(Prolifer)ations 11-4-11
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli
We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.
- Accepting Abundance points out an abortion clinic advertising “gentle abortions” with “no pain” and “no memory.” The same clinic also advertises the reportedly “rare” late-term abortions up to 24 weeks, which is curious because usually businesses want to advertise that which is most in demand. Why advertise such a “rare” type of abortion – unless it isn’t quite so rare?
- Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights without Frontiers denounces Relativity Media – the same production company responsible for exposing the human rights abuses in Sudan in Machine Gun Preacher – for filming a movie in the city of Linyi, despite knowing that Chinese officials there are responsible for the mistreatment and imprisonment of blind activist Chen Guangcheng. Chen publicly decried China’s One-Child Policy.
- Stand for Life features a chilling undercover phone call with a New Mexico abortion clinic, which reveals a $16k abortion of a 30-week-old child with Down syndrome would be covered by Medicaid – in other words, funded by taxpayers. The call was staged and recorded by Operation Rescue:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbd_ydGkFkk[/youtube]
- Suzy B has an update on the 12 New Jersey nurses who filed suit after being threatened with termination for refusing to participate in abortions.
- John Smeaton welcomes the idea of a 7 billion world population:
Economies continue to expand, productivity is up, and pollution is declining. Life spans are lengthening, poverty is down, and political freedom is growing. The human race has never been so well off. In fact, underpopulation, not overpopulation, is the real threat that much of the world faces today. Some 80 countries representing over half the world’s population suffer from below replacement fertility defined as less than 2.1 children per woman.
- National Pro-Life Radio tells the story of a North Carolina couple who was repeatedly pressured to selectively abort one of their triplets because the obstetrician thought taking care of them all would be overwhelming. They switched doctors and carried all three to 36 weeks, when they were delivered at healthy birth weights. The family is pictured left, with their au pair and their older son.
- Wesley J. Smith and Secular ProLife examine the reactions of mainstream media, the pro-life movement, and the abortion industry regarding the upcoming vote on the Mississippi Personhood Amendment. Smith points out:
The law doesn’t only reflect our values, it molds them. A law that gave full moral and legal inclusion to unborn life would be profoundly subversive to a reigning social order that not only doesn’t wish to include embryos and fetuses in the moral community, but wants to kick certain categories of born humans out of membership (even as some seek to expand moral inclusion to flora and fauna).
- ProWomanProLife reports that the trespassing charges brought against a pro-life club at Carleton College for sponsoring a Genocide Awareness Project have been dropped. However, inexplicably, the judge has ordered the club students to pay over $21K for the college’s legal fees.
- Real Choice chronicles the post-Roe death of a tubal ligation patient who was found to be pregnant. The doctor offered a two-for-one visit – abortion and the tubal – and ended up perforating her bowel and shrugging off serious post-surgery complications. After her death, he denied the abortion, claiming instead to have performed a D&C after a miscarriage. So much for safe and legal.
- Pro-Life Wisconsin announces the endorsement of the Wisconsin Personhood Amendment by Wisconsin Family Action, an affiliate of Focus on the Family.
- Timmerie’s Blog encourages pro-lifers to register to vote, and tells youth to be a voice, even if they aren’t yet of voting age:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaZ-lUqbhQk[/youtube]
[Photo via National Pro-Life Radio]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I attended Carleton College for a semester, so I’m really not surprised at the backlash. It’s such an extremely liberal school that I’m surprised they even have a pro-life group on campus.
I love that: Will you help shine a light on the darkness?
That’s exactly what prolifers want to do! Love it!
While I don’t deny that advertising for any abortions is disgusting and offensive, the reason a mill would advertise late-term abortions, despite the fact that they are a statistical minority of abortions overall, is the same reason that Cadillac advertises the Escalade or Lexus advertises any of their cars. It’s a big ticket item that people are not, generally, going to purchase often, but will bring in a huge amount of money for the vendor. One late-term abortion will sometimes come with a price-tag three-to-four-to-more times that of an abortion at eight-to-twelve weeks. A mill won’t have to sell that many, as a percentage of total abortions, to be making big bucks off of them anyway. Of course they’re advertising late abortions. Having decided money is more important than human life, they’re just taking the next step in the amoral logic and trying to make as much as they can.
If something is relatively rare but people want it, they may not know where they can obtain it. So advertising the availability just lets that group know that it is available and where.
On the ‘personhood at conception’ front, pandora’s box may well be opened.
Firstly the pill and IUD’s may be banned (ok some of you would like that, not sure that the majority would feel the same way). There have been small pieces here and there in the media citing people who say that that is something they will be seeking.
Next, smoking and drinking whilst pregnant will have to be prevented. How? Will there be another layer of incarceration to prevent or punish women who persist in smoking or drinking?
Of course we all know that healthy eating and exercise is of great benefit while pregnant. Will this be mandated? Will women have to prove that that aren’t eating the wrong foods? Will they have to have an exercise chart signed off?
Where next?
Where next? Let’s just stop killing the unborn.
You aren’t interested in the answer to those questions, Reality.
Personhood would simply confer equal standing as far as right to life. Equality–I shudder to think what MLK Jr. thinks when he looks down on the scary black “leaders” of today. He would definitely have fought for the unborn.
I am very interested in the answers to those questions Courtnay.
The woman carrying a fetus which has been conferred ‘personhood’ status would be deemed to be as responsible for it as a parent is for a child which has been born. Given the rules, regulations, laws and societal expectations that we see, then things could go a lot further than outlawing the pill and IUD’s.
Pandora’s box.
Reality,
Gee, who knew you were the slippery-slope type. There are laws against spousal abuse. No one parks a lawn chair by a neighbor’s window waiting for something to report. Yes, abortifacients may well be phased out. But I don’t think you’ll have to worry about some Gestapo inspecting bedsheets.
Health police are more likely under a leftist, pro-choice regime.
Reality, there are countries today which protect the legal sancity of life from natural beginning to natural end. None of them go around putting pregnant women in jail for having a smoke or a drink. See, if you logically and legally confir the benefits of HUMAN RIGHT to HUMANS you don’t generally see a lot of problems from that. Parents have the legal right to make decisions for their underage children. Just like a smoking mom of a toddler has the right to make that health choice for their child, so does the mother of an inutero child. Some parents let their six year olds ride on a motocycle, others don’t. Some parents won’t let anyone who smokes around their kids, others don’t. It’s not illegal (yet) to expose a child to smoke, processed foods, meat, milk, fish, or any of the other of hosts of things people disagree about. As a parent I have the right to raise my child as I see fit, whether they are an embroy, a fetus, a neonate, an infant, a toddler, a pre-adolescent, or an adolescent. Pro-life people don’t want to take away a parent’s right to raise their children, we just want to make it as illegal for a mother of an embroy to kill her child as it is a mother of a 3 year old to kill her child. Murdering one’s child is *not* a parenting ‘choice’, it is a horrendous abuse of untold measure against a human being. When you withhold human rights from humans you do damage to *all* humans.
Next, smoking and drinking whilst pregnant will have to be prevented. How? Will there be another layer of incarceration to prevent or punish women who persist in smoking or drinking?
What do you mean, “next”? They’ve already charged women for harming their gestating children for such things, and the world is still intact, and women have yet to be prosecuted for being outside the kitchen or wearing shoes. Smoking (drugs)/drinking while pregnant, and of course a mother harming her child should be a prosecutable offense.
Will pregnant women be banned form bars even if they don’t want to drink alcohol? Isn’t it against the law to take a ‘person’ under 21 into a bar?
Reality, you’re a bit misinformed. In most places (although I will admit perhaps some states or cities have different rules) minors can accompany adults into bars. I’m even aware of more than one nursing mother’s group who gather in bars (that serve food, drink, and/or have bands/music) for their meetings. I myself have taken a sleeping baby in a sling into a bar for an ‘after party’ after our Amtgard group met for feast. No one looked twice at me, except for one server who cooed over the sleeping baby. There is nothing wrong with a drink or two while you are nursing. I myself have sipped at a glass of mimosa while nursing at a Sunday brunch with my family. Furthermore, actual evidence based studies (as well as real life data from other countries) show no harm to pregnancies with the occassional drink. In fact it’s not at all unusual for pregnant women in other countries to drink a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with lunch. It’s not even unheard of in *this* country for doctors who are familiar with actual evidence (as opposed to fear-based medicine) to tell mothers to drink some wine in late pregnancy to help lower blood pressure and avoid premature contractions. And hops heavy beer or ale can be very good for milk production of lactating mothers.
Just another example of how ‘the sky is falling’ mentality about what will happen if we give human rights to all humans can be easily countered.
If an extremist minority group can convince people to carry a vote that states that once a sperm bumps into an egg a ‘person’ exists, then this will encourage all sorts of groups with their own wheelbarrows to push.
As we’ve seen here and elsewhere, there are those who will strive to ensure that the pill and IUD’s have a very short life expectancy if this law is enacted.
If a fertilized egg is a ‘person’ and the pill or IUD’s can have a detrimental effect on this ‘person’ then the pill and IUD’s will have to be banned.
It will then be necessary to ensure that women aren’t taking the pill or using IUD’s. How will this be done and what will the penalties be?
There are all sorts of groups which are vocal in regard to actions, behaviors and substances which they believe can be harmful to fetuses. These people will be seeking legislative support to prevent women from partaking.
Seatbelts and airbags aren’t the optimum safety restraint systems for fetuses, what will the vehicle manufacturers have to come up with?
What about horse-riding? Bunjee jumping?
If you decree that a fertilized egg is a ‘person’ a whole new set of legislative controls awaits.
It will then be necessary to ensure that women aren’t taking the pill or using IUD’s. How will this be done and what will the penalties be?
Since both the pill and IUDs (which does not need an apostrophe because it is not possessive; lrn2grmmr, plz) must be obtained through pharmacies/doctor’s offices, here’s a brainwave for ensuring people won’t use them anymore. Don’t sell them! See how easy that was? Really, now you’re just grasping at straws.
Aside from which, your main objection here is basically, “We can’t do this! It would be really hard!” And that is the lamest excuse in the history of ever for not doing the right thing. People use it all the time, but that doesn’t make it less lame.
Thanks for pulling me up on that little slip Alice.
The pill must be about the most popular and common form of contraception around.
An inestimable number of women have, do or will use it.
If this ‘personhood’ law is passed then it must become illegal.
OK, pharmasists and doctors can obey the law and not sell it.
But it sure ain’t gonna be hard to obtain it when one small, backward state bans it.
Thus many women will still use it, along with IUDs.
Therefore women will need to be tested and checked and face punitive measures.
How will they be tested and what will the punishment be?
There is no rational reason to ban the pill or IUDs, this is going to get very messy.
What would happen if one state banned alcohol?
Was Southwestern Women’s Options the one that the Western-style video was made about?
Reality, have you ever taken an American history course before? There was a time when some states allowed alcohol sales and others didn’t. And when drinking ages varried. There was a time when some states allowed the pill and others didn’t. Today different states have different driving ages, car seat laws, abuse laws, age of consent laws, etc. Ironically, laws tend to work pretty well. Most people (shocking I know) obey laws. There was also a time (still?) Where different states have different laws concerning OTC cold medication! Furthermore right now there are already detailed laws concerning prescriptions of narcotics and other strong drugs and crossing state lines. I can’t take my script for pain meds written in Iowa and fill it in another state. If I lived in CA and had a marijuana script I couldn’t take the drugs up to Washington. Nor could I in iowa go back to Oregon, get a script for marijuana and then come back home and expect not to be legal heat for it.
I have to wonder at your friends or peer group that you assume there would be this rampant lawlessness if something is criminalized. Even during prohibition there were only a real problem in a few large cities. Most places just didn’t sell alcohol. If a state outlawed the pill some people would move, a tiny number might try to obtain it on the black market, but most people would just choose another form of birth control.
Personally I think if/when the pill gets outlawed what we’ll see is some clever pharmacy scientists actually coming up with a hormonal birth control that *actually* prevents pregnancy, as opposed to terminating it very early on (possibly something for men as opposed to women). Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.
I think that a study of history shows us what an absolute nightmare scenario this whole thing has the potential to unleash.
The examples you cite possess detection methods and punishments, as laws do.
I note that no-one will answer the question as to how women will be tested to ensure that they aren’t using the pill or IUDs and what the penalties might be.
“Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention” – I completely agree Jespren. The only way we will ever get even close to preventing abortion is by the development of something failsafe which, with no side effects, basically allows fertility to be turned off until desired.
I just think that banning the pill and IUDs is a foolhardy approach. Yes they may in odd cases actually cause the loss of a fertilized egg or something slightly further along the developmental path. But to decry this as the ‘taking of a persons life’ is pretty extreme.
There is a constant drive for better contraception. There are enough people who are unhappy with the success rate or side effects of various forms of contraception to propel this drive.
Abstinence sure doesn’t work to any great extent so the need for people to control their fertility remains.
Unfortunately there are those who believe that anything less than totally unimpeded, potentially procreative sex within a marital environment is blasphemous. It is these folks who will still agitate for the banning of such products and expose their own children to unwanted pregnancies.
I note that no-one will answer the question as to how women will be tested to ensure that they aren’t using the pill or IUDs and what the penalties might be.
Maybe we were hoping you’d notice on your own what an idiotic question it is. The police do not investigate every scenario where a crime might be committed to ensure that it isn’t. If they did, the cops would have to monitor every single vehicle every time anyone went driving. And that’s just for starters. The whole scenario you’re trying to envision is fatalistic, fear-mongerish nonsense.
Reality, my examples seem to provide a framework that has and would continue to work. But since it’s apparently not making sense I’ll be happy to detail.
If there is some reason to believe a law has been broken, police have a right to get a search warrent and look for/search out any illegal substances. Sometimes they don’t need a warrent. For instance: assume for a moment I hypothetically went back to Oregon and obtained a script for marijuana and filled it legally in Oregon (which, btw, my genetic condition and my chronic pain would allow me to do), I then returned home to Iowa and was pulled over for speeding. The officer asks to search my car and he find my marijuana. I get arrested for an illegal substance (and probably plead out to a fine). Now, in this hypothetical if the pill is also illegal and he finds my pills in the car too, well, I’m arrested for posession of an illegal substance.
The law doesn’t have the right to randomly grab a person off the street and make them take a test. Americans are innocent until proven guilty. There would be no more reason or expectation that women would be in some fashion ‘tested’ to confirm they were complying with the law. This isn’t China. Lawfulness is *assumed* until proven otherwise. The only way a woman would get caught breaking the law if she had an IUD or was taking hormonal birth control was if someone called the cops on her (just like my friends who occassionally do drugs know if they do them around me I *will* call the police and report them), or if proof of illicit activity was found on an otherwise legal search (for instance if the cops are searching a house for stolen goods and they come across illegal guns). In other words a law against ‘the pill’ or iuds would work like every other law we have!
As for punishment…while we know hormonal birth control and IUDs can cause and do cause early abortions, given our current level of science I don’t think it could be proven in a court of law (beyond a reasonable doubt) that it *did* cause one in any specific instance of ingestion or use. So any law that was enforceable would, realistically, have to treat ingestion/possession of the aformentioned the same way we treat other ingested/possessed illicit substances, we charge for their possession. Currently most drug possession charges (for personal use) end up being misdemeanor, with additional possible charges for habitual users.
We are not trying to criminalize women, nor change anyone’s Constitutional right to be secure in their person, rather, we are simply seeking to extend thsose rights justly to all humans. People are presumed innocent. The only people who have visions of child-bearing aged women lined up for pregnancy exams monthly (in America anyway, it already happens in China) are pro-aborts who are apparently terrified that we might actually tell people they have to be responsible for their actions.
Which, btw, abstinence is 100% effective, every single time it’s used. And, furthermore, has a wonderful track record throughout history of producing a very low societal ‘failure’ rate due to ‘imperfect’ use when it’s actually incouraged. If you think it’s actually incouraged in todays schools you haven’t read/attended an actual sex-ed course for the last 20 years or so. Saying at the beginning of an hour long class ‘abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy’ and then spending the next 59 minutes talking about the different kinds of condoms and where to get birth control pills is *not* ‘abstinence based’ sex-education. it’s a way to put on a piece of paper ‘we taught abstinence and it didn’t work’.
Sobriety checkpoints, random drug searches, suspicion, reports from others. All causes for people to be tested for various things which have been declared illegal.
If the pill and IUDs are capable of ‘murdering a person’ then wouldn’t they also be tested for.
What if a woman miscarries and requires medical care. They’ll want to identify the cause. (unless this sort of thing goes underground – again)
My questions stand.
This is exactly why I need to win that Voucher! So many great new things that I can add to my sons room to match his Billie bedset!!!