0 comment Wednesday, December 3, 2014 | admin
This story, of the abortionist arrested in Philadelphia, is generating discussion around the right-wing and pro-life blogs.
The photos of those arrested, including Gosnell and his wife, are at the link. What a cast of characters.
Readers will have noticed that I don't blog much about abortion. It seems an exercise in futility, given that both sides are hardened in their positions. Just about everyone has strong feelings one way or the other on that subject. But the feminists and leftists and some on the ''right'' insist that women have a 'right' to choose -- though they don't agree on what a woman is 'choosing' when she goes to an abortionist. To pro-life people, what she is choosing is ending the life of her child, ending a human life, the life of a boy or girl, who would have grown into a man or woman with a name and a personality and a soul. The pro-aborts (who insist on styling themselves 'pro-choice') deny to themselves and to others that a 'fetus' or 'embryo' is fully human. I don't want to spend futile hours trying to convince people otherwise; they simply 'choose' to deny the humanity of the aborted children, and they won't be convinced.
This gruesome story out of Philadelphia should convince people that abortion is cruel, a dirty business. Instead, though, what I think the pro-abortion people will do, in true leftist fashion, is to use this as an argument for government health care (''then there would be more oversight and better conditions," etc.) or they will argue that if abortion were not legal, this kind of thing would be universal, with 'back-alley butchers' providing abortions to poor women in 'need' of their services.
As it is, some of the articles I've read emphasized that these people 'targeted' minority women and immigrants. So it is being implicitly tied to race. That is a bad tactic for lots of reasons.
First of all, it's evident from the pictures that many of the principals involved, the people whose pictures are shown in the Daily Mail article, are not White, apart from three of the women. It seems more than absurd to make this a case of 'targeting minorities and immigrants.'
And yet, I am sorry to say, there is already considerable anti-abortion propaganda promoting the notion of a 'black holocaust', a concerted effort to abort black babies in particular. I blogged about that misguided campaign a couple of years ago, and it seems to be gaining momentum. On various newspaper comment sections on this news story of the abortion clinic, people are repeating the stories of black children being the target of a campaign to reduce their population. The 'g' word, 'genocide', is even being used.
I was actually working on a post about that issue over the last couple of days. It seems to have been put on my heart, as it were, to speak out against that.
Herman Cain, the new idol among the Free Republic faithful, has said
"I absolutely would defund Planned Parenthood -- not because I don't believe in planning parenthood, [but because] Planned Parenthood as an organization is an absolute farce on the American people," he notes. "People who know the history of Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, they know that the intention was not to help young women who get pregnant to plan their parenthood. No -- it was a sham to be able to kill black babies."
The meme that is circulating is that Margaret Sanger, the feminist who was the foremother of the 'Family Planning' movement, was part of a plot to eliminate the black race via family planning/abortion. A quote is being passed around (with no link to back it up; I have searched for it and it does not turn up on the web) which has Sanger mentioning this diabolical plot, as if to admit it. Something does not quite ring true about it, but it seems to appeal to many on the right, as it fits like a glove with this talking point that ''liberals are the REAL racists", and of course Sanger and Malthus are arch-villains among many Republicans.
The quote from Sanger seems to be drawn from a biographical work written by Ellen Chesler
Yet all the evidence is that Sanger was not a 'racist' by any standard definition; she apparently was friends with, and worked with W.E.B. DuBois and other prominent black leaders. Sanger is certainly not a heroine of mine, but there is no evidence that she had genocidal plans towards nonwhites or anyone else. If anyone has a link showing the quote or the context, it would be appreciated.
As far as wanting to discourage reproduction by certain people (the poor, criminally inclined, and mentally impaired) this was commonplace in Sanger's day, and the fact is much of the effort at encouraging sterilization was aimed at White people, too, as witness all the literature written at the time about 'backwoods' families like the pseudonymous Jukes and Kallikaks, who were White people with criminal proclivities, mental aberrations or chronic alcoholism.
The idea that these proponents of eugenics were out to eliminate blacks or other minorities is far-fetched, except to those who see 'Whitey' as being genocidal by nature. Apparently some Republicans have no scruples about promoting that idea -- as long as it is liberals who are being labeled as genocidal racists.
This is just wrong. If I am to believe liberals want to eliminate anybody, I would say it is European-descended people, not minority races. To say otherwise is to turn reality on its head.
A number of people have been promulgating this idea; examples here. And it isn't just the liberal Christian clergy; a Republican congressman from Arizona introduced a bill (which did not pass) which insinuates some kind of racial plot in the abortion industry, using the term 'race selection abortions.' From that bill:
2) RACIAL DISCRIMINATION FINDINGS-
[...]
(C) A 'race-selection abortion� is an abortion performed for purposes of eliminating an unborn child because the child or a parent of the child is of an undesired race. Race-selection abortion is barbaric, and described by civil rights advocates as an act of race-based violence, predicated on race discrimination. By definition, race-selection abortions do not implicate the health of mother of the unborn, but instead are elective procedures motivated by race bias.
(D) No State has enacted law to proscribe the performance of race-selection abortions.
(E) Race-selection abortions have the effect of diminishing the number of minorities in the American population and therefore, the American electorate.
(F) Race-selection abortion reinforces racial discrimination and has no place in a civilized society.''
However, the Guttmacher Institute which keeps statistics on these kinds of things says:
This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.
The Issues4Life Foundation, for example, is a faith-based organization that targets and works with African-American leaders toward achieving the goal of "zero African-American lives lost to abortion or biotechnology." In April, Issues4Life wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus to denounce Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its "racist and eugenic goals."
The group blamed PPFA and abortion providers in general for the high abortion rate in the African-American community�deeming the situation the "Da[r]fur of America"�and called on Congress to withdraw federal family planning funds from all PPFA affiliates.
These activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women�black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.
Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women's unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all.''
I would think that if there were any suspicion that there is a racial agenda in abortion the Guttmacher Institute would be the first to denounce it, being as liberal as they seem to be.
I fear that there is an eagerness on the part of the pro-life groups to find some strategy that works to combat abortion. Perhaps they think they can grasp this race-baiting issue and turn people against abortion on the basis that it is directed against blacks. I think this is an ill-advised tactic to use, although I fear that many of today's Christians have become so politically correct that they actually believe that there is such a plot against blacks, immigrants, or other such oppressed groups.
To believe this, however, is to believe the worst about our people. And despite all the anger I may direct towards leftists, I cannot bring myself to believe that they are plotting against blacks or immigrants, or that Whites are in general so diabolical that they would concoct such a plot on a wide scale. Considering how Afrocentric our society has become in my lifetime, it beggars belief to say that there is some huge conspiracy to practice 'race-selection' by abortion.
I think it is an ill-conceived propaganda effort to try to discredit family planning and abortion. And although I oppose abortion, this is an immoral way to try to combat it. It amounts to accusing people with very flimsy evidence, or no evidence at all. It is attributing motives of which there is no solid proof. It may very well be 'bearing false witness' which we are enjoined not to do, as Christians.
Given the fact that minority groups have many ongoing rumors about some plot against them by White people (for example, AIDS was supposedly invented to target blacks and gays, etc.,) it is reckless and irresponsible to foment yet another rumor of machinations by Whites against blacks.
This could easily get out of hand and cause great damage.
And for White ''conservatives'' to stoop to accusing fellow Whites of these horrendous plots is troubling. We have enough division and conflict over racial matters without White people accusing each other of heinous plans and deeds, fueling more animosity and mistrust.
I have just about zero respect for leftists; those who are 'useful idiots' for the progressive cause, I occasionally feel pity for. However I will not recklessly accuse my kinsmen, absent any real proof of the charges. I will not have this on my hands, if these rumors cause harm to others.
The photos of those arrested, including Gosnell and his wife, are at the link. What a cast of characters.
Readers will have noticed that I don't blog much about abortion. It seems an exercise in futility, given that both sides are hardened in their positions. Just about everyone has strong feelings one way or the other on that subject. But the feminists and leftists and some on the ''right'' insist that women have a 'right' to choose -- though they don't agree on what a woman is 'choosing' when she goes to an abortionist. To pro-life people, what she is choosing is ending the life of her child, ending a human life, the life of a boy or girl, who would have grown into a man or woman with a name and a personality and a soul. The pro-aborts (who insist on styling themselves 'pro-choice') deny to themselves and to others that a 'fetus' or 'embryo' is fully human. I don't want to spend futile hours trying to convince people otherwise; they simply 'choose' to deny the humanity of the aborted children, and they won't be convinced.
This gruesome story out of Philadelphia should convince people that abortion is cruel, a dirty business. Instead, though, what I think the pro-abortion people will do, in true leftist fashion, is to use this as an argument for government health care (''then there would be more oversight and better conditions," etc.) or they will argue that if abortion were not legal, this kind of thing would be universal, with 'back-alley butchers' providing abortions to poor women in 'need' of their services.
As it is, some of the articles I've read emphasized that these people 'targeted' minority women and immigrants. So it is being implicitly tied to race. That is a bad tactic for lots of reasons.
First of all, it's evident from the pictures that many of the principals involved, the people whose pictures are shown in the Daily Mail article, are not White, apart from three of the women. It seems more than absurd to make this a case of 'targeting minorities and immigrants.'
And yet, I am sorry to say, there is already considerable anti-abortion propaganda promoting the notion of a 'black holocaust', a concerted effort to abort black babies in particular. I blogged about that misguided campaign a couple of years ago, and it seems to be gaining momentum. On various newspaper comment sections on this news story of the abortion clinic, people are repeating the stories of black children being the target of a campaign to reduce their population. The 'g' word, 'genocide', is even being used.
I was actually working on a post about that issue over the last couple of days. It seems to have been put on my heart, as it were, to speak out against that.
Herman Cain, the new idol among the Free Republic faithful, has said
"I absolutely would defund Planned Parenthood -- not because I don't believe in planning parenthood, [but because] Planned Parenthood as an organization is an absolute farce on the American people," he notes. "People who know the history of Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, they know that the intention was not to help young women who get pregnant to plan their parenthood. No -- it was a sham to be able to kill black babies."
The meme that is circulating is that Margaret Sanger, the feminist who was the foremother of the 'Family Planning' movement, was part of a plot to eliminate the black race via family planning/abortion. A quote is being passed around (with no link to back it up; I have searched for it and it does not turn up on the web) which has Sanger mentioning this diabolical plot, as if to admit it. Something does not quite ring true about it, but it seems to appeal to many on the right, as it fits like a glove with this talking point that ''liberals are the REAL racists", and of course Sanger and Malthus are arch-villains among many Republicans.
The quote from Sanger seems to be drawn from a biographical work written by Ellen Chesler
Yet all the evidence is that Sanger was not a 'racist' by any standard definition; she apparently was friends with, and worked with W.E.B. DuBois and other prominent black leaders. Sanger is certainly not a heroine of mine, but there is no evidence that she had genocidal plans towards nonwhites or anyone else. If anyone has a link showing the quote or the context, it would be appreciated.
As far as wanting to discourage reproduction by certain people (the poor, criminally inclined, and mentally impaired) this was commonplace in Sanger's day, and the fact is much of the effort at encouraging sterilization was aimed at White people, too, as witness all the literature written at the time about 'backwoods' families like the pseudonymous Jukes and Kallikaks, who were White people with criminal proclivities, mental aberrations or chronic alcoholism.
The idea that these proponents of eugenics were out to eliminate blacks or other minorities is far-fetched, except to those who see 'Whitey' as being genocidal by nature. Apparently some Republicans have no scruples about promoting that idea -- as long as it is liberals who are being labeled as genocidal racists.
This is just wrong. If I am to believe liberals want to eliminate anybody, I would say it is European-descended people, not minority races. To say otherwise is to turn reality on its head.
A number of people have been promulgating this idea; examples here. And it isn't just the liberal Christian clergy; a Republican congressman from Arizona introduced a bill (which did not pass) which insinuates some kind of racial plot in the abortion industry, using the term 'race selection abortions.' From that bill:
2) RACIAL DISCRIMINATION FINDINGS-
[...]
(C) A 'race-selection abortion� is an abortion performed for purposes of eliminating an unborn child because the child or a parent of the child is of an undesired race. Race-selection abortion is barbaric, and described by civil rights advocates as an act of race-based violence, predicated on race discrimination. By definition, race-selection abortions do not implicate the health of mother of the unborn, but instead are elective procedures motivated by race bias.
(D) No State has enacted law to proscribe the performance of race-selection abortions.
(E) Race-selection abortions have the effect of diminishing the number of minorities in the American population and therefore, the American electorate.
(F) Race-selection abortion reinforces racial discrimination and has no place in a civilized society.''
However, the Guttmacher Institute which keeps statistics on these kinds of things says:
This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.
The Issues4Life Foundation, for example, is a faith-based organization that targets and works with African-American leaders toward achieving the goal of "zero African-American lives lost to abortion or biotechnology." In April, Issues4Life wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus to denounce Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its "racist and eugenic goals."
The group blamed PPFA and abortion providers in general for the high abortion rate in the African-American community�deeming the situation the "Da[r]fur of America"�and called on Congress to withdraw federal family planning funds from all PPFA affiliates.
These activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women�black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.
Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women's unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all.''
I would think that if there were any suspicion that there is a racial agenda in abortion the Guttmacher Institute would be the first to denounce it, being as liberal as they seem to be.
I fear that there is an eagerness on the part of the pro-life groups to find some strategy that works to combat abortion. Perhaps they think they can grasp this race-baiting issue and turn people against abortion on the basis that it is directed against blacks. I think this is an ill-advised tactic to use, although I fear that many of today's Christians have become so politically correct that they actually believe that there is such a plot against blacks, immigrants, or other such oppressed groups.
To believe this, however, is to believe the worst about our people. And despite all the anger I may direct towards leftists, I cannot bring myself to believe that they are plotting against blacks or immigrants, or that Whites are in general so diabolical that they would concoct such a plot on a wide scale. Considering how Afrocentric our society has become in my lifetime, it beggars belief to say that there is some huge conspiracy to practice 'race-selection' by abortion.
I think it is an ill-conceived propaganda effort to try to discredit family planning and abortion. And although I oppose abortion, this is an immoral way to try to combat it. It amounts to accusing people with very flimsy evidence, or no evidence at all. It is attributing motives of which there is no solid proof. It may very well be 'bearing false witness' which we are enjoined not to do, as Christians.
Given the fact that minority groups have many ongoing rumors about some plot against them by White people (for example, AIDS was supposedly invented to target blacks and gays, etc.,) it is reckless and irresponsible to foment yet another rumor of machinations by Whites against blacks.
This could easily get out of hand and cause great damage.
And for White ''conservatives'' to stoop to accusing fellow Whites of these horrendous plots is troubling. We have enough division and conflict over racial matters without White people accusing each other of heinous plans and deeds, fueling more animosity and mistrust.
I have just about zero respect for leftists; those who are 'useful idiots' for the progressive cause, I occasionally feel pity for. However I will not recklessly accuse my kinsmen, absent any real proof of the charges. I will not have this on my hands, if these rumors cause harm to others.
Labels: Political Correctness, Pro-Life Movement