The Democrats’ #1 political strategy

Me: Maria, why so sad? Maria: The GOP just killed millions of women.

If Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell actually believe the things they tweet, they may be the stupidest people around, lacking sufficient intellectual depth to understand any topic at more than a surface level.

And that’s if I’m being nice.

The other possibility is that they’re shameless partisan hacks*, mindlessly spouting off leftist talking points regardless of the truth. In other words, they’re liars.

For example, last Thursday, the Senate voted on whether or not to allow states, at the discretion of their own legislatures, to withhold Title X funds from family planning clinics that provide abortions. Basically, the vote allows states to choose not to use that federal money to fund Planned Parenthood. That’s it. That’s all the vote authorized. Not a single thing else.

Federalism is good, right?

Not according to Murray and Cantwell, who apparently don’t trust states to make the “right” decision. You know, the decision that agrees with them. So they were going on about the Title X vote as though every woman in America has suddenly been cut off from access to any health care whatsoever. Or as Patty Murray says…ZOMG, Women will die and Mike Pence is the devil!

Let me state this as clearly as I can. If Planned Parenthood values providing other kinds of services more than they value providing abortions, they can simply stop doing abortions and reduce the risk of losing Title X funds to zero. But they won’t, which makes it seem as though Planned Parenthood is unnaturally attached to providing a service which makes up, as they claim, only 3% of their business.

If last week’s vote accomplishes nothing other than to allow the states to disburse Title X funds, why, then, are Democrats so determined to mislead the public about it?

I recently wrote, “Democrats…repeat lies until they’re ground into the public consciousness and internalized as truth.” Democrats know that defunding Planned Parenthood is a winning issue for the GOP; therefore they must lie to try to steal the win. That they lie in ways specifically calculated to instill fear in women is particularly contemptible, because it illustrates their misogynistic belief that women are politically naive and easily manipulated. This is the basis for the entire “Republican war on women” story line.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Powerful enough to cause otherwise rational and intelligent women to march for rights they already have. Fearmongering. It’s the Democrats’ #1 strategy and it’s disgusting.

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* Patty Murray reveals herself to be a shameless partisan hack; Maria Cantwell reveals herself to be a shameless partisan hack

I don’t stand with Planned Parenthood

This will probably come as no surprise to you, but leftists disgust me. I’m not talking about well-meaning but misguided people like my liberal neighbors. I’m talking about hard left politicians and activists.

Today in particular, which has been designated as a “Pink Out Day,” whatever that is supposed to mean – and thanks for spoiling a perfectly good color, BTW – I’m thinking of women who have made protecting Planned Parenthood their mission in life. Women like Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Suzan DelBene (can you tell I live in Washington?) and Elizabeth Warren.

Planned Parenthood was birthed out of the negative eugenics movement of the 1930s and it would appear they’ve been wildly successful, as 40% of all African-American pregnancies end in induced abortion.

Today’s leftists are selling Planned Parenthood as essential health care. In case they’re not aware, abortion isn’t health care unless pregnancy is a disease, which, to be perfectly fair, some of them probably believe. But generally speaking, the goal of “health” care isn’t usually a dead, dismembered baby. By definition. Seriously, look up the definition of health care.

Planned Parenthood could do one simple thing to secure federal funding from now until our inevitable financial collapse: stop providing abortions. In the meantime, the funds they’re currently receiving could be channeled into the more than 1,300 federally funded community health centers which provide actual health care without the ethical baggage of abortion. In their own words:

HRSA Health Centers care for you, even if you have no health insurance – you pay what you can afford based on your income. Health centers provide services that include:

• Checkups when you are well
• Treatment when you are sick
• Complete care when you are pregnant
• Immunizations and checkups for your children

Some health centers also provide mental health, substance abuse, oral health, and/or vision services. Contact the health center organization directly to confirm the availability of specific services and to make an appointment.

As you can see, HRSA health centers probably provide more services than are available at your local planned parenthood clinic.

This is a not hard and if leftists weren’t exclusively focused on allowing the maximum number of women to kill their own babies as quickly and easily as possible, they’d see it, too.

Don’t be surprised when a young person says something that makes them sound young

I don’t hold 24-year-olds’ youth against them, but at the same time, I’m not surprised when they say something that sounds, well, immature and uninformed. This is the reason that it’s often disappointing when a young person is put in a position to represent or speak for others. Tomi Lahren makes a good case against pushing them into the conservative limelight.

Here’s what she said:

I’m pro choice, and here’s why. I am a constitutional, y’know, someone that loves the Constitution. I’m someone that’s for limited government. So I can’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say I’m for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies. I can sit here and say that, as a Republican and I can say, you know what, I’m for limited government, so stay out of my guns, and you can stay out of my body as well…

Let me just start by saying, a “constitutional?” Really? In my English language, “constitutional” is an adjective, unless one is referring to a walk taken to improve one’s health.

Putting that aside, Lahren has, in the past, posted tweets that would lead one to believe she considers an unborn baby to have human rights.

Ms. Lahren has fallen into the indefensible trap of saying, “I think a fetus is a human being, but who am I to say that other women can’t kill their own babies?” Then she inexplicably ties her reasoning to federalism. Not content to stop there, she notes that anyone who doesn’t ascribe to her imbecilic line of thought is hypocritical. She may be surprised to know that millions of people nationwide have managed to find a way to be both pro-life and pro-federalism.

Imagine that.

Women’s Health And Safety Be Damned

An abortion training project for non-physicians has prompted Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo has issued a ruling that truly defies logic.

In his May 17 decision, Judge Evelio Grillo denied the Life Legal Defense Foundation’s petition for a writ of mandate to require release of the names of physicians, clinicians and stakeholders who participated in the pilot project conducted by the University of California San Francisco/Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“[T]he court finds that the public interest in withholding the names of the Clinicians outweighs the public interest in disclosing those names,” the decision states. “First, there is a public interest in protecting persons who provide abortion services from harassment. … Second, the public has an interest in academic research, and that interest may be compromised if research participants cannot participate with the assurance that their privacy will be protected.”

The project itself is revealing. For years, abortion proponents have claimed that only by keeping abortion legal can women’s health and safety be protected, presumably because doctors could perform them without fear of prosecution. Now comes this push to allow nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants and certified nurse midwives to perform abortions with as little as two day’s training. How’s that working out? 8,000 patients later, “…the project’s own documents show that the injury rate is 80 percent more than when physicians perform abortions….”

Now Judge Grillo has ruled that the privacy concerns of the project participants outweigh the safety concerns of patients. That seems backwards to me.

WTH?!?

Someone found my blog today with the search string, “cute abortion pictures.” Don’t even want to know. But, oh, hey, since we’re talking about abortion, I still think it’s wrong.

There’s A New High Priestess In Town…

…And she’s ready to fulfill her sacred duty.

A Planned Parenthood affiliate’s newest president and CEO said in an official statement that she regards her work for the biggest abortion business in America to be a holy profession.

Melaney Linton, who will now oversee Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, is determined to further the Life-ending work of Planned Parenthood:

“I am honored and humbled to be entrusted with such a sacred duty…I pledge to do everything in my power to fight back against the ideological attacks on Planned Parenthood and women, so that no teen will ever say she didn’t know how she got pregnant, no one will ever be denied basic reproductive health care, and no woman will ever be forced to bear children she cannot adequately support.” (full article)

There’s so much wrong with Ms. Linton’s statement, it’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll just focus on her “sacred duty.” I wonder which of these definitions she’s referencing.

sa·cred

adjective

1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.

2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.

3. pertaining to or connected with religion ( opposed to secular or profane): sacred music; sacred books.

4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study.

5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero.

One would hope that the people involved in providing abortions regard it as a necessary evil, but it appears that Ms. Linton regards it as a sacrament, in which case she is truly a High Priestess in the Church of Abortion.

Sometimes It’s Not “Only Words”

I am pro-life. I oppose abortion under any circumstances, no matter how psychologically painful or even physically dangerous carrying a pregnancy to term might be for the mother. I am pro-life because I believe that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and that it’s always wrong to take an innocent human life. Did I not believe the first point to be true, my position would be different. When an unborn child is denied its humanity, there is no reason to protect it in the womb.

Let me repeat: I am pro-life because I believe that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception. These are not “only words” to me; in terms of their need to be loved, cherished and protected, I see no difference between an embryo, a fetus, a newborn and a toddler.

Recent conversations with both people who describe themselves as pro-choice and people who describe themselves as “pro-life,” have brought me to the conclusions that to many people, these are only words.

People who are pro-choice hear what I’m saying but have only a superficial understanding of my meaning; they still can’t understand why I want to deny women their “right to choose.” For these people, my words are only words. That’s to be expected; there’s no reason they should understand the depth of my belief and in not understanding, it’s no wonder that my position angers them.

More disturbing are self-described pro-lifers who agree that an unborn child is a human being, but would still grant a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy for so-called compassionate reasons – in cases of rape, incest or danger to her own life. For these people, their own words – their own beliefs, apparently – are only words. In the cases of rape and incest, people who would be horrified to see a ten-year-old jailed for the crimes of his father feel its acceptable for a ten-week-old fetus to be given the death penalty for the same, as if the circumstances surrounding an unborn child’s conception have a bearing on the value of its life. They would be shocked to see a mother put her five-year-old child between herself and an attacking dog, but also accept that same mother’s right to abort her five-month-old fetus for reasons of her own health.

To hold a pro-life position based on the humanity of the unborn child, while still wanting to allow  for abortion in certain circumstances is a position that cannot be supported through logic or reason.  Furthermore it’s my opinion that this position is less moral than that of the pro-choice individual who holds a sincere belief that the unborn child is lacking humanity.

In fact, I find it to be morally abhorrent; when I say I object to abortion as the unjustified taking of an innocent human life, it’s not “only words” to me.

$363 Million

Are the Democrats in Washington, D.C. really willing to deny pay to our servicemen and women over $363 million in funding for Planned Parenthood? Sadly, it appears so.

Thankfully, there’s a better way. Depending on the poll, roughly half of all Americans believe that abortion should be legal in “all or most cases.” Admittedly my math skills are weak but I believe that 50% of the 308,745,538 is Americans counted in the 2010 census is 154,372,769. If each of those people who apparently feel so strongly about a woman’s right to an abortion were to contribute just $2.35 to Planned Parenthood, the funding gap would vanish!

People who think Planned Parenthood provides valuable services can direct their dollars to its continued operation. People who have moral objections to abortion aren’t forced to fund them. This is the beauty and the logic of re-privatizing charity; people are free to direct their charitable contributions according to their own consciences. Win-win situation…what’s not to love?

Update 1: Ezra Klein of the Washington Post thinks Planned Parenthood is a swell organization because abortion accounts for only 3% of their services. Let’s look at what that means in human terms.

Because of Planned Parenthood, 899 babies won't be born today.

According to Ezra, Planned Parenthood claims to perform 220,000 abortions a year. That doesn’t quite jive with their 2008-2009 annual report (the most recent available). According to the report, they provided 10,943,609 services, with abortion accounting for 3% of the total or 328,308 abortions…meaning that Planned Parenthood performs 899 abortions every day; 37 every hour; one every 95 or so seconds.

But that’s a-okay with Ezra Klein because 3% is such a small number. (H/T The Other McCain)

Knowing What’s Important

How perverted has feminism become – even the name of the movement implies, wrongly, it seems, a celebration of all things feminine – when a simple, spontaneous and beautiful expression reflecting the joy of becoming a mother could be considered wrong or controversial?

Read what Alexa Shrugged has to say about it.

Congratulations to Ms. Portman on her Oscar win and for understanding, even in the midst of the Hollywood insanity, what things are really important.

Again I Ask, Who’s Extreme?

Unwilling to run on her lackluster record, Patty Murray has resorted to a series of misleading and dishonest ads attacking Dino Rossi for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the issues about which people are most concerned. Her latest ad attempts to paint Rossi as an extremist who will turn back the clock on abortion rights.

As I see it, are two extremes in the abortion debate. On the pro abortion side, the extreme position advocates the right to abortion for any person – even minors – for any reason, at any time during gestation up to and including partial birth abortions. In this world view, the right to an abortion is inalienable and requires government protection and facilitation through funding and coercion of health care workers who have sincerely held conscience objections.

On the pro life side, the extreme position advocates the right to life for every human being from the moment of conception. In this world view, abortions would be illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, or when the life of the mother would be endangered by a pregnancy. Conscience objections would be protected.

So let’s compare the positions of Patty Murray and “Turn Back the Clock” Dino Rossi.

Rossi opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life. This moves him towards the center, away from the extreme pro-life position.

On the other hand, Patty Murray has, apparently, never met an abortion she wasn’t willing to protect with legislation. She voted against the ban on the barbarous procedure rather euphemistically known as partial birth abortion and against conscience protections for health care workers. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to find any scrap of evidence to support moving Murray towards the center on this issue.

If you don’t agree that Murray’s position is extreme, tell me…what, exactly, would constitute an extreme position on abortion?