Problems Solutions and Trade Offs

Occasionally, a columnist must issue an apology for something he wrote that, while seeming correct at the time, later proved to be misguided. Today, is one of those occasions where I must take the time to write a retraction concerning a column I wrote some time ago. Although it has been roughly four years since the column appeared, I am still compelled to offer an apology.

The issue concerns the use of pictures of the aftermath of abortion and whether the pictures should be displayed on college campuses, which are obviously populated by scores of women who have, in fact, suffered through the trauma of abortion. Four years ago, I took the position that the pro-life movement should not be doing that. The publication of that opinion constituted a serious error of judgment on my behalf. Accordingly, I offer an apology to my readers as well as an explanation of how I arrived at that incorrect conclusion.

Liberals have a tendency to think in terms of problems and solutions, not in terms of tradeoffs. We see this all the time. A liberal will identify a social problem. Then, he will attempt to identify a solution. The bad news for the rest of us is that the liberal “solution” usually involves government intervention, not private initiative.

The “problem” I identified four years ago came from a survey on campus censorship – one that I gave in my Introduction to Criminal Justice class every semester. I simply asked which book they would like to see banned from the library and which person or group they would like to see banned from campus. I then moved into a discussion of how the growing tendency to censor (with government backing) threatens our campus environment.

For years, the KKK and the Black Panthers vied for first place among the groups my students would most like to ban from campus. Then, in 2008 I was hit with a shocking new development: students voted “pro-lifers” as the group they most wanted to see kicked off campus. Their reason was simple: they sometimes showed pictures of aborted babies.

I saw this as a “problem.” Therefore, I wrote suggesting a “solution.” The solution was that we, as pro-lifers, should voluntarily abandon the practice of showing such pictures on campus. I did not advocate government backed censorship – the kind of advocacy we expect to hear from liberals. I just thought that voluntary abandonment of the practice would be the best “solution.” In retrospect, the suggestion was more than just naïve. It was stupid. And I am very sorry I ever wrote the column.

Living in an imperfect world among fallen people does not generally facilitate finding solutions to problems. Life is not that simple. Instead, it involves the making of decisions involving trade-offs. The decision of whether pictures of aborted babies should be displayed – even on campuses among those who have experienced abortion – is no different. So I should not have approached the issue like the liberals analyzing things within a problem/solution framework. I should have examined the trade-offs.

Put simply, the use of graphic abortion pictures on college campuses will upset women who have had abortions. They will also upset men who have financed abortions – especially those who actively pressured women into having them. But a greater number of people will be awaked to the fact that abortion involves the dismemberment of innocent human beings. Confrontation with those pictures will put the lie to the assertion that the unborn is nothing more than a clump of cells. The confrontation will draw an unmistakable moral distinction between the picking of a scab and the termination of a pregnancy. There may be negative aspects to showing the pictures. But they are far outweighed by the information they convey and the moral impulse they compel.

Put simply, we cannot enable those who would deny the American Holocaust in order to reduce emotional discomfort. That is not an acceptable trade-off. It sounds more like a final solution.

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/2012/09/03/problems_solutions_and_trade_offs/page/full/

Two Nice People! By Rod Anderson , CP Cartoonist

. . . technology can also be a huge advantage in the fight to recognize and protect the sanctity of human life-every human life. For example, pro-lifers have worked diligently to place sonogram machines into pregnancy care clinics, and the presence of these high-tech wonders-which clearly show the humanity of the fetus-has no doubt contributed mightily to a substantial drop in the abortion rate, as well as a marked increase in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be pro-life.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/two-nice-people-77743/

A Murder of One

Some years ago, I was sitting in a tree stand in Sampson County, North Carolina. Less than an hour after ascending into the stand, a beautiful doe stepped into my field of vision. I raised my 30/30 and set my sights just behind her right shoulder. Just as I was about to pull the trigger, I saw something moving along the outer perimeter of my field of vision. I glanced to my right and saw a young fawn grazing just 25 yards away from its mother – the doe I had nearly shot. I had to draw my weapon down for a moment and reassess the situation.

After I took a second careful look at the doe and the fawn, I made a decision. I took the shot and watched the doe run about fifty yards until she rolled over under a tree and died resting in a bed of leaves. As I turned around and got ready to step down out the tree stand, I saw the fawn stop and turn around to look for its mother. Seeing nothing, the young deer turned and ran off into the distance.

When I came upon the fallen doe resting in the bed of leaves, I was relieved to see that my assessment of the situation was correct. She was no longer nursing. That meant her young fawn was ready to survive on its own. That is important to me because I would never want to see the fawn left to fend for itself and try to survive on its own unless it was ready to do so. I try to show a concern for helpless young fawns that exceeds our president’s concern for helpless young humans. It isn’t hard to do.

I’ve never met a pro-abortion liberal who disagreed with my assertion that the young fawn is living and fully a deer even before it has the capacity to survive on its own. But many liberals view the unborn as less than persons simply because they lack the ability to survive on their own. This strange deference to the deer (but not the human) is symptomatic of a deeply confused worldview – one that refuses to see man as made in the image of God.

Several weeks ago, I ran across one such person. I assume she was a person though she may well have been dependent on the government for her survival. She argued vigorously that the unborn are not persons until they are capable of surviving on their own. She was somewhat emotional as she argued with me. So I struggled for just the right example to come to my mind – one that would convince her that dependency did not undermine personhood. I wanted to plant a stone in her shoe by making her think deeply without deepening her defensiveness. Within seconds, it came to me.

Because I teach law courses, I am forced to illustrate points by using hypotheticals, which I must often think up on the spur of the moment. In the middle of our discussion of dependency and personhood, I asked the young women to consider the following hypothetical:

I am a member of a gang that has just decided to retaliate against a rival gang for a drug-related murder. While driving by the home of the rival gang member, I fire ten shots into what I thought was his bedroom window. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The room housed two of his siblings. Consequently, the bullets struck and killed both of his twin sisters. How many counts of murder should I face in court?

 

Without hesitation, the pro-choice woman said “That’s easy. Two.” Then I asked her the $64,000 question: “Would it change your answer if they were Siamese twins?” Without hesitation, she replied, “Of course not.” Checkmate.

I followed up by reminding her that the twins were not only physically connected to one another but also dependent on one another for survival. If depending on another for survival does, in fact, undermine personhood then I was responsible for zero, as opposed to two, counts of murder. In other words, the dependency argument that gives license to kill unborn babies also gives license to kill Siamese twins. And that is no mark of compassion.

Shortly after we ended the conversation, the woman stood up and thanked me for talking to her. When she stood, I noticed a bulge around her waistline. About a minute later, her pro-life friend approached me and thanked me, too. It was then that I learned she was five months pregnant. In other words, as she was making the dependency argument she was carrying a baby that was not “viable.”

Ideas have consequences so we must be prepared to answer them with both logic and evidence. The stakes are always high. Abortion season lasts twelve months out of every year.

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/2012/05/14/a_murder_of_one/page/full/

Whose Movie Is Propaganda?

It’s more than a little shocking when someone makes a movie that deals harshly with abortion. This is Hollywood after all. Abortion is a feminist sacrament. The movie “October Baby” just debuted on 390 screens and registered in eighth place for the weekend, with an estimated $1.7 million gross.

“October Baby” is a drama loosely based on the real-life story of Gianna Jessen, born with cerebral palsy after she survived a failed abortion procedure and now a celebrated pro-life speaker. In the film, the lead character, Hannah, discovers her adoptive parents hid from her that she was never meant to be born.

Naturally, the critics just couldn’t judge this movie by artistic standards. It had to be savaged because it is so politically incorrect. New York Times film critic Jeannette Catsoulis bared her ideological fangs at this improbable movie: “Not even a dewy heroine and a youth-friendly vibe can disguise the essential ugliness at its core: like the bloodied placards brandished by demonstrators outside women’s health clinics, the film communicates in the language of guilt and fear.”

Ouch. A celebration of life is “essential ugliness.” One of the film’s most powerful moments was assailed by Catsoulis as propaganda. Jasmine Guy plays the clinic nurse who assisted at Hannah’s birth. “Her pivotal speech, a gory portrait of fetal mutilation and maternal distress, conjures a vision of medical hackery that is clearly intended to terrify young women — and fits right in with proposed state laws that increasingly turn the screws on a woman’s dominion over her reproductive system.”

Notice how the Times couldn’t focus on the movie without imagining the horror of conservative state legislators reducing a “woman’s dominion” over the termination of unborn children, no matter how advanced the pregnancy.

What is it that the nurse says that is so offensive? “I didn’t see no tissue, just the face of a child.” This is not a Hollywood talking point.

Catsoulis concludes, “‘Hate the crime, not the criminal,’ a friendly police officer advises Hannah. Except that abortion is not a crime, no matter how fervently some people continue to wish that it were.”

But if you do consider abortion a crime — against God — isn’t that the kind of compassionate message Hollywood preaches regularly? Such is the militancy of this issue in Hollywood.

Catsoulis also assailed Ben Stein’s anti-Darwinist documentary “Expelled” as an “unprincipled propaganda piece” that was “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time.” But in 2005, Catsoulis adored a documentary on America’s failure to uplift the poor, cribbing from socialist author Barbara Ehrenreich, finding it “eye-opening, often heartbreaking … neither hectoring nor sanctimonious … brisk and unexploitative.” This woman is a fervent activist disguised as a film critic.

Another recent surprise at the cineplex was “Act of Valor,” a war movie made with active-duty Navy SEALs that’s made $66 million at the box office. It actually won the box-office crown on its opening weekend at the end of February. Again, newspaper film critics hated it.

On the front page of the Washington Post on Feb. 24, there was film critic Ann Hornaday reporting the movie was in “the crosshairs of critics who question whether the movie crosses the line between entertainment and propaganda, and whether the military should be in the movie business at all.” She wanted a congressional investigation.

The Navy didn’t fund the movie, but Hornaday wrote “it could be argued that the Navy heavily subsidized it in the form of access to its assets and personnel that would have cost millions to reproduce.” The Navy also didn’t have creative control, but Hornaday insisted “the filmmakers admit that there was little chance the Navy would be dissatisfied with their portrayal in the film, which depicts a group of strong, brave, unassuming men who pursue their missions, not with hot-dog swagger but cool teamwork and quiet professionalism.”

My God, the hate-America crowd is alive and well.

Here’s the rub: Hornaday had no problem with propaganda when it shredded the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. When it came to the 2010 movie “Fair Game,” which glorified Bush-hater Valerie Plame Wilson, Hornaday complained that people would fact check this propaganda, and what “audiences often fail to take into account is that a too-literal allegiance to the facts can sometimes obscure a larger truth.”

In that article, Hornaday even touted Oliver Stone‘s ridiculous fact mangling. Stone “favors bright lines and (often wholly imagined) emblematic scenes over messier shades of gray.” Stone’s imagination of “history” is somehow more truthful than “Act of Valor”? Obviously not, it’s just more politically satisfying.

Critics slam politically incorrect movies with lines such as “this would have been better off as a bumper sticker.” But when movies conform to Hollywood’s long-standing libertine and anti-military prejudices, they qualify as “resonant” and “emblematic” pieces of art.

Tags:                 Abortion            ,                                    Hollywood            ,                                    Pro-Life            ,                                    The New York Times            ,                                    Movie Review

Brent Bozell

Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America. TOWNHALL DAILY: Be the first to read Brent Bozell’s column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.

http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2012/03/30/whose_movie_is_propaganda/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/

Racing Down the Slippery Slope

The specter of the “slippery slope” is widely considered to be a logical cop-out – an intellectually lazy response employed by the rigid and fearful among us (usually conservatives and the religious, of course). Like all enduring metaphors, however, the concept embodied by the slippery slope is quite often proved true. “Give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile” is a compelling slogan for good reason. Once an initial barrier is broken, it is difficult to turn back.

Nowhere is the danger of the slippery slope more evident than in the area of abortion. If an unborn child’s right to life can be denied based on criteria like age, size, location, cognitive capacity or simply the wishes of the mother, then what’s to stop similar criteria from nullifying the life rights of the elderly, the disabled, or even the very young?

The fruits of this disturbing trend are already playing out in countries like the U.K. and Canada, where panels of bureaucrats hold the power of life and death over the terminally ill and the aged. Advisors to our very own President Obama have advocated for a “comparative effectiveness” principle in medicine, in which the most resources are directed to those deemed to be the “best investment” from the perspective of potential benefit to society. Under the comparative effectiveness protocols, the very old, the very young, and the disabled aren’t deemed good investments.

It is hardly surprising, then, that some in the field of bioethics – in the abhorrent tradition of Peter Singer – have begun to embrace infanticide as a perfectly reasonable solution to the hardship and inconvenience sometimes imposed by the birth of a child. From a recent post on Touchstone Magazine‘s “Mere Comments” blog:

“As a current example of nothing new under the sun, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva recently wrote an article published on February 23, 2012, in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a peer-reviewed journal for health care professionals and researchers in medical ethics.

[T]he authors say that parents should have the right to kill their newborn infants because infants are not people. . . .  The authors prefer the term ‘after-birth abortion’ as opposed to ‘infanticide’ because the term after-birth abortion emphasizes ‘that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable to that of a fetus . . . rather than to that of a child.’

So, what do our erstwhile ethicists suggest are acceptable circumstances under which the newborn may be killed?  This might include a situation where the well-being of the family is at risk, even if the newborn had the potential for an ‘acceptable’ life. . . .  Thus, a newborn whose family (or society) can be socially, economically or psychologically burdened or damaged by the newborn should have the ability to seek out a legal after-birth abortion.”

 

There are no words to describe the level of depravity, the chilling inhumanity, of such logic. One has to wonder if these so-called bioethical “experts” are themselves parents, and if so, how they justify their abhorrent philosophy to their children. “Be grateful you weren’t a social, economic, or psychological burden to your mother and me, Junior, or it might have been an after-birth abortion for you.”

That this proposition is even embraced as a legitimate contribution to the field of bioethics is indicative of what happens when a society defines itself by it’s unwillingness to recognize and adhere to fixed, universal limits. Reject traditional morality, cast off the bounds of religion, place the individual at the center of the moral universe and you have the perfect recipe for a culture in which virtually everything is permissible.

“Progressives” believe that mankind is on a steady and inevitable march towards utopia. Only by eliminating our dependence on the “God of the gaps” and learning to place faith in ourselves can we achieve true actualization as a species. This philosophy has yielded a society in which proponents of infanticide are no longer castigated as disordered sociopaths but accepted as legitimate participants in the public conversation.

Progress my eye! Heaven help us.

Tags:                 A Culture of Life            ,                                    Abortion            ,                                    Pro-Life            ,                                    Euthanasia            ,                                    pro-abortionists

Ken Connor

Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC.

http://townhall.com/columnists/kenconnor/2012/03/07/racing_down_the_slippery_slope/page/full/

Ultrasounds Are Only ‘Rape’ If They Prevent An Abortion

Virginia recently enacted a new law making theirs the eighth state to require an ultrasound to be performed prior to an abortion. As with other states that have passed similar measures, Virginia’s law provides the mother “an opportunity” to view the ultrasound image of her [baby] prior to the abortion,” but it is an option she can decline.

And because ultrasound technology poses a threat to the abortion industry—inasmuch as it allows a mother to see the life within her in a way that we couldn’t even imagine decades ago—supporters of death have been rallying the troops against the progress being made in Virginia and equating such ultrasounds with rape.

Their basis for making this claim is that women who want to have an abortion, but are less than 12 weeks along in their pregnancy, will have to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound: one in which “a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”

Straining to prove this mad assertion, abortion supporters are claiming that such an ultrasound requirement will result in women being “forcibly penetrated,” and therefore, violated by the state.

What’s strange is that these same people have no ethical qualms about allowing an abortionist’s scalpels and vacuum devices to be inserted into a woman as her baby is literally ripped from the womb limb by limb. And they apparently feel no angst over a pre-born child being injected with medicine that stops his or her heart so that labor can be induced and the stillborn child can be disposed of in a trash can (or a dumpster) in much the same way one would dispose of a banana peel or moldy bread.

Of course, there is no constitutional prohibition on providing women with full information about this life-and-death decision, as the Supreme Court has affirmed.  Nor is the ultrasound requirement an unlawful “search” by the government, any more than would be a legal requirement that a doctor take an x-ray of a broken limb before setting it.  In fact, even abortionists like Planned Parenthood admit that they routinely do ultrasounds before abortions to confirm gestational age – it is the standard of practice for this “business,” as confirmed by the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

If the truth were told, what bothers opponents is not really the ultrasound requirement per se, but the combination of the ultrasound and the waiting period which gives the mother time to see and think about things before making a decision which, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in a recent case, “she may come to regret.”

Here’s the exact wording of the law:

Except in the case of a medical emergency, at least 2 hours before the performance of an abortion a qualified medical professional trained in sonography and working under the direct supervision of a physician licensed in the Commonwealth shall perform fetal ultrasound imaging and auscultation of fetal heart tone services on the patient undergoing the abortion for the purpose of determining gestational age. The ultrasound image shall be made pursuant to standard medical practice in the community, contain the dimensions of the fetus, and accurately portray the presence of external members and internal organs of the fetus, if present or viewable.

The combination of a waiting period and an ultrasound is a one-two punch against the culture of death, and its proponents don’t like it. They’d rather keep everything moving quickly so the woman doesn’t have time to think about the fact that she’s ending a human life – one that is her own flesh and blood. Members of the culture of death, used to peddling what the Supreme Court has called “the abortion distortion,” can call it “rape,” but reasonable people see this for what it is—an attempt to appeal to every sensibility in the mother’s heart and mind in the hope that she will become fully aware of what she’s actually doing to her pre-born child.

Tags:                 A Culture of Life            ,                                    Abortion            ,                                    Pro-Life            ,                                    ultrasounds

Steven Aden

Steven H. Aden is senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (www.telladf.org).

http://townhall.com/columnists/stevenaden/2012/03/06/ultrasounds_are_only_rape_if_they_prevent_an_abortion/page/full/

Marquette Debate Aborted During Late Term

Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been preparing for an abortion debate at Marquette University. It was supposed to take place in the Alumni Memorial Union (Ballroom E) at 7pm on March 1, 2012. Now, it appears that I will be giving a speech on abortion instead of participating in a debate. Nonetheless, the speech is free and open to the public. Come join us, please.

Earlier this semester, Maggie Gervase, of the Marquette College Republicans, managed to get Professor of Theology Dan Maguire to agree to debate me. Later, she sent him this e-mail to confirm the format of the debate:

Hi Dr Maguire, I just want to touch bases and make sure we’re on the same page for the debate on March 1st. It’s coming up fast and we are very excited to be hosting the event! Your opponent will be Dr. Mike Adams from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. The debate will be a 20-20-10-10 format; each opponent will get twenty minutes to present their argument and ten minutes for a rebuttal followed by a question/answer wrap-up. Please let me know if you will need a room for preparation beforehand and I will see what I can do to get one adjacent to the ballrooms. Also let me know if you will be needing anything else! Thank you again for offering to do this, we really appreciate it and look forward to it!
Maggie Gervase

We were all eager to hear back from Professor Maguire. I was especially eager to get his approval of the format. I wanted to get that out of the way so I could then request to speak first at the debate. That would allow professor Maguire to speak last. The order of presentation is important, by the way.  It dictates which of two very different debate tactics I will use against any given opponent. Professor Maguire’s response was, therefore, important. When it arrived it was ultimately disappointing:

Maggie, I just looked up Dr. Mike Adams and found he is a psychology-criminology professor. I am a theologian presenting theological arguments. I would not try to debate Dr. Adams in psychology/criminology since it is not my field. Similarly he would not want to debate me in theology since he is not a theologians [sic] and could not argue a theological position with professional competence. We would be skew lines. So when you find a theologian who wants to debate me, as was done at Notre Dame, get back in touch. Dan Maguire.

Professor Maguire’s excuse for backing out of his commitment to debate me is dishonest for at least two reasons:

1.     He has previously made, in public, an argument for abortion that is not theological. Specifically, he argued that, even if human, the unborn is not a person, which means the unborn are not citizens deserving of equal protection. This is an argument based on the 14^th Amendment. Clearly, he is stepping into the constitutional arena, despite his claims to remain safely on theological ground.

2.     In the 1990s – at Marquette University, no less – Professor Maguire debated the issue of capital punishment. Unsurprisingly, he took the anti-death penalty side. Later, he was also featured on a Marquette panel arguing specifically in favor of government run-health care. In neither case did he debate a theological issue from a strictly theological position relying strictly upon his theological training.

The fact that Professor has no special degree in criminology reveals his mendacity. What degree would specifically qualify him to oppose the death penalty? And why invoke the lack of a criminology degree – selectively, mind you – in order to get out of debating a criminologist on abortion? And, since he has held himself out as an expert on health care why not debate abortion? Isn’t that a health care issue?

Of course, Maguire lacks two things that are worth noting. He lacks a degree in any health care related discipline. He also lacks the courage to defend his views against a worthy opponent. Since Professor Maguire obtained his doctorate when I was only four years old, he has had plenty of time to prepare his arguments on abortion. This issue is obviously meaningful to him. That is why he speaks to friendly audiences in support of abortion-choice.

Of course, Professor Maguire has a right to abort a debate we have been planning for nearly nine months. But he does not have a right to be respected for his intellectual honesty and moral consistency. Those traits of his have not yet fully formed. And tenure protects him from presenting viable arguments outside the womb some call the Ivory Tower.

 

 

 

 

Tags: Abortion , Education and Schools , Pro-Life , College Education , pro-choice , Education , Mike Adams

 

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/2012/02/21/marquette_debate_aborted_during_late_term/page/full/

One Rape Two Victims

 

Dear Professor Adams:

I appreciated your article on abortion (whether you’d abort Hitler). I read on your page on Facebook that you’ve gotten hate mails after the article, I know you always get lambasted by the intolerant left. It means you’re doing what’s right. Anyway I wanted to send you this message, because I appreciate all your efforts. Almost 30 years ago, when I was 19 I was raped. I learned a month later that I was pregnant as a result. Everyone urged me to abort, but what struck me at the time was that that baby was as much a victim of the rape as I was. And it didn’t deserve to be punished for it. I decided to carry the pregnancy to term, and place the baby up for adoption. In 1982, that baby was born and he was given to a wonderful Christian family, and I know that he has been a joy to them. I lost nothing by carrying that pregnancy to term. It didn’t hurt me, or cause me to miss out on anything. There is nothing that can’t be postponed to preserve an innocent life. Anyway, I wanted to add my voice to those who contact you in thanks for providing a much needed message to so many, especially young people. I hope your clarion call, strikes home. God bless you.

Dear (name deleted):

I appreciate your kind note. It helps to explain why women who experience unexpected pregnancy due to rape are less likely to abort than those who experience unexpected pregnancy due to consensual sex. In the aftermath of the rape, your encounter with evil caused you to think very deeply about the prospect of inflicting pain and violence upon another. You could not even imagine consenting to violence against another human being. Not after what happened to you. You dealt courageously and head-on with a very important question: “Isn’t it better to suffer evil than to inflict evil?”

In a sense, the question is an easy one. The assumption of those supporting the “rape exception” (to criminalizing abortion) is plainly silly: that aborting the product of rape will put an end to the suffering of the rape victim.

After only a month, your suffering was barely beginning. I have known women who have been raped and not experienced a single nightmare for many months. But when those nightmares began, they went on for years and years. Counseling helps such women. But it will not bury the memory entirely. Terminating the life of a product of rape can no more cause a woman to forget a rape than terminating the life of a product of casual sex can cause a woman to forget a one-night stand. It is just plain common sense – the kind that often eludes us when we discuss abortion.

The callousness of those who encouraged you to get the abortion is revealed by asking a couple of simple questions: What about the life of the rapist? Do we even remember the time when we used to execute the rapist rather than executing the baby for the crime of rape?

That was not a rhetorical question. It was in my lifetime. Before 1966, no state allowed for abortion in circumstances of rape. And no Supreme Court decision prevented states from executing for the crime of rape. In 1973, the Court said states cannot protect the product of rape from execution via abortion. In 1977, the Court said we must (repeat: must) preserve the life of the rapist because the constitution demands it. Today, some people applaud the right to kill the innocent human while shielding the guilty rapist from execution. In fact, they call themselves “humanists.” Some even call themselves “humanitarians.” I prefer to call them “intellectually bankrupt,” “morally bankrupt,” or both.

Of course, those who argue for the “rape exception” do not really believe in it. In order to have a rape exception, there would first have to be a presumptive rule against abortions for mere convenience. Such a rule would mean that men could no longer use women for sex and then use abortion to divorce themselves from the consequences. And that would involve learning to respect a woman’s body. This is hardly a goal of the sex-driven pro-abortion-choice male.

You stated correctly that there are two victims for every rape. There are also two victimizations of the same woman for every rape. The first is when a man uses the woman by forcing her to have sex against her will. The second is when another man uses the rape victim again in order to justify abortion. Both men are really the same. They are willing to use violence in order to get sex. That is why there really are no pro-choice men. There are only pro-choice males.

 

 

 

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/2012/02/20/one_rape_two_victims/page/full/

Abortion’s Hard Case Exceptions

When it comes to the hot-button issue of abortion, there are some questions that make even the staunchest pro-lifer uncomfortable: What do you say to the woman who finds herself pregnant due to rape? What do you do with the adolescent girl who is impregnated by her father, brother, or uncle? What if it was your wife, or your daughter that was the victim? Would you expect her to bear a child conceived in violence and fear?

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently made waves when he stated that his respect for the sanctity of human life precludes an exception for instances of rape or incest on the question of abortion. Given the highly traumatic nature of these crimes, it is hardly surprising that many Americans, pro-lifers included, disagree with Mr. Santorum, viewing such an exception as a necessary and compassionate concession in the abortion debate. It is easy to understand why the victims of such horrible crimes would want to eliminate any vestige of the offense, after all. Why punish them further by forcing them to embrace a lifelong reminder of the ordeal they experienced? For those of us that believe in the humanity of the unborn, however, the fundamental question remains: Does an act of rape, perpetrated against one person, warrant the taking of another person’s innocent life?

There can be no question that rape is a heinous, abhorrent, despicable act. Short of murder, it is likely the most offensive and demeaning act that can be perpetrated against a woman, and is a crime that used to be punishable by death in the United States. Nevertheless, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. According to the majority opinion, although Patrick Kennedy’s rape of his eight-year-old stepdaughter was so brutal that she required emergency surgery, the concept of proportionality and “evolving standards of decency” rendered the death penalty unwarranted.

Abortion clearly involves the taking of a human life. There can be no getting around this fact. The baby is alive and it is human. Following the court’s logic, if it is cruel and unusual punishment to visit the death penalty on the perpetrator of a child rape, how much more so is it it cruel and unusual punishment to visit that penalty on an innocent child who is the unwitting product of that act? The child is guilty of nothing except that it exists, and it is manifestly unjust to punish an innocent child for the crimes of his or her father. The Jewish and Christian religious traditions reject the notion that children are culpable for the sins of their parents or vice versa (Deut. 24:16; 1 Kings 14:6). So does Article Five of the U.S. Constitution, which eliminated the taint “corruption of blood” to future generations whose forebears may have been guilty of treason. Punishing the innocent victim compounds the violence of the original act and magnifies its impact, extending it beyond the mother to the innocent child, who suffers not only physical damage, but total destruction.

Pro-lifers must keep this in mind when considering the circumstances under which abortion may be deemed permissible. In circumstances where a woman’s life is jeopardized by her pregnancy, the decision to abort involves consideration of moral equivalents: life for life. However, even under these circumstances the goal is not to end the life of the child, but to save the life of the mother.

In this life, we cannot always undo the effects of sin and violence. We can only seek to mitigate the adverse consequences of such acts. Killing an unborn baby does not erase the pain and trauma imposed by rape. It is rather a form of misdirected retribution, revenge meted out against an innocent child because of the act of his or her parent. In the case of rape, the mother deserves our love and help and support. The perpetrator deserves punishment. But the child, once conceived, deserves to live.

 

 

 

Tags: Abortion , Pro-Life , Rick Santorum

 

Ken Connor

Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC.
 
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http://townhall.com/columnists/kenconnor/2012/02/15/abortions_hard_case_exceptions/page/full/