Pro-life blog buzz 5-16-14
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.
- The Guiding Star Project points out how “reproductive healthcare” for women is actually biased against helping women who wish to reproduce:
Let me take a pause for a moment, I am not agreeing that abortion should be considered “healthcare”, but I want to talk about other facets of healthcare for women. Why do I (and others like me) have to pay high premiums to find out why I can’t achieve a healthy and normal pregnancy?If it is an equal right for a woman to terminate a healthy, or even an unhealthy pregnancy (for her or the baby), paid for by taxpayers or her insurance, why do I have to pay all costs trying to find out what is wrong with my body?
- Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reports that Belgian euthanasia practitioner Dr. Wim Distelmans is actually organizing tours to the death camps of Auschwitz:
In a travel brochure he describes Auschwitz as an ‘inspiring’ surrounding in which to ‘clarify confusion about euthanasia’….
Linking the right to die and the Nazis is a no-no in most circles. In fact, opponents are usually deemed to have lost the argument as soon as they mention the word “Nazi”. But Dr Distelmans’s breath-taking initiative could change that rule. To hold a seminar on euthanasia in an extermination camp where the idea of ‘lives not worth living’ took its most extreme form, is peculiar, to say the least….
It is gratifying for us to see Dr Distelmans connect the dots between euthanasia in Brussels and the atrocities of Auschwitz. It confirms for us the dark future of Belgium’s legal euthanasia. It should terrify all the chronically ill and disabled who live there.
- Americans United for Life joins senators calling for a vote on the ban on abortions after 20 weeks gestation:
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell along with pro-life leaders, calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow a vote on legislation Senator Graham introduced, S. 1670, The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks which will protect women’s health and unborn children from fetal pain. The Capitol Hill news conference took place on the one-year anniversary of the murder conviction of notorious abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell….The United States is one of 4 out of 195 nations, standing with North Korea, China and Canada, allowing abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy, for any reason at all, including sex selection, and sometimes with taxpayer subsidies. And under the Affordable Care Act, that could be expanding.
- Live Action posts an article discussing how “Terry O’Neill (pictured right), president of the National Organization for Women, has written a column for Huffington Post, irrationally claiming that abortion is essential health care and that it actually saves the lives of babies.” Hey, great idea! Instead of improving actual medical care, let’s kill more babies before they’re born so they can’t die after they’re born. Really, Terry?
- Fletcher Armstrong reports that their second visit to the University of Buffalo with the Genocide Awareness Project enjoyed the protection of free speech from the University officials who “got religion” after a federal lawsuit was filed. On the group’s first visit, officials allowed an unruly mob of “pro abortion protestors to disrupt their peaceful pro life demonstration”:
For those keeping score, this was only the second time in the history of GAP that CBR has been forced to file a lawsuit against a public university. Usually, the knowledge of our willingness to defend speech rights is enough to ensure their enforcement.
- At Secular Pro-Life, Clinton Wilcox discusses personhood:
My preferred definition of “person” comes from medieval philosopher Boethius, that a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. There are many things we think of when we think of persons, and various philosophers like Mary Anne Warren and Peter Singer have identified: the capacity for rational thought, the ability to express oneself through language, the ability to form concepts, etc. And of course, I have argued in the past that it’s not our present capacities that ground our personhood, but our inherent capacities. This is why the unborn qualify as persons.It’s simply counterintuitive to refer to anything other than humans as persons. Even pro-choice writers use the terms “human” and “person” interchangeably… until they want to justify abortion. Then they suddenly want to make a distinction between the two.
[O’Neill photo via robinholland.wordpress.com]
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.
You’re out a day in the title.
Thanks. Fixed.
“Thanks. Fixed.”
Still says 5-15-14, shouldn’t it be 5-16-14?
The Guiding Star Project blog puts into words what I’ve been trying to say for years…why is “reproductive health care” in truth a code word for abortion access. Its proponents claim for the words to mean “an access to a full range of health care option” and yet access & support is slanted towards the prevention & ending pregnancy rather than supporting & embracing those who are seeking to acheive &/ or maintain a pregnancy, despite adverse circumstances (such as an unplanned pregnancy) or health conditions.
Really, Terry?
No, not really. O’Neill said that abortion can save the lives of people who are pretty much beneath LiveAction’s notice–women.
points out how “reproductive healthcare” for women is actually biased against helping women who wish to reproduce
Actually, what she points out is that she has a crummy health insurance plan.
Still says 5-15-14, shouldn’t it be 5-16-14?
I think she changed the wrong one. She changed the 5-15-14 pro-life blog buzz to the 16th and left this one as the 15th.
LisaC, did you even read the column? You’re losing it!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terry-oneill/abortion-like-contracepti_b_5316300.html
We have a premature birth crisis in this country that can be directly linked to our failure to provide adequate contraception and abortion care. About half of pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unintended, and for those women who carry their pregnancies to term (more than half do), the prognosis is anything but great. They not only experience higher rates of premature birth, but also are more likely to have inadequate prenatal care, low birth weight and small size infants, maternal depression and anxiety.
From a public health point of view, abortion care, no less than contraception, is an essential measure to prevent the heartbreak of infant mortality, and to prevent another tragedy as well — maternal death.
Seems pretty clear to me. Her solution to infant mortality is to kill more babies before they’re born so they can’t die after they’re born. As stated above.
“You’re losing it!”
Did she ever really have it?
Thanks, guys. Crazy week. Got my days all mixed up! Hopefully it’s fixed now. But I make no promises. :D
“Hopefully it’s fixed now.”
It seems to be. Thanks.
Navi, of course I read the column, both LiveAction’s column and O’Neill’s. O’Neill includes contraception as something that can reduce infant mortality by preventing unplanned pregnancies that are statistically more likely to result in births of infants that are too premature to survive–her solution is not “abortion saves babies’ lives.” If O’Neill intended to convey that both abortion and contraception reduce infant mortality–it’s not the best-written column in the world–then I think that her inclusion of abortion is silly. LiveAction’s deliberate omission of O’Neill’s discussion of contraception, however, is an intentional lie by omission (pro-lifers preferred kind of lying). As I noted earlier, LiveAction also entirely ignores O’Neill’s argument that abortion can reduce maternal mortality; it in fact deceptively edits a quotation to hide that point. However, I’m less inclined to call that lying by omission because I think that LiveAction quite sincerely does not understand that many people believe that a pregnant woman is a person.
I can see your point. There’s this passage in the Live Action article:
Nowhere in her article does Terry O’Neill say that teen mothers should be educated, that poor women should be provided with prenatal care, or that any other positive action should be taken. The only thing she advocates for is death. Find a poor, uneducated pregnant woman? O’Neill’s one and only solution is to kill her baby.
I understand why you’d find that objectionable, since Ms. O’Neill did advocate for at least one other thing in her column (contraception, which Live Action did not address). Still, she did include abortion as a major focus. So I still stand by what I said above.
As I noted earlier, LiveAction also entirely ignores O’Neill’s argument that abortion can reduce maternal mortality; it in fact deceptively edits a quotation to hide that point. However, I’m less inclined to call that lying by omission because I think that LiveAction quite sincerely does not understand that many people believe that a pregnant woman is a person.
Or, more likely, it was omitted because “abortion reduces maternal mortality” and “abortion is safer than childbirth” are common pro-choice talking points (that Live Action has probably addressed elsewhere) and don’t really stand out the same way.