Abortion Kills Children and Entire Populations

Since Roe v. Wadelegalized abortion in January 1973, more than 55 million babies have been aborted in America.

If a number like “55 million” is hard to grasp, think of it this way—if you added together the populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, and San Francisco, you would only have about 26.1 million people—less than half the number aborted.

Looked at in this way, it’s easier to understand just how many missing people “55 million” represents.

Yet the tremendous number of lives taken here actually pales in comparison to the number of human lives wiped out in other countries, where abortion has been legal for longer and Christianity sidelined more readily.

In the former Soviet Union, where abortion for medical reasons was declared legal in 1955 and abortion for any reason was legalized in 1968, the number of abortions was approximately 113.2 millionthrough 1980—a profoundly staggering number.

During this moral nadir the average Soviet woman had 8 abortions.

As recently as 2008, abortion was still “the common method of birth control” in Russia.

Starting from a ban on abortion and projecting forward just a few decades, it’s very difficult to grasp the magnitude of this human, demographic, and moral tragedy. Over time the de facto meaning of words like “medical necessity” has become “abortion on demand.”  Might we be headed down the same path?  Many today seem to be engaged in a form of moral and demographic solipsism—pretending or denying the reality that a loss of human life on this scale   will have no effect.

Some abortion advocates these days fight to prevent women from seeing ultrasound images of the babies they carry. Some will not even discuss the enormous numbers of unborn children dying each year or the cumulative total of humans lost to abortion in the United States.

In Russia—the largest nation on earth geographically—the population is down to an estimated 140 million, shrinking by several million each year. Put bluntly, they are killing themselves faster than they are replacing themselves. Immigration—legal or illegal—aside, do we really want to continue down this path toward national genocide?

In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the falling birthrate—a consequence of high abortion—as “the most acute problem of contemporary Russia.” The same pattern is occurring in Spain, Italy, and most other European nations.

With the ramifications of unfettered abortion on demand so undeniably clear, why aren’t we learning from our mistakes?

Shouldn’t we pursue life for a change?

Benjamin Bull

Benjamin Bull is an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom.

http://townhall.com/columnists/benjaminbull/2012/10/16/abortion_kills_children_and_entire_populations/page/full/

Islamic Exceptionalism

The “enlightened” who claim a firm grip on the steering wheel of Western civilization see the future through a lens in which man becomes ever more perfectible as outdated religious creeds fade away. And thus the irony. For all the contempt these cosmopolitans show for religion, there is one faith beyond public rebuke. Call it Islamic exceptionalism.

 

Public Enemy No. 1 right now is the man who made a ridiculously shoddy YouTube video titled “The Innocence of Muslims.” This man and his so-called “film” have been blamed with a very broad brush for every riot and protest across the Mideast.

It is all so … impossible. This video sat unwatched for months until an Egyptian television station decided to promote it as some kind of global insult. Not you, not anyone you know and not anyone they know ever heard of this. But when the “Arab street” decided to stage riots outside American embassies, our government derided “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

Susan Rice, our ambassador to the United Nations, even wrongly blamed the terrorist attack that killed our ambassador and three others in Libya on the video. She told ABC News it was “a direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”

The Obama administration asked YouTube to review whether it should be censored, since it may have violated the website’s terms of service. Its maker was publicly outed and dragged by a posse of armed cops into a “voluntary” session with his federal probation officers in Los Angeles.

This is the exact opposite of the way the so-called “progressive” elites usually toast the eviscerators of religion in Hollywood and Manhattan.

Rather than condemn attacks on all religions as “reprehensible and disgusting,” they usually honor the courage of the artist who put ants on Christ’s crucifix, or sinks it in a vial of urine, or smears dung on an image of the Virgin Mary. As part of their arrogant dance on behalf of “artistic freedom,” the cosmopolitans not only insist these artists are to be honored, but they demand and expect Christian taxpayers to subsidize them.

As a carpet-bagging candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York in 1999, Hillary Clinton was no Profile in Outrage. After several days of silence after Chris Ofili’s dung-smeared Virgin Mary hit the fan when it was displayed at the taxpayer-funded Brooklyn Museum, Mrs. Clinton announced, “Our feelings of being offended should not lead to the penalizing and shutting down of an entire museum.”

Last year, the AP reported Mrs. Clinton attended a showing of “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway from the strenuously religion-bashing “South Park” creators, apparently without holding a press conference before or after the musical to declare “We condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

Islamic exceptionalism really showed its ugly head when the elites started arguing in national newspapers that the video creator should be jailed. On September 13, USA Today put forward religion professor Anthea Butler to declare she wouldn’t have jailed the makers of “The Last Temptation of Christ,” but she would jail the anti-Muslim director because he “indirectly and inadvertently inflamed people half a world away, resulting in the deaths of U.S. Embassy personnel.”

That’s not only factually untrue, since we’ve learned the Libya attack had nothing to do with YouTube. It grants Muslim radicals a permit to jail any artist they feel has insulted Islam. And what of the millions of Christians insulted by that hideous Jesus movie?

Even so-called journalists have supported censorship. Sarah Chayes, NPR’s past Paris Bureau Chief for six years, wrote in the Los Angeles Times on September 18 that his video was “not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution” because it inflames radicals half a world away. In her long experience in Afghanistan, she has seen Pakistani radicals use any “pretext” for riots — and she wants those “pretexts” removed from the Internet.

She calls the video “speech that is deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk.” Like many Islamic exceptionalists, she claimed “heightened volatility” in the Mideast demands a crackdown: “such provocation is certainly irresponsible — and reveals an ironic alliance of convenience between Christian extremists and the Islamist extremists they claim to hate.”

One satirist put this hyperbole in perspective. Fouad Ajami recounted a mock Twitter statement by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, presently butchering his Muslim subjects. “Wow, it’s good that I’ve been killing women and children. It’s good I’ve been shelling mosques,” said the fake tweet. “Imagine what would have happened had I made an anti-Muslim video. They would have really come after me.”

Brent Bozell

Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.

http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2012/09/21/islamic_exceptionalism/page/full/

I Used to Love Her but I Had To Kill Her

Author’s Note: I will be speaking in Still Hall Auditorium at Clarion University in Clarion, PA this Thursday, March 29th. The speech will begin at 7 p.m. and will last about 75 minutes unless it is aborted before it comes to term. I’ll let you guess the topic.

My recent engagement lasted only a few days and has resulted in some unfortunate rumors spreading across the internet. It is therefore necessary for me to take a break from the usual subject matter of my columns in order to shed some light on a most unfortunate turn of events.

Anna and I met a few years ago and formed a quick friendship. We both enjoy running, reading, and listening to live music in some of the local establishments in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. Our time together was often limited by my hectic travel schedule.

Back in September, however, we began to spend a lot more time together. Just a couple of weeks ago, while we were hanging out on the south end of Wrightsville Beach, I proposed marriage. In a fit of temporary insanity, she accepted. We began to make plans for our wedding until things changed drastically just a few days ago.

After we became engaged, Anna revealed a secret to me. I always knew she was adopted. But I did not know that when she was 32 years old she embarked on a mission to locate her biological mother. She did this so she could learn the reasons why she was given up for adoption. She did it for peace of mind but the result of her research was unsettling: Anna found out she was a product of rape.

When I found out the news, I acted immediately. I killed Anna while she was sleeping and then dumped for body off of Johnny Mercer’s pier at Wrightsville Beach. And now I face a long legal battle in which my lawyers will attempt to argue that Anna, as a product of rape, does not have the same rights as other persons. In fact, whatever rights she may possess are outweighed by a compelled need to destroy evidence of rape, which might remind a rape victim of a past sexual assault.

My argument will be simple: I believe that Anna was no more or less of a person as an adult than she was as an unborn child. Therefore, it would have been permissible to kill her at either stage of development so long as that killing was motivated by compassion for the victim of rape.

I anticipate four rebuttals to my argument. Accordingly, I present my counterarguments to all of them below:

1. Size. Some say that the unborn are not persons simply because they are smaller than those who have been born. This is a dangerous argument. If we accept it, we destroy both racial and gender equality. Asians are smaller than blacks. Women are smaller than men. Are we really prepared to say that Asian womenare not fully persons? What fraction of a person are they in relation to black men? Are they three-fifths of a person? 

2. Level of development.  Some will say that personhood is attained at a certain level of development or that it varies with development. This is also a dangerous argument that destroys human equality. A twenty-two year old woman has a fully functioning reproductive system and, in many cases, a college degree. A two year old girl has neither. Is she therefore a non-person? Or is she just a partial person? Could she be killed legally? Or would her killing be considered a lesser form of homicide?

3. Environment. A woman in Los Angeles had her baby two months before it was due. Her sister in New York had an abortion one month before it was due. Could the woman in Los Angeles have killed her baby one month after it was born? Why not? There is no difference in size or development between these two East and West Coast cousins. Are we prepared to say that moving eight inches down a birth canal makes one a person? Since when does where you are determine what you are? Be careful before you answer. And be careful before you take your next step.

4. Degree of dependency. The older I get, the worse this argument seems to become. If we are prepared to say that we become persons when we become independent then we must also be saying that we can lose our personhood. This can happen due to a car accident, a serious illness, or simply due to old age. Regardless, this just doesn’t work. Besides, I know some 16 year olds that could be killed according to this logic.

 

It should be evident from the foregoing that it is high time that we stop playing games with human equality. We all know the unborn are persons. And we’ve been killing them in the womb for years. In fact, we’ve been enshrining the practice in the constitution since 1973. If we say that the reason we have been doing so is that the unborn are only “potential” persons then we must be prepared for some pretty broad implications.

I propose instead that we carve out a narrow defense to homicide that allows us to kill products of rape because they remind us of a painful violent event. That is the best way to deal with things from my perspective. It will make the world appear to be a better place. Of course, there will be more murder. But it will seem like there is less rape. And that will make all the killing worth our while.

Tags:                 A Culture of Life            ,                                    Abortion            ,                                    Pro-Life            ,                                    pro-choice

Mike Adams

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” On Campus.

http://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2012/03/26/i_used_to_love_her_but_i_had_to_kill_her/page/full/

‘Disgusted beyond belief’: Parents shaken by ex-Calif. teacher’s molestation charges By msnbc.com staff and news services

KNBC-TV‘s Patrick Healy reports.

 

By msnbc.com staff and news services

LOS ANGELES — There was never any outward indication that anything was wrong in Mark Berndt’s classroom at Miramonte Elementary School in south Los Angeles. School officials and law enforcement authorities say they never received any complaints about the third-grade teacher, who is accused of blindfolding students, putting tape on their mouths and taking photos of them with live cockroaches or a spoon full of semen.

The photographs, brought to the attention of authorities last January by a film processor, eventually led to Berndt’s arrest on Monday on charges that he committed lewd acts on 23 boys and girls, ages 6 to 10, between 2008 and 2010.

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The 61-year-old made his first court appearance on Wednesday. His bail was raised to $23 million from $2.3 million. His arraignment was scheduled for Feb. 21.

“If it wasn’t for the film processor, this could still be continuing today,” sheriff’s Lt. Carlos Marquez told the Associated Press.

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Damian Dovarganes / AP

Students are escorted to a waiting bus as they leave Miramonte Elementary school after classes Tuesday.

 

Five more children have contacted sheriff’s investigators since Berndt’s arrest, which could lead to additional charges, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy told msnbc.com on Tuesday that there was nothing in Berndt’s 30-year record with the school district to indicate a problem. “Not so much as a single complaint,” he said.

“I am disgusted beyond belief,”  Deasy said. “I’m a dad as well as a superintendent and it’s horrifying.”

Some parents picking up their students at the school on Tuesday complained that school officials should have notified them when the photos were discovered last year. Berndt was fired immediately after the investigation began, and placed under surveillance, but parents didn’t learn why until this week.

“My concern is why, if the principal knew this in advance, why didn’t he inform us?” Gloria Polanco, the mother of a second- and a third-grader, said to the Associated Press. “How long has he been doing this?”

Deborah Harmon, whose 7-year-old granddaughter goes to the elementary, was also upset about the length of time it took school administrators to notify parents of the allegations.

“It’s a sense of violation and betrayal because you think that your children are safe when you send them to school but they’re not safe,” Harmon told NBCLosAngeles.com.

The photographs uncovered reveal disturbing images. Some allegedly show Berndt with his arm around the children or with his hand over their mouths, according to a statement by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. In addition, authorities say the images depict girls with a blue plastic spoon filled with a substance, later determined to be semen. There were also photos of children with large, live Madagascar-type cockroaches on their faces and mouths.

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Early in the investigation, Special Victims Bureau detectives say they recovered a blue plastic spoon and an empty container from the trash in Bernd’t classroom. The recovered items tested positive for semen, authorities said, and the suspect’s DNA matched the DNA profile found on the spoon and container.

“We ended up finding out through DNA that the white substance was bodily fluids from our suspect,” Marquez told NBCLosAngeles.com.

A search warrant served by detectives on Berndt’s home also led to the discovery of more than 100 similar photographs depicting children, authorities aid. Also found was a DVD depicting adult sexual “bondage” activity. The adults in that DVD are not identified, according to detectives.

Investigators are still working to identify 10 of the child victims in the 390 photos uncovered.

Authorities are recommending the children be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, the Associated Press reported.

The Associated Press contribued to this story.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/01/10289454-disgusted-beyond-belief-parents-shaken-by-ex-calif-teachers-molestation-charges