Congressman Andrew Clyde vs. Woke Planned Parenthood Physician

Georgia's own Andrew Clyde--U.S. Congressional Rep. for Georgia's 9th district--recently asked a Planned Parenthood doctor if "biological men can get pregnant." Of course, for a doctor who denies the biological reality of life in the womb, it's not too far a leap to the absurd conclusion that "men can get pregnant." Mr. Clyde corrects this absurdity: 

Unless brought to heel, the left will continue on this path of evil. And remember, millions of American school-age children are subjected to this evil in their government schools. 

Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith and Reason.
www.TrevorGrantThomas.com 
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com

Lying Jon Ossoff is Unfit for Office

The most expensive congressional race in U.S. history has again dispelled the myth that conservatives are the aggressors in the moral wars that plague our politics. As Kyle Wingfield of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution recently pointed out, in the race to replace Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, it was only a matter of time before Jon Ossoff went after Karen Handel for her brief experience at the Susan G. Komen organization. And like almost every other liberal when it comes to matters involving abortion, Ossoff lied.

The ad uses an OB-GYN corrupted by liberalism—Mindy Fine from Cobb County, Georgia —who falsely claims that Handel “cut off funding for Planned Parenthood cancer screenings when she was an executive at Susann G. Komen.” Fine goes on to say that Handel’s actions in her short stint at the cancer charity as “unforgivable.”

Fine is referencing a much-publicized incident that occurred in early 2012. At that time, Handel—fresh off a failed run for governor of Georgia—was Komen’s newly hired Senior Vice President for Public Policy. In late January of 2012, Komen, the largest breast cancer organization in the U.S., announced that they would not be renewing financial grants to Planned Parenthood. At the time, Komen claimed this was the result of Planned Parenthood being under congressional investigation.

Of course, as they so often do when they sense their “sacred” sacrament of abortion under attack, liberals across the U.S. went full-on donkey-dung crazy (and as I noted at the time, Komen later caved). Most of the blame for ending the grants was laid at the feet of Handel. Article after article, column after column (interesting experiment: do a “custom range” Google search for Karen Handel and Komen for early 2012 and note the liberal outlets that show up) claimed that Handel and Komen were pulling funds that provided tens-of-thousands of “clinical breast exams to low-income and uninsured women.”

Claims of “clinical breast exams” and “cancer screenings” often lead to the oft-repeated lie that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms. This is a lie that refuses to die. President Obama himself repeated the lie on national TV in late 2012. After repeated debunkings by the likes of even the liberals at the Washington Post (and by Handel herself), liberals today, such as those at MSNBC and Senator Chuck Schumer, continue to repeat the lie that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms. As his campaign openly supports the mission of Planned Parenthood, almost certainly the Ossoff campaign is hoping to perpetuate this lie.

In addition, according to various sources, including Handel’s book on the incident, the decision to “cut off funding” of Planned Parenthood was far from Handel’s alone—as the Ossoff ad implies—and had been in the works for years. Komen’s CEO at the time, Nancy Brinker, said, “Karen did not have anything to do with this decision. This was decided by the board level and by our mission.” The Atlanta-Journal Constitution article referenced by the “Unforgivable” ad mentions only internet “speculation” that Handel was even involved in the Komen decision to pull Planned Parenthood grants.

Ossoff’s Handel-Komen lies come on the heels of his national security credential lies. As The Washington Free Beacon noted back in March of this year, “After claiming for months he had five years of experience as a congressional national security staffer with top-secret clearance, Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff has now admitted that he had clearance for just five months.” This lie helped carry Ossoff into his June 20 runoff with Handel.

In addition to his lies, Ossoff also seems to have an issue with commitment. As folks down here in Georgia put it, Ossoff is “shacked-up” with his girlfriend of 12 years. He told CNN, “I've been living with Alicia, my girlfriend of 12 years, down by Emory University where she's a full-time medical student. ... I want to support her in her career and do right by her.” Of course, “doing right by her” would mean marrying her, but again we see, liberals have long had a hard time discerning what is “doing right.”

As I noted a half-dozen years ago, corrupted by the “values” of modern liberalism, the current generation in America is shunning marriage for cohabitation at an unprecedented rate. As sound morality as long taught us—which Mr. Ossoff seems blind to—such irresponsible and selfish behavior by adults is disastrous for children.

According to a recent study by the Brookings Institution, “U.S. children born to cohabiting parents are twice as likely to see their parents’ relationship end compared to children born to married parents.” According to Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, children who live with their cohabitating biological parents are more than four times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused and they are three times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents.

Unsurprisingly, Ossoff’s “Priorities” page on his campaign website makes little, if any, mention of marriage, families, or children, but he does support the “right to choose” to kill the most helpless and innocent among us. In addition to his campaign lies, when it comes to two of the most important moral issues of our time—life in the womb and marriage—Ossoff fails badly at both. If elected, almost certainly he would support the radical liberal agenda when it comes to what is marriage, what is a human being, what is a male and a female, and so on. Thus, like most every other modern liberal, he is unfit for public office. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Witness the Absurd Lengths Liberals Go to Guard the Killing of Children in the Womb

Two recent episodes display the ignorant, foolish, vile, and vulgar lengths to which liberals will stoop in order to safeguard abortion. At the recent Democrat Party debate, where abortion was never mentioned, MRCTV asked the head of the Democrat National Committee, Debbie Schultz, if her children were human prior to birth. Her response would be comical if not for the tragic results of the Democrats loyalty to abortion. Witness an abortion apologist at her "best:"

The CNN panelists NEVER ONCE asked the Democrat candidates about abortion or even Planned Parenthood--even after Hillary brought up the latter. I suppose they did want to make them look as foolish as Schultz does in the above video.

Also, in a horrific display of modern liberalism, Argentinian pro-abortionists, with provocative nudity and deliberate violence, recently attacked a group of young men who had gathered to pray outside the Cathedral of Mar de Plata in Argentina. The out-of-control abortion supporters hurled glass bottles and feces at the praying men, and even threatened to burn down the Cathedral. (Viewer discretion advised.)

I suppose we should be surprised at nothing from those who attempt to defend the indefensible. Nevertheless, the videos above are very telling. Change our hearts, oh God!!!

Guns Don’t Kill People, Liberalism Does

President Obama wants us to politicize gun deaths in America. I decided to take him up on his invitation.

I hope that no one is surprised that Obama took this opportunity again to attack guns, the gun industry, and those of us who are fans of the Second Amendment. This is what a community organizing career politician does. For liberals like Obama, virtually everything is, or must be made, political. Because political problems require political solutions, and thus, when something is politicized, those in favor of empowering and growing government get to do what they do best: give speeches, call for legislation, and attempt to stir up the electorate in their favor.

Prior to the murderous rampage by Chris Harper Mercer at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, liberals across America must’ve decided that after the next mass shooting in the U.S., “time to politicize” was going to be one of the themes of their talking points. Prior to Obama’s speech on the Umpqua massacre, where he declared “this is something we should politicize,” in the largest newspaper in my home state of Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, liberal columnist Jay Bookman (at about 3:30 in the afternoon on the day of the shooting) posted an online piece entitled, Another mass shooting at college? Hell yes we should ‘politicize it.’

Liberals wouldn’t do this if it hadn’t worked for them in the past. In spite of being on the wrong side of virtually every moral issue of our time, democrats have won many elections with their shrewd political skill. However, it’s not that liberals are that much better at politics than conservatives. It’s that the deck is stacked in their favor. As I’ve pointed out before, because under liberalism the moral demands are few, politics is much easier for liberals.

Again, when you operate in the realm of fantasy, it is much easier not only to ignore the truth, but also to manufacture crises and perpetuate false injustices so as to paint oneself as the savior for what needs (or will need) fixing. Thus, “never let a crisis go to waste” is a frequent means by which political power is obtained and kept. Far too many Americans are all too willing to cast their votes for those who promise to “protect” them—from the climate, from the corporations, from the Christians, from guns, and from the consequences of their own bad decisions.

Speaking of fantasy and guns, (on this, there’s no shortage of material from liberals) in an attempt to defame the NRA and republicans, I recently encountered the following:

“Last Year” in the poster is a reference is to 2013. However, what any good liberal will neglect to point out is that of those 33,636 deaths, nearly two-thirds were suicide, with an additional several hundred the result of legal intervention. (Even Wikipedia has the numbers.) The high ratio of gun deaths by suicide has been the case for years. Nevertheless, liberals regularly report (or even incorrectly report) the 30,000-plus gun deaths in the U.S. without mentioning the number of suicides.

And notice the blood on the hands in the poster above? With nearly 60 million of the most helpless and innocent Americans killed since 1973, when it comes to bloody hands, none are more red-stained than a modern liberal’s. As I noted on the day of the Oregon shootings, given their rabid support for slaughtering the unborn, when it comes to any form of violence—or for that matter, any moral issue whatsoever—no voter should ever trust any “solution” presented by a liberal.

It’s rather telling—but not at all surprising—that so few liberals have demonstrated any shock or remorse at the recent undercover Planned Parenthood videos. Remember how the liberal media had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell? Whether the Gosnell trial, or the Planned Parenthood videos, the truth about the abortion industry has been known for decades now. What’s more, there’s no real shortage of photographic and video evidence of what really happens during an abortion. Again, much of this has been around for years.

Mother Theresa warned us years ago, “We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, of killings, of wars, of hatred. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?” As she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Theresa declared that abortion “is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child—what is left for me to kill you and you kill me—there is nothing between.” In other words, if as a culture we’ve become comfortable killing in the womb, we shouldn’t be surprised at killings in the classroom.

In addition to making what should be one of the safest places for a human being into a killing zone, once outside the womb, the most dangerous places in America are run by liberals (i.e., democrats). According to FBI data, and as Mark Alexander noted a few months ago, “the 10 most dangerous cities in America with populations above 200,000 are all managed, top to bottom, by Democrats. They are: Detroit, Oakland, Memphis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Birmingham, Newark and Kansas City.”

As Alexander also notes, along with being extremely impoverished (the top ten most impoverished American cities are all also run by democrats), these liberal havens have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. And as Umpqua Community College again tragically demonstrated, strict gun laws—such as “gun free zones”—only work when people are willing to obey the laws.

In most cases, these dangerous and impoverished cities have been dominated by liberal politics for decades. Sadly, democrats’ most reliable constituency, black Americans, have suffered most under liberalism. Though only 12.6% of the U.S. population, blacks make up over 35% of abortions in America. Nearly 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics are in minority neighborhoods.

Additionally, blacks (especially young black males) comprise well over half of the 11,000+ annual gun homicides in America. Well over 90% of these murders are the result of black-on-black crime. Multiple times this year, urban America has seen the equivalent of the Umpqua massacre occur over a weekend. In Obama’s home state of Illinois, Chicago alone has had several weekends that were as violent or more violent than what we just witnessed in Oregon. Do you recall any impassioned presidential pressers as a result? Me either.

All of this, and I’ve made no mention of the devastation that liberalism has wrought upon the family, nor the crippling and enslaving economic policies practiced and preached by modern liberals. If Americans want to be safe, the truth is clear: walk with Jesus, buy a gun, and don’t vote for liberals.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Everybody Wants to Rule Their World

When one abandons eternal truth, there is virtually no limit to the extremeness and no end to the amount of folly that will follow. Modern liberalism again demonstrates this well.

Because of his commitment to liberalism, which makes him unable to call the public display of women’s breasts that is occurring in Times Square what it really is (offensive, absurd, gross, and yes, wicked and sinful), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided to wield one of the favorite tools of modern liberals: the dreaded “multiagency task force.”

According to CBS, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo “has said he believes the women posing for the photos are breaking the law and undermining efforts to keep the tourist area family friendly.” Imagine that: a liberal complaining that liberal values on full display for the world to see is an affront to a “family friendly” atmosphere. Cuomo likely wouldn’t recognize what is truly “family friendly” even if it mugged him on the subway.

Caitlyn Lewis said, “It is a quality of life issue, and the worst case scenario is that people don’t want to come to Times Square.” In spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, liberals don’t seem to be concerned about any “quality of life” issues when it comes to homosexuality or same sex “marriage.” And liberals certainly aren’t concerned with “quality of life” when it comes to life in the womb.

Again, as is the case with the supposed “campus rape culture,” liberals bemoan what they’ve helped to create. Anybody want to give me odds on the voting records of the topless twits plaguing New York? What do you think their position is on abortion, same-sex “marriage,” the welfare state, and climate change? These bare-breasted bimbos are simply more rotten fruit of liberalism.

About the topless women, de Blasio also said, “It’s wrong, it’s wrong.” Someone should ask him, “Why?” Upon what moral standard does his conclusion rest? After all, toplessness is not illegal in New York. And if it’s legal, then it must be moral, right libs? (In other words, shouldn’t the debate be over?)

As the topless women took their act to Austin, Texas, one political observer asked the protestors to “explain reasons why women should be topless.” The number one reason given: “It frees oneself from guilt and sin.”

This sounds a lot like the pro-abortion Satanists recently documented at National Review. As the author David French notes, “The Satanists adhere to such edifying statements of principle as ‘Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!’ and ‘Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!’”

As Mr. French also points out, though most pro-abortionists (and liberals in general) are not Satanists (nor favor the “right” to parade around topless in public), “prominent Satanist involvement in the abortion debate does have a clarifying effect.” Of course, this “clarifying effect” is also present with liberals who clamor for their “right” to be topless in public.

As French concludes,

A person who is willing to kill another person for the sake of preserving their own prosperity or emotional health is declaring that their life is supreme — their existence is at the center of all things. This is the core of Satanist theology. So when Satanists declare their creeds, they strike uncomfortably close to the rotten core of the abortion-rights regime.

Writing for Patheos, author and philosopher Michael Novak makes note of this “theology of self” when he writes of a two decades-old study on abortion that he only recently encountered. “Two main findings of the study startled me,” Novak writes,

but they are also fairly obvious once one sees them from the point of view of the young women in the study…To such women, having an unplanned child represents a threat so great to modern women that it is perceived as the equivalent to a ‘death of self.’

Such a theology is not exclusive to Satanists. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has embraced this theology. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, ruling in favor of the “right” to kill children in the womb (Planned Parenthood v. Casey), Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” (Thus, no one should have been surprised at his infamous conclusion on marriage.)

In fact, the desire to make oneself “the center of all things,” or, as it is stated in Genesis chapter 3, to make oneself to “be like God” is almost as old as humanity itself. C.S. Lewis called it “The Great Sin.” The Great Sin, the utmost evil, Lewis wrote, is Pride. “Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison. It was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.” It was an appeal to the pride of Adam and Eve which introduced sin into God’s perfect creation.

“The Christians are right,” Lewis continues, “it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” The only cure for the disease of Pride, as the life and words of Jesus reveal, is the “death of self,” and a rebirth as a new creature.

Of course, this is not easy. As Lewis also notes,

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves’, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good.’ We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way – centered on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, in spite of this to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.

There is only one way to “free oneself from guilt and sin.” We cannot find this freedom in the redefining of sin, in the election of one politician over another, in the ruling of a judge, or in uninhibited acts of hedonism. The only way to such freedom is the Way of the Cross.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.TrevorGrantThomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Liberalism is ALWAYS Ugly

Mark Twain wrote, “All religions issue Bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious things against him, but we never get to hear his side.” It’s seems that Mr. Twain, at least prior to penning the previous quote, never encountered a liberal.

Of course, not all liberals espouse Satanism, however ANY unedited, unbiased examination of liberalism is going to reveal plenty of dark, ugly truths. Whether Planned Parenthood (which I will now refer to as “Designed-to-Exterminate-and-Abuse-The-Hood”—or D.E.A.T.H.), Kermit Gosnell, Ferguson, Baltimore (and most other major U.S. metropolitan areas), Islam, political investigations, immigration, climate change (no matter the costs, the Warmists will get it to “change” one way or another), healthcare, rape, the war on women and blacks, socialism, marriage, parenting, parenting, “husbands and wives,” fatherhood, homosexuality, transgenderism, pornography, the sexual revolution, economics, the minimum wage, Uber, bravery, pronouns, “blackness,” virtually all things hailed or assaulted by modern liberals reveal the corruption of modern liberalism.

As the dearth of information at the links above reveals, the recent videos of D.E.A.T.H. tell only a small part of the story when it comes to liberalism. What do you think undercover videos into the offices of the Obama-led EPA, IRS, or INS would reveal? Have you ever seen significant video or photographic footage of a homosexual-pride parade? Most every voting-age American saw some image of unrestrained liberalism on display in Ferguson and Baltimore.

And speaking of death, forget footage of the loose-lipped lackeys of D.E.A.T.H., why not just video the actual procedures where the “fetal tissue” is procured? If there is really nothing to hide, if it is—like the abortion apologists tell us, akin to watching “open heart surgery” or (more apropos), “an autopsy”—then let the light of truth shine on it for all the world to see.

In the name of transparency, surely there are plenty of eager feminists out there—some who’ve already taken us along as they exercised their “super-great” choice to kill their unborn child—who would gladly allow a video camera to record what really happens when an abortionist slips his instruments of death inside a uterus.

Perhaps a D.E.A.T.H. agent could give a play-by-play on what techniques are best—you know, whether to “crush above” or “crush below”—when trying to obtain “intact hearts,” livers, or lungs. Perhaps, like the QVC network, D.E.A.T.H. could also indicate the price of baby parts and organs as they are ripped from their mother’s womb—of course, with the “highest ethical and legal standards” always on display.

Consider the deception—both the effort and the endurance—that has been, and continues to be, employed in order to convince hundreds-of-millions of Americans—over multiple decades—that what exists in the human womb is not really human, and it’s quite alarming that some don’t even consider the abortion lie our greatest scientific fraud.

John Casey, a former space program advisor to the White House, president of the Space and Science Research Corporation—a leading independent climate research company—and one of the most successful climate researchers and climate prediction experts in America, considers the current Climate Change agenda of today’s left the “greatest scientific fraud in history.”

When one considers the hundreds-of-billions of dollars at stake and the number of lives impacted by the left’s war on fossil fuels—the fuel that literally built America—one can easily see Casey’s point. He’s certainly not trumpeting mere hyperbole. Who knows? The left may be just as adept at killing humans through climate regulations as they have been in the abortion clinics.

Perhaps we need hidden cameras at the next secret climate regulation meeting (or at least a look at the emails exchanged). Maybe someone slipped a tape recorder into Obama’s secret climate change meetings with the Chinese. Whatever the case, as with the unborn, liberals want to keep as many in the dark on the climate as possible. (Remember “Hide the Decline?”)

Abortion and man-made climate change have long been replete with leftist propaganda; however, no fraud of the modern left has been around longer than the foolish idea that human beings came into being purely as the result of naturalistic forces. In other words, no lie of the left is more entrenched than that of Darwinian evolution.

Darwinian evolution is the foundation of liberal orthodoxy. The de-humanization of the unborn is why we’ve seen nearly 60 million abortions in the U.S. The de-humanization of humanity in general is how we end up with environmental wackos telling us it’s time to “phase out the human race.” (And people like these are advising the Obama administration on our energy policy!)

And nothing is as de-humanizing as the notion that all life magically sprang from some single-celled source, that humans share ancestors with both apes and apricots, and that humans came into being through the bloody and godless efforts of “survival of the fittest.” Why not kill humans if we are simply highly evolved animals? Why not kill humans—to “save the planet” or to avoid the work of having to parent a child—if we are nothing more than “amoral parasites?”

Thus, instead of looking at creation and looking for the Creator, Darwinian evolution points people to “science.” For far too many liberals, science is their god. To them, religion, especially Christianity, is a crutch—something for the weak minded, and thus never to be taken seriously. Right and wrong, good and evil are arbitrary and cultural—products of human progress. Such a worldview leaves absolutely no room for the supernatural, and thus, no room for God. Therefore, along with championing “social justice,” for decades liberals have also fought vociferously to expel God from our culture.

And of course, when God is shunned, the results are always ugly.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Untermenschen: The Language of Death

Following the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II, the first trial held at Nuremburg was for those who were accused of medical atrocities. Twenty-three individuals, 20 of whom were medical doctors, were tried for a wide variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Prisoners of the Nazis were subjected to, among other horrible things, blood experiments, sterilization, castration, mastectomies, starvation, amputations, electroshock, and so on. Seeking cures for a variety of diseases, the Nazis purposefully infected some prisoners (including children) with typhus, hepatitis, Yellow Fever, smallpox, malaria, and the like.

In order to understand and improve conditions for German soldiers, prisoners of the Nazis were also subjected to high-altitude and hypothermia experiments. Doctors committed to the Nazi cause were also instrumental in Hitler’s euthanasia and Final Solution programs.

As the principal prosecutor Telford Taylor said in his opening statement at Nuremburg,

The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected ... To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.

According to author Dr. David Livingstone Smith, such dehumanization played a significant role in the “single most destructive event in human history: the Second World War.” Smith is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of New England, co-founder and director of the New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Studies, and the author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others.

According to NPR, in his book, Smith “argues that it's important to define and describe dehumanization, because it's what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.” Before going any further, let me say that from the little I know of Dr. Smith and his work, it is fair to assume that our worldviews are vastly different.

This paragraph from NPR justifies my conclusion:

Human beings have long conceived of the universe as a hierarchy of value, says Smith, with God at the top and inert matter at the bottom, and everything else in between. That model of the universe ‘doesn't make scientific sense,’ says Smith, but ‘nonetheless, for some reason, we continue to conceive of the universe in that fashion, and we relegate nonhuman creatures to a lower position’ on the scale.

Of course, from the Christian perspective, having God at the top of the hierarchy of the universe is the only worldview—or “model of the universe”—that makes any sense. Nevertheless, Smith’s conclusions on humanity and genocide are revealing.

In Less Than Human, Dr. Smith asks, “What is it that enables one group of human beings to treat another group as though they were subhuman creatures?” According to Dr. Smith, the answer isn’t difficult to come by. He concludes,

Thinking sets the agenda for action, and thinking of humans as less than human paves the way for atrocity. The Nazis were explicit about the status of their victims. They were Untermenschen — subhumans — and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together. It's wrong to kill a person, but permissible to exterminate a rat. To the Nazis, all the Jews, Gypsies and others were rats: dangerous, disease-carrying rats.

Cover of the Nazi propaganda brochure "Der Untermensch" ("The Subhuman")

The Germans were not the only dehumanizing butchers of World War II. By the time the Soviets were drawn into the war, Stalin’s government was already quite adept at dehumanization and mass atrocities. In the 1930s, Stalin killed millions of his own citizenry. In turn, upon invading the Soviet Union, the German army killed over 20 million Soviets, about half of them civilians.

In retaliation, and in order to foment hatred towards the Germans, Soviet propagandists provided soldiers of the Red Army with pamphlets describing the Germans as “two-legged animals who have mastered the technique of war”—“ersatz (inferior) men” who needed to be annihilated. “The Germans are not human beings,” the pamphlets read.

In 2010, in Forbes Magazine, Dr. Smith also describes the Japanese brutality of World War II.

For a period of six weeks from December 1937 to January 1938, Japanese soldiers slaughtered, mutilated, raped and tortured thousands of Chinese civilians. Honda Katsuichi’s harrowing book The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan’s National Shame describes many of the details of what happened. Katsuichi lets the perpetrators speak for themselves, and their accounts of the atrocities are so horrific that they are difficult to read.

A Japanese veteran of World War II interviewed for Katsuichi’s book explained how such cruelty was possible. “We called the Chinese ‘chancorro’ that meant below human, like bugs or animals. The Chinese didn’t belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it…If I’d thought of them as human beings I couldn’t have done it,” he observed, “But I thought of them as animals or below human beings.”

“This is called dehumanization,” Dr. Smith again concludes.

We dehumanize our fellow human beings when we convince ourselves (or allow ourselves to be convinced) that they are less than human and come to believe that, although these people appear to be human beings like us, this is merely a façade. Beneath the surface they are really subhuman creatures, fit to be hunted down and destroyed. The immense destructive power of dehumanization lies in the fact that it excludes its victims from the universe of moral obligation, so killing them is of no greater consequence than swatting a mosquito, or poisoning a rat.

Smith’s conclusions are quite beneficial as we witness modern liberals’ attempts to defend the killing of children in the womb, along with the harvesting of the baby’s organs, by Planned Parenthood. To justify the slaughter of tens-of-millions of children in the womb, abortion apologists have regularly employed the de-humanizing language described by Dr. Smith. For decades now, liberalism has excluded unborn babies “from the universe of moral obligation.”

This has been on particular display in the recent scandal involving Planned Parenthood (PP). “These are not ‘baby parts,’” insists Jen Gunter. She prefers that the “tissue specimen” be referred to as “products of conception.” The term “baby” doesn’t apply until birth, Gunter declares. She concludes, “Calling the tissue ‘baby parts’ is a calculated attempt to anthropomorphize [humanize—notice that, she can’t even bring herself to use the word “human”] an embryo or fetus.”

Such language is replete within liberal circles when it comes to killing children in the womb. “The right to choose,” is a refrain that’s been around for decades. The recent videos that shed more light onto what PP really does, according to Hillary Clinton, is “really an attack against a woman's right to choose.” Like the murderous Nazis, barbarous Red Army, and the genocidal Japanese of World War II, tens-of-millions of Americans have been convinced (or allowed themselves to be convinced) that a child in the womb is “less than human.”

As science and technology advance, the deception about this “choice” is getting more difficult for liberals. This is due not only to pro-life activism and ultrasounds, but also the internet. For those who are willing to look for it, the truth about the humanity of life in the womb is available now more than it has ever been.

Nevertheless, the will to do whatever one wants sexually without the consequences is a powerful force, and those devoted to death are working harder than ever to maintain their lies. In defense of the largest abortion provider in the U.S., liberals regularly extol PP. They are lauded as “awesome,” and regularly promoted as merely “a women's health care provider” who has “extremely high standards.” President Obama himself has thanked PP for their work, and even offered them a “God bless you.”

In other words, in the face of well over 50 million deaths in American wombs since 1973, in order to maintain the façade of abortion as simply a “choice,” liberals have utilized the same language and propaganda as the most prolific murderers in the history of humanity.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Cecil vs. Cecile: Dead Lions vs. Dead Babies

On my Quotable Quotes page, I have the "Rules for Self Discovery" by noted author, pastor, and magazine editor A.W. Tozer. They are:

1. What we want most
2. What we think about most
3. How we use our money
4. What we do with our leisure time
5. The company we enjoy
6. Who and what we admire
7. What we laugh at.

Some time back, I added a number 8: "What offends us." Current events perfectly illustrate the reasons behind my addition. The headlines recently have been filled with news of the death of Cecil the lion. (With multiple links, the news of Cecil's death has been featured at the top of the Drudge Report the last couple of days.) 

The evidence so far seems to make it clear that the lion was illegally and brutishly killed by American, Dr. Walter J. Palmer. Palmer has been labeled a "coward and a killer." PETA said that Palmer should "hang for killing Cecil." Palmer has had protesters swamp his home and his office. (Palmer's a dentist.) Some protesters dressed as "dentist hunters." Echoing much of the media's shock and outrage over this incident Jimmy Kimmel choked up on-air as he described Palmer's actions. Death threats have sent Palmer into hiding. 

Contrast our culture's response to Cecil the lion with the response to the organization ran by Cecile Richards. The gruesome videos--which, again, should surprise no one--that recently shed more light into the nasty business of Planned Parenthood--killing children in the womb--have not garnered nearly the outrage as has the death of a lion. 

As Rush Limbough asked today, "[H]ow in the world can you get teary-eyed and misty-eyed and sad over Cecil and, at the same time, participate in burying what's happening at Planned Parenthood (PP)?" As a piece I will have out shortly notes, the indifference that many have shown PP reveal how devoted so many Americans are to the perverse sexual agenda of today's left. 

Additionally, in a lame attempt to link the death of Cecil the lion to conservatives and republicans, a headline at The Hill.com today declares, "Cecil the lion's killer donated to Romney." The piece is very short and reveals nothing new about the incident other than the fact that Dr. Palmer donated $5,000 to Mitt Romney in 2012, and $250 to GOP representative Jim Ramstad in 1990 and 1992. 

PP, the recipient of billions of dollars in federal tax-payer funds, has donated tens-of-millions of dollars to political campaigns, almost all of which goes to democrats (and I would argue, 100% has gone to liberals). For example, in 2014 PP donated $588,918 to a PAC for federal candidates. $586,095 went to democrats. $2,823 went to republicans. That's 99.52% for democrats and 0.48% for republicans. Have you heard any of this in the media? 

What does it say about us and the media that a single dead lion generates so much sadness and anger, yet so many of us seemingly couldn't care less about the death of tens-of-millions of children in the womb? So tell me (in the comments below), by what are you more offended?

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Planned Parenthood is Selling Baby Parts? What Else is New?

At Cosmopolitan, abortion apologist Robin Marty said that after reading the emails, watching the video, scanning the press releases, and poking around the primary sources of the latest scandal involving America’s number one killer of children in the womb, all she could do was yawn. Sadly, my reaction was very similar.

No one should be surprised that Planned Parenthood (PP) is in the organ trafficking business. And what if they are not? What if this is—as some Planned Parenthood puppets have claimed—much ado about nothing? Does that really change anything about how we feel about an organization so devoted to death (which gets over half-a-billion dollars in tax-payer funds)?

And so what, if in order to harvest intact organs, the abortionist decides that “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact?” (The exact words, as caught on tape, used by Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Deborah Nucatola.) Does it really matter where the baby is “crushed?” Either way, a child is dead.

In other words, whether or not PP is hocking the organs of babies, they’re still the same butcherous bunch they've always been. Again, no one should be surprised by this—not in the least.

PP has been caught instructing minors to lie about their age, targeting minorities, misleading teenagers about the dangers of promiscuity, and encouraging customers to cover up rape. Planned Parenthood lobbied passionately in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion (PBA) procedure where a “doctor” (their term, I wouldn’t honor them with such a title) “delivers a living child until its legs and torso are hanging outside the mother and then pierces the child’s skull with a sharp instrument and vacuums out its brains.”

Of course, PP was not alone in lobbying for such savagery. Many democrats partnered with them. Yes, this barbaric procedure was outlawed, but then presidential candidate Barack Obama himself said that he would not have supported such a law, and Americans elected him President—twice. Obama was not only against the ban on PBA, but, as I’ve noted more than once, Obama also lobbied against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA). In other words, before he was elected U.S. President—twice—then state senator Obama spoke out in favor of what could only be described as infanticide.

And PP continues to roll on. Liberals are even pointing out that “the transfer of human fetal tissue is not illegal in the United States. Women undergoing abortions sometimes choose to donate fetal tissue for scientific research and abortion providers do not facilitate these donations without their explicit consent.” Nice.

Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for PP, says that “In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, such as treatments and cures for serious diseases. (Because, you know, it’s important for those who have just killed a child in the womb to be able to help save a life.) Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers (A nice name for a place where so many lives come to an end.), we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider (Yes, because so many “high-quality health care providers” are devoted to death.) does—with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards.” (It takes high ethical standards to suck out a child’s brains with a stiff upper lip.)

Forgive me if I think this will really change things. I’m not very encouraged that, in spite of all the evidence we already have pointing to the truth of abortion and abortion providers, Americans are suddenly going to turn on PP because of the harvesting and marketing of baby organs. Additionally, can I really trust a nation who routinely elects rabid abortion apologists like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, to all of a sudden have a conscience when it comes to the unborn?

Please, surprise me America.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Rolling Stone, et al. Bemoan the Culture They Helped Create

Why is anyone surprised that Rolling Stone would flub a rape story? Since when did a magazine so devoted to a liberal worldview, and that borders on—and, by my standards, crosses over into—pornography, become a trusted source for matters involving women and sexual assault?

For over four decades, Rolling Stone has spilled thousands of gallons of ink glorifying the hedonistic, misogynistic culture of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Its covers have been adorned with nude men and women—sometimes together. Pornography is a regular topic, and it’s almost always put in a positive light.

In April of this year, Rolling Stone did a near 4,000-word exposé on the infamous Miriam Weeks—aka Belle Knox—the Duke freshman who decided to pay for college with a career in the porn industry. Describing America’s reaction to the news of a barely-out-of-high-school 18 year-old—without the knowledge and consent of her parents—becoming a porn sensation, the author declares, “On the one hand, said some, why shouldn't a consenting adult engage in a perfectly legal profession in order to better herself through higher learning? And what right does society have to tell women what to do or not do with their bodies, anyway? But, on the other hand, you know, WTF?” As if those of us who stand aghast at Miss Weeks’ decision can only manage “WTF?”

I won’t link to the piece. It’s full of vulgarities and perversions, and it paints as rosy a picture as possible for a still teenage girl who has prostituted herself to the point that her first scene as a porn star was described as:

“I remember getting naked, and the guy said, ‘You have cuts on your legs. You're a cutter.’ He could tell I had written the word ‘fat’ in my thigh, so he started calling me fat.” Once they called “action,” she was pushed to the ground and slapped. “And I said, ‘Stop, stop, stop. No, no.’ And then they stopped, and they were like, ‘We have to keep going.’” 

“And I was like, ‘Just please don't hit me so hard.’ But it went on like that, me getting hit, pushed, spit on. I was being told I was fat, that I was a terrible feminist, was going to fail all my classes, was stupid, dumb, a slut. But I got through it. You know how you kind of zone out sometimes? I just disassociated.’”

She just “disassociated.” One of the great lies of the porn industry, whether a participant or a consumer, is that one can simply “disassociate” such activity from the rest of one’s life. In other words, as any good liberal knows, porn consumption or participation is just like the consumption or participation in an abortion—it’s no big deal.

Rolling Stone was so impressed with Miss Weeks that, just two weeks prior to running the disastrous “A Rape on Campus” piece, they published her defense of prostitution in their opinion section. That’s right, a publication that wants us to take them seriously when it comes to a matter as grave as rape, devoted a part of their opinion pages to a 19-year-old who, in addition to now devoting her life to porn, has also added “prostitution apologist” to her résumé. Miss Weeks informs us that prostitutes are only trying to make an “honest living,” and we should avoid the notions of “abused hookers and human traffickers” that are so often associated with prostitution.

Unsurprisingly, Miss Weeks could hardly be more wrong. As I noted back in April, prostitutes are a tragic example of what often results when women use their bodies as a means to an end. Prostitutes are more likely than any other group of women ever studied to be, among many other terrible things, victims of rape and homicide.

In 2008, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times points out that, “The mortality data for prostitutes is staggering.” According to a study by The American Journal of Epidemiology, the “workplace homicide rate for prostitutes” is 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women—working in a liquor store. The average age of death of the prostitutes in the study was 34. The Journal concluded, “Women engaged in prostitution face the most dangerous occupational environment in the United States.”

Why are men more violent toward prostitutes? Because in prostitution, a woman’s humanity is removed. She becomes little more than a commodity to be consumed. Thus, a very unhealthy attitude toward women in general is fostered. Studies have shown that men who regularly use prostitutes are more likely to be sexually aggressive with women who are not prostitutes.

Of course, in pornography, women (and men) are also commodities to be consumed. Gail Dines, a highly regarded academic, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, and considered “the world's leading anti-pornography campaigner,” concludes that “the earlier men use porn, the more likely they are to have trouble developing close, intimate relationships with real women.”

Dines adds that, “Some of these men prefer porn to sex with an actual human being. They are bewildered, even angry, when real women don't want or enjoy porn sex.” Of course, such anger often results in violence. Dines also notes that “porn sex” is becoming increasingly violent (as Miss Weeks’ experience demonstrates).

“We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn,” Dines says, “and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behavior and attitudes towards women.” In Dines’ research, she has found that the prevalence of porn means that men are becoming desensitized to it. Thus, men are getting caught in the vicious cycle of looking for images that are ever more harsh, violent, and degrading toward women.

Ms. Dines goes on to describe images that are too horrible to mention here. “To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” she concludes. Additionally, Dines points out that, “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”

Yet women like Miss Weeks ignorantly and defiantly conclude that it’s the “conservative Bible Belt culture of the South” that makes a “highly misogynistic and oppressive atmosphere for women.”

In early 2013, the insufferable Lena Dunham, doing her best Miley Cyrus imitation on the cover, also had a spread in Rolling Stone. Dunham, who, when she’s not writing (and performing in) TV shows and books that promote and glorify abortion, casual sex, drug use, and everything else that makes a liberal’s life complete, also takes topless selfies in support of the abortion mill known as Planned Parenthood.

Demonstrating that, for liberals, not all rapes and rapists are created equal, it seems that Planned Parenthood is also in the business of protecting pedophiles. A recent investigation reveals that girls as young as 10 were taken by their abusers to Planned Parenthood facilities for abortions and birth control. Because Planned Parenthood staff failed to report the crimes, the sexual abuse continued for years. Some girls were brought repeatedly for abortions, yet no questions were asked.

Earlier this year, the pro-life group Live Action caught Planned Parenthood giving dangerous and violent sexual advice to girls as young as 15. According to American Thinker’s Drew Belsky (Live Action’s communications director at the time), “As viewers can see in our preview, Planned Parenthood has an institutional policy of endorsing and recommending dangerous sexual behaviors to underage girls. These include whipping, beating, breaking the skin, and asphyxiation. Remember, the counselors in these videos believe that they are talking to a 15-year-old girl.”

“Whipping, beating, breaking the skin, and asphyxiation”—sounds something like what often occurs during a rape.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, in USA Today, recently pointed out more liberal hypocrisy when it comes to rape. Terry Bean, the co-founder of the largest pro-homosexual advocacy organization in America, the Human Rights Campaign, was recently arrested and indicted on two felony counts of third-degree sodomy and one count of third-degree sexual abuse after allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old boy he met online last year.

Bean is also co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and is a major donor to the National Democratic Committee and a major financial supporter of Democrats across the U.S., including Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Bean has made multiple trips to the White House and has even been on Air Force One. In other words, on issues related to homosexuality, Bean has the ear of virtually every leader in the Democrat Party.

Rolling Stone, Lena Dunham, Planned Parenthood, and other such liberals to whom “the narrative” is the priority, can never be trusted to tell the whole story when it comes to matters as grave as rape. Worse, the sexual perversions that plague our culture are the direct result of the efforts of liberals across the U.S —from our campuses to our courts. In other words, on sexual assault, liberals are mourning a culture that they helped to create. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Black on Black Genocide in America

It is well known by most (despite the mainstream media largely ignoring the matter) the dangers that young black males face from other young black males in America. Of course, as is often noted, this is directly related to the breakdown of the black family. Less known, but even more tragic is the devastation that abortion has brought to the black family in America.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, black women are more than 5 times as likely as white women to have an abortion. Since 1973, abortion has accounted for more deaths (about 13 million) among blacks than all other causes combined--FAR more. The patriarch of the abortion industry, Planned Parenthood, is notorious for targeting minorities, especially blacks. According to recent research, "79% of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of African American and/or Hispanic/Latino communities."

Just as when a young fatherless black gang-banger guns down one of his black peers, blacks--especially those in Washington D.C.--who are enabling and even encouraging the abortion industry are complicit in the slaughter of young black children. Only, those killing young blacks in the womb are doing it at a rate about 40 times greater than their thug-partners that operate on the streets and in dark alleys. Some call this genocide.

Today the Congressional Black Caucus proudly held an event with Planned Parenthood. The event was sponsored by Black Entertainment Television Networks. For decades now leadership in the black community, with its unapologetic collaboration with modern-day liberalism, has sold-out the black family. In addition to literally killing the black family, this has resulted in a dependency upon others--especially government--that is unrivaled in America.

In other words, there's a new plantation operating in America, and it's run by the Democrat Party.

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

What Gave Us Gosnell

The surest way for sin to prosper is for a culture to stop calling it sin. Given the rapidly decaying culture in the U.S., I could proceed in a myriad of directions following such a conclusion. However, in America the foremost example of the rotten fruit born of neglected sin is Kermit Gosnell.

In case you missed it—which is very likely, given the way the mainstream media had to be dragged kicking and screaming into covering Gosnell’s trial (after Gosnell’s guilt was pronounced, 56 days since the trial began, ABC News finally broke its silence!)—Gosnell was found guilty of, among hundreds of other things, first degree murder in the cases of three babies born alive after botched abortions.

If you’ve paid any attention at all, you know the gruesome details: “snipped” necks, frozen body parts, tiny arms and legs stored in jars, and so on. For decades, while earning millions of dollars, Gosnell and his associates butchered women and children alike.

No one should be surprised that the culture in America produced a Kermit Gosnell. After decades of lies from the abortion industry and its willing cohorts within the liberal media and Democrat party (along with “pro-choice” Republicans like Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania—where Gosnell performed his butchery), millions of Americans were led to believe that, after sperm fertilizes egg, what grows inside a woman’s body was not a life, but a “choice.” Such blatant disregard for sound morality, sound science, and plain common sense produced Gosnell’s “House of Horrors.”

After weeks of a trial that revealed a shocking callousness for both the born and the unborn and after 10 days of jury deliberations, during which speculation of the verdict abounded, there was plenty of time for all of America to see the truth when it comes to abortion and the ghastly practices that occur in abortion clinics. Yet following the announcement of Gosnell’s guilt, like a toddler with his fingers in his ears, abortion apologists such as The New York Times continued with their propaganda.

Before being caught, called out, and subsequently editing its online article, six times The Times referred to Gosnell’s young victims as “fetuses.” Early in the article The Times noted, “The verdict came after a five-week trial in which the prosecution and the defense battled over whether the fetuses Dr. Gosnell was charged with killing were alive when they were removed from their mothers.”

In March of this year, a representative from Planned Parenthood (PP) Florida testified before the Florida legislature. The legislators were considering a bill that would require abortionists to provide medical care to a child born alive as a result of an abortion attempt. In a rare moment of candor from the culture of death (to borrow from Al Mohler), the PP representative endorsed the position under which Gosnell himself operated: the “right” to kill a baby born alive.

Stunned, Rep. Jim Boyd wanted clarification. “So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief,” said Boyd. “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” PP lobbyist Alisa Snow replied, “We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

Writing for Salon.com early this year, pro-abortionist Mary Elizabeth Williams declared that it is time for the abortion industry and its supporters to stop playing games when it comes to life. “So what if abortion ends a life,” she concludes. She explains: “All life is not equal…a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”

Given such a climate, it is unsurprising that Gosnell’s attorney blamed the verdict on the “baby factor.” He did not elaborate as to his meaning, but given the perverted sense of life that many in our culture have developed, there is little surprise that the lawyer for an abortionist would choose to slander the use of the word “baby” when it comes not only to describing the unborn, but even children outside the womb.

Words matter. In a recent interview for The Atlantic, psychotherapist Gary Greenberg notes the many problems with modern psychiatry. Mostly he points out how, through the very political and subjective Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, modern psychiatry has attempted to gain medical relevance. In this process, Greenberg notes we have eliminated the moral aspect behind certain behaviors. He rightly concludes, “This society is very wary of using the term ‘evil.’” Not being able to call evil “evil” is how we end up with Kermit Gosnell.

Also, in this case (as with every such abortion) distance (mere inches) matters. As pointed out on The Hill, “The murder case against Gosnell rests entirely on the location of the victim (in inches, mind you) at the time of death, not in the fact that the victim was killed. The main difference between Gosnell and other abortion doctors is that he couldn’t get the job done before the baby came out. He tried doing it like his peers at Planned Parenthood—the industry leader which is worthy of half a billion dollars annually in tax-payer funds.”

Further illustrating America’s moral decay, when it comes to protecting children who survive an abortion, no less than the man most recently elected (twice!) President of the U.S., Barack Hussein Obama himself, advocated a position that differs little from Gosnell’s. As World Net Daily put it, “Fundamental to Gosnell’s argument was that severing the spinal cord of a baby who survived an abortion was not infanticide.”

In 2001, the Illinois legislature took up a bill that was patterned after the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA). Then state senator Obama voted against the bill in committee. On the floor of the Illinois Senate, he later gave the only speech against the bill, saying, “I mean, it—it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.”

In 2003, even after a “neutrality clause” was added to the Illinois bill that made it virtually identical to the federal BAIPA that unanimously passed both houses of the U.S. Congress and was signed into law by President Bush, Obama chaired an Illinois Senate committee and led the Democrats on that committee to kill the amended bill.

What can one conclude about a nation that elects such a man its leader? For one thing, as I already noted, the fact that a Kermit Gosnell exists should come as no surprise to any American. Secondly, until this nation sees abortion for what it really is, the next Kermit Gosnell is just around the corner.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Komen Suffers Pro-Abortion Extortion

It was inevitable. Only those who are principally opposed to abortion can withstand the onslaught that the left is sure to unleash when there is even the appearance of being pro-life. When Komen for the Cure—the world’s largest breast cancer charity—initially announced that its decision to defund Planned Parenthood was due to the fact that Congress was investigating the nation’s largest abortion provider, it was painfully clear that Komen was not standing on firm ground. One doesn’t need an investigation into Planned Parenthood to discern what they are all about.

Alas, after only about three days of relentless attacks from the Planned Parenthood extortion machine, Komen backtracked and declared “We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”

This seemed to satisfy many on the left and frustrate those of us who had cheered Komen’s initial declaration. However, some have noted that Komen’s follow-up statement was not necessarily a capitulation. James Taranto reports that “Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, parses the statement for LifeNews and finds it actually reflects no change in policy: ‘We have known and have reported that they are continuing five grants [to Planned Parenthood] through 2012. This is a reference to that. The second clause about eligibility is certainly true. Any group can apply for anything. It does not mean they are going to get anything.’”

Pro-life advocate Jill Stanek notes that “Komen’s apology was careful not to include any commitment to give Planned Parenthood grants in the future. The Komen executive team doesn’t want to, now more than ever.”

It is unclear the direction Komen will take with Planned Parenthood in the future. One thing is clear—money will certainly factor into their decision. Major corporate donors were threatening to end their relationship with Komen over its initial Planned Parenthood statement, and Feminazis such as NOW’s Terry O’Neill were threatening corporations to do just that.

“…corporations like Yoplait, and Dell computers, and New Balance shoes, all these corporations…they’re going to have to move away from Komen,” said O’Neill on the MSNBC’s The Ed Show. As Taranto noted, the campaign against Komen “is analogous to a protection racket: Nice charity you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Also, time and again Komen was accused of “playing politics.” So much so that, in its follow-up statement, Komen said, “We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.” Komen later added that they would be “Amending our criteria [to] ensure that politics has no place in our grant process.”

Spending millions of dollars lobbying every year, Planned Parenthood is the most politically active organization operating in the most politicized industry within the U.S. Yet, after Komen decided it would no longer fund Planned Parenthood, The New York Times concluded that “Companies like Ford Motor, Dell and Yoplait may not find the same value in identifying themselves with the foundation after its sharp departure from political neutrality.”

Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Komen’s original decision “profoundly stupid,” adding that Komen had “taken sides in a fight that was not its own.” You know what’s really “profoundly stupid”? Concluding that Komen was neutral and “apolitical” (to use another Bookman word) when they were funding Planned Parenthood, but “playing politics” when they decided to do otherwise.

Also “profoundly stupid” is to conclude that abortion represents only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services. This is the lie that will never die. The New York Times, Ed Schultz, Ezra Klein, The Boston Globe, et al, parroted the 3 percent nonsense. Of course, the left does this to give people the false idea that Planned Parenthood isn’t all about abortion.

Part of the deception involved in this number is that, when a woman goes into Planned Parenthood for an abortion, there are multiple other “services” that go along with the abortion. Counting these services separately from the abortion is like concluding that, when someone stops at a liquor store and gets 4 candy bars, 3 bags of chips, and 2 packs of gum along with their Crown Royal, only 10 percent of the “services” the liquor store provides involve alcohol. Liquor stores are to alcohol what Planned Parenthood is to abortions.

Perhaps the greatest absurdity in all of this is the fact that Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms. That’s right—all of the bluster over “women’s health,” and there are zero mammograms done at Planned Parenthood clinics. Do you think liberals would be satisfied in this debate if Komen took the approximately $700,000 it donated to Planned Parenthood last year and gave it to crisis pregnancy centers to purchase mammography machines? Nah, me neither.

Copyright 2012, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Efforts to Defund Planned Parenthood Must Continue

The recent failure of the GOP to achieve the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood should not deter further efforts to remove taxpayer funds from the largest abortion provider in the U.S. In fact, the issue should remain front and center at every level in the 2012 political campaign.

Make no mistake about it, as Jordan Sekulow noted just prior to the latest federal budget deal, Planned Parenthood (PP) owns the Democrats. Therefore, for the Democrats, shutting down the federal government was worth it as long as it ensured continued taxpayer funding for PP.

In the middle of March of this year, when asked about amendments that would defund PP, Harry Reid was quoted as saying “not only no, but hell no.” Just hours prior to the budget agreement, Reid declared that the only issue holding up a budget deal was funding for PP. He declared, “Republicans want to shut down our nation's government because they want to make it harder for women to get the health services they need.”

It’s amazing that a U.S. senator can use the phrase “health services” in describing an organization that is dedicated to ending human life. However, this is how the liberal mind of the leader of the U.S. senate works.

Joining the chorus of PP supporters was the number three ranking Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. “The dangerous, ideological cuts to Planned Parenthood that passed the House are never, never, never going to pass the Senate,” said Schumer. Giving his best Winston Churchill impersonation, Schumer added, “Let me repeat that, so all those who want to stomp on women’s health and women’s rights can hear us loud and clear. The dangerous, ideological cuts to Planned Parenthood that passed the House are never, never, never going to pass the Senate.”

He may be right about this Senate, but the next one will almost certainly be a different story. In the 2012 election, the GOP has to defend only 10 U.S. Senate seats, while the Democrats have to defend 23. Of the 10 seats the GOP defends, six of them are from GOP strongholds (AZ, MS, TN, TX, UT, and WY). Of the other four seats, two have been in GOP hands for at least three election cycles (18 years). The other two seats belong to Scott Brown of Massachusetts and John Ensign of Nevada.

Of the 23 Democratic seats (two are actually independents who caucus with the Democrats), three are from GOP strongholds (MT, NE, ND), eight are from states that elected GOP governors in 2010 or 2009 (FL, MI, NJ, NM, OH, PA, VA, WI), and six are from states that elected a GOP senator in 2010 (FL, MO, ND, OH, PA, WI).

Thus, with the Republicans needing to flip only four seats for control, it is highly likely that the GOP will take charge of the U.S. senate after the 2012 elections. (Notice that FL, OH, PA, and WI elected GOP governors and senators in 2010.) If this happens, Republicans should act quickly and make Schumer eat his “never, never, never” declaration.

In light of the current economic climate, there has never been a better political climate for cutting off the over $360 million in federal funds that PP receives. Besides, our federal government has no business being in business with an abortion provider. “But no taxpayer funds are used for abortions—federal law already prohibits that,” PP supporters say. This is an asinine and absurd argument. With around 1/3 of its budget coming from taxpayer funds, it is clear that federal money enables PP to function and do what it does “best:” provide abortions.

Of course, with President Obama on record supporting what many consider infanticide, even if congress passes a bill defunding PP, he would almost certainly veto it. According to The Susan B. Anthony List, almost all current GOP candidates for president support defunding PP. This is an issue that pro-lifers need to keep a significant part of the 2012 campaign. In more ways than one, the U.S. federal government cannot afford its relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Copyright 2011, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com