Good morning and Happy Sunday! Here were my top five six favorite political cartoons this week. Which one is your favorite? Vote in the poll at the bottom of the post!
by Chip Bok at Townhall.com…
by Glenn Foden at Townhall.com…
by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com…
by Steve Kelley at Townhall.com…
by Nick Anderson at The Houston Chronicle…
by Gary McCoy at Townhall.com…
Click all images to enlarge…
Facebook caption for this September 8 photo: “Created Equal shows Westerville High School [Westerville, Ohio] students the victims of abortion”:
Explanation for this next photo comes via the UK’s Daily Mail, September 11:
A grieving mother has released this poignant picture of her daughter crying moments after being born at 24 weeks.
Emily Caines wants to show how developed her baby was at this stage of pregnancy - the legal limit for abortions in Britain.
Adelaide survived for only about an hour after she was delivered by doctors who tried in vain to keep her alive.
This is Mrs Caines’ only picture of her daughter, and was taken by one of the medics before the infant died.
She and her husband Alastair, a security guard, think the legal limit of 24 weeks for an abortion should be lowered.
“Our picture shows Adelaide was not a foetus,” said Mrs Caines, 35, from Yeovil, Somerset. “She was a fully formed human being, and to think that a baby like her could be legally terminated is to me horrifying…. I hope this beautiful picture of my daughter being born helps change people’s perspectives.”
Finally, these photos come via Mirna Awrow, president of Students for Life of Michigan, who blogged about Oakland University’s pro-life group going to an inordinate amount of trouble to chalk “positive pro-life messages” on the evening of September 11 only to have abortion proponents on campus dump water on their work or maliciously change wording.
[Bottom photos via @ProLifeLawyer on Twitter]
The title of the September 8 USA Today column was a bit misleading.
Author Tom Krattenmaker’s focus was urging pro-life Christians to become involved in the effort to sustain water, the growing scarcity of which, he claimed, is becoming a worldwide problem:
If you care about life - and I know you do, especially if you’re a Christian who believes in the sanctity of life - please pay attention to what is happening with the water….
Lately, because of political controversies and headline-grabbing court cases such as the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, the public’s view of evangelical reverence for life has been reduced mainly to fetuses and fertilized eggs. In truth, evangelicals are addressing myriad threats to life, from poverty and slavery to genocide. If the life movement can devote itself to fighting these, can’t it also confront the threat to our life-giving water - and compel the small- and large-scale actions that will conserve it for human beings today and tomorrow?
Krattenmaker confused the issue by interchanging the terms ”Christian,” “evangelical,” and “the life movement.” It is true Christians took on poverty, slavery, and genocide as core issues – a couple thousand years before any other movement came along.
But everyone can’t do everything. Christians comprise a body. See I Corinthians 12. Our body is woven together by people God has brought together who are gifted with different talents and passions. Christians use their God-given talents and passions in various ways to give the Church body life. It’s a beautiful thing.
So there is a subset of Christians whose passion is stopping abortion. (Embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide, and euthanasia are recent add-ons, as the Culture of Death has expanded its tentacles.)
It’s what this subset focuses on. Why is this so hard to understand? Why are other movements never called to take on the anti-abortion issue? Even in his own article, Krattenmaker participated in that hypocrisy:
One of the environmental movement’s biggest mistakes has been to give the impression that enviros care more about old trees and rare animals than human beings. That problem, thankfully, is being remedied as a new ethos in the movement connects the dots between a healthy environment and the viability of human life.
Krattenmaker did link to a flyer by the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, but I only wish it were true “a new ethos” of environmentalists had added “save the baby humans” to their plank. But they haven’t.
To that end, I wrote in a comment to the article, “I hope the author is writing a similar column to environmentalists encouraging them to take on the anti-abortion issue?”
Why do you think it is that pro-lifers are singularly targeted with demands to add a myriad of other issues to their work, called hypocrites along the way if they don’t?
Do you think we should?
I suppose one way to look at it is other groups think the pro-life movement does amazing work and are only longing for us to help them, too.
Um, I don’t think that’s it.
Feathers flew in the blogosphere after Phil shared with my radio audience his biblical belief that God wants a man and woman to keep sex within the confines of marriage. Not exactly groundbreaking news that a Christian would uphold what the Bible teaches about sexual immorality – but more than enough to stir outrage and distortions from the Left.
Predictably, Phil‘s critics pounced on his comments about what the Bible says on the consequences of sin. “God says, ‘One woman, one man,’ and everyone says, ‘Oh, that’s old hat, that’s that old Bible stuff,'” Phil told Washington Watch listeners. “I’m thinking, let’s see now; a clean guy – a disease-free guy and a disease-free woman – they marry and they keep their sex between the two of them. They’re not going to get Chlamydia, and gonorrhea, and syphilis, and AIDS. It’s safe. Now to me, either it’s the wildest coincidence ever that horrible diseases follow immoral conduct, or, it’s God saying, ‘There’s a penalty for that kind of conduct.’ I’m leaning towards there’s a penalty toward it.”
Phil is right and the social science confirms that God’s plan is the best. God is not a cosmic kill joy. God shows us through his Word the way to enjoy life. But Phil didn’t always have it right. He lived a life of sin for 28 years before his life dramatically changed after he came to know Christ. “I have run with the wicked for 28 years and run with the Godly for 40 years. The contrast is astounding.”
~ Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, speaking about a September 9 interview he conducted with Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, as quoted by FRC’s Washington Update
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN
Of the 95 sites where memorial services will be held, 42 are actual gravesites of aborted children whose bodies were recovered from dumpsters and other improper resting places by pro-life activists.
You can find the location of a memorial service near you by visiting the list of sites.
The pro-abortion activity and public confession of her abortion also serve as a powerful outlet for the complicated grief, guilt and anger that needs to be continually repressed… but struggles to find expression. Anti-abortion activists and public political activity that highlights our nation’s contentious struggle with this issue, become a convenient target for anger and rage at one’s spouse, self, God and others involved in the abortion decision.
Perhaps we can revisit the abortion filibuster of June 2013 and see in this very public action on behalf of abortion rights as being closely connected to her incomplete abortion healing. At great personal sacrifice she labors for hours on end, without food and water… to fight what she sees as draconian abortion restrictions. I would suggest that what was driving this display may be closely related to the abortion disrupting her body’s ability to go through the natural labor process… which she displaces onto a dramatic, lengthy and painful filibuster process.
Close was impregnated via IVF, with no biological connection to the twins she delivered. She thought she was going to raise them with the sperm donor, Marvin McMurrey, in a platonic relationship, but the couple ended up in court when he said he wanted sole custody to raise the children with his gay lover.
What started with this historic ruling will be resolved this November when the people will vote on a constitutional amendment that would allow the General Assembly to once again place regulations around abortion. This battle is gaining national attention.
As the father of a girl who was aborted against my will - and her mother’s will - one of millions of abortion’s unmentioned victims, I say: “No way.” I demand that my fellow Catholics who claim to be pro-life stop trivializing the legal execution of my preborn daughter by equating it with far-flung political issues that well-meaning people are free to argue about.
There are many answers to addressing the plague of poverty, many of which don’t even involve the government. There is one answer to legalized mass murder, and it does involve the government. Just as civil rights could only be enforced by government action, so abortion can only be stopped when doctors who try to perform them end up in chain gangs. Anyone who tells you different really doesn’t care about ending abortion. And it’s time that we called them out on it.
However, many feminists and anti-rape activists have raised some very valid criticisms of the nail polish, its implications, and the kind of attention it’s getting. While the nail polish may indeed prevent some women from getting raped (and obviously, every rape avoided is a Good Thing), examining this invention in the context of rape culture still raises important concerns.
For example, every precaution that places the onus on women to employ an ever-growing anti-rape checklist raises the possibility of victim-blaming: should this product become widespread, whenever a woman is drugged and raped there will invariably be voices saying, “This could have been avoided if only she was wearing her anti-roofie nail polish. How irresponsible.”
What does this have to do with abortion, you ask? You may be surprised to find that there are many parallels between the criticisms feminists levy against this nail polish and the criticisms pro-life feminists raise about the prevalence of abortion.
by Hans Johnson
Pro-life protesters had an unsettling interchange with a couple going into an Aurora, Illinois, abortion clinic.
A man cordiallly approached them, saying he and his significant other were there for an abortion because they already had a child and couldn’t afford another. Asked if he didn’t know he was having his child killed, he readily said “Yes.” When the questioner offered to take the child, he smiled and refused. “We’re not gonna give it away,” said the woman.
Which propted the man to say: “I’ll make a deal with you, man. You give me $50,000, I’ll keep this baby.”
[youtube]http://youtu.be/P8Ekfhndrxc[/youtube]
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
(HT: Saynsumthn)
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
Compare this recent editorial to a Huffington Post piece written by Richards in 2013 where the FDA’s decision to make emergency contraception available over the counter for women of all ages (including teen girls) was described as “wonderful news” and meant that there would be “no barriers, no shame.”
Knights, 23, said in her lawsuit against the clinic and Dr. Raymond Robinson that she sought an abortion in February 2012 because she has a genetic disorder in which she has a double uterus with individual cervices. The condition put her at risk of death if she delivered a child, she said.
Despite undergoing the abortion procedure, she discovered a short time later during an emergency room visit that she was still pregnant. Seven months later, she safely delivered a 6-pound baby girl, her second child.
At some point in the almost two weeks of second and third and fourth opinions and tortured decision making, I could feel her little body tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her, and I knew then what we needed to do. She was suffering …”
An unborn child in the second trimester was suffering physical pain?
That’s a strange assertion coming from Davis who claimed just the opposite when she famously filibustered against the pro-life law in Texas.
At about the 13 minute mark of the video below, Davis begin discussing a paper in which the authors claim fetal pain probably isn’t possible until the third trimester:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/r6zTavYx7mk[/youtube]
She continues in this video:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/0aX0rhN-epk[/youtube]
So Davis’ position is that Texas shouldn’t ban late second trimester abortions based on unborn children feeling pain because they don’t feel pain but I had a late second trimester abortion because my unborn child felt pain and I didn’t want her to suffer any more.
by Carder
The Archbishop of New York says that the issue of pro-abortion Catholic politicians committing sacrilege, not to mention the sacrilege being participated in by those giving them Holy Communion, is “in the past.” That’s such an arrogant statement it takes your breath away.
First of all, it is a direct contradiction of Canon Law—number 915, to be specific.
Secondly, it absolutely deflates many pro-life Catholics’ efforts – takes the winds right out of their sails – by suggesting in a rather in-your-face kind of way, “We’ve moved on. Get over it.”
For all those pro-lifers praying in front of abortion chambers across the country, you are correct if you are feeling like you have been abandoned at the barricades—you have. It’s also interesting that he brands the issue as “inflammatory.” Why do you think it’s inflammatory in the first place? Because it involves sacrilege, the defilement of the Body and Blood of Our Blessed Lord.
~ Catholic apologist Michael Voris, deconstructing Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s interview with the Boston Globe regarding the controversy surrounding pro-abortion politicians claiming to be Catholic and receiving Holy Communion, Church Militant.TV, September 11
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.
