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| RALPH NADER TO "F" UP DEMOCRATS' CHANCES IN '04 ELECTION |
| 02.26.04 (6:08 am) [edit] |
Ralph Nader announced on national television that he is embarked on a battle to totally destroy any possible chance the Democrats have to win the November election.
"Don't get me wrong," said Nader to interviewer Tim Russert, "I'm in the race to win. The only thing is, I know I can't win. If you think I'm stupid enough to believe I can win, you shouldn't be voting for me."
At the suggestion that he's only in the campaign to stroke his own ego, Nader snapped "How dare you? Do you have any idea who I am?"
Asked if his candidacy would mean the re-election of George Bush, Nader said "I'm afraid so, and yet, as a man of conscience, I feel I must make this run for the presidency, and condemn the American people to another four years of hell."
Democratic strategists have been huddled since the announcement, reportedly discussing the best way to kill Nader.
The centrists are suggesting an "auto accident"
They feel an "accidental" car explosion is fitting for a man of Nader's background, "and the irony is delicious" said Blaine Filamen, a young Kerry activist.
But the more liberal wing of the party is said to favor beating Nader severely with baseball bats, followed by a toss from a high, rocky cliff.
"It not only eliminates a problem" said liberal Democrat Phil Malone, "but the drama of it is instructive."
Man in the street Democrats are said to be undecided, but their attitude could best be summed up by Norman Redmond, a volunteer at Kerry headquarters who said "I don't care how they do it, as long as he dies. It's an idea whose time has come."
Meanwhile, chief Republican strategist Karl Rove has hosted several fund raising dinners asking wealthy Republicans to contribute to Nader's campaign.
"If Mr. Nader runs" said Rove, "Bush will have to do exactly nothing to win."
Nader's camp said they were unaware of any death threats, but added that even if Mr. Nader is killed, his corpse will continue to run for President.
"And he'd do a better job of it dead than Bush does alive." said Nader's cousin Marlene.
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| Something “Big” Will Prevent Saddam from Coming to Trial |
| 02.25.04 (12:09 pm) [edit] |
Saddam Hussein, who is currently being held captive by the Americans, is slowly going insane. This has been reported by Arab newspaper "Elaf" with a reference to members of the Red Cross organization.
Saddam's physical condition is almost perfect. He is decently treated and well fed. However, not so long ago, one could read a completely different account of Hussein's captivity.
Saddam started to have mental problems. At times, he would suddenly start mumbling something irrational. Afterwards, he would sit in total silence, without uttering a single word. Doctors assume that the Iraqi leader used to consume a lot of alcohol or used drugs in the past. At the same time, the symptoms could have been caused by his far from young age as well as death of his sons.
Hussein has several photographs of Udai and Kusai (his sons) in his cell. Interestingly, a portrait of Gerge W. Bush of an unknown origin also neatly hangs on the wall. This fact can be interpreted as another evidence of Hussein"s insanity. Had he been well, the former Iraqi leader would not have hung a picture of his enemy. And in case the portrait had been hung by someone other than Hussein, perhaps, the captive has gone crazy as a result of constantly staring at Bush' intellectual face.
In the meantime, according to a recently conducted poll, nearly 70% of Americans in the US support the idea of public broadcast of Saddam's execution. 21% of Americans are even willing to pay for watching Osama bin Laden being executed. Another 11% would like to enjoy watching the last moments of Hussein"s life. So there you have it, a democratic society with experience.
... because, after current uproar about Kelly's suicide subsides, one morning he could find himself hanging by the neck, as many so much insane people do.
So much about professional integrity among thiefs.
Seemingly Unsolvable Legal Traps Face an Administration Running Out of Wiggle Room
Events in the five years following September 11th 2001 will determine the course of human history for the next five hundred years.
In looking at the tectonic pressures building during a presidential election year -- as driven by the emerging reality of Peak Oil and Gas -- it now appears that, of those five years, 2004 may well be marked by some of the greatest political, economic and military changes in history.
Much of this upheaval will have been caused by the success of independent journalists, researchers, activists, courts, and congress in challenging the actions of the US Empire at home and abroad since 9/11 and holding it accountable for its own statements, actions and documents.
This brings to mind the proverb, “Be careful of what you pray for. You just might get it.”
This beast is dangerous now and signs are abundant, from the unrealized terror scares over the holidays, to the re-emergence of Mad Cow disease, to a suddenly renewed government interest in anthrax, that nothing is beyond the pale if the beast is threatened.
Even the Washington Post's David Rothkopf planted seeds on November 24th when he suggested that a terrorist attack might “disrupt” the 2004 presidential elections.
We should not be surprised.
With attacks on US and coalition troops in Iraq having intensified since the December 14 “capture” of Saddam Hussein and with the US losing the peace in Afghanistan, as attested in a recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations, it appears that some major distractions are going to be needed to keep the American economic and political machine operating.
A December 28th story in the Post revealed that the rate of US casualties in Iraq had doubled in the four month period from September through the end of the year. There was to be no post-Saddam dividend on that account.
It's an open question whether the customary economic moves to grow the economy in advance of an election are not going to reveal some of the darker aspects of Peak Oil and Gas before the election even gets here.
As the US, Chinese and European economies expand (China's is exploding), so does energy consumption.
[b]It is a deadly game to increase oil and gas use now and risk more blackouts and price spikes before next November. [/b]
A strong breeze is hitting the house of cards.
The success of challenges to the US version of 9/11 and to the fraudulent intelligence justifying last March's invasion of Iraq has put some major obstacles in front of Wall Street's and Washington's post-9/11 agenda.
In the context of a presidential election year those obstacles will be of primary concern to the Bush administration as it seeks to hold on to its position as CEO of an emerging New World Order, and it must do everything possible to remove or neutralize all of them before then.
It is for that reason that Thomas Kean, the Republican chair of the so-called Independent Commission investigating 9/11, chose on December 17th to advance a modified limited hangout saying that the attacks could have been prevented had it not been for incompetence and intelligence failures on the part of middle managers. The timing of that announcement, just four days after the “capture” of Saddam Hussein, was a weak attempt to bury unresolved questions about 9/11 in boosted Bush approval ratings.
The fact that Kean decided to make his announcement after having subpoenaed FAA records of Air Force and government actions on 9/11, but before receiving them; and after agreeing to the tepid compromise of reviewing partial extracts of George Bush's pre-9/11 intelligence briefs, but before seeing them, is ample evidence of his political motive. Investigative bodies rarely pass public judgment before reviewing the evidence.
If backed into a corner, the neocons and the global economic system which committed its support to them in 2000 will likely resort to extreme and draconian measures which may mark the end of the façade of American democracy. 2004 is going to be a very dangerous year. The major challenges faced by the Bush administration are both legal and self-created. They reflect inevitable challenges to positions adopted and statements made by the neocons since the US embarked on a course of infinite war for oil. They call to mind another old adage once expressed by a recovering alcoholic who said, “If you don't tell a lie, you don't have to remember what you said”. The Bush administration is walking an unraveling tightrope.
[b]Cheney's Energy Task Force [/b]
FTW has long maintained that the deepest and darkest secrets of 9/11 lay buried in the records of Vice President Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) which concluded its work and published a report admitting critical shortages in energy supplies in May of 2001. While those admissions were vague --- and located almost exclusively in buried sections of the report not mentioned in executive summaries or press accounts --- they clearly indicated that a major national priority was the acquisition of new sources of hydrocarbon energy against a backdrop of ever-decreasing domestic production.
Shortly after the report was submitted, a battle ensued between the House Government Reform Committee and Democrat Henry Waxman over the records of who had met with the panel and what had been discussed. While much of the early attention was focused on the participation of corporations like Enron, ExxonMobil and BP, FTW asserted that the real secrets had to do with the task force's awareness of peaking world oil and gas supplies and looming impacts on human civilization.
Since the task force had been paid for with taxpayer money, Congress rightly felt that the public had a right to know who had been invited and what had been discussed.
Initial suits by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) and citizen groups including Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club affirmed the constitutional right (imperative) of Congress and the people to have access to the files. An initial ruling in US District Court agreed and the US Court of Appeals declined to intervene after a White House appeal. As a result, a very incomplete set of records was released by agencies that assisted the task force while the White House itself, arguing executive privilege, has steadfastly refused to reveal a single page of its records.
On December 15, 2003, as reported by the Associated Press, the US Supreme Court announced that it would make a ruling in the case sometime in July 2004, just three months shy of the presidential election. This presents a real problem for the Bush administration. Legally, there is little to sustain its obviously illegal actions. And presenting the American people with another politically-tainted Supreme Court ruling just months before the election could easily rekindle debate over the Court's illegal Bush v. Gore ruling which stopped the Florida recount in 2000.
Aside from reminding the Court through widespread publication of stories about the pending decision there is little the American people can do to influence the outcome. However, the Court is already feeling enough pressure as a multitude of Bush administration extralegal positions come under increasing fire and close public scrutiny. In order for the machine to continue to function it must protect the value of the American brand name as reflected by its ability to convince large portions of the populace that the system still works. While the American people may not fully understand the implications of a Supreme Court ruling favoring the Bush administration in this case, the lawyers who make the system work and journalists who report on it most certainly will.
This is the ultimate high-stakes, must-win decision for the administration in the coming year. Full disclosure of Cheney's records would enable publications like FTW to once and for all answer for the American people and the world the single biggest question about 9/11, “What would motivate them to do such a horrible thing? What could have been so important?” In a criminal trial for murder this would be one of the three basic elements required for a conviction: the motive. The method and opportunity have already been established.
[b]9/11-RELATED TERROR PROSECUTIONS[/b]
Only one person in the entire world has been convicted of anything connected to the attacks of 9/11. Very few people have ever heard of Mounir el-Motassadeq who was arrested in Germany in November 2001 and, according to a December 16 Wall Street Journal report, convicted this year as an accessory to 3,066 murders. His conviction is about to be overturned solely as a result of the failure of a related German prosecution. That case failed recently because the US refused to produce a key witness who might have offered exonerating testimony, Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
Bin al-Shibh, reportedly captured in Pakistan a year to the day after the attacks, has been elevated to the status of principal planner in the 9/11 legend. Like one of the other alleged key planners, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad (KSM), he has yet to make a single public appearance while reams of convenient confessions from him and KSM are released by the US government to support its unsupportable version of events. Bin al-Shibh is reportedly being held at Guantanamo, outside the reach of media, lawyers and the Constitution.
The credibility risk to the US government, as it spins a tangled web of conflicting data, is that at some point, in order to maintain any credibility at all, it will have to produce real and verifiable statements from those it holds in custody. It must produce the witnesses themselves, and in the flesh.
On December 11, 2003 the German trial of a second person charged with complicity in the 9/11 attacks, Abdelghani Mzoudi, collapsed when a statement from bin al-Shibh was presented to the court exonerating Mzoudi from any knowledge of the 9/11attacks. The statement made its way into court after German intelligence defied a US request to keep the statement out of court and obeyed German law which -- like US law -- demands that any exculpatory evidence be disclosed during trial. According to stories in The Guardian and The New York Times, German intelligence had had the exculpatory material in hand before Mzoudi's trial began. This leaves open the question of why the US government had sought to illegally suppress evidence demonstrating Mzoudi's innocence.
The answer is clear.
The US needs a 9/11 conviction, any 9/11 conviction, desperately.
The German judge who dismissed Mzoudi's case opened the door for an immediate appeal and reversal in the case of Motassadeq who, like Mzoudi, was connected with members of Mohammed Atta's Hamburg cell. Both men are Moroccans and both had sought bin al-Shibh's testimony in their defense. That access had repeatedly been denied to Motassadeq's attorneys. In an omen for future 9/11 prosecutions – if they ever happen – Judge Klaus Ruhle said, as reported in the Times on December 12, “that while he had strong doubts about the reliability of the evidence, he could not properly evaluate it without testimony from bin al-Shibh.”
This leaves open the additional possibility that in order to avoid future and more dangerous exposures of its own criminal conduct, the US government created the bin al-Shibh testimony in order to prevent Mzoudi's trial from exposing even more glaring defects in the US-created 9/11 legend after it became clear that German courts were not going to yield to John Ashcroft's wishes.
In a very revealing passage at the end of its report the Times' Desmond Butler seemed to acknowledge lingering worldwide questions about whether KSM and bin al-Shibh had ever actually been taken into custody. He wrote, “ According to the police's letter to the court, the witness presumed to be Mr. bin al-Shibh made his statement last month.”
If Motassadeq's conviction is overturned, renewed examination of bin al-Shibh's role in 9/11 and subsequent “capture” could risk exposure of other lies about 9/11. This is especially true with regard to the deliberately confused identity of the “paymaster” for the attacks, Omar Saeed Sheikh, and the man who ordered him to transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta just weeks before 9/11 -- then-Pakistani intelligence chief General Mahmud Ahmad. Ahmad was known to have close ties to CIA Director George Tenet and was in Washington during the week of the attacks, meeting with Tenet, senior members of the Bush administration and key congressional leaders like House Intelligence Chair Porter Goss and Senate Intelligence Chair Bob Graham.
Zacariahs Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, jailed in Minnesota shortly before 9/11, was made famous by the legendary Rowley Memorandum, written by the FBI's Minneapolis legal affairs agent Coleen Rowley, TIME Magazine's Woman of the Year in 2002. In her memo she described deliberate, heavy-handed and successful attempts by FBI headquarters personnel, including Radical Fundamentalist Unit chief David Frasca, to suppress an investigation that might have prevented the attacks.
As time has passed it has become apparent that details in the Rowley memorandum have become enshrined – as noted by one researcher – as “holy scripture” about 9/11. But what if some of those details were part of a fabricated legend made more credible by Rowley's protestations? For an excellent analysis of this scenario please see There's Something About Omar: Truth, Lies, and the Legend of 9/11 by Chaim Kupferberg at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/... .
Since his incarceration and the filing of charges against him, Moussaoui has repeatedly sought the testimony of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi and bin al-Shibh. As in the above cases the US government has refused to allow depositions or the questioning of witnesses that might exonerate him. A US district court eventually ordered the witnesses to be produced and depositions to be taken. As a result, Moussaoui's prosecution stalled while John Ashcroft's Department of Justice appealed to a higher court for a ruling which is not likely to come down in Ashcroft's favor.
Given the outcome in the German trials it is extremely likely that going into the November election the Bush administration will not have a single 9/11-related conviction to show the American public; a fact which will surely be mentioned by the Democratic nominee and noted in the press.
Two additional recent US court decisions have further impaired the administration's ability to keep a lid on the lies of 9/11 and seriously compounded the above problems. On December 20, the AP reported that, in two separate Appeals Court rulings, it had been decided that the US could not keep detainees held in Guantanamo Cuba indefinitely outside the US legal system (i.e. the public eye) and that American citizens like alleged dirty-bomb suspect Jose Padilla could not be denied constitutional protections because they were allegedly “enemy combatants” being held outside US territory.
The result of the first ruling is to guarantee an inevitable point in time when the US government will have to produce Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, bin al-Shibh and other key figures in the 9/11 legend for public inspection. FTW has not a single doubt that the government's credibility will undeniably collapse at that moment if even the most basic questions are asked by the world's press and defense lawyers with an IQ higher than that of a baked potato.
The result of all these precedents would make it impossible for the government to successfully maintain the credibility of its accounts of 9/11.
SADDAM HUSSEIN
What were they thinking?
Assuming that it is the real Saddam Hussein that was officially taken into custody on December 14 th FTW cannot conceive of a single scenario in which the US government will ever let him come to trial. The world will not accept a secret trial.
The New York Times wrote on December 17th, “The trial of Saddam Hussein must do several things at once. It must educate Iraqis and the world about the nature of his regime, adhere to the highest international standards of fairness, and provide a mechanism for appropriate punishment. The best way to achieve those goals is by creating a tribunal inside Iraq under United Nations authority, staffed by Iraqi and international judges and prosecutors.”
But the dilemma faced by the US was made clear by the Agence France Presse which wrote on December 20th, “Controversial French lawyer Jacques Verges says he is willing to defend Saddam Hussein in court and, if he can, bring world leaders to the witness stand, in what could be a huge embarrassment for the United States, France and other countries.
“…He insisted that ‘all Western heads of state,' from the time of the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war to the latest Iraq conflict, should take the stand when the imprisoned former Iraqi officials go on trial… ‘When we reprove the use of certain weapons (we need to know) who sold these weapons,' he said about Iraq 's past purchase of arms from France, Britain, the United States and Russia.”
Joe Conason of The New York Observer observed on Dec 22nd that, “ An obvious prospective witness is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who acted as a special envoy to Baghdad during the early 1980's. On a courtroom easel, Saddam might display the famous December 1983 photograph of him shaking hands with Mr. Rumsfeld, who acknowledges that the United States knew Iraq was using chemical weapons. If his forces were using Tabun, mustard gas, and other forbidden poisons, he might ask, why did Washington restore diplomatic relations with Baghdad in November 1984?
There are many problems with the details of Saddam's convenient capture at a time when Bush popularity was sinking. A number of world papers from Britain to Australia have noted that Kurdish rebel groups laid claim to Saddam's capture before US sources released an official story. The Kurdish stories are credible but do not reveal the date of capture which might account for the former Iraqi dictator's disheveled appearance.
On December 21, FTW received the following unsourced photograph in an email titled “From a friend in Saudi Arabia.” The picture purports to show two US soldiers demonstrating how they lifted a Styrofoam block seal to Saddam's hiding place. The picture poses two problems for the US story. First, it clearly depicts ripened dates hanging from a tree branch. This ripening only occurs in the summer months and by December dates have either long since been harvested, rotted black on the branch or have fallen from the trees. Next to the dates is a line holding an unknown meat drying in the sun. Again, this is a process – according to Iraqi and Arab sources – which only occurs during the summer months.
A search of various news websites revealed that the photograph was an AP photo which – along with at least four others showing the ripened dates – is still posted on the CBS News website at: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/14/60 minutes/rooney/main588520 .shtml .
(Go to “The Capture of Saddam” and then click on “Photo Essays”).
The AP photos dispel other rumors that Saddam had been trapped under a concrete block. AP close-ups of the block above clearly indicate that it is lightweight. This is supported by the less-than-aggressive hand grips used by the soldiers in the photograph. While it is possible that bricks had been placed on top of the foam seal, it remains true that if Saddam had been captured sometime earlier, he was held a prisoner in the spider hole while his captors occupied the Spartan farmhouse above.
The timing and manner of Hussein's capture defy logic. He can only be tried in public and even if convenient confessions from him, unsupported by video or sworn testimony, allow the US to locate planted weapons of mass destruction, the cards of this poker hand are going to have to be fully disclosed at some point. The Bush administration knows this and FTW concludes that even as it announced his capture, it also had decided that Saddam Hussein would never be tried in public or allowed to defend himself. This makes his capture an incredibly ominous event. Something big will have to happen to prevent the trial from taking place.
A GRAND JURY OVER THE PLAME/WILSON CASE
Finally, a December 26th story in The Washington Post reported that a fourth prosecutor has been added to the Department of Justice team investigating who it was in the White House who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to journalist Bob Novak last year. Plame is the wife of former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson who was dispatched on the orders of Dick Cheney to investigate documents purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had been attempting to purchase uranium from Niger. The documents were crude forgeries, yet President Bush mentioned them in his state-of-the-union address and much of his cabinet relied upon them to justify the Iraqi invasion even after Wilson had reported that they were fakes and the claims were false.
According to the Post story FBI sources have indicated that a grand jury may shortly be empanelled to investigate the case. If so, Bush administration problems will multiply as more and more of the evidence appears before a body over which John Ashcroft cannot exert complete control.
The Post story added that, “On Monday [Dec. 22] the Senate minority leader and the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services committee sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding more information about the probe. ‘We request that you provide us with an overall status of the investigation, including the number of people the Justice Department has interviewed, the number of briefings you have received, the general types of information you are briefed on, what conditions you have placed on the scope of these briefings to ensure the independence of this investigation, and whether you have discussed this case with senior administration officials outside the Justice Department…
“The Senators said that it is an apparent conflict of interest for Ashcroft to be briefed on the subject, and again requested a special counsel to prosecute the case…”
The Daschle-Levin letter apparently hit home. In a surprise announcement on December 30th – as reported on CNN – John Ashcroft announced that he had recused himself from any role in the investigation and that control of the case would pass to the US Attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's selection was apparently governed by nothing more than political concerns. But it should be noted that under US law, US Attorneys operate independently of the Attorney General. (See: http://www.fromthewilderness.... )
This development further weakens Bush's ability to control a legal powder keg that, like so many others, could topple his regime.
Of key interest in this investigation is a document which surfaced out of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the fact that there have been several mysterious deaths in that unit in recent months. (FTW is currently preparing a detailed subscriber-only investigation of the links between these developments, the deaths and the fact that the CIA and the Bush administration are in a feud just short of a “shooting war”.)
If a grand jury is empanelled in this case it could – as was the case with the Watergate grand jury and Richard Nixon – spell the end of the Bush administration. The current regime has proven itself an inept manager of world affairs for the benefit of the financial system and offensive to most of the world's population. As FTW has said for a year, George W. Bush may be unbeatable in the election. He will certainly raise more money than all of his challengers and, if the three preceding years are any measure, he has demonstrated that he will go to any lengths to retain power. But that does not make him unstoppable. Richard Nixon believed that he was unstoppable and played a tough poker hand to the very end. The difference between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush is that Richard Nixon capitulated when he saw that further struggle would destroy the country.
Against the backdrop of Peak oil and Gas and what lies inevitably in our future, George W. Bush may see no similar grounds for restraint.
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| How Did Gov't Get Involved in "Marriage", a Matter of Religious |
| 02.25.04 (11:36 am) [edit] |
From: "V. C."
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 1:04 AM
Subject: Should "Marriage" Even Be Defined in Secular Law?
About 15 years ago, my former wife of 26-1/2 years, filed for divorce. We had
seven children, five daughters and two sons. Our youngest at the time, our
second son, was five years old.
At the time, I prepared a counterclaim to the Petition for Dissolution her
attorney filed in Domestic Relations (DR) court. I met one afternoon with the
head of the Maricopa County Superior Court, Marriage License Bureau, in downtown
Phoenix. The marriage license bureau was headed by a young woman of about age
25. I asked her to explain to me the general and statutory implications of the
marriage license. She was very cooperative, and called in an Assistant, a tall
Black man who at the time was working on an Operations Manual for internal
departmental use.
She deferred for most technical explanations to her Assistant. He walked
through the technicalities of the marriage license as it operates in Arizona.
He mentioned that marriage licensing is pretty much the same in the other states
-- but there are differences. One significant difference he mentioned was that
Arizona is one of eight western states that are Community Property states. The
other states are Common Law states, including Utah, with the exception of
Lousiana which is a Napoleonic Code state.
He then explained some of the technicalities of the marriage license He said,
first of all, the marriage license is Secular Contract between the parties and
the State. The State is the principal party in that Secular Contract. The
husband and wife are secondary or inferior parties. The Secular Contract is a
three-way contract between the State, as Principal, and the husband and wife as
the other two legs of the Contract. He said, in the traditional sense a
marriage is a covenant between the husband and wife and God.
But in the Secular Contract with the state, reference to God is a dotted line,
and not officially considered included in the Secular Contract at all. He
said, if the husband and wife wish to include God as a party in their marriage,
that is a "dotted line" they will have to add in their own minds. The state's
marriage license is "strictly secular," he said. He said further, that what he
meant by the relationship to God being a "dotted line" meant that the State
regards any mention of God as irrelevant, even meaningless. In his description
of the marriage license contract, the related one other "dotted line."
He said in the traditional religious context, marriage was a covenant between
the husband and wife and God with husband and wife joined as one. This is not
the case in the secular realm of the state's marriage license contract. The
State is the Principal or dominant party. The husband and wife are merely
contractually "joined" as business partners, not in any religious union. They
may even be considered, he said, connected to each other by another "dotted
line."
The picture he was trying to "paint" was that of a triangle with the State at
the top and a solid line extending from the apex, the State, down the left side
to the husband, and a separate solid line extending down the right side to the
wife, a "dotted line" merely showing that they consider themselves to have
entered into a religious union of some sort that is irrrelevant to the State.
He further mentioned that this "religious overtone" is recognized by the State
by requiring that the marriage must be solemnized either by a state official or
by a minister of religion that has been "deputized" by the State to perform the
marriage ceremony and make a return of the signed and executed marriage license
to the State. Again, he emphasized that marriage is a strictily secular
relationship so far as the State is concerned and because it is looked upon as a
"privileged business enterprise" various tax advantages and other political
privileges have become attached to the marriage license contract that have
nothing at all to do with marriage as a religious covenant or bond between God
and a man and a woman.
By way of reference, if you would like to read a legal treatise on marriage, one
of the best is "Principles of Community Property," by William Defuniak. At the
outset, he explains that Community Property law decends from Roman Civil Law
through the Spanish Codes, 600 A.D., written by the Spanish jurisconsults. In
the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a for-profit venture or
profit-making venture (even though it may never actually produce a profit in
operation) and as the wife goes out to the local market to purchase food stuffs
and other supplies for the marriage household, she is replenishing the stocks of
the business. To restate: In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a
business venture, that is, a for-profit business venture. Moreover, as children
come into the marriage household, the business venture is considered to have
"borne fruit."
Now, back to the explanation by the Maricopa County Superior Court, Marriage
Bureau's administrative Assistant. He went on to explain that every contract
must have consideration. The State offers consideration
in the form of the actual license itself -- the piece of paper, the Certificate
of Marriage. The other part of consideration by the State is "the privilege to
be regulated by statute." He added that this privilege to be regulated by
statute includes all related statutes, and all court cases as they are ruled on
by the courts, and all statutes and regulations into the future in the years
following the commencement of the marriage.
He said in a way the marriage license contract is a dynamic or flexible,
ever-changing contract as time goes along -- even though the husband and wife
didn't realize that. My thought on this is can it really be considered a true
contract as one becomes aware of the failure by the State to make full
disclosure of the terms and conditions. A contract must be entered into
knowingly, intelligently, intentionally, and with fully informed consent
Otherwise, technically there is no contract. Another way to look as the
marriage license contract with the State is as a contract of adhesion, a
contract between two disparate, unequal parties. Again, a flawed "contract."
Such a contract with the State is said to be a "specific performance" contract
as to the privileges, duties and responsibilities that attach.
Consideration on the part of the husband and wife is the actual fee paid and the
implied agreement to be subject to the state's statutes, rules, and regulations
and all court cases ruled on related to marriage law, family law, children, and
property. He emphasized that this contractual consideration by the bride and
groom places them in a definite and defined-by-law position inferior and subject
to the State. He commented that very few people realize this. He also said
that it is very important to understand that children born to the marriage are
considered by law as "the contract bearing fruit" -- meaning the children
primarily belong to the State, even though the law never comes out and says so
in so many words.
In this regard, children born to the contract regarded as "the contract bearing
fruit," he said it is vitally important for parents to understand two doctrines
that became established in the United States during the 1930s. The first is
the Doctrine of Parens Patriae. The second is the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis.
Parens Patriae means literally "the parent of the country" or to state it more
bluntly -- the State is the undisclosed true parent. Along this line, a 1930s
Arizona Supreme Court case states that parents have no property right in their
children, and have custody of their children during good behavior at the
sufferance of the State. This means that parents may raise their children and
maintain custody of their children as long as they don't offend the State, but
if they in some manner displease the State, the State can step in at any time
and exercise its superior status and take custody and control of its children --
the parents are only conditional caretakers.
He also added a few more technical details. The marriage license is an ongoing
contractual relationship with the State. Technically, the marriage license is
a business license allowing the husband and wife, in the name of the marriage,
to enter into contracts with third parties and contract mortgages and debts.
They can get car loans, home mortgages, and installment debts in the name of the
marriage because it is not only a secular enterprise, but it is looked upon by
the State as a privileged business enterprise as well as a for-profit business
enterprise.
The marriage contract acquires property throughout its existence and over time,
it is hoped, increases in value. Also, the marriage contract "bears fruit" by
adding children. If sometime later, the marriage fails, and a "divorce"
results the contract continues in existence. The "divorce" is merely a
contractual dissolution or amendment of the terms and conditions of the
contract. Jurisdiction of the State over the marriage, over the husband and
wife, now separated, continues and continues over all aspects of the marriage,
over marital property and over children brought into the marriage. That is why
family law and the Domestic Relations court calls "divorce" a dissolution of the
marriage because the contract continues in operation but in amended or modified
form. He also pointed out that the marriage license contract is one of the
strongest, most binding contractual relationships the States has on people
At the end of our hour-long meeting, I somewhat humorously asked if other people
had come in and asked the questions I was asking? The Assistant replied that
in the several years he had worked there, he was not aware of anyone else asking
these questions. He added that he was very glad to see someone interested in
the legal implications of the marriage license and the contractual relationship
it creates with the State. His boss, the young woman Marriage Bureau
department head stated, "You have to understand that people who come in here to
get a marriage license are in heat. The last thing they want to know is
technical, legal and statutory implications of the marriage license."
(Laughter)
I hope this is helpful information to anyone interested in getting more familiar
with the contractual implications of the marriage license. The marriage license
as we know it didn't come into existence until after the Civil War and didn't
become standard practice in all the states until after 1900, becoming firmly
established by 1920. In effect, the states or governments appropriated or usurped control of marriages in secular form and in the process declared Common Law applicable to marriages "abrogated."
Please pass this information along and share it as widely as possible.
Best regards from Virgil Cooper
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| Polygamists Outraged By Proposed Amendment |
| 02.25.04 (6:20 am) [edit] |
Polygamists Outraged By Proposed Amendment Defining Marriage As "Between One Man and One Woman"
In a press conference today immediately following President George Bush's announcement that he is endorsing a new amendment that will define marriage as a union between 'one man and one woman', in essence making it illegal for same-sex marriages to occur, the United Polygamists Association, UPA, announced that this amendment would infringe upon their legal and religious rights to marry more then one woman at a time.
"I was so upset after I heard his speech," stated the President of UPA, "I know he is trying to do this so that gays and lesbians don't get married, and I'm fine with that, but the side effect of this amendment is that we won't be able to marry more then one woman. Does he understand this?"
"We will have to leave this country," stated another polygamist who wished to remain anonymous, "I will have to take my 15 wives and 300 children and move.
Do you understand the logistics involved in that? I mean, my poor 13th wife hardly gets any sleep now just preparing the lunches for all my children every day, and she needs her sleep!
She is only 15 years old and 8 months preagnant! This is the beginning of the end for freedoms in America. I just don't know what's next!"
Apparently, UPA was not aware that polygamy is actually already banned and illegal in the United States. "It is? But don't the Mormon's do that in Utah?" stated the president of UPA, "Oh. I thought it was legal. Are you sure? Why should I believe you guys anyhow? You are just reporters."
"Today, I join the rest of America in legally defining marriage," stated President Bush in a televised press conference, "We must create an amendment to the Constitution so that the institution of marriage is protected forever and no court can ever challenge it again. That is why I support this infringement upon the freedoms of innocent people that want the same rights that the rest of us, heterosexuals, have today."
Conservative groups are applauding what President Bush is doing, while liberal groups are horrified at what they heard on television today.
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| “Our Children--Our Hope For a Future Free of Abortions” |
| 02.25.04 (6:10 am) [edit] |
One of the first things I try to do every morning is to quickly skim the headlines in the newspapers and online and to catch up on intriguing articles I’ve xeroxed from magazines but never read in their entirety. One of the stories I read over today was a report on the massive crowd that assembled at the giant rally in Washington, D.C. on the anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision.
The headline for the January 22 March for Life story was, “Casting Stereotypes Aside: Young Crowd at Annual March Views Antiabortion Cause as Human Rights Issue.” Given the use of “anti-abortion” and the not-so-occasional cheap shot, we might easily conclude that the reporter is not ordinarily a bosom buddy of pro-lifers.
For example, we read, “[T]he marchers—particularly the college students—are not noticeably intolerant or doctrinaire.” Mighty big of him, wouldn’t you say?
While the picayune criticisms are annoying, from our perspective what truly matters is that he didn’t miss the big picture: the audience was overwhelmingly young, idealistic, and considered the taking of unborn life to be “an urgent human rights issue,” “an urgent social justice issue,” as one marcher put it.
As this story indirectly suggests, the biggest headache for the anti-life crew is the enlarging of the pro-life coalition. With respect to young people, their much larger public profile is the fruit of the natural idealism of youth and the vigorous outreach by pro-life organizations such as National Right to Life.
But the infusion of high school and college students is only the tip of the iceberg. It is hugely important that our Movement is gradually finding additional allies in the African-American community.
Last week, Black Americans for Life held a press conference at the Supreme Court. The following story, written by the NRLC Outreach Department, puts into perspective why more and more African Americans are saying “No!” to abortion.
************************* ***********************
February is Black History Month, the perfect time for Black Americans for Life (BAL) to drive home the connection between the historic struggle of African Americans for equality and the devastating impact of the ultimate assault on human rights: abortion. In a February 19 press conference held on the steps of the Supreme Court, BAL Director Day Gardner linked the struggles African Americans have faced, from slavery through the fight for civil rights, with abortion.“Through all our pain and suffering,” she said, “it has always been our children who were our hope for a better future.”
Ms. Gardner and the coalition of women assembled with her believed abortion is jeopardizing that future. “It’s a somberness I feel,” Ms. Gardner explained, “because after all that we, as Black Americans, have endured and achieved, by the end of this day 1,200 Black babies- – the babies that insure our future – -will be purposefully and yet legally killed without mercy.”
Ms. Gardner emphasized the disproportionate impact abortion has had on the Black community. There are two abortions for every three live births, and statistics show that the abortion rate among Black women is three times higher than that of White women.
And this is no accident. “Over 70% of all abortion providers are in minority communities,” said Rev. Janine Simpson, another participant at the press conference. Rev. Simpson said that 94% of abortion providers are in metropolitan areas, compared with only 2% of pregnancy resource centers.
The result has been that of the 44 million unborn babies aborted since 1973, more than 14 million have been Black. “Blacks are no longer the largest minority,” Ms. Gardner said. “At this rate of abortion, our future looks dim.”
As the Director of Urban Center Development for CareNet, an organization that supports a network of crisis pregnancy centers, Rev. Simpson is working to plant new pregnancy resource centers in urban areas. “Our goal is to empower every woman to have real choices,” Rev. Simpson said. “Not just the choice of abortion… but real choices that will change their lives, strengthen our community, and empower our people to excel.”
Dr. Epps told of the devastating impact of her two abortions. Now the executive director of the Peninsula Care & Pregnancy Center, Dr. Epps works regularly with women suffering the aftermath of abortion.
“Each story is almost like a collage of painful memories, scars that last a lifetime,” Dr. Epps said. “I know their pain first-hand.”
Although the BAL-sponsored Coalition consisted of Black women of diverse backgrounds and from different organizations, all shared a common goal: to spread the word about abortion’s enormous impact on African Americans.
“Our purpose is to unite and empower Black women to break the silence and speak out,” said Day Gardner. “We have the highest abortion rate in the country, yet, Black women tend to be the most silent when it comes to this abomination. The Coalition is working to change that.”
To join the Coalition (there is no membership fee), or simply to find out more about Black Americans for Life, please e-mail dgardner@nrlc.org.
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| Pro-Abortion Feminist Scouts |
| 02.23.04 (12:10 pm) [edit] |
I love the cookies, but the organization has somewhat rejected moral decency.
Across America, Girl Scout cookie sales are in full swing. Last week, Girl Scouts of America officials announced a sales record for Washington, D.C. as 4.2 million boxes of Samoas, Thin Mints, and other cookies were sold in the nation's capitol.
But I'm going to be critical of the Girl Scouts. I love the cookies, but the organization has somewhat rejected moral decency.
At a recent Nobody's Fool annual meeting held at Planned Parenthood of Waco, Texas, the Bluebonnet Council of the Girl Scouts of America bestowed on Planned Parenthood chief executive Pam Smallwood the title of "Woman of the Year."
A Texas Christian radio station is urging its listeners to boycott Girl Scout cookie sales because of the Girl Scouts' close dealings with Planned Parenthood, and last Monday, parents of nine Girl Scouts in Crawford, Texas announced that their daughters will be leaving the Girl Scouts of America. Pam Smallwood is "not who I want as a role model for my daughter," announced the mother of a ten-year old Girl Scout who apparently broke into tears upon learning of Ms. Smallwood's lethal occupation. "I have to make a stand or there's no telling what else would happen," another mother told the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Sadly, more unfortunate positions have been taken by the Girl Scouts of America in recent years than parents and supporters may realize.
Rather than fight a 1992 lawsuit that challenged "God" in its Promise, the Girl Scouts broke its Promise with overwhelming support at the 1993 Girl Scouts national convention by permitting atheist and agnostic girls to use "words they deem more appropriate" in place of "God."
Since the 1970s, the Girl Scouts have been aligned with the radical feminist movement. For many years, Betty Friedan was seated on the national board of the Girl Scouts of America.
In 1972, at the urging of Friedan and other feminist leaders, the Girl Scouts dropped "loyalty" from its oath because the feminized America was one where neither men nor women were expected to commit to each other in marriage.
And for the past thirty years, the Girl Scouts have taken great pride in their anti-family sex education program, a program that has alienated Catholic churches and archdioceses as well and has drawn sharp criticism from leading pro-family organizations.
Girl Scouts sex education materials include such words as, "Some girls have sexual attractions or desires for people of the same sex."
A 1997 book entitled On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on their Scouting Experience estimated that approximately one in three adult Girl Scout professionals are lesbian and that the Girl Scouts are a positive place for lesbian relationships to develop.
Obviously, the Girl Scouts are not a lesbian organization, and different girls have had different experiences as Girl Scouts -- some good, some bad. But the organization is far from standing against homosexuality. Open lesbians are welcomed into the Girl Scouts.
In the summer of 2001, Mountain Meadow Girl Scout Camp in New Jersey was advertised as a "feminist camping experience [for] children of lesbian, gay, transgender ... and other progressive families." Children ages nine to fifteen were required to fill out an application asking name, birth date, medications, and "Gender of camper: male/female/other (please explain)."
In December 2000, President Clinton welcomed leaders of homosexual organizations to the White House to debut the Girl Scout-promoted film That's A Family! The video, produced by Women's Educational Media (WEM) to educate public schoolchildren about homosexual families, used young children to describe what it is like growing up with two moms or two dads. Girl Scout President Connie Matsui addressed the assembled crowd of homosexual activists at the controversial White House screening, explaining her enthusiasm for the film.
One might wonder why the Girl Scouts have been spared the painful attacks that have been launched upon the Boy Scouts by the Left in recent years. The reasons are simple: the Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion, feminist training corps.
While the Girl Scouts fit comfortably in the dire realm of political correctness, the organization should not fit so comfortably in America's network of moral education. Parents should be warned that the moral content of today's Girl Scouts is no longer based in the Victorian virtues that gave it life in 1912.
Parents and supporters of the Girl Scouts must be vigilant in these matters. If the Girl Scouts of America can't get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.
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| New Hippy Movement |
| 02.23.04 (12:06 pm) [edit] |
A growing number of young college adults today do not accept the idea of the need for violence for just and moral reasons in the defense of our country.
There are certain thought processes that parents should be aware their children may adopt when they off to college. Young adults today are exposed to countless morally void mindsets in the classroom lectures of liberal teachers in America’s institutions of higher education.
Possibly one of the most destructive trends is that a growing number of young college adults today do not accept the idea of the need for violence for just and moral reasons in the defense of our country. It's a new movement on college and university campuses, and revives the hippie ideology of the 60s. Pacifism, (or anti all-war and any act perceived as violent) is quite possibly the scariest misconception accepted on college campuses today.
Students today often find themselves being taught by morally bankrupt professors, and some college and university campuses are becoming a refuge for moral relativity and backwardness. Even students who seek out a morally advantageous atmosphere at some private and religious colleges, sometimes find themselves between a secular rock and a postmodern hard place. Separated from reality, college professors often permeate their lectures with pacifism and the appeasement philosophy. Reminiscent of the earlier hippy movements, this trend seems to be becoming a way of life for more and more young college students.
As a citizen who plans on having a family, I find this appalling. At the core of the hippie mantra is the believe that "peace," "love," and "tolerance" is the only way to resolve differences among nations. The way to peace is through love and tolerance. Love, in this case, means accepting others as they are, giving them freedom to express themselves, and not judging others. Well, isn’t that just groovy?
Disregarding all preconceived notions of what a hippie looks like physically, it is scary how many students today resemble the former hippies – philosophically. There is a good argument to be made that many Generation Xers today are even fashioning themselves to look like the distasteful hippies of the 60s, but it’s their politics that are truly distasteful.
You’ve heard the rhetoric:
''War is not the answer,''
''War never solved anything,''
''An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,''
''Make love not war,''
''Build bridges not bombs,''
''The way of the gun is the way of the dumb,''
''Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam.''
Perhaps you’ve sensed the same pacifistic tendencies pervading a growing segment of Generation X. I’m not as worried about those who specifically opposed the war in Iraq as I am about those who oppose war in general to protect our nation.
To oppose all war to protect our country is to be morally and logically confused.
Communism, fascism, Nazism, and slavery are just a few of the rotten ideas crushed by just violence.
To say war never solves anything is utterly dishonest.
Now don’t get me wrong: no one wants war. We shouldn’t like war or look forward to it, for war is ugly.
Contrary to what some liberals believe, conservatives and Republicans do not wake up in the morning, take a shower, and pray that our country decides to stomp the crap out of someone.
However, we must attest that war is needed from time to time. Slavery wasn’t abolished because everyone agreed that it was a putrid idea.
Hitler didn’t step down from power because of diplomacy.
Within the lifetime of Generation Xers, if I remember correctly, Saddam didn’t leave Kuwait because Bush 41 asked him ''Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top.''
With all that said, let’s be honest. The notion that ''War is not the answer'' or that ''Violence never solves anything” is almost too absurd to debate.
However, we must continue to fight this sophomoric philosophy because many young adults today are beginning to subscribe to it.
Newsflash: Some violence in defending our country can be good. Some violence can be just. Some violence can be moral.
Excuse me, hippies, but violence -- including war -- can sometimes be the only answer.
From the war on terrorism to issues like capital punishment, young people today are becoming less willing to support some necessary violence because it doesn’t ''feel good.''
It doesn’t ''feel good'' to engage in military operations against other human beings. It doesn’t ''feel good'' to put someone to death.
Moral lines are being blurred on college campuses, and we must fervently oppose the new hippie movement’s ignorance of the need to protect our country.
It’s easy to observe how college students have used Operation Iraqi Freedom as Generation X’s equivalent to Vietnam.
For proof of the lack of moral clarity on college campuses we need not look further than the atrocious attacks of September 11.
One would like to believe that our nation was united in identifying, hunting, and destroying the evil forces behind the deaths of over 3,000 innocent lives.
You would be wrong to make such an assumption. Some vocal college students and their college professors were singing a much different tune, like some of these quotations:
''The United States has to realize that what it’s doing with its foreign policy is just as bad, at least, as what happened last week [Sept. 11].'' -- Student, Georgetown University Schools of Foreign Service.
''To call this a just war is to ignore the mountain of injustice it is based on. People are just drunk on the cheap jingoism of the media and politicians.'' -- Student, Brown University.
''It disturbs me to see all the flags out supporting the slaughter.'' -- Student, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee.
''[I]ntolerance breeds hate, hate breeds violence and violence breeds death, destruction and heartache.'' -- Student, University of Oklahoma.
''Just because a grotesque act was committed against this country, does not mean any response is justified; it does not grant this country special license to use the sword.'' -- Student columnist, Yale University.
''[We should] build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls.'' -- Speaker, Harvard University.
''…the actions taken by the terrorists on Tuesday are not completely unwarranted. We try to forget about the way this country behaves internationally—that we too often behave as terrorists.'' -- Student, University of Michigan.
"[It is] ridiculous for us to go and kill more people because of what Bin Laden did.'' -- Student, Columbia University.
The audacity of these future leaders of America should shock you. If it doesn’t, you may have already encountered the treacherously pacifistic mindset that many young adults today are propounding.
The new hippie movement has spoken and now it is our obligation to wage intellectual war in retaliation.
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| Diversity vs. Civility |
| 02.23.04 (11:57 am) [edit] |
The new codes that ooze from the mouths of diversity trainers have little to nothing to do with kindness and courtesy and much to do with divisiveness and bigotry.
After a six-year legal battle, a school district near San Jose has settled a lawsuit brought by six homosexual students and the American Civil Liberties Union alleging anti-homosexual discrimination by paying out $1.1 million and beginning new mandatory diversity training programs for all students and staff in the school district. The district will also designate a "compliance coordinator" to investigate reports of anti-homosexual bias and to ensure that schools demonstrate favorable attitudes toward homosexuals.
In Colorado, state university students are required to undergo diversity courses and comply with diversity standards in order to maintain student group funding. The stifling of free speech and traditional morality that has ensued caught the attention of state legislators who are now demanding an end to campus diversity programs that violate the First Amendment and infringe on the right to "speak disapprovingly against certain sexual behaviors."
Diversity training, diversity monitoring, diversity policy enforcement, diversity weeks and assemblies and conferences -- all of it has become a burgeoning multi-million dollar growth industry. Besides that, it is rapidly dividing America.
The intentions of diversity program advocates are quite good -- they seek the final salvation of human beings from the discomfort of discrimination. But they've gone about it all in a pathetically foolish way.
Instead of talking about civility and character as did Martin Luther King, diversity trainers talk about sensitivity -- toward racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual minorities only. And in place of the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," it is as if we're told to say, "Do unto minorities as they would have them do unto you," even if our only account of a minority group's expectations comes from the mouth of the diversity trainer.
Several years ago, a Pacific Lutheran University professor named Gregory Guldin formulated what I called the Guldin Rule. Guldin drafted a report for the Puyallup (Washington State) School District (from which I graduated) recommending that it reject the idea of treating all people equally. Minorities, he asseverated, deserve special rights and treatment.
After a long lawsuit battle in the Puyallup School District featuring such dissimulations as the Guldin Report, the Puyallup Schools decided last year to pay out $7.5 million to black families who alleged that the district discriminated against racial minorities. The district also began a new half million dollar per year "Diversity Office" aimed at investigating alleged discrimination, requiring diversity curricula and diversity assemblies in schools, and mandating staff diversity training.
One diversity film called "Journey to a Hate Free Millennium" was shown at Puyallup High School my junior year with the goal of eradicating discrimination. But instead of a positive message about love and dignity, the film negatively linked three isolated "hate crimes" to widespread homophobia and racism. And instead of criticizing the Columbine killers as hate criminals, it was their peers who became the bad guys for not being tolerant of Klebold and Harris' Satanic lifestyle.
From the time I was in ninth grade until I graduated from high school, I fought against the proliferation of my school district's diversity program, which now is a suppurating effort, whether intentional or not, to dismantle traditional codes of respect and civility. The new codes that ooze from the mouths of diversity trainers have little to nothing to do with kindness and courtesy and much to do with divisiveness and bigotry.
My purpose in fighting diversity programs is that I care deeply about civility, character, and the dignity of my fellow human beings; and I care nothing for the opposite of civility: political correctness. Diversity is nothing more than a code word for extreme political correctness, which, in its typical forms these days, means that everyone must tolerate and accept and even celebrate any and every behavior under the sun.
Convincing several thousand diversity program-saturated industries and institutions that their politically correct ways are actually dangerous is no small task. But it can and must be done.
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| Getting It Done-Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act |
| 02.23.04 (11:27 am) [edit] |
When it comes to contentious issues, and certainly when they are taken up by the courts, so much takes place out of the public eye that sometimes we might be lulled into thinking that not much is happening.
Let me just say that when it comes to defending the recently passed Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, out of sight definitely does not mean out of mind. The Bush Administration is vigorously defending the law.
Last November the ink had barely dried when the pro-abortionists challenged the law in court. Having prevailed initially in obtaining temporary restraining orders, our benighted opposition perhaps breathed a sigh of relief.
But the Bush Justice Department has not let up from the day the courts in San Francisco and New York and Nebraska enjoined the new law. Its defense, the very model of commonsense and civility, has set the anti-life crowd to howling.
To respond to the challenge to the new law, the Justice Department asked for medical records from hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Illinois where abortionists have performed partial-birth abortions.
Assistant United States Attorney Sheila M. Gowan is one of the Justice Department lawyers defending the ban. I read the transcript this morning of a hearing that took place in New York February 5 in front of U.S. District Judge Richard Casey. It was a real eye-opener.
Gowan told Judge Casey that the plaintiffs, the National Abortion Federation (NAF), had challenged the law on the grounds that it did not include a “health” exception. She reminded Judge Casey that Congress had concluded “that no health exception was necessary with regard to partial birth abortion because the procedure is never medically necessary to preserve the health of a woman.”
NAF had dutifully trotted out seven abortionists who claimed that there were conditions that had required a partial-birth abortion (which they call a “D&X”) to preserve a woman’s health. Okay, the Bush Administration said, remove all names and personal information (so as to protect patient confidentiality) and show us the medical records.
Gowan offered two reasons why they were needed: to determine whether the abortionists had actually performed the procedure, and “whether there was something about the maternal health that required the performance of that procedure, or was it just the doctor’s preference to perform the procedure.”
When he was questioned by reporters, Attorney General John Ashcroft, noting that “Congress has enacted a law with the president's signature that outlaws this terrible practice,” said, “We sought from the judge authority to get medical records to find out whether indeed the allegation by the plaintiffs, that it's medically necessary, is really a fact.''
Bear in mind that last November this same Judge Casey temporarily blocked the government from enforcing the ban. But his patience with the pro-abortionists’ dilly-dallying was clearly wearing thin.
Talcott Camp, representing NAF, tried to shift the blame to the hospitals for the delays. Judge Casey was not buying it.
Casey said,“[Y]ou have brought the lawsuit. They [the plaintiffs] are going to do whatever it takes to produce hospital records. I will not-–hear me out loud and clear–-I will not let the doctors hide behind the shield of the hospital. Is that clear? I am fed up with stalls and delays.” He added, "They didn't have to be plaintiffs. They chose to be, and now they are going to get it done.”
When Ms. Camp indicated she didn’t know how long it would take to produce the records, Judge Casey asked, “Would you like to have the case dismissed and bring [it back] in five years when you have time to go through the records and get them ready?”
Pro-abortionists found a more sympathetic ear in U.S. Chief District Judge Charles Kocoras of the Northern District of Illinois. He labeled the government's subpoena of records at Northwestern Memorial Hospital "a significant intrusion" of patients' privacy that would provide "little, if any, probative value" to the government's case.
Reportedly, the Justice Department is considering a possible appeal of Kocoras' ruling. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner is considering a similar request from Hahnemann University Hospital.
Stay turned. This battle has just begun.
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| "Cloning - A Sign of Moral Regress" |
| 02.19.04 (2:11 pm) [edit] |
Cloning is at present as much an art as a science. The success rate is very low. What really gave the Korean team an edge was that they were able to obtain 242 human eggs from 16 women volunteers who took hormone treatment to stimulate egg production.
An ethics committee in the West might have questioned this, as the women themselves got no benefit. An
American or European team would be lucky to get 20 eggs, as they are in short supply for IVF treatments, never mind ‘blue skies’ research.”
Nigel Hawkes, London Times.
“The Korean scientists, if their experiment is confirmed in other laboratories, will have proved, in principle, the viability of the first step in therapeutic cloning, that of converting an ordinary body cell back into the embryonic state. But one element in their success is simply that they were able to amass enough human eggs to get the standard techniques to work, and had no legal restrictions standing in their way.”
Nicholas Wade, New York Times.
As many of you know, a team of South Korean researchers reported in the February 13 issue of the journal "Science" that it had created a cloned human embryo from which it derived stem cells. However gussied up in over-hyped promise of future "benefit," the simple truth is that tiny human lives were manufactured to be looted for parts.
This use of cloning to create and destroy human embryos is a sign of moral regress.
In fact, the loss in human life was much more extensive than most press reports suggested.
Using the 242 human eggs, the team of veterinary cloning expert Woo Suk Hwang and gynecologist Shin Youg Moon made 213 embryos at the two-celled stage.
Forty survived to the "compacted morula" stage (3-4 days), then 30 to the blastocyst stage (5-7 days).
From this the researchers were able to get inner cell masses from 20, but established a stable stem cell line from only one.
Hwang and Moon attempted to shield themselves from criticism by arguing that they were not intending to produce a baby (so-called "reproductive cloning") but tailor-made replacement cells to assume the duties of cells damaged by disease (referred to as "therapeutic" or "research" cloning).
But this was little more than the typical ruse, as a reading of the "Q&A" written for the London Times by Nigel Hawkes demonstrates.
Referring to the South Korean work, the question was posed,
“How is this different from cloning human babies?”
The answer?
“Not very different, except that the development of the embryo is halted at an early stage, after just a week, and long before it would be recognisable as a baby,” Hawkes writes. “Technically the same process could be used to create a baby, if the developing foetus had been placed in a woman’s womb rather then being used as a source of stem cells.”
The list of ethical barriers they leapfrogged is, to put it mildly, formidable, and the inventory of moral dangers is thicker than an old Sears and Roebuck catalogue.
Before further criticizing their work, it is necessary to know in a general way what they did. As you quickly discern, this is a layman’s explanation!
As Hawkes suggested in the quote reproduced above, the research protocol used would hardly be acceptable by our standards. Sixteen women were pumped full of powerful hormones to stimulate the production of eggs (ova) which were then harvested.
The nuclei of the eggs were removed and replaced with the nuclei of cumulus cells (cells that surround a woman’s eggs).
According to the Chicago Tribune,
“Chemicals in the egg's interior, or cytoplasm, then caused it to reprogram the replacement nucleus, deactivating the adult genes and switching on embryo genes,” a kind of Rip Van Winkle in reverse.
“Researchers were able to collect embryonic stem cells from the resulting cell mass inside 20 cloned blastocysts, which are very early embryos.”
Only when the egg and the nucleus from the cumulus cell came from the same woman did the clones mature sufficiently to make stem cells.
As the "Science" article explains, eggs that received nuclei from adult cells of women other than the donor (or from adult male cells) did not produce stem cells.
But for all the eggs harvested, nuclei sucked out, and cloned blastocysts manufactured, the South Korean researchers were only able to produce a single culture of embryonic cells.
And because the South Korean team used the nucleus from a particular female body cell --the cumulus cell-- thus far the technique works only for women.
As the input-to-success ratio suggests, “Cloning is an arduous process, and using it to create tailor-made replacement cells may prove impractical,” as Gina Kolata, writing in the New York Times, explained.
“Cloning uses human eggs, and that means finding young women who agree to be donors. Dr. John Gearhart, a stem cell expert at Johns Hopkins University, estimated that even if there were eggs and even if scientists knew how to efficiently get cloned stem cells that match a patient and to turn them into replacement cells, it would take months, perhaps a year, to make cells for an individual patient.”
It is always difficult, of course, to defeat something (however theoretical in nature) with nothing. And although you'd barely know it by reading most press accounts, there are very viable alternatives.
“Some scientists say it would be more practical to use stem cells from adults,” writes Andrew Pollack for the Times News Service.
“While some experts say these cells cannot be grown outside the body as easily as embryonic stem cells and may not be as versatile [both highly debatable points], they are more predictable in what kind of cells they turn into.”
Then there is Brian Alexander, author of “Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion.” Alexander supports cloning, including the use of cloning to produce a live birth. In an interview with Wired.com, he made this intriguing concession.
“It's possible that there may be a better way to do this. It might be done by taking cells already in our body and switching their function,” he said.
Ironically, Alexander offered as an example actor Christopher Reeve, a vociferous proponent of the use of embryonic stem cells and cloning, who was paralyzed when he was thrown from a horse.
“He [Reeve] is somehow managing to gain some function back that people didn't think he was going to get, thanks to this intense program he's in,” Alexander told Wired.com.
“They think what's happening is some cells are being recruited and switching their jobs. It's possible his body is regenerating, in a small way....”
There are other possible options, including freezing the stem cell-rich blood from the umbilical cord of newborn babies.
Stay tuned to Today’s News & Views and National Right to Life News for ongoing stories and critiques of cloning. We need to be fully informed if we are to repel this latest foray.
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| Engineering Specs and Bureaucracies Last a Long Time |
| 02.19.04 (7:13 am) [edit] |
Here is a look into ENGINEERING specs that is very interesting, educational, historical, completely true, and hysterical all at the same time:
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet,8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing. Okay!
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.
Now the twist to the story... There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds.
When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or S.R.B.'s. The S.R.B.'s are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.
The engineers who designed the S.R.B.'s might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the S.R.B.'s had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The S.R.B.'s had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' rears.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a Horse's Ass!
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| 'Pro-choicers' clap after partial-birth abortion |
| 02.17.04 (11:38 am) [edit] |
How sick is this?
Attendees of a national conference for abortion providers watched and listened with rapt attention as the inventor of the partial-birth abortion procedure narrated a video of the grisly procedure – and then burst into applause when the act was over and the unborn child destroyed.
The disturbing and eye-opening event, featuring abortion doctor Martin Haskell addressing members of the National Abortion Federation, was captured on audiotape.
Calmly and dispassionately describing each step of the process – up to and including the insertion of the scissors into the base of the baby's head, followed by the sound of the suction machine sucking out the baby's brain – Haskell walks his audience through the procedure that opponents hope will finally be banned during this congressional session.
At the end of the procedure, after the late-term, fully developed unborn child's life has been violently and painfully terminated, the audience breaks out into applause.
Pardon me while I go into the other room to be violently sick.
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| Abortion and the "Defective" Child |
| 02.13.04 (10:05 am) [edit] |
The third of the three arguments for the sake of the child says, "We should not bring a defective child into the world. If we have reasonable grounds to believe that the child will be defective, and therefore handicapped, either physically deformed or mentally retarded, it is an act of mercy not to let such a child come into the world.
He will have a miserable life, a life of anguish and suffering. We should spare him that. It is better for him that he not be born at all."
Abortion to prevent the birth of a "defective" child is not morally justified, for several reasons.
The verdict that a child in the womb will be born defective can easily be mistaken. It is hardly ever, if ever, a certain one. As a rule it is a mere probability, and not even a very high one. "There is some chance that your child will be born with a defect."
Since that is so, why not wait until birth? Why kill a child who might be defective? One may well be killing a child who is in fact perfectly healthy. So, if the reasoning is that a "defective" child should be terminated, why not wait until one knows with certainty whether she is in fact "defective." Why not wait until birth?
And kill her at birth? Does that sound horrible? But why is killing this same child before birth any different? Why is killing her at an earlier phase of her existence "all right," "an act of mercy," while killing her at a later phase such a horrible thing? The difference is purely psychological. One who favors killing before birth - called abortion - need not see the child, hear her cry, or look into her pleading eyes. The child is not seen, so she is psychologically not there as a real person with whom we identify. That says a lot about us; it says nothing of any significance about the child herself.
It is one thing if a severely handicapped person decides for himself that his life is not worth living; it is quite another if we impose such a decision on him. The same reasons, in terms of individual autonomy, that make it wrong to kill an unwanted child also make it wrong to kill a defective child.
Many handicapped people have happy lives. They find meaning and fulfillment in life through creativity and love. They are glad to be alive. The argument for aborting a defective child assumes that such a child will be unhappy. This is an unwarranted assumption, and when it is removed, the pro-abortion argument based on it collapses.
Eugene F. Diamond, M.D., speaks to this point, and to the previous one:
There is no evidence that the handicapped child would rather not go on living. As a matter of fact, handicapped persons commit suicide far less often than normal persons. An interesting study was done at the Ana Stift in Hanover, Germany, a center where a large number of children with phocomelia, due to thalidomide, are cared for. Psychological testing on these children indicated that they do indeed value their lives, that they are glad that they were born and they look forward to the future with hope and pleasant anticipation.
There are numerous case histories of handicapped persons leading productive, fulfilled, meaningful lives, glad that they are alive. Each of them is a refutation of the idea that a handicapped person cannot achieve a meaningful life; or that such a person is merely a "vegetable."
In a 1973 issue of Newsweek magazine, the medical section carried an article entitled "Shall This Child Die?" It reported on the work of Drs. Raymond S. Duff and A. G. M. Campbell at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. These men permit babies born with birth defects to die by deliberately withholding vital medical treatments. The doctors are convincing the parents that these children would be a financial burden and that they had "little or no hope of achieving meaningful 'humanhood.’" The doctors understood that they were breaking the law by doing away with what they called "vegetables," but they believed the law should be changed to allow for such deaths.
Sondra Diamond, who is in private practice as a counseling psychologist and is currently completing her doctoral work, responded to the article in a letter to the editor of Newsweek...
"I'll wager . . . that you have never received a letter from a vegetable before this one, but much as I resent the term, I must confess that I fit the description of a 'vegetable' as defined in the article, ‘Shall This Child Die?'
Due to severe brain damage incurred at birth, I am unable to dress myself, toilet myself, or write: my secretary is typing this letter. Many thousands of dollars had to be spent on my rehabilitation and education in order for me to reach my present professional status as a counseling psychologist. My parents were also told, 35 years ago, that there was 'little or no hope of achieving meaningful humanhood' for their daughter. Have I reached 'humanhood'? Compared with Drs. Duff and Campbell I believe I have surpassed it!"
The term "vegetable" is one of the greatest affronts to the dignity and preciousness of each person: its use cannot be too strongly condemned. No human beings are "vegetables," they are all persons. Some lack the physical skills, mental abilities, or other capacities that we associate with "normal" persons. This does not make them nonpersons, "vegetables." If we use this term, we are failing, they are not. We fail in our response to their being as persons, as full persons, with the same dignity and rights as the rest of us.
Not all handicapped people can reach a level of achievement like that of Sondra Diamond. Meaningful human life does not require this. My father, Balduin Schwarz, told me of the moving experience he had long ago in a home for the severely mentally retarded. Though very limited in their activities, they showed by their facial expressions and gestures a deep gratitude to those who took care of them. They were capable of receiving and giving love. They appreciated what was done for them, they responded from their hearts, and in this their lives had a deep meaning.
But suppose a handicapped person is not happy, even miserably unhappy. Does that mean we should kill him? Should we kill all unhappy born persons. Why try to kill all unhappy preborn persons?
I suggest that the argument for abortion for a "fetus" diagnosed as probably "defective" rests on the assumption that the "fetus" represents a merely potential person who is not yet there, and who may therefore be terminated before he actually arrives. Hence the phrase "let us not bring into the world a defective child," as though the child were not yet here. Once the fallacy of this assumption is recognized, and it is seen that the child is already here, then anyone who reverences human life, all human persons, whether normal or handicapped, will understand the absurdity of abortion in the name of "not bringing a 'defective' child into the world." (The same point applies to the "unwanted child.")
I noted above the inappropriateness of the term unwanted as applied to children: there are no unwanted children, only unwanting adults. Some such parallel applies to the term defective, as in "defective child." It is true that there are real differences among children, between those who have the capacity to walk and those who do not, between those who can see and those who are blind, and so on. These are important differences, and the negative in each case does imply a defect. But it is not a defect of the person; it is a defect in ability and bodily state. The term "defective child" is odious because it implies that it is the child himself who is defective, rather than something about his body.
"But many defective babies die naturally before birth, in the very early stages, or later by miscarriage. Nature 'takes care of them' by providing a merciful death. Where nature fails, should we not do the same: provide a merciful death? Should we not, therefore, abort defective babies?"
No. There is a world of difference between natural death and murder! If a very sick person dies of his illness, that is a natural death; it is not a moral evil, it is not murder, since no one intentionally killed him. If he is deliberately killed, "mercy killing," that is murder. What is perfectly obvious for born persons applies equally to preborn persons.
Abortion for the Sake of the Family
Abortion is sometimes advocated for the sake of family welfare. "We cannot take care of another child. It would not be fair to the other children." These, and other similar reasons, may be valid for not bringing another child into existence. But once a child is there? We have only to remember that the child in the womb is already there, as much as any born child. She is just as real as a born child and should be treated in the same way.
The reply to this abortion argument is basically twofold. One: Abortion would not be right even if it did benefit the family. As I have been stressing, we cannot benefit people by murdering someone. We cannot kill B to benefit A, not even to save A’s life, still less for other benefits.
Two: Abortion does not benefit a family. On the contrary, it has in general a disastrous effect on the family and its members in four specific ways.
First, in a society where abortion is accepted, children who survive to be born naturally wonder why they exist when many of their brothers and sisters were destroyed. Such children, Dr. Ney states, may suffer from guilt, from distrust regarding their future, and from carrying a heavy burden of expectation they may not be able to fill. "Since their fate once hung on their desirability, they tend to feel secure only when they are pleasing to their parents."
This is a heavy burden to carry, not all children succeed. In some cases it may lead to depression and suicide. Ney also explains that having abortions causes guilt leading to "antepartum depression that interferes with a mother's ability to bond." Failure to achieve bonding with the child tends to lead to child abuse, problems with subsequent pregnancies, and aversion to touching a child born later. Children who are abortion survivors, since they feel they exist only because their mothers chose them, tend to feel deeply insecure. "Since their security rests in their wantedness.... [they] keep checking. . . , 'Do you really want me?’"
Second, perhaps the deepest and most devastating effect of abortion on family life. and the other children especially, is that abortion cheapens life:
Abortion diminishes the value of all people, particularly children. When the destruction of the unborn child is socially sanctioned and even applauded, the child can't have much value. More than anyone, children realize they are becoming worth less. Thus, the rate of suicide has increased correspondingly.
"Every child a wanted child" sounds noble. When it is taken to imply the destruction of children who are unwanted, it becomes something frightening.
If society adheres to the ethic that the unborn child only has value when he is wanted, that ethic can easily be applied to small children.... If the unborn has no value and it is all right to kill him, then it is defensible to kill children who have lost value because they are now unwanted.
People do not harm what they highly value. As children decline in value, it becomes easier to neglect and dispose of them.
A third dimension of abortion on the family is its destructive effect on the structure of the family. Under current American law, a woman can get an abortion without her husband's consent, even without his knowledge. The child conceived by the man and woman together is torn from the man and put at the mercy of the woman who has the power to have him destroyed. The union of father-mother-child is destroyed; the family structure is effectively destroyed.
Or, if it survives, it does so in spite of the power, enshrined in law, of a woman to destroy her unborn child, a child that should be seen as belonging in a family rather than to an individual woman.
The same applies to the right, under current American law, of a minor to have an abortion without her parents' consent or knowledge. A child who cannot have even minor surgery without parental consent may have an abortion! Recall the hazards for women from abortion, physical and psychological. These alone should mandate the necessity for parental consent. The preborn child may be torn from the young (minor) woman; and she may be torn from her parents in her decision to abort. In no other way could the family structure be more effectively destroyed.
Noonan puts it well when he observes that making abortion legal and readily available means that a "childbearing woman ... became a solo entity unrelated to husband or boyfriend, father or mother, deciding for herself what to do with her child. She was conceived atomistically, cut off from the family structure."
Finally, abortion can be devastating to the man, and to the relation between him and the woman. The man is often the forgotten figure in the abortion drama. "What many people don't realize is that men, too, suffer from the abortion process - especially fathers of aborted children. Whether they encouraged the abortion or opposed it, they endure feelings of guilt, depression, grief, and often describe the abortion experience as bewildering and painful beyond their coping abilities."
Here is an excerpt from a pamphlet titled: "How Abortion Affects Men: They Cry Alone." Referring first to the woman, it says: "The evidence grows daily that she is, indeed, a casualty - that she is a real victim, along with her unborn baby, of this most unnatural procedure.... The purpose of the pamphlet is to point out that much the same can be said of the aborted child's father."
Dr. Vincent Rue expounds:
Sociologist Arthur Shostak observed in an article for The Family Coordinator that three out of four male respondents studied said they had a difficult time with the abortion experience and that a sizable minority reported persistent day and night dreams about the child that never was, and considerable guilt, remorse and sadness.
For men and women alike, the feeling of emptiness may last a lifetime, for parents are parents forever, even of a dead child. Emotional resolution is nearly impossible because there is no visible conclusion - just a memory. Because the unborn child was denied humanity, he or she is denied a grave or marker. The grieving process is left unfinished....
Because of the basic inequality between the partners in the abortion decision, the capacity to develop trust.... intimacy, honesty and companionship is severely restricted. This same inequality has the potential to breed displaced male aggression via child abuse, spousal abuse or self-abuse.
A woman's "right to choose" abortion, and the law that protects this, means that the father is denied any rights to protect the child. In many cases the father very much wants the child. To have his own child destroyed, at the request of the woman with whom he begot this child, is devastating.
Not all men want the child. Some in fact take just the opposite position. This too is harmful, for it is harmful to human relations. Speaking of men who support abortion, Wailing says, "Now they can pursue their pleasures without a thought about the consequences. When told of a pregnancy, they say to the woman, ‘That's your problem.' Other men do even worse - they apply great pressure on the woman, threatening to break off the relationship if she doesn't have the abortion. She must choose between the baby or the baby’s father."
Not surprisingly, abortion takes its toll on human relationships: "Researcher Emily Milling found that of more than 400 couples who went through the abortion experience, most of the relationships (70 percent) had failed within one month after the abortion."
Abortion for the Sake of Society
It is argued: "What will we do with all those unwanted babies? Abortion is needed to control population growth in the face of the threat of overpopulation," And, "it is unrealistic to say that all abortions are immoral. If we lived in a perfect world, we would not need abortion; but we do not. Killing is never good, but it is sometimes necessary, as in war time."
First, abortion is bad for society because it is bad for people! Abortion is bad for the child. The child is already in the world. She should not be excluded from membership in our society merely because she is still in a secluded place, necessary for her so that she is nourished and protected during those first formative weeks of her life. Abortion is bad because it represents frightening hazards for women, physically and psychologically. It is bad because of its effects on other children. It is bad because of its effects on the family structure. It is bad because of its effects on men. Abortion is bad because of its effects on human relations.
Many other dimensions could be added: its effect on the medical profession when doctors, committed to healing and saving, become hired killers; its effect on nurses having to reassemble the broken pieces of a baby torn apart by the abortion knife; and its effect on the society that lives in the midst of a holocaust. Abortion is a deadly plague with many victims.
Second, "What will we do with all those unwanted babies?" Often it is the pregnancy that is unwanted. The child once born, and perhaps even before birth, is very much wanted. A child unwanted now may be very much wanted later. And if a child is at first wanted, then later unwanted, does the objection imply that she should later be killed, when she is born? Adoption, not abortion. While millions of babies are killed, so many couples who want to adopt cannot.
If there are still many babies "left over," we can make room for them. We can adjust our lifestyles to take care of them. If a boat full of poor, hungry refugees were to come to our shores, begging to be allowed in, would we turn them away to their deaths? Or would we open our hearts to them? Open our gates to let them in?
Abortion is, if anything, still worse than a closed door to refugees; that is more like withholding support, as discussed in chapter 8. Abortion should be compared to killing the refugees after they land on our shores. ("The child is already in the world.")
In the worst case scenario, we return to the original question, "What will we do with all those unwanted babies?" Mass extermination, as the Nazis did with "all those unwanted people" in their society? If it would be an atrocity to kill "all those unwanted babies" after birth, would it be any less of an atrocity to kill them before birth?
It is sometimes said that abortion is cheaper than welfare; that eliminating or sharply curtailing abortion means adding welfare costs later on. This is not evident when we consider the thousands of couples eager to adopt and take care of babies. But grant the premise for the sake of argument. "Abortion is cheaper than welfare." Of course. It is always cheaper to kill a child than to feed him and clothe him! The same applies to the aged, infirm, and to handicapped persons. What follows? That we should kill people to get them out of the way?
Third, "Abortion is needed to control population growth in the face of the threat of overpopulation." The question of overpopulation is broad and complex, far beyond the scope of this book. Let me suggest three significant points in reply to this objection.
There is evidence to suggest that population growth, far from being a threat, is actually healthy. One author who argues for this is P. T. Bauer. His thesis is that as population increases the standard of living increases.
Since the 1950s rapid population increase in densely-populated Hong Kong and Singapore has been accompanied by large increases in real income and wages. The population of the Western world has more than quadrupled since the middle of the eighteenth century. Real income per head is estimated to have increased by a factor of five or more. Most of the increase in incomes took place when population increased as fast as, or faster than, in the contemporary less developed world.. . .
In both the less developed world and in the West some of the most prosperous countries and regions are extremely densely populated. Hong Kong and Singapore are probably the most densely populated countries in the world, with originally very poor land.... In the advanced world Japan, West Germany, Belgium and Holland are examples of densely populated countries. Conversely, many millions of extremely backward people live in sparsely populated regions amidst cultivable land. Examples include the backward peoples in Sumatra, Borneo, Central Africa and the interior of South America. They have ready access to vast areas of land - for them land is a free good. In South Asia, generally regarded as a region suffering from over-population, there is much uncultivated land, land which could be cultivated at the level of technology prevailing in the region....
Evidence contradicts the idea that unchecked human reproduction will fill the earth because the sheer number of people will outdistance food resources, as Malthus warned. James A. Weber argues against Malthus (and contemporary Malthusians such as Paul Ehrlich):
This Malthusian drama of despair has captured the imagination of generation after generation of population experts, including our present crop of doomsayers. However, there is one thing wrong with the scenario. It is exactly the opposite of what has happened in the past or what can be expected to happen in the future.
Far from outdistancing material progress in the past, population growth has lagged far behind, as is evidenced by continuing rapid increase in per capita income that has occurred in the United States and other advanced countries since Malthus formulated his population principle.
However, based on broad trends of past and present world population growth, it is possible to suggest that world population will return to an extremely slow growth rate about the time it reaches the neighborhood of 10 billion people, which should be approximately the middle of the next century.
Jacqueline R. Kasun argues that 10 billion people is not too many for the world to sustain:
Colin Clark, former director of the Agricultural Economic Institute at Oxford University and noted author of many books on population-resource questions, classified world land types by their food-raising capabilities and found that if all farmers were to use the best methods now in use, enough food could be raised to provide an American-type diet for 35,100,000,000 people, almost 10 times as many as now exist! Since the American diet is a very rich one, Clark found that it would be possible to feed three times as many again - or 30 times as many people as now exist - at a Japanese standard of food intake. Nor would these high levels of food output require cropping of every inch of available land space. Clark's model assumed that nearly half of the earth's land area would remain conservation areas. The noted city planner, Constantin Doxiasis, arrived independently at a similar estimate of the world's ability to feed people and to provide conservation areas.
Clearly there is plenty of room on this earth for 10 billion people. "We could put the entire world population [around 4 billion] in the state of Texas and each man, woman and child could be allotted 2,000 square feet [the average home ranges between 1,400 and 1,800 square feet] and the whole rest of the world would be empty."
There is evidence to suggest that the problem, far from being a population explosion, is rather the opposite: a declining population, a population rate below replacement, leading to extinction:
Ansley J. Coale, director of the office of Population Research at Princeton University, states: "Of the 31 countries that are usually listed as highly developed, 21 now have birthrates below replacement." Coale points out that, in the U.S., "by the time the Zero Population Growth movement came along, fertility was in the midst of its steepest decline in history - 50% in 16 years. We are below replacement now and are continuing to grow only because of the age distribution of the population. If the downtrend continues, we will begin to have a shrinking population not long after the end of the century." . . .
Thus, there is no population explosion in the U.S. or in the other developed countries. Population scholars estimate that rates of growth are higher in the less-developed world, but also note evidence of declining growth rates in a majority of the countries for which data are available.
Suppose the worst, that there is a real danger from a population explosion. Are we simply going to kill off all the "extra people," a Nazi-type "final solution"? It is shocking even to mention this. The alternative is that all persons be respected, that no one be killed to get him out of the way. All persons means everyone, born or preborn.
Fourth, "Isn't an absolute ban on abortion unrealistic? We don't live in a perfect world. Killing in war is bad, but war is sometimes necessary. Isn't it the same with abortion?"
We do not live in a perfect world. We live in the pervasive presence of moral evil. Abortion as the unjust killing of small, helpless, innocent children, especially on a mass scale that makes it a holocaust, is a frightening example of this. Far from being a solution, abortion killings make the world more imperfect. And much worse than imperfect.
The destructive effects of abortion - on women, on men, on other children, on the structure of the family, on society - make abortion hardly a realistic solution, but exactly the opposite. A realistic solution is something positive, not destructive like abortion.
The argument for abortion that compares it to war is not valid. If "going to war" is a way of trying to settle disputes, the comparison is indeed apt: Both are terrible moral evils. For both are assaults on innocent people, both cause horrible sufferings, both have terrible side effects; both are fundamentally destructive. If it is the question of defense against unjust attack, war becomes a complex subject, far beyond the scope of this book. Some defensive wars are indeed unjust, and some tactics in war are unjust. Intentionally killing an innocent person is always wrong, whether by a rifle, a bomb, a saline solution, or a knife.
Abortion is indeed a war, a war on the preborn, in which they cannot defend themselves, in which they are killed in extremely cruel ways. Saying that war is not a solution applies most aptly to the war on the preborn.
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| Abortion and Child Abuse |
| 02.13.04 (9:59 am) [edit] |
It is argued: "Abortion is necessary to prevent, or at least to minimize, the terrible evil of child abuse. Anyone who has ever witnessed the absolute horror of child abuse cannot but wish that such a child had never been born."
As in the previous type of case, we must have the greatest sympathy for a child who is a victim of child abuse. We must do all we can to stop this abomination. But to kill the child before he is born?
First, abortion is not a solution for child abuse, because abortion is itself the ultimate child abuse! Recall what has been continually emphasized, the horror of the methods of abortion, such as saline burning of the skin for one to two hours or cutting the child to pieces, and the pain these methods cause to the child. Even by other "clean and painless" methods, abortion would still be child abuse because all murder is a form of abuse.
Second, abortion is not a solution for child abuse. It is simply false to assume that it is the unwanted child who will be abused while the wanted child will not. That is, abortion for this purpose, even if it were justified, would not be effective. "Many studies have demonstrated that the victim of child abuse is not the 'unwanted child.'" It IS the wanted child. In his study of child abuse, Edward F. Lenoski, M.D., found that "91% of the parents admitted they wanted the child they had abused. The mothers had also donned maternity clothing two months earlier than most expectant mothers."8 Furthermore: "A higher percentage of the abused children were named after one of the parents," indicating that they were wanted.
Third, there is another compelling reason why abortion is not a solution for child abuse. "Instead of reducing the incidence of child abuse, the evidence shows that abortion actually increases child abuse." There are a number of reasons for this:
The abused child is reduced to an object.
The abortion mentality reinforces the attitude of treating children like objects, objects that can be wanted or unwanted according to whether or not | |
