abortion – Page 3 – monoblogue

Andy Harris endorses Ben Carson: too little too late?

Multiple reports today revealed that our Congressman, Andy Harris, became the first member of Congress to endorse Dr. Ben Carson for President, taking time to join Carson on the campaign trail in South Carolina today. Said Harris, in part:

(Carson) will restore America to greatness – not as a punch line in a campaign, but as a belief in returning America to its Constitutional roots. What we saw in the debate last Saturday reminds us just how much we need someone thoughtful like Dr. Carson in the White House.

Given the position in the polls the good doctor (Carson, not Harris) has fallen to in the Presidential race, one has to wonder if this will stop the bleeding in Ben’s foundering campaign. Despite protestations to the contrary from Carson loyalists, there’s no question that he has lost his luster since being one of the frontrunners last fall. Currently on a national level Carson polls fifth with 6% of the vote, according to the RCP average. (To be fair, the most recent poll cited has Carson at a much more healthy 10 percent.) In the Palmetto State, Carson is also right around 6 percent, but that put him (on average) in last place among the six remaining GOP contenders, with one poll placing him in fifth.

So to say Carson has an uphill battle is to put it mildly. On a national political basis, one has to wonder if an endorsement by a Congressman, regardless of how well-known he is around the country, would have made more impact back in November when Carson was near the top.

But if you take this to a more local scale and consider the race Harris has at home, an endorsement of Carson could make more sense. If you polled the First Congressional District, I suspect Carson would at least double his national total and 10 percent is a significant chunk in the Congressional primary. If Carson is still in the race come April, there’s a pretty good chance he would do some campaigning in the region because it would be one of his stronger areas. (Maryland shares an April 26 date with four other states: Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.) A stop or two in the First District with the popular Carson could drive the pro-life constituency over to Harris, since his opponent Mike Smigiel has made hay over remarks Harris made at a Planned Parenthood protest in August.

And even if Carson is out of the running, I would say the chances are pretty good he’ll be assisting the Harris re-election bid to some extent, particularly in the primary. (I would think that prohibitive Democratic nomination favorite Jim Ireton will have a contrasting position to Harris’s on the subject, so there’s no real need for Carson to buttress Harris on social issues in the general election.) If you want a popular draw locally, you probably can’t go wrong with Carson.

So I’m going to count this as an endorsement more for the sake of the Congressman than the Presidential candidate. After all, besides being the leading voice against decriminalizing marijuana in Washington, D.C. there isn’t a whole lot Andy Harris is known for on a national scale. In certain areas of the GOP, this is an endorsement well worth making.

The struggle to save babies

Who will stand in the gap? That was the question asked in a presentation by Texas pastor Charles Flowers as he keynoted the eleventh annual Labor of Love fundraising banquet to benefit the Eastern Shore Pregnancy Center. Despite being plagued by some technical gremlins, Flowers presented a message mainly based on Proverbs 24:11, which oddly enough was the same verse used by Cathy Keim in her post the other day.

Flowers was introduced by local pastor David Diskin, who appealed to Christians to stand against abortion. We have to support life, Diskin added, despite living in a nation that overall has “slapped the hand of God.”

Pastor Flowers agreed. “We are in a day of adversity,” said Flowers, before asking who would deliver those drawn to death. He noted that the government had no interest in it, considering they were giving half a billion dollars to Planned Parenthood.

And regardless of the educators present that Flowers called “beacons of light” in our public schools, theirs was a “Godless field” as well. Even churches couldn’t fill the need as they were being pulled in many directions in their ministry. It was up to us to, as he put it, “trade babies for paper.”

Now before I continue with Pastor Flowers, it’s worth stating that the ESPC served over 350 women last year. Director Jackie Seldon relayed the story of one young woman and her boyfriend who were set on terminating the pregnancy until they saw the ultrasound. She changed her mind, and the boyfriend turned from passive observer to a guy who wanted a girl “so I can spoil her.” That’s the sort of success story they managed to achieve 50 times in the last year and their goal for this coming year was to make it to 85.

So the calculation of the paper needed to trade for each baby was $1,200. It’s a goal of about $100,000 overall.

Thus, despite the fact the government was against us, explained Flowers, we were called upon to answer to a higher law even at the price of civil disobedience. He cited the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah, who fibbed in Exodus 1:19 that Hebrew women were stronger and delivered babies more quickly than Egyptian women, thus they could not follow Pharaoh’s order to execute Hebrew boys. “God places the value of life extremely high,” added Flowers, and challenged us to do the same.

There’s no doubt that in our secular society, where a child is but an expression of “choice” rather than a living human for whom the mother and father should take responsibility and (hopefully) bring up in a Godly manner, many have strayed from assigning a high value to life. There were close to 200 people at the dinner, but that is a small portion of the local population – I pray it’s but a small fraction of those around here who value life.

Even without the visual aid, Flowers illustrated the impact of nearly 60 million abortions. As he read off a list of states, he asked everyone who was born there or had parents or grandparents from there to stand. The last one was Maryland, so most stood. Regardless, if you took the 25 smallest states in population and imagined them wiped out, you’ve reached the number of babies aborted in the country since Roe v. Wade. (In political terms, it’s generally those states that only have 3 to 8 electoral votes. Those who support Planned Parenthood may not be against that since the bulk are loyal to the GOP.)

As I stated above, the goal is an ambitious one. We didn’t get there tonight, but if you count what the sponsors gave (nearly $8,000 based on the minimums listed in the program) and the amount donated and pledged tonight, they made significant progress of over $63,000. At $1,200 per, they have already made their budget for saving 50 babies, but more can and should be done.

If you are pro-life like me, or just want to assist a noble cause, the ESPC is always looking for both compassionate volunteers who can spare time as well as those who want to trade paper for babies. It may not be the most popular or politically correct cause, but it is a rightful one.

Protest Planned Parenthood holds second national protest

By Cathy Keim

Deliver those who are drawn toward death,
And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.

If you say, “Surely we did not know this,”
Does not He who weighs the hearts consider it?

He who keeps your soul, does He not know it?
And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?

Proverbs 24:11-12

On Saturday, October 10, 2015, over 20,000 protestors turned out at 290 Planned Parenthood facilities across the nation to protest the selling of baby parts for profit. The protestors were against abortion, but were highlighting the gruesome practice of harvesting baby organs to sell for research. The availability of large numbers of aborted babies at Planned Parenthood facilities make for a profitable secondary business of supplying fetal organs and tissue to researchers, including the National Institutes of Health.

Although this is not a new phenomenon, it was brought to public attention by the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, which led to Congressional investigations and the call to defund Planned Parenthood. So far, Congress has been unsuccessful in their quest to defund Planned Parenthood. Citizens are continuing to protest to keep the pressure on Congress to act.

This issue contributed to the resignation of Speaker John Boehner and it continues to reverberate in DC as hearings drag on and there is an effort to use reconciliation to force a bill through to the president’s desk. President Obama has said that he will veto any bill that defunds Planned Parenthood, and there are not the votes in the Senate to override a veto. This has led to talks of a government shutdown if the House refuses to fund the government over this issue.

Please note that it is the President that will shut the government down by refusing to accept the bill that the House sent to him, because he wants PP funded.

The new Speaker will have to face this problem right away as the continuing resolution (CR) that was passed under John Boehner will expire in December. We are heading towards a showdown anyway, because the President has indicated that he will not accept another CR.

We have not had a budget passed in years. The government has been lurching along on CR after CR. The President is in a rush to spend more and is chaffing under sequestration. The House needs a Speaker that will hold the line on spending, including a government shutdown if that is what it takes.

So, while the 20,000 protestors across the nation were protesting abortion and fetal tissue harvesting for profit, they were also part of the struggle between government factions. We cannot say the struggle is between Republicans and Democrats, because that is not the case. This is a struggle between Republicans that defend life and conservative values and Republicans that are working with the Democrats as part of the elites that rule over us.

The Democrats are united in their totalitarian quest to rule over us. They use their technique of dividing people into victim minority groups that pay allegiance to them for taking care of them to control and manipulate their followers.

The Republicans have not been able to consolidate the control of their base sufficiently to shut down all opposition. The conservative faction, while not the majority, is still large enough to bring down the Speaker and to cause occasional upsets like with the amnesty issue. The Chamber of Commerce funded, crony capitalist GOP faction despises the conservative base, but cannot quite break free yet.

Over and above the political factions are the media who decide what to report or not report. If you hold a protest and nobody reports on it, then did it really happen?

Here are pictures of the protest in Easton.

Almost all of the forty-four participants came to the first protest on August 22 and returned because they are convicted by the knowledge that babies are being sacrificed for human convenience and profit. We stood on the sidewalk with our signs and prayed for the abortionists and staff that work at the facility and the women that come for abortions to have a change of heart. The clinic was not open on Saturday, so we did not see any workers or clients.

Despite our peaceful gathering, many people think of pro-life activists as wild-eyed dangerous crazies because of the media’s depictions, which frequently tar all pro-lifers as doctor killers and abortion clinic bombers.

This Washington Post article reports that
a charter school was concerned when a PP facility was going to be located next to them. “Many parents worry that they will have to explain graphic images of aborted fetuses and the ideological underpinnings of one of the country’s most contentious debates to their young children,” wrote reporter Michael Alison Chandler.

Actually, at the first protest in Easton on August 22, that is exactly what happened. The pediatric clinic next to the PP facility was open during the protest. The pediatricians came out to complain that our signs were scaring their patients. We did not have any graphic photos, but they complained about a sign that said, “Abortion kills babies.” I mentioned to the pediatrician that we were trying to save babies so that they would have more patients. He shamefacedly acknowledged that we were pleading for babies to be spared a gruesome death.

A final nod to the uneven playing field that pro-life protestors face is the reality that big money is deployed against them. Planned Parenthood is a “non-profit” which pays it president, Cecile Richards, a salary of $590,000. Planned Parenthood receives over a half billion dollars in federal funding as well as millions more in state funding.

According to the Free Beacon, “Planned Parenthood has supported the Democratic party in the past. It poured $18 million into outside spending groups in 2014 and 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Most of its nearly $6 million in direct contributions since 1990 have gone to Democrats. Every Democratic candidate except for (Jim) Webb has benefitted from this cash influx at the federal level. (Bernie) Sanders and (Lincoln) Chafee have received nearly $25,000 combined over the course of their careers.”

How much of our tax dollars are being used against us to buy the politicians’ protection? This is the typical cycle of the tax dollars funding an organization that then donates exclusively to the Democrat party to protect them.

Interestingly enough, this runs in the family. Cecile Richards is married to Kirk Adams, who just stepped down as Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union, SEIU. His last reported salary was only $229,880, so his wife was out earning him by a significant amount. More importantly, in the last presidential election, the Wall Street Journal reported that the SEIU donated over $70 million to Democrat candidates and knocked on millions of doors campaigning for them.

This, then, is a David vs. Goliath battle. The ordinary Americans that are calling for an end to the merciless killing of our smallest citizens are fighting against a taxpayer funded giant organization that pays protection money to our leaders.

But take heart: David won with God’s help.

Rally redux

Cathy Keim sent this along:

On August 22, over 78,000 people attended protests at over 300 Planned Parenthood centers, protesting that organization’s practice of harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted children, as revealed in a series of undercover videos released over the past three months. On October 10, the #ProtestPP coalition will again bring protests to hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations, including their center at 8579 Commerce Drive, #102, in Easton, MD.

Despite the controversy created by the undercover videos — including possible illegal activity — Planned Parenthood continues to receive over $500 million from state and federal governments. The organizers of #ProtestPP are calling for an end to this massive taxpayer subsidy for the nation’s largest abortion chain, and calling on all Americans of good will to oppose Planned Parenthood, especially by joining the growing pro-life presence at their hundreds of centers around the country.

“These undercover videos have shown the cruelty of abortion in a singular way,” said Cathy Keim. “It’s chilling to see Planned Parenthood’s doctors talk about how to crush an unborn child’s body in order to maximize profits from tissue sales. But too few of our fellow Americans have seen these videos. Our protest will invite everyone to learn the truth about Planned Parenthood, and to recognize that this injustice is taking place right here, in our own community.”

#ProtestPP is a coalition of state and national pro-life groups, headed by three national pro-life activist organizations: Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, Created Equal, and the Pro-Life Action League.

For more information please contact: Cathy Keim, (443) 880-5912, sckeima@gmail.com.

*********

Now it’s my turn. I won’t make this one because I have a prior commitment, but I encourage those who read this space to make the time if they can.

Perhaps we have lost the immediate battle thanks to a gutless soon-to-be-former Speaker who threw up the surrender flag and got a “clean” continuing resolution with mainly Democrat support, so it’s up to us to change hearts as we change minds.

The call to action

By Cathy Keim

“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There is going to be another Protest Planned Parenthood rally in front of the Easton Planned Parenthood facility on Saturday, October 10, 2015. Once again this will be in conjunction with over 330 protests across the nation.

Michael covered the last protest but since then several more videos have come out from the Center for Medical Progress. If you take the time to watch them, you will see Planned Parenthood staff discussing that they must be careful how they approach the issue of selling baby parts because it wouldn’t play well as a newspaper headline. They were correct on that count. More disturbing, though, is watching as they pick through the pieces of a baby to see how much it would be worth if sold to a tissue procurement firm.

Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life writes:

In our day, many Christians shy away from the word ‘protest,’ but there is no reason to do so. To affirm good means to reject evil. To stand up for what is right means to protest what is wrong.

When people realize the atrocities going on in Planned Parenthood, such as the harvesting of body parts, and when they have the courage to view what an aborted baby actually looks like, a voice of protest arises from inside of them: “No, this is wrong; this must stop!”

At that point, every human being is at a crossroads: we either act on that voice of protest or we silence it.

Too many times we squelch the voice of protest because it is easier, we are busy, it would be embarrassing, or we just don’t know how to go about protesting. Maybe we feel like it won’t make any difference anyways.

And with that decision another part of us dies. Carly Fiorina said at the last debate that:

I’d like to link these two issues; both are incredibly important. Iran and Planned Parenthood. One has something to do with the defense of the security of this nation. The other has something to do with the defense of the character of this nation.

You haven’t heard a plan about Iran from any politician up here, here is my plan. On day one I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend to Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him that we will stand with the state of Israel. The second to the Supreme Leader to tell him that unless and until he opens every military and every nuclear facility to real anytime, anywhere inspections by our people, not his, we the United States of America will make it as difficult as possible to move money around the global financial system, we can do that, we don’t need anyone’s cooperation to do it. And every ally and adversary we have in the world will know that the United States of America is back in the leadership business, which is how we must stand with allies.

As regard to Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape – I dare Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain. This is about the character of our nation, and if we will not stand up and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us.

I think Carly Fiorina correctly connects the Planned Parenthood issue as equal in importance to the Iran agreement. The horrible Iran deal weakens our physical security while the Planned Parenthood holocaust destroys our moral character.

We have become so used to millions of lives being stamped out in their mother’s womb that we are numb to the horror. It is time to shake off our slumber and rise to the call to action. For many, this first step of standing with a sign in front of an abortion provider may seem difficult, but think of the alternative which is to let your conscience die piece by piece. Once you take action, you will find that it frees you to take other steps.

The media speaks with a monolithic voice to lull you into complacency. Because they repeat the same meme over and over again, people think that everybody is in agreement on the issue.

I talk to lots of people that think that there is nothing that they can do to change things or they think that they are not brave enough to face the disapprobation of their family and friends. Give it a try and see if standing up for the defenseless is not worth the effort.

Another point that Father Frank Pavone makes is:

When you look at the organizations that help sponsor these events, you will find people and groups who pour out their time, money, and energy all year long to provide alternatives to abortion and healing after abortion. Some of the organizers are pregnancy centers and maternity homes. Abortions do not happen because of freedom of choice, but because some people feel they have no freedom and no choice. The same people who come out and protest a Planned Parenthood on a Saturday will volunteer at a pregnancy center during the week. Moreover, they reach out to provide counseling and healing to those who have had abortions. We who reject abortion do not reject those who have had abortions, but rather embrace them with mercy and forgiveness.

As I looked around at our last Protest Planned Parenthood rally, I saw people that use their time and money to help their community in many ways from supporting pregnancy centers, to helping the homeless, mentoring children, and advocating for the value of life at every stage. These are the acts of free people choosing to help others. The government would prefer that we numb ourselves with senseless entertainment while they control how everyone lives.

Join us as we protest against the evil of abortion and selling baby parts for profit. Let us stand for the defenseless.

Mainstream media showing bias again?

By Cathy Keim

Editor’s note: Last night, as I was finishing my article on yesterday’s rally in Easton, I received an e-mail from Cathy with this piece, which she called “How the Media Distorts a Pro-Life Rally.”

Read on and I will have more thoughts at the end.

Yesterday 128 protesters gathered at the Planned Parenthood facility in Easton, Maryland, from 9 to 11 a.m., while thousands of protesters gathered in front of about 300 PP facilities across the nation. According to the Planned Parenthood website, they have about 700 facilities total. So what, you say.

That information that I just wrote took a few seconds to obtain online, but the WBOC reporter that covered the protest in Easton managed to get the first sentence of her article incorrect.

Pro-life protests happened in front of all Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide Saturday afternoon calling for federal defunding of the nonprofit.

Notice that it states that protests happened in front of all PP clinics on Saturday afternoon. According to my math, 300 protests do not cover 700 facilities, nor is 9 to 11 a.m. an afternoon event.

After reading the first sentence, I knew that we were not going to get unbiased coverage for our event and I was correct.

Next comes a quote from “authority,” the interim president and CEO of Maryland’s Planned Parenthood, Dr. Amina Chaudhry:

Planned Parenthood’s medical providers and staff are the best in the country. We have the highest professional standards, and we take swift action if we are ever aware of an instance where those standards aren’t being met.

There is no evidence to back the claims; in fact, the whole protest was over the videos which showed evidence of quite the opposite nature. But her assertions are allowed to stand and are followed by a quote from a protester whose profession and qualifications are not noted.

But protestors including David Smith of Parsonsburg, are convinced Planned Parenthood is practicing body and organ harvesting, without actually having seen said videos.

“There are several videos out there and I have not seen them, but we really believe from what I understand that once anyone sees those videos, they’re just so horrific,” said Smith.

The reporter took her time and asked many protestors for statements until she found the perfect one from a protester who had not actually seen the videos. It was disingenuous of her to troll about for that quote when there were numerous protestors that could have addressed the videos.

In fact, although I introduced myself to her and was clearly in charge of the event, she did not ask me a single question.

Next the reporter returns to her “authority” for an attack on the “right wing extremists.”

Chaudhry further explained in a statement that the attacks on the nonprofit are steered by right-wing extremist agendas.

“Extremists who oppose Planned Parenthood’s mission and services are making outrageous and completely false claims. They are engaged in a fraud, and other claims they’ve made have been discredited and disproven.

The group behind these videos has close ties with organizations and individuals who have been linked to the firebombing of abortion clinics and threats to the physical safety of doctors who provide abortion. The real agenda of these baseless attacks has become totally clear: to ban abortion and limit women’s access to reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of the public rejects this extreme political agenda and rejects the fraudulent campaign behind it.”

In a few sentences, the group of peaceful citizens who came to stand up for the right of the unborn baby to live rather than be killed in the womb and sold for profit was turned into extremists that support firebombing abortion clinics and threatening doctors.

If you take the time to watch the videos, which I have, you will see doctors casually talking about altering the abortion procedure so that they can acquire better fetal tissues to sell for profit. Changing an operation in order to get fetal hearts, lungs, livers, etc. undamaged is illegal in itself.

Who is the extremist here? The peaceful protestor who wants the baby to be able to live or the doctor who is cheerfully describing how they destroy the baby in the most profitable way? Another doctor describes turning the baby into the breech presentation so that they can deliver the fetus without crushing its skull. It is better for selling to have the whole baby undamaged, except that the baby is dead, of course.

The reporter does admit that this protest is unprecedented in scope. Never have so many protestors joined in so many places simultaneously, but she quickly recovers with a closing statement that:

(A) number of state agency officials in Georgia, Massachusetts, Indiana, South Dakota and Florida have investigated Planned Parenthood clinics there and have not found any evidence of illegal activity.

There are about 700 PP facilities in the country. It is entirely plausible that not every facility is involved in the baby parts for profit scheme. The fact that some clinics have not been proven guilty, does not prove all of them innocent.

How biased these reporters are! All protestors are linked to firebombing clinics, but not all PP facilities are linked to selling baby parts.

It has been my experience, that whenever I have had the misfortune to be interviewed or take part in an activity where reporters cover the event, the coverage is almost always inaccurate, incorrect, and often completely biased.

That was certainly the case for today’s coverage of the #ProtestPP rally in Easton yesterday. It’s not just yesterday, though – CNS News has tracked the coverage devoted to the scandal so far, and, shall we say, it is lacking.

Here is a link to a Washington Post piece on the #ProtestPP events that shows a more evenhanded approach.

Compare the two and see for yourself the difference. Our local WBOC report should be filed under opinion pieces.

Editor’s note redux: The Post piece wasn’t perfect either but was better.

But when are we going to drop the pretext that mainstream reporters are unbiased, yet folks like us who write for the “pajamas media” are unworthy of trust because we have a slant? I will cheerfully admit I see things through the lens of a conservative.

I was asked by Cathy to come along to document the event and take photos (it doesn’t hurt that I am pro-life myself, though.) I think I could have done a better job in some respects, but I believe I did what journalists are supposed to do – create an account of what really happened there. It’s why I took the time to video and upload the statements of both Andy Harris and Mike Smigiel.

It reminded me of how the initial TEA Party rallies were covered. If those who create the “news” don’t agree with your narrative it’s dropped down the memory hole.

I think the better approach for WBOC would have been to place the opposing view at the end, sort of like the State of the Union does.

I also think we should all thank Cathy for her efforts. But like they said during the rally, this is not a one-day thing – so there’s time for the media to get it right.

Pastors and politicians punctuate Planned Parenthood protest

This morning I got up with the sun to help cover one of around 300 coordinated local rallies aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood in the wake of their sale of baby parts exposed in a series of investigative videos from the Center for Medical Progress.

The Easton site was selected because Salisbury’s office had closed last spring. And while detractors claim the facility, which is located in a nondescript office complex with several other tenants, doesn’t do any abortions, they still support the overall brand.

As you will hear in a bit, the facility is not the only one which provides its services. Plenty of care is available and accessible. (It’s ironic the facility was closed today, but the protests were intentionally scheduled for off-hours.)

The rally began at 9 a.m. with about 50 people lined along the street in front of the facility.

In all, there were a dozen speakers, mainly representing the pastoral community. We had clergy representing churches from Berlin to Centreville and several points in between. First up was Keith Myer, from Harvest Baptist in Salisbury.

As he spoke, the gathering was growing, spilling into the front yard of the facility and later across the street.

Another Wicomico County minister who spoke was Shawn Seldon, who represents a church in the small hamlet of Tyaskin.

He lamented Planned Parenthood as “the largest morgue in the country.” But when it came to those on the other side, it was not our job to cast stones but instead “love the hell right out of it,” he said.

If the Seldon name rings a bell, it should because his wife Jackie runs the Eastern Shore Pregnancy Center here in Salisbury. Both she and her counterpart from the Choices Pregnancy Center in Easton were there.

Jackie noted that when women come to her center and take advantage of their services, “things change in the ultrasound room.” They see that their baby is not a tissue mass, but a living human being developed in the womb.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get photos of all of the pastors but I did get a number of quotes. For example, John Abbott of Faith Baptist in Berlin reminded us that “thou shall not kill” means you don’t kill innocent life. Chris Williams of Covenant Family Church in Centreville added that, “our hearts should be broken as a nation,” and called abortion “the antithesis of the good news of the gospel.”

Also representing his congregation was Eric Olson of the Oasis Covenant Fellowship in Easton, who spoke early as I was taking photos. We also heard from Barbara Kelly, a post-abortion counselor who told us “abortion doesn’t have to happen.” She added that women come to her decades after their procedures, a “trauma” that happens as they grow old and wistfully think about the child they never had.

The only minor bit of controversy came when the lone tenant who was open at the time, a pediatrician’s office, asked us to move back onto the sidewalk. As you’ll see in the videos, we were larger than the right-of-way.

I think their issue was twofold: supposedly people were cancelling appointments this morning and “the children are upset.” I suspect it was parents who simply didn’t want to face the facts.

So our last speakers, pastor Jason Shelton of Providence Presbyterian Church in Salisbury and the lady representing Talbot Right to Life (who secured the permit for the event) did their speaking from the street.

Sheldon cited heavily from 2 Timothy 3, adding that we have become “a bloody and callous people.”

I noted above that we had politicians as well. One who spoke was local Delegate Christopher Adams.

Citing his own experience with his kids, Delegate Adams opined that “parenthood means life” and described the connection between abortion and profit as “disgusting and immoral.” He continued that we weren’t on the slippery slope here in Maryland, but “the bottom of the chasm.”

There were two other political speakers of note, who both happen to seek the same office. Congressman Andy Harris spoke early on, followed a few turns later by challenger and former Delegate Mike Smigiel. I fired up my moribund Youtube page to share the videos of their remarks, Harris first.

To his credit, Smigiel and his aide Cody Leach stayed for the whole thing.

As with a rally such as this, there were a number of good signs. You’ll see a number of pink ones which remind us Planned Parenthood sells baby parts, but there were other descriptive ones too.

The fine folks from Worcester County opted to take a group photo.

Fortunately, there was some media there to spread the word (besides me.)

Nicole Edenedo of WBOC-TV filed this report, which managed to avoid me until the very end when it showed my good side. It was interesting observing her work – I guess reporters don’t bring cameramen anymore, and she did well memorizing her wrap at the end that she repeated to herself a couple times.

From what I was told, yet another CMP video was released today. With 300 protests scheduled nationwide today, even if they only averaged the 125 or so we had that’s 37,500 people who came out on a summer weekend to make their displeasure known.

You may have noticed a police car in the background of my videos. Despite the fact we were on a quiet street and had a rally Myer described as one where we were “calm, peaceful, left no trash, respected the police, stayed consistent with the time allotted for the protest, stayed out of the street, and didn’t damage any property,” we had an officer spend his morning watching us. I suppose it was SOP given the chance of a counter-protest, but none was to be found.

As I noted, the only issue was that we were too many for the sidewalk. My colleague Cathy Keim took the lead in getting this together, with a lot of help and maybe a dash or two of divine providence, and as such deserves kudos.

This is the first step along a road that leads first to the defunding of Planned Parenthood by the federal government but ends when abortions are no longer commonly accepted as the law of the land. Remember, even Hillary Clinton said abortions should be “rare.” I just disagree that they are “safe” – especially for the unborn – and their legality should be at the very most a state matter.

The best time to be pro-choice is making the choice not to create kids if you’re not ready or willing to take the responsibility. As a method of birth control, it’s worth remembering that, unless you are destined to carry the son of God, abstinence works every time.

A pair of Easton events

Our friends on the mid-Shore will get to be a hotbed of conservative political activity next week.

First off, on Thursday evening the fine folks of Heritage Action will host a training session on “How to be an Effective Activist Through Social Media.” It will run from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Comfort Inn in Easton so you should be back home well before the witching hour.

The topics will include:

Online Training: Blogs, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube
Twitter Training: Build and deploy a Twitter Army
Legislative Training: Learn how to use the Heritage Action Dashboard to Hold Congress Accountable

All they ask is that you register at this site, show up a little early (they prefer 5:00), and bring their iPad or smart phone. A hankering for Chik-fil-A wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. And say hi to Melody Clarke for me, since she alerted me to this.

Then comes Saturday. Because Easton has a centrally-located Planned Parenthood facility, it will be the Eastern Shore site of “one of over 150 events coast-coast on August 22, in cooperation with a coalition of more than 40 pro-life groups.” This according to the organizers of the local event. I spoke to the folks with the Maryland Pro-Life group at the Wicomico County Fair tonight and they were anxious to be at the protest. (It should be noted that Planned Parenthood is closed on Saturdays. With any luck they will soon be closed more permanently.)

Dubbed the Easton #PPSellsBabyParts Protest, it will run from 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, August 22 at the Easton Planned Parenthood location, 8579 Commerce Drive #102 in Easton. As my notice says:

We may never have a better opportunity to strip Planned Parenthood of their massive $500 million taxpayer subsidy and expose the truth about this corrupt organization.

They may claim “doctored video” and “we provide needed health services” but the fact Planned Parenthood had to hire a Democrat hired gun PR firm means we have them on the ropes – even the PR firm is ashamed to admit it. Pressure from caring Americans can finish this fight.

I can’t make the Thursday event but I will strive for the Saturday one. It will be interesting to see who covers it.

Body count

By Cathy Keim

I saw that Robert Conquest died last Monday, August 3, 2015, at the age of 98.

Robert Conquest was most famous for his book, The Great Terror, which chronicled the horror of the Stalinist death toll.

He estimated that under Stalin, 20 million people perished from famines, Soviet labor camps and executions—a toll that eclipsed that of the Holocaust. Writing at the height of the Cold War in 1968, when sources about the Soviet Union were scarce, Mr. Conquest was vilified by leftists who said he exaggerated the number of victims. When the Cold War ended and archives in Moscow were thrown open, his estimates proved high but more accurate than those of his critics.

Once I started looking at the body counts for different political ideologies in the 20th Century, the death tolls began to mount.

This quote from the Amazon.com review by Gregory McNamee of The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression expands on the deaths in the USSR and adds totals for other communist countries.

Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America–an astonishingly high toll of victims.

What if we look at the loss of life in World War II? We are all familiar with the estimated 6 million Jews killed, but how about all the people that died in that conflict?

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history in absolute terms of total dead. Over 60 million people were killed, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion). The tables below give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses. World War II fatality statistics vary, with estimates of total dead ranging from 50 million to more than 80 million. The higher figure of over 80 million includes deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilians killed totaled from 50 to 55 million, including 19 to 28 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead: from 21 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war.

Only a few years prior the world had reeled from the World War I death toll of 17 million people including the 1.5 million Armenians killed in Turkey in the Armenian Genocide. I won’t go on to list all the other conflicts that have popped up on a smaller but still deadly scale. All of these numbers are rounded off because nobody can actually be sure of how many people died in these conflicts.

Your mind becomes numb even trying to comprehend the horror behind these statistics. As Joseph Stalin, the great murderer himself, so aptly put it: “One death is a tragedy: One million is a statistic.”

Now let’s go to one final chilling death count right here in these United States. We the people, who fought communists, Nazis, fascists, and dictators to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, have allowed over 57 million babies to be murdered in their mother’s womb since 1973.

How could this happen? At first, the lies that were spun about an abortion just removing a mass of cells were able to be presented with a straight face because there was no way to see inside the womb to be sure of what was happening although any mother that was ever pregnant surely knew that she was carrying a baby, not a mass of tissue.

However, in the intervening years since Roe v. Wade there have been so many advances in technology that the baby inside the womb is easily seen by ultrasound even very early on. There is no room to hide in that tired canard of “it is just a mass of tissue.”

The revelations of Planned Parenthood selling baby parts should be the straw that broke the camel’s back and yet the Senate was unable to pass a bill defunding Planned Parenthood. Do we not realize that we have surpassed the death counts of World War I and the Soviet Union and are rushing to catch up with the body counts of the People’s Republic of China and World War II? Are the numbers so large that we cannot even bestir ourselves to feel revulsion for what we have done?

The media and war protestors were wildly happy to keep a body count of each soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush presidency. The media would display the numbers prominently and often. Strangely that all disappeared once a Democrat was in the White House.

The lost children of America have never had the media support their cause. The Democrat Party has fully embraced its position as the party of death and the mainstream Republican Party has often tried to ignore the issue. It is only because the conservative base has demanded that the pro-life and pro-family positions are defended that the Republican Party has kept the plank in their platform. How many times have you heard that we really should just focus on the economy?

Now that you mention it, let’s take a moment to contemplate what the loss of 57 million children has done to our country.

Those were the young adults that should be working and paying into Social Security to keep that Ponzi scheme going. Instead we have to import millions of illegal immigrants to fill the places of our dead children. This obviously has some drawbacks. Wouldn’t it have been better to have our own citizens than to be taking in people that break the law to come here?

The increasingly hostile racial problems between blacks, whites, and Hispanics have some roots in the abortion holocaust. The Black population has been murdered in the womb at a much higher rate than other groups, so their percentage of the population is lower than it would have otherwise been. Planned Parenthood abortion mills are located in the urban areas to be convenient for the urban poor. There are many problems afflicting the urban poor such as failing schools and the breakdown of the nuclear family, but the willful murder of their children cannot be ignored.

Our nation’s soul is seared by the years of abortions deemed acceptable by the Supreme Court. Let us use the momentum from these grisly Planned Parenthood videos to stop the government sponsored terror. Michael has already covered the Republican presidential candidates’ positions on abortion. We need to elect a President and a Congress that will stop the carnage. The Supreme Court ruled incorrectly in the Dred Scott case and they have ruled incorrectly in the Roe v. Wade case. It is time to protect our smallest citizens.

2016 dossier: Social issues

I don’t think I even had this down as a concern four or eight years ago, but as I get older and grow in my faith these things become more important to me. So I will devote a valuable eight points to these issues, which I would loosely define as abortion, preservation of traditional marriage as in only between a man and woman, and religious freedom issues such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Ideally, abortion would only be legal in very rare circumstances, marriage would return to being between one man and one woman with same-sex couples allowed civil unions to grant them a similar legal status to marriage (but not co-opting the term), and those who have religious conscience would be allowed to follow their faith directive. I understand that this might open a can of worms insofar as the traditions of certain religions, particularly Islam, so it should be understood that America was based and founded on Judeo-Christian principles and our laws and customs tend to follow those. I see nothing wrong with that course.

When a candidate believes “2016 will be the religious liberty election” and scorns fellow Republicans about running from the fight to “rearrange their sock drawers,” there’s a pretty good chance he will rate highly, and Ted Cruz does. I’m also not worried about his abortion stance if leftist ninnies are screaming about it, for example, questioning the fact January 22 is a day of infamy among pro-lifers. Cruz also turns around the tired leftist “war on women” meme, calling unfettered abortion the “real war on women.”

If you add in his call for civil disobedience when it comes to same-sex marriage and consider his overall record, I think we have a winner.

Total score for Cruz – 8.0 of 8.

Very close behind Cruz is Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, whose state is considered the most pro-life in the country. Just like Cruz, his stance on abortion drives the Leftist ninnies batty, as they seem to forget their idea was to keep abortions safe, legal, and rare. Two out of three ain’t bad. He’s called out the inside-the-Beltway crowd for their cowardice as well.

As the governor of a state that had its definition of marriage between a man and a woman overturned by the Supreme Court, he was reluctant to follow the directive, waiting for the court with jurisdiction over the state to actually overturn the will of the people before relenting. Now he wants a change in the Constitution.

A recent action, though, would seem to bolster the argument against the religious freedom executive order he signed. But as usual, the media got it wrong: Westboro protesters were free to demonstrate, but Jindal simply ordered a strict enforcement of state laws which already prohibit disrupting funerals.

Total score for Jindal – 7.9 of 8.

Coming in just behind Cruz and Jindal is Mike Huckabee. Mike has no problem defending life; in fact, he responded to an obvious “gotcha” question about deploying the FBI or federal troops to stop abortion by curtly saying, “we’ll see when I become President.” The Left had a field day with it, as one would expect. Huckabee also decried the “manufactured crisis” regarding Indiana’s original religious freedom law and vowed to use executive authority to prevent it.

Huckabee also blasted the Obergefell ruling, calling it an “out-of-control act of unconstitutional judicial tyranny.” You would figure a man with Huckabee’s background would do well here and indeed he does, with just the slightest hint of apprehension from me about how far he would take executive power. He’s also far more vague on his website than he is in the press.

Total score for Huckabee – 7.8 of 8.

Much of what I needed to know about the plans of Rick Santorum when it came to social issues came in this neat little statement. I also knew from his last run he was pro-life, yet he complains about the media treatment he gets. Well, when most of the media is left-wing it’s what you need to expect.

So I have no problem with the issue standards – which are very much like those who come in ahead of him – just the whining.

Total score for Santorum – 7.6 of 8.

After reading up on Rick Perry, I decided to give him a score that is about halfway between Bobby Jindal, who could argue with Perry’s claim about being the most pro-life governor (and has the laws to back it up), and Ben Carson, because both Perry and Carson have misspoke on gay marriage. A defender of state’s rights, Rick defended the Indiana religious freedom law, signed one for his own state, and decried the Obergefell decision because it usurped 10th Amendment authority.

Unlike the others above him, though, I don’t see Rick using the bully pulpit as much on these issues.

Total score for Perry – 7.0 of 8.

Overall, I think Marco Rubio will be fine on social issues – he’s pro-life, has a compelling story to tell, and seems to have the right idea on the Obergefell ruling. Several others wish to fight this at the state level, too. He’s also good on religious freedom. I also like how he’s given space on his campaign site to these issues, although his unusual layout makes it hard to find.

He doesn’t seem to get as much credit on these as others in front of him. In that respect he’s like Rick Perry but doesn’t have the advantage of being able to pass laws. In the Senate Rubio is more well-known for immigration than social issues, and that holds him back a little in both categories.

Total score for Rubio – 6.4 of 8.

Ben Carson makes no bones about it: he is “unabashedly and entirely pro-life.” Obviously his perspective as a physician helps there, and much of his appeal comes from those who make social issues paramount. He also supports religious freedom legislation like Indiana’s original RFRA law, which supposedly allowed discrimination against same-sex couples so they “clarified” it.

The problems have come when he tripped over his tongue on being gay, and conceded the Supreme Court made gay marriage “the law of the land” (although he personally favors civil unions in lieu of same-sex nuptials, which is my stance as well.) His comments and subsequent walking back of them hurt him a little bit here as well, but overall this is by far his strongest category to date.

Total score for Carson – 6.0 of 8.

Trying to straddle a line between libertarianism and faith can be difficult, and it puts Rand Paul a little below the top tier of candidates on this issue. He’s admirably pro-life and gets it for the most part on religious freedom, although he was slow to defend the Indiana law that should have been just what he wanted: key social and moral issues left up to the states. But as long as taxation and child-rearing legalities are dependent on marriage, you can’t simply take government out of it as it stands currently. On the other hand, sound thinking in other areas can work toward that goal, which is why I don’t deduct as much on Rand as I do for others who simply wash their hands of the issue (see below.)

Total score for Paul – 5.5 of 8.

During his tenure as governor of Florida, Jeb Bush was placed in the unique position of defending the life of Terri Schiavo, who was the unwitting subject of a legal tug-of-war between her estranged husband and the remainder of her family. Ultimately he lost that fight, but overall Jeb has a relatively sound pro-life record.

Where I begin to differ with Jeb is his “evolving” (read: retreating from the truth) on marriage, particularly true in his choice of advisers. At one time he decried the idea of homosexuals having “special legal protection,” but now is fine with letting states decide and not amending the Constitution to declare marriage as the union of one man and one woman. He also backed away a little on Indiana’s RFRA law after the outcry from the gay lobby. His brother retreated from a conservative stance more and more as he went on as President, and I fear Jeb may start from an even worse position despite his assertion that his faith will guide him. At this juncture he’s only slightly better than average.

Total score for Bush – 4.5 of 8.

John Kasich has a very sound pro-life record and approach, which I applaud even if the lefties don’t.

But I see him shrinking from the fight in other important areas, telling the Republicans “it’s time to move on” from traditional marriage and stating Ohio doesn’t need a religious freedom law despite the fact he backed the federal one as a Congressman in 1993. Just wait, governor, you will. As he backs away from those positions, it makes me wonder if he has the fortitude to remain on the side of the unborn. If you value working across the aisle I wonder about that.

Total score for Kasich – 4.5 of 8.

Scott Walker joins this crowd in the middle with much the same resume as Kasich – a staunch record for life that includes a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act he signed days before his announcement, but ambivalent opposition to same-sex marriage (perhaps due to family concerns) and a lack of desire to enact a religious freedom law in Wisconsin.

So he gets the same score as Kasich and Jeb Bush, who is cut from a similar cloth.

Total score for Walker – 4.5 of 8.

Carly Fiorina is very good on the pro-life front, noting on the trail that her mother-in-law was advised to abort the man who would become her husband. On that front she’s also unafraid to call out liberals for their hypocrisy. She’s also on the right side when it comes to religious freedom.

But, in the same breath, she’s going the wrong way on gay marriage, and the lefties (who would back Hillary anyway) are happy about it. I’m also disappointed she doesn’t make any statement on these issues on her campaign page, although it is short on a lot of specifics in the first place. And even though she is misled about the crux of the gay marriage issue, at least she will disagree without being disagreeable.

Total score for Fiorina – 4.2 of 8.

Maybe Chris Christie came late to the party, but as governor of New Jersey he touts his pro-life record. It’s relatively close to the mainstream, with the usual “rape, incest, and life of the mother” exceptions. But he’s not fought hard on same-sex marriage, meekly allowing his state’s supreme court to enact it and telling us that, while he didn’t agree with it, same-sex marriage was now “the law of the land” as Ben Carson did. He also would not support county clerks following their conscience, which tells me he’s no big advocate for religious freedom. He supported Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on a personal basis, but was backing the changed law.

Total score for Christie – 4.0 of 8.

I decided, after a little bit of thought, that while Lindsey Graham is earnest in his pro-life beliefs and deserves a lot of credit for trying to enact a federal Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – anyone who says in one breath they are for traditional marriage and religious freedom but in the next advises us to wave the white (or maybe it should be rainbow) flag and “move forward” because there’s little chance at success. Instead, he pledges to fight on religious liberty.

But if he’s willing to throw in the towel there, when will he stand and fight? As I kept reading and considering, he kept sliding down my list.

Total score for Graham – 4.0 of 8.

I’m probably being a little unfair to Jim Gilmore since he just got into the race, so he hasn’t made a priority of staking out positions on all the issues. However, in looking back mainly to his abortive 2008 campaign, I found he has an eight-week window where abortion is okay. And while he was against same-sex marriage and civil unions back in 2007, so was Barack Obama. One thing that troubles me is this 2013 interview where he seems to be cautioning Republicans to stay away from social issues. That, though, is the conservative base and they need to be fired up in order to get to the ballot box.

Total score for Gilmore – 2.0 of 8.

While he leads in the polls for now, Donald Trump is near the bottom of my list. The only thing that saves him from the bottom is his relatively recent pro-life conversion. And even though he vows to be the “greatest representative for Christians” if elected he doesn’t seem comfortable with the evangelicals and was hesitant to state his opposition to gay marriage. There are far better alternatives as far as social issues go.

Total score for Trump – 1.6 of 8.

It’s no surprise George Pataki is at the bottom of my list given he is pro-“choice.” Yet he doubled down on bad decisions by blasting the Indiana religious freedom law, and is fine with same-sex marriage being the law of some of the land, saying let the states decide. Basically that takes us back to a pre-Obergefell status and it’s easier to fight at that level, so I guess I can give him a little something for that.

Total score for Pataki – 0.5 of 8.

I need to catch Kasich and Gilmore up on previous issues (education, Second Amendment, and energy for Gilmore) so once I do that I will move on to the next category, trade and job creation.

Companies run for the tall grass on Planned Parenthood

Follow the money. Someone did and a whole slew of America’s corporate giants had some ‘splainin to do.

Over the past few days, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal website has followed a story where a website called Second Vote tracked corporate donations to Planned Parenthood, notorious alleged purveyor of aborted baby parts. Three of the 41 immediately denied they donated to the organization nor did they match employee contributions, while others downplayed their role by protesting Planned Parenthood was a 501 (c)(3) like any other eligible group and it was up to employees to contribute. By week’s end, Planned Parenthood eliminated this lightning rod for criticism by pulling the entire corporate donor list.

It would be an interesting study, though, to figure out whether these companies have any restrictions at all on giving to pro-life groups – that is, when they can actually receive 501(c)(3) status the IRS is reticent to give out. Perhaps pro-lifers should adopt the tactic of this group, which is more politically correct and has both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) status as two “separate” entities. Or maybe they can be “engaged in education, training, organizing, action, and coalition building” as this 501(c)(3) is. Somehow I doubt the IRS gave them any issues.

Maybe the biggest objection on this whole front is that our tax dollars help Planned Parenthood carry out its mission – even if they can’t legally spend the money on providing abortions, surely they are using it to pay the staff who does the service and they can use the medical equipment in a number of other procedures. If they just happen to be abortions where they avoid doing things in a “crunchy” manner, so be it.

What it all comes down to is that Planned Parenthood would come to a lot less grief if they just got out of the abortion business. After all, its defenders say that only about 3% of its procedures are abortions, so it would be like a 3% budget cut, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t miss three measly percent and the staff would have plenty to do to keep them busy, right?

Obviously I don’t see this occurring, despite the fact its founder has been associated with the 20th century eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger was in favor of contraception “to be used in poverty stricken slums, jungles and among the most ignorant people.” Considering the outsized proportion of minority abortions to their overall numbers, she may be attaining her wish.

Body parts, though, don’t reflect poverty, upbringing, or ignorance. They seem to have a value regardless of source, so why can’t we give a value to the lives snuffed out for their ghoulish harvest? Obviously corporations concerned about their image already have, if only to avoid the bad optics of being associated with abortion these days.

Ethics 101: the ends do not justify the means

By Cathy Keim

Abortion is murder. If we would stop dancing around about choice, privacy, complicating circumstances, etc. and just state the facts plainly, then the discussion would be clearer.

When a woman is pregnant, there are two people involved: the woman and the baby in her womb. After an abortion, there is a woman and a dead baby outside her womb. (Yes, there is also a father, but he cannot stop the mother from having an abortion.)

This is amazing in its gruesome truth. We, as a nation, have murdered over 55 million babies since 1973 when seven of our Supreme Court justices determined that abortion was just fine.

Now there is a video to reveal how hardened one can become to this terrible truth. If you murder enough babies, then it just becomes another day at work. But we find out that murdering babies isn’t enough. Profit can be made by selling pieces of the murdered children.

The undercover video was filmed in July 2014 by the Center for Medical Progress, an advocacy group that reports on medical ethics. They dispatched two actors posing as representatives of a human biologics company to a business lunch with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services.

Dr. Nucatola casually discusses how she extracts body parts unharmed so that they can be used in medical research. These children that Planned Parenthood refers to as blobs of tissue have such developed tissue that it is sold as hearts, lungs, livers, and brains. All these years Planned Parenthood has been lying to cover their evil actions, but when a purchaser is involved the blobs of tissue are correctly identified as the functioning organs we knew they were.

The mothers that are willingly killing their own child can soothe their conscience by saying that the destroyed pieces of their child are going to help medical researchers find a cure for terrible diseases that afflict many people.

I am sorry, but this is not a decision that any mother should make. An adult may decide to donate a kidney to another person, but we do not allow people to donate their heart to someone else. We do not kill a person to obtain their organs for someone else.

Why is there a consent form for the mother to fill out, but the living child in her womb has no advocate if she decides the child must go? A mother that is in the process of killing her child really should not have the option to donate the poor dead child to medical research so that she can feel that some good has come out of the episode.

Planned Parenthood first tried to say that the video was deceptively edited, but now they are having to regroup and say that the tissue harvesting is legal. Even that is suspect because the video shows Dr. Nucatola discussing changing the baby’s position to enable the abortionist to harvest the desired parts without damage. Federal law states that the abortion cannot be prolonged to allow harvesting.

It is fine by me if this federal law can be used to shut down Planned Parenthood or to remove government funding, but let us go back to my original premise. Abortion is murder. Is it any surprise that once the decision is made to murder a little human being that other bad decisions will follow?

There is the federal government helpfully setting up laws on how the mother must give consent for her baby to be divided up for tissue harvesting. If mom consents, then it is legal.

Next the government makes another law to protect mom from the abortionist prolonging or changing the procedure to increase the yield of good body parts.

Finally, the government makes a law that making profit on the body parts is not okay, but getting reimbursed for the work involved in securing parts of a child is legal.

Once you declare that murder in the form of abortion is legal, then you continue to make one bad decision after another. Are you surprised that a murderer, an attractive young female doctor, would speak calmly of dismembering little bodies while chowing down her lunch?

We have called evil good and good evil for so long that we are hardly even shocked by this story. It is time to speak the truth plainly even if it offends people. I am offended that tearing little ones to pieces in the womb that should be sheltering them from harm is done with monotonous regularity in this country.

Just as a woman could not sign a consent form to donate her body parts resulting in her death, so she should not be able to sign a consent form to donate her living child’s body by way of abortion.

As always, once the government intrudes, the long list of laws, regulations, funding, and exceptions increase. It is time to call abortion murder and be done with all the subterfuge.

Increasingly our country is being divided into two camps with no room for compromise. In this instance, one camp wants murder and the other wants life. I am firmly on the side of life.

Editor’s note: I think it’s worth noting that, while Cathy used a Fox News link to detail the Nucatola story, that news item is filed under “opinion” and not on the lead news site. The video was only opinion insofar as Dr. Nucatola had her guard down because she believed she was speaking to a potential client.