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Pro-life Americans must not settle for half measures in defense of the unborn
LifeSite News ^ | April 26, 2024 | Shaun Kenney

Posted on 04/26/2024 9:35:45 AM PDT by ebb tide

Pro-life Americans must not settle for half measures in defense of the unborn

While Democrats continue to be held in thrall to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood, Republicans seem to hope that remaining in a state of superposition will somehow help the electoral math in November.

The Guttmacher Institute worries intensely that it is no longer able to co-opt half of the pro-life movement, hoping that incrementalist measures — long derided as the pro-regulation arm of the abortion industry — might become the norm. By its own admission, so-called 15-week bans are nothing of the sort when 97% of abortions occur within the first 15 weeks.

Even six-week bans are still a six-week open season on babies, when Guttmacher’s own tally shows 63% of the abortions performed in America are done so through chemical means.

Let us be clear once and for all. The pro-life movement is not interested in half measures or compromise. Either the abortion industry is correct and human life is a cheap and disposable thing, or the pro-life movement is correct and every human person deserves the basic right to exist.

The argument was never one of settling on when one can kill preborn children, but rather whether the practice is ever acceptable in a civilized society. This was never about ending Roe; it is about making abortion a moral impossibility.

While Democrats continue to be held in thrall to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood, Republicans seem to hope that remaining in a state of superposition will somehow help the electoral math in November. For pro-life Americans, such superposition is and remains utterly insufficient — and they know it.

Of course, the abortion industry is defending a multibillion-dollar business convincing young mothers to destroy their babies.

Again, by Guttmacher’s own numbers, Planned Parenthood is a $2 billion organization subsidized by nearly $1 billion in donations and another $700 million in federal and state taxpayer dollars. Such a behemoth is constantly on the lookout for new victims. How do they collect them? By convincing otherwise rational people to reduce themselves to mindlessly pleasuring themselves and then providing the escape for the consequences of doing so.

Let’s be clear on this matter as well. When public figures such as the comedian Bill Burr and late-night talk show host Bill Maher can say the quiet part out loud — that abortion really is taking a life — this is no longer a public conversation about when life begins, but rather who has the power to decide when life ends.

In this, the Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood will defend what is commonly defined as a salient feature of modern neo-liberalism, namely that each person is a property unto themselves and that neither government nor law has the right to impede upon one’s personal autonomy and individual freedom.

Yet there is a deceit in claiming that individuals are the final ends of a society. Turning personal pleasure into the highest good and hard choices into its opposite doesn’t create a just society. Instead of a society of equals and respect, the abortion industry has helped to create a society built on manipulation and abuse.

Women are no longer respected for their femininity, but rather are asked to throw away what makes them most feminine so as to participate in a neo-liberal society.

Guttmacher’s own numbers in 2005 indicate that nearly three out of every four abortions occur because young mothers believed they would be unsupported. Nearly half cited relationship concerns or fear of being a single parent. One in six — a number that should horrify us all — said their partner was coercing them to have an abortion.

Another 2017 study in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons states that nearly three out of every four women who had an abortion felt either pressured or coerced into doing so.

This is the hellscape that Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood defend in the name of personal autonomy. If the old truism holds that in every abortion the result is one dead and one wounded, how does the abortion industry sleep at night knowing that the vast majority of its victims are pressured into accepting one form of violence in the hopes of offsetting another?

The answer is $20 million split among 53 Planned Parenthood affiliate CEOs, nine of whom are men pushing abortion on women, and 70% of those victims being minorities, according to Pew Research.

When former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg told The New York Times in 2009 that abortion policy in America was crafted due to a “concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of,” the question goes larger than who decides in matters of life and death, but rather it strikes deeply at the heart of other questions. Do we value each and every human person? Are we supporting women as mothers? Or as mere cogs in the economy?

One doubts there is any disagreement that both Democrats and Republicans could do far more to support mothers who choose life. Yet the question as to where to set the number isn’t six or 15 or 24.

Bill Maher is right. There are only two honest options: 0 or 40. Pro-life Americans should not settle for half measures, or will we? Doing so is both dishonest and selling out millions of pro-life Americans as the pro-regulation arm of an already materially enriched abortion industry.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abortion; infanticide; murder; prolife
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CDC: U.S. Birth Rate at Record Low After Pandemic Boost
1 posted on 04/26/2024 9:35:45 AM PDT by ebb tide
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To: Al Hitan; Fedora; irishjuggler; Jaded; kalee; markomalley; miele man; Mrs. Don-o; ...

Ping


2 posted on 04/26/2024 9:36:07 AM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide

Of course, any reduction in abortions is a victory. The critical life and death nature of our fight can’t mask the fact that the medium is politics. And vice versa. We have to think strategically and never lose heart.


3 posted on 04/26/2024 9:50:53 AM PDT by Rinnwald
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To: ebb tide

I’m afraid that simply banning birth-control abortion will not help to eliminate the practice.

Whole generations of young women have been conditioned to consider abortion as a routine form of birth control, much like the pill or IUDs.

What we need to do is work on educating them. The time to decide whether or not you want a child is before you get pregnant. Once you get pregnant, the child is a reality.

Nervous system development takes place between weeks 2 and 5 of pregnancy. This means that by week 5, if not before, the fetus is able to sense and respond to its environment. From week 5 on, the nervous system increases in size and refinement of function. Yes, that means the fetus feels what is done to it during abortion. Many young women justify abortion on the basis of abortion industry lies telling them the fetus either is not alive or is incapable of feeling. Educate them, and much of the support for abortion will evaporate.


4 posted on 04/26/2024 9:54:16 AM PDT by exDemMom (Dr. exDemMom, infectious disease and vaccines research specialist.)
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To: ebb tide

Oh, and about the birth rate being at record low:

According to abortion industry advocates, lack of access to birth control abortion is essentially forcing hundreds of thousands of women to give birth.

But we haven’t seen the birth rate increase by hundreds of thousands.

Hmm.

What it really looks like is that hundreds of thousands of women have decided to use contraceptives now that it’s not as convenient to get abortions.


5 posted on 04/26/2024 9:57:18 AM PDT by exDemMom (Dr. exDemMom, infectious disease and vaccines research specialist.)
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To: ebb tide

True, but they need to change our rotten culture first. Dry-up the teen sex. Restore marriage. Stop ridiculing virginity. Stop teaching middle school girls that babies are a career-ending burden.


6 posted on 04/26/2024 10:00:34 AM PDT by Socon-Econ (adi)
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To: exDemMom
You are correct, but the problem is bigger than that.

This is why we're going to be stuck with abortion for some time

7 posted on 04/26/2024 10:05:34 AM PDT by Publius
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To: ebb tide

It’s not a National/Federal Government issue.
It’s, rightly adjudicated, for the States and The People.

and half the country disagrees with you-

Convince your fellow citizens FIRST.
Get enough folks elected, that will make change.
Then change the law.

Pushing the last item first is an electoral disaster.
It’s what The Left wants you to do.


8 posted on 04/26/2024 10:20:46 AM PDT by Macoozie (Roll MAGA, roll!)
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To: Publius

Marriage as a social institution in the west is gone. It is a luxury good. In that “Nice to have, not needed”. Young women don’t want it as they can get support from the government. Young men fear it as it can lead to a lifetime of payments and judgements.

Now you have the average age of loss of virginity going up, with no marriage, and most men are seeing there is little chance for a relationship.

That is how societies die, or burn.


9 posted on 04/26/2024 10:33:17 AM PDT by redgolum
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To: ebb tide

Demorats don’t care what the birth rate is - they’re bringing their chosen ones across the border as replacements many of which DO bare children and will raise them as Demorats.


10 posted on 04/26/2024 10:49:02 AM PDT by caww (O death, when you seized my Lord, you lost your grip on me......)
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To: ebb tide

Any attempt to ban first trimester abortion will result in a Democrat tsunami at the next election. That’s how it is.

I will regard anyone suggesting it as a covert Dem.


11 posted on 04/26/2024 11:00:24 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (Either you will rule. Or you will be ruled. There is no other choice.)
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To: SauronOfMordor
Any attempt to ban first trimester abortion will result in a Democrat tsunami at the next election.

I will regard anyone suggesting it as a covert Dem.

I will regard anyone who defends first trimester abortion to be at best, amoral and at worst, immoral.

12 posted on 04/26/2024 12:05:40 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide

Well Shaun, even a well written article screaming even louder than you did does not hide the fact that you are clueless about the vary issue organization you represent. The problem is the constitution is silent to life. Until society addresses when life begin, the aborting, euthanasia, murdering, etc is going to continue. If nothing guarantees our right to life then we have no rights. That’s the purpose of the viability, 15 week, 6 week strategy, at some point the SC has to establish that fact, but that is all water under the bridge not that the SC washed their hands of their most important responsibility in overturning Roe. Whereas they created a right to abortion because the constitution was silent to it, they had the opportunity to create a right to life as it also is silent in the constitution but is obviously implied and assumed since all other rights are meaningless without the right to life. The worst decision in SC history was written by none other than Alito and unbelievably Robert’s was actually on the right side. A 6 week ban allows for a 5 week then 4 week and eventually no weeks, but because the retardicans wanted an all or nothing, dems will continue to stroll out the 12 yo rape victim forced to carry her rapists baby to term because of retarded republicans


13 posted on 04/26/2024 12:30:16 PM PDT by pghbjugop
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To: ebb tide

It’s a matter of practicality.

What we have seen is that any attempt to restrict abortion into the first trimester will result in Republican defeat, and Democrats EXPANDING abortion.

If you want a Constitutional amendment protecting abortion, then go ahead and try banning first trimester abortions.

It will need a culture change.


14 posted on 04/26/2024 1:19:08 PM PDT by SauronOfMordor (Either you will rule. Or you will be ruled. There is no other choice.)
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To: Publius

Yes. Soon after Roe v. Wade forced legal abortion at any time across the country, a Planned Parenthood guest lecturer came to my high school biology class to “teach” us about birth control.

The takeaways of that “lesson” were that—
1) Birth control is dangerous and ineffective.
2) Abortion is perfectly safe.
3) There are health benefits for having a late term abortion.
4) The idea that a fetus is alive is laughable. (Literally: the guest lecturer said that “some people believe a fetus is alive. Hehe. Some people even believe that the sperm and eggs are alive. Haha!” But she offered no scientific evidence that fetuses are dead until birth.)

I was puzzled at the time, since it did not seem to me like the education was really about birth control, avoiding pregnancy, or any of the stuff I expected, as a high school student, to be taught. With age and wisdom, I have realized that the lecture was nothing more than a 50 minute infomercial for abortion.

That was in 1975. How many millions of young women have received similar “education” from Planned Parenthood since then?


15 posted on 04/26/2024 1:34:43 PM PDT by exDemMom (Dr. exDemMom, infectious disease and vaccines research specialist.)
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To: Socon-Econ
Dry-up the teen sex.

Zoomers have having less premarital sex than any generation over the past fifty years.

16 posted on 04/26/2024 1:36:49 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: ebb tide
I will regard anyone who defends first trimester abortion to be at best, amoral and at worst, immoral.

And with this, you'll get abortion up to the moment of birth.

You have no seat at the table. Zero. The pro-life movement in the United States is effectively dead.

17 posted on 04/26/2024 1:40:46 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: Drew68
The pro-life movement in the United States is effectively dead.

So are you just willing to bend over and ask for another kick?

18 posted on 04/26/2024 4:28:37 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide
So are you just willing to bend over and ask for another kick?

I don't really care about abortion. It's at the bottom of the list of issues I give a crap about.

I'm just sick and tired of seeing full blown Marxists get elected because certain conservatives live under the delusion that 100% pro-life candidates are electable and 100% pro-life positions are popular.

19 posted on 04/26/2024 5:11:20 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: ebb tide

Abortion needs a culture change.

Women want to be sexually active with multiple men in hopes of landing Prince Charming. Prince Charming will not be interested in a single mom. Single motherhood also dooms any corporate career.

To change things, you would need to restore a culture where girls married young and intended to be stay-at-home moms.


20 posted on 04/26/2024 5:19:24 PM PDT by SauronOfMordor (Either you will rule. Or you will be ruled. There is no other choice.)
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