Joe Biden's Abortion Flipflop

Joe Biden has put himself squarely in the sights of the Democratic abortion extremists.

Yesterday it Joe Biden bucked the Democratic orthodoxy on abortion by defending the Hyde Amendment, the law which prohibits federal (i.e. taxpayer) funds from paying for abortions. Biden’s confusing stance on the amendment, which was first passed in 1976 and has been renewed annually ever since, opens questions about the candidate’s thought process and puts him at odds with the extreme pro-abortion faction of the Democratic Party. Support for the amendment was historically bipartisan until Hillary Clinton called for its repeal in 2016.

Biden’s campaign expressed support for the Hyde Amendment to NBC News in an article published on June 5. The piece noted that while in the Senate Biden consistently voted against federal funding for abortions, even for victims of rape and incest.

Biden explained his position to a constituent in 1994, writing, “I will continue to abide by the same principle that has guided me throughout my 21 years in the Senate: those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them. As you may know, I have consistently — on no fewer than 50 occasions — voted against federal funding of abortions.”

In 2007, Biden wrote in his book, Promises To Keep, “I’ve stuck to my middle-of-the-road position on abortion for more than 30 years. I still vote against partial birth abortion and federal funding.”

Yet in May of this year, when Biden was confronted by an ACLU activist who asked him if he would repeal the Hyde Amendment, Biden answered, “Right now it has to be… It can’t stay.”

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1126237661784629248

The Biden campaign subsequently told The Hill that Biden misheard the question and thought that the activist was referring to the Mexico City policy, which prohibits federal funds from going to foreign groups that perform abortions.

The Hill quotes a response from the Biden campaign that said, “He supports the repeal of the Mexico City rule because it prevents critical aid from going to organizations even if abortion is a very small fraction of the work they are doing. He has not at this point changed his position on the Hyde Amendment.”

The reversal is curious because it seems that it would have been difficult to misunderstand the activist, who was very close to the candidate, and the two policies sound nothing alike. It raises the possibility that Biden did not remember what the Hyde Amendment was or his longtime opposition to it.

Interestingly, it would have been politically easier for Biden to let his statement supporting repeal of the policy stand than to walk it back. He seems to be the only Democratic candidate who supports maintaining the amendment. His position will put a target on his back for radical pro-abortion activists who seem to resist any limits on abortion rights.

Support for the Hyde Amendment does not mean that Biden is pro-life, however. He supports Roe v. Wade even though he is a Roman Catholic who claims to be personally opposed to abortion. Jamal Brown, Biden’s press secretary, told NBC that the candidate believed that Roe was wrongly decided when he was first elected to the Senate, but now “firmly believes that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and should not be overturned.” Brown pointed to Biden’s pro-abortion record that included blocking measures to criminalize abortion and voting against justices such as Bork, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas.

Biden’s mixed record on abortion may turn out to be a blessing. Polling shows that Americans are closely divided on abortion with very few supporting either an outright ban or abortion on demand without restrictions. A Marist poll from earlier this year showed that even a third of Democrats identify as pro-life. Biden’s middle-of-the-road views on abortion may actually be more in line with the majority opinion of most voters than either the radicals to his left or the Republicans to his right.

I’ve long suspected that Biden would secure the Democratic nomination in a manner similar to how Donald Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016. So far, that prediction seems to be holding true. Biden is claiming the moderate niche, which few other Democrats have targeted, while the plethora of candidates to his left fight over fractions of the radical leftist bloc.

Nevertheless, Biden’s response to the ACLU activist and subsequent reversal represent a dangerous gaffe for his campaign. The very public reversal drew attention to his pro-Hyde Amendment position and gave rise to questions about why the candidate would agree to repeal a policy that he has supported for decades.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Women Consider Adoption ‘More Emotionally Painful’ Than Abortion

The Atlantic recently ran a piece on adoption versus abortion. While most conservative outlets and readers focus on the money quote, a subtitle that reads, “Some American women see giving up their babies as more emotionally painful than terminating their pregnancies,” the excerpt doesn’t do the article justice and really doesn’t reflect the tone of the article.

The implication from the blurb is that many women choose abortion over adoption because they are self-centered and would rather inflict pain on an unborn baby than to go through the process of pregnancy and suffer emotional pain themselves as a result. That was my initial reaction, but then I actually read the piece by Olga Khazan, which turned out to be quite interesting.

Preconceptions are shattered almost immediately when Khazan points out that, while rates for both adoption and abortion have fallen in recent decades, births to unmarried children have risen. This suggests that, rather than making a choice to abort over placing their baby up for adoption, many women are choosing to become single parents. As single-parenting has become more socially acceptable, more women have decided to keep their babies rather than allow them to be adopted.

While this does contribute to the welfare state since children of single-parent families are more like to be raised in poverty, it is a better choice than abortion. It also works against the declining birthrate in the United States, which is another longterm problem that needs to be addressed.

Khazan cites the Turnaway Study of women who were denied abortions between 2008 and 2010. Of 956 women interviewed, 161 went on to give birth, but only 15 chose adoption. Khazan doesn’t say, but presumably, the remainder had successful abortions on subsequent attempts.

The study found that when women were denied an abortion, usually for financial reasons or lack of access, they often considered adoption. Fourteen percent of mothers who were denied an abortion considered adoption in the weeks following their abortion attempt, but ultimately, only nine percent decided to adopt. Most of those who carried the baby to term simply decided to raise the child themselves.

On the other hand, none of the mothers who aborted had any interest in adoption. The authors of the study wrote, “Adoption was often ruled out because they felt it was not right for them, because their partner would not be interested, because they had health reasons for not wanting to carry to term, or because they believed there were already enough children in need of homes.”

While the mother’s health might preclude an adoption, the other reasons relate more to the fact that the baby was an inconvenience. For example, having children already has nothing to do with putting a different child up for adoption but does raising children while pregnant is more difficult.

The study did find that mothers who chose adoption were satisfied with the choice but that it was very traumatic initially.

“Uniformly, the birth mothers experience grief after placement,” said Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group of the University of California at San Francisco. “It’s a very hard choice and one that a lot of women are not interested in making. By the time they are delivering the child, women feel bonded to their pregnancies and their children.”

One study participant said, “I had too many feelings for her to give [her] to someone I barely knew.”

These types of comments underscore the truth that unborn babies are living human beings, a fact denied by many in the pro-choice camp. Nevertheless, most mothers inherently understand that the child inside them is just that: a child.

Khazan also cites a small study performed by Sisson on mothers who placed their children up for adoption between 1962 and 2009. In the study, she wrote, “Rarely was adoption the preferred course of action; it emerged as a solution when women felt they had no other options.” Most of the women interviewed described their experience with adoption as “predominantly negative.” Khazan notes that this may be because most of the participants were involved in closed adoptions where no contact was allowed between the birth mother and the adopted child.

Finally, Khazan cites a third study which does lend credence to the money quote cited above. A 2008 study found that a quarter of women considering abortion found adoption to be too emotionally distressing. “Respondents said that the thought of one’s child being out in the world without knowing whether it was being taken care of or who was taking care of it was more guilt-inducing than having an abortion,” wrote the authors.

While it seems barbaric and wrongheaded – and more than a little reminiscent of Nazi Germany – to kill an unborn baby because you are concerned about its wellbeing, this statement again cuts against the claim that a fetus is not a human being. If an unborn baby is nothing more than a lump of cells then there is no reason to be concerned about whether it will be taken care of in the future.

If I go that far, I’m attached. I cannot just give my baby away to someone,” said the unmarried, 24-year-old mother of two who was considering abortion over adoption.

Khazan also points out that neither pro-choice nor pro-life counseling centers are doing a good job of selling expectant mothers on adoption. According to the National Council for Adoption, the referral rate to adoption agencies is only about one percent.

While Khazan’s article is not pro-life by any means, she is objective enough to confront some uncomfortable truths. “Rightly or wrongly, very few women who desire abortions actually see adoption as a favorable alternative,” she writes, but adds, “The reason the women don’t choose adoption is not great for the pro-choice side, either. Some of these women report feeling bonded with their fetuses, or at least too attached to give up the resulting baby. That’s an inconvenient point if you feel that a fetus is nothing more than a collection of cells and that what happens to it before viability is basically immaterial.”

If the pro-life movement wants women to see adoption as a viable alternative to abortion, there is a lot of work to be done. Crisis pregnancy centers could do a better job of informing women about adoption and there should be more methods through which the mother can stay involved in the child’s life if she chooses. This may help to reduce the emotional stress of giving a child away. Campaigns should also be undertaken to make the public see adoption as a positive choice and spouses should be encouraged to support women who want to carry their children to term and place them with adoptive parents.

One of the most difficult problems to overcome is the fact that abortions can take place in secret while carrying a baby to term is difficult to conceal. Many women probably choose abortion to keep others from ever knowing that they were pregnant in the first place.

In the end, Khazan’s article contains both good news and bad news for the pro-life movement. Rather than attacking the messenger or ridiculing the women who choose abortion over adoption, we should learn from their experience and tailor the pro-life message to address their concerns.

The only way to resolve the national issues that divide us is to talk to each other and find common ground. Olga Khazan may be a pro-choice advocate, but I applaud her for looking past the rhetoric to find out what mothers on both sides of the issue think.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

No Abortion Restriction Is Reasonable Enough For Pro-Choicers

Much of the debate on the new anti-abortion laws in Georgia and Alabama has centered on Alabama’s lack of an exception for rape and incest victims. While the Georgia law does contain such an exception, some pro-abortion advocates argue that it is not broad enough. After watching the abortion debate over the past 30 years or so, I can say without reservation that no matter what exceptions the authors of the bill had carved out, it would not be enough for the pro-abortion lobby.

Since I first became aware that abortion was legal, a mind-blowing revelation to an elementary school student, I’ve followed the debate and legal wrangling that has been involved with probing the limits of Roe v. Wade. In that time, I cannot recall a single example of any restriction on abortion, no matter how trivial or rational, that has not been opposed by the abortion special interest groups.

Among the first challenges to Roe were attempts to require that minors get the permission of their parents before having an abortion. Pro-choice groups, often led by Planned Parenthood, fought these common sense restrictions, but, beginning in 1979 with Bellotti v. Baird, the Supreme Court began to allow these laws that protected parental rights if they included an exception that allowed pregnant minors to get approval from a judge instead of their parents. This was affirmed in Planned Parenthood of Kansas City v. Ashcroft (1983) and Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992).

The original Roe v. Wade ruling essentially prohibited restrictions on abortion in the first trimester and required that laws covering the second trimester be focused on the health of the mother, per Pew Research. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the decision that the state has an interest in protecting “potential life” in the third trimester and could ban abortions at that point as long as exceptions were made for the life and health of the mother. These guidelines were later overhauled by Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.

Despite the original decision that allowed some regulation of abortion, decades later pro-abortion activists were fighting restrictions on partial-birth abortion, a barbaric procedure in which the abortionist dilated “the woman's cervix, then pulling the fetus through it feet first until only the head remained inside. Using scissors or another sharp instrument, the head was then punctured, and the skull compressed, so it, too, could fit through the dilated cervix.” The abortion community fought attempts to ban partial birth abortion, technically called a “D&X,” dilation and extraction, despite the fact that there seems to be no medical necessity for the procedure, which NPR notes, was developed “to perform second-trimester abortions without an overnight hospital stay, because local hospitals did not permit most abortions after 18 weeks.”

As technology has improved, the pro-abortion community has resisted attempts to require that abortion clinics inform women about the choice for abortion. Several states require that mothers be presented with an ultrasound image of their baby before the make the choice for an abortion. Again, the advocates for women’s rights fought to keep women from seeing the scientific evidence that the child within them is a living human being.

The pro-choice community also fought to prevent health and sanitary standards for outpatient surgery centers from being applied to abortion clinics. In Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that required that abortionists have admitting privileges at a local hospital and that abortion clinics meet the same health and sanitary standards as an outpatient surgical center.

The Texas law was passed after a woman died in Kermit Gosnell’s Philadephia abortion clinic. Philadelphia’s NBC-10 reported that Karnamaya Mongar, 41, died after experiencing severe pain at the clinic. It took an hour for an ambulance to arrive to take Mongar to the hospital and firefighters had to cut bolts off the clinic’s emergency door to extricate her. Gosnell was convicted of manslaughter in the case in addition to three counts of murdering infants that were born alive. He was also accused of allowing extremely unsanitary conditions in the clinic and hiring unqualified workers who he then allowed to perform abortions unsupervised.

In about 30 years, I can’t recall a single instance where pro-abortion groups voluntarily submitted to even the most reasonable of abortion restrictions. Even the NRA has occasionally bowed to pressure for more gun controls as it did earlier this year when President Trump ordered bump stocks to be banned, but the abortion advocates seem to have never given an inch. We can reasonably conclude that if the new laws allowed unrestricted abortion access to victims of rape and incest that the pro-abortion crowd would find something else to complain about.

The truth is that the debate about rape and incest exceptions is a red herring. The Guttmacher Institute found that only one percent of abortions were due to rape and less than half a percent were due to incest. The vast majority of abortions are elective procedures that are performed as a method of birth control. It is these hundreds of thousands of abortions annually that the pro-abortion acitvists are fighting to protect.

Rape and incest victims will not be without options under the new laws. Heartbeat bills and even the Alabama law do not outlaw morning-after pills. There are also charities that provide transportation for mothers to areas where abortion is legal and clinics still operate. In Georgia, the law specifically provides an exception up to 20 weeks for women are willing to file a police report alleging rape or incest.

The fight over abortion and protecting the lives of pre-born humans is not over and won’t be for a long time, regardless of what courts decide about the current crop of laws. There is little doubt, however, that whatever laws are passed to limit the killing of babies, the pro-abortion groups will be there to oppose them, whatever they are. For pro-choice groups, it’s all about unrestricted access.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Is a Democrat Civil War Brewing Over Abortion?

News stories often point to internal squabbling among Republicans and speculate as to whether the GOP is in the midst of a civil war because of the frequent disagreements. Mainstream outlets may be missing a budding civil war among the Democrats, however. Recent comments by several Democrat leaders indicate that the party may be splitting over one of its core issues.

For years, Democrats have marched in virtual lockstep on abortion. If pro-life Democrats were endangered before Barack Obama’s presidency, they were almost nonexistent after the elections of 2010 when Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and a cadre of pro-life congressional Democrats bowed to pressure to vote for Obamacare and lost their seats as a result.

Fast forward to 2017 when Tom Perez, elected chairman to rebuild the Democratic Party in the wake of the disastrous 2016 election, seemed to draw a line in the sand last month on abortion. “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said in a statement. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”

If support for unrestricted abortion is “not negotiable” as a litmus test for Democrats, then the donks can plan on writing off about half of the American electorate. Polling has shown that Americans are split almost equally between the pro-life and pro-choice viewpoints. When examined more closely, only small factions support either extreme on the issue. Most Americans say that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.

Perez’s comments have set off a battle between Democrats who favor a big tent party and those who believe that ideological purity is more important. The debate is similar to the one that Republicans have had in recent years on issues such as spending, immigration and the details of replacing Obamacare.

Some party leaders rejected Perez’s comments. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on NBC that “of course” pro-life Democrats should be accepted and supported by the party.

“I grew up Nancy D’Alesandro, in Baltimore, Maryland; in Little Italy; in a very devout Catholic family; fiercely patriotic; proud of our town and heritage, and staunchly Democratic,” she told the Washington Post. “Most of those people — my family, extended family — are not pro-choice. You think I’m kicking them out of the Democratic Party?”

Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate Minority Leader, agreed on MSNBC. “Look, we're a big tent party as Nancy Pelosi said, but we are, let's make no mistake about it, we are a pro-choice party. We're a strongly pro-choice party,” Schumer said. “We think that's where the American people are, and in fact, if anything, are moving even more in that direction.”

Some members of the Democrat base disagreed with their leaders’ inclusiveness. “It was great to see Perez discover a spine,” Erin Matson, a pro-abortion activist, told The Atlantic, adding that “Schumer and Pelosi’s recent comments are cowardly.”

“It’s about policy, not feelings or labels, and anything less than a bold stance that makes clear that the Democratic Party must be united in protecting a woman’s right to an abortion is a betrayal of a core constituency of the party,” Matson continued. She stopped short of calling big tent Democrats “DINOs.”

Elyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America noted in the Washington Post that last year’s Democratic platform “went further than the Party has ever gone to stand up for the women’s rights. It didn’t just seek to protect abortion access — it sought to expand it,” while failing to note that Democrats lost that election. “If the Democratic Party is going to gain back power, it can’t go backward, it can’t back down and it can’t trade away these principles,” she added.

“I don’t know why we would want to start walking away from folks, like myself, who have a personal conviction on the pro-life issue,” said Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), a pro-life Democrat congressman. “We ought to be able to include everyone, as opposed to saying ‘no, we don’t want these folks, even though they fight with us on jobs, even though they fight with us for economic rights, even though they fight with us on healthcare.’ It just seems to me to be very, very short-sighted.”

Nevertheless, even Bernie Sanders, the sometimes-Democrat with the cult-like following, is not immune to criticism when he deviates from the party line on abortion. Sanders drew fire from fellow progressives for his support of Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello. Mello had a pro-life voting record and reputation during his time in the Nebraska state legislature.

Pelosi later claimed to the Washington Post that the abortion is “kind of fading as an issue” for Democrats. That may be wishful thinking.

This week failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton jumped into the fray with a speech to abortion provider Planned Parenthood. “Protecting access to the full range of reproductive health care: it is a health issue, of course, it is a core economic issue,” Clinton said, quoted by The Blaze. “Women in every corner of our country understand that intimately. And anyone who wants to lead should also understand that fundamentally, this is an issue of morality.”

By claiming that opposition to abortion is immoral, Clinton has upped the ante and made it clear that pro-lifers will not be welcomed by a large part of the Democratic Party. Framing the issue in moral terms makes it almost impossible to compromise.

“I believe we can and should respect deeply held beliefs of our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens, even if they differ from our own,” Clinton continued. “That’s what should make America, America. But it is possible to do that while holding firm to what we know is the only right approach in our diverse democracy. Oh, yes, let’s respect people’s convictions, but never back down from our commitment to defend the ability of every woman to make these deeply personal decisions for herself.”

In other words, Democrats should respect the immoral opinions of pro-life Democrats as long as those opinions have no impact on the party platform or policies.

The decision on whether to welcome (or tolerate) Democrats who differ from the party dogma on an issue like abortion is an important one. It is very difficult for a political party to win if it is actively seeking to expel many of its members. Even if pro-life Democrats are permitted to stay, it is unlikely that the official Democrat position on abortion will change any time soon.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

Planned Parenthood President’s Shocking Reason For Aborting Her Baby

I remember the days when Bill Clinton talked about abortion. President Clinton’s mantra was nobody wanted to get an abortion. He said that it should be “safe, legal and rare.” Likewise, when the pro-choice crowd challenges legal restrictions on abortion, much of the time it is because the laws allegedly don’t contain strong enough provisions for hardship cases such pregnancies that result from rape, incest or that threaten the life of the mother.

There is some logic to these arguments. Americans can argue in good faith about if it is ever moral to kill an unborn baby. While I believe that abortion is murder and morally repugnant, I can concede that there are gray areas where there are no good choices. With deep moral and logical arguments to be made on both sides, it is all the more shocking to hear Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards justify her own abortion.

In an interview with Katie Couric in 2015, Richards described her decision to take the life of an unborn baby. “It was a decision my husband and I made. It was a personal decision. And we have three children that we adore and that are the center of my life. And we decided that was as big as our family needed to be,” said Richards. “It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that. But I can’t imagine a woman being in that circumstance — with an unintended pregnancy and not being able to make her own decision about that pregnancy.”

“It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that.”

Cecile Richards is the daughter of former Texas governor, Anne Richards (who notably coined the nickname “Shrub” for George W. Bush). She comes from an affluent family. Lifenews estimates the salary of the younger Ms. Richards at “around $600,000.” She is a one-percenter in her own right. Yet she chose to end the life of her baby, the sibling of her other three children, because “we decided that was as big as our family needed to be.”

This is no hardship case. This is not a gray area. This is a case of a wealthy woman who apparently was not on birth control or using contraceptives deciding that she didn’t want another child.

The Cecile Richards abortion is an example of the dishonesty of the abortion movement. The vast majority of abortions are for convenience or quality of life reasons, not for medical emergencies or due to sexual assaults. According to the Guttmacher Institute, rape and incest cases make up less than one percent of abortions. Abortions due to the health of the mother account for only 12 percent of abortions. Concerns about the health of the baby lead to 13 percent.

The most common reason cited for having an abortion? “Having a baby would dramatically change my life.” Cecile Richards’ excuse, “have completed my childbearing,” was given by 38 percent of women who had abortions.

The pro-choice movement is fundamentally a selfish one. At its core, it is all about “me.” The slogan “my body, my choice” puts all other considerations below the mother’s preference. The fact that a human being is killed, the desires of the father, even the possibility of problems with the mental and physical health of the mother are pushed aside.  

Abortion is not a necessary medical procedure to protect the life of the mother in most cases. Abortion is a tool with which people can escape the consequences of their actions.

Ironically, the extremist position of abortion for any reason may be hurting the pro-choice cause. Since the 1990s, the percentage of pro-choice Americans has plummeted while the pro-life position has increased. The country is equally split between the two viewpoints according to Gallup. On closer examination, the majority is neither pro- nor anti-abortion. A majority, 50 percent, of Americans believes in the middle ground that there should be legal abortion with restrictions. Most of these (37 percent) believe that abortion should be legal in only a few circumstances, presumably the traditional exceptions of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is in danger.

The change in attitudes about abortion helps to explain another shocking statistic. American abortions are their lowest level since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. The pro-life viewpoint is winning. Perhaps this is why abortion activists are sounding increasingly shrill and extreme.

(Hat tip to at Amanda Prestigiacomo at the Daily Wire for finding the 2015 interview.)

Originally published on The Resurgent

New poll shows social conservatives in decline

Polling released over the past few weeks has revealed what may be seismic shifts in American morality. On virtually every issue, American public opinion has shifted to the left. The most recent polling, released today by Gallup, show that the country has moved left on abortion and approval of out-of-wedlock births.

Today, a poll on attitudes about abortion showed that half of Americans consider themselves pro-choice for the first time since 2012. The Gallup poll showed that the percentage of Americans who identify as pro-life has declined to 44 percent, its lowest point since 2008. 2009 was the first year in which pro-life polled higher than pro-choice. Attitudes on abortion are still much more divided than they were in the 1990s.

The poll does not define pro-choice and pro-life, but 29 percent of respondents indicated that abortion should be legal in all circumstances. The plurality, 36 percent, said that abortion, should be legal in only a few circumstances.

Another Gallup poll released today revealed increasingly divergent attitudes on out-of-wedlock births. Sixty-one percent now believe that it is morally acceptable to have a baby outside of marriage. Only 35 percent call out-of-wedlock births immoral. Opinions on extramarital births have diverged widely since 2002, the last year that a majority called them immoral.

The shift has come as the percentage of out-of-wedlock births has increased dramatically. In 2014, the Washington Post reported that Census figures show that less than 60 percent of first-time births are to married couples. The Census report noted that “women with a nonmarital [sic] first birth are both less likely to ever marry and less likely to remain married if they do marry” and also links unmarried births to higher risks of poverty, lower educational attainment and family instability.

Today’s polling comes on the heels of increased support for doctor-assisted suicide, also from Gallup. Sixty-eight percent of respondents now support a right to die when a person has an incurable disease and is in severe pain. Only 28 percent are opposed. After remaining close for years, opinion on doctor-assisted euthanasia has diverged since 2013.

The biggest shift in public opinion is related to homosexuality and gay marriage. Gallup reports that a record high of 60 percent now supports gay marriage. Only 37 percent disagree. As recently as 1999, the numbers were almost completely reversed with 62 percent opposed and 35 percent in favor of redefining marriage.

Likewise, by 51 – 30 percent, most Americans now believe that homosexuals are born gay, not created by upbringing or environment. On this issue, Gallup’s numbers have also reversed since the 1990s. In reality, scientific proof that homosexuality is inherited genetically has been hard to find. It is even harder to find a genetic explanation for bisexuals, which make up approximately half of the gay and lesbian community.

On a similar issue, Gallup found that respondents greatly overestimated the number of gays in the US. Only 3.8 percent self-identify as gay or lesbian, but poll respondents believed that 23 percent of Americans were gay.

In general, the recent Gallup polling shows that social liberals are now equal in number with social conservatives in the United States. Since 1999, the percentage of social conservatives has declined while social liberals have increased. Both factions now stand equal at 31 percent.

The polling shows that the sample trended more liberal on virtually every issue since 2001. The largest shifts occurred on gay and lesbian relations (considered moral by 23 percent more in 2015 than in 2001), extramarital births (16 percent more), extramarital sex (15 percent more), divorce (12 percent more) and stem cell research using human embryos (12 percent more). Other issues with a large shift included polygamy (nine percent increase) and cloning humans (eight percent).

Some issues are considered less moral today than 14 years ago. Support for the death penalty declined by three percent, but a majority (60 percent) still approve. Support for medical testing on animals declined by nine percent to 56 percent approval.

Some of the shift in public opinion may be explained by the sample. The poll was conducted from May 6-10, 2015 with 1,024 adults, aged 18 or older, living in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Since all of the findings stem from the same poll, if there is an error in providing an accurate sample or weighting the responses, the findings could have been skewed to the left. Nevertheless, these findings do support other polling that shows social attitudes moving to the left on several issues. 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Adoption should be easier than abortion

God save America

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This Fourth of July it might be time to amend the traditional patriotic song and sentiment of “God bless America.” In recent years, America has become so divorced from godly values that it now seems mocking and irreverent to seek his blessing. It might be more appropriate to prostrate ourselves and seek his forgiveness.

The most recent rejection of God is the wave of gay marriage laws sweeping the nation. Twenty years ago, gay marriage was unheard of. Denmark passed a gay partnership law in 1989, but same-sex marriage did not exist legally until 2000 when the Netherlands first passed a gay marriage law. In what would become a familiar theme, gay marriage was legalized in Canada the next year after two gay couples sued. In the U.S., Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in 2004, again after a lawsuit. In 2007, Iowa followed suit, again after the state’s marriage law was struck down by courts. Gay marriage did not pass through the legislative process until 2009 when Vermont’s legislature approved the redefinition of marriage. At this point, gay marriage is legal in twelve states, but recent Supreme Court decisions indicate that the Court will probably strike down state definition of marriage laws in the near future.

One of the few truly scientific studies that has been done on the radical changes to the structure of society’s most basic unit, the family, is the New Family Structures Study of 2012. The study reported that gay families are much less stable than comparable heterosexual families. The instability leads to many negative effects in children including being “more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, and report… more sexual victimization.”

In the New Testament, particularly Romans 1, homosexuality is described, not as an unpardonable sin, but as a consequence of judgment. Paul wrote that homosexuality is one of the consequences of a society that rejects God. Homosexuality is not the only result of judgment, however. Paul’s roll call of depravities reads like a list of twenty-first century special interest groups:

“…filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
The issue of abortion has also seen setbacks in recent years. President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, was billed by Life News as “the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.” The ACA, “Obamacare,” mandates that all insurance policies cover abortifacient drugs without copayments. The ACA also ignores the Hyde Amendment that once prohibited federal tax money from being used for abortion. Together with federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, Obamacare means that the United States government is in the business of funding and encouraging abortions.

Abortion was at the forefront in the trial of Kermit Gosnell. Although the trial of the Philadelphia abortionist was largely ignored by the media, the news of how Gosnell and his staff allowed babies to be born only to murder them in cold blood spread around the country via social networks. Gosnell was found guilty of three counts of first degree murder as well as a number of other charges. An estimated 50 million Americans have been aborted since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Also in 2013, Colorado became the first state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The use of the drug is being normalized in spite of the fact that there are clear links between marijuana use and schizophrenia and aggression. Writing in the Wall St. Journal, Samuel Wilkinson of the Yale School of Psychiatry points out that heavy users of marijuana who start at a young age have a 200 percent increased risk for schizophrenia, which affects more than three million Americans. About one third of homeless Americans are schizophrenics.

The expansion of abortion and homosexuality corresponds to attacks on religion in spite of the First Amendment. Christian teaching on these issues is being called “offensive” by liberal activists. Members of the Obama Administration talk of “freedom of worship” rather than “freedom of religion.” What this means in practice is that religion, specifically the Christian religion, is being driven underground. Advocates of traditional marriage or pro-life causes can have their jobs threatened or be forced to attend sensitivity training. Christian businesses are sued if they refuse to supply their services to gay weddings, even in states where gay marriage is not legal. In New Jersey, a Methodist church has already been sued – and lost – for refusing to rent their facility to a lesbian couple for their same-sex union.

The fundamental problems with America today are rooted in the decline of Christianity and the corresponding rise of government. The beginning of the decline of American marriage in the 1960s is clearly visible on a Heritage Foundation graph. A separate graph shows the simultaneous rise of out-of-wedlock children at the same time. Both correspond to the “Great Society” programs of President Johnson in which the federal government began to take responsibility for caring for the poor and children away from families, churches, and charities. Unsurprisingly, the federal debt began a meteoric rise at the same time.

At the same time, American church attendance fell sharply. Gallup reports that in 1955 U.S. church attendance over the past week was at 75 percent. Now, even though 78 percent of Americans identify as Christian, only 43 percent attend church regularly. Consequently, many American Christians are ignorant about the doctrines of their professed faith, leaving them open to pseudo-Biblical arguments for liberal policies.

These social trends mean that out-of-wedlock births now account for almost half of U.S. births. The average age of a woman at her first marriage is 26.5 years while the average age at her first childbirth is 25.7 according to CBS News. This is causing a rise in single-parent families that poses dire consequences for the United States because these families are much more likely to live in poverty and require government financial assistance than traditional families. There are also negative effects on the children of single-parent families, such as being more likely to be abused and more likely to become involved in violent crime, drug abuse, and premarital sex according to the National Fatherhood Initiative. The cycle repeats as children of broken homes grow up to have their own children, often in single-parent homes as a result of premarital sex or divorce, and the dependency on government entitlement programs becomes more pronounced.

It may already be too late to reverse America’s decline. Jonathan Cahn, author of “the Harbinger,” believes that recent history, from the Sept. 11 attacks to the economic crash, are warnings from God and that America is running out of time for repentance. Cahn pointed out to Examiner that the “macro pictures of end-time prophecy” do not include America. The current series of “harbinger” warnings “fill in the gap with specific detail” as to how America will “lose its crown as the head of nations” although Cahn is careful not to commit to a specific timeline.

Last year, no less a man of God than Billy Graham published a letter to America in which he wrote, “My heart aches for America and its deceived people…. The farther we get from God, the more the world spirals out of control.” Graham related how his wife Ruth had exclaimed, “If God doesn’t punish America, he’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” Nevertheless, Graham also points out, “The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance.”

Later in the year, Graham ran ads that urged Americans “to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God.” For his involvement in politics, Graham’s ministries were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service.

America is at a crossroads. Either our country will continue to reject God and continue to decline or we will seek his forgiveness and begin the process of repentance. The process of turning America around begins with individuals. Even if the country faces the ultimate judgment, individuals can be saved. As Jonathan Cahn said in his interview with Examiner, “We all live in the face of judgment.  And the time to repent, to be saved, and to get right with God . . . is now.”
Originally published on Examiner.com:

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

Kermit Gosnell may change national conversation on abortion

The trial of Kermit Gosnell may represent a turning point in the American discussion of abortion. The story is not merely the heinous crimes committed by Gosnell and his staff; the other half of the story is the left’s almost total lack of outrage. As James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal wrote in his excellent summary of the case, the mainstream media almost totally ignored the entire case and trial until an outpouring of interest on the internet all but forced coverage of the trial onto television and into newspapers.

Bill Clinton made famous the line that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Under modern Democrats, the attempt to make abortion rare, if there ever was a real attempt, has fallen by the wayside. Obamacare’s contraception mandate also forces insurance companies to include coverage for abortifacient drugs and President Obama’s budget increased federal funding for mega-provider of abortion Planned Parenthood. While Gosnell was on trial, President Obama became the first president to speak to Planned Parenthood, telling the group “as long as we've got to fight to protect a woman's right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you've also got a President who's going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way” and “God bless you” according to Politico.

As the grisly details of Kermit Gosnell’s practice come to light, it is becoming apparent that the left is far more concerned with keeping abortion legal than in keeping it safe. (Clinton apparently meant safe for the mother; abortion is almost always fatal for the baby.) A major point that pro-abortion activists frequently make is that legal abortion is needed to avoid keep women from being maimed in “back alley” abortions. It is apparent now that these back alley abortions continue in the offices of people like Kermit Gosnell.

Among the dead from Gosnell’s Philadelphia office was a 41-year-old woman who had come to Gosnell for an abortion. According to the grand jury report, Karnamya Mongar, a Nepalese immigrant, was given repeated doses of Demerol while waiting for Gosnell to perform her abortion. After several hours of waiting in a drug-induced sleep, Mongar stopped breathing. It is not certain how long Mongar lay there dying before the clinic’s employees noticed. It is known that when she was discovered Gosnell half-heartedly performed CPR, but did not administer drugs that could have restarted her heart. The clinic had a defibrillator, but it was broken. Ms. Mongar was probably brain dead before paramedics were even called. The report states that before paramedics arrived, the clinic staff hooked up equipment and rearranged the body to make it appear as if Ms. Mongar died in the midst of a procedure. Any chance of reviving her was lost as paramedics were unable to get her out of the building for 20 minutes due to cluttered hallways and padlocked emergency door.

Gosnell came close to killing other women as well. The report details several other instances in which Gosnell’s medical incompetence and negligence resulted in serious illness and near fatal complications for his patients. Many clinic employees were not trained or licensed. One employee who commonly dosed out medications was an untrained high school student. Gosnell inadvertently implicated himself by recording hundreds of late term abortions as 24. 5 weeks, when the Pennsylvania law limited abortions to earlier than 24 weeks.

Gosnell’s record of abusing women goes back 40 years ago to 1972. On Mother’s Day, Gosnell offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women from Chicago who were bused to his clinic. Gosnell did not tell the women that they would be guinea pigs for a new abortion device, a ball of gel-coated plastic razors to be inserted in their uteruses. Their body heat was supposed to melt the gel, loosening the razors and cutting up the unborn babies. In reality, the device, called the “super coil,” caused serious complications for nine of the 15 women. One required a hysterectomy. The incident became known as the Mother’s Day Massacre.

There were many more recent reports of problems at Gosnell’s clinic. It is apparent that he flouted numerous laws and nearly killed an unknown number of women due to poor sanitary methods and negligence, yet Pennsylvania’s medical regulators did not investigate. There were a multitude of complaints including a doctor who noticed that many of his patients who went to Gosnell contracted the same venereal disease. The medical examiner of Delaware County informed the Pennsylvania Department of Health that Gosnell had illegally performed an abortion on a 14-year-old mother with an unborn baby at 30 weeks. In one case, Gosnell refused to halt an abortion for a woman who changed her mind. Then, on November 18, 2009, Karnamaya Mongar died of a drug overdose in Gosnell’s office.

The report notes that none of this triggered state inspections of the clinic. In fact, in 1993 Pennsylvania had completely stopped inspecting abortion clinics for political reasons under the administration of pro-abortion Republican Tom Ridge.

Even pro-choice Americans should be concerned about the abysmal conditions that Gosnell’s patients endured. There were many reports of infections and life threatening complications before Gosnell and his staff actually killed Ms. Mongar. It is readily apparent that Gosnell did not operate a “safe” abortion clinic and was actually a threat to the health and wellbeing of women. Any doubts to this effect should be dispelled after reading testimony about how Gosnell drugged patients who were upset or slapped them.

Gosnell was part of a black market for abortionists who will circumvent the meager restrictions on abortions that the courts permit states to enact. Gosnell was aided and abetted not only by his clinic staff, but by numerous referrers, many of whom must have known that Gosnell was performing abortions at much later stages than the law allowed. It seems that the patient’s ability to pay was Gosnell’s only concern. In the end, the raid on Gosnell’s clinic was not due to his many violations of the law, Mongar’s death, or complaints by other women or doctors. The 2010 raid was based on suspected illegal drug trafficking.

In many respects, Gosnell’s clinic was not unique. The undercover filmmakers at Live Action have made a several short films showing abortion clinic workers helping patients to break laws limiting abortions. The practice of circumventing abortion restrictions appears to be widespread enough to warrant further investigation.

There is also evidence that other abortion clinics are substandard when it comes to keeping clean and sanitary facilities. A clinic in Ohio was ordered closed last month after failing a state health inspection. A second Ohio clinic in Toledo may be closed as well. A Planned Parenthood clinic in Delaware is charged with using unsterile instruments and rushing patients through procedures on bloody tables. Police investigating a break-in at a Muskegon, Mich. clinic found similar unsanitary conditions. A Lexington, Ky. abortionist’s medical license was suspended amid charges of fraud and unsanitary conditions. A Wilmington, Del. Clinic was closed in March 2013 after four women were rushed to the hospital with complications within a month. In Atlantic City, N.J. an abortion clinic was closed in for a series of health code violations.

USA Today reported that abortion clinics in Delaware are not required to undergo routine inspections. Maryland does not inspect for cleanliness and New Jersey only inspects surgery centers. In Virginia, the cleanliness and safety of abortion clinics has become a political issue after the state’s clinics were issued 80 violations according to Breitbart. Inspections of clinics vary from state to state with several states apparently choosing not to inspect at all even though the potential for infection and disease is high.

The Gosnell case explodes several myths about abortion in America. Abortion is not the safe, sterile procedure that advocates make it out to be. Many clinics are apparently unsanitary even by basic standards. Many abortion clinic workers seem eager to help clients break the law and often avoid fulfilling even basic obligations for counseling.

Statistics show that other promises of abortion proponents have also been unfulfilled as well. Abortion proponents claimed that abortion would reduce out of wedlock births and child abuse. In reality, a Bowling Green State University study from 2005 showed that women who have had abortions are 144 percent more likely to abuse their children. A study by Edward Lenoski of the University of Southern California found that 91 percent of abusive parents had wanted their children.

The trend toward unwed motherhood has been accelerated since Roe v. Wade. A report released in March 2013 by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the RELATE Institute indicated that almost half of U.S. births are now out of wedlock. The average age when a woman first gives birth is now 25.7. The average age when a woman gets married has increased to 26.5.

Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/kermit-gosnell-case-may-break-deadlock-on-abortion-1