abortion

New at Live Action: Keeping Sight of the Big Picture in Abortion Scandals

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

A number of particularly sickening abortion-related stories have been in the news lately, from an abortionist carrying babies’ corpses in his car to an abortion facility worker getting pressured by her superiors for respecting a patient’s reluctance to abort, from a home abortion leaving a born baby boy mutilated for life to Planned Parenthood dumping its victims’ dead bodies in landfills. And then there’s been the defining controversy of the year, Planned Parenthood’s criminal organ-harvesting side business.

All of these stories are tremendously valuable in illustrating the true character of the abortion industry. And during a time where the law’s hands are tied from going after abortion directly, it’s worthwhile to seek whatever justice we can for its lesser crimes not under the Supreme Court’s protection.

But in our discussions of these lesser scandals, pro-lifers must take great care to keep them in context of the bigger picture, to cite them not as wrongs purely for their own sake but as outgrowths of a far greater wrong.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Pure Evil of Pro-Abortion Spin in TN Murder Case

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

From Tennessee comes the sickening story of a 31-year-old woman, Anna Yocca, who faces attempted murder charges for trying to abort her 23-week-old preborn child with a coat hanger. The baby survived – due solely to fears for her own health that led her to go to an emergency room – but he sustained lung, eye, and heart damage that will require medical support for the rest of his life, plus additional health problems that will arise as he grows up.

A mother’s selfish attempt to crudely kill her own son directly caused an innocent child to suffer grievous injuries that will plague him for the rest of his life. We don’t know exactly how debilitating his conditions will be, but at the very least pain and limitations will loom over a childhood that should have been filled with love, laughter, learning, and playing, thanks to the very person who was supposed to comfort and protect him.

So who does the abortion cult have sympathy for? The perpetrator, of course.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: OH “Censorship Zone” Bill Threatens Pro-Life Speech

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , ,

Our friends at Created Equal are sounding the alarm on H.B. 408, a bill proposed in Ohio they warn would essentially create “censorship zones” around abortion facilities, threatening legal penalties against any pro-lifer who dares to exercise his or her First Amendment right to protest abortion.

The legislation provides that “Any employee of a health care facility who is subjected to harassment or intimidation may commence a civil action for” not only reasonable grievances such as physical injury or property damage (which are already illegal), but also “harassment,” which the bill defines as:

[A] knowing and willful course of conduct that is directed at one or more employees of a health care facility, that would cause a reasonable person to be seriously alarmed, annoyed, or harassed, that in fact seriously alarms, annoys, or harasses the employee or employees, and that serves no legitimate purpose.

Any pro-lifer who runs afoul of the statute within fifteen feet of the property would be “liable to the plaintiff for damages in the amount of five thousand dollars.”

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Bernie Sanders Smears Men, Belittles Women in Abortion Tweet

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bernie Sanders, the socialist Vermont senator running in the Democrat presidential primary, is a walking caricature in many ways, and recently he added abortion clichés to that reputation. On Saturday, he said:

It’s a popular slur among abortion supporters because it plays to modern radical feminism’s paranoia that misogynistic agents of the patriarchy lurk around every corner, waiting to chain America’s women to their kitchens, and because it reinforces the abortion lobby’s fantasy that abortion entails no serious moral dilemma they have to confront. But as a meaningful argument, it completely fails.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: The Moral Consistency of Peaceful Pro-Life Activism

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In response to Robert Lewis Dear’s killing spree at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, pro-abortion columnist Jill Filipovic resurrected one of abortion supporters’ most insidious (and that’s saying something!) refrains in asking:

If you actually believe abortion is legal mass murder on par with the Holocaust, then how is it 100% wrong to kill abortion providers? Answer: most prolifers don’t even believe their own claims and don’t think abortion is quite the same as murder. Because it’s not.

This pops up every now and then among abortion defenders trying to trip up pro-lifers on our own principles. Slate’s Will Saletan accused pro-lifers who condemned the slaying of George Tiller of not “mean[ing] it literally” when we call abortion murder. Evangelical pastor-turned-humanist/atheist Bruce Gerencser asks “those who say abortion is murder” if “you support the execution of murderers.” Jason Brennan of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog thinks it’s “implausible” and “absurd” for people who equate abortion with murder to confine themselves to stopping it through legal and peaceful means. California law blogger Mike Cernovich argues that peaceful pro-lifers are suffering cognitive dissonance, basing our beliefs “on psychological comfort rather than intellectual rigor.” We see it on a fairly regular basis in comment threads.

The truth is that this isn’t a sincere argument. They know they can’t win a fair argument on whether the unborn are human or abortion is killing, so they hope to indirectly discredit the truth by conjuring up inane reasons to claim we don’t believe it. So now would be a good time for a refresher course on the just use of force in a free society.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Gloria Steinem Accidentally Undermines Pro-Abortion Arguments

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

Whether she’s sharing blatantly sexist quotes such as: “if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament” or she’s excusing Bill Clinton’s treatment of women simply because he is pro-abortion, Gloria Steinem has always been in a league of her own in the pantheon of radicals who elevate abortion beyond all else.

Now Steinem has written a new book, and a couple of details from both it and its press tour have inadvertently undermined the logic of her cause.

First, Steinem’s book is dedicated to John Sharpe, the doctor who referred her for an illegal abortion in London in 1957. It reads:

Knowing that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.”

Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I say this so long after your death: I’ve done the best I could with my life.

Hard as it is to overlook the sickness of casting someone who helped murder a child as a hero, that’s not the most revealing takeaway here.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Abortion Neglected at CNBC GOP Debate. Let’s do something about it.

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , ,

If you were expecting to hear the Republican presidential candidates say anything new about how they would protect the preborn from abortion or getting Planned Parenthood’s hand out of America’s wallets, then last night’s CNBC primary debates were a huge letdown.

Not one question addressed abortion or Planned Parenthood in any way. The excuse would be that the debate was billed as strictly focusing on economic issues – making pro-life issues off-topic – but that went out the window the moment questions were asked about marijuana legalization and gay rights. Those detoured the conversation away from the nation’s finances and into individual freedom, morality, and society’s values — abortion would have been out of place how? (Not to mention the clear economic issue of taxpayer dollars funding Planned Parenthood.)

Moderators with a major political axe to grind clearly weren’t interested in giving the preborn or Planned Parenthood’s crimes any attention, but even so, the candidates could have done more to proactively work abortion into their answers, like Lindsey Graham did with his main issue, foreign policy.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Pro-Abortion HuffPo Attack on Ben Carson Completely Fails

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Following Dr. Ben Carson’s strong stand for life over the weekend on Meet the Press, the Huffington Post is attacking the presidential candidate with an open letter to Carson by playwright, political science professor, and self-professed “ordained minister and a person of faith” Monica Bauer.

After some lip service to how Carson “seem[s] like a sincere person who wants to do the right thing,” she proceeds to challenge him on “a couple of things that just maybe no one in your circle has ever discussed with you.”

As we will soon see, this condescension is mostly projection:

First of all, if it is as simple as all that, and all abortions were about killing a baby, how do you explain the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade? This was a 7-2 decision. It was not simply liberals versus conservatives.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Pelosi Drafts Pope Francis to Fund Planned Parenthood

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

Ready for the most preposterous manifestation yet of Nancy Pelosi’s pro-abortion devout Catholic shtick? On Thursday, the House Democrat Leader invoked pro-life Pope Francis in the name of her pro-abortion agenda:

Republicans are moving forward with a GOP reconciliation package that once again lays the groundwork for another Republican government shutdown. It’s a waste of time. It will go nowhere in the Senate. It will be their 61st vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they will of course be wanting to defund Planned Parenthood, destroy the Affordable Care Act, dismantle newfound health security for millions of Americans.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead we could be working together recognizing a Republican Congress, a Democratic president, the ability for Democrats to use their leverage legislatively to have compromise for the good of the American people. That’s what Pope Francis told us to do. He said leaders should have transparency. That would be wonderful – openness, he said. He used the word openness and pragmatism, and he said we have to move forward for the good of the people. Let’s in the spirit of Francis do that.

Yes, Pelosi has devolved to arguing that the Pope wants politicians to accept a budget that gives millions of dollars to the abortion industry. Let that sink in a minute.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Rare Pro-Choice Attempt at Fair-Mindedness

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One of the most frustrating things about dialogue between pro-lifers and pro-choicers is that only one side truly understands where the other is coming from. We can fully understand that support for abortion (among the non-extremists, at least) is rooted in a reluctance to not force women to undergo something perceived to be needless (because they erroneously believe the fetus isn’t alive), but pro-choicers rarely acknowledge compassion for preborn children as our driving force, instead constantly insisting we simply hate women.

At Refinery29, Kelsey Miller has what seems to be a rare pro-choice effort to actually understand pro-lifers, in the form of an extended ride-along and discussion with Students for Life coordinator Emily Wilkinson.

It contains a number of revelations that the truth is more complicated than pro-aborts would like, which will hopefully push some of the site’s more moderate readers to reassess their own assumptions—for instance, she acknowledges the problems with Planned Parenthood’s “abortions are only 3% of what we do” lie and the counter-argument to the belief that more contraception would reduce abortion rates, and admits that we don’t call abortion murder “for dramatic effect; that’s simply what they see.”

But Miller also unintentionally illustrates several ways that even more reasonable pro-choicers are avoiding the fundamental questions about their position.

Read the rest at Live Action News.