Tone Down The Rhetoric? Not Hardly.

That sound you heard was me dropping the gloves. I am not even vaguely interested in being cowed into silence by infanticide profiteers and proto-fascist politicians. If you are feeling especially squeamish, find something else to read.

Over the weekend I commented on Facebook that the shooting at a Planned Parenthood "clinic" in Colorado Springs was fortuitous for some on the Left. It was a perfect storm, the dream trifecta for Leftist talking heads. 1) A white male perpetrator. 2) A gun used in the commission of a crime. 3) The location being the sanctified grounds of an abortuary. Behind closed doors they had to be giddy. After all we are talking about the same crew that Rahm Emmanuel belongs to, the don't let a crisis go to waste troop. It took almost no time at all for the High Priestess of Baal. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, to hit the airwaves assigning blame for this criminal act on everybody who dares question the pro-abortion orthodoxy. Shortly thereafter the fundraising emails went out as Planned Parenthood sought to cash in on human tragedy, something they do in their "clinics" every day with the aid and assistance of the United States government. Of course the President of the United States took time out of being a shill for "climate change" to call for more gun regulations. Fortunately no one is really paying attention to him anymore.

Don't be fooled here. The calls for reining in the rhetoric are simply thuggish tactics designed to silence dissent, just like President Clinton blaming "talk radio" for the Oklahoma City bombing. These are the same people who refuse to recognize the connection between radical Islam and the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks but waste no time in trying to paint all white pro-life Christians as in league with someone who by any measure was a loony bird, a time bomb waiting to go off. You wouldn't know it to hear the media tell it but attacks like this involving abortion clinics are pretty rare and are condemned by pro-life advocates.

I for one am not someone who is going to cede the field to the bad guys because of one outlier event that has no bearing on the peaceful protests being conducted at abortuaries around the country every  day. We can't pretend to care about human life when adults are shot by a criminal lunatic while ignoring the slaughter that goes on in the same clinic everyday. Cecile Richards can race to get herself on TV with her fashionable suits and perfectly coiffed hair and try to seize the moral high ground but her expensive suits and professionally done hair are paid for with the blood of innocents. She sits in front of the TV camera smiling while her minions are carving babies apart for profit. Her smugness is a reflection of the Enemy.

A loner, with no apparent connection to the pro-life movement and who likewise never seemed all that interested in abortion allegedly made a comment about baby parts, murders three people. That is where the focus should be, on the grieving process and the legal system. Instead this has been callously used to advance the agenda of a murderous organization that kills thousands more each day than Robert Dear in his rampage. Some say we should not take a stand while families are grieving and I wish that were possible but while we mourn the mass murderers collect money and gather influence and all the while the most defenseless and innocent among us are slaughtered. Their cronies in the mass media and the Hollywood actors/clowns who are famous for pretending to be someone they are not are doing all they can to gain advantage from a horrific crime perpetrated by a deranged individual. We cannot unilaterally surrender the discourse until we get their permission to speak again. 

While many sit silent, cowed into silence by those who hate everything they stand for, the forces of evil keep pressing their advantage. The innocents who die in the womb cannot defend themselves. It would be proper for those who can stand up for them to do so, not just when it is easy but especially when it is hard. We do the children dying tomorrow around this country no favors by being shushed in a vain effort to be the adults in the conversation. While children die in these abortuaries there can be no quarter, no pause, no let up and no cowardice. Nothing less than ending the practice of infanticide will do and nothing less than complete commitment to that cause is appropriate. 

Non-resistance In Light Of The Selling Of Human Beings Piecemeal

I write a fair bit about the genteel genocide that happens on a vast scale in America in the sterile offices of abortionists. I don't apologize for that. Just the opposite, the national horror and staining of our character that is abortion demands the church speak out. If I posted something about abortion every day of the year I would still count myself timid in the struggle for basic human dignity for the least of us.

This past week has introduced an entirely new level of gruesome brutality as undercover videos show representatives of the falsely named organization "Planned Parenthood" bartering for the left over pieces of human infants. While "comedians" cried crocodile tears over the death of a single lion, the media did their level best to ignore the whole topic but thanks to social media and a few outspoken voices, this topic will not go away. What makes these videos so chilling is not the brutal act of abortion. Everyone knows (but few will say) what happens when a woman enters an abortuary pregnant with a human child and leaves no longer pregnant. We hide the brutal carving, crushing and vacuuming of over a million children each year behind clever euphemisms and concepts like "choice" and "women's reproductive rights". It is murder for hire hiding in plain sight, little different from rail cars filled with Jews going away and never coming back. The Germans knew something was going on but no one talked about it. Likewise we avoid talking openly about abortion and certainly refuse to look at the results. No, what really makes the videos grotesque is how casual the representatives of history's greatest mass murderer are about the entire thing.

Casual brutality is far worse than other kinds of brutality. The brutality that is often on display in our popular culture and evening news is bad enough but when brutality is hidden behind shrugged shoulders and polite conversation there is something far more disquieting about it. We sort of get it when people who are unhinged are savage but when savagery happens in lovely offices with not so much as a moment of regret by people purporting to be "medical professionals", it is so much worse. When you compound this brutality with the half a billion the tax payers provide to these butchers and the reality that one political party, to quote George Will's brilliant column, has as a sacred cow the unlimited, anytime, anywhere, any age support for abortion...

The nonnegotiable tenet in today’s Democratic Party catechism is not opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline or support for a $15 minimum wage. These are evanescent fevers. As the decades roll by, the single unshakable commitment is opposition to any restriction on the right to inflict violence on pre-born babies. So today there is a limitless right to kill, and distribute fragments of, babies that intrauterine medicine can increasingly treat as patients.

...you are left with no choice but to act. But how in keeping with Biblical non-resistance?

What then ought a non-resistant Christian do in light of abortion, especially with the new revelations of Planned Parenthood harvesting the "non-crushed" parts of tiny human being for sale?

I have some serious moral qualms about the way the videos were gathered. Being false even in the defense of the helpless is something that bothers me. I also have absolutely zero faith that electing a sufficient number of Republicans would do anything to stop abortion. My understanding of the Biblical mandate to Christians is, in the King James vernacular, that we "resist not evil" (Matthew 5:39) and "overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21). So what then? Shall we sit on the sidelines and think positive thoughts?

Of course not. Being non-resistant never has been intended to be inactive, just that we seek the way of the cross in fighting injustice rather than employing the coercive and violent methods of the world. We can and we must be outspoken, prophetic voices calling those who commit abortion and those who seek abortion out to repent. Even as grievous a sin as abortion is, it is not beyond the reach of the blood of Jesus. Even those who profit handsomely from infanticide and are enemies of God and a type of anti-Christ in doing so demand not our hatred but our love and our prayer. We also must continue to emasculate the false dilemma posed to pro-lifers that we only care about a child until they are born. The evidence that the opposite is true is overwhelming but we must continue to do more to show the love of Christ to women and men alike who have chosen life instead of death for their child. That means education and that might mean material support, both of which are provided in vast measure by the many crisis pregnancy centers operating around the country. For those who have had an abortion and now repent must be treated as brothers and sisters. None of us has a clean slate before we were born-again. Of course we must pray, often and fervently, for God to stop this barbarism because only God can change a human heart.

It often seems bleak and even hopeless but little by little I believe that the people of this country will roll back the legal abomination created out of thin air by the Supreme Court. We are limited in the tools God has given but those tools possess unlimited power if we only have the courage and humility to use them.

All Human Lives Matter Especially The Smallest Of Us

Brit Hume crushes it when discussing the blood soaked merchants of death at Planned Parenthood and the grisly video where prices for the component parts of fellow human beings are being negotiated like the price of a new car. These modern day Josef Mengeles traffic and profit in the slaughter, dismemberment and sale of human beings. For those who have been speaking out against this crime against humanity for a long time, these revelations are not unexpected although the casual way it is discussed is still chilling. Hopefully those who blithely cover their ears and eyes and try to explain away the slaughter taking place every day in America and around the world by converting human beings into amorphous and ambiguous dehumanizing terms will be forced to face what they are doing and examine the position they hold so dearly. Let me be clear:

Calling a tiny human being "tissue" is no different than calling a human being "nigger".

It rips away their humanity and turns an image bearer of God into a thing, something distasteful and unworthy of consideration. Why not enslave blacks, after all they are just niggers? Why not tear apart a tiny human, after all it is just "tissue"? Why not herd millions of Jews into gas chambers, after all they are just vermin?

One can easily imagine a casual meal like the one in the released videos where the speakers are wearing the uniform of Nazi Germany and discussing rates for rail cars carrying Jews to Auschwitz.

So don't be fooled. This is not an anomaly. This is business as usual for our nation's premier serial killer, a murderous organization that is funded by the tax dollars of Americans and the payment for services of desperate women who have been convinced that an abortion is their only sensible choice and after all it isn't a baby, it is just "tissue".

Somewhere in the deepest pits of hell, Josef Mengele is applauding his modern day offspring as they go about their daily task of murder for hire. Watch the video in this link and be thankful that there are still voices who will not be silent about real injustice in America.

41 Years Of Shame

Sacrificing children has a long and horrifying history. Throughout the existence of man some cultures have brutalized the most vulnerable members. We rightly look back with horror on such abuse of the innocent, the old, the infirm, women and most of all children. From the pagan worshipers of the Old Testament era who delivered children to be burned to the Holocaust to the intentional killing of civilians by military forces, we are rightly outraged by those who kill for the sake of terror and ideology. At least that used to be the case.

Forty one years ago today, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that a "right" to abortion existed in the United States Constitution, rendering an entire class of people disposable. In an absolutely travesty of tortured reasoning divorced from even a cursory attempt to base their decision in the Constitution, the Justices decided with the stroke of a pen to disenfranchise millions of Americans without due process.

The repercussions of the creation of the "right" to an abortion have been staggering. Around 55 million Americans have been killed by medical professionals, doctors who take an oath to first do no harm. 55 million people who will never get a chance to take their first step, to play in a park, to go to school, to get married.

55,000,000 babies.

The smallest and most vulnerable. The weakest and most dependent. The very people that common decency and human nature should cause us to defend. They are not just some abstract concept. You cannot rightly dehumanize people by reducing them to catch phrases like "choice" or "reproductive freedom" any more than you can dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany or blacks in the pre-Civil War South by painting them as subhuman no matter how you try. No one deserves to be forced into a gas chamber because they are Jewish. They are human beings. No one deserves to be enslaved because of their skin color. They are human beings. No one deserves to be cut apart in the womb because of their relative size. They are human beings.

Matt Walsh wrote a powerful piece yesterday on the latest feminist flavor of the week, Texas representative Wendy Davis who has made her political fortune by advocating for infanticide. Sure she lied about her touching background story, from trailer park dweller to poster child for infanticide, but that doesn't matter to the forces of "choice". All that matters is that she stood up to The Man and made a spectacle of herself anf in doing so has become an apostle for the death cult of Choice. She even managed to trump Sandra Fluke who only demanded that taxpayers subsidize her promiscuity. Poor Sandra will never get ahead unless she gets on board with abortion advocacy. At the end of Matt's post, Planned Parenthood: still a bigger liar than Wendy Davis, he writes:

So, Wendy Davis lied? Yes, of course she did. She lied about a lot more than her divorce and her stint in a trailer park. She lied the moment she stood up and positioned herself as a champion for women. In reality, she isn’t championing anyone but herself, and she’s stepping on the carcasses of dead infants in the process.

Planned Parenthood has been doing that for decades.

Wendy Davis, you learned from the best.

What do you call a political movement that has as their highest ideal, their one non-negotiable article of faith, the legal right to murder unwanted people? About 70 years ago you called it Nazism but today we have nice, neat clinics with friendly staff and magazines in the waiting room instead of guards, barbed wire and dogs. I guess some would call that “progress”. Is that extremist? Is it lacking nuance? Is it hyperbole? Not at all. If anything it is too mild.

Slavery and abortion are the two great stains on America. We can only hope that the conscience of the American people one day views abortion as an evil at least as bad as the enslavement of a race of people. The little ones who have no legal rights, barred from justice by a thin layer of skin, deserve our strongest efforts. The scourge of infanticide demands our outrage, our prayer and our action. Make a point today to pray for those who work in these clinics. God has powerfully saved many and shown them the truth. Pray for women who are waking up this morning terrified by an unexpected pregnancy. Pray that they will pick up the phone and call a pregnancy resource center rather than an abortuary.  Pray for those who labor on the front lines of this fight for life. We will likely never overturn abortion by he power of Caesar but by God's grace we can overcome abortion one saved child at a time by the weapons He has given us: prayer, faith and our own weakness. Pray for God's forgiveness of the apathy of His people for so long in standing up for life.

Fifty five million slain. God have mercy on us.

(see also today from Al Mohler Abortion and the American Conscience )

Which Is The Greater Disservice?

Driving this morning and listening to NPR they had a section on the new "restrictive" abortion regulations in Texas that have led to some abortion clinics closing, Clinics Close As Texas Abortion Fight Continue. It was a pretty typical story from NPR. I always find it sadly ironic that the same crew that wants more and more regulation and government interference in every aspect of our lives, and especially in health care, cries foul whenever anyone tries to regulate abortion.  Anyway, about halfway through the piece NPR included an interview with a young woman who had an abortion at a clinic that was going to stop performing abortions. (emphasis is mine)

Across the vast Texas plains, more than 300 miles from Fort Worth, is the city of Lubbock, in the northwest part of the state. It's just an hour from the New Mexico border, and it's home to a much smaller Planned Parenthood clinic. The facility recently stopped scheduling appointments.

Annie Jones recently had an abortion. She's a single mother working and going to school in Lubbock, and she has a 2-year-old daughter, Molly.

Jones, who is 28 years old, says she decided to have an abortion because it was best for her family.

"I knew that if I decided to have the second child, I would be doing it a disservice," she says. "I'd be doing my daughter a disservice because I wouldn't be able to care for them in the way that they deserved."

That just chilled me to the bone. The logic here is that it is better to kill a child rather than offer a potentially less fulfilling life. I guess a death in the womb is preferable to a possibly lower quality of life? Somehow mothers for thousands of years have managed to care for multiple children without giving each child a lower quality of life.

This mindset is not all that rare in our world today. In the religion of Choice the convenience of parents trumps the right to life of a child. Women are fed the lie that they are incapable of caring for a child by the same people who force feed them sex as a recreational sport with no consequences. We need to tell a different story, the truth which is that every child conceived deserve the chance to make their own way in the world rather than being condemned as a failed life before they draw their first breath. I weep for Annie Jones and I weep for the child she conceived and carried for a short time before a "doctor" slaughtered that tiny life.

Our Double Standard Is Showing (Again)

There was quite an uproar a few days back when President Obama addressed an event for Planned Parenthood and closed his comments with "God bless you", a "blessing" aimed at Planned Parenthood. The uproar was understandable. Planned "Parenthood" is the face of the American abortion industry, a business that is responsible for unimaginable butchery on a daily basis. To invoke God's blessing on their endeavors, even in the throw away manner that politicians typically say "God bless ", is an affront. George Weigel writing for  First Things described it as blasphemy in his essay yesterday, Tribulation Compounded by Blasphemy: 

But there was worse. For President Obama concluded his remarks as follows: “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you . . .”

And that is nothing short of blasphemy.

Too harsh? No. For in its discussion of this grave sin against the Second Commandment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 2148) teaches that “it is also blasphemous to make use of God’s name to . . . reduce people to servitude, to torture persons or to put them to death.” That is precisely what happens in Planned Parenthood abortuaries. And on that, the president of the United States called down the divine blessing.

Pray for him. Pray for the United States, which is in very, very serious trouble.

Now I don't put much stock in what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say on a topic but it is interesting that it says that it is blasphemous to use God's name to put people to death. I would agree that invoking God's name in the process of putting people to death is blasphemy (an irony I will leave unexplored for now). To ask for God's blessing on a group that murders children for money on a daily basis is a perversion and gross blasphemy indeed. No issue there but that also raises a sticky question that most Christians in America not only refuse to consider but get awfully mad when someone else does. Many, many Christians and generic religious Americans alike pray loudly and fervently for God to "bless our troops". What is the connection you ask?

We don't say "God bless the troops of every country". No, often Christians in America thank God for our soldiers, the soldiers that "keep us free" and ask God to "bless our troops". A quick Google image search for "God bless our troops" brings up some pretty extensive results as a testimony to the notion that somehow American soldiers are more deserving of blessing and serve in a more righteous capacity than soldiers of other nations. After all America is a "Christian nation" founded on "Judeo-Christian values" so of course our soldiers are carrying out God's will.

If someone were to say "God bless Planned Parenthood" and mean "God bring repentance to those engaged in their bloody work of murder for profit" that would be one thing. Likewise if our desire for God to bless our troops was a call to change hearts and bring repentance that might be something else indeed. However I cannot imagine that is what President Obama meant in his attempt to invoke God's blessings on the mission of Planned Parenthood nor is that what American Christians mean when they pray for God's blessings on "our" troops to prevail over "our" enemies. The blessing in both case is for a blessing on their current efforts to continue and that is problematic.

Just as I cannot divide my loyalty by pledging allegiance to a flag, I cannot pray for God to intercede on behalf of one side of a secular military conflict over another side. I don't see that God calls me to be concerned over a "way of life" or state sponsored "religious liberty" or the various economic, territorial or ego driven reasons we go war. I understand the very substantive difference between the military which has a legitimate secular function even if I don't agree with the policies and a business that makes money from carving up unborn children in the womb. They are not the same but that doesn't change the very real double-standard in play here where we place our loyalties to nation on a pedestal and pray for God to bless the armies of Caesar because we are terrified that we might lose our precious "rights" or have to pay more for gasoline. We have not faced a real threat to America proper since the beginning of the 20th century but those intervening decades are filled with war after war that American Christians have dutifully and often eagerly participated in not just by praying for our troops but by filling the ranks of those troops with our sons. In spite of this, if you dare to ask the question of why God should bless our troops you can be sure that you are in for a hostile response.

The double-standard in our pro-life position is glaring and if you think that the world we are called to reach doesn't see it you are fooling yourself. We pray outside of abortion clinics but cheer when unbelievers die. We talk about loving out enemies on Sunday and pray for God to smite them or at least assist our troops in smiting them on Monday. We worship a Savior executed by the state and have no problem with the state executing others. We speak of the sanctity of human life, especially children, but turn a blind eye to the dead children who are "collateral damage" in American wars. The often hurled charge that American Christians only care about children until they are born is spurious but we seem bent on trying to prove our accusers right. After Kermit Gosnell was convicted of the heinous crimes of which he was accused, some Christians seemed to be tripping over themselves to call for his execution while the majority of the church seemed disinterested once the cause of the day left the headlines. Even while it was going on the church in America was largely silent on the killing in our name of innocents abroad. Out of sight, out of mind I guess and after all when it comes to "national security" you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.

Few things undermine our witness more than hypocrisy and even when it is in our blind spots, the world sees it clear as day. People reject Christ because of the hardness of their unregenerate hearts but they reject "Christianity" because they see our hypocrisy and double-standards, preaching one thing and practicing another. No matter how much we cherish our American identity and the privileges that come along with our worldly citizenship, it pales compared to the holy and eternity impacting mission we are called to. If our loyalty to our land of birth impedes our witness, it is unhealthy and needs to be cut out of the church. If we can rail against President Obama asking for God's blessing on an organization of butchers and do so while driving cars asking for God's blessings on those we send to kill and die on our behalf for secular reasons we shouldn't be surprised at the derision of the world. 

Being pro-life means all life. Loving our enemies means all of our enemies. The commandments of Christ don't change at the borders of America.

Pray For Kermit Gosnell

The news is abuzz with the verdict of guilty for Kermit Gosnell. Caesar has meted out a just verdict and now will carry out the wrath of the state on an evil doer. While many who kill children for profit still walk free, a mockery of justice, at least in this one account justice will be done. As far as what is to happen to Gosnell next, there remains the possibility of a death sentence. Many will cheer if that is the sentence.

I will not.

First, Mr. Gosnell is 72 and unlikely to live long enough to have a death sentence carried out. More importantly, as heinous and inhuman as his actions were no one is too great a sinner for Christ. I will not call for his death because he is already dead in his sins. I will instead pray for his life, a new life in Christ where he can receive forgiveness for his crimes. Mr. Gosnell, a butcher of children, is no more deserving of hell than I and if a killer of children is not the sort of enemy I should pray for I don't know who would be.

Pray for this man that while he still draws breath that God will call him to Himself. If God chooses not to, He will see to it that Gosnell faces the eternal justice that he deserves (and that I do as well). Regardless there is hope for Kermit Gosnell in Jesus Christ and I am far more interested in seeing his salvation than I am in seeing him strapped to an electric chair.

Hypocrisy Alert

On my way home this afternoon I heard President Obama speaking during his campaign to push for "common sense" gun laws to "keep children safe". One thing he said really grated on me....

"No law or set of laws can keep our children completely safe, but if there's even one thing we can do, if there's just one life we can save, we've got an obligation to try," he said.

Well that sounds delightful and all. I am all for keeping children safe. I just have to ask. Since President Obama opposes any "common sense" restrictions on abortion and since President Obama seems to have no problem using drone strikes even when children might (and have) be injured or killed, does he really care about keeping children safe?

Here is the uncomfortable truth. It certainly seems that the only children President Obama is really concerned about "keeping safe" are the politically expedient ones that he can use to push his own agenda. An unborn child, a child in a village in Afghanistan? Well those children are of little value from a political standpoint so they are simply ignored.

It is not about keeping kids safe and it never has been so quit lying about it.

Reflections on our perverse view of children

As I mark with sadness the anniversary of the travesty known as "Roe v.. Wade", a gross usurpation of the power of the legislature to make law and the 10th amendment, I thought of how perverse our culture's view of children really is.

A madman shoots twenty children in a suburban school and the nation rightly mourns and weeps, at least for a few hours until the political posturing begins.

Meanwhile in Chicago and other cities around the nation, young people, children in fact, murder one another with impunity and few people care.

The man we inaugurated as our President yesterday who spoke forcefully about "doing something" and protecting our children at the same time embraced the culture of death that transforms tens of millions of children into "choices" to be disposed of at will. The death of twenty children at the hands of a man wielding a gun is a tragedy, the death of 56,000,000 children at the hands of men wielding scalpel and suction tubes is cherished as a sign of how far we have progressed.

Yet many of the same people who carry signs protesting abortion shrug off the deaths of children around the world, victims of the "war on terror". Freedom isn't free and all that.

A child killed in a suburban school is a tragedy. A black child shot by another black child in Chicago is a statistic. A child killed in the womb is a murder victim or a choice depending on your politics. A Pakistani child killed in a drone strike is collateral damage, an acceptable loss to preserve our way of life.

Ours is a culture that feeds and thrives on death, especially the death of children. If that doesn't make you weep, something is broken inside of you.

All Life Is Precious And God Is Always In Control Even When The Circumstances Are Awful

Here I go again with a quasi-political post but this has me all wound up. In the otherwise boring world of Indiana politics, a comment last night by GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock has the media all a-twitter. Here is what he said in response to a question about abortion and exceptions in the case of rape…

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Mourdock said.

Gasp!

Now of course in this political environment those pretty obvious words have been twisted, even unfortunately by some people who claim to be Christians. Our illustrious State Democratic Chairman, Dan Parker wasted no time in saying:

"As a pro-life Catholic, I'm stunned and ashamed that Richard Mourdock believes God intended rape," Parker said in a statement. "Victims of rape are victims of an extremely violent act, and mine is not a violent God."

Set aside the idea of “my God” here. Mr. Parker, a supposed pro-life leader in a political party that has made being pro-abortion a litmus test, is guilty of bearing false witness, something that his church frowns on. Only someone who is borderline illiterate or masterfully dishonest would hear those words and come to Mr. Parker’s conclusion. I am hoping that people in Indiana are less susceptible to the sort of “gotcha” politics being wielded here by Indiana and national Democrats. I was probably going to vote for Richard Mourdock anyway, although I am considering Libertarian Andrew Horning, but now I am definitely going to vote for Mourdock. For someone who claims to be pro-life to seek to score cheap political points that come at the expense of the lives of unborn children is unconscionable. Perhaps Mr. Parker should read the genealogy in Matthew where the lineage of Jesus through Joseph the husband of Mary includes Solomon, a man conceived by the terrible sin of David. You think maybe that even in the midst of David's sin God was at work?

As I have stated before, if you say you are pro-life then that should extend to all unborn children regardless of the circumstances of their conception (a notion clearly lost on “pro-life” Dan Parker). Let me be uncharacteristically blunt:

Aborting an unborn child conceived as the result of a rape is punishing an innocent for the crime of another.

Here is a prime example of the muddled way that religious Americans view abortion. Is God only in control when pregnancy happens to a middle class Caucasian married couple that has already started painting the nursery and opened a 529 account? What about when the terrified teen girl comes into the crisis pregnancy center where I volunteer? Should we tell her that God doesn’t care about her or her child because she drank too much at a party and got pregnant? Should we tell the woman living in a motel to abort her child because the dad ran off and she doesn’t have much financial support? You can’t call children a blessing when the stars are all aligned and then turn around and support the dismemberment and murder of a child based on the criminal act of another.

Turning abortion into a mainly political argument has led to ridiculous discussions like “under what circumstances of conception does a child forfeit her right to life?” and statements like those from Dan Parker that are simply beyond the pale, using an issue of human life to try to undermine a political campaign and retain control of the U.S. Senate. We have brought this on ourselves and it is high time for Christians to stop relying on the ballot box to overcome the evil of abortion. I guarantee that there are opportunities for each and every Christian in America to give or volunteer at a life affirming ministry in their own home town. We need to quit relying on politicians to do what God has called us to do as salt and light in the world. Abortion is a barbaric, pagan practice and the only cure is the sin atoning blood of Jesus Christ. Only the blood of the Lamb can save the innocent blood of the unborn.

Better Off Dead

The best thing I can say about them is that at least pro-abortion advocates are becoming more open about what they believe instead of hiding behind euphemisms like "choice" and "reproductive freedom". The honesty, inhuman as it may be, of those who have recently questioned whether newborns are worthy of protection under the law are simply the natural extension of the worldview that sees all people through the lens of how useful or how inconvenient they are to judge whether they are worthy of life or not.

The latest example, grotesque and disturbing for certain but also enlightening, comes from Shannon Bradley-Colleary, writing for the Huffington Post. This self-described "Author, screenwriter, wife dominatrix, mom butler" offers us a glimpse into a troubling worldview in her essay I'm Pro-Choice Because I Love My Kids. What exactly does loving your kids have to do with abortion? Nothing really other than the false nobility of a worldview that sees killing off children that might cause trouble later in life. The entire essay centers around the search for her stepbrother "Joey" and her reaction to discovering that he grew up to be a criminal and meth user. This makes him someone who would apparently have been better of having been aborted.

Every child deserves to be wanted, safe and loved. I don't deny there are damaged women out there who use abortion as a means of birth control. A former friend had five abortions. Those pregnancies were her cry for help. But I can't help thinking those babies were better off not being in her care.


There are also situations, in my opinion, where abortion is the only humane path to take for both mother and child. I remain firmly in the pro-choice camp not just because a woman should have the "right to choose" (although that is a powerful platform for me), but because every child deserves quality of life and when a child is unwanted there's a much higher risk he'll perpetuate the problem, having unwanted children of his own, if he even survives childhood.

What is lost here is that Joey, at age 12, was a normal kid that she loved to play with and build forts with and have lemonade stands together. When he was age 12 their parents divorced, she went with her parent and he went with his and they never saw one another again. What happened to Joey is unknown but it certainly sounds like he was part of a family of serial marriages and divorces. Ms. Bradley-Colleary describes him as the "oops" child of her first step-dad, a man who she describes as cruel and capricious. Of course Ms. Bradley-Colleary apparently grew up in a less than ideal childhood and turned out OK, as do countless others who get a less than ideal family situation and somehow overcome. What ever happened to Joey? We don't know and neither does she apparently. Is he dead? Or did he turn his life around? I have a friend who was a drug user and dealer in his youth. If he had died then, would people have said he was better off never being born? Today he is a college graduate, a husband and a father and someone who is helping others. I don't think my friend would have been better off being aborted.

What sort of mindset sees snuffing out the life of a child before she is even born to break some sort of cycle of abuse and unwanted pregnancy as justified? The mindset of the Left. A mindset that sees people as having value only so far as they are "productive" and not inconvenient. A child that might, MIGHT, grow up in a less than ideal home could possibly be an inconvenient burden on people like Shannon Bradley-Colleary. They might not get a decent job or they might be a criminal or a drug abuser. They might but based on this pro-abortion mindset that unknowable possibility is sufficient reason to want them dead before they inconvenience the rest of us.

This mindset sees "unwanted" children "better off dead" and punishes children for the potential misbehavior of their parents. What is unsaid but very real is the assumption by usually well-to-do, educated, white liberals that low income people are somehow more likely to abuse their children while college educated, enlightened parents are less likely to abuse them. We see on display the general arrogance and disdain of the Left that sees fit to proclaim who is or is not worthy of life based on the level of inconvenience they will potentially cause the rest of us. Implicit in this is an elitist and racist mindset, ironic because these are precisely the sort of people who allegedly defend the poor, the downtrodden and the minority from the evil Republicans. Does the "quality of life" she describes come only from the "wanted" children of affluent parents or at least parents who desire them? Where does she get the authority to pass judgment on who does or does not deserve life, or when it is or is not "humane" to carve up a child before vacuuming him out of his mothers womb?

The implication of her essay was that her step-brother, a child she spent many wonderful years with, would have been better off had he been aborted. Of course that misses the point that for those children who were aborted we will never know if they will indeed have been happy and successful in life, as if that is the basis on whether or not a child should live or die. A child who is killed in the womb never gets the chance to be happy or sad, to succeed or fail, to live a long life or die young. Those uncertainties are part of what makes the human experience and they are denied to millions of children in the name of the god "choice".

I guess if you love your kids, you are "pro-choice" in the hopes that your children will not have to deal with hooligans and drug abusers who by rights should have been aborted rather than being allowed to live. If that is what it means to love your kids, I guess I don't love mine. I would prefer to teach my children that every human life, made in the image of God, is valuable, that no one is beyond redemption and that God never makes mistakes. Ms. Bradley-Colleary's step-brother Joey was not a mistake, he was a little kid who had an allegedly abusive father and an unstable home life. As a child he didn't commit any crimes but he should have been punished for the mistakes of the adults who failed to care for him?

Never forget the worldview that is behind the "pro-choice" movement. It is the same worldview that fueled Baal worship where children were sacrificed in fire to appease these pagan idols. The bloody altars and sacrificial flames have been replaced by clean clinics with magazines in the waiting room but what is going on behind those doors has its origins thousands of years ago. We are a people called to love our enemies and pray for them, even people with a perverse unregenerate worldview like Ms. Bradley-Colleary. It can be hard sometimes but we must because we once were like them. Take time today to pray for Shannon Bradley-Colleary, for her step-brother Joey, for those children who are abused and neglected, for women who are terrified and facing an unplanned pregnancy, for those who work in Planned Parenthood clinics making a living from murder. Pray that God would work in their hearts as He worked in mine and in yours. If He can save us, He can save anyone.

A Lesser Evil Is Still Evil

I find Doug Wilson, who blogs at the cleverly named Blog and Mablog, to be, in spite of some puzzling positions on issues like baptism and ecclesiology, one of the finest minds in the church today. Even when I disagree with his position I usually find his clearly thought out arguments to be refreshing in a day and age when dialogue often devolves into online shouting matches and one-upmanship. I found myself reading an interesting essay he wrote the other day, Santorum, Just War, and False Equivalence. Doug is disturbed by the questions some people, like me, raise when it comes to “Christian politicians” who claim the title “pro-life” based on opposition to abortion but simultaneously are quite comfortable and rarely challenged regarding their enthusiasm for war. His concern is that we are making a (false in his opinion) equivalence between support for abortion and support for war.

Equivalent what? I am speaking of the civilian casualties of war, what is sometimes infelicitously called "collateral damage," and the fatalities that result from abortion-on-demand. When these two are placed on the same moral plane in the heat of debate, it is an understandable mistake. Just as there is a fog of war, so also there is a fog of debate. But a studied, steadfast refusal to distinguish them is in reality a moral failing and we really need to be done with it.

Let me set this alongside a comparable moral failing -- the refusal to acknowledge a distinction between a deliberate targeting of civilians (as when Hamas blows up a pizza joint full of teenagers) and when one of our units targets combatants who place themselves in close proximity to civilians, so that the civilians might get caught in the crossfire. If the rules of engagement instruct our troops to do whatever is possible to protect the lives of such civilians, then this is completely different from the first scenario. These are two military actions which result in the deaths of civilians, but they nevertheless occupy two different moral universes.

At the outset let me say how troubling I find it when Doug, and the vast majority of other Christians, refer to American soldiers as “our troops”. They are not “my troops”, not in any sense. I am not interested in God blessing our troops as they vanquish the foes of America. When “our troops” are bombing someone else, whether they are targeting civilians or military targets, they are not doing so on my behalf. My political, economic and even religious freedoms are not really all that important and the presence or lack of them does not change my calling as a minister and evangelist of the King. It was by God’s providential hand that I was born and live in America but it was also His providential hand that placed Japanese children in Hiroshima and Dresden, Germany. Our fascination and admiration for the military is unbecoming for followers of the Lamb who was slain.

As far as the war=abortion equivalence, I have made that connection as well, speaking not specifically about politics but rather how Christians view political issues, in relation to candidates who espouse “our values”. There is a serious disconnect between issues where we take seriously that all people, including unborn children, are made imago dei , in the image of God, and other places where we tacitly reject that notion when the image bearer in question is wearing the wrong uniform or living in the wrong country. I have run into far too many people who claim to be Christians that see nothing wrong with defending as a necessary evil (if they even see it as evil) the killing of Japanese children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki while expressing outrage over the murder of unborn children in the womb.

However, I recognize that Doug has a point. The loss of innocent life in war is not precisely the same thing as the willful murder of a child in the womb. The intent is different, the circumstance are different just as a child in the womb killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting is a different setting than the cold clinical setting of an abortion clinic. That is simply reality.

That reality does not in any way make one acceptable in some circumstances and the other not acceptable under any circumstances, especially for a follower of Christ. Jesus speaks directly to this when He talks about things like adultery as an act and lusting after a woman in your heart or the act of murdering someone versus hating someone in your heart. Far from creating a “sin hierarchy” where adultery in lust is lower than adultery in fact, Jesus creates an “equivalence” between the two. Likewise with murder and hatred. Jesus was not known for His nuanced positions. You will look in vain to Christ for an exposition of “just war theory”. Jesus didn’t say that murder was bad when it was an innocent child in the womb but potentially OK in a military action, especially if it is done on behalf of a free republic founded on “Judeo-Christian” values. If anything Jesus is drastically expanding what is unacceptable for God’s people or rather pointing out what was always the case. It was never OK to hate someone as long as you didn’t kill them. It was never OK to lust after a woman even if you never consummated the act. I think we would say that hating someone in your heart is “not as bad” as actually taking the life of another but that doesn’t mean that we should assume that in the eyes of God the two are in different moral universes.

In war, innocents die. That is simply the way of war, even in this day and age. An attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will result in civilian deaths and the resulting backlash will result in untold more. Simply assuming that if America is the one dropping the bombs that it is somehow more justified than another country is comforting to those who live under the stars and stripes but that is probably less than comforting to a Christian in Iran or North Korea. Whether we admit it or not, and often it is not only admitted but trumpeted, Christians in America view our military as distinct from the armed forces of any other country. When “our troops” kill innocent civilians in a military strike, it is a tragic but unavoidable situation. When the opposite happens and the aggressor is one of our “enemies”, it is a war crime.

This truth alone should dissuade Christians from blithely supporting someone as “pro-life” who advocates for war, especially pre-emptive strikes on a nation that has not threatened America and that we are not at war with, even though that candidate is adamantly anti-abortion. That is not to suggest that Christians should only vote for one candidate or another. Whoever becomes President (or is re-elected) will be in a position where national interests likely will demand a decision that leads to killing. As such we should find ourselves removed more and more from the political process and the governing of a state.

Aborting a child is a horrible thing. It places a mother in the most unnatural possible position, a position where the one person who cares for and protects their child more than anyone else finds herself ending her child’s life. Seeing the results of “collateral damage” in the broken and burned body of a child is likewise horrible. The end result is the same regardless of the circumstances: a child is dead.

I appreciate the nuance that Doug is putting out there and the thought that he puts into his argument, flawed though I find it. It is perhaps a sign of the political times that we live in that we tend to make moral equivalences in places where they may not be appropriate but it is also a sign of the enormous influence of American culture on Christians who live here that permits us to compartmentalize certain types of evil as “necessary in some circumstances” and others as “unnecessary under any circumstances”. Our calling as Christians, if we are indeed Christians, trumps political considerations, economic and religious freedom and our “rights” to self-defense and self-determination. We may be called to lay down our lives but we will never be called to take the life of another, or to actively support actions that lead to that result. Abortion is evil and wrong. Killing a child (or an adult for that matter) in a war between nations or ideologies is also evil and wrong.

A lesser evil is still an evil.

180

I have noticed a lot of chatter about this on the web but this morning I actually watched it for the first time. I am not normally a big fan of "gotcha" on the street videos but the moral bankruptcy on display is incredible. The same worldview that makes abortion acceptable was on display in Nazi Germany. You dehumanize the victim and then killing them becomes so much easier especially if you are not forced to face the results.

Lots of people are "pro-choice" when it is a poll question but it becomes impossible to justify when you actually think through it. This video is about half an hour long and is disturbing in places but we should be disturbed when faced with the barbarism that comes from the killing of innocents, whether those innocents are Jews in Nazi Germany or unborn children in America or non-combatant "collateral damage" in wars. Check out Ray Comfort in 180 the movie and let me know what you think...

Reduction to a singleton

The New York Times (thanks for the link to Eric Metaxes) has an article out this morning on women who choose to exterminate one or more of their children in utero to be left with only one child. Imagine a young man who worked hard for years, saving his money, until he had enough money not just to buy a car but to buy two cars. Excited he runs out and buys two brand new Mustangs, one red and one yellow. He drives them out to a scenic overlook, stands looking at them admiringly and then puts one brand new car into neutral and shoves it off the cliff before driving home in the other. That is crazy, right? Not any more so than paying some fertility specialist a vast sum of money to impregnate you because you are desperate for children and then paying someone to kill some of those children so you have a more manageable number.

The chilling euphemisms used in the article, The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy is testimony to the disregard for life in our culture...

This secrecy is common among women undergoing reduction to a singleton.

A "singleton" is the survivor, chosen by his or her mother, the child who fulfilled the acceptable number "1" rather than "more than 1". "Undergoing a reduction" is code for killing off the unwanted children that you spent a ton of money and effort to conceive.The abortion industry has expended a great deal of effort to change the terms of the discussion to make it more palatable. "Reduction" instead of abortion or killing, "singleton" instead of survivor.

There is a lot going on here. The reduction of the blessing of a child to something to be manipulated by science into something never intended. The results of a culture that tells young women to wait to get married, wait to have children (not wait to have sex of course, that is just silly!) until they are "ready", as if anyone is ever "ready" to be a parent and then when they finally decide to have children the biological reality has set in and they find themselves unable to conceive. We see the ethically dangerous question of what a woman who is infertile should do. We also see the way that people can explain things away to cover their shame. Read this from "Jenny" (I assume that is a pseudonym):

“Things would have been different if we were 15 years younger or if we hadn’t had children already or if we were more financially secure,” she said later. “If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.”

There is so much to unpack in those words.My heart aches for the women who have been sold a lie in our culture, a lie that sees a job in an office or cubicle as "success" and a child as a burden to be controlled, avoided or "reduced". Satan is the Father of Lies and nowhere is His lie more pronounced than in this. God says children are a blessing and that old serpent still says "Has God really said...". Even the so called "ethics" that surround this are terrible:

Mark Evans, an obstetrician and geneticist, was among the first to reduce a pregnancy. He quickly became one of the procedure’s most visible and busiest practitioners, as well as one of the most prolific authors on the topic. Early on, Evans decided the industry needed guidelines, and in 1988, he and an ethicist with the National Institutes of Health issued them. One of their central tenets was that most reductions below twins violated ethical principles.

So killing one child to reduce the number to two is perfectly ethical but killing two to bring the number down to a "singleton" is not? How macabre, how ghastly! We may not leave our newborn children out to die from exposure but under the neat and tidy medical clinics we are every bit as barbaric. Since the method described to "reduce" a child: involves a fatal injection of potassium chloride into the fetal chest. The dead fetus shrivels over time and remains in the womb until delivery. , I think it is a bit late to be talking about "ethics" here.

We live in a world gone completely insane but we congratulate ourselves for how progressive we are. Other than the cross there is no greater sign of the forbearance, patience and mercy of God than the fact that He does not bring down His wrath on this world right now. The need for Christians to raise our children to think about things differently, Biblically has never been more urgent. Sons that embrace marriage and fatherhood, daughters that embrace home and motherhood, is one of the greatest witnesses we can provide to a world full of people who are yearning for something other than the lie they have been fed by our culture, media and educational system. We need to be a witness to the preciousness of human life, lives that we precious enough for God to send His only begotten Son to redeem, lives too precious to be "reduced".

One final quote from "ethicist" Mark Evans (I refuse to call him "doctor"):

“Ethics,” he said, “evolve with technology.”

Actually no it doesn't. We have just gotten more clinical in our descriptions of murder. That isn't progress.

Planned Parenthood: They are not in the women’s health business, they are in the abortion business

Representative Mike Pence wrote a great essay for National Review titled Battling Big Abortion and he lays out the case for defunding Planned Parenthood. It is a compelling case.

Lots of people on the left decry corporate welfare but are outraged when cuts to Planned Parenthood are suggested. The truth of the matter is that Planned Parenthood, a single organization, is the recipient of a substantial amount of tax payer funds that make up around a third of Planned Parenthood’s total revenue. It is high time we eliminate funding for an organization that is primarily involved in aborting children.

We often hear that Planned Parenthood is focused on women’s “reproductive health” and that attempts to defund the abortionists at Planned Parenthood are an attack on women’s health. Set aside the awful fact that half of the children murdered in their clinics are little girls if you can. The facts are plain when you get past the flowery rhetoric about “reproductive health care” and “a woman’s right to choose”. From Representative Pence’s article:

In 2009, the group (Planned Parenthood) made only 977 adoption referrals and cared for only 7,021 prenatal clients, but performed a record 332,278 abortions. In other words, a pregnant woman entering a Planned Parenthood clinic was 42 times more likely to have an abortion than to either receive prenatal care or be referred for adoption. Planned Parenthood recently made plain the centrality of abortion to its mission by mandating that every one of its affiliates have at least one clinic that performs abortions within the next two years.

Planned Parenthood is not a women’s health provider that offers abortions. It is an abortion driven business that also offers additional services.

An organization with over a billion dollars in annual revenue (1/3 of which comes from taxpayers) and is performing hundreds of thousands of abortions each year is not an organization that the tax-payers of the United States should be forced to subsidize. Every time you get a paycheck, a portion of your pay is withheld for Federal taxes and part of that money is going to operate abortion clinics. It is high time that we get out of the abortion business as a nation. Our ultimate goal is no secret and that is to eliminate abortion entirely but until that day not a single tax payer dollar should go to prop up the abortionists at Planned Parenthood.

Defund Planned Parenthood now!

Speaking of choice

I guess it only applies to those advocating for abortion. If you want to provide information contrary to what the death merchants put out, in other words engaging in free speech and seeking to educate women, you are somehow violating what New York stands for. A recent billboard in New York that pictured a young black girl with the words ""The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb" is directed at the grim reality that 60% of pregnancies to black women in New York City end in abortion. More than half of all black children conceived in New York City are killed in New York. Such a bloody record certainly is drawing the attention of black leaders right? Not so much.

The activist Rev. Al Sharpton cancelled a protest at the billboard site that he had planned for Friday.

"The billboard was offensive, especially during Black History Month," Sharpton said in a statement Thursday.

Nothing could be more offensive for "reverend" Al Sharpton than the truth apparently. It turns out that the billboard is going to be pulled because of the reaction of open-minded, pro-abortion supporters....

"We received a complaint that some people who objected to the billboard were harassing the wait staff of a nearby restaurant," said Hal Kilshaw, a VP for Lamar Advertising. "We heard that there would be a protest tomorrow. There were concerns about problems for people who live or work in the area. That's why we chose to take it down. We are not taking the copy down because we don't think the copy should have been accepted in the first place or that it is too controversial."

Keep mind that the pro-life people are supposed to be the intolerant ones.

The truth is that for acolytes of the cult of death, there can be no dissent, no hint that abortion might be wrong. Rather than engaging the question of why 60% of black children are aborted, leaders in this community instead focus on protest and shouting down any dissenting view. How can you call it "choice" when you only hear one side of the issue?

Doing some good doesn't excuse murder

Sandra Fish writing for Politics Daily is crying hypocrisy over the effort to defund Planned Parenthood: Planned Parenthood Defunding: Family Planning's Not a GOP Family Value?. How can you claim to be family friendly and yet defund such a noble organization?! Sandra sez:

When it comes to family planning, apparently the ability to decide whether or when to have a child isn't part of Republican family values.

That's the message the GOP-controlled House sent by voting to cut not only all of Planned Parenthood's $75 million in federal funding for family planning but also the entire $317 million Title X budget. Title X money helps pay for birth control, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, breast and cervical cancer testing, prenatal care, sex education and vasectomies for men. About 4.7 million Americans get health care from clinics funded by Title X money, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Indiana Rep. Mike Pence represented his successful gutting of the funding as a victory in preventing abortion, even though the Hyde Amendment, enacted in 1977, prohibits federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. And President Barack Obama signed an executive order last year preserving the funding ban under the new health care reform law.

In addition to the money from from Title X, which was signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970, Planned Parenthood and other health care providers receive Medicaid money for health services to low-income people. Under Pence's amendment, approved in a 240-185 vote, Planned Parenthood wouldn't be allowed to receive any federal dollars, including money from Medicaid.

The message here apparently is that Planned Parenthood should be supported because of all the swell stuff they do and we should overlook the abortions they perform. Set aside whether you consider making it easier for young women to be promiscuous and engage in physically, emotionally and certainly spiritually risky sexual behavior to be a societal good for another discussion.

Here is where the rubber meets the road. No matter what value you find in the other services Planned Parenthood provides, those other services cannot offset the grim reality that Planned Parenthood profits from providing abortions. Even if they provided abortions for free and even if they only performed one abortion per year it would make the entire organization unacceptable. Hiding the fact that Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill behind language like "family planning", "womens health services" and "choice" is designed to deceive and distract from the horror that happens behind closed doors in their innocuous looking clinics. Their devotion to the bloody cult of choice taints everything else Planned Parenthood does and makes this organization one that shouldn't receive one nickel of tax dollars.

It is bad enough that we permit infanticide in this country, we certainly shouldn't be subsidizing it.

One is a horror, one is a “choice”

The story of the arrest of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Barron Gosnell has been all over the news since yesterday including this CNN story with the ironic title: Philadelphia doctor accused of murdering patient, newborns. Ironic because I would make the same accusation of every “doctor” who performs abortion.

There is a great deal of controversy about this arrest because the perpetrator is clearly a crackpot and the depictions of his offices are so macabre:

Williams provided a grisly scenario of the shuttered abortion clinic: A search of the office last year by authorities found bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses scattered throughout the building. Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf. Furniture and equipment was blood-stained, dusty and broken.

Certainly horrifying and this man is deserving of arrest and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. I sincerely pray that he comes to know Christ before his end because the full reckoning of his crimes will come not from a human magistrate but the King of Kings. But here is my question.

If it is done in a sterile, clinical manner, is infanticide somehow less grotesque?

What is happening every day in nice, brightly lit abortion clinics is every bit as horrific as what was going on in this house of horrors. Perhaps the murder was covered up by sterility and professionalism and a waiting room full of pamphlets but the end result was the same: a woman and a child walked in and (except in one case) only the woman leaves. The perverse logic that our laws operate under says that a baby in the womb is fair game for an abortionist but that once she passes through the birth canal she is all of a sudden legally protected.

Let’s skip all of the feigned horror here because the only difference between what was happening in the clinic of Kermit Barron Gosnell and your local Planned Parenthood is a difference in hygiene, not in function.

In New York City babies have a three in five chance of surviving to birth

I saw this in the Wall Street Journal and even as cynical as I am, I was frankly stunned.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan joined other religious leaders Thursday vowing to work to reduce the number of abortions in New York City.

Leaders of various faiths denounced figures that showed that 41% of pregnancies in the city were terminated in 2009. They also criticized sex-education programs in the public school system that include distributing condoms.

“That 41% of New York babies are aborted, a percentage even higher in the Bronx and among our African-American babies in the womb, is downright chilling,” said the archbishop, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in New York City. “I invite all to come together to make abortion rare,” he added.

There is a webpage devoted to this issue, NYC41Percent.com . 2 out of 5 children in New York City are murdered before they even make it to their birthday. I am physically ill thinking about that. How cleverly has Satan convinced so many people that children are disposable, that aborting your child is an acceptable choice.

Please pray for the unborn in New York City. 40% of will never even have a chance at life.

A must read editorial in a most unlikely place

Ross Douthat penned a powerful editorial today that appears, in all places, on the pages of the New York Times. His essay, The Unborn Paradox, looks at the terrible paradox in America of countless infertile couples desperately trying anything to have a baby because adoption is so expensive and takes so long while at the same time millions of children are murdered in the womb. As Douthat points out, being a single mom is terrifying and I believe is the number one indicator of a future life of poverty. For many young women, scared and often alone because the father has bolted the options that they are presented with is an either-or scenario. Either you abort this “embryo/fetus/pregnancy tissue” inside of you for a couple hundred bucks or you keep your child and consign yourself to a life of poverty. There is a third way that used to be vey common. A young woman who got pregnant out of wedlock would give up her child for adoption. That is unfortunately no longer the case. This was a heart wrenching statistic:

In every era, there’s been a tragic contrast between the burden of unwanted pregnancies and the burden of infertility. But this gap used to be bridged by adoption far more frequently than it is today. Prior to 1973, 20 percent of births to white, unmarried women (and 9 percent of unwed births over all) led to an adoption. Today, just 1 percent of babies born to unwed mothers are adopted, and would-be adoptive parents face a waiting list that has lengthened beyond reason.

Infertility is a reality. So is out of wedlock pregnancy. With adoption there was a solution but that solution has been replaced by abortion. In our society we have so many couples who are childless going through extreme and horribly expensive procedures in an effort to get pregnant while at the same time millions of babies are killed by “doctors”. The butcher’s bill of abortion is made even more tragic, if that is even possible, by the reality that there is another choice. Not every unwanted baby would be adopted but a lot of them would be. Why then is abortion so common and adoption so rare? Frankly because the abortion industry has successfully marketed its murderous services as the only viable choice. Adoption? You have to be pregnant for nine months, everyone will know about it and then when the baby is born you have to hand it over? Far better to snuff that child out in the sanitary confines of an abortion clinic.

Douthat ends his editorial with these tragic but accurate words:

This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed.

America can never be considered a nation that cares for children while we live in a paradoxical world where politicians speak about how important kids are, how they are our future, how they must be protected from every germ and sniffle and fed properly and ride in car seats and get the most expensive education around even though the end result is mediocre while at the same time enshrining a made up “right” to kill babies before they get a chance to skin their knees or made a bad choice in the lunch line.