Kermit Gosnell and America’s Holocaust

Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was recently found guilty of a laundry list of crimes including three counts of first degree murder for the killings of several babies that were born alive at his abortion clinic. Gosnell was accused of cutting the necks of the babies in violation of Pennsylvania law and basic human decency.

Gosnell has received virtually no support or sympathy from the pro-choice crowd. The head of NARAL Pro-Choice America said that Gosnell will “get what he deserves” in a statement. Before his arrest, her view of Gosnell would likely have been different. Many abortion clinics in surrounding states referred late term patients to Gosnell for abortions because it was common knowledge in the abortion industry that he was an abortionist who had little regard for state laws limiting abortion to 24 weeks according to the grand jury report.

It is also interesting to note that the same pro-choice activists who now throw Gosnell under the bus still fight for the right to perform abortions. If the babies that Gosnell murdered had still been in the womb, pro-choice activists would have rallied around him as a martyr. In the past, pro-choice groups have opposed any meaningful restrictions on abortion, even fighting against a ban on brutal partial birth abortions in which a baby is delivered except for the head. The abortionist then punctures the baby’s skull, still inside the woman’s body, and inserts a catheter to suck out the brain. Partial birth abortions were performed on babies much older than the 24 weeks mandated by Pennsylvania. Pro-choice groups have also opposed parental notification laws, clinic inspections (Gosnell’s clinic was appallingly unsanitary), and limits on when abortions can be performed.

Godwin’s Law dictates that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the more likely it is that someone will make an analogy about Nazis. Consequently, comparisons to Nazis or the use of “Nazi” or “fascist” as an epithet are so overdone that they have lost much of their effectiveness. Nevertheless, from time to time, a situation arises where a valid comparison to Nazis can be made. The case of Kermit Gosnell is one of these situations.

Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society was every bit as much a murder factory as the German concentration camps. The babies, the majority of the victims of Gosnell’s crimes, were dehumanized in the eyes of their murderers, just as the Jews and other victims of the camps were dehumanized in the eyes of their Nazi captors.

This dehumanization began with what is standard practice for pro-choice activists: the refusal to call an unborn baby a “baby.” When a baby becomes a “fetus” it is easier to think of it in less than human terms, an “inanimate lump of cells” in the words and minds of some pro-abortion advocates. This is directly analogous to the way in which Nazis dehumanized Jews, Slavs and others as “untermenschen,” sub-humans.

When someone is viewed as sub-human, they are easier to kill. At some point during the nearly 40 years of his practice, Gosnell and his staff members graduated from killing unborn “fetuses” to killing living, breathing babies who had “precipitated,” the office euphemism for birth.

Like the Nazi executioners, the staff of the Women’s Medical Society became so desensitized that they even joked about the babies they were killing or played with them before they cut their spinal cords according to grand jury testimony. Gosnell was said to commonly joke after killing big, late term babies that they could have “walked me to the bus stop.”

Testimony of the Holocaust includes tales of kindness from Germans at one moment followed by cold-blooded, businesslike killing the next. The book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” details the account of German soldiers who found a group of hidden Jewish orphans. Feeling pity for the untermenschen children, they put them at the head of the line for extermination so that they would not suffer.

Undercover videos by the pro-life documentary group Live Action reveal that the practice of dehumanizing unborn babies is common. In most cases, the abortionists never utter the words “baby,” “kill,” or “die.” Instead, a “pregnancy” is “terminated” or “fetal demise” is ensured. In violation of state and federal law, as well as human decency, the undercover activists are repeatedly assured that if the baby survives the abortion, the clinic workers will not help it live.

For other abortion clinics, the dehumanization also extends beyond killing the baby in the womb. One abortionist in the Bronx, where a baby is as likely to be aborted as born, tells the undercover filmmaker to “flush it” if she delivers her baby away from the clinic. LeRoy Carhart, known for performing late term abortions, is unusually direct and blunt, telling patients that they will have a dead baby inside them for three days that will be softening up like “meat in a crock pot.” More typical is the Bronx abortionist who says, “We don’t use the word ‘kill.’” Likewise, the Nazis also used a number of euphemisms for their killing, including several that are the same or very similar to terms used by abortionists.

Like the Nazi camps, abortion clinics, Gosnell’s in particular, are assembly lines of death. The grand jury report notes that Gosnell’s clinic was subject to a constant stream of patients, some coming for abortions, others for illegal drugs. Gosnell’s untrained and uncertified staff would promptly sedate the women coming for abortions because Gosnell didn’t like it when women screamed or moaned in pain. The women were also given drugs to induce labor, often in Gosnell’s absence. Because Gosnell often came in late, babies were often born alive; one or two each night according to the testimony, often entering the world into the toilet in Gosnell’s clinic. Gosnell allegedly preferred it when babies were born alive because it made his job easier. An abortion procedure could take up to half an hour. It was much quicker to kill a living baby and just suck out the placenta.

Also like the Nazis, Gosnell and other abortionists profit handsomely from their killings. According to the grand jury report, Gosnell’s take from his clinic was estimated at $1.8 million per year, most of it in cash. Police found $240,000 and a gun hidden in his 12-year-old daughter’s closet when they raided his house.

Abortion is profitable for other clinics as well. The American Center for Law and Justice points out that 51 percent of Planned Parenthood’s income comes from abortions. Planned Parenthood, a for-profit business that also receives taxpayer funds, receives more than $164 million per year from abortions. The sale of body parts from aborted babies for medical and pharmaceutical research is rumored to be a multimillion dollar underground industry (Nazis experimented on their victims as well). In spite of the lucrative nature of the abortion business, as noted earlier on Examiner, abortion clinics are often unsanitary and ill equipped. Infections, complications and even deaths of women resulting from the substandard conditions in abortion clinics are not uncommon.

Nazi death camps and abortion clinics also share common roots in the racist scientific theories of the early 20^th century. Hitler’s ideas were rooted in eugenics, a pseudoscience popularized in California, which held that humanity could be improved by controlling the genetic makeup of society. According to PBS, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was also a proponent of eugenics.

Hitler took eugenics one step further by totally eliminating - killing - those he deemed unfit. From the 1920s until after World War II, the mentally handicapped were sometimes the subject of forced sterilizations due to American eugenics laws. In 1918, a U.S. Army doctor, Paul Popenoe, had suggested executing “defective” people to “keep up the standard of the race” according to George Mason University. Hitler seized these ideas, which had been funded by Americans like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller, and began sterilizing German undesirables almost as soon as the Nazis came to power. In 1940, two years before the Final Solution for the Jews was formalized, the Germans began euthanizing – killing – the mentally retarded, the physically handicapped, and the mentally ill. Even today, the possibility of birth defects remains a main rationalization for abortion, a legacy of eugenics.

The Holocaust stands as one of the great tragedies of human history. Not only Jews, but other untermenschen and undesirables such as Slavs, gypsies, political prisoners and others were killed by the Nazis. The BBC estimates that the total number of civilians murdered by the Nazis was about 15 million over the 12 years of the “thousand year Reich’s” existence. Politifact estimates that there have been 50 million abortions in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

Perhaps the most positive thing that can be said about the Gosnell trial is that most Americans are shocked by the revelations about the U.S. abortion industry. When people are shocked by Gosnell’s behavior, they are not yet desensitized to the slaughter of innocents among us. When abortionists must cover their deeds with euphemisms, lies and a media blackout there is hope that the American public will become aware and angry enough to act.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said it best in a statement on the group’s website: “The few inches that separate a child in the womb from a child outside the womb should never determine whether its intentional ‘demise’ is permitted by law or whether a ‘right’ to kill it no longer exists.”

Originally published on Examiner:

 

http://www.examiner.com/list/kermit-gosnell-and-america-s-auschwitz

Abortion doctor guilty of killing babies

Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who ran a little shop of horrors that churned out a steady stream of scarred and battered women along with untold numbers of dead babies, has been found guilty. Gosnell may be the first abortionist ever convicted of killing babies.

Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first degree murder for the killings of three babies born alive at his abortion clinic. After the babies were born, Gosnell cut their necks with scissors, a practice that was allegedly common in the clinic. Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the drug overdose death of Karnamaya Mongar, an adult patient at the clinic. The jury found Gosnell not guilty in the case of a fourth baby’s murder.

Gosnell was also found guilty of a host of lesser charges. According to NBC Philadelphia, the guilty verdicts included an additional count of infanticide, two counts of conspiracy, 21 of 24 counts of abortion of an unborn child of 24 weeks or more and 208 of 227 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s informed consent of abortion law.

Prosecutors have indicated that they will seek the death penalty for Gosnell, who is 72 years old.

Yahoo News quotes a statement by Ilyse Hogue, chairman of NARAL Pro-Choice America as saying, “Now, let's make sure these women are vindicated by delivering what all women deserve: Access to the full range of health services including safe, high-quality and legal abortion care.” Hogue added that the verdict means that Gosnell will “get what he deserves.”

The revelations from the case about the late term abortion industry have sparked a growing debate that is causing some abortion supporters to reconsider their views. Examiner reported that a prominent blogger and a reporter covering the trial were among the people swayed by testimony about the killings that went on in Gosnell’s clinic.

Originally published on Examiner.
http://www.examiner.com/article/abortion-doctor-found-guilty-of-killing-babies

Abortion doctor trial is changing minds… in spite of press blackout

The trial of Kermit Gosnell has put abortion on display in America. This is in spite of mainstream media attempts to ignore the grisly story of Gosnell’s little shop of horrors in Philadelphia. Previously Examiner reported how Gosnell and his employees were responsible for the death of at least one woman at his clinic and caused serious damage to the health of others. While many of Gosnell’s victims were the women who came to him, they were only the tip of the iceberg.

The other victims of Gosnell and his employees were too numerous to count. Gosnell had worked as an abortionist since 1972. The grand jury report on Gosnell makes a conservative estimate that Gosnell did 25 abortions each night for three nights per week. That works out to an estimated 3,900 abortions per year or 148,200 abortions in the 38 years he practiced until his arrest in 2010. The take for Gosnell’s work was an estimated $1.8 million per year… most of it in cash. A search of Gosnell’s house turned up $240,000 in cash hidden in his daughter’s closet along with a gun.

Gosnell will never be punished for killing the majority of the 148,200 babies who died at his hands. Many were under the legal limit of 24 weeks in which abortions are permitted in Pennsylvania. For others, many of whom were older than 24 weeks, Gosnell apparently destroyed the records, although he recorded the age of hundreds of babies as “24.5 weeks,” just over Pennsylvania’s legal limit.

Seven babies bear mute testimony to the horrors of Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society.” Some of these babies were photographed by staff members after they were killed. Others were discovered in the office when police launched a drug raid in 2010. Police found fetal remains “in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers. Some fetal remains were in a refrigerator, others were frozen” according to the grand jury. Forty-five sets of fetal remains were discovered in the clinic. Gosnell admitted to detectives that “at least 10- to 20 percent” were older than 24 weeks. The medical examiner determined that two or three of the babies were viable. The seven babies that Gosnell is accused of murdering are referred to by the letters A through G since they never acquired names.

Baby Boy A was 18 to 19 inches long and weighed about six pounds when he was born alive in Gosnell’s clinic. In spite of the fact that the baby boy was breathing, Gosnell slit his neck and put the body in a shoebox. The baby continued to move. A neonatologist testified to the grand jury that this means that the baby was still alive and in “a tremendous amount of pain.” Several staff members took photographs of the baby because of its unusual size. The details in the photograph showed hair, a developed scrotum and other features that indicated a development of 32 weeks.

Baby C was delivered by one of Gosnell’s employees, Lynda Williams. After delivering the baby, Williams placed it on a counter while she tended to the mother. Baby C was moving and breathing for about 20 minutes. Williams played with Baby C according to testimony and then slit its neck. Williams is among several clinic workers to plead guilty to murder.

According to testimony, it was not uncommon for Gosnell to perform late term abortions on babies that were viable outside the womb. In many cases, babies were born alive, often because Gosnell would arrive late, and then be killed by Gosnell or his staff. Many of these babies could move or cry on their own. When babies were born at the clinic, Gosnell or other staff members would cut the baby’s spinal cord or slit its throat. Gosnell is reported to have preferred it when the babies were already born because it made his job easier. He often made jokes about the size of the babies that he had killed.

Gosnell flagrantly disregarded the law. In Pennsylvania, abortions must be performed prior to 24 weeks, but the grand jury report notes that Gosnell had a reputation as a doctor who would perform abortions “at any stage without regard for legal limits.” Gosnell also disregarded Pennsylvania’s 24 hour waiting period law, often performing abortions on the same day as the initial consultation “as long as the patient paid in full, typically in cash.”

The revelations of Gosnell’s killings have already changed the abortion debate. Roger Simon wrote in Pajamas Media how he and his wife were affected by the Philadelphia atrocities:

“Both lifelong ‘pro-choice’ people, after watching only seconds, we embarked in an immediate discussion of whether it was time to reconsider that view.  (Didn’t human life really begin at the moment of conception?  What other time?) Neither of us was comfortable as a ‘pro-choice’ advocate in the face of these horrifying revelations.  How could we be?”

It is an uncomfortable truth for pro-choice advocates that the legal line between a “fetus” and a baby is arbitrary and perilously thin. What Gosnell and his staff did is the logical extension of legal abortion where babies are dehumanized as inanimate growths in a woman’s body.

A number of prominent liberals made comments before Gosnell’s atrocities that come close to advocating his brand of post-birth abortion. Noted atheist Richard Dawkins said in a video clip available on Youtube that he could find no moral objection to infanticide on babies up to a year old. Princeton philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer has written in support of after-birth abortions and infanticide for more than 20 years. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said in a televised congressional debate on CSPAN in 1996 that “I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born … the baby belongs to your family and has all the rights [of a person].” In 2001, then-Senator Barack Obama argued against a bill in Illinois that would have required abortionists to provide treatment for infants who were born alive during abortions. The audio of the session is on Youtube. A 2011 article in the Journal of Medical Ethics argued that after-birth abortion should be permitted, even when the newborn is not disabled. In March 2013, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist told the Florida legislature in a video on the Weekly Standard that if an infant was born alive during an abortion, the “decision [of whether to kill or seek treatment for the baby] should be between the patient and the health care provider.”

If support for infanticide is shocking, it is only separated by a degree from Gosnell’s crimes and that by a degree from legal abortion. Beyond all the euphemisms and carefully chosen words is the reality that abortion kills a living human being that, in many cases, would be viable to survive on its own. According to the law, it is legal to kill a baby up to the 24 weeks old as long as it is inside the mother, but if it is born, killing it is murder. The difference in abortion and infanticide is only a short trip through the birth canal.

JD Mullane, a Pennsylvania reporter and one of the few journalists covering the Gosnell trial, reconsidered his pro-choice views after hearing testimony at the trial. Mullane told Mike Huckabee, “Gosnell pulls the curtain back from the inherent violence of abortion. You can't sit in that courtroom and learn about what abortion does to the unborn child and to the woman in many cases … you can't sit there day after day and week after week and listen to that testimony and not be changed, and not have a change of heart, or at least reconsider your position.”

The idea that people will see abortion for what it is and reconsider is exactly what the pro-choice members of the media are afraid of. The Apostle John wrote, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed” (John 3:20). To put it in modern terms, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Read for yourself about the crimes of Kermit Gosnell and the Women’s Medical Society. The grand jury report detailing the charges against Gosnell and the clinic workers is available online at:

http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf

 

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/abortion-doc-trial-is-changing-minds-spite-of-media-blackout

Casey Anthony and the pro-choice culture of death

Casey Anthony (Wikimedia)

There has been a huge public outcry over the acquittal of the Florida mother accused of killing her two-year-old daughter.  Casey Anthony was acquitted of the murder charges against her, but convicted on four counts of lying to police.  She will be set free after the next week after being credited for the time that she has already served.

Like O.J. Simpson, Anthony was acquitted in the court of law, but found guilty in the court of public opinion.  Her responsibility for the death of her daughter was taken for granted by the media and the millions of viewers who watched the trial on live television.  The titillating details of how she partied at Orlando nightclubs while little Caylee was missing stoked national anger against Casey.  A late June poll of west Floridians by WFTV showed that 92 percent believed that Casey killed Caylee.

Casey Anthony’s alleged crime might be described as a post-natal abortion.  If, as she is accused of doing, Anthony actually killed her daughter because being a mother interfered with her carefree lifestyle then her action is different from abortion primarily in that her daughter was two-years-old instead of an unborn baby. 

Peter Singer (Bbsrock/Wikimedia)

While the law does differentiate between unborn and born humans, there are actually people who advocate that actions similar to those for which Anthony was accused should be legal.  For example, Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, does not dispute that unborn babies are living humans.  To Singer, however, that still does not mean that killing unborn babies is wrong.  In fact, Singer believes that abortion should be taken a step further.  In Singer’s view, even a newborn baby “has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person.”  He says in an interview on the Princeton website that “killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.” 

There are other academics who have argued in favor of infanticide.  Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at MIT, wrote an article for the New York Times in 1997 in which he argued that the right to life is contingent upon “having a unique sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people, …an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death and to express the choice not to die. And there's the rub: our immature neonates don't possess these traits any more than mice do.”

In the same article Pinker cites other academics in favor of infanticide.  Michael Tooley, a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says that it should be legal to kill newborns for a specific length of time after birth.  Psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson have argued that if a newborn is seriously ill that parents must “decide” whether to “cut their losses and favor the healthiest in the litter or try again later on.”

James Watson, a discoverer of DNA and the first director of the Human Genome Project, had a similar view.  In 1973, Time magazine quoted Watson in an interview with an AMA magazine as saying “if a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system.  The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering."

In the Netherlands, these ideas are already being put into practice.  In 2002, the Groningen protocol set forth standards for performing euthanasia on newborns with incurable deformities, but “the New Republic” noted that it could be applied to children as old as twelve.  Above the age of twelve, Dutch law already allows euthanasia with parental consent.  Dutch law prohibits involuntary euthanasia, but there are allegations that doctors are increasingly killing patients, both babies and adults, without consent or permission.  

While much of the support for infanticide is based on euthanizing the terminally ill, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was explicit in her support of infanticide for convenience.  Anne Barbeau Gardiner notes that Sanger wrote in “Woman and the New Race” that “the most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”  In “My Fight for Birth Control” she sympathized with a drunken man who considered his newborn a “nuisance” and threw the “naked infant into the snow” because of he was “desperate for want of sleep and quiet.”  She also approved of “drowning girl children” during famines in China in her book “Pivot of Civilization.”

Margaret Sanger (Wikimedia)

It is a short leap from abortion to infanticide.  Even though abortion is typically defended on grounds of medical necessity it is commonly accepted that over ninety percent of abortions are performed for convenience or personal preference rather than medical reasons.  When leading philosophers, ethicists, and doctors dispute the immorality of killing newborns it is easy to see how infanticide for medical reasons could quickly degenerate to infanticide for convenience.   

This brings us back to Casey Anthony and the other mothers who have been accused of killing their children.  These women have been given an inconsistent message about both the humanity of their children and the immorality of killing them.  The legalization of abortion for convenience and the advocacy of euthanasia and assisted suicide have helped to cheapen human life to the extent that some  consider a newborn baby a nuisance to be discarded on the whim of the parent. 

It is an irrational act of cognitive dissonance to hold forth that babies, born or unborn, are not people and that killing them is not immoral and then be surprised when parents do just that.  If our society is determined to continue to walk the tightrope between life and convenience, it will continue to be complicit in the murders of children like Caylee Anthony.

 

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/casey-anthony-and-the-pro-choice-culture-of-death"> 

A Father's Lullaby

Lullaby and goodnight, pleasant dreams ‘til tomorrow
Lullaby, now sleep tight, it’s time to close your eyes.
Lay you down, close your eyes; time to go to sleep.
Lay you down, close your eyes; time to go to sleep.

Lullaby and goodnight, you know you should be sleeping
Lullaby and goodnight, Daddy's really getting tired.
Lay you down, close your eyes; how can you be awake?
Lay you down, close your eyes; how can you be awake?

Lullaby and goodnight, I have to work in four hours
Lullaby and goodnight, my alarm goes off soon.
Lay you down, close your eyes; I really need to sleep.
Lay you down, close your eyes; I really need to sleep.

Lullaby and goodnight, it’s almost sunrise
Lullaby and goodnight, I’m feeling half-dead.
Lay you down, close your eyes; maybe I'll wake up mama
Lay you down, close your eyes; maybe I should wake your mom.

Lullaby and goodnight, I think your eyes are closing
Lullaby and goodnight, now I’ll just put you down.
Lay you down, don’t wake up; now I’m off to bed
Lay you down, don’t wake up; now I’ll rest my weary head

The Palins Choice for Life

Recently a media firestorm was introduced around Republican Vice President nominee, Sarah Palin, regarding abortion. On one front, Palin’s seventeen-year-old daughter Bristol was revealed to be pregnant outside of marriage. On another front, Palin recently gave birth to a son, Trig, who was diagnosed in the womb with Down’s syndrome. Governor Palin, who is pro-life, or anti-choice in the parlance of most media outlets, was roundly criticized for opposing abortion in both areas.

More than almost any other issue, Governor Palin’s response to these family crises highlights the difference between conservatives and liberals. In the decades since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the answer to both problems from the political left has been to turn to abortion.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama made it clear what his choice for his daughters would be if they were in Bristol Palin’s position. While campaigning in Pennsylvania in March 2008, Obama said, “…I’ve got two daughters, nine years old and six years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16.”

That Obama equates a baby with a disease is telling and highlights the difference between the two positions. The left views an unborn baby as nothing more than an inanimate lump of cells that has the potential to become a baby if left unchecked. Since the baby is not human, they reason that abortion is no more a moral issue than removing a tumor or some other unwanted growth.

Abortion advocates argue that unwanted and disabled babies should be aborted. They believe that children with disabilities or who are born to parents that did not want children have no chance for happiness, and are better off not being born.

Sometimes even being born is not enough. Barack Obama helped to kill the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois legislature. The bill would have allowed infants born alive in botched abortions to receive the full protection of a human person under the law. Fortunately, a federal version of the law was passed by Congress in 2002 without dissent.

The right views an unborn baby as a human that simply has not been born yet. Since the unborn baby is a person already, it should be protected by the same laws that protect all other people. Abortion kills a living person and thus is murder and immoral.

Pro-lifers also argue that allowing abortion ultimately cheapens all life. Since 1973, euthanasia and suicide have become increasingly acceptable. In 1997, Oregon became the first US state to pass a law permitting assisted suicides. In 2005, Terri Schiavo died after her husband had her feeding tube removed against her family’s wishes. In Holland, infants can be euthanized, even without parental consent, if the baby is determined to have “an unlivable life.” Princeton professor Peter Singer, viewed in many circles as a leading philosopher, also espouses infanticide of disabled babies, even after they are born. The next step will be to euthanized the elderly who are terminally ill in order to save resources for the young.

One problem with aborting, or euthanizing, the disabled is that while most healthy people imagine that they would be miserable with a severe disability, in reality, disabled people are just as likely to be happy as healthy people. People with a severe illness or disability adapt to their condition and often become stronger mentally and spiritually. In fact, a group of disabled activists called Not Dead Yet has arisen to oppose Peter Singer and his ilk. The list of disabled people who have made significant contributions to society is long and includes such names as Helen Keller, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Stephen Hawking. Disabled children often have a profound impact on their family and friends even if they do not achieve notoriety.

Most American women (75%) who have abortions say that the baby would interfere with caring for dependents or that they cannot afford to care for a baby. Many of these women are young (50% are under 25, 17% are teenagers) and poor (over four times as many women who live under the poverty level obtain abortions as do women 300% above the poverty level). While carrying a child under these circumstances can be daunting, there are options that women can consider.

The first option is become a single parent. While parenting alone is a difficult prospect, it is also rewarding. Financial assistance from the government, religious groups and family may make the job easier. Additionally, the baby’s father may be legally obligated to provide child support. A disadvantage to a single-parent family is that it can be extremely challenging financially.

Another option is marriage. If the woman is already in a serious relationship, it might be relatively easy to take the next step and get married. Marriage provides a supportive and stable family environment for raising children. An important advantage is that both parents can provide incomes or one can work while the other keeps the children. The responsibility for everything does not fall onto one person. Additionally, there are tax advantages to marriage as well.

An underutilized option is to place the baby up for adoption. No child is truly unwanted. Many couples who have difficulty in becoming pregnant would like to adopt a baby. The birth mother can choose which family will adopt her baby and can even choose to have further contact with her child as it grows up.

To help women overcome the basic human instinct to not kill another human being, abortion advocates devote considerable time and energy to proving that unborn babies are not human at all. They conspicuously avoid discussing babies and instead speak of “fetuses,” “embryos,” and “choice.”

Scientific evidence gives lie to the claim that unborn babies are not human. Even at very early points in its gestation, the unborn fetus takes on the appearance of a tiny person. The heart starts beating as early as the fourth week of the pregnancy, likely before the mother even knows that she is pregnant.

New 3-D ultrasounds provide a new window into the baby’s life inside the womb. It is not known at exactly what point an unborn baby can start to feel pain, but it is generally accepted even by abortion opponents that the fetus can feel pain by twenty weeks. Many scientists believe that even abortions done much earlier cause the fetus to die a painful death. The film Silent Scream (www.silentscream.org) offers haunting, but inconclusive evidence of the consciousness of an unborn baby at twelve weeks.

There is virtually no doubt that partial birth abortion, which are commonly performed at twenty-six weeks or later, cause excruciating pain for the baby. In a partial birth abortion, also called dilation and extraction (D&X), the child is partially delivered. While the head remains in the womb, the abortionist sticks a set of surgical scissors into the baby’s skull, and then spreads them to enlarge the opening. He then sucks out the baby’s brain with a suction catheter. The head must be crushed with forceps to be removed.

A similarly brutal method of late term abortion is dilation and evacuation (D&E). In this procedure, the abortionist grasps the child in the womb with a clamp, then proceeds to dismember its body and remove the pieces. Again, the head, referred to by the abortionist as “number one,” must be crushed with forceps to be removed

One of the most dramatic pieces of evidence that point to life inside the womb was a photo taken in 1999 by Mike Clancy. Clancy actually photographed two separate pre-natal surgeries to treat spina bifida in unborn babies. The photos of Samuel Armas and Sarah Marie Switzer show the unborn babies reaching out of the womb to grasp the surgeon’s finger. Samuel was at twenty-one weeks when his photo was taken. The picture can be seen at www.michaelclancy.com/story.html.

If abortion opponents deny that life begins at conception, they must determine an arbitrary point at which life does begin. Some options for the beginning of life could include the first heartbeat, the first trimester, when the baby can live outside the womb, or when the baby is finally born.

The problem with most of these points of view is that they are arbitrary. Science has shown us that the baby is very much alive and active inside the womb long before it is born or can survive on its own. Scientific advances allow babies to live outside the womb with the help of medical technology at increasingly early stages of development. A baby that needs an incubator to live is no less human than an adult who needs a dialysis machine or a pacemaker.

Because sperm can live in the female body for up to five days, conception can occur several days after intercourse. Conception occurs twelve to twenty-four hours after the woman ovulates. The body will not know that it is pregnant until the egg implants itself on the uterine wall. This occurs between five and twelve days after conception.

If conception is allowed to occur, the unborn baby will grow according to a clearly defined schedule. The gestation period continues for forty weeks, until the baby is mature enough to live outside the womb. At that point, birth occurs. If the baby is healthy enough to prevent miscarriage and its growth is not artificially inhibited, conception results in the birth of a full-term baby forty weeks later. Therefore, it is evident that life begins at conception. It follows that if that life is artificially terminated, a living human being has been killed.

There are several medicines, referred to as morning after pills, which can prevent conception. Because these pills prevent, rather than terminate, a pregnancy, they escape most of the moral problems of abortion. A morning after pill must be used quickly after intercourse, before the woman is actually pregnant. To that end, women should be educated in the use of these contraceptive pills.

If it were as simple as educating women to use contraceptives though, abortion would be an almost nonexistent problem. Over the past few decades, sex education classes have been taught in more and more schools across the country, both in order to reduce unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. In spite of the increased education, almost fifty percent of women who have abortions did not use any contraceptives. Of those who did, most (76% of pill users) did not use their birth control consistently.

The effects of abortion on the mother are not often discussed, but they can be significant. Abortion is touted as an easy solution, but there are real physical, emotional, and psychological risks. In most states, abortion clinics are not required to meet the same standards of cleanliness as hospitals. Many women report that abortion clinics are dusty, smelly and generally unclean. These conditions can cause women to develop infections that can be life threatening. Infections might also result in infertility and disease.

An emerging problem with abortion is that numerous studies are finding strong links between abortion and breast cancer. In the early stages of pregnancy, the woman’s estrogen level increases dramatically. This leads to the growth of undifferentiated cells, in the breast that would ultimately help the body produce milk. In an abortion, the woman is left with abnormally high numbers of these cells that are never differentiated. Scientists believe that these cells are very vulnerable to carcinogens and lead to an increased likelihood of tumors later in life.

Psychological and emotional damage often last longer than the physical effects of the abortion. Post Abortion Syndrome (PAS) is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Many women experience feelings of guilt and anxiety that sometimes leads to depression and thoughts of suicide. In other cases, the guilt leads women to become obsessed with becoming pregnant again. Some women turn to alcohol, drugs or self-punishing behaviors as a means of coping.

All of these thoughts might not have been explicitly discussed by the Palin family as they dealt with Bristol’s pregnancy and Trig’s disease; they were already predisposed to err on the side of life. Although as many as 80% of unborn children who are diagnosed with Down’s syndrome are aborted, but the Palin’s strongly held pro-life views influenced them to allow Trig to be born. Similarly, Bristol Palin chose life for her as yet unborn child. With her family’s help, she will be able to raise a well-adjusted child regardless of whether she eventually marries the baby’s father.

By sticking to their principles and standing up for their pro-life beliefs, both Gov. Palin and Bristol are changing the way America looks at the choice of abortion. If Gov. Palin becomes our next Vice President, American’s will be able to see the childhood of both children. They will see that raising a disabled baby or an unplanned child is not as bad as it might seem. That, in turn, might help to further reduce the number of abortions in America and around the world. That would be a beautiful thing.

Sources:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
http://www.cultureandmediainstitute.org/articles/2008/20080402175415.aspx
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/003dncoj.asp?pg=2
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0049.html
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/050210_ill_but_happy.html
http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_0060.shtml
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/unplannedpregnancy/my3choices.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002398.htm
http://www.dhushara.com/book/orsin/fetus/fetus.htm
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA_Images/PBA_Images_Heathers_Place.htm
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/DEabortiongraphic.html
http://www.famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Fetus_hand_reaches_out
http://www.beyondfertility.com/art206.htm
http://www.ramahinternational.org/abortion-clinics.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23506
http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_books/love_them_both/why_cant_we_love_them_both_21.asp#How%20often%20do%20women%20get%20infection%20as%20a%20consequence%20of%20induced%20abortion?
http://postabortionsyndrome.org/post_abortion_syndrome_symptoms.html
http://www.lifenews.com/nat4231.html

Posted in Winner, South Dakota

Reflections on Ethan's Birth Day

It is July 27, 2008. Tomorrow morning is when my daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, is going to be born. I’m currently sitting in the terminal at Baltimore-Washington International and my flight is delayed to thunderstorms here and at home in Atlanta. My experience today reminded me of when my first child, Ethan, was born.

The time was February of 2004 and we were living in Florence, Kentucky where I was a First Officer with Atlantic Coast Airlines/ Delta Connection flying from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG). Debi and I had been going to frequent ultrasounds, and a couple of days after one of them, we received a call from the doctor’s office telling us that they thought that the most recent ultrasound showed a birth defect on the baby. We were instructed to come in for another ultrasound with a specialist at a neighboring hospital two days later and about a month prior to the due date.

I was off work when for the ultrasound, but was scheduled to work the following day. At the time, I was a reserve pilot at the airline, which meant that, even though I was on duty, I might fly and I might not. As it turned out, the company called and assigned me a trip for the day after the ultrasound. I was to leave CVG and fly through Boston to an overnight in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

We reported for the ultrasound together with our pastor, Steve, who came for moral and spiritual support. The technician started looking at the baby, making notes, and not saying a whole lot. Finally, the medical gurus told us that they were concerned because Debi’s amniotic fluid was low. For some reason, this reminded me of Lewis Grizzard’s book, If Love Were Oil I’d Be a Quart Low. Unfortunately, their solution was not to add a quart, they wanted to keep Debi in the hospital overnight and give her an IV to bring up her fluid level.

This caused a problem. I had a limited number of sick days. I had applied for FMLA for when the baby was born, but I was a regional airline FO. Regional First Officers are poor and FMLA is unpaid leave if you run out of sick time. I could not afford to be out of work long and I might have to miss more work days after the baby was born.

We talked it over and finally decided that since Debi would be going home in the morning, I should go on to work. I felt uneasy at the prospect of leaving my pregnant wife in the hospital, alone and eight hours away from both of our families. As I was about to leave to go home and pack my bag for Canada, a nurse nonchalantly told me, “You might want to wait. I think you are going to have a baby in the morning.”

My reaction was basically, “huh?” This was quickly followed by the slightly more verbose, “are you serious?” She was.

I’m not sure who was more shocked: Steve or me.

I still really have no idea when or exactly why the doctor decided to induce labor. At the time, it really didn’t occur to me to ask. The next few hours are a blur of calling our parents and telling them that their grandson would be born the next morning, not a month from now, and, no, I wasn’t kidding. My parents had non-revenue/standby travel benefits from my company so I booked them on a flight to CVG. Debi’s parents set out on the eight-hour drive as quickly as they could pack.

The new plan was to have Debi spend the night in the hospital where they would monitor her and the baby throughout the night. They would induce labor with Poticin in the morning, then we would go home with a happy, if slightly smaller than expected, baby boy.

That afternoon, I went to pick my parents up at the airport and pick up Debi’s suitcase, which, she had already packed, thank goodness! Our carefully laid plans were all falling apart. We were having the baby a month early and in a completely different hospital than what we had planned. We had recently completed the nursery, but Debi had a baby shower scheduled at our church the following weekend. She had actually joked about not being able to go if the baby came early. Only now it didn’t seem very funny!

I spend that night at the hospital with Debi while my parent stayed in our apartment. Debi’s parents spent the night on the road between north Georgia and northern Kentucky. Ironically, Debi’s sister was also pregnant. She had set up a c-section for February 17, so Debi’s parents thought that they would have plenty of time between births. Now they were dealing with having two grandchildren within days of each other.

I remember the night of February 11, 2004 as being one of the longest nights of my life. On top of the anxiety of becoming a parent the next morning, Debi was trying to sleep with a fetal monitor across her stomach. She would get comfortable, then Ethan would move. The nurses would immediately realize that they were no longer monitoring the baby and come in to readjust the monitor, which would wake us up. I don’t know exactly how many times this happened throughout the night, but I’m sure it was at least a million.

Finally, morning came. With it came the nurses with Debi’s dose of Potocin at around seven o’clock. Not long after, Debi’s parents arrived just in time. About the same time, the medicine kicked in and Debi started having contractions. We were going to have a baby!

It wasn’t long after that that the doctors and nurses started looking worried again. Ethan’s vital signs were erratic whenever Debi had a contraction. He was going into fetal distress. The doctor thought that the umbilical cord was probably wrapped around his neck, which could cause major problems as the birth proceeded. Someone mentioned the possibility of sending Debi to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, but my sweet, southern wife put her foot down: “I don’t want no yankee baby!”

The next thing that I knew, they were suiting me up in scrubs for an emergency c-section. It is probably a good thing that I had no idea this was coming; otherwise I would have been more nervous than I actually was. As it is, I was more numb than nervous.

In much less time than you would think, they had Debi in an operating room. When they had her settled, they brought me in and gave me a seat by her head. As I sat down, alarms started going off and the nurses and doctors looked up in alarm! They quickly determined that everything was all right; I had just sat on a cord going to the monitoring equipment. They told me to move. Stat!

The actual c-section was uneventful. It was a little bit surreal looking my wife’s organs being moved about by doctors. In no time at all, they pulled forth from her a baby boy.

The nurse asked if I would like to see my baby. I felt torn between staying beside Debi and going to Ethan, but she indicated that I should go. I don’t remember holding him then, but I went to the table where the nurses were examining him.

I remember hearing that babies often looked pasty at birth. Not Ethan. He was born looking as if he had a tan. I remember his head full of black hair and his blue eyes, as well as his really pronounced lips. I put my finger in his tiny hand and he grabbed it.

The nurses said that he was perfectly healthy. There was no sign of a birth defect.

Shortly after that, we were back into Debi’s hospital room with a new baby in her arms. Our parents said that we left so suddenly that they didn’t know where we went. You can imagine their shock when we showed up with Ethan in hand.

We did take the opportunity to play a practical joke on the grandparents. We (I) had toyed with several potential names, as all parents do. We considered Andrew Taylor, a nod to Debi’s maiden name and the Andy Griffith Show. I kept saying that we should name him Ezekiel and call him “Zeke.” Since his birthday, February 12, was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, we told the assembled crowd in the hospital room that we had decided to name him “Abraham Ezekiel.” There were more than a few forced smiles in the room at that point.

An additional item that will be good blackmail material when Ethan starts dating came before we left the hospital. The name card on his basinet read in big blue letters: “I’M A BREASTFED BOY.” We definitely got a picture of that.

The story after that is routine. Ethan went home with us three days later. He was healthy in spite of being born a month early. At five pounds one point four ounces, he had virtually no body fat, so he ended up spending a night in the incubator after a checkup the following week.

A memorable moment was the first time I changed a diaper… ever. There in the hospital nursery, in front of doctors, nurses, and everyone, my newborn son peed on me. After that I learned to treat a little boy like a loaded weapon. Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to get shot and keep it holstered as much as possible.

And, oh yeah, the baby shower that Debi missed? The church people brought it to her after she and Ethan had returned home. It's a rare thing for a baby to be the guest of honor at his own shower!

So here I am four years later. Ethan is about to be a big brother. Debi is again wondering if I’ll be there for the big moment. The family is assembled and I’m just waiting on Air Tran to let me know when I’ll get there. All I can say is that if the eve of Sarah’s birthday is any indication, it will be an interesting experience.