmother lost a leg, and my sister and I were injured.  The car accident and family trauma triggered a chain of events that led to my mother and first stepfather to divorce.

My stepfather was committed to a mental hospital briefly, and mother had an emotional breakdown. My sister and I went to live with my aunt and uncle for some months.

When we returned home to my mother after the divorce, things were not the same. My mother seemed wounded and disillusioned with life.  Without the stability of the family, or the church, we all struggled to recover from my brother’s death. She was still working as a teacher but she was living with my second stepfather, though they were not married yet.  He is a man I have grown to love and respect over time, yet in the 1970’s, when he was living with my mother, he was a different person than he is today and we disliked each other.

My sister and I were left on our own most of the time.  Previously, I had been raised going to church, but after the accident we just never went back. My sister and I became angry and rebellious. My sister left home when she was about 16, and backpacked around the country with her boyfriend. There I was at age 15, my sister gone, and feeling like I was in the way. There was a sense of being an obstacle to my mothers’ relationship with this new man.

My friendships changed from the kids we knew at church to the kids who hung out at the local Teen Center. Some of them took drugs and drank.

[…]My mother signed over guardianship of me to Steven after I had moved to Boston. I remember my surprise when Steven told me she had signed the papers and trying to take this in mentally. A sense of vulnerability came over me, knowing that I was his ward, but we were not married. He had not expressed his intentions of a long-term relationship with me. He had mentioned that he wanted guardianship papers so I could travel across state lines when he was on tour. I had told him my mother would not sign me over to him. I asked him how he had got her to do it. He said, “I told her I needed them for you to enroll in school.” I felt abandoned by my mother as well as my father and stepfather. Steven was really my only hope at that point.

So now what do we learn from this? Who is responsible for Julia’s abortion according to these facts? And what should Christians do to prevent a situation like this from occurring again? Should we wait until the pregnancy happens, or is there a way to attack the root of the problem with pro-family policies and effective church involvement?

First of all, it’s important to point out that fatherlessness causes women to engage in early sex.

Consider these facts:

– Adolescent females between the ages of 15 and 19 years reared in homes without fathers are significantly more likely to engage in premarital sex than adolescent females reared in homes with both a mother and a father.

Source: Billy, John O. G., Karin L. Brewster and William R. Grady. “Contextual Effects on the Sexual Behavior of Adolescent Women.” Journal of Marriage and Family 56 (1994): 381-404.

– Children in single parent families are more likely to get pregnant as teenagers than their peers who grow up with two parents.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. National Health Interview Survey. Hyattsville, MD 1988.

– A white teenage girl from an advantaged background is five times more likely to become a teen mother if she grows up in a single-mother household than if she grows up in a household with both biological parents.

Source: Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe. “Facing the Challenges of Fragmented Families.” The Philanthropy Roundtable 9.1 (1995): 21.
(Source)

Fatherlessness has many causes, but the most obvious cause is that women freely choose to have sex with men who will not stick around to raise the children. That is why we have an out-of-wedlock birth rate of over 40% – women are consenting to sex with men who will have not demonstrated that they are willing and capable of committing to marriage and parenting. The choice of who to have sex with is, in virtually every situation, the woman’s decision. Women with low self-esteem are especially prone to avoid men who have strong moral character, and definite ideas about religion. They want to avoid being “controlled” or “rejected” when they act immorally. So they deliberately choose men who will not judge them or lead them spiritually. So the blame for fatherlessness lies solely on the woman – she chooses the man who she intends to have sex with.

Women cannot blame an irresponsible MAN for hurting them if they CHOOSE HIM and then he acts… IRRESPONSIBLY. He was irresponsible BEFORE the woman got there, and yet she still chose him of her own free will. Women are very well educated these days, and they have plenty of time to think about marriage. But what I have found is that they often resent the idea of using any criteria for men other than entertainment, feelings and peer-approval. How will they look in wedding pictures, they wonder?

We have already talked a lot about how women choose men using the 180-second rule, based on physical appearances and “confidence”. Women are not doing a good job of evaluating men for the role of husband and father. They are choosing based on shoes and voice and shoulders. So of course this is not going to work. Everything else in life requires lots of time spent reading, planning and testing if you hope to have success. But when it comes to men, many young, unmarried women choose irrationally and stupidly, based on selfishness and vanity. And the problem gets worse as successive generations are raised without fathers. Fathers matter. Fathers need to respected for the role they play in parenting.

Politics

Exacerbating the situation is the fact that leftist social engineers push sex education and welfare subsidies for women who chose to deliberately avoid men who are protectors and providers. However, women again do not escape blame here, since 77% of young, unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008, according to exit polls. Obama is a Democrat, and Democrats are the party of sex education, single mother welfare, no-fault divorce, and same-sex marriage. Democrats are the anti-marriage party, and young, unmarried women turn out in droves to vote for Democrats. And these policies cause the out-of-wedlock birth rate to skyrocket.

Naturally, the more that these young, unmarried women vote for bigger and bigger government to bail them out of their own irresponsible choices with men, the higher taxes will go, and the less money marriage-minded men will have. Men with less money DO NOT GET MARRIED. And the decline of boys in the schools isn’;t going to help them to find jobs, either. Instead of valuing good men, it seems as though young, unmarried women prefer to marry the government, since government mails out the checks but makes no moral demands. Parenting is left to taxpayer-funded day care and public schools – not fathers. We need to realize that fathers can only be effective when they have authority in the home, and this is usually related to the fact that they are primary breadwinners.

Postmodernism, moral relativism and universalism in the church

Another factor is the church. Julia’s mother was a very devout, spiritual and pious Christian. She attended church regularly, read the Bible and sung all the praise hymns. And how did this affect her decision making? Well – it didn’t. And the reason for this is two-fold. First of all, the church has stopped providing boundaries for behaviors and making moral judgments. Churches have embraced postmodernism (there is no truth), moral relativism (moral judgments are evil because people feel bad when they are judged) and universalism (believe anything you want as long as it makes you feel good). Christianity is no longer presented as being TRUE, with evidence and arguments (apologetics). Instead it is presented as something that makes people feel better, and you choose the religion you like.

The purpose of going to church for Julia’s mother was to have good feelings and a sense of community. She was not interested in discovering scientific and historical evidence that would make the moral rules of Christianity incumbent on her – she was not interested in moral obligations. Moral rules, like the rules around chastity and courtship, are “too strict”. It’s better to just take church as another way of feeling happy, and then do whatever you want. I once knew an adulterous woman who had sex with her boyfriends in the same house as her children, yet she loved to attend church and to sing Handel’s Messiah at Christmas – for the spectacle and the emotional high. Imagine what view of marriage her children got from that?

Anti-intellectualism in the church

In addition to the failure of the church to defend against postmodernism, moral relativism and universalism, there is the problem of the fundamentalist churches that just preach from the Bible without ANY idea of why the Bible should be taken as an authority. So, not only is the church disinterested in talking about the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, the habitability problem, irreducible complexity and so forth, but they are also disinterested in explaining moral issues like abortion and traditional marriage. When churched parents have discussions with their children, they use church merely as a way to boss the children around so that they have less trouble with the kids. They scare them with the Devil and Hell (which are both real) without ever explaining prescriptive moral obligations using evidence.

For example, Julia’s mother’s church and parents SHOULD HAVE explained to her the importance of chastity and courting using evidence from social science that shows how chastity improves marital stability and marriage quality – things like communication and fidelity. The bad effects of cohabitation and hooking-up should have been explained WITH EVIDENCE, like you find in Dr. Laura books or Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse books. I can walk into churches to hear some of the most famous preachers, like John Piper and Alistair Begg, and never once hear a single piece of real-world evidence. All I get is “the Bible says” and that has no effect on people who do not have reasons to accept the Bible as true, and an  understanding of how that truth is applied in the real world. Apparently, in many churches it is considered high-treason to ask – “are these things really true? And how do we see that they are true here in the real world, with publicly testable and observable data”? (Mark Driscoll is an exception, much as I disagree with his male-bashing, feminist bias)

Conclusion

So, in short, young, unmarried Democrat-voting women cause problems for their daughters by raising them without fathers, and the church’s refusal to engage in apologetics and to connect faith to public evidence just makes the problem worse. That’s where abortion comes from, and many, many pro-lifers need to get engaged on these problems instead of waiting until the woman is already pregnant. Yes, we need sonograms Yes, we need to cut public funding for Planned Parenthood. Yes, we need parental notification laws. But we also need to address the problem with pro-family policies and with apologetics and statistics in the church.

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News

Spanish conservatives defeat socialists in regional and local elections

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Political Map of Europe
Political Map of Europe

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (H/T Bret Baier)

Excerpt:

Spain’s ruling Socialists suffered a crushing defeat to conservatives in local and regional elections Sunday, yielding power even in traditional strongholds against a backdrop of staggering unemployment and unprecedented sit-ins by Spaniards furious with what they see as politicians who don’t care about their plight.Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the result was due punishment of his government for the state of the economy — the jobless rate is a eurozone high of 21.3 percent. But he said he had no plans to move up general elections, which must be held by March of next year, and pledged to press on with job-creating reforms despite the loud outcry of opposition to his party.

The win for the conservative opposition Popular Party puts it in even a stronger position to win the general elections and return to power after eight years of Socialist rule.

In what Spanish media said was the worst performance on record by the Socialist Party in local and regional elections, the numbers reflecting the loss were stunning: the conservative Popular Party won at the municipal level by about two million votes, compared to 150,000 in its win in 2007, and in 13 regional governments that were up for grabs, Zapatero’s party lost in virtually all of them.

One was Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain, where the Socialists have always held power. The Socialists also lost bastions like the town halls in Barcelona and Seville. The conservatives padded their majorities in Madrid and Valencia, in the latter even though the president is under investigation for corruption. Several other Socialist-controlled regional governments also fell. Spain’s electoral map turned largely blue — the color of the Popular Party.

I can see why Zapatero would want to avoid calling federal elections. Spain’s youth unemployment stands at 45% and he is very likely to be thrown out of power completely. I’m sure a lot of the young people voted for socialism, because socialism is so trendy in movies, music, in the universities, and on television . But the young people are finding out now that you cannot cover your nakedness with empty rhetoric, you cannot feed your stomach with feelings of self-congratulation, and you cannot coerce employers to hire you by demonizing capitalism.

News

Is Mitt Romney conservative or liberal?

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Let’s start by looking at Romney’s record on fiscal policy.

The libertarian Cato Institute think tank explains why Obamacare and Romneycare are identical in many ways.

Excerpt:

As part of his liberal phase when governor of Massachusetts — political principles have been ever-flexible for Romney — he orchestrated passage of legislation with eerie similarities to ObamaCare. Massachusetts mandates purchase of insurance, decides what benefits must be offered, and maintains a complex system of subsidies and penalties. Declared Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker, the two programs are “not identical, but they’re certainly close kin.” MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who advised both Gov. Romney and President Obama on health care, asserted: “Basically, it’s the same thing.”[…]Alas, even the former governor’s constitutional scruples are suspect. In 1994 he backed a federal mandate. His concern about the overweening federal government apparently was not so finely developed then.

[…]However, paying for more benefits for more people inevitably makes medicine more expensive. Costs for Commonwealth Care, the Massachusetts government’s subsidized insurance program alone are up a fifth over initial projections. Last year State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill wrote: “The universal insurance coverage we adopted in 2006 was projected to cost taxpayers $88 million a year. However, since this program was adopted in 2006, our health-care costs have in total exceeded $4 billion. The cost of Massachusetts’ plan has blown a hole in the Commonwealth’s budget.”

[…]State finances have not collapsed only because RomneyCare spread the costs widely, forcing virtually everyone in and out of the state to share the pain. Cahill cited federal subsidies as keeping the state afloat financially. Indeed, a June study from the Beacon Hill Institute concluded that “The state has been able to shift the majority of the costs to the federal government.” The Institute pointed to higher costs of $8.6 billion since the law was implemented. Just $414 million was paid by Massachusetts. Medicaid (federal payments) covered $2.4 billion. Medicare took care of $1.4 billion.

But even more costs, $4.3 billion, have been imposed on the private sector — employers, insurers, and residents. This estimate is in line with an earlier study by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which figured that 60% of the new costs fell on individuals and businesses.

As expenses have risen, so have premiums. Noted Kuttner, “because serious cost containment was not part of the original package, premium costs in the commonwealth have risen far faster than nationally — by 10.3%, the most recent year available.” Economists John F. Cogan, Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel Kessler figured that RomneyCare inflated premiums by 6% from 2006 to 2008. This at a time where the state-subsidized Commonwealth Care was displacing private insurance for many people, thereby reducing demand, which should have reduced cost pressures.

Unfortunately, noted the Beacon Hill Institute, “private companies have no choice but to pass the higher costs onto the insured. Some of these costs fall in the double-digit range.” That naturally displeased public officials, since it undercut their claim to have solved Massachusetts’ health care problems.

And the Boston Herald notes that Romneycare caused the loss of 18,000 jobs. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Excerpt:

The Bay State’s controversial 2006 universal health-care plan — also known as “Romneycare” — has cost Massachusetts more than 18,000 jobs, according to an exclusive blockbuster study that could provide ammo to GOP rivals of former Gov. Mitt Romney as he touts his job-creating chops on the campaign trail.

“Mandating health insurance coverage and expanding the demand for health services without increasing supply drove up costs. Economics 101 tells us that,” said Paul Bachman, research director at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute, the conservative think tank that conducted the study. The Herald obtained an exclusive copy of the findings.

“The ‘shared sacrifice’ needed to provide universal health care includes a net loss of jobs, which is attributable to the higher costs that the measure imposed,” said David Tuerck, the institute’s executive director.

…Despite Romney’s vaunted business acumen as a successful venture capitalist, Bachman said the former governor “was a little naive about what would become of the law.”

The Beacon Hill Institute study found that, on average, Romneycare:

  • cost the Bay State 18,313 jobs;
  • drove up total health insurance costs in Massachusetts by $4.311 billion;
  • slowed the growth of disposable income per person by $376; and
  • reduced investment in Massachusetts by $25.06 million.

And from the Heartland Institute, an article showing how Romneycare could actually lead to single-payer health care in Masachusetts.

Excerpt:

The 2006 reform jeopardized the solvency of private health plans in the Bay State. Unfortunately, insurers’ solvency is not something patients, physicians, and voters have reason to observe closely, so the political class suffers from perverse incentives once it starts micromanaging health insurance. As a result, higher costs have been passed on through higher per capita spending and premium growth.

According to the state’s 2010 annual report, today “per capita spending on health care in Massachusetts is 15 percent higher than the rest of the nation, even when accounting for wages and spending on medical research and education in Massachusetts.” Indeed, Professor John F. Cogan of Stanford University has concluded the 2006 reform led to premium growth 6 percent higher in Massachusetts than in the rest of the United States between 2006 and 2008.

Because it was politically intolerable to allow premiums to rise in line with the costs of Romneycare, the state’s insurance commissioner denied 235 of 276 rate increase requests in April 2010. For a short time, no new policies were offered, and plans suffered significant losses. The next month, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest carrier, announced a $55 million provision for anticipated losses in the second quarter alone.

Of the 12 largest carriers, five were already operating at a loss. At this point, even if the state allows Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts to increase rates in line with medical costs, my analysis concludes the carrier will become insolvent in the vicinity of 2017. Other carriers will soon follow.

Campaign speeches and debate zingers today don’t cancel out a liberal leftist record on policy yesterday.

Mitt Romney on the issues in 2012
Mitt Romney on the issues in 2012

Mitt Romney’s record on fiscal issues

And a comprehensive overview of Mitt Romney’s record from the Examiner.

Excerpt:

He often claims to have balanced the Massachusetts budget without raising taxes. The first part of that claim is true, but the second part is a matter of semantics.

As Cato pointed out in a 2006 report, while Romney didn’t raise general tax revenues, he raised various fees by $500 million and then proposed $140 million in business tax hikes by closing “loopholes.” His health care plan also increased spending, prompting tax increases after he left office to cover cost overruns.

This time around, by sticking by his health care law, Romney is attempting to avoid the “flip flopper” label that dogged his last campaign. But this shift in tactics isn’t going to make the problem of his past positions suddenly disappear.

As governor, Romney was no friend of gun owners. In 2004, when the Clinton-era federal assault weapons ban expired, he signed a permanent one at the state level.

Despite his tough talk on immigration during his last campaign, in 2005 Romney told the Boston Globe that reform along the lines that McCain proposed was “reasonable.”

Romney also, at various times, supported campaign finance regulations far more sweeping than McCain-Feingold, even though he subsequently blasted that law as an attack on free speech.

Romney’s support for “No Child Left Behind,” President Bush’s expansion of the federal government’s role in education, not only puts him at odds with conservatives, but it also undercuts the federalist defense of his health care law. If a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for health care, why should it work for education?

Furthermore, there’s no reason to believe that social conservatives who were suspicious of Romney’s conveniently timed conversion from pro-choice to pro-life before his last presidential run will see him as any more authentic this time around.

Consider this article from the Boston Globe.

Excerpt:

“I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course,” Romney said, in response to the first question of the morning. “But I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”

He also said he wanted to wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil by seeking alternative sources of energy, and said that Americans should do more to conserve.

“I’m told that we use almost twice as much energy per person as does a European, and more like three times as much energy as does a Japanese citizen,” Romney said. “We can do a lot better.”

This makes me think that Mitt Romney wants to surpass Obama’s $535 million loan to Solyndra.

Mitt Romney position on abortion, gun control, gay marriage
Mitt Romney position on abortion, gun control, gay marriage

(Image: H/T Robert)

Mitt Romney’s record on social issues

From the 1994 Massachusetts Senate debate between Mitt Romney and Edward Kennedy.

Here he is again in 2002 in his run for government of Massachusetts:

And again in May 2005, as governor of Massachusetts:

And on embryonic stem cell research in 2005:

And on gun control in 2002:

Mitt Romney is not a social conservative. He is a center-leftist who will say anything in order to get elected in 2012. Nothing he says can be trusted – he adapts himself to any environment when campaigning – he says what people want to hear, and it is not at all what his actual record shows.

Mitt Romney political views in 2012
Mitt Romney political views in 2012

What do conservatives think of Mitt Romney’s record?

Well-known conservative magazine Human Events listed Mitt Romney as #8 on their list of 10 RINOs. This list is from December 27, 2005.

Excerpt:

8. Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.)
Has said, “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” Supports civil unions and stringent gun laws. After visiting Houston, he criticized the city’s aesthetics, saying, “This is what happens when you don’t have zoning.”

Those are the facts on Mitt Romney’s record.