Category: Abortion

GOP Freshmen Will Call for Congressional Investigation of Planned Parenthood

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Reacting to a new report about the taxpayer-funded activities of Planned Parenthood, Rep. Renee Ellmers has warned her House colleagues of “systemic fraud and abuse” by the nation’s largest abortion provider.

A first-term North Carolina Republican, Ellmers will be joined by fellow GOP freshmen Rep. Rep. Randy Hultgren of Illinois and Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, as well as third-term Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado) at a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday to express their concerns about evidence of wrongdoing contained in The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood, a new 181-page report by Americans United for Life.

In a letter to fellow Congress members, Ellmers wrote:

“I invite my colleagues to review the findings of this Report and to join us on Thursday as we voice our concerns about the issues raised by AUL’s Report and express our renewed commitment to seeking accountability for taxpayers and for investigating whether taxpayers are funding an organization that misuses government funding and violates state laws.
“I will be hosting a press conference on Thursday, July 14, 2011 together with Rep. Randy Hultgren to discuss the AUL Report’s extensive documentation of the systemic fraud and abuse inherent within Planned Parenthood and the need for Congress to investigate how Planned Parenthood is using federal money.”

Thursday’s noon press conference in room 2360 of the Rayburn House Office Building is expected to be the first step toward congressional hearings into taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.

UPDATE: Linked at The Conservatory — thanks!

UPDATE II: Linked at Maggie’s Notebook and by The Lonely Conservative — thanks!

Science Gone Wrong

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Instapundit’s enthusiasm for all things scientific leads him to write this headline:

MORE WOMEN ARE freezing their eggs
to make babies later. Makes sense.

Well, excuse me for disagreeing. It is a preposterously stupid idea to encourage women deliberately to postpone first-time motherhood until they are middle-aged, without concern for the obvious arguments against such a decision.

For a woman to have her first (and most likely only) child at age 45 — to do this deliberately, as I say — is to ensure that her child grows up with an elderly mother, one who will be in her 60s when her child is a teenager. And it is quite likely that, should this child eventually become a parent, that child’s grandmother will already be in the grave. You are almost guaranteeing a sundering of direct cultural continuity between generations.

It is one thing, I say, when such things happen by luck or accident or fate (call it what you will), but it is another thing to pursue this preposterously unnatural course of action deliberately, with the aid and encouragement of science. And I wish Professor Reynolds, whose admiration of science extends also to science fiction, would keep in mind how often sci-fi offers dystopian warnings about well-intentioned Science Gone Wrong.

We are just now seeing how “scientific” intervention on the other side of the procreative ledger has brought unintended consequences, and perhaps we ought to consider whether it is time for a return to making babies The Good Old-Fashioned Way.

IYKWIMATIYD.


Wow! Strange Plot Twists in #WeinerGate’s Third Act

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A sentence you won’t see me write very often: Tommy Christopher has done some excellent reporting.

Tommy’s story about @PatriotUSA and a 16-year-old girl who (falsely) claimed her friend was involved in Twitter “sexting” with Rep. Anthony Weiner is an absolute must-read. (BTW, Mediaite has posted Tommy’s story as five different pages, without a “single page view” or “print all” function, which annoys me, but that’s not Tommy’s fault.) One quote that stood out to me was this:

“I saw many other girls in the news and I wanted to be famous.”

Yeah. The desire to get fame for fame’s sake — fame without talent, fame without achievement, fame you don’t actually have to work for — is one of the great evils of our age. Nowadays, I’m often reminded of a line from Gone With the Wind, where Scarlett O’Hara says of one of her envious rivals: “She’d walk down the street naked if she thought anybody would look twice at her.” But we’ll save Ginger Lee for later . . .

I should probably write an essay about the underlying lesson here: How inexperienced, irresponsible and unscrupulous people, trying to play citizen-journalist, muck things up for everybody else in the “Army of Davids.” On the other hand, maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if the regular media could be trusted to do their job with minimal competence and fairness.

The statements from the girls and one of the girls’ parents are, I think, subject to criticism, but I will leave that to others for now. The failure of Markos Moulitsas to respond promptly to Tommy Christopher’s e-mail warnings is also likely to get enough criticism from others without me jumping on the dogpile.

Responsible reporting requires a sense of news judgment, even if that sometimes means foregoing a possible scoop.

Last Saturday, when the WeinerGate story first broke, some people sent me DMs or e-mails with phone numbers for Gennette Cordova and I thought to myself: Should I call? Continue reading Wow! Strange Plot Twists in #WeinerGate’s Third Act →

‘The Light of the World’

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That painting by Charles Chambers is titled The Light of the World. Many years ago, a print of that painting hung in a first-grade classroom. But then the Supreme Court forbade religion in public schools, which meant the painting of baby Jesus had to go, and so the teacher took it home with her. Years later, the teacher gave it to her grand-daughter, who had just moved into an apartment with her boyfriend.

One day when her boyfriend was gone, she was home alone when a fire destroyed their apartment, and it was a miracle that she survived.

Her only possession that survived the fire? The Light of the World.

She and her boyfriend later broke up. You’ve probably heard of her boyfriend — he’s quite famous — but you’ve probably never heard of the woman who survived the fire, and who recently said this:

“My husband is my true hero. He has been a loving husband, a generous father, and hard-working provider for our family. . . . Today I am a pro-life Roman Catholic, the mother of seven children, and this year my husband and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.”

Want to take a guess? Her maiden name was Continue reading ‘The Light of the World’ →

Good-Bye, Global Population Control!

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And it’s certainly about time!

Spurred on by a public vote in which pro-life advocates said cutting funding for the pro-abortion UNFPA agency was their top desire, Congressional Republicans have filed legislation to yank millions from the UN organization. . . .
The vote at the popular YouCut web site makes it so the public will be able to track the progress of the legislation as it moves through the legislative process.
Rep. Renee Ellmers, of North Carolina, will be introducing legislation soon.
“This is going to save American taxpayers $400 million dollars over a 10 year period and it’s just another part of what we’re doing here in Washington to cut wasteful spending that we see happening,” she said in a new video introducing the bill. “And I am very excited to be part of this program and each week we will have more cuts coming forward.”

Here’s video of Rep. Ellmers making the announcement:

Rep. Ellmers’ Facebook page is here.

Dept. of Bad Analogies

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“Last Friday, Kansas legislators approved a ban on insurance companies offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans.”

This is in itself problematic. I’m pro-life, but I don’t like the idea of government bossing around insurance companies, telling them who and what they should or should not cover. And this description of the rationale behind the bill seems confusing:

If the bill becomes law as expected, starting in July, individuals and employers who want abortion coverage would have to buy supplemental policies that cover only abortion. Supporters of the bill argue that it will protect employers who oppose abortion rights from having to pay for policies that cover the procedures.

But don’t different companies offer different policies? I mean, if an employer didn’t want to provide abortion coverage, couldn’t the employer shop around to find a company that offered the kind of coverage he wanted? There must be some background to this story I don’t understand.

Whatever the policy logic of this law, it doesn’t help the pro-life cause to have it defended by idiots:

Rep. Barbara Bollier, a Mission Hills Republican who supports abortion rights, questioned whether women would buy abortion-only policies long before they have crisis or unwanted pregnancies or are rape victims.
During the House’s debate, Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told her: “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Bollier asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?”
DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have spare tire on my car.”
“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

“Groans of protest,” indeed. A much better argument: The fee for a first-trimester abortion isn’t so steep as to be prohibitive to the uninsured. It is a relatively inexpensive procedure. This is also a valid argument against taxpayer subsidies for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood: Even if you are enthusiastically “pro-choice,” there is no compelling economic need that justifies such subsidies.

Exactly why the Kansas legislature felt the need to interfere this way with the insurance companies, I don’t know. But spare us the spare-tire analogies.

Because Life Is Beautiful

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“I’ve never set out to win a popularity contest. I came from [being previously pro-choice], but when I was confronted with the science — and I spoke to top scientists throughout our country asking, ‘Would you please just show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being?’ and no one has been able to show me any, and I will continue to fight for those human rights until someone can show me otherwise.”
— Kathy Ireland, explaining her opposition to taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood

One reason that liberalism is so fashionable is that liberals astutely seek to associate their philosophy with prestige and glamour. Never mind that the most successful politician in show-business history was conservative Republican Ronald Reagan — Hollywood is, and always has been, politically dominated by liberals. (Indeed, Reagan himself was once a “hemophiliac liberal” by his own admission.)

It therefore behooves conservatives to celebrate those shining exceptions to the general rule, and what example could be more exceptional than Kathy Ireland, whose famous beauty graced the pages of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue for 13 consecutive years?

Ms. Ireland is nowadays a 48-year-old married mom (she and her husband, Dr. Greg Olsen, have a 12-year-old daughter, Lilly) and is not afraid to speak up about her Christian values.

Opus 6 provides several of Ms. Ireland’s classic bikini photos and comments: “God Bless her heart, among other things. I didn’t have to search hard to find good pics of her.” Continue reading Because Life Is Beautiful →

Rachel Maddow’s ‘Man Cave’ Moment: Planned Parenthood Does Oil Changes?

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Monday night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow went off on a tangent so incredibly weird that it is almost impossible to describe. The topic was Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who had apparently signed legislation defunding Planned Parenthood in his state. Maddow then evidently decided that guys in the audience failed to understand why Planned Parenthood is so vital, suggesting that what Planned Parenthood mainly does is health-care “maintenance” for women. Watch the video:

Question: Why is it only women who require “routine maintenance”? Is there no special need — a need so urgent that it must be subsidized by taxpayers — to provide health-care for men?

It’s almost as if Rachel Maddow were saying that men and women are biologically unequal.

But surely she doesn’t believe that? Or does she?