There were a couple of lively debates on the abortion issue yesterday following House Republicans cowardly caving on a ban on aborting babies in the third trimester (a ban supported by wide majorities in the USA* and consistent with the laws of every country in the world except for Communist China and North Korea.)

Supporting the destruction of inconvenient human life is one of the few occasions when leftists are unafraid of being openly racist, as these supporters at AOSHQ cited the “abort babies because they will end up on welfare and in prison” argument.

Millions of unwanted kids will cost me money via welfare, incarceration in prisons, etc.
Posted by: Mr. Moo Moo at January 22, 2015 12:51 PM (0LHZx)

It would be racist for liberals to states that living blacks are disproportionate users of the country’s welfare and prison systems, but it is perfectly fine to say the same thing of unborn black babies (“populations we don’t want to have too many of” to quote left-wing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg). It also seems like a fallacious argument when you consider how both welfare spending and the prison population have skyrocketed since Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court could have saved the country forty years of division and acrimony by ruling that abortion was none of the Federal Government’s business, instead of going through bizarre contortions to create the ‘right’ to an abortion. If Roe v Wade had been decided in that Constitutionally correct manner, the states could set their own laws according their own prerogatives. New York could have 100,000 Kermit Gosnells offering abortion right up to when the labor pains started, and maybe even beyond that as some liberal ‘ethicists’ have suggested that even successfully escaping the birth canal should be no bar to ending the life of an inconvenient child. Meanwhile, Utah might only allow abortion in the case of rape or to protect the life of the mother.  And people could choose to live in whatever state suited their personal conviction on the subject.

All of the social strife and division in the United States today is the result of left-wing social progressives using Government to force their morals (or lack thereof) and values on society as a whole.

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A woman in Australia aborted an otherwise health baby at 7 months, because the baby’s left hand was deformed.

The mother said she believed she would feel guilty for allowing a baby to live with a disability. “I grew up with many people who were disabled, and… there was discrimination,” the mother told The Brisbane Times. “I didn’t want my child to be discriminated against.

Yup, the pro-abortion left believes disabled people just plain don’t deserve to live.

And note she does the projection thing leftists often do to absolve themselves of prejudice. “It’s not that I, personally, find deformities disgusting; but other people do, and so I had to kill her to protect her from other people’s prejudice.” It’s a bit like that lesbian couple in Ohio who found themselves with a half-black child and claimed that other people’s discriminatory attitudes were the problem.

The really sad part, this isn’t even the worst excuse for an abortion I ever heard.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg laments that Margaret Sanger’s vision of world free of poor, brown children remains unfulfilled.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spouts in a new interview.

“It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people,” Ginsburg says.

Previously, Justice Ginsburg … who worked in a majority black city (Baltimore) and never once hired a black person to work in her legal practice… had this to say about the role of abortion in keeping brown people in their place.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

I imagine her after that coughing into her hand while muttering “Blacks.”

All of which takes us back to the mother of the philosophy of “Birth control for populations we don’t want too many of,” Margaret Sanger (who is revered to this day by Planned Parenthood and the Democrat Party).

We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Planned Parenthood should rightfully be under fire for sending a thirteen year old girl back into the arms of the man who was raping her, instead of, I don’t know, informing the constabulary or something. Since Planned Parenthood can pretty much do whatever they damn well please, they’ve decided part of their job is teaching the ins and outs of rough sex to underage girls.

A second shock video has busted the Planned Parenthood abortion business, where its staffers are teaching teenagers about S&M-based sexual relationships and concepts such as gagging, whipping and asphyxiation.

In a series of undercover audits, Live Action investigators documented Planned Parenthood counselors and nurses advising our investigators, who the Planned Parenthood staffers thought were minors, on how to practice torture sex.

This reminds me of when the current White House Safe Schools Czar was holding seminars to teach middle school boys about fisting.

Planned Parenthood’s annual taxpayer subsidy is over $500,000,000.00

And she’s as smart as she is pretty. Seriously, one word from Rush Limbaugh, and I think we’re looking at the new Sandy Fluke. (Severe Language Warning: Because you know how leftists are when they try to reason with an opponent.)

I mean, seriously, all Rush has to say is “This is the last woman on Earth who needs to worry about birth control” and Bam! Keynote speaker at the Democrat Convention.  And maybe even a candidate for Governor of Texas Ohio.

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The Genderqueers want a piece of the pro-abortion action.

My name is Beck Martens, I’m genderqueer, and I’m directly impacted by attacks on reproductive rights. But the language of the pro-choice movement doesn’t recognize me. That’s why I and activist friends Alice, a cis-woman and Calliope, a trans-woman, are asking NARAL and Planned Parenthood to commit to trans* inclusivity in all future campaigns.

Do Transgenderoids really have a dog in the abortion fight? No, but there probably aren’t enough of them to bully non-supporters on the scale that they would like. So, they have to build coalition with more established bullies.

Scenario: A woman finds herself pregnant and wishes to bear the child. The sperm donor does not want to deal with the responsibilities of parenthood, and so secretly slips the woman abortion drugs in her water. Woman miscarries.

According to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, it is perfectly fine for a man to force or trick a woman into taking abortion drugs. And if you think otherwise, you’re an extremist and a foot soldier in the War on Womenfolk. Republicans in Florida are trying to pass a law making it illegal for a man to force a woman to have an abortion against her will; DWS has branded the bill “senseless and wrong,” and, of course, “extreme.”  (Because everything Republicans want to do is called “extreme,” it’s like the entire Democrat smear program was ripped off from a 90′s-Era Mountain Dew commercial.)

Florida Republicans including Gov. Rick Scott are taking constrictions on women’s health to a new level. The state legislature recently passed two new restrictions that will interfere with a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions with her doctor, and instead inserts the GOP’s extreme agenda

Democrats really aren’t pro-choice, they’re pro-abortion, as the example above demonstrates.

Not that she was seeking attention or anything, but she is giving interviews.

“Like, no one can tell me how to feel about my abortion. I felt how I felt, and that was not influenced by anyone else except for how I grew up, how I you know went to college, how I live my day, how like I ate a salad for breakfast. How I, like – it’s me. Like, this is me,” she said, throwing her hands about and cocking her head from side to side.

She continued, “Like, I breathe. I sneeze. I fart. I poop. I’m a human being. You know, that’s all that I am. And so like, I’m sharing my story.”

I feel like the atmospheric pressure drops whenever Emily Letts walks into a room.

A woman in Britain is having an abortion so she can improve her chances of being on a reality show.

Wannabe celebrity Josie Cunningham last night confessed the chance of appearing on TV’s Big Brother was worth more than her unborn child’s life.

Puffing on a cigarette and rubbing her baby bump, the controversial model and call girl – who will have her abortion at a clinic this week – said: “I’m finally on the verge of becoming famous and I’m not going to ruin it now.

“An abortion will further my career. This time next year I won’t have a baby. Instead, I’ll be famous, driving a bright pink Range Rover and buying a big house. Nothing will get in my way.”

I guess she’s just taking Obama’s advice and not letting herself be “punished with a baby.”

By the way, the IndieGoGo campaign to raise money to make movie about abortionist Kermit Gosnell has raised over a million dollars after the campaign was booted from Kickstarter.

In a follow-up to the incident in which a University of California Feminist Professor assaulted a teenage girl who was advocating an anti-abortion position in the university’s “Free Speech Zone,” the University has issued a fauxpology.

In a long-winded 1,000-word letter that reads more like a diatribe than a mea culpa, University of California at Santa Barbara Vice Chancellor Michael Young eventually conceded that women’s studies professor Mireille Miller-Young should not have snatched a pro-life sign from 16-year-old Thrin Short, giving backhanded praise to the framers of the Constitution.

“Our Founding Fathers – all white men of privilege, some even slave owners – got it right when designing the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Young wrote in an open memo to the student body.

The price of freedom of speech, Young was enlightened enough to acknowledge, is that students, staff and faculty must tolerate “outside groups and individuals coming here to promote an ideology, to promulgate particular beliefs (at times extreme beliefs), or simply to create discord that furthers a certain personal agenda.””Some passionately believe in their causes, while others peddle hate and intolerance with less-than-noble aims,” Young added, mentioning “evangelical types.”

Translation: “We’re sorry we violated the free speech rights of you racist, bigoted, stupid, invisible-magical-sky-god-worshipping hatemongers; rights that were granted to you by dirty, rotten white slaveowners.”

It is reminiscent of the apology Mel Gibson gave after making anti-semitic comments.

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After V’s posts on the progressive, feminist lesbian who stands with the religion that actually oppresses women, and the transsexual who feels that her sex change operation should get her off the hook for murder, I thought I’d throw in a couple more examples.

1) In Michigan, a teachers’ union contract openly discriminates against men, whites, and Christians. From the Ferndale school district’s clause about promotions:

Special consideration shall be given to women and/or minority defined as: Native American, Asian American, Latino, African American and those of the non-Christian faith.

I could note the poor construction, and the apparent ignorance of the fact that many Latinos are part of what progressives would call “white privilege”. But what’s far more disturbing is that teachers – or, a school district – could be so disrespectful of basic American legal, civic and moral principles.

2) There’s more on that bossy left-wing professor who assaulted a pro-life, 16 year old girl last week in Santa Barbara. From the police report:

In essence, Miller-Young told me that she felt “triggered” by the images on the posters…

Miller-Young said that she and others began demanding that the images be taken down. Miller-Young said that the demonstrators refused. At which point, Miller-Young said that she “just grabbed it [the sign] from this girl’s hands.” Asked if there had been a struggle, Miller-Young stated, “I’m stronger so I was able to take the poster.”…

Miller-Young went on to say that because the poster was upsetting…she felt that the [pro-life] activists did not have the right to be there…

I told Miller-Young that I appreciated the fact that she felt traumatized by the [pro-life] imagery but that her response constituted a violation of law…

Miller-Young replied that [the pro-lifers] coming to campus and showing “graphic imagery” [in common areas] was insensitive to the community…

Miller-Young also suggested that the group had violated her rights. I asked Miller-Young what right the group had violated. Miller-Young responded, “My personal right to go to work and not be in harm.”

Miller-Young elaborated that one of the reasons she had felt so alarmed by this imagery is because she is about to have the test for Down Syndrome. Miller-Young said. “I work here, why do they get to intervene in that?”

I explained to Miller-Young that vandalism, battery and robbery had occurred…

Get it? Mireille Miller-Young wants to get off the hook for alleged acts of vandalism, battery and robbery because *her feelers were hurt*.

Miller-Young could potentially have a Down Syndrome baby that she might then want to abort, and how dare anyone take (or publicize) any stance that might make her feel guilt over that? Telling Miller-Young your truth (remember when lefties used to love the idea of everyone ‘telling their truth’?) is now “harm” to her that justifies her use of physical violence.

This looks to me like a classic case of a woman who might have a personality disorder, seeking to control/abuse other people. God bless the sane policeman!

Now for some better items. The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld self-protection rights for residents of public housing. And they were unanimous. Remember, the criminal residents already had guns, so this ruling is a help to the law-abiding residents.

And in California, three Asian-American State senators thankfully blocked an effort to bring back racial discrimination in college admissions, after California voters had rejected it in 1996.

Despite the social left’s repeated claims that “it’s unfair to call us pro-abortion; we aren’t in favor of the act of abortion, per se, but we support the idea that woman should have that choice, under any and all circumstances.”

A couple of items that tend to run contrary to that narrative. First, Alpha Feminist Amada Marcotte expresses her complete and utter contempt for babies and the women who choose to have them.

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding. No matter how much free day care you throw at women, babies are still time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness.”

On the topic of adoption, Marcotte sums up her feelings simply: “Adoption? Fuck you, seriously.” That’s a heck of an argument.

On the Progressive Left, motherhood and family are disdained; promiscuity, pr0n, and abortion are the emblems of female empowerment.

Second, a pro-abortion group in Washington DC is giving away coat-hanger pendants, so that people who donate $10 or more to… in the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, help keep down populations of people we don’t want too many of (i.e. minorities)… can show how proudly they support baby extermination procedures.

These just don’t seem consistent with the narrative of abortion being a tragic, deeply personal choice.

Update: A pro-abortion instructor at a California University is facing charges of assault and vandalism for attacking pro-life demonstrators at the university.

A couple of items. In Santa Babara, CA a bossy pro-abortion professor of ‘Feminist Studies’ is accused of assaulting a 16 year old pro-life girl.

A department of feminist studies professor [at University of California Santa Barbara] has been accused of going berserk after coming across a campus prolife demonstration that used extremely graphic displays, leading a small mob of students to chant “tear down the sign” before grabbing one of the signs, storming off with it, then allegedly engaging in an altercation with a 16-year-old prolife protestor who had followed the educator to retrieve it.

Much of the scuffle was recorded on a smartphone by the 16-year-old, Thrin Short. The yet-to-be-released video is now in the custody of Santa Barbara law enforcement officials, who are investigating the March 4 incident.

The professor at the heart of the controversy is Mireille Miller-Young, an associate professor whose area of emphasis is black cultural studies, pornography and sex work, according to her faculty webpage.

Consider the following:

• This May, a Florida man was indicted on federal first-degree murder charges, because he aborted his girlfriend’s fetus (giving her an abortion drug without her knowledge). News articles state that she was six weeks pregnant (well under such legal abortion limits as 20 or 24 weeks).
• Also in May, the 300+ charges on rapist-kidnapper Ariel Castro included one charge of aggravated murder, because his assaults on his female victims had terminated a pregnancy.
• In 2004, a CA man was charged with murder after his pregnant girlfriend’s fetus died, due to his assaults on her.

In each example, the men certainly deserve charges/punishment for other reasons; namely, for crimes of fraud, assault, kidnapping or rape.

But murder? In each case, the murder charge arose from the man having aborted his fetus (that is, the fetus created from his genes). Is that just? In each example, if the woman had aborted her fetus, she would not be charged with murder.

Why is it a crime of homicide when the father terminates the fetus, but not when the mother does? Why should the same action (killing the fetus) be a crime, or not, depending on who (which parent) did it?

If the variant were race – If we claimed, for example, that the killing of a black person is somehow not murder, when “who did it” happens to be a white person – then Bob Dylan would write protest songs about the inequality…and rightly so.

Please note, I am not expressing a stand on the above questions. I am asking them, inspired by Bruce’s re-tweet from Matthew H, “…men do not have the same rights as women. We can’t kill & call it ‘health choices’.” The tweet is correct. And why should that situation be? Has the pro-choice movement created a ‘female privilege’, a dangerous new form of legal inequality?

The House recently passed a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks.

Via HotAir and The Weekly Standard, CNS News asked one of the bill’s opponents, Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado:

“Many Democrats, when they were arguing for gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting said even if this saves one life it will be worth doing. Why not support this bill then, if it undoubtedly will save lives of babies that have been carried throughout 5 months of pregnancy?”

Some have characterized DeGette’s answer to CNS as evasive, and I can’t agree that it was. In answer, DeGette stated her belief that the bill is unconstitutional and that the Kermit Gosnells of the world can be handled under criminal law. Ironically, that is the perfect answer to give against gun control (and many other Big Government overreaches).

Having said that: Just because DeGette gave a direct answer doesn’t mean she gave a good one regarding this bill – or that it isn’t a good question, one needing an answer. The Democrats’ “Even if it saves one life!” narrative in favor of gun control cannot be squared with their support for late-term abortion.

All via HotAir.

• IRS told pro-life groups that they should stop peacably demonstrating. Where is the ACLU on this? You know: freedom of assembly, something the ACLU proudly defended in Skokie? Are pro-lifers really lower (in the ACLU’s eyes) than actual KKK-hooded neo-Nazis?
• The “Benghazi e-mails were doctored!” canard, refuted.
• Senior White House Advisor Dan Pfeiffer, discussing the IRS and Benghazi scandals this morning, apparently did Obama no good with his over-use of the word “irrelevant”.

UPDATE: There seems to be controversy over Pfeiffer’s remark on the IRS scandal, “The law is irrelevant.” Here is his full quote, for context:

“I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again.”

Superficially, Pfeiffer said: The IRS activity was outrageous, regardless of whether it was illegal. Which sounds like taking the high road.

But Washington-speak is notoriously indirect. Pfeiffer may have been saying: The administration/DOJ is giving NO focus to the question of legality, as we intend to have no prosecutions.

To make my view clear: On current information, there should be prosecutions. If the Obama administration won’t send malefactors to court, then the Obama administration isn’t serious about repairing the scandal’s profound moral damage. As Gabe at Ace points out, “…the most obvious of crimes related to the IRS scandal [is] the public release of confidential information, something punishable by up to a year’s jail time.”

UPDATE: Per ABC, Pfeiffer later tweeted “Before folks quoting me out of context get too far ahead of themselves, of course the law matters, IRS conduct is wrong even if legal.”

Again, note Pfeiffer’s posture. While expressing outrage over what the IRS did, he carefully plants the suggestion that it might have been legal – which would mean that no prosecutions are needed. Sorry Mr. Pfeiffer, I don’t think so.

Only days ago, Obama gave a speech in which, rather than warn us against tyranny, he warned us against the people who go around warning us against tyranny.

The IRS revelations only get worse: From the Washington Examiner yesterday (via Ed Morrissey this morning), we learn that the IRS demanded of a pro-life group – under “perjury of the law”, the IRS staffer’s words – that it not engage in legal Planned Parenthood picketing. And required another pro-life group to furnish detailed plans on its constitutionally-protected speech activities.[1]

This is the same IRS that Obama has been beefing up to enforce Obamacare by demanding ever-greater private information of citizens.

The AP snooping scandal speaks for itself. Now from the GP comments, V the K reminds us of something Obama said in 2008:

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Video here.[2]

In these disparate data points, I see a pattern: Obama wants to be a tyrant – while pretending not to. My question is, do liberals really not see the pattern?

I know that some liberals have begun seeing it – and will, for example, condemn the IRS actions – but others don’t. The other day, I noted Julian Bond saying that he thinks conservative groups deserve the IRS harassment. The execrable Bill Maher has joined the fun there.

Obama maintains his democratic pretense by periodically declaring the goodness of his intentions. For example: yes, the other day he called the IRS actions “inexcusable”.

But a troubled President Nixon, as well as actual tyrants like Chavez and worse, also frequently declared their own goodness. So many of Obama’s other words, policies, and actions of his underlings point in a direction opposite to his self-declared goodness. Do liberals really not see? Or are they part of the pretense; de facto pro-tyranny?

—————-
[1] (I don’t know the ins and outs of these tax-exemption laws, but I thought that as long as a group would refrain from electioneering for parties/candidates, it would get a pass.)
[2] Students of history will note that the Fascists also believed in having powerful civilian, national security forces, and will be troubled by the weird applause that Obama’s liberal audience gave him for proposing it.

You’ve heard the news, now here’s the comment thread on your favorite gay conservative blog. Kermit Gosnell is guilty of three counts of murder re: the babies, and one count of involuntary manslaughter re: his grownup patient who died in a late-term abortion.

With outstanding cluelessness, Planned Parenthood tweeted “The jury has rightly convicted #Gosnell for his appalling crimes, ensuring no woman is victimized by him ever again.” Clueless, because – even apart from the fact that a Gosnell acquittal probably would have made PP breathe a sigh of relief – they made no mention of Gosnell’s main victims (the murdered babies).

NARAL’s statement started in a similar vein to PP, then topped PP by suggesting that conservatives are the real villains:

Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell today…Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.

Lefties!

FROM THE COMMENTS: Noting another deception in the NARAL quote, V the K says “Gosnell was not a ‘back alley butcher,’ he operated precisely the kind of ‘safe and legal’ abortion mill PP and NARAL champion; state licensed, he advertised in the yellow pages and accepted all major credit cards.”

This will be a rambling non-post, inviting your input (even) more than usual.

First, here’s my general position on abortion. Having long believed that both total permissiveness on abortion and a total prohibition of it will lead to some horribly unjust outcomes, and that a line must be drawn somewhere even though the line will be permeable and arbitrary: I would ban late-term abortions – let’s say, I don’t think second-semester abortions should be allowed – while permitting early-term abortions – let’s say, I’d allow first-semester. (Again, I know the “semester” line is unclear and highly debatable; I simply believe that the other lines that people propose are worse.) Also, I favor counseling about the alternatives, and parental notification where the mother is a minor. Finally, I oppose publicly-funded abortions, i.e., I am against our government forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions against their conscience.

Having arrived at the above positions some time ago, I spend little time on the issue of abortion. It’s just not a top one for my interest.

But abortion may interest many of you. This is, after all, a gay conservative blog (and, as a non-conservative on certain issues, I am a guest).

So, what’s up with the Gosnell trial? It’s big right now, in Bruce’s Twitter stream. In my slower-moving way, I gather that:

1. Gosnell did some particularly shocking, immoral late-term abortions; and that
2. The media silence about the trial is shocking and repugnant in itself.

Is that the gist? Or is there more (or less) to it? Re: the media blackout – Is it a conspiracy perhaps, or just the media’s usual left-wing Herd Instinct? Has the trial been getting, say, foreign coverage?

People who have been following the trial, please feel free to inform me (and everybody) in the comments, and to express your informed opinion. I feel that, certainly on a conservative blog, this topic should get some daylight as a comment thread.

UPDATE: Wouldn’t you know, today Yahoo! is rotating a column on the Gosnell trial through its headlines, on and off. I don’t know if that means the wall of silence is cracking, or only that Yahoo! had me profiled as conservative-leaning.

UPDATE: The wall of silence is cracking. Ace has examples of Jake Tapper and Andersen Cooper both teasing some coverage to come. Naturally, and as Ace puts it, Cooper’s “entree into the story is through the prism of ‘not enough government regulation.’” Better than nothing!

I had the honor and privilege to be a part of this year’s March for Life today in Washington, DC.  GOProud organized a group and we were welcomed warmly, despite the frigid temperatures.

Despite the touch of Global Warming, the March was quite personally fulfilling to me.  I’m the one in the back, holding the sign, by the way.

Sometimes life has moments that you aren’t expecting and today was one of them.  Please note Michael, the man in front of me in the yellow coat.  He sought out GOProud today because, “I had to be here today.”  I spent a lot of time listening to Michael today and I hope that my listening was as helpful to him as his story was to me.

Michael spent the last two years in prison and now he’s trying to make things right.  He is gay and pro-life.  He ostensibly served his time because of  his principles.  Let me explain…

Michael’s sister was pregnant and her boyfriend gave her the funds to abort the baby.  His sister refused and instead used the money to buy clothes.  The boyfriend was so enraged that the baby hadn’t been aborted, that he threw Michael’s sister down the stairs, inducing a miscarriage. Michael stabbed the boyfriend in an attempt to help his sister.

I’m not in a position to judge Michael, that’s God’s role.  And I wasn’t told if the stabbing resulted in serious injury or death of the boyfriend.  But there is something admirable about a gay guy taking matters in his own hands to protect his sister from a violent attack.

Michael now makes the money he needs to live in a cheap residence by shining shoes.  After the March was over, Michael — with quite a lot of embarrassment — asked me if he could shine my shoes.  I told him that I appreciated the offer, but that I would give him the money he needed to stay in a warm home without the shoe shine.   He began to cry and we hugged each other.

Life is funny.  Which is why all life is precious.  And why the government should be protecting all rights of self-protection, not trying to restrict them or incentivize death.

[RELATED: Hundreds of Thousands Gather for Record-Breaking March for Life]

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)