And then, totally by accident, Republicans stumbled onto the Democrats' Achilles heel. Among their specific defunding proposals, Republicans had suggested taking mere peanuts away from Planned Parenthood. The Democrats responded: NO! WE'LL CUT 40 BILLION! JUST DON'T TOUCH PLANNED PARENTHOOD!
[...]
If Republicans keep threatening to defund Planned Parenthood, they can probably get Democrats to repeal Obamacare, pass a flat tax and get a capital sentence for Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
The trouble with unprincipled incrementalism and allowing for exceptions
Rebecca Kiessling
This is my response to Scott Klusendorf’s blog on the subject:
Hello Scott, thank you for bringing up these very important issues. Many in the pro-life movement will insist that we remain silent on things that matter to us in order to have “unity.” But the reality is that there is not unity within the pro-life movement on every issue and on strategy. We may say we want unity, but really, we’d like everyone else to either agree with us, or keep it to themselves. I think it’s beneficial for all to have logical discussions on issues involving strategy, and hopefully through these discussions we’ll at least gain more understanding.
I’m very thankful to have this opportunity to address the efficacy and import of what you refer to as “the incremental approach” to legislating abortion. I’ve written a piece which is the #1 ranked philosophical abortion essay on Google, and I’m well-able to articulate logical arguments on the subject, but for me, this is far more than merely a philosophical exercise. You see, I was conceived in rape and nearly aborted at two back-alley abortionists. But the dangerous conditions and the fact that it was illegal caused my birthmother to back out. She did not choose life for me. She chose abortion. Pro-life advocates and pro-life legislators chose life for me by making sure abortion was illegal in Michigan back then, even in cases of rape – 100% pro-life, no exceptions, no compromise, no incrementalism. They are my heroes and I owe my life to them! This is why I, in turn, do the same for others. I wasn’t lucky – I was protected. And so, it is with this sense of gratitude, purpose and urgency that I address these issues here.
I often hear the “burning building” and “sinking ship” analogies when speaking of allowing for exceptions – that you should try to save as many as you can. I believe that these analogies fail for several reasons. First of all, with the sinking ship, you are making a judgment call as to whom you should save – who is worthy of being saved first. This judgment call speaks volumes as to what values a society or organization holds dear. The saying, “women and children first” became a protocol used in marine disasters after it was established with the sinking of HMS Birkenhead in 1845, later employed in the sinking of the Titanic when 74% of the women on board were saved and 52% of the children, but only 20% of the men. By contrast, when the French ship SS La Bourgogne sank in 1898 killing 546 people, of the 165 survivors, 104 were crew members, 61 passengers, and only one woman. This was a product of the French Revolution and considered to be shameful to the entire French merchant marine. When we choose who we will save, it speaks volumes about what we really believe and who we are. Allowing for the rape exception says that children conceived in rape are disposable. It’s like putting us out there as infantry soldiers on the front lines, and then taking a huge step back, because you think that this current battle needs to be won and you perceive it’s the only way to achieve victory. But we are not column fodder!
Secondly, with the “burning building” analogy, the assumption would be that you would make efforts to go back and save the rest, right? In your blog, you state: “We are choosing to save as many as we can while we work to save all.” Well Scott, I would love to see the statistics as to how many times anyone has gone back to save the 1% after the 99% were already safe. How much are these incrementalists truly “working to save all?” I just don’t see this happening. Instead, all I’ve witnessed is that once the 99% are “safe”, the firehoses are being shut off, the fire engines are sent home, and unprincipled incrementalists are allowing the building to be burnt to the ground because, after all, those stuck inside are “only 1%.” Why bother wasting all of that water, manpower and other resources for only 1%?
The Hyde Amendment is a glaring example of this. A generation ago, the Hyde Amendment allowed for taxpayer funding of abortions in cases of rape. And instead of the pro-life calvary returning to save the 1% who’d been left behind, we had the celebration of the proposed Stupak Amendment a generation later as being a pro-life victory. In fact, NRLC originally sent out a press release saying that the Stupak Amendment wouldn’t provide for the funding of any abortions, which of course was not true because the rape exception was in there. When this fact was exposed, then NRLC and others dismissed it by saying that it “merely” incorporates the terms of the Hyde Amendment, and again, “it’s only 1%.” And so, mediocrity begets mediocrity. For me, this is so much worse than pro-choicers who would say to me “I think your mother should have been able to abort you / if I have my way, you’d be dead right now.” No, it’s much worse because it’s saying, “And our tax dollars should have paid for it!” Ouch! And that’s pro-life??? When you’re the 1%, you feel it, you get it, and it’s not a strategic game plan – it’s the lives and deaths of those similarly-situated. They are not a nameless-faceless irrelevant 1%.
Next, these analogies fail because the assumption is that 99% of the others’ lives have been saved by this unprincipled incremental approach, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. What I’ve observed is a mediocre attempt to save the lives of the 99%, but in reality, very few have been saved by these measures, and they have not brought us any closer to ending legalized abortion – especially now with chemical abortions so readily available. Instead, many pro-lifers have become satiated with these so-called victories. When you’re satisfied with baby steps, why bother exhausting yourself with a giant leap? But after 40 years, you haven’t even made it across the room!
Fourth, these analogies and unprincipled incrementalism are based on the faulty assumption that you can’t save them all, and that simply isn’t the case. Scott, on your blog, you mentioned “abortion-control legislation aimed at limiting evil insofar as possible given current legal restraints” and “given current political realities.” Oh really? And what are those current political realities? Is it some supernatural phenomenon which is truly out of our sphere of influence or control? Of course not! The current political realities are lawmakers who have been re-elected because they’ve repeatedly received the exclusive endorsement of major pro-life organizations’ PACs in recurring election cycles, despite the fact that those lawmakers have not voted 100% pro-life. These lawmakers do not make the rape exception in a political vacuum. They make the rape exception because they are able to make the rape exception and get away with it. Too many pro-life organizations are not holding them accountable because they are allowing for it as well. Accepting rape exceptions = allowing for rape exceptions = supporting rape exceptions = making rape exceptions. The outcome is all the same, and what you support and applaud as a victory speaks volumes as to what your true values are. We will always have lawmakers who will insist on the rape exception as long as we have major pro-life organizations which tolerate, and thus, condone it. Instead of trying to push legislation through as quickly as possible, those who are 100% pro-life should hold out, as the Democrats did when they got what they wanted with the national health care legislation. They kept working their fellow lawmakers until they had them convinced and had the votes to win.
I just recently testified before a state house committee on a pro-life piece of legislation which had no exceptions. The sponsor of the bill was hoping for a 12 – 8 vote before the hearing began, but in the end, it passed with a 15 – 5 vote. Many legislators who make the exception have never really been challenged on this issue and have never put a face to it. I find that it’s rather easy to change the minds of those who make the rape exception – challenge them, hold them accountable, and put a face, a voice, a story to the issue. Even if it’s anecdotal, it’s still okay Scott. My observation is that many people like to keep this discussion in the philosophical realm so that the can play “let’s make pretend we’re not talking about real people,” so that you don’t have the opportunity to penetrate the stone wall they’ve built around their hearts with a personal story. But I’ve found that there’s nothing which pierces the heart like a personal story.
As a strategic means of ending abortion, unprincipled incrementalism has been a complete failure and got us the ruling in Roe v Wade. The majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v Wade, Sec. IX, states, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.” However, the Court noted the following in footnote 54: “When Texas urges that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person, it faces a dilemma. Neither in Texas nor in any other State are all abortions prohibited. Despite broad proscription, an exception always exists. The exception contained [410 U.S. 113, 158] in Art. 1196, for an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother, is typical. But if the fetus is a person who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law, and if the mother’s condition is the sole determinant, does not the Texas exception appear to be out of line with the Amendment’s command?
“There are other inconsistencies between Fourteenth Amendment status and the typical abortion statute. It has already been pointed out, n. 49, supra, that in Texas the woman is not a principal or an accomplice with respect to an abortion upon her. If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice? Further, the penalty for criminal abortion specified by Art. 1195 is significantly less than the maximum penalty for murder prescribed by Art. 1257 of the Texas Penal Code. If the fetus is a person, may the penalties be different?”
And then the Court concluded, “In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.”
You see, the hard lesson from Roe v Wade is that when ALL aren’t protected, NONE are protected. But it’s a lesson of which some are either ignorant, have forgotten, neglected, or have yet to learn. We will never have an end to legalized abortion in the U.S. as long as unprincipled incrementalists have their way.Many of the incremental laws which merely regulate abortion are heralded as necessary protections for women. So then why the rape exceptions? Don’t rape victims deserve the same protection? Again, it just makes no sense to throw it in there. If you can’t stand up for the 1% in some of these small measures, how are you going to do it when it comes to actually ending legalized abortion? You’ve already established that we’re expendable.
For those who would like to put names, faces and stories to this issue, please visit these pages on my site, which include written stories and videos:
www.rebeccakiessling.com/Othersconceivedinrape.html
and
www.rebeccakiessling.com/PregnantByRape.html
And there are a multitude of others for whom we speak. Never forget that 1% of 54,000,000 = 540,000 people!
Scott, I would have to be suicidal to acquiesce to a rape exception. I love life! I love the opportunity to live which was afforded to me by others who recognized the value and dignity of children conceived in rape, and that we were worth fighting for. My birthmother is thankful too. In fact, she and her husband legally adopted me 4 months ago – 22 years from the day we met. When you can say that you are committed to holding out for 100% pro-life legislation, it’s like saying, “I get it. You all matter. Yours were lives worth defending.” Now I hope you’ll all proceed from here and do the same for others!
Rebecca Kiessling, Esq., Pro-Life Speaker/Activist
Abortion is not legal. It can never be. No matter what the Supreme Court has said, the fact is that the right to life is inalienable.
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At just nine weeks, you can already see his extremities and hear the heart beating at an incredible rate.
With that evidence, even the Roe Court could not disguise its unlawful ruling. As it wrote then: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.” (Emphasis added).
[...]
Abortion is as incompatible with our American ideals as slavery. Roe did not make abortion legal. It only delayed punishment for the perpetrators.
God stands above all; may He have mercy on us!
Let's give the "climate of hate" rhetoric a rest for a moment. It's time to talk about the climate of death, in which the abortion industry thrives unchecked. Dehumanizing rhetoric, rationalizing language and a callous disregard for life have numbed America to its monstrous consequences. Consider the Philadelphia Horror.
In the City of Brotherly Love, hundreds of babies were murdered by a scissors-wielding monster over four decades. Whistleblowers informed public officials at all levels of the wanton killings of innocent life. But a parade of government health bureaucrats and advocates protecting the abortion racket looked the other way -- until, that is, a Philadelphia grand jury finally exposed the infanticide factory run by abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D., and a crew of unlicensed, untrained butchers masquerading as noble providers of women's "choice." Prosecutors charged Gosnell and his death squad with multiple counts of murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abuse of corpse, theft and other offenses.
The 281-page grand jury report released Wednesday provides a bone-chilling account of how Gosnell's "Women's Medical Society" systematically preyed on poor, minority pregnant women and their live, viable babies. The report's introduction lays out the criminal enterprise that claimed the lives of untold numbers of babies -- and mothers:
"This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy -- and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels -- and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it."
Echoing the same kind of dark euphemisms plied by Planned Parenthood propagandists who refer to unborn life as "fetal and uterine material," Gosnell referred to his deadly trade as "ensuring fetal demise." Reminiscent of the word wizards who refer to the skull-crushing partial-birth abortion procedure as "intact dilation and evacuation" and "intrauterine cranial decompression," Gosnell described his destruction of babies' spinal cords as "snipping." He rationalized his macabre habit of cutting off dead babies' feet and saving them in rows and rows of specimen jars as "research." His guilt-ridden employees then took photos of some of the victims before dumping them in shoeboxes, paper bags, one-gallon spring-water bottles and glass jars.
They weren't the only ones who adopted a see-no-evil stance:
-- The Pennsylvania Department of Health knew of clinic violations dating back decades, but did nothing.
-- The Pennsylvania Department of State was "repeatedly confronted with evidence about Gosnell" -- including the clinic's unclean, unsterile conditions, unlicensed workers, unsupervised sedation, underage abortion patients and over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street -- "and repeatedly chose to do nothing."
-- Philadelphia Department of Public Health officials who regularly visited Gosnell's human waste-clogged offices did nothing.
-- Nearby hospital officials who treated some of the pregnant mothers who suffered grave complications from Gosnell's butchery did nothing.
-- An unnamed evaluator with the National Abortion Federation, the leading association of abortion providers that is supposed to uphold strict health and legal standards, determined that Gosnell's chamber of horrors was "the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected" -- but did nothing.
Meanwhile, the death racketeers have launched a legislative and regulatory assault across the country on pro-life crisis pregnancy centers from New York City to Baltimore, Austin and Seattle that offer abortion alternatives, counseling and family services to mostly poor, vulnerable minority women.
Already, left-wing journalists and activists have rushed to explain that these abortion atrocities ignored for four decades by abortion radicals and rationalizers are not really about abortion. A Time magazine writer argued that the Philadelphia Horror was "about poverty, not Roe v. Wade." A University of Minnesota professor declared: "This is not about abortion."
But the grand jury itself pointed out that loosened oversight of abortion clinics enacted under pro-choice former GOP Gov. Tom Ridge enabled Gosnell's criminal enterprise -- and led to the heartless execution of hundreds of babies. Mass murder got a pass in the name of expanding "access" and appeasing abortion lobbyists.
As the report made clear: "With the change of administration from (pro-life Democratic) Gov. Casey to Gov. Ridge," government health officials "concluded that inspections would be 'putting a barrier up to women' seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay."
Deadly indifference to protecting life isn't tangential to the abortion industry's existence -- it's at the core of it. The Philadelphia Horror is no anomaly. It's the logical, bloodcurdling consequence of an evil, eugenics-rooted enterprise wrapped in feminist clothing.
The truth is, the procedure Gosnell preferred is not new. Third term, especially "late term," abortions are performed the same way in overwhelming numbers.
Commonly referred to as "partial birth abortions" the procedure begins the same was as the "Gosnell abortion." Inducing labor and beginning the delivery of the child is where most of the children are lost in both procedures. As many as 75% of the children lose their lives in the process of early induced labor. Leaving roughly 25% of the children involved to have their lives terminated through an additional step.
In partial birth abortion, the child is delivered to within two inches of being free of the birth canal. In the "Gosnell" he delivered the child completely.
But from that point on, little difference between the procedures existed.
Scissors would be used to puncture the base of the skull and to snip the spinal cord. On some occasions then the brains would be crushed and suctioned.
In other words, while Gosnell was collecting jars of tiny feet, severed from the babies he ended the lives of, abortion practitioners from coast to coast were performing the eerily similar procedures. And 100% of them done with the backing of the National Organization for Women, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and a long list of U.S. Senators, including then Senator Barack Obama.
It was State Senator Obama just a few years previous who had also called for votes on three occasions, in a committee that he chaired, in meetings that he had called, in which the life of a born child was in equal jeopardy to the ones Gosnell delivered.
The issue was a debate over whether or not Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois (a hospital operated by the denomination of Obama's church) could continue a practice in which a woman's labor could be induced weeks ahead of delivery. Roughly 75% of the children would die in the process, leaving roughly 25% who survived.
Instead of snipping spinal cords, the hospital would leave the children in the now infamous "soiled utility closet" to perish from exposure and neglect. Sometimes these children would expire in 45 minutes. Many times the children would struggle for life for the full 8 hours of a nurse's shift. And on multiple occasions the children would live for nearly a day.
Jill Stanek, one of the pediatric nurses who worked in the department while this practice was on going later testified before Obama's committee.
Obama's response? (According to Stanek?)
Roughly paraphrased: If a woman entered the hospital with the intent of seeking an abortion, then it was the woman's choice to allow that child to live or die. (Should it survive the induced labor.)
To be clear President Obama is the one and only ever elected federal office holder that has voted in favor of such procedures, and he did so three times, on the record.
All of which leaves me puzzled.
Why is Gosnell a monster, if so many people, including our own president believe it to be the fullest expression of "women's rights" to simply do what he was doing?
A West Philadelphia abortion doctor, his wife and eight other suspects are now under arrest following a grand jury investigation.Because of the popularity of murdering babies, particularly in the Legacy Media, the District Attorney is actually defensive about prosecuting a murder case.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, faces eight counts of murder in the deaths of a woman following a botched abortion at his office, along with the deaths of seven other babies who, prosecutors allege, were born alive following illegal late-term abortions and then were killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.
“I am aware that abortion is a hot-button topic,” said District Attorney Seth Williams. “But as district attorney, my job is to carry out the law. A doctor who knowingly and systematically mistreats female patients, to the point that one of them dies in his so-called care, commits murder under the law. A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law.”There is nothing wrong with keeping cash in the house, but it is suggestive of criminal behavior.
Investigators say during a search of his home, they found $240,000 in cash.The story indicates this so-called doctor was taking many short cuts. Apparently, it's easier to murder a baby if its entire body is no longer inside the mother. I can see how that would be the case. However, that trivial distinction is the only legal difference between murder and a medical procedure. But this murderer understands most rationally, as we all should, that there really is no difference. Murdering a baby is murdering a baby whether or not it, or any part of it, remains inside the mother.
Only one day after WND reported on a complaint filed by a team of Christian attorneys over Vanderbilt University's requirement that nursing students pledge to participate in abortions, the requirement has been dropped.
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Bowman had explained the Vanderbilt policy violated the law providing that any institution receiving federal grants cannot force, coerce or otherwise require an individual to assist in abortions.
[...]
In a statement one day earlier, Vanderbilt University Medical Center spokesman John Howser said the ADF was mistaken.
