Pro-life news brief 6-10-13
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- A Connecticut man’s bail has been set at $2.5 million after he was accused of hiring a friend to kill his pregnant girlfriend. Carlton Bryan allegedly wanted Shamari Jenkins dead because she wouldn’t have an abortion:
Calling the crime “egregious,” prosecutor Cathryn J. Krinitsky told the judge that Bryan asked a friend to shoot his girlfriend because “the girlfriend has previously decided to have an abortion but decided not to.”
According to the warrant for Bryan’s arrest, he “begged” Hall-Davis to shoot Jenkins, 20. She was shot in the chest April 29 as she sat behind the wheel of her Honda Accord, with Bryan in the front passenger seat, in front of 137 Magnolia St. in the city’s North End.
“Carlton Bryan did not want to have the baby with Shamari Jenkins,” Hall-Davis told police. “Carlton Bryan said Shamari initially agreed to have an abortion but changed her mind and she was now four months pregnant.”
Hall-Davis also told police that Bryan “wanted to stay with… his other girlfriend,” the warrant states.
- Remee Lee (pictured left), the Florida woman whose boyfriend tricked her into taking abortion drugs, is working with a state senator to encourage the passage of an unborn victims of violence law in FL which covers unborn children before viability:
Before she was tricked into taking abortion pills, Remee Lee planned to name her baby Memphis Remington, she said.
Now Lee and her attorney, Gil Sanchez, hope that name will give new impetus to a state bill that would more often ban crimes against fetuses.
The Offenses Against Unborn Children bill, sponsored in 2013 by state Rep. Larry Ahern, R-St. Petersburg, has failed at least three years in a row. Ahern said Sunday he might name the 2014 bill after Memphis Remington in an effort to personalize the issue and help gather the support it needs to pass.
- Pro-lifers in Florida are suing over a sound ordinance which police have been using to fine them:
According to the lawsuit, the ordinance banning people from shouting, playing loud music or making any amplified sound within 100 feet of any health care facility is not only unconstitutional but local police officials also have been applying the law unevenly against [Susan] Pine and [Marilyn] Blackburn by fining them for using a bullhorn near the clinic.The fine, they say, came after police officers routinely recorded them when they used the bullhorn and even used a laser-measuring device to calculate the distance between the clinic and where the protesters were standing. After the fine, police failed to provide the women with guidance on how far away they could stand from the clinic without violating the ordinance, according to the suit.
The group contends that the ordinance is so broad that — if enforced correctly — it should land many other residents in trouble.
[Photo via Tampa Bay Times]
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.
Men might desperately want abortion if they fear getting stuck with child support. On a “Parole Board,” a man was on there who had 8 kids by 6 women. He was $36,000 behind in child support.
I read about another man who had sired 14 children by 12 women.
It is often impossible for men to financially support all the children they sire. Of course, that doesn’t mean women should abort. However, the fact that women can legally abort has led men like Matt Dubay to claim men should be released from child support obligations. Needless to say, if that happens, instead of 1/4 of children impoverished, it will be something like 60%.
Should vasectomy ever be mandatory?
Yes, that is hardly reproductive freedom. But reproductive freedom should be seriously reconsidered. Choices we make for our own bodies often lead to disasters — embryos and fetuses ripped apart, children impoverished.
“Should vasectomy ever be mandatory?
Yes, that is hardly reproductive freedom. But reproductive freedom should be seriously reconsidered. Choices we make for our own bodies often lead to disasters — embryos and fetuses ripped apart, children impoverished.”
Well, I think it’s much preferable if no abortions happen, no children are being abandoned or abused and no unplanned pregnancies, and the only men being sterilized are those who decide to do so after thinking about it and deciding it’s best for them. But if I had to choose legal abortion or forced vasectomies? It’d be the vasectomies, not even a contest. At least no kids are going to die if guys are forced to be snipped.
I was never a fan of bullhorns, so I’m not that distraught that there are sound ordinances around clinics.
I noticed in the article in the Hartford Courant that was linked to in this blog that it said that “her unborn baby boy” was pronounced dead.
I can only imagine the huge national uproar if it had been opposite – if her boyfriend had shot her for getting the abortion (which would also have been terrible, don’t get me wrong). I don’t think we would have heard anything about “her unborn baby boy” then, but only the “terminated pregnancy” or the “removed contents of the uterus”, and how she was so brave to exercise her “reproductive rights”
The assertion that forced sterilization is the ‘solution’ to the abortion problem is a fallacy. Sterilization, especially mandated sterilization, is another way to encourage the disconnect between sex and procreation. Male sterilization has been known to cause pain for the man, lead to a weakened marital bond between the spouses, and result in unexpected pregnancies (because it isn’t 100%; as we fail to teach our children and each other, the ONLY 100% effective method of delaying pregnancy is abstinence).
Most importantly, however, sterilization, especially forced sterilization, is a manner of deconstructing the wonderfully made human being down to the “sum of our parts.” We are so much more than a machine! Not only are we incredibly complex, but we are the image and likeness of our Creator. We are a beautiful, intricate, and many times inexplicable creature. It is harmful and destructive to our nature for us to mandate vasectomies.
Denise, every time you post, I feel for you. I hope that some day your life is enriched with a realization of what exactly it is you lack- a comprehension of the fact that mankind is beautiful and *almost* explicable not when viewed as cogs and machinery, bits and pieces, but when seen as a whole: the image and likeness of God, a creature incomparable to anything else on earth.
Re: the actual post,
YOU GO REMEE! I pray for your reunion with Memphis someday :)
This is society’s idea of reproductive choice for men
Why doesn’t Planned Parenthood assist men with these types of development reduction services so that they can safely terminate unwanted pregnancies without having to resort to less safe ways aborting?
Denise,
Your suggestion is what? After 5 kids they get sterilized? After so much debt?
I’m glad you don’t make the laws. Your logic sounds not entirely unlike China’s one child law with forced abortions. No, I do not, even with “too many unwanted,” support the idea of sterilization. It conflicts with our natural order, deconstructs our personhood, and dehumanizes both the sterilized and the steriliz-er. I, rather, support greater support for single mothers and a more consistent worldview accepting children as a gift rather than a right or a burden.
These two stories are just more examples of how a culture of death in which we slaughter our most helpless and innocent citizens breeds a greater disrespect and lack of compassion for all human lives, including those of the women whom abortion rights and “reproductive freedoms” are supposed to protect.
Hi Victor,
hmmm – I wonder if this is complete. Perhaps this is ‘one result’ of a culture that is gleefully bent on self destruction, rather than signals to a slippery-slope. Is THE SLOPE already in place, and we’re on it too? Is our task then to-stop-our-sliding?
Ancient societies and the USA had a whole bunch of heroes/heroins ‘to teach us’ Since we no longer listen to anyone, especially heroes … the slippery-slope of the culture of-death remains active. Who speaks for silence … a computer program? .. death?
It conflicts with our natural order, deconstructs our personhood, and dehumanizes both the sterilized and the steriliz-er.
I am apparently now less-than-human, and should’ve been super happy that my ex lamented he had pushed me into getting sterilized and raped me after I told him I wanted a divorce in the vain hope that my tubal ligation would fail. Because babies, y’all.
9_9
I’m with Jack on his gentle response to Denise’s wistful suggestion. Jerks like this latest guy in the news with the 14 children could use some corralling of his “reproductive freedom”.
Maybe a REALLY good swift kick in a certain region.
@ Hans Johnson: Yes, the entire concept of “reproductive freedom” should be thoroughly re-examined — and at both ends of it. The freedom NOT to reproduce means being free to hire a doctor to rip to pieces a fetus in the 6th month of gestation. This is after the 19th week of pregnancy when the central nervous system is hooked up and the unborn may suffer pain, even agony, as they are destroyed.
The freedom TO reproduce means men are blithely scattering their seeds hither and yon with the resulting children brought up in poverty and neglect.
A child-focused view might try to set limits at both ends of reproductive freedom.
X,
Come now you’re smarter than that. dehumanizes, as in, alters our view of ourselves & so doing loses in perception part of what makes us human.
@Denise
How about we just have a culture that seriously encourages men to keep their pants on and women to keep their legs crossed when they aren’t serious about each other?
The number of single mothers was much lower when we used to insist on it, and the men faced serious consequences for violating that more just like the women did.
A man who wants to be so careless and selfish should have a VERY hard time finding partners with whom to sire children.
In my opinion any concept of reproductive freedom (or justice) that does not include freedom (and justice) for the unborn, who are just a bit involved in the conception, is worse than a cruel joke.