Abortion v Females: Abortion Wins

The War Against Girls




Wall Street Journal
Johnathan Last
June 18, 2011
Book Review



Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons


Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In "Unnatural Selection," Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.

What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl's counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world. Moral horror aside, this is likely to be of very large consequence.

.In the mid-1970s, amniocentesis, which reveals the sex of a baby in utero, became available in developing countries. Originally meant to test for fetal abnormalities, by the 1980s it was known as the "sex test" in India and other places where parents put a premium on sons. When amnio was replaced by the cheaper and less invasive ultrasound, it meant that most couples who wanted a baby boy could know ahead of time if they were going to have one and, if they were not, do something about it. "Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later," reads one ad put out by an Indian clinic, a reference to the price of a sex test versus the cost of a dowry.

But oddly enough, Ms. Hvistendahl notes, it is usually a country's rich, not its poor, who lead the way in choosing against girls. "Sex selection typically starts with the urban, well-educated stratum of society," she writes. "Elites are the first to gain access to a new technology, whether MRI scanners, smart phones—or ultrasound machines." The behavior of elites then filters down until it becomes part of the broader culture. Even more unexpectedly, the decision to abort baby girls is usually made by women—either by the mother or, sometimes, the mother-in-law.

If you peer hard enough at the data, you can actually see parents demanding boys. Take South Korea. In 1989, the sex ratio for first births there was 104 boys for every 100 girls—perfectly normal. But couples who had a girl became increasingly desperate to acquire a boy. For second births, the male number climbed to 113; for third, to 185. Among fourth-born children, it was a mind-boggling 209. Even more alarming is that people maintain their cultural assumptions even in the diaspora; research shows a similar birth-preference pattern among couples of Chinese, Indian and Korean descent right here in America.

.Ms. Hvistendahl argues that such imbalances are portents of Very Bad Things to come. "Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live," she writes. "Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent." As examples she notes that high sex ratios were at play as far back as the fourth century B.C. in Athens—a particularly bloody time in Greek history—and during China's Taiping Rebellion in the mid-19th century. (Both eras featured widespread female infanticide.) She also notes that the dearth of women along the frontier in the American West probably had a lot to do with its being wild. In 1870, for instance, the sex ratio west of the Mississippi was 125 to 100. In California it was 166 to 100. In Nevada it was 320. In western Kansas, it was 768.

There is indeed compelling evidence of a link between sex ratios and violence. High sex ratios mean that a society is going to have "surplus men"—that is, men with no hope of marrying because there are not enough women. Such men accumulate in the lower classes, where risks of violence are already elevated. And unmarried men with limited incomes tend to make trouble. In Chinese provinces where the sex ratio has spiked, a crime wave has followed. Today in India, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area is not income but sex ratio.

A high level of male births has other, far-reaching, effects. It becomes harder to secure a bride, and men can find themselves buying or bidding for them. This, Ms. Hvistendahl notes, contributes to China's astronomical household savings rate; parents know they must save up in order to secure brides for their sons. (An ironic reflection of the Indian ad campaigns suggesting parents save money by aborting girls.) This savings rate, in turn, drives the Chinese demand for U.S. Treasury bills.

And to beat the "marriage squeeze" caused by skewed sex ratios, men in wealthier imbalanced countries poach women from poorer ones. Ms. Hvistendahl reports from Vietnam, where the mail-order-bride business is booming thanks to the demand for women in China. Prostitution booms, too—and not the sex-positive kind that Western feminists are so fond of.

The economist Gary Becker has noted that when women become scarce, their value increases, and he sees this as a positive development. But as Ms. Hvistendahl demonstrates, "this assessment is true only in the crudest sense." A 17-year-old girl in a developing country is in no position to capture her own value. Instead, a young woman may well become chattel, providing income either for their families or for pimps. As Columbia economics professor Lena Edlund observes: "The greatest danger associated with prenatal sex determination is the propagation of a female underclass," that a small but still significant group of the world's women will end up being stolen or sold from their homes and forced into prostitution or marriage.

All of this may sound dry, but Ms. Hvistendahl is a first-rate reporter and has filled "Unnatural Selection" with gripping details. She has interviewed demographers and doctors from Paris to Mumbai. She spends a devastating chapter talking with Paul Ehrlich, the man who mainstreamed overpopulation hysteria in 1968 with "The Population Bomb"—and who still seems to think that getting rid of girls is a capital idea (in part because it will keep families from having more and more children until they get a boy). In another chapter she speaks with Geert Jan Olsder, an obscure Dutch mathematician who, by an accident of history, contributed to the formation of China's "One Child" policy when he met a Chinese scientist in 1975. Later she visits the Nanjing headquarters of the "Patriot Club," an organization of Chinese surplus men who plot war games and play at mock combat.

Ms. Hvistendahl also dredges up plenty of unpleasant documents from Western actors like the Ford Foundation, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood, showing how they pushed sex-selective abortion as a means of controlling population growth. In 1976, for instance, the medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Malcom Potts, wrote that, when it came to developing nations, abortion was even better than birth control: "Early abortion is safe, effective, cheap and potentially the easiest method to administer."

The following year another Planned Parenthood official celebrated China's coercive methods of family planning, noting that "persuasion and motivation [are] very effective in a society in which social sanctions can be applied against those who fail to cooperate in the construction of the socialist state." As early as 1969, the Population Council's Sheldon Segal was publicly proclaiming the benefits of sex-selective abortion as a means of combating the "population bomb" in the East. Overall Ms. Hvistendahl paints a detailed picture of Western Malthusians pushing a set of terrible policy prescriptions in an effort to road-test solutions to a problem that never actually manifested itself.

There is so much to recommend in "Unnatural Selection" that it's sad to report that Ms. Hvistendahl often displays an unbecoming political provincialism. She begins the book with an approving quote about gender equality from Mao Zedong and carries right along from there. Her desire to fault the West is so ingrained that she criticizes the British Empire's efforts to stamp out the practice of killing newborn girls in India because "they did so paternalistically, as tyrannical fathers." She says that the reason surplus men in the American West didn't take Native American women as brides was that "their particular Anglo-Saxon breed of racism precluded intermixing." (Through most of human history distinct racial and ethnic groups have only reluctantly intermarried; that she attributes this reluctance to a specific breed of "racism" says less about the American past than about her own biases.) When she writes that a certain idea dates "all the way back to the West's predominant creation myth," she means the Bible.

Ms. Hvistendahl is particularly worried that the "right wing" or the "Christian right"—as she labels those whose politics differ from her own—will use sex-selective abortion as part of a wider war on abortion itself. She believes that something must be done about the purposeful aborting of female babies or it could lead to "feminists' worst nightmare: a ban on all abortions."

It is telling that Ms. Hvistendahl identifies a ban on abortion—and not the killing of tens of millions of unborn girls—as the "worst nightmare" of feminism. Even though 163 million girls have been denied life solely because of their gender, she can't help seeing the problem through the lens of an American political issue. Yet, while she is not willing to say that something has gone terribly wrong with the pro-abortion movement, she does recognize that two ideas are coming into conflict: "After decades of fighting for a woman's right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right."

Late in "Unnatural Selection," Ms. Hvistendahl makes some suggestions as to how such "abuse" might be curbed without infringing on a woman's right to have an abortion. In attempting to serve these two diametrically opposed ideas, she proposes banning the common practice of revealing the sex of a baby to parents during ultrasound testing. And not just ban it, but have rigorous government enforcement, which would include nationwide sting operations designed to send doctors and ultrasound techs and nurses who reveal the sex of babies to jail. Beyond the police surveillance of obstetrics facilities, doctors would be required to "investigate women carrying female fetuses more thoroughly" when they request abortions, in order to ensure that their motives are not illegal.

Such a regime borders on the absurd. It is neither feasible nor tolerable—nor efficacious: Sex determination has been against the law in both China and India for years, to no effect. I suspect that Ms. Hvistendahl's counter-argument would be that China and India do not enforce their laws rigorously enough.

Despite the author's intentions, "Unnatural Selection" might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion. It is aimed, like a heat-seeking missile, against the entire intellectual framework of "choice." For if "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "I have patients who come and say 'I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra.' "

This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. Ms. Hvistendahl may wish the matter otherwise, but there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
abortion

Boyfriend kills pregnant girlfriend because it interferred with his future plans

Tragic.


Teen murdered for refusing abortion


Charlie Butt
OneNewsNow
8/12/2010


Authorities in Fontana, California, last week found the body of a pregnant 17-year-old girl whose boyfriend admits killing her because she refused to have an abortion.

After a two-month search through a mountain of trash, 18-year-old boyfriend Jesus Avitia, Jr. was formally charged in the death of Anyssia Escamilla. The death was not premeditated, but it most likely took place because Avitia wanted to pursue a nursing career but was afraid a baby would interfere with those plans.

The girl's father, Jorge Escamilla, responded to the news on television station KCAL 9, saying, "I cannot wish this, not even to my worst enemy because this is a pain that will never, never go away."

The teen had been missing three months before the body was found, and volunteers had assisted in searching and in spreading the word about the missing girl. Escamilla's brother reacted upon learning that the boyfriend confessed to the crime.

"I didn't think it was him, and it hurt me when I found out it was him because he was helping us hand out flyers," he laments.

Avitia has admitted to stuffing the teenager's lifeless body in a trash container, but he claims he did not intend to kill her.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
abortion

Abortion and Planned Parenthood

Antiabortion activists see a racial conspiracy


According to a vocal group - and a set of stark new billboards in Atlanta - abortion providers target black women in order to reduce the black population.


By Robin Abcarian
Los Angeles Times
March 2, 2010



It's a campaign designed to shock: Dozens of newly installed billboards in Atlanta feature the cherubic face of a black baby and a stark claim: "Black children are an endangered species."

A joint effort of Georgia Right to Life and the pro-adoption, pro-abstinence Radiance Foundation, the campaign ostensibly calls attention to the fact that black women have a disproportionately high number of abortions. But there is a deeper, more disturbing claim at work as well.

An increasingly vocal segment of the antiabortion community has embraced the idea that black women are targeted for abortion in an effort to keep the black population down.

The billboards direct people to a website called toomanyaborted.com, which claims that "Under the false liberty of 'reproductive freedom' we are killing our very future."

Some black antiabortion activists call the phenomenon "womb lynching." One prominent black cleric, the Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. of New Jersey, often says the most dangerous place for a black child is the womb.

No one disputes that black women have more abortions, proportionately, than women of other races. Nationally, African Americans make up about 13% of the population and have about 37% of all abortions, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But abortion rights advocates say that is because African American women have a disproportionate number of unplanned pregnancies, an enduring problem with complex socioeconomic roots, including inadequate insurance coverage.

"The notion that abortion providers are targeting certain groups of people is absurd," said Vanessa Cullins, an African American physician who is vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's using race to undermine decisions that responsible black women are making about whether to terminate a pregnancy or not."

Radiance Foundation founder Ryan Bomberger, a 38-year-old former ad man, came up with the idea for the billboards. Adopted as a baby, he said he was conceived when his white biological mother was raped by a black man.

"I am definitely not a white Southern bigot," he said, alluding to an accusation hurled his way since the ads went up. "I am as black as President Obama."

He has also been accused of shaming black women who seek abortions. Not so, Bomberger said: "It's about exposing an industry that is stealing potential from our community."

Many African American women who support abortion rights find that message patronizing and offensive.

"Ryan is a young advertising executive who has stepped into a food fight that he doesn't quite understand," said Loretta Ross, 56, national coordinator of SisterSong, an Atlanta-based coalition of 80 women's groups that work on reproductive health issues for minorities.

"To be honest, black women aren't fooled by zealots or the church or even the individual men in our lives," Ross said. "We know that the bottom line is you don't have much control over your life when you don't control your body. Should a rapist have the right to choose the mother of his child? That's what Ryan is saying."

But many abortion foes focus on the sheer numbers involved.

Catherine Davis, minority outreach director for Georgia Right to Life, visits black college campuses, bringing the message that abortion is a destructive force for blacks. She often screens a movie called "Maafa 21," made by Texas antiabortion group Life Dynamics, alleging that blacks have been targeted for abortions since the end of slavery by white elites fearful of uncontrolled population growth.

"Let me put it this way," Davis said, "18,870,000 black babies have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade. If those babies hadn't been aborted, we would be 59 million strong -- over 19% of the population."

While the abortion rate among black women is higher than average, so is the birth rate. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006 the black birth rate was 16.5 per 1,000 women of childbearing age compared with 14.2 per 1,000 for all women.

Most black women who have abortions are already mothers or plan to have children later, Cullins said.

Which means they do not have any children right now.  And the operative term is MOST - many could therefore not want children and or might say they do simply to accomodate their actions within a framework constructed by the choice advocates.

The statistics are not persuasive for Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I know for sure that the black community is being targeted by abortionists for the purpose of ethnic cleansing," said King, a Georgia Right to Life board member who had two abortions before a religious conversion in 1983. "How can the dream survive if we are willing to sacrifice the futures of our children?"

In a scenario popularized by abortion foes, the culprit is Planned Parenthood, whose clinics are often located in poor communities where the need for subsidized healthcare is greatest.

The roots of the antipathy toward Planned Parenthood come not just from its role as the nation's largest provider of abortions and other reproductive healthcare, but from questionable social policies embraced by its founder, Margaret Sanger, the mother of the American birth control movement.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Sanger was an advocate of eugenics, a movement that posited the human species could be improved with selective breeding and the forced sterilization of the poor and "feeble-minded." That often was believed to include blacks.

She was not alone, however. In 1927 the Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote about the case's plaintiff, a young white woman who was later found to be of normal intelligence.

Abortion foes use Sanger's own words (often out of context, say abortion rights supporters) to prove that Sanger founded an organization rooted in racism.

"It's a very complicated picture," said Ross of SisterSong. "There was a eugenics movement, and it did target black people. But when Margaret Sanger first started, it was black women who came to her" for help.

Black leaders of the day -- including W.E.B. Du Bois and Adam Clayton Powell -- supported Sanger. "All these people wanted her to put clinics in African American communities because we then, as now, see fertility control as part of the racial uplift strategy," Ross said.

Historian Ellen Chesler, a Planned Parenthood board member and Sanger biographer, said that Sanger's eugenics views were applicable to sterilization, not abortion, which she generally opposed.

In 1920, Sanger wrote, "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion is justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."

"To say she is racist is counterfactual, it's inventing history," said Chesler, a professor at Hunter College.

Also, Chesler noted, eugenics is still with us: "Its most enduring legacy is IQ testing," she said. "Every woman who has amniocentesis is a eugenicist."

In Atlanta, the billboards are to remain up through March. "We are really drawing people into the history of abortion and the birth control movement," Bomberger said. "My hope is that people begin to wake up."










abortion and eugenics

Abortion and Imbeciles

I will first be a politician - what I believe is not important and I won't force my views on anyone, at any time, ever. It is entirely the individuals choice, or as far as we know at this time, only the female’s choice (perhaps in 50 years it may also be males who give birth via c-sections). In any case - I don't really care. If you want one, go have one. If you'd like two, have two. If you'd like five, by all means have five.



That is where I part ways with people like Biden and Pelosi, Kerry, and Feinstein. My faith teaches something about the sanctity of life, and I believe it is the only answer as far as this issue is concerned. I do not get more disturbed about this issue because I know, God does have the ultimate say in the end and He will sort out all the loose ends, without debate or rationalizations from the individuals involved.



What bothers me more, here on earth, is that I, a person who vehemently opposes abortions, would have to fund them.

According to Senator Diane Feinstein, it is - click here --> morally correct to require people to fund abortions.


I want to, well, I cannot be too surprised. No, Ms Feinstein, it is not morally correct to make anyone do something that is immoral or force them to support (fund) an immoral act - REGARDLESS of whether or not the law says it is legal. What you need to do is rephrase your imbecilic comment - it is legal to force people to pay for something they do not want to pay for.


Again, for me personally, it is not the abortion that so distresses me (because God sorts all that out eventually), as much as the imbecilic and retarded response by this woman, and others of her ilk.









abortion

Ginsburg: Abortion is a population control tool for unwanted groups

CNSNews.com

Justice Ginsburg Says She Originally Thought Roe v. Wade Was Designed to Limit 'Populations That We Don’t Want to Have Too Many Of'

Friday, July 10, 2009
By Christopher Neefus


(CNSNews.com) – In an interview to be published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thought the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion was predicated on the Supreme Court majority's desire to diminish “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

In the 90-minute interview in Ginsburg’s temporary chambers, Ginsburg gave the Times her perspective on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s first high court nomination. She also discussed her views on abortion.

Her comment about her belief that the court had wanted to limit certain populations through abortion came after the interviewer asked Ginsburg: “If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist agenda?”

“Reproductive choice has to be straightened out,” Ginsburg said. “There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe (to make abortion legal) are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.”

Ginsburg discussed her surprise at the outcome of Harris v. McRae, a 1980 decision that upheld the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of Medicaid and other federal funds for abortions.

Here’s a transcript of that portion of the Times' interview:

Q. Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

Justice Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the Court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.”

The comment suggested Ginsburg eventually changed her mind and concluded that Roe was not decided with the idea that abortion could be used to limit "growth in populations we don't want to have too many of." But she did not qualify her position that the policy enacted under the case put an unacceptable burden on poor women.

During the interview, the justice also affirmed a position she took on abortion during her Clinton-era confirmation hearing, suggesting the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was a better grounds for justifying abortion on demand than the "right to privacy."

“The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman,” Ginsburg told the Times. In 1993, she told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing: “(Y)ou asked me about my thinking on equal protection versus individual autonomy. My answer is that both are implicated. The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.”

The Court legalized abortion under Roe v. Wade based on a “right to privacy” that it found in the 14th Amendment---and not the Equal Protection Clause. In doing so, it said the state had an interest in protecting the unborn child that increased as pregnancy progresses. Gindburg's position that women have an equal right to abortion as a result of their gender would appear to allow for no state restrictions on abortion.









abortion

Let the Choice Begin ...

Gender test spurs abortion fears



Monday Jun 08, 2009

Briony Sowden and Martin Johnston

New Zealand Herald




A new test to reveal the gender of a fetus in early pregnancy has sparked a row over whether it will lead to sex-selection abortions.


The American-designed IntelliGender test kit, which can be used from eight weeks after conception, went on sale in Australia last month. Its Australian distributor hopes to launch it in New Zealand within a fortnight.


David Portnoy, managing director of Melbourne-based Early Image, said yesterday that he was negotiating with health products companies Douglas Pharmaceuticals and API to supply the kits to New Zealand pharmacies.


He expected they would sell for about $125.


They do not test pregnancy, so do not require state approval under the Medicines Act, unlike pregnancy tests. To use the new test, a pregnant woman mixes her urine with the kit's chemicals in the supplied container. If it turns green or black, the fetus is a boy; orange or yellow indicate a girl.


The kits are claimed to be 90 per cent accurate, but because patents have not yet been issued, the maker will not reveal the supporting data or the science of how they work.


The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is worried about what the test might lead to.


"The concern we would have is that people would then terminate pregnancies on the grounds of sex selection," said college president Dr Ted Weaver.


Anti-abortion group Voice for Life echoes this concern. Spokesman Bernard Moran said abortions for sex selection were a problem overseas and the test would facilitate this in New Zealand. "Certain ethnic minorities here might be more prone to use it."


Mr Moran was concerned to learn that the approval of the Health Ministry's Medsafe unit was not required. He said that although abortions were not permitted for sex selection, they were permitted on grounds of the mental health of the woman, and the Abortion Supervisory Committee had acknowledged that the way this was applied meant New Zealand, in effect, had abortion on demand.


Mr Portnoy, responding to the concerns about sex-selection abortions based on the test, said, "I would be amazed if anybody was to do anything so drastic based on a urine test that has a 90 per cent accuracy rate."


If a woman was intent on that course, she could, for a few hundred dollars, have a much more accurate test, such as amniocentesis.


Women can also have a state-funded ultrasound scan at 18 to 20 weeks after conception, or earlier in some cases, and these can mostly determine the sex of the fetus.


Medsafe group manager Stewart Jessamine said that until the maker of IntelliGender stated how it worked, "none of us know much about it as to whether it's anything better than a guess".














abortion

Bias or Not?

Dr. Tiller, or as Bill O'reilly called him 'Tiller the baby killer' was murdered in church on May 31, 2009. The NY Times, echoing the voice of the left calls for a wider net to be cast when determining guilt - suggesting O'Reilly and other right-wing anti-abortionists are also to blame for the murder.

The NY Times also ran an article 'Seeking Clues ...'

The Los Angeles Times ran an article informing the reader that "Many abortion foes have condemned Tiller's killing, but there are some who hope they can use violence to eliminate the few doctors who provide late-term abortions or scare others into not performing them."

And another from the LAT - Abortion Doctor George Tiller is Killed.

The coverage runs the gamut from the NYTimes, LATimes, and the Economist which ran an interesting bit -

Home Grown Terrorists under their Democracy in America page.

Interesting.

The Guardian also ran a couple columns.


George Tiller was murdered.


However, let's look at another murder and the coverage.

An army soldier was murdered in Arkansas, standing outside a recruiting office with a friend.

The coverage in the LATimes was 11 lines.

The NY Times had a column - Muslim Convert Singled Out Soldiers, Prosecutor Says.


This attack occured 1 day after Dr. Tiller.


More Americans have been killed by Muslim converts, in the military than all the abortion doctors at the hands of anti-abortion fanatics.


Yet the media coverage is awkwardly skewed.








Media

Courts: Give Everyone birth control regardless of age

And the judges decision was not, in any way, based at all on politics!

Amazing really.




FDA to allow Plan B birth control for 17-year-olds

Apr 22, 2009
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, AP

WASHINGTON - Seventeen-year-olds will be able to buy the "morning-after" emergency contraceptive without a doctor's prescription, a decision conservatives denounced as a blow to parental supervision of teens.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it was accepting rather than appealing a federal judge's order that lifts Bush administration restrictions limiting over-the-counter sales of "Plan B" to women 18 and older.

Women's groups said the FDA's action was long overdue, since the agency's own medical reviewers had initially recommended that the contraceptive be made available without any age restrictions.

U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ruled last month in a lawsuit filed in New York that President George W. Bush's appointees let politics, not science, drive their decision to restrict over-the-counter access.

Korman ordered the FDA to let 17-year-olds get the birth control pills. He also directed the agency to evaluate whether all age restrictions should be lifted.

The FDA's latest action does not mean that Plan B will be immediately available to 17-year-olds.The manufacturer must first submit a request.

"It's a good indication that the agency will move expeditiously to ensure its policy on Plan B is based solely on science," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit.

Conservatives said politics drove the decision.

"Parents should be furious at the FDA's complete disregard of parental rights and the safety of minors," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

Plan B is emergency contraception that contains a high dose of birth control drugs and will not interfere with an established pregnancy. It works by preventing ovulation or fertilization. In medical terms, pregnancy begins when a fertilized egg attaches itself to the wall of the uterus.

If taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, it can reduce a woman's chances of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent.

Critics of the contraceptive say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. Recent research suggests that's possible but not likely.

The battle over access to Plan B has dragged on for the better part of a decade, through the terms of three FDA commissioners. Among many in the medical community, it came to symbolize the decline of science at the agency because top FDA managers refused to go along with the recommendations of scientific staff and outside advisers that the drug be made available with no age restrictions.

"The FDA got caught up in a saga, it got caught up in a drama," said Susan Wood, who served as the agency's top women's health official and resigned in 2005 over delays in issuing a decision.

"This issue served as a clear example of the agency being taken off track, and it highlighted the problems FDA was facing in many other areas."

The treatment consists of two pills and sells for $35 to $60. Women must ask for Plan B at the pharmacy counter and show identification with their date of birth. The drug is made by a subsidiary of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli company. It does not prevent sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV/AIDS.

Supporters of broader access argued that Plan B is safe and effective in preventing unwanted pregnancy and could help reduce the number of abortions.

Opponents, including prominent conservatives, counter that it would encourage promiscuity and might even become a tool for criminals running prostitution rings, as well as for sexual predators.

Early in the Bush administration, more than 60 organizations petitioned the FDA to allow sales without a prescription. But according to court documents, the issue quickly became politicized.

In 2003, a panel of outside advisers voted 23-4 to recommend over-the-counter sales without age restrictions. But top FDA officials told their subordinates that no approval could be issued at the time, and the decision would be made at a higher level. That's considered highly unusual, since the FDA usually has the last word on drug decisions.

In his ruling, Korman said that FDA staffers were told the White House had been involved in the decision on Plan B. The government said in court papers that politics played no role.

In 2005, the Center for Reproductive Rights and other organizations sued in federal court to force an FDA decision.

The following year, the FDA allowed Plan B to be sold without a prescription to adults. But the controversy raged on over access for teens.











Obama

Homeland: Veterans are threats to our security

Napolitano stands by 'extremism' report
By Audrey Hudson and Eli Lake
Thursday, April 16, 2009

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was briefed before the release of a controversial intelligence assessment and that she stands by the report sent to law enforcement that lists veterans as a terrorist risk to the U.S. and defines "rightwing extremism" as including groups opposed to abortion and immigration.

The outcry resulted in a demand from the head of the American Legion to meet with Ms. Napolitano, a request the DHS chief said she would honor next week when she returns to Washington from her current tour of the U.S.-Mexican border.

"The document on right-wing extremism sent last week by this department´s Office of Intelligence and Analysis is one in an ongoing series of assessments to provide situational awareness to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies on the phenomenon and trends of violent radicalization in the United States," Ms. Napolitano said in a statement.


[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link above.]







Obama

Response to Biden's Comments Concerning Abortion

September 8, 2008

Public Servants and Moral Reasoning:
A notice to the Catholic community in northern Colorado
To Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver:

When Catholics serve on the national stage, their actions and words impact the faith of Catholics around the country. As a result, they open themselves to legitimate scrutiny by local Catholics and local bishops on matters of Catholic belief. In 2008, although NBC probably didn't intend it, Meet the Press has become a national window on the flawed moral reasoning of some Catholic public servants.

On August 24, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, describing herself as an ardent, practicing Catholic, misrepresented the overwhelming body of Catholic teaching against abortion to the show's nationwide audience, while defending her "pro-choice" abortion views. On September 7, Sen. Joseph Biden compounded the problem to the same Meet the Press audience.

Sen. Biden is a man of distinguished public service. That doesn't excuse poor logic or bad facts. Asked when life begins, Sen. Biden said that, "it's a personal and private issue." But in reality, modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it. People might argue when human "personhood" begins - though that leads public policy in very dangerous directions - but no one can any longer claim that the beginning of life is a matter of religious opinion.

Sen. Biden also confused the nature of pluralism. Real pluralism thrives on healthy, non-violent disagreement; it requires an environment where people of conviction will struggle respectfully but vigorously to advance their beliefs. In his interview, the senator observed that other people with strong religious views disagree with the Catholic approach to abortion. It's certainly true that we need to acknowledge the views of other people and compromise whenever possible - but not at the expense of a developing child's right to life. Abortion is a foundational issue; it is not an issue like housing policy or the price of foreign oil. It always involves the intentional killing of an innocent life, and it is always, grievously wrong. If, as Sen. Biden said, "I'm prepared as a matter of faith [emphasis added] to accept that life begins at the moment of conception," then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.

As the senator said in his interview, he has opposed public funding for abortions. To his great credit, he also backed a successful ban on partial-birth abortions. But his strong support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the false "right" to abortion it enshrines, can't be excused by any serious Catholic. Support for Roe and the "right to choose" an abortion simply masks what abortion is, and what abortion does. Roe is bad law. As long as it stands, it prevents returning the abortion issue to the states where it belongs, so that the American people can decide its future through fair debate and legislation.

In his Meet the Press interview, Sen. Biden used a morally exhausted argument that American Catholics have been hearing for 40 years: i.e., that Catholics can't "impose" their religiously based views on the rest of the country. But resistance to abortion is a matter of human rights, not religious opinion. And the senator knows very well as a lawmaker that all law involves the imposition of some people's convictions on everyone else. That is the nature of the law. American Catholics have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the destruction of more than a million developing unborn children a year. Other people have imposed their "pro-choice" beliefs on American society without any remorse for decades.If we claim to be Catholic, then American Catholics, including public officials who describe themselvesas Catholic, need to act accordingly.

We need to put an end to Roe and the industry of permissive abortion it enables. Otherwise all of us - from senators and members of Congress, to Catholic laypeople in the pews - fail not only as believers and disciples, but also as citizens.


Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver

Obama - Life and Death - Birth and Human Rights

Rick Warren asked both Senator Obama and McCain the following question:
“When do babies get human rights?”

Obama responded:


“I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade”



*****************************

Obama does not know with certainty at what point the baby gets human rights, AND YET he votes against human rights for babies, EVEN AFTER they have been born (partial birth abortions) or after botched abortions.

He does not know when they get human rights and yet, it would seem, even after they are born, they do not possess human rights.

It is above his pay grade.

If it was above his pay grade, should you not err in favor rather than against. If Marines are surveying an area and see a shape in the distance - should they simply shoot it, because it is above their pay grade to figure out who it is and whether it is a cow or child, woman, or terrorist.

Above their pay grade to check.


It is most certainly above Obama's pay grade - the possibility of being president, and it should remain so. He hasn't a clue.







Obama