Tag: abortion

#rsrh Obamacare, abortion, and the Catholic Church.

I just saw this:

In August, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that health insurance plans, as of January 1, 2013, will be required to cover contraception, including FDA-approved emergency contraception. “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need,” she said. The Catholic Church has been pushing the White House to allow Catholic hospitals to opt out of providing contraception that it considers the termination of a life, and many in the abortion rights community are worried that the president will grant that exemption. Additionally, many Democrats invested in President Obama’s re-election are worried that if he grants that exemption, he will alienate liberal women voters they will need come November.

…and I feel the need to explain something, here.  The Roman Catholic Church considers ’emergency contraception’ – otherwise known as the ‘morning after’ pill – to be an abortificant.  The Roman Catholic Church does not permit its hospitals to perform abortions.  And the leadership (note the distinction) of the Roman Catholic Church is utterly indifferent to what taking a firm line on this might do to Barack Obama’s re-election chances. Continue reading #rsrh Obamacare, abortion, and the Catholic Church.

Abortion clinic reform passes Virginia Senate.

The bill requires that facilities that perform more than five first trimester abortions per month be subject to the same regulations as hospitals, which will hopefully help keep down the kind of abuses that were documented here by Live Action (and, much more horrifyingly, the atrocities committed in Pennsylvania by Kermit Gosnell).  This rather commonsense consistency in regulating abortions would be normally out of reach of the pro-life movement, as the Virginia Senate is 22/18 Democratic/Republican: however, two Democrats switched their votes after a parliamentary procedure forced them to take a stand on the bill.  This made the vote 20/20, thus allowing Lt. Governor Bill Bolling to break the tie.

Because elections matter.

People may also remember that this has been building up since August of 2010, when Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli ruled that abortion facilities could be regulated as if they were hospitals – which ruling helped set up this bill.

Because elections matter.

The bill now goes to Governor Bob McDonnell, who will sign it.

Because elections matter.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Lila Rose fights the Man.

Choice of phrase deliberate: one of the most entertaining things about today’s state of activism is that the Professional Left is just now starting to realize that they have somehow become the agents of reaction without ever quite noticing how it happened.  Lila Rose, on the other hand?  Her pro-life organization Live Action is a classic guerrilla theater operation designed to target the weaknesses of a frankly sclerotic tool of the Establishment… in this case, Planned Parenthood.  It’s not quite the same as the Sixties groups, though: the Right has never been all that interested in getting our opponents to admit that we were right and they were wrong.  Winning is sufficient validation, thanks.

And this is where I think that the above Christian Science Monitor article featuring Lila missed the fundamental point.  In my opinion, the CSM author approached Live Action’s program in terms of an attempt to sway public opinion; which is after all how the Activist Left always does it.  But the reason that the Left always does it that way is because the Activist Left always has to convince a majority of the American public that their ideas are correct.  The Right doesn’t have that problem in this country.  To use this specific example: Live Action doesn’t have to start by convincing people that abortion is disgusting, because people already find abortion personally disgusting.  All Live Action has to do is show that the horrid things said about abortion providers and abortion advocates are actually true. Continue reading Lila Rose fights the Man.

Banning Abortion the EPA way!

Thomas Sowell has an article out today about the latest incidence of mission creep from the EPA.  To summarize: the EPA has wide discretion when it comes to oil spills.  Milk contains oil.  Therefore, the EPA has wide discretion over milk spills, too – which includes requiring ’emergency plans’ and ‘first responders’ and ‘extra storage tanks’ from dairy farmers in order to handle such life- and civilization-threatening events as milk getting spilled*.  And, no, this is not an exaggeration: Cato reported on this back in June.  This is happening.

Now, Hot Air and Ace of Spades both waxed wroth on this, in their individual ways – but I asked myself, Self?  How can I make this work for us? And lo! – the answer was easy.

Continue reading Banning Abortion the EPA way!

Thoughts on the infamous Planned Parenthood video.

RedState (among other sites) is going to be hammering this one a bit more (life issues aren’t my main patch, so I defer to my colleagues over there who do focus on such things)… but I have to say: this video is appalling on multiple levels.

I mean, where do I start? Continue reading Thoughts on the infamous Planned Parenthood video.

#rsrh Hey! Want to keep radicalizing me…

…with regards to adopting a more pro-life position?

Then have people keep writing passive-aggressive Kermit Gosnell-situation apologetics like this one.  Actually, the problem isn’t the writing; it’s the publishing.  Because every time I see a pro-choicer start off on this topic without admitting that the Gosnell story confirms the absolutely worst fears and suspicions of the pro-life movement*, I get just a little bit angrier.  And the angrier I get, the more I stop caring that people have a problem with me having a problem about being lied to.

But I hear that the other side wants to find some common ground?  Fine.  Let’s start with “Born-alive babies are not to be killed.”  Then the pro-choice movement can explain how they [expletive deleted] that one up, and what they’re doing to keep from [expletive deleted] that up again.

Also, Ms. Kuschmider?

And you do not have the right to impose your personal sexual morals on anyone else. You don’t. It’s rude. So please don’t try.

You go first.  Thanks in advance!

Moe Lane

*Fears that we were told were ridiculous, exaggerated, hyperbolic, and generally silly.

#rsrh What pro-choicers need to grok.

I do not normally talk about abortion: it’s a difficult subject, and while my opinions on it have progressed to the point where I am definitely pro-life it is not my top domestic policy issue.  But upon reading this post on the failure – no; the systematic refusal – of pro-choice individuals and groups to stop Kermit Gosnell, I feel that I should point out three things.

  1. Kermit Gosnell confirms every single dread that the pro-life movement had about abortionists. If he was in a book, his habits, methods, attitudes, and hygiene would be widely derided as being inflammatory.  But it all happened.
  2. The current visible reaction by the pro-choice movement confirms every single prejudice that the pro-life movement has about pro-choicers. Gosnell has defenders.  Defenders who want unrestricted abortion – who we kept getting told earlier didn’t actually exist.  Well, they exist… and they’re not being sat upon by less radical members of their side.
  3. The media’s non-coverage of this atrocity confirms every single suspicion that the pro-life movement has about the media. Eight formal counts of murder, thirty-three formal counts of illegal abortions – and I had to go to the grand jury document itself in order to find that latter number*.  Ace of Spades – who is also somebody who doesn’t normally talk about pro-life issues – waxes wroth on this and related subjects; I’ll add that there’s every indication that a cover-up by officials in the state government (including appointees from pro-choice Republican former Governor Tom Ridge**) is going on… which is apparently not newsworthy, either.

Put more simply: there is nothing in this case that does not support pro-life arguments – including the ones that pro-choicers have been prone to denigrate as being silly, paranoid, and/or outrageous.  There have been widespread late-term abortions, in flagrant violation of the law.  The laws are not preventing this from happening.  The people doing the abortions can operate with impunity.  Pro-choice officials c0nnived to let ideology trump respect for the law.  Minority women were disproportionately victimized here.

And pro-lifers are right to be infuriated by all of the above.  I certainly am.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh What pro-choicers need to grok.

#rsrh Also, he’ll be signing it in a broom closet.

Don’t ask where the Members of Congress will be.

Really.  Don’t.

This says it all, really:

President Barack Obama will sign the executive order Wednesday that prohibits federal funding of abortion surrounded by members of Congress who oppose abortion rights — but he won’t do it for the cameras.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Actually, not quite all.  Politico was kind enough to give us a list of those Members of Congress who can safely be said to have flunked the intelligence test you need to stay in Congress: Continue reading #rsrh Also, he’ll be signing it in a broom closet.

Ben Nelson (D) bringing everyone together!

This takes skill – but apparently Reid’s amendment is up to the task.

The National Organization of Women:

We call on all senators who consider themselves friends of women’s rights to reject the Manager’s Amendment, and if it remains, to defeat this cruelly over-compromised legislation.

Planned Parenthood apparently agrees.

National Right to Life:

NRLC will score the upcoming roll call votes on cloture on the Reid manager’s amendment, and on the underlying bill, as votes in favor of legislation to allow the federal government to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand, to oversee multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and to empower federal officials to mandate that private health plans cover abortions even if they do not accept subsidized enrollees, among other problems.

In addition, if the final bill produced by a House-Senate conference committee does not contain the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, NRLC will score the House and Senate votes on the conference report as votes to allow federal mandates and subsidies for coverage of elective abortion.

And Rep. Bart Stupak (D) has or has not sent out his people to talk to or not talk to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R) people. Hard to say.

If your head hurts, don’t worry about it. That’s just the Great Old Ones eating your brain.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.