An open letter to my long-time friend and compatriot Patrick Layne:
Dear Patrick,
I had a dream about you a couple nights ago which reminded me that I have yet to respond to the comment you left on my blog. This might sound weird, but thank you for disagreeing with me—and not just in your head, but out loud. You are one of the friends I’ve had the longest, and I’m so honored that we’ve continued to remain friends even through major disagreements. My response to you has turned into another long blog post. I’m sure you’re not surprised.
This is the comment that you left on my post "A matter of life or death and a decision impacting generations":
While I have every option not to voice my opinion here as it is unlike all the rest posted here, I can't help but one million percent disagree with the notion that a "vote for Obama is a vote for genocide." Um, legitimize this statement. Roe v. Wade was legalized in 1973. Like it or not, it is the law of the U.S. I struggle to see how Obama will make abortion more legal than it already is. Abortion would almost certainly continued to have been legal had John McCain won the election. Would that have made a vote for McCain a vote for genocide?
In a nutshell, I believe I did legitimize my statement in my post, but I'll happily expound. In a nutshell, abortion was legal in the U.S. pre-Roe v. Wade. It would continue to be legal in some states if Roe v. Wade were overturned; however, other cases have opened wide the door to not only abortion, but also to infanticide, and that's where I believe genocide begins (as in the case of Nazi Germany which gradually moved from killing infants to three-year-olds to 17-year-olds to adults in fewer than ten years). I'll repost that section in this response.
President-Elect Obama supports not only abortion, but every form of abortion including partial birth abortion, which congress found to be "a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited." Most partial birth abortions have been performed on babies during the second trimester, or after 20 weeks (five months), which is when the gender of the baby can be determined. Dr. Martin Haskell, the author of a paper outlining partial birth aboriton,"performed over 700 of these procedures" and in 1992 wrote that he "performs these procedures up to 32 weeks or more." A full-term baby is one who reaches 40 weeks on average, give or take two weeks; therefore, 20 weeks is half-way through the pregnancy.
Obama also opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act four times, which would proposed medical care for babies born alive during abortion attempts (that is outlined in my previous post, but I'll expound on it here, too).
Finally, he promises to sign the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would legalize partial-birth abortion and eliminate current restrictions on abortion, including requiring doctors who choose not to perform abortions to begin offering abortion services.
In January 2003, congress passed an act "to prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion":
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003'.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds and declares the following:
(1) A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion--an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant--is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited [boldface mine].
Before I go on, let me say that I sincerely hope and pray that I’m wrong. I really do. But I wholeheartedly believe what I wrote in my previous posts. I really do believe that our country is on a path toward socialism and, yes, even genocide. Maybe I’m crazy. I can live with that. But when I look at the cycles that other countries have experienced and when I consider that history repeats itself and when I think about the gradual changes that have been made with regard to the “pro-choice” movement, I can’t help but visualize our country, as early as 10 years from now, progressively legalizing horrific and barbaric “procedures” beginning with abortion and killing infants who are born alive during abortion attempts to eventually killing unwanted toddlers, teens, and adults. Remember the Nazi Germany example? I'll re-post it in a minute.
Back to Obama and his position on infanticide. His supporters like to point out that he said, with regard to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, “if these are children who are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they're looked after." However, that statement is taken out of context. He uses clever semantics to distinguish between a "live birth" and an "abortion" before he references "children who are being born alive." You can read the full context of his statement on pages 31-34 of the State of Illinois 92nd General Assembly Regular Session Senate Transcript here: http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST040402.pdf.
If you will, just hang with me for a minute while I lead up to my point . . . on page 29 you'll find that the "Induced Birth Infant Liability Act," which became known as the "Born Alive Infants Protection Act" would "create a cause of action where medical care, as provided for in Senate Bill 1663, is not provided" http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST040402.pdf.
Some of the quotes that really stood out to me as I read through the transcript are as follows: Obama states, " . . . one of the things that we were concerned about, was what impact this would have with the respect to the relationship between the doctor and the patient and what liabilities the doctor might have in this situation" (p. 31) . . . adding a--an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments [confirm that the baby was, in fact, born alive and is also considered "viable"], is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion . . . this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births . . . because if these are children who are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they're looked after" (italics and boldface mine).
Here you have a great example of clever legal semantics. When Obama refers to “children who are being born alive,” he is not referring to babies who are the product of a “botched abortion.” Look at the previous sentence. He says, “This issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births.” He makes a distinction between the two before he offers his “confidence” that babies who are "born alive" in hospitals will be looked after by doctors. Of course those babies will be looked after. They are not under contract to be killed. The babies that will not be looked after—the ones who will be left to die even if they are delivered alive--even if they are considered viable—are those who are under contract to be delivered dead. A woman seeking an abortion signs a contract essentially asking the doctor to produce a dead baby. If a live one is produced, as Obama pointed out, “what liabilities [might] the doctor have in this situation”?
My question is, "What liabilities might we as a nation have in these situations?" If we do not make laws to protect the most vulnerable in our nation, what then? Laws are designed to protect the innocent, not the wealthy.
Can abortion become more or less legal? No. However, the next link in the chain is infanticide. And then what? Remember Nazi Germany? Have you read or taken time to consider the following section of my previous blog post?
The Unimaginable Becomes Imaginable;
Then It Becomes Common
. . . Acceptable thought changes throughout time. History continually repeats itself as in the examples set before us by Christian Overman, the author of Assumptions that Affect Our Lives, "Infanticide was commonly accepted and widely practiced in ancient Greece. The Spartans tossed unwanted children from the side of Mt. Taygetus, and the Athenians exposed them to the elements in earthen jars placed next to the temples of their gods." Now fast-forward to the early to mid-1940s in Nazi Germany where "there was a special agency set up for the purpose of child termination. It was made up of psychiatric and pediatric experts, whose function it was to decide--entirely on their own--which children were to be eliminated" (1996, p. 67) [boldface mine].
In his book The Sign for Cain, Dr. Fredric Wertham writes of the agency that Overman described:
The children slated for death were sent to special "children's divisions." ... They were killed mostly by increasing doses of Luminal or other drugs either spoon-fed as medicine or mixed with their food. The dying lasted for days, sometimes weeks. In actual practice, the indications for killing eventually became wider and wider. Included were children who had "badly molded ears," who were bed-wetters, or who were perfectly healthy but designated as "difficult to educate." The children coming under the authority of the Reich Commission were originally mostly infants. The age was then increased from three years to seventeen years. Later, in 1944 and 1945, the work of the commission also included adults (quoted from Assumptions that Affect Our Lives by Christian Overman, 1996, p. 69) [boldface and italics mine].
Couldn't happen in America? Consider this: while abortion was unthinkable in the 1950s, today it's embraced by many as a "right" or a "choice." Infanticide is currently unthinkable to many Americans. We have a hard time believing that babies who are aborted couldn't possibly be born alive. They're just a blob of tissue, right? My dear friend and former employer Gianna Jessen, who was born during a saline abortion, is proof that a baby is not a blob of tissue and that babies who survive abortion attempts can go on to live full and prosperous lives given proper medical treatment at birth.
What if the abortionist had been present during Gianna's birth in 1977? She would have received proper medical treatment, right? Not so. The truth is, she would have been strangulated, suffocated, or left to die. Sadly, infanticide has been a reality in our country for years. In states like Illinois, infanticide is still legal.
"Even as far back as 1982, legal infanticide hit the headlines when the Indiana Supreme Court officially sanctioned the deliberate withholding of medical treatment and the subsequent starvation of a newborn child known to millions as 'Infant Doe.' Born with Down's Syndrome, the baby suffered from a blocked esophagus that could have been easily corrected through routine surgery. But the court granted the parents authority to withhold food. After six days, Infant Doe starved to death, not in an earthen jar, but in a modern, sterile American hospital" Assumptions that Affect Our Lives by Christian Overman (1996), p. 69.
Sobering, isn't it? The law protected the parents from being tried for murder. They let their baby starve to death, and the law protected them--not their baby. As a believer in the Most High God, I am commissioned to stand up for and plead the case of the orphan and the widow—to give a voice to those who cannot plead their own case. This is my plea.
Why did I say that a vote for Obama was a vote for genocide? One of the main reasons is this:
In his July 17, 2007 speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Obama said,
"We know that a woman's right to make a decision about how many children she wants to have and when— without government interference—is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have in this country. . . . I have worked on this issue for decades now. I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught constitutional law. . . So, you know where I stand. . . The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do."
Do you know what the Freedom of Choice Act states? Have you taken the time to read it?
According to Wikipedia,
“The bill is described by NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan as a bill to ‘codify Roe v. Wade’ which would ‘repeal the Bush-backed Federal Abortion Ban,’ referring to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, ‘and other federal restrictions.’
Similarly, opponents of the bill assert that[2] it would, if passed, invalidate every restriction on an abortion before the stage of viability, in every state, even those previously found consistent with Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court, such as parental notification laws, waiting periods, requirements of full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks inherent in abortion, and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Opponents further assert that it would challenge the right of religiously-based hospitals or clinics to refuse to perform abortions, and that it would force the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which restricts the use of Federal funding for abortions. Conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec disagrees with the latter assertion, noting that the Hyde Amendment is renewed annually by Congress and argues that this legislation would not supersede it [3].
In other words, minors seeking abortions would not need parental consent. Waiting periods would be eliminated. Physical and emotional risks would not be disclosed. Doctors who currently refuse to perform abortions would be required to perform them by law. The partial-birth abortion ban act would be reversed. Taxpayer dollars would fund these "gruesome and inhumane" procedures. This is not a bill about abortion. It is a bill about infanticide: government-protected, and perhaps eventually government-legislated infanticide.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has been vehemently opposed to the Freedom of Choice Act. According to the USCCB's Secretariat for Pro-Life Activites, FOCA would not only "codify the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade" but "in allowing and promoting abortion, FOCA goes far beyond even Roe."[9] On November 12, 2008, Francis Cardinal George, president of the USCCB, warned that FOCA would limit the right of Catholic hospitals and doctors to not offer abortions adding that, "those who support FOCA must realize that if Catholic hospitals are ever required to perform abortions, the bishops will close every one of them; no one would be hurt more than the poor."[10] Drawing on Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, the Catholic apologist Frank M. Rega, S.F.O., writes[11]:
The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is legislation co-sponsored by Barack Obama which would nullify all state laws that in any way attempt to limit or regulate abortion, including partial-birth abortion. Ironically, it specifies that government will not interfere with a woman’s choice to keep or to kill her unborn child. Nevertheless, FOCA would be a major move towards the dangerous precipice of government-mandated abortion, since it would consolidate all power over birth control into the hands of federal law and authorities. From there it would only be a small step to amend it in the light of overriding national health interests, environmental or population concerns, or any other reason deemed appropriate. Thus the FOCA clause in section 4.b.1.a, stating that a woman has the “right to choose to bear a child” could conveniently and easily be changed to, for example, that a woman has the right to choose to bear up to two children. More ominously, it could be amended to state that a woman has the right to bear a child, except in cases of rape, incest, Down syndrome, etc. [boldface mine].
The pro-life organization Americans United for Life (AUL) began a petition called Fight FOCA to collect signatures to oppose FOCA. AUL also wrote an open letter to Senator Barack Obama on FOCA.[12] As of Friday, December 5, 2008, at 22:39:00 UT, the Fight FOCA petition has 311,013 signatures.[13]"
My signature is included among the many.
In her conclusion to "The Freedom of Choice Act: A Radical Attempt to Prematurely End Debate Over Abortion," Denise M. Burke, the AUL Vice President of Legal Affairs writes:
“Clearly FOCA will not make abortion safe or rare – on the contrary, it will actively promote abortion and do nothing to ensure its safety – so, abortion advocates’ unrelenting campaign to enact FOCA is a “wake-up call” to all Americans. If implemented, FOCA would invalidate common-sense, protective laws that the majority of Americans support. It will not protect or empower women. Instead, it would protect and promote the abortion industry, sacrifice women and their health to a radical political ideology, and silence the voices of everyday Americans who want to engage in a meaningful public discussion over the availability, safety, and even desirability of abortion.”
Can abortion become more or less legal? No. However, our President-to-be has made some promises to a very large, wealthy, influential organization that, if fulfilled, will open many doors to frightening places. I believe with my whole heart that we are a nation waltzing toward genocide. PRAY. SPEAK. ACT. Now is not the time to be silent. Remember, acquiescence means to agree in silence. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us all against acquiescing. Stand up. Make your voice heard. Pray. We are a nation hinging on a great comeback or a great fall.
1 comment:
Lori, I just read this. It is one of the most provocative pieces I've read in a long time. Wow. Your voice is a gift to me, to this people, to this country. Thank you for sharing it.
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