Is this man that scary?

It appears that Rice University will have to cancel a scheduled debate on abortion because the ACLU has been unable to find anyone willing to debate Scott Klusendorf.

Though the web site of the ACLU of Texas is sparse with regards to "reproductive freedom," you'd think an organization that claims to be at "forefront of advocacy for a variety of civil rights and civil liberties issues" would be able to find one person who'd be willing to debate such an important issue in front of a crowd of university students.

Chief "Neanderthal" approved 78-22

NOW's President Kim Gandy compared John Roberts to a Neanderthal, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick concluded he had a contempt "for all things female" because of a high school newspaper article, the People for the American Way said he was out of the mainstream and NOW has called his "agenda" "anti-woman, anti-civil rights, and anti-worker agenda."

NARAL's blog Bush v. Choice is disappointed. Too bad their $500,000 plan to "secure a pro-choice nominee" didn't work.

Confirm Them has the line up of who voted which way for the Democrats.

Human Beings Material

Christianity Today has a long article on stem cell research that contains some quotes from the vice president of embryonic stem cell/cloning proponent Geron, that truly display the ridiculous lengths some of those in favor of killing human embryos in the vague hope of curing diseases will go. David Greenwood was asked if Geron considers the embryos to be human. Here's his answer:

"I can't put labels … on these materials," Greenwood says. "The materials are what they are medically and scientifically, and that's what we describe. It's IVF material.

"As a company, obviously, it would be grossly inappropriate for us to make theological pronouncements of any kind."

While shying away from "theological pronouncements," ESC researchers prize stem cells because they are pluripotent, having an almost mystical ability to grow into other kinds of tissue. ESCs also have the ability to reproduce themselves indefinitely.

"Quite simply, [ESC research] may redefine medicine," Greenwood says. "Its potential is that extraordinary."

That's right. Not only are embryonic stem cell proponents treating human embryos as mere materials (like wood or ore) - they're calling them that.

Since when did the question of whether an organism is human or not became a "theological pronouncement?" Sounds more like a question of biology to me.

I do enjoy how the author, Stan Guthrie, quietly points out how ESC researchers (who shy away from supposedly religious positions) put an extraordinary large amount of faith on embryonic stem cell research despite their relative lack of success.

Life Links 9/29

Wesley Smith has a new piece in the Weekly Standard about stem cells from adult and umbilical cords.

A just-published peer-reviewed study (Cytotherapy, Vol. 7. No. 4 (2005), 368-373) reports that scientists have used umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal cord injury patient. The patient had been paraplegic (complete paraplegia of the 10th thoracic vertebra) for 19 years.

Wesley concludes,

Talk about reality checks. For all the propaganda and hype boosting embryonic stem-cell research, ESCs are far from ready for prime time. Meanwhile, adult and umbilical cord blood stem-cell therapies keep quietly chugging along with continual advances in animal studies and the bringing of effective and safe treatments to a growing variety of suffering human patients. Maybe someday the media establishment will catch on to this real news, instead of focusing so myopically on the embryonic stem-cell story they want to tell.

Naaman has posted an ultrasound image of his new child and updated his blogroll to include opposing views.

The Third Carnvial of Life is up at The Stem Cell Extremist

Suicide after an abortion in India

How sad is this?

Of course the 21-year-old man with a different name was her brother

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a long article on abortion entitled "It's easier to get an abortion than an aspirin." It makes you wonder how often Planned Parenthood turns a blind eye toward statutory rape.

A staffer at a local Planned Parenthood clinic called the number and got permission - from a 21-year-old man who was molesting the girl and coerced her into an abortion.

The man, now in prison, pretended to be her father on the phone, then posed as her brother at the clinic. He paid with his credit card, and had the girl injected with Depo-Provera birth control, so he could resume having sex with her three days later.

"Jane Roe presented her school identification card, which showed that she was a junior high school student," a lawsuit by the girl's parents says. "(He) presented his Ohio driver's license, which showed that he was 21 years of age and his last name was different than Jane Roe's. (Planned Parenthood) did not question (either) about the differences in their ages or their different last names."

And that was under Ohio's parent notification law. State law also requires notice to law enforcement, because a girl 13 or under who seeks an abortion is automatically a victim of rape.

HT: LifeNews

Free abortions in Arkansas

According to this Associated Press article, abortionist Jerry Edwards has already performed six abortions for free on hurricane evacuees at his clinic in Little Rock.

Supreme Guessing

The rumor mill regarding who the President will pick to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court of the United States is churning at Red State. I'm sorry but five anonymous "unconnected sources" just don't do it for me, especially after the D.C. rumor mill falsely predicted the nomination of Edith Clement last time.

I think K-Lo's predictions are a little more on point.

For the fun of it, I'm starting my own rumor. It's complete unsubstantiated, I don't have any cool anonymous D.C. sources and I don't know what Karl Rove is thinking but the next pick for the Supreme Court will be Maura Corrigan.

Moral Relativism

Here are a few links on moral relativism for a frequent commentor who says she is a moral relativist.

Has Cindy Sheehan finally jumped the shark?

Or will her recent arrest just lead to more "news" coverage for her?

Life Links 9/26

The Governator has come out in favor of California's parental notification initiative.

First Things has a long article on Darfur.

Robert George in the Weekly Standard discusses the kind of stem cells that researchers really want. Scary stuff.

"Why would biomedical scientists be interested in fetus farming? Researchers know that stem cells derived from blastocyst-stage embryos are currently of no therapeutic value and may never actually be used in the treatment of diseases. (In a candid admission, South Korean cloning expert Curie Ahn recently said that developing therapies may take "three to five decades.")

In fact, there is not a single embryonic stem cell therapy even in clinical trials. (By contrast, adult and umbilical cord stem cells are already being used in the treatment of 65 diseases.) All informed commentators know that embryonic stem cells cannot be used in therapies because of their tendency to generate dangerous tumors. However, recent studies show that the problem of tumor formation does not exist in cells taken from cows, mice, and other mammals when embryos have been implanted and extracted after several weeks or months of development (i.e. have been gestated to the late embryonic or fetal stage). This means that the real therapeutic potential lies precisely in the practice of fetus farming. Because the developmental process stabilizes cells (which is why we are not all masses of tumors), it is likely true that stem cells, tissues, and organs harvested from human beings at, say, 16 or 18 weeks or later could be used in the treatment of diseases." (emphasis mine)

If you don't want to ruin your weekend, save this until Monday

A couple of sad abortion stories here and here (warning profanity)

The girl in the first one is young (probably high school) and was around seventeen weeks according to a previous post. It stuck out to me how she "pleaded" with the clinic workers to stop and they didn't because she signed a consent form.

In the second story Ruth shares her experience at a CPC which made her watch a video before giving her the results of her pregnancy test. Her experience there makes you realize that some prolife strategies or maybe any kind of strategy isn't going to work with some people. Ruth also relays the experience of seeing the container which held the remains of her aborted child.

Liberal media bias on abortion? No never

If you saw the headline "Irish favour legalising abortion," what would you think the majority of people in Ireland would favor doing with regards to abortion? Now this shouldn't really be a trick question but you never know with the media.

Check out this article whose title openly declares "Irish favour legalising abortion" but then the first sentence states,

Irish voters under 35 strongly favour legalising abortion, but if a referendum on permitting abortion was held now it would be defeated, according to an opinion poll.

The article goes to state that the poll found that 47% of people surveyed favored keeping Ireland's prolife law while only 36% would support a referendum to change the law.

So then the headline should have actually been something like "Irish don't favour legalising abortion," right?

Kitten War Konspiracy

I believe the web site Kittenwar.com is conspiring against my kitten.

My kitten Rascal currently only has a battle record of 54% won, 36% lost and 10% drawn while another orange fluffy kitten named Foster Kitten who closely resembles Rascal but isn't as cute has a battle record of 71% won, 16% lost, and 13% drawn.

Thank you David Gelernter

He writes in the LA Times:

Instead of heckling Roberts, they ought to ask themselves why abortion rights should be up to the Supreme Court in the first place, and not to the American people and their elected representatives.

The abortion issue is a catastrophic wound in U.S. cultural life. It has inflicted unending battles on American society ever since the Supreme Court seized control of the issue from state legislatures in 1973 — in one of the grossest power grabs American democracy ever faced.

Young people pondering U.S. democracy today might easily conclude that all really important laws must be decreed by the high court.

Gelernter then goes on to propose a two-part constitutional amendment which I don't agree with and isn't going to ever happen but I appreciate his understanding that Roe v. Wade was "one of the grossest power grabs" in American history.

Do we really need a study to tell us that men are dirtier than women and have worse hygiene habits?

A recent study spied on people as they left public restrooms to see if they washed their hands after using the bathroom and surprise of all surprises, men don't wash their hands as often as women. We're dirty vile creatures. Yes, we know.

I'm actually surprised that people at "Atlanta's Turner Field, where 37 percent of the men left the bathroom without washing" were the worst offenders. I recently went to Michigan football game and it seemed like only a third of the guys washed their hands when they were finished.

Roberts Round-Up

Judge Roberts has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 13 to 5. All ten Republicans voted yes along with Democratic senators Patrick Leahy, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold. For some quotes from the members of the committee on their votes, check out the New York Times.

It appears NARAL is part of coalition to defeat Roberts called IndependentCourt.org. They have a new television commercial that is a bunch of snippets of Roberts refusing to answer various questions.

Planned Parenthood's President Karen Pearl is concerned that the Senate Judiciary Committee rolled "the dice with women's health and safety by voting for Judge Roberts."

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review's Corner has some predictions.

Peter Singer: "Being human doesn't matter"

The infamous Princeton professor in favor of killing newborns has provided us a small taste of his sick version of utopia with this editorial.

According to Singer, "By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct."

I guess calling your opponents names is what counts as intelligent discourse in Singer's world of philosophy.

It's easy for me and my ilk of know-nothings to brush off insults, especially when the writer is unable to write a short editorial without contradicting himself. In one paragraph, Singer argues that human embryos will no longer be seen as precious because they "have the potential to become human beings" and then later on he adds that "we will understand that even if the life of a human organism begins at conception, the life of a person—that is, at a minimum, a being with some level of self-awareness—does not begin so early."

So which is it? Is the embryo something with the potential to become a human being or an actual human being? Or are human organisms not the same thing as human beings?

Singer also takes on a strawman. The prolife argument is not "the unborn should be protected because they have the potential to be human beings." The prolife argument is the unborn should be protected because they are human beings and its wrong for one human being to intentionally kill an innocent human being based on accidentally acquired properties like size and level of development.

HT: The Thing Is

UPDATE: In his book, "Should the baby live?" Singer and his colleague Helga Kuhse "suggested that a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others."

Here's a picture of my niece hours after birth. A human non-person who doesn't have a right to life in Singer's eyes.

Who are the victims of prolife legislation?

After reading one abortion provider's reaction to an Ohio prolife law, it seems obvious to me that the pocketbooks of abortion providers are the biggest victims.

``I am choosing to close my door,'' Jackson said, ``because I'm not willing to offer my services in a lesser way than I have before.''

In other words, "This legislation makes it more difficult for me to make money. I'm closing up because my business will suffer."

Abortion clinic director Debi Jackson continues:

`I would have to essentially become an abortion mill,'' Jackson said, adding that the new rules would push the cost of an abortion from about $450 to $550.

I would really like Jackson to explain how a law that requires that a doctor (instead of any clinic counselor) meet with a woman 24 hours before her abortion and changes the parental consent law would make her abortion clinic into more of a "mill."

The article also quotes Carol Westfall, another abortion clinic director, who was last heard saying, "My opinion is, the judge should be lynched."

"Aborting a deformed fetus would be an act of love"

Or so says Colombian woman Pilar Duran in a recent article about abortion laws in Colombia.

I wonder if Ms. Duran believes that suffocating her severely disabled infant would also be an act of love. Does the probability that a child will die soon after birth of natural make it an act of love to intentionally kill the child before they are born? If so, wouldn't it then also be an act of love to intentionally kill the same child after they are born?

The woman's choice or what the boyfriend wants?

I often hear the saying that abortion is all about what a woman wants to do with her body but what happens when abortion is actually what the boyfriend wants her do?

"I don't really have an update yet. I have another abortion appointment scheduled for Saturday at the urging of my boyfriend. I really don't want to go through with it. I have gone back and forth with my moral issues for weeks now. I am now about 8 weeks lmp. If I don't get it done this weekend, I won't be able to get the manual aspiration... and I really don't want the vacuum surgery. I think the vacuum would have more of a psychological impact on me. As more time goes by the moral implications weigh more and more heavily on me. But how do I tell my boyfriend that I don't want to go through with it? He'll be devastated and I don't want to risk losing him. Still not sure what to do. Any advice?"

Reason #359 why not to argue with your wife while she's cooking with boiling oil and then go to sleep

Something like this may happen to you.

Choice in China: Abortion or Sterilization, you pick

Numerous articles have discussed the recent arrests and firings of Chinese officials who forced women to be sterilized and have abortions.

International human rights groups have accused overzealous Chinese family planners of forcing women to abort, in some cases in the ninth month of pregnancy, or to undergo hysterectomies, but Beijing regularly denies the claims or keeps silent.

Tuesday's rare admission of official wrongdoing came after a blind activist, Chen Guangcheng, accused Linyi officials of forcing couples with two children to be sterilized and forcing women pregnant with a third child to undergo abortions.

"It falls far short of the number of officials who should be punished," Chen, who has since been put under house arrest in Shandong, told Reuters on Tuesday.

A source close to Chen said about 120,000 Linyi residents had been forced to undergo abortions or sterilization, but a Shandong family planning official said the figure was an exaggeration.

Shandong is one of the 32 counties where the UNFPA has supposedly been working for years with China to "move their policies and practices AWAY from coercion TOWARD a voluntary approach that respects human rights and human dignity and that is in line with international agreements."

It's strange that with the UNFPA working so hard and with so much money to move China's policies away from coercion that a blind activist got the Chinese officials to fire and arrest individuals using coercion.

In related news, Planned Parenthood is upset that President Bush has again denied funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

For a history of UNFPA and China and forced abortion, Annie Banno had a long and informative post a few months backs.

Do women who abort really see their unborn child as human beings?

Even though many women who have abortions say that either they believe the unborn are human beings or believe that abortion is a sin, Scott Klusendorf observes that actions often speak louder than words:

People hold contradictory and incoherent views on abortion precisely because they don't really believe the unborn are fully human, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. As Dr. Francis Beckwith points out, "Why do women only kill their fetuses when confronted with practical difficulties rather than their already born children if they truly believe their fetuses are human?"

I agree with Scott in that too often, women in unplanned pregnancies fail to internalize their stated beliefs. How often do you read post-abortion testimonies where a woman starts off by saying, "I used to be prolife until I got pregnant...." If someone really believed and fully internalized that the unborn were human beings and killing them was an objective moral wrong, then how does one's own personal situation change those objective facts? Living with that kind of cognitive dissonance has to be extremely difficult.

I think that cognitive dissonance leads many people who would otherwise be prolife into the pro-choice camp. When faced with the idea of "I ended the life of my child" vs. "Abortion is a tragic decision but it doesn't kill a real human being" it seems much easier to side with the latter.

"Only bad people kill their children. I'm a loving mother who cares for her children. I had an abortion. Therefore, abortion can't take the life a human being because I had an abortion and I'm not a bad person." Or "I know women who've had abortions and they're not bad people. Only bad people would end their child's life. Therefore, abortion doesn't really take a life."

Some women spend years fighting objective facts because their personal experiences don't comfortably jive with them.

I also think the legality of abortion is also something that preys on the minds of women who say they believe the unborn are human beings yet have abortions in spite of their beliefs. Justifying thoughts like, "If the unborn were really full human beings, then how could abortion ever be legal" and "If abortion is legal then it can't really be killing a human being. Our government wouldn't allow that," begin to creep into the minds of women who fear the possible repercussions of being pregnant out-of-wedlock and/or can't imagine raising a(nother) child.

Don't we also see this same kind of lack of idea internalization with regards to abstinence before marriage? How many Christian teens (while not in a relationship) have made pledges to abstain from sex until marriage because they recognize God's gift of sex is meant to be shared between married men and women but then reject this pledge once they are in a relationship where sex is a possibility? Then how quickly does the cognitive dissonance of having sex outside of marriage while believing sex outside of marriage is wrong turn into believing that sex outside of marriage is perfectly alright or not that bad?

Another good article on umbilical cord blood

Today's edition of the Detroit Free Press features a long story on stem cell rich umbilical cord blood.

"Most hospitals discard cord blood after a baby's birth, despite the fact that the blood contains stem cells that can be used in transplants for as many as 80 serious medical problems...

But in March 1999, Allison's cancer recurred. Her only choice was a stem cell or bone marrow transplant.

Luckily for her, no one had claimed her brother's cord blood in the four years it was frozen and stored at the Karmanos registry. He also was a perfect match and though he was small at birth, just 6 pounds, the cord blood was enough for a transplant.

It worked. Month after month, Allison's health improved.

She has been free of cancer since."

Abortion in Arkansas

Some prolife bloggers including Emily at After Abortion and Scott Klusendorf have already mentioned the New York Times article on an abortion clinic in Arkansas which includes quotes from women about to have abortions but I'm amazed at this straightforward comment from abortionist Tom Tvedten regarding parental consent:

"If you go to the judge and say, 'I'm afraid to tell my parents because they might harm me,' that's all you need to say," said Dr. Tom Tvedten, who has been performing abortions in Arkansas for 20 years, and now works part time at the Little Rock clinic. "It doesn't have to be true, because how would anybody know?"

Isn't it nice to know how much respect abortionists have for prolife laws and how concerned they are that girls involve their parents in an abortion decision?

I also think it is especially sad that one of the women that works at the abortion clinic considers abortion a sin, yet still works at an abortion clinic.

Ebony, 28, an operating room supervisor, rinsed the blood off the aborted tissues for Dr. Edwards to examine. Ebony, too, had a story. When she was 15, her aunt and grandmother had made her carry her pregnancy to term. Later, she had an abortion. As a Baptist, she still considered abortion a sin - but so are a lot of things we all do, she said. She squeezed Regina's hand.

"No problem, sweetie," Ebony said. "We've all been there."

The Lie that Never Ends

Today, Planned Parenthood's main page prominently features the story of Becky Bell, a young woman whom various pro-choice organizations claimed died from an illegal abortion in 1988 because she was afraid to tell her parents about her desire for an abortion. Becky Bell's story is supposed to convince people that young women will die if parental consent laws are passed.

The problem? Becky Bell didn't die from an illegal abortion. Pro-choice organizations have been pathetically spouting this lie for more than a decade. It's like the lie disappears for a couple years and then reemerges when they think people will forget about it. I can almost guarantee that in ten years or so, Planned Parenthood and NARAL will be telling us that abortions increased during President Bush's first term.

Carolyn Gargaro at Rightgrrl has the truth about Becky Bell.

National Right to Life (who helped expose this myth in 1990) makes this argument:

"There are at least two things wrong with this argument. First, there is the matter of the actual cause of Ms. Bell's death. While the coroner's report gives "septic abortion with pneumonia" as the cause of death, medical experts (documentation available from NRLC's State Legislation Department) found that the autopsy report was compatible only with a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage (neither infection of the reproductive organs nor trauma from instruments was present). "Septic abortion" as the cause of death was incompatible with the physical findings. Although his autopsy report attributed the cause of death to "septic abortion with pneumonia," the physician who performed the autopsy stated in 1990, "I cannot prove [Becky Bell] had an illegal abortion. I cannot prove she had anything but a spontaneous abortion" (Dr. Pless, quoted by reporter Joe Frolik in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9/9/90).

Second, there is the offensive implication that parental notification and consent laws cause young girls to die. If the parental notification and consent laws that have been in effect for years had, in fact, had this effect, such statistics would have been big news in the pro-abortion press. There are no such statistics. Pro-abortionists dragged Becky Bell's tragic death into the debate about the CCPA because they hoped it would generate sympathy for their bizarre notion that strangers have a "constitutional right" to take your minor daughter across state lines for a secret abortion."

Life Links 9/15

There's an interesting article in the LA Times on how the text of the Roe v. Wade decision came to be. In a rare occurrence, the article also discusses how Doe v. Bolton has affected our nation's abortion law landscape.

Before you read the article guess which Supreme Court justice in the time of Roe said, "There is no absolute right to do with one's body what you like." Here's a hint - it wasn't Rehnquist.

HT: STR blog


Planned Parenthood now officially opposes the nomination of John Roberts. They've obviously opposed Roberts' nomination since the get go but have acted like they were carefully looking over documents to come to a well-thought out position. If I was a pro-choice feminist, I'd be wondering, "What took you so long? The game is almost done."


Nathan Sheets attended a Students for Choice meeting at Williamette University.


Dana Stevens at Slate seems peeved that a character on Fox's new show Reunion didn't go thru with an abortion.

Judge rules that Michigan's law which defines legal birth is unconstitutional

Last night, federal Judge Denise Page Hood ruled that Michigan's Legal Birth Definition Act was unconstitutional. Here's the AP article. For a summary of how the law was enacted (via petition drive) and the background, check out Right to Life of Michigan's web page.

Hood's opinion has yet to be posted on the Eastern District Court's web site but reading some of the language quoted in the AP article seems to indicate that judge (who took 3 months to write the opinion) was more than a little befuddled with the law.

The act also does not distinguish between induced abortion and pregnancy loss.''

The law, which is around a page long, clearly states that physician will be immune from this act "if the perinate is being expelled from the mother's body as a result of a spontaneous abortion."

Hood agreed with abortion rights groups that argued the law would ban all pre-viable abortions, including ``dilation and evacuation,'' or D&E, the most common method of second-trimester abortion.

The law defines "perinate" by saying, ‘"Perinate" means a live human being at any point after which any anatomical part of the human being is know to have passed beyond the plane of the vaginal introitus until the point of complete expulsion or extraction from the mother's body.'

The law also defines "anatomical part" by saying, ‘"Anatomical part" means any portion of the anatomy of a human being that has not been severed from the body, but not including the umbilical cord or placenta.'

You can view a drawing of a D & E abortion here. By the time the leg or arm would be "delivered" or "born" it would already be severed so it would not be considered an anatomical part of the child and therefore the act wouldn't have anything to do with D & E abortions.

The gory details of partial-birth abortion

I just discovered (even though they probably did this a while ago) the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have posted the transcripts of the hearings on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The transcripts include days of testimony in the spring of 2004 by abortionists regarding how they perform abortions.

The transcript from the New York trial includes Judge Richard Casey's probing questions of abortion providers regarding how they describe the procedures to women and if they discussed the possibility of fetal pain. I'm just posting a few quotes but there are so many more that show the moral depravity of individuals who perform abortion and the outrageous and almost incomprehensible evil of this procedure.

On day three (pg. 467), Judge Casey asks Dr. Timothy Johnson, a professor at U of M's medical school and abortionist, to describe the instrument used to crush the partially-born child's skull.

THE WITNESS: It would be like the end of tongs that are combined that you use to pick up salad. So they would be articulated in the center and you could move one end, and there would be a branch at the center. The instruments are thick enough and heavy enough that you can actually grasp and crush with those instruments as if you were picking up salad or picking up anything with --
THE COURT: Except here you are crushing the head of a baby.
THE WITNESS: Correct.

On day six, (page 120) Dr. Marilynn Fredriksen admits that she uses her fingers instead of scissors to help collapse the child's skull.

COURT: Ma'am, I didn't ask you that. Very simply I asked you whether or not do you tell the mother that one of the ways she may do this is that you will deliver the baby partially and then insert a pair of scissors in the base of the fetus' skull?
THE WITNESS: I have not done that.
THE COURT: Do you ever tell them that after that is done you are going to suction or suck the brain out of the skull?
THE WITNESS: I don't use suction.
THE COURT: Then how do you remove the brain from the skull?
THE WITNESS: I use my finner (sic) to disrupt the central nervous system thereby the skull collapses and I can easily deliver the remainder of the fetus through the cervix.

I like Sam Brownback

From what I've seen, he's not one of those politicians who's timid about the abortion issue. Here's a question he laid out for John Roberts this morning.

The very root of the issue is the legal status of the unborn child. This is an old debate. Whether that child is a person or is a piece of property is the root of the debate.

In our legal system, everything's either one of the two: you're either a person or you're a piece of property. If you're a person, you have rights; if you're a piece of property, you can be done with as your master chooses.

And I believe everyone agrees that the unborn child is alive. And most agree that biologically it is a life, a separate genetic entity. But many will dispute whether it's a person. These may be legal definitions, but that's the way people would define it.

Could you state your view as to whether the unborn child is a person or is a piece of property?

Prolife Politicians: You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em

On Tuesday night, Virginia's candidates for governor, Republican Jerry Kilgore and Democrat Tim Kaine, had a debate on a variety of issues. One of the issues was abortion. After reading articles that describe the debate, I'm again reminded of how frustrating it is when prolife politicians are unable to use the debate format to effectively convey the prolife position.

But it was debate moderator Tim Russert, NBC's Washington Bureau chief, who brought the issue to a head when he pressed Kilgore on what he would do if a new Supreme Court were to allow states to ban abortion.

"I'm a pro-life candidate running for governor," Kilgore responded. "I support a culture of life."

"But, Mr. Kilgore, it's a simple question," Russert insisted as he asked for a yes or no answer to the question of whether the Republican would sign a bill to outlaw abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of a mother.

Kilgore, as he had said in a July debate, responded that the question is "a hypothetical. You don't know what any Supreme Court in the future is going to do."

Russert changed course and asked, "If the Virginia legislature passed a tax increase, would you veto or sign it?"

Kilgore replied, "I would veto a tax increase unless a referendum was on it."

"That's a hypothetical question," Russert shot back. The overflow crowd in the McLean Hilton's ballroom broke into laughter and applause at the Republican's expense.

Wouldn't this have been a great opportunity for Kilgore to say something like,

"Well Tim, I've actually thought about this issue a lot over the last couple of weeks and I've come to some startingly conclusions. I've realized that abortion should be legal through all nine months of pregnancy, Virginia tax dollars should pay for every abortion, and the rest of Virginia's laws that restrict abortions should be overturned if..... if what? If the unborn aren't living human beings. I believe that intentionally killing innocent human beings based on accidentally acquired properties like size and level of development is wrong. So yes, if the unborn are living human beings then I would sign a law that would provide legal protection to these innocent human beings."

Prolife politicians need to be able to do more than say, "I favor a culture of life" or "I'm prolife" over and over again. They have the great opportunity to use the political podium they've been given to spread prolife message to numerous individuals yet too often fall back on repeating slogans like a broken record.

Abortion experiences

Jadekah: The reason I've decided to have the abortion is because I don't feel he and I are in a situation to have a baby just yet. I feel very bad because I've had one abortion before and told myself I'd never have another..but here I am again facing this. My intution is telling me not to do this, but mainly because I feel like it's going to mess me up mentally. But another part of me says I have to do this because I love this man and I think this is the best thing for our future.

Mandy (who doesn't regret her three abortions) : I have had three abortions and I have never shed a tear. If I found out I was pregnant today I would run to the clinic. I had my first abortion when I was 18 and my poor, naive boyfriend wanted to keep it. I had the procedure and told him afterwards....I paid for all 3 operations myself and saved taxpayers a ton of money. There are woman in this world who have children they cannot pay for and they keep having more. These are the women who should be ashamed.

Hurt Woman from Texas: The procedure itself wasn't as horrible as you would think, but it wasn't anything I ever want to go through again. Afterwards I felt relieved at first and then the guilt sank in. I thought, "what have I done - I killed my baby".

I am getting better, but I still hurt when I think about what I have done. I never told anyone so there isn't anyone to talk to about it with me and it is eating me up inside. Thank you so much for sharing your stories and showing me that I am not alone that other women feel this same way. I just hope that God will forgive me for what I have done and that someday I had the chance to explain to my baby why I did what I did.

HT: After Abortion

The Grilling Begins

Blogs for Bush is live-blogging the John Roberts hearings and even has some transcripts of the questioning. Don't waste your time with Kennedy's transcript. That guy blathers on for 5 minutes at a time, making numerous incredible assertions, hardly asking any questions and then interrupting Roberts when he answers. At one point, after a long diatribe, he looked up from his speech and says to Roberts, "Your comments on that." Roberts has this mystified look on his face like he's thinking, "Where there a question in there?" and then begins to say something and is quickly interrupted as Kennedy continues.

The transcript of Specter's questioning is mainly focused on abortion and stare decisis.

Confirm Them says a leading conservative prolife lawyer was "thrilled" with how Roberts responded.

The New York Times also has a transcript.

UPDATE:
Senator Kyl just asked for Roberts' opinion on using international law. Roberts did a good job of showing how using international law as precedent allows judges to place their personal opinions in rulings since international law is so varied.

Lynch the Judge?

That's how one abortionist in Ohio has responded to a recent ruling. (Registration required - if you want to use mine - it's billsmith34@yahoo.com - password - billsmith34)

Women scheduled to get abortions on Friday were turned away at clinic doors, while lawyers scrambled to obtain a delay in the implementation of Ohio's stricter abortion law.

By the end of the day, a judge had agreed to a two-week delay to allow clinics and courts time to change the way they do business to accommodate the new law.

The law now will take effect at 5 p.m. on Sept. 22.

``We were told by all the attorneys not to do them (on Friday),'' said Carol Westfall, executive director of the Akron Women's Medical Group on East Market Street and its sister facility in Cleveland.

Westfall didn't mince words about the decision issued late Thursday by U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith in Cincinnati. That decision upheld a 1998 state law that requires teenage girls to obtain parental consent before getting an abortion.

It also requires adults seeking abortions to meet in person with a doctor at least 24 hours beforehand to get a description of the procedure and information about alternatives. Under the former law, that information could be given over the phone or by videotape.

It was the 24-hour requirement that was causing problems at the local clinic.

``This ruling came out at quarter to five on a Thursday night. It was impossible to get a hold of these patients,'' Westfall said. ``My opinion is, the judge should be lynched.'' (my emphasis)

Westfall said Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest days at her clinics because women schedule their procedures so that they have a few days to rest before returning to work.

``They're making this very, very hard on working women,'' she said.

Beckwith had ordered that the new law take effect immediately.

For some background information on the law, you can read this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

After fighting to keep this law from taking effect for 7 years, an abortionist calls for a judge to be lynched because they had to cancel a day's worth of appointments?

HT: The Corner

Women wanting late-term abortions are all crazy

Or at least that's what Spanish abortion provider Leonardo Llorente says. During an interview with an undercover reporter from London's Telegraph, Llorente admits to circumventing Spain's laws on abortion by exploiting the phrasing of Spain's law which includes no limits on abortion if there is a "high risk to the mother's mental health."

"Always it can be proved that the patient at this moment had serious mental problems even though later on the patients can be completely normal." Asked whether this meant that the woman could be given an abortion "whatever the situation", he answered: "Definitely."......

When asked if the foetuses had to be abnormal for the clinic to terminate them, he said "not necessarily" before going on to explain how they interpreted the law on "serious risk to a mother's mental health". Anyone who was motivated to ask for a late abortion in the first place must be distressed enough to qualify, he said.

I wonder if any pro-choice feminists bloggers or pro-choice organizations will attack Llorente for his comments regarding women who want late term abortions?

UPDATE:
Imagine if Pat Robertson declared that every woman having an abortion after a certain point was mentally ill. That would quite some firestorm.

We'd here shouting from the rafters that "Women aren't crazy because they want to make a decision about their body!" "How dare he pass judgement on women in difficult situations!" "Since when did Pat Robertson because a psychiatrist?" But when an abortionist makes what most ardent pro-choice people would consider a patronizing comment, the response is silence.

If I was that reporter for the Telegraph, I'd ask Llorente, "Why are women who want to abort late term pregnancies mentally ill? If abortion doesn't take a human life then why would a woman wanting a late term abortion be mentally ill? If the women wanting late term abortions are mentally ill, how much more mentally ill are you for wanting to perform these types of abortions?

Naaman adds:

Why is he treating women for psychological illness by killing their children? Why does that treatment make any sense? Why is that a solution? I'm not a psychiatrist, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to treat the actual illness. Why are these women so threatened by their unborn children?

If it's rape trauma, let's heal the trauma.
If it's a feeling of powerlessness, let's improve her self-esteem.
If it's a fear about money, let's get some public assistance to her. (Even here in the let-them-eat-cake USA, we have government-aid programs to help pregnant women and new mothers. Doesn't the UK?)
If it's a lack of "life skills", let's find someone to mentor her.
If it's depression, get her on some anti-depressants. Prozac doesn't appear to be safe, but Zoloft could be helpful. (Lawyers take note: I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice, so don't sue me.)

More muddling with human life in Britain

Scientists from the Roslin Institute, from whence the deceased Dolly the sheep was produced, have been working on getting embryonic stem cells from human embryos created via parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is the process of getting an egg to divide and grow without sperm.

"So far they have been able to make six embryos of about 50 cells apiece from 300 eggs.

‘At the moment we have not managed to get stem cells from these embryos, and that continues to be our ambition,' said Professor Paul de Sousa.

In order to get stem cells embryos of at least 100 cells are needed."

Help for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina

Food, shelter, clothing, and now from a few generous abortionists: abortions for free. Well, not exactly "free" but they won't cost any money.

HT: Jill Stanek

Does John Roberts have a right to privacy?

Planned Parenthood doesn't think so. Unable to find anything worthwhile in truckload of documents they want all of his government documents ASAP.

"We demand that the White House release all documents related to John Roberts' service in the government. Both Republican and Democratic senators must be able to carefully review the totality of his record before reaching a decision on his nomination. He cannot be confirmed without the Senate's full access to his records, especially on important matters such as women's health and safety and Americans' privacy rights."

Isn't it true to Planned Parenthood's style that on the same day they demand Roberts' records, they're trying to hide their own? Because covering up statutory rape is alright to Planned Parenthood as long as it's done in the name of privacy.

Yes, I do have too many cats

Which often leads to violent confrontations.

And a Baby Makes 4?

British fertility watchdog chihuahua, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has just approved experiments that will allow British scientists to create human embryos with genetic material from three separate parents. For now, the human embryos will be created solely for experimental purposes and scientists are currently not allowed to implant them into a womb.

In order to try to prevent mitochondrial DNA defects which affect 1 in 5,000 people and are usually mild, researchers in Britain hope to create human embryos that have the nuclear DNA from their parents but healthy mitochondrial DNA from an egg donor.

Times Online describes the technique: "First, an egg from a woman carrying mitochondrial defects will be fertilised in vitro using her partner's sperm. At the point of fertilisation, two "pronuclei" containing genetic material from the mother and father will be removed, and injected into an unfertilised egg from which the nucleus has been removed.

This donated egg will contain healthy mitochondria, but none of the nuclear DNA that makes up most of the human genetic code."

Doesn't that sound eerily familiar to somatic cell nuclear transfer, aka cloning. Instead of a somatic cell being taken from an adult patient, two pro-nuclei are taken from what sounds like a human zygote.

The Times Online article says it's not cloning because "the embryo that develops as a result will have a full complement of genes in its nucleus from a mother and a father. Clones created by nuclear transfer are genetically identical to the adult from which they are cloned, with the exception of their mitochondrial DNA."

I'm not buying this since cloning is cloning regardless of whether a human embryo is being cloned from a human adult or from a human embryo.

Wrong on taxes and stem cells

At Powerline, Paul's cousin notes how Bush implemented his tax policy before 9/11 in response to Thomas Freidman's editorial which claims that Bush used the mandate he received from 9/11 "not simply to confront the terrorists but to take a radically uncompassionate conservative agenda - on taxes, stem cells, the environment and foreign treaties - that was going nowhere before 9/11, and drive it into a post-9/11 world. In that sense, 9/11 distorted our politics and society."

I'd also like to point out that Friedman's timeline regarding stem cell research is also incorrect. Bush made his decision regarding the limited federal funding of embryonic stem cell research on August 9, 2001, about a month before 9/11.

Could someone please find Thomas Friedman an assistant who could fact check some of these assertions?

Since when did Michael Moore start writing for the Associated Press

Gina Holland, an AP writer lets me know that the "Rehnquist five" "held together in the 5-4 decision that essentially handed the inconclusive 2000 election to Bush over Democrat Al Gore."

I'm looking at an AP article in the Grand Rapids Press from today's paper by Holland regarding Rehnquist's funeral that partially borrows from above linked article and says the "Rehnquist five" "handed Bush the 2000 election."

Where's Media Matters when you need them?

If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?

I think this is probably one of the more clever pro-choice bumper stickers out there. At a quick glance, it appeals to our idea of fairness and how much responsibility and trust a person should be given. Those who are trusted with important tasks should also be entrusted with "simple decisions." If we can't trust a person to make a "simple choice," then how could we ever entrust them to the immensely more important task of raising a child?

The bumper sticker displays one of main tactics of the pro-choice movement. Don't talk about what the choice actually is. Just emphasize that it is a "choice." The immense problem with this bumper sticker's message is when someone asks "what choice?"

Imagine a candidate for President of the United States running on the slogan, "If you can't trust me to run the country, how can you trust me with a child?" It doesn't really work, does it? Most of recognize the importance and skills need for parenting yet we also realize that being President of the United States entails a different set of skills.

Or imagine an advocate for bigamy with a bumper sticker saying, "If you can't trust me with a choice (to marry more than one person), how can you trust with a child." The pro-choice bumper sticker uses language to obscure the reality that some choices are wrong regardless of how much responsibility an individual might have.

This bumper sticker also fails miserably at the Toddler Test.

Imagine a mother holding her toddler and saying, "If you can't trust me with the choice (of whether or not I can legally kill this toddler), how can you trust me to raise this toddler?" Just because we trust parents with their children doesn't mean we entrust them with the right to decide whether to kill them or not.

The bumper sticker assumes that having an abortion is a choice that doesn't affect anyone else instead of doing anything to prove it.

Once the question "what choice" is asked, the real issue becomes obvious. The issue isn't "shouldn't I have a choice?" or "aren't I responsible enough to make a choice?" but "what is unborn?" If the unborn aren't living human beings, then yes, you should be able to choose. But if the unborn are living human beings then you shouldn't be granted the right to kill that human being anymore than a mother should be granted the right to kill her toddler.

LifeLinks 9/8

The Congressional floor speeches of Rep. Henry Hyde and Rep. Joe Barton on embryonic stem cell research in the New Atlantis. You can read the rest of this great quarterly here.

Jill Stanek is working to help pregnancy centers in Louisiana and Mississippi that were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Miguel Miranda has a list of approved conservatives to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the Wall Street Journal. My personal favorite would be Maura Corrigan from the Michigan Supreme Court. I would love to see NARAL call a woman who has been elected by Michigan voters "radical conservative who is opposed to women's rights."

Womens Enews is asking, "But did anyone ever seriously mention a woman of color for the (Supreme Court job)?" Then they casually dismiss Janice Rogers Brown because she was filibustered when Bush nominated her for her current position the Court of Appeals.

The Most Misleading People on the Planet

have to be individuals in favor of human cloning for research, aka "therapeutic" cloning. From what I've seen the large majority of columnists, scientists, and bio-ethicists who favor human cloning for research can't come anywhere near being honest about what they are trying to do.

The Age features an editorial by scientist and author Elizabeth Finkel which displays how misleading proponents of human cloning for research consistently are. All it takes is some misdirection about what cloning is with some preposterous claims about embryonic stem cell research mixed in.

At present, human cloning is banned outright in Australia. That ban, however, covers two different things. It outlaws not only the cloning of human babies, but also therapeutic cloning, the aim of which is to copy the cells of a human being - an entirely different proposition.

Actually, the law bans or criminalizes many things, including creating human embryos for a purpose other than acheiving a pregnancy. Another prohibited practice happens to be the creation of a human clone. The aim of "therapeutic" cloning is not to copy the cells of a human being. The aim is to create a genetically identical embryonic human being who can be killed for their cells.

What does the technique of therapeutic cloning offer us? For one thing, merely by shedding a skin cell, a person might acquire a perfectly matched reservoir of embryonic stem cells: the biological gold that can regenerate any organ.

Ha!! "The biological gold that regenerate any organ?" Talk about an outlandish claim. Have embryonic stem cells ever completely regenerated a single human organ much less every human organ?

The 100-cell embryo is also a focal point of concern because it could be implanted into a woman's womb to produce a human being.

Before the above paragraph, Finkel finally admits that what is created by "therapeutic" cloning is an embryo even though "senseless ball of cells" is probably her preferred term.

But she never explains how implanting something into a human womb turns it into a human being. How does a mere change in location make a cloned human embryo into a human being?

Let's not oversell things here: it's unlikely patients will be seeing these "cures" for several years. (Of course they will be available sooner if you happen to live in South Korea.)

Notice how Finkel oversells things in the same paragraph where she claims to take a brake from her Mary Kay ways. No one knows if hypothetically distant cures via human cloning will be available sooner in South Korea than anywhere else because no one knows if they will ever occur. Using "of course" is horribly misleading rhetoric. The obvious sell point here is, "You better hurry up Australians and get on the human cloning bus so you can get the cures faster. All the South Koreans will be cured from a plethora of diseases while your bodies are rotting away."

For another, while researchers are having success producing brain, spinal cord and blood grafts, it's not so easy to grow pancreas, liver or kidney tissue.

But wait, I thought you said that embryonic stem cells were "biological gold that can regenerate any organ?" If researchers can regenerate any organ with then why are they having such trouble growing pancreas, liver, and kidney tissue?

Life Links 9/6

The Spotlight on Darfur is up.

Michael Fumento on recent news regarding a now debunked embryonic stem cell claim.

Has NOW's President Kim Gandy lost her mind?

"Now that Roberts' attitudes toward women have been revealed, it is an outrage and an insult to the women of this country that George W. Bush has nominated such a jurist to be Chief Justice of the United States."

Why Do Women Have Abortions

Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, has released a new study on the reasons why women have abortions. The last time they released a study like this was in 1987. When women were allowed to list multiple reasons for why they had an abortion, reasons like "Having a baby would dramatically change my life," "Can't afford a baby now," and "Don't want to be a single mother/having relationship problems" came out on top.

Other notable statistics:

6% of women said their parents wanted them to have an abortion
14% of women said their husband or partner wanted them to have an abortion
25% of women said that they didn't want people to know they had sex or were pregnant

UPDATE
After reading the complete report another thing that stuck to me was the brief paragraph on adoption. According to the report, more than 1/3 of the 38 women who were given an in-depth interview "said they had considered adoption and concluded that it was morally unconscionable option because giving one's child away is wrong."

The paper also includes some quotes from the women who were interviewed. Some I thought were particularly heart-wrenching.

"You know, I'm 19 years old. I don't think I should be having a child right now. I should be more focused on what I'm trying...I'm trying to do things for myself. How am I supposed to do something for another human?"

and

"I am on my own, and financially and mentally, I can't stand it now. That is one whole reason...It's a sin to bring the child here and not be able to provide for it...This is just in the best interest for me and the children- no, my children and this child."

The Need to Blame

Why is it that we feel the need to blame people for natural disasters? Why is it that we feel the need to blame anyone or everyone if the government's response isn't 100% to our liking? Why is that people need to take attention off rescue efforts and the incredible goodwill of American people with idiotic statements like "Bush doesn't care about Black people" or "Bush's unwillingness to save the lives of poor Blacks in New Orleans has been laid out in Black and white, literally for the world to see" or obvious race baiting?

I think Joe Carter is definitely onto something when he says, "Our view of governance has not only attained this level of ideological belief, but has become rather commonplace. For instance, one of the most consistent, though often unstated, themes in the discussion about the disaster in New Orleans is that the government could have saved everyone.....Over the next few weeks, the primary question will be "Which part of the government is to blame?" and will be hashed over by the various Gnostic sects the way Lutherans and Presbyterians argue over baptism. A few heretics (like me) may step forward to claim that maybe -- just maybe -- the government really can't save us all."

Same with Thomas Sowell: "No doubt the inevitable post mortems on this tragic episode will turn up many cases where things could have been done better. But who can look back honestly at his own life without seeing many things that could have been done better?.......Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk. "

When we knowingly or unknowingly view government as our ultimate sustainer and provider any type of perceived failure quickly leads us blame those who were unable to perfectly control government's perfect ability to save.

Remembering Rehnquist

Many bloggers have already covered the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. I thought I would share some excerpts from his dissent in Roe v. Wade

“The Court's opinion brings to the decision of this troubling question both extensive historical fact and a wealth of legal scholarship. While the opinion thus commands my respect, I find myself nonetheless in fundamental disagreement with those parts of it that invalidate the Texas statute in question, and therefore dissent....

Even if there were a plaintiff in this case capable of litigating the issue which the Court decides, I would reach a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Court. I have difficulty in concluding, as the Court does, that the right of "privacy" is involved in this case. Texas, by the statute here challenged, bars the performance of a medical abortion by a licensed physician on a plaintiff such as Roe. A transaction resulting in an operation such as this is not "private" in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the "privacy" that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which the Court has referred to as embodying a right to privacy. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)....

But the Court's sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester is impossible to justify under that standard, and the conscious weighing of competing factors that the Court's opinion apparently substitutes for the established test is far more appropriate to a legislative judgment than to a judicial one....

The decision here to break pregnancy into three distinct terms and to outline the permissible restrictions the State may impose in each one, for example, partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment....

The fact that a majority of the States reflecting, after all, the majority sentiment in those States, have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century is a strong indication, it seems to me, that the asserted right to an abortion is not "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental," Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934). Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the "right" to an abortion is not so universally accepted as the appellant would have us believe.

To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. Conn. Stat., Tit. 22, 14, 16. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. 1 While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. 2 Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857 and "has remained substantially unchanged to the present time." Ante.

There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter...." (emphasis mine)

Probation for Teen who Killed his Unborn Son with a Souvenir Baseball Bat

A Macomb County teen who killed his 25 week unborn son with his girlfriend's consent by beating her abdomen with a souvenir-style baseball bat over the span of weeks pleaded no contest to the charges and will serve two years of juvenile probation.

Here's the Macomb Daily story.

HT: LifeNews

Related:
Terminating pregnancy with a baseball bat
You've got to be kidding me
Consent is not a defense for baseball bat abortion

NOW more than ever

The latest press release from NOW regarding the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court is a doozy. It is NOW's President Kim Gandy's statement from a "No on Roberts" press conference.

Some excerpts:

Roberts' attitudes aren't conservative, they're simply backward. And women can't afford to go that direction....

Roberts has been downright dismissive of people who stand up for their own rights and the rights of others, with the cavalier attitude of one whose rights have always been guaranteed....

They are organizing campus campaigns and local events, and generating letters and phone calls — telling their Senators that we are united in one message: A lifetime appointment for John Roberts on the Supreme Court would spell decades of disaster for women and girls.

Looks like NARAL's Nancy Keenan may have some competition for the award of Most Over-The-Top Rhetoric From A Pro-Choice Feminist Leader (I think that will be a category at next year's MTV movie awards).

If you want to see Gandy lay out some whoppers check out this C-SPAN program from a couple of days ago where Gandy and FRC's Cathy Cleaver Ruse discuss Roberts and abortion. I can't download it because my Real Player isn't working to the best of its abilities but if her comments are anything like Ed Whelan describes them, it should be a good time.

So much for supporting "choice"

Regarding a story about a prolife woman who was raped, gave birth to the child and eventually gave the child up for adoption, one commenter at the I'm Not Sorry blog had this to say:

Personally, I find no heroism whatsoever in such an act. Don't get me wrong; I fully support her right to make that choice, but, personally, I find it to be indescribably heinous. I mean, even Mary was given a choice whether or not to carry God's son in the Christian mythology, but the Catholic Church expects women to simply accept whatever abuse men hurl at them? Knowing what we do about the genetics of behavior, it is irresponsible and thoroughly repugnant to reward a rapist in such a fashion...

Global Warming and Hurricanes

One of the things I grow most tired of is every time there is an natural disaster of immense proportion, the environmentalists hit the streets and blame global warming. It's like they have no idea that massive hurricanes have been pounding the Gulf Coast for years.

See Rich Lowry's piece in the National Review for a taste of reality. Even the New York Times isn't buying the "global warming caused Katrina" crap.

UPDATE:
Also check out this table from the national weather service.