That’s out of the way now.

My question to pro-lifers is: what’s the end game? What exactly are you wanting to accomplish with the pro-life movement?

Do you want abortion doctors convicted of murder? That would seem like a logical conclusion. But, I don’t see that being pushed.

Do you want it simply made illegal? If so, then on what basis is it an illegal action? Because the basis for it’s illegality determines what type of punishment is going to be tied to it. Again, I don’t see that discussion.

Do you want the women who have abortions to be convicted? If so, convicted of what? Murder? I haven’t seen an answer to that.

Do you want it to be a constitutional amendment? Because if it’s not, then it’s a state issue. And you don’t seem to want that.

Questions like these don’t seem to be generating any answers because the abortion issue has been so thoroughly politicized that it has morphed into something new that’s hard to nail down. The morality questions haven’t changed, but the politics have cause the whole argument to lose it’s framing. In a way, when you strip a question like this down to only it’s moral components, you’re left with an end that has no means.

So what’s the answer? Depoliticizing the argument. Abortion can’t be fought as an “issue” any more. There’s only one way to eliminate abortion, and that’s in the heart of yourself and your children. It’s not laws that will keep my daughter out of the abortion room. It’s me. It’s what I teach her. It’s her moral vision. It will never be a law that will keep any woman out of that room. It will always be what’s inside them that will make the choice. Government doesn’t help. Like with everything else, it just muddies the water with empty rhetoric.

Congress hasn’t declared a war since 1941, but hundreds of thousands of war dead since then prove that laws are meaningless. Making something illegal doesn’t stop it. The thing that stops sin and crime is what’s inside a man’s heart, not what a group of people I’ve never met before write down on some paper.

I’m pro-life to my core, but I also see the futility of modern law. We can’t look to government for any kind of redress or to mete out justice of any kind. They aren’t in the justice business any more. I choose liberty instead. And I’ll fight my battle in the heart, not in the court room.

In Roe at 37, Daniel McCarthy, of The American Conservative looks at the pro-life movement in the aftermath of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and nails one of the main reasons the pro-life cause has gained so little ground since that horrible decision:

“If you want to be politically effective, you will probably have to use a major party — but you have to use it, not let it use you. Unfortunately, the people who have the purest motives, who are most habitually inclined to trust the honorable intentions of others, wind up as fodder for the likes of Scott Brown once they get involved in the bloodletting that is politics.”

And commenter Thomas goes even further and takes the position (with which I agree) that the pro-life cause will continue to make little progress as long as it’s political fortunes are tied to the GOP:

“Publius Cato has a point about the GOP on abortion. I will take this further: if the Republicans DID do anything about abortion, they would lose their #1 political issue in the depressed parts of the South and Midwest where they win by gathering 80% or so of white working class votes which don’t agree with their globalist, oligarchic (and liberal-inegalitarian) economics. They need the abortion issue to persist indefinitely or else they are done.”

While I’m not sure of his demographics, the point is that the GOP is so dependent on the pro-life vote that it can’t afford for the abortion issue to go away. Maybe that’s why there are so few cosponsors for HR 2533 – Sanctity of Life Act of 2009, authored by Ron Paul. Pro life lobby where are you?

–Rowman, Liberty vs. Leviathan

And, by the way. In the end they will probably stick all the abortion stuff back in there anyway. It’ll only stay out long enough for a vote. Then they’ll amend it right back in.

And, of course that’s exactly what happened:

A House Democratic leader said Monday she’s “confident” controversial language on abortion will be stripped from a final healthcare bill.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-abortion rights lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from subsidizing abortions.

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we’re all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that’s the case.”

–Michael O’Brien, The Hill

So, the language banning funding of abortion is coming out of the bill. Surprise, surprise. But, that’s not what you should be taking away from this whole scenario. If you see how all of this played out and then walk away thinking the Republicans and Blue-dogs got duped then you’ve played right into what they want you to believe. The dirty little secret is that the Republicans want this Obamacare bill just as much as the Democrats. They just need to appear as if they don’t for the purpose of re-election. Don’t believe me? Is that just too much to swallow? Well then, do a little thought experiment with me.

Imagine that Obamacare passes the Senate in a few weeks and it’s as bad as everyone fears it will be. It’s got the public option, mandatory death consultations(death panels), abortion funding, buy mandates, etc., etc. Of course, none of this goes into effect until 2013/2014. That’s always been the case. Now, imagine that because of all this, the Republicans win back control of the House and even the Senate(unlikely) in 2010. Can you convince yourself that they would immediately repeal Obamacare? Can you? No. Of course they won’t. Did they repeal anything Clinton did when they took control in 1994? Nope.

You see, they could have scuttled the entire House vote this past Saturday night by voting “present” instead of a “no.” But they didn’t do that. They used the abortion thing as cover just as much as the blue dogs did:

Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) said he plans to buck right-to-life groups and his own party and vote “present” on a Democratic amendment that would prevent federal funding for abortions as part of health-care overhaul legislation.

Shadegg is doing so in the face of strong support from groups like National Right to Life and Americans United for Life, which say they will count present votes as not supporting its pro-life agenda. He said this was a “bad call” for pro-life organizations and he vowed not to “give a vote away” to right-to-life groups for what he considers a very flawed process. Shadegg contends that Pelosi is using this amendment to wrangle votes for the overall bill.

“(Nancy) Pelosi is speaker and she’s pro abortion every minute of every hour of every day as speaker,” Shadegg said in an interview with POLITICO Saturday evening. “This is a vote to help her move the bill forward.”

He said he expects at least four or five other Republicans to join along. Sources say Republican Reps. Phil Gingrey (Ariz.), Steve King (Iowa), and Scott Garrett (N.J.) are likely to also vote present.

The Arizonan has been bickering all day via email with his Republican colleagues. He said he feels House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) circumvented his conference by announcing he would support the amendment, brought by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), without consensus from GOP lawmakers.

“This is a gut-wrenching issue for a lot of people,” Shadegg said. “But I won’t support Pelosi’s bill, which is not pro-life at all.”

–Jake Sherman, Politico

Shadegg saw it for what it was. Organizations like NRL can’t see beyond their own nose. They should have stayed out of the whole thing. Instead, their lobbying gave cover. And in the end it allowed the very thing to happen that they claim to be opposed to. Regardless, the thing to take away from all this is that – like I’ve said a thousand times – you don’t have anyone in Washington that cares about you. You must understand this. The whole system is built to make you think that you do. But you absolutely do not have a “representative” in D.C. I’m sorry, but that’s just the truth.

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson’s life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

“I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that’s it,” said Jonhson.

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it’s business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

“It seemed like maybe that’s not what a lot of people were believing any more because that’s not where the money was. The money wasn’t in family planning, the money wasn’t in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that,” said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

“I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don’t have this guilt, I don’t have this burden on me anymore that’s how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion.”

–Ashlea Sigman

This is why more groups like STR are now pushing to show the actual graphic images of abortions in certain situations. Seeing the actual act has a huge impact. Just like war. When you actually see an Iraqi civilian get there head blown into a thousand pieces by an M-16 it makes it a little harder to make statements like “we should just turn Iraq into a parking lot.” In the same way, many people need to see the graphic and horrible nature of what abortion really is before they will understand it’s truly evil nature.

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants.  This, too, is false.  The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  You lie!  (Boos.)

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s not true.  And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.  (Applause.)
–President Obama, Speech to Joint Session(9/9/09)

Another day, another reason why nobody trusts anything this man or this congress says. The above paragraph is from Obama’s highly touted speech to the joint session of congress on September 9th. But today we get this story in the NY Times:

As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.

Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.
–David Kirkpatrick, NY Times

Oh, so his promise in the speech actually had no basis in reality?  Surprise, surprise.  This is just the same ol’ song and dance’.  Politicians feign adherence to public opinion, then go off and do exactly what they need to do in order to keep the campaign contributions flowing in from their biggest backers.  How many times have we seen this same scenario play out at all levels of government.  A politician pushes a big issue and then brings it up for a vote.  Then, when it gets voted down, they go right ahead and use some loophole or something to just push it through and do it anyway.

As I said in the last post, it’s the contradictions and blatant lying that’s killing this whole thing for him.  I honestly believe that if he came out and said flatly that he wants government run healthcare, federally subsidized abortion, etc. that the poll numbers would probably be about the same or even higher.  It makes me sick to believe that, but I’m afraid it’s true.  Maybe I’m too cynical.  I hope so.

I hope you appreciate the magnitude of Ginsburg’s admission. She just confessed what we have all known for decades. The end game for abortion is not women’s rights. It’s eugenics. Sure, at a very local level you’re going to have any number of so-called useful idiots that carry out the actual abortions under the illusion of women’s choice. But at the top of the movement, where the elites control the purse strings and set the agenda, it’s all about population control. To them, the poor are not to be helped. They are to be extinguished. Abortion has been the weapon of choice ever since forced sterilization got a bad rap under Hitler. Before the Nazi’s were so blatant about it there were many influential people that were vocal supporters of sterilization. I listed some of them in my first post on this subject. Woodrow Wilson was one. As well as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Jonah Goldberg talks about Oliver Wendell Holmes, who’m I had been unaware of in this regard:

I’ll try to move on to a different subject tommorrow I promise. But, in the mean time please just stop falling for the standard media line about all this stuff. Modern liberalism is just a tamed version of Progressivism, and progressivism has always been about eugenics. Is it so hard to accept the fact that some people are evil enough to want power over the life and death of others on a grand scale? I don’t think that’s hard to believe at all. In fact, I think that when we look at history it’s pretty darn obvious.

I’m not saying that Walter is silly. He’s a brilliant man and I respect his expertise in economics and many other areas immensely. But applying capitalistic ideas like demand to human value is going way beyond the capabilities of the theory. So let me just try to sum up the argument in a way that I think Dr. Block would agree with:

Believe me, that’s the sanitized version. That lecture was full on wierd. I kept asking myself the whole time where he was storing his moral intuition. He evidently keeps it in a lock box. The main problem with that whole argument should be staring you in the face right now. There is a transcendent obligation at work when a mother conceives a child. That obligation is evident in the design of a woman’s body. The child bearing capactity of a woman is not a function tacked on anachronistically. It’s the defining aspect of the female gender. A woman’s entire body is built to do that one job in a miraculous way. Yet, this teleological, intuitive understanding is wholly missing from Block’s argument. A baby in the womb indeed does have a “positive” right to be cared for by it’s mother. Simply saying “we don’t believe in positive obligations” is putting a movement before morality in the face of common sense.

Really, when it’s boiled down to it’s base parts, Block’s argument is a libertarian variation of the the violinist argument. He even quotes it en masse. He kind of meshes it with a capitalistic twist. Take these excerpts:

Again, common-sense and intuition has taken a back seat to adherance. The idea that nobody has a right to life, but everyone has a right not to be agressed against seems made up entirely out of whole cloth. Why should I buy that reasoning. Where, exactly did this right not to be aggressed against come from? It flies counter to my moral intuitions that say: life is more precious than comfort. Maybe I don’t mind putting up with some amount of agression in order to go on living. This line of reasoning informs the later craziness that leads him to make the argument that whether a person is “wanted” or not determines their value. Sound familiar? Of course it does. It’s supply and demand, applied to human life. It’s capitalism applied to the human condition.

The second part of the argument – the violinist nod – is flawed. Saying that a baby is a fetal “aggressor” intiating “violence” against the mother is like saying that your lungs are a pulmonary aggressor that enslave you by making you breathe even when you don’t want to. A baby is supposed to be in a womb, just like your lungs are supposed to breath whether you like it or not. That’s where it’s designed to be. That’s what a woman’s body is designed to do. That’s what wombs are for. Again, the teleology cannot be ignored here. Greg Koukl has one of the finest arguments spelling out the fatal flaws in the violoinist argument. He says it this way:

This post is getting long so I’ll pick it up next time. Block’s paper is long and I have more to say about it.