Susan B. Anthony List: Winning

An interesting article in National Journal shows that, while pro-choice political groups generally raise far more money than pro-life groups, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List stomps the crap out of the pro-choice National Organization for Women:

National Journal also features video stories including interviews with SBA List Chairwoman Marjorie Dannenfelser:

If Nelson says 'no,' is Obamacare dead?

If the Nebraska Democrat's statement means he'll join the the GOP filibuster, this could be the stake througth the vampire's heart:

A moderate Democrat whose vote could be crucial said Thursday an attempted Senate compromise on abortion is unsatisfactory, raising doubts about whether the chamber can pass President Barack Obama's health care overhaul by Christmas.
"As it is, without modifications, the language concerning abortion is not sufficient," Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a key holdout on the health care bill, said in a statement after first making his concerns known to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. . . .
[I]n a radio interview earlier in the day with KLIN in Lincoln, Nebraska, Nelson also said that abortion wasn't his only concern and he didn't see how the Christmas deadline was achievable.
The development came with Senate leaders working round the clock trying to finalize their 10-year, nearly $1 trillion bill in time for a final vote on Christmas Eve. Nelson is emerging as a major obstacle -- perhaps the only remaining one -- since Democrats need his vote to have the 60 necessary to overcome Republican stalling tactics.

(Gee, Associated Press, thanks for that perfectly neutral characterization of the "Republican stalling tactics.")

Here's the situation: Nelson can vote "yes" on the motion to proceed to a vote (which requires a 60-vote supermajority). and then vote "no" on final passage, where only 51 "yes" votes are needed. Because of the overwhelming Democratic majority in the Senate, there is no question on the final passage if it gets that far; therefore, the only way Nelson (or any other Democrat) affects the outcome is if he votes "no" on the motion to proceed.

So unless and until Nelson says he'll join the filibuster, his statement of opposition is meaningless. If you are a Nebraska resident opposed to ObamaCare, you need to contact Nelson and try to get a clarification:

Omaha
7602 Pacific St.
Suite 205
Omaha, NE 68114
Tel: (402) 391-3411
Fax: (402) 391-4725

Lincoln
440 North 8th Street
Suite 120
Lincoln, NE 68508
Tel: (402) 441-4600
Fax: (402) 476-8753

Washington, D.C.
720 Hart Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: 1-202-224-6551
Fax: 1-202-228-0012

Scottsbluff
Tel: (308) 631-7614

Kearney
Tel: (308) 293-5818

South Sioux City
Tel: (402) 209-3595

And if you are a Nebraska Tea Party activist, you need to go in person to Sen. Nelson's office nearest you. No need to get angry or make a scene. Just make sure the Senator's staff knows that you understand the legislative process, and that you won't count the Senator as having voted against the legislation unless he joins the filibuster and votes "no" on the procedural question.

Dr. Coburn's prescription to stop the Pelosi bailout for Abortion Inc.

Brilliant:

Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who developed a close friendship with President Obama when they served together in the Senate, is threatening to have the entire health care bill read on the Senate floor. . . .
Coburn, who has a reputation for using procedural rules to block and delay legislation, has been an outspoken critic of the president’s health care overhaul. He recently told the New York Times: "My mission is to frame this health care debate in terms of the fiscal ruin of this country. . . . I have instructed my staff to clear my schedule for every minute that bill is on the floor."

(Via Memeorandum.) Meanwhile, how to stop Nancy Pelosi's crazy scheme to rush the ObamaCare bill through a House floor vote on Saturday? Barbara Espinosa links a CNS News article:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) told CNSNews.com on Thursday he has not reached an agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and therefore he and dozens of pro-life Democrats are still poised to kill the House health care bill. Stupak has organized a group of about 40 Democrats who are committed to killing the health care bill if Pelosi (D.-Calif.) does not allow them a straight up-or-down vote on an amendment that would prohibit federal dollars from paying for any part of any health insurance plan that covers abortions. . . .

Read the rest of that and also Barbara's post at American Freedom. Pro-life groups are especially urging phone calls and e-mails to Congress from their activists who live in House districts represented by Democrats. If Pelosi can enforce discipline in her own caucus, she has enough Democrats to pass ObamaCare without a single Republican vote.

The fact that ObamaCare would amount to a federal bailout of the abortion industry has not gotten much notice in the MSM, but the pro-lifers are ready to use that as a "wedge" issue, which could really hurt Democrats with Catholic voters in 2010.

Planned Parenthood is America's largest abortion provider and gets a lot of its funding from taxpayers:

In April [2008], the annual report of Planned Parenthood Federation of America revealed that the abortion giant had a total income of $1.02 billion -- with reported profits of nearly $115 million. Taxpayers kick in more than $336 million worth of government grants and contracts at both the state and federal levels. That's a third of Planned Parenthood’s budget.

Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups have been hit hard by the economic meltdown -- seems a lot of their supporters were Bernie Madoff's friends like Jeffrey Picower -- and this is one reason there is such a frantic urgency for the "public option" on the Left.

Ann Coulter has said that abortion is the sacrament of the Church of Liberalism, and the Democrats desperately fear that they're missing opportunities to kill babies because of the funding shortage caused by the bankruptcy of their Ponzi-scheming friends. So now they want to bankrupt the rest of us to bail out the baby-killers, and trying to do it secretly by sneaking through their plan on a football Saturday:

[Nancy Pelosi] is scrambling to buy off recalcitrant Democrats on two of the very issues that Rep. Joe Wilson and other House Republicans called out the White House for: abortion and illegal immigrant coverage. The wheeling and dealing is taking place behind closed doors. Once again, the Democrats who promised transparency are breaking their own promise to publish the final bill publicly 72 hours before the vote.

Fortunately, there are these things called "elections," and something called an "economy," and these two things are having an influence, which may explain why Nancy Pelosi still doesn't have enough Democratic votes to pass ObamaCare. As Pundette observes:

Some representatives are keenly aware that the jobs they save may be their own. The bad economic news combined with last week's electoral cautionary tales, unresolved hot button issues, and the sheer massiveness and cost of HR 3962 is making too many legislators queasy.

If it weren't for the encouragement Pelosi gets from unprincipled RINOs (who would vote for nuclear war so long as you called it nuclear "reform" and threw in some pork for their districts) she might have dropped the whole thing months ago.

UPDATE: According to the Washington Post, they have reached an agreement to vote on the Stupak Amendment, which is expected to pass. Smitty passes along a report that the House may not vote until Tuesday.

NY23: Ordinary Americans make miracles happen; start doing what you can

Letter to the editor, Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times:

It has recently come to my attention that the Republican Party bosses met behind closed doors to select the candidate for the special election to fill the vacancy created by the appointment of John McHugh to the office of Army secretary.
They selected Dede Scozzafava, a liberal member of the state Assembly. She received the same Planned Parenthood award that was awarded to Hillary Clinton. With President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushing an anti-life agenda through the House, we do not need another pro-abortion politician in Washington.
Let's send a message: both the Democratic and Republican candidates are pro-abortion, but the Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is pro-life. On Nov. 3, pull the lever for Doug Hoffman on the Conservative line and cast a vote for life.
Ann Dougherty

To repeat what I wrote in "Memo to the Grassroots":

One of the problems that hinders grassroots activists from making a difference is that they see problems so big that they think to themselves, "What's the point? I'm just one person. I'm not important. Why waste my time? There's nothing I can do anyway." . . .
The reason the GOP national leadership is so out of touch is because too many grassroots conservatives don't know how to fight back against the RINOs and sellouts and self-serving GOP headquarters staffers who collect fat paychecks for screwing up over and over again. . . .

If you haven't read that essay yet, you should do so now. Because if all you're going to do is sit around whining, "What can I do?" you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Don't become discouraged and start telling yourself that you can't do anything to fight back. Doing the little things you can do -- like sending short, clear, well-reasoned letters to the editor of your local paper -- is the key to successful grassroots activism. "Steady licks kill the Devil," they say.

Ms. Dougherty's letter boiled down to its essence a key point about the NY23 special election, namely that it was the "lords of the backroom" who picked Scozzafava as the GOP candidate. How many people in the 23rd District are really aware of that dirty little secret? With that one letter, then, Ms. Dougherty may have struck an important blow for Hoffman by helping inform local readers about the real story of this election, namely the battle between the grassroots and the out-of-touch Republican elite.

That's just one example of the difference the Ordinary American can make, if you'll ignore those pessimistic Eeyores who are always spreading negative gloom and doom by telling you there's no point trying, because you're certain to lose. If Doug Hoffman had listened to that kind of advice -- when he was growing up poor, pumping gas at age 14 to earn money -- he never would have become a successful businessman, and he sure wouldn't be running for Congress today.

The Doug Hoffman campaign collected $116,000 online in a single day last week. This morning, I spoke with a campaign source who told me that the overwhelming majority of those donations were in the $20-$50 range.

Think about that. Raising a six-figure sum -- in one day! -- with the average donor contributing less than $35. If you haven't kicked in yet, what are you waiting for? And if you've already given the Hoffman campaign $20 or $50, how about another $10 or $20 just to say, "Keep up the good work?"

HOFFMANIA: CATCH IT!

Our complete coverage of the NY23 special election

(Cross-posted at Hot Air Greenroom and Not One Red Cent.)

Aurelio Vallerillo-Sanchezis so totally going to Hell

Worst. Rapist. Evah!

OMAHA, Neb. — A Nebraska man who stole a painting of the Virgin Mary to finance an abortion for a teen he raped has been convicted of first-degree sexual assault and felony theft.
Aurelio Vallerillo-Sanchez, 39, of Omaha pleaded no contest to the charges Friday . . .
Beadle said Vallerillo-Sanchez fled to Mexico with the 300-year-old painting worth $100,000 and the pregnant teen in March 2007.
"The plan was that when they got to Mexico, she was to undergo an abortion," she said.
When an abortion wasn't possible, Vallerillo-Sanchez pushed to have the baby given up for adoption, Beadle said: "He wanted to do everything he could to get rid of this baby 'cause it was evidence against him."
The teen returned to Nebraska after giving birth, the prosecutor said.
Vallerillo-Sanchez was arrested in February after DNA linked him to the September 2006 assault of the then-14-year-old girl.

Hat-tip to Ann Coulter, who remarks:

"He better hope liberals are right about there being no God."

Miss Coulter knows, of course, that liberals are wrong about everything.

Big Money and the Culture of Death

This morning, I watched Michelle Malkin on Fox News talking about Obama's "science czar" John Holdren, advocate of "compulsory abortion" and "involuntary fertility control" to deal with a non-existent overpopulation crisis.

Where did Holdren get his wacky ideas? His Ecoscience co-author Paul Ehrlich was the author of a notorious 1967 book, The Population Bomb, which promoted the overpopulation hysteria.

But where did Ehrlich get his wacky ideas? That story -- and a lot more besides -- is told in an excellent 2001 book by historian Donald L. Critchlow, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Goverment in Modern America.

The population control movement, which generated the anti-baby hysteria that Ehrlich and Holdren promoted in their books, was largely the brainchild of John D. Rockefeller III. Rockefeller funded much of the movement himself and through a number of family trusts and foundations, and he encouraged other foundations (Ford, Scaife, Carnegie) to do the same.

Rockefeller promoted the population control movement through many means, but just to give you an example, between 1959 and 1964 one organization alone, the Population Council, got more than $5 million from the Rockefellers, $8.4 million from the Ford Foundation and $2.1 million from Scaife. So that's $15 million in five years, back when a million dollars was a lot of money.

'Babies: Threat Or Menace?'
One of the things that the population control movement did was to promote their agenda through the press, and by subsidizing writers with grant money. From page 54 of Critchlow's book:

[T]o raise the public's consciousness about the threat of overpopulation . . . the population movement undertook a concerted public relations campaign through a steady stream of books, pamphlets, and magazine and newspaper articles. This campaign was aided by the involvement of key publishers and editors who were actively involved in the movement, including George Hecht, editor of Parents Magazine. The drumbeat around the population crisis reached crescendo by the early 1960s. Readers of popular magazines were faced with a barrage of articles warning of an impending population crisis . . . Women readers were inundated with articles like "Are We Overworking the Stork?" (Parents Magazine, 1961), "Why Americans Must Limit Their Families" (Redbook, 1963), "Intelligent Woman's Guide to the Population Explosion" (McCall's, February 1965), "Overpopulation: Threat to Survival" (Parents Magazine, 1967) and "Population Increase: A Grave Threat to Every American Family" (Parents Magazine, 1969).

The point, you see, is that there was an organized propaganda campaign, funded and directed by big money. One of the most active promoters of this agenda was Hugh Moore, a millionaire who was a contributor to Planned Parenthood and who later founded his own organization, the Population Crisis Committee. In fact, the title of Ehrlich's book, The Population Explosion, was borrowed from a pamphlet of the same name published by Moore in 1954. And Ehrlich's book was then promoted by the Sierra Club, which had its own wealthy donors.

'We're the Smart Ones'
Big money continues to fund the Culture of Death. In 1999, I was the only reporter in the room when Ted Turner gave a speech at a conference of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association:

Mr. Turner, founder of CNN and now the vice chairman of Time-Warner Inc., also suggested that world population could be reduced by the adoption of an international "one-child policy."...
The Atlanta-based billionaire and his wife, actress Jane Fonda, are active supporters of the United Nations Population Fund. In 1997, Mr. Turner pledged $1 billion to a new foundation to support U.N. efforts on population and the environment.
Though he fathered "five kids -- boom, boom, boom -- by the time I was 30," Mr. Turner said, he now believes overpopulation is a major problem and suggested people should "promise to have no more than two children."
Mr. Turner recalled a discussion many years ago with Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book "The Population Bomb" predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and '80s as a result of global overpopulation. Mr. Turner said he asked Mr. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, what the ideal world population would be.
"They told me about 2 billion," Mr. Turner said. World population is now 5.9 billion, but the world could reduce its population to that ideal, Mr. Turner suggested. "We could do it in a very humane way," he said, "if everybody adopted a one-child policy for 100 years."....
"If you're only going to have 10 rules, I don't know if [prohibiting] adultery should be one of them." Speaking of himself as a member of "the progressive movement," Mr. Turner urged the NFPRHA audience to "give 'em hell" when seeking more government funds for population control."People who think like us may be in the minority, but we're the smart ones," he said, and as a result should be able to defeat opponents he called "a whole bunch of dummies."
Mr. Turner, whose net worth is more than $3.2 billion, got laughs with his responses during a question-and-answer session after his speech. . . .
Asked what he would say to Pope John Paul II, who opposes abortion and artificial contraception, Mr. Turner responded with an ethnic joke -- "Ever seen a Polish mine detector?" -- and then suggested the Pope should "get with it. Welcome to the 20th century."

People like Turner think they're "the smart ones," and love to recite environmental nonsense, global warming idiocies and pro-choice talking points as if these were indisputable facts. The neo-Malthusian agenda (which I discussed in "Forbidding To Marry" in April) is advanced by people who don't even realize they're advancing an agenda at all.

"It's science!" these people declare, dismissuing skeptics as "ignorant," when in fact the real ignorance is on their part -- environmentalists and pro-choicers often don't know the real history of their own movement. A half-century ago, in Up From Liberalism, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote:

In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators . . .

It's even more true than ever.

Thank you, Jamie Kirchick

The Religious Right Didn't Kill George Tiller

Jamie is gay. Jamie is a Democrat. But Jamie isn't one of those crazy dingbat leftists who revel in comparing "Christianists" to al-Qaeda.

Thanks, Jamie. You are owed beers.

Remember all those liberalslecturing us about 'civility'?BUMPED: It gets WORSE!RE-BUMPED: The latest

(BUMPED 7:15 EDT; RE-BUMPED 8:24; UPDATES BELOW) After I linked pro-lifer Becky Brindle, she got some interesting comments from such progressive exemplars of peace, love and tolerance as "Maine Cat Woman":

Using Fox News as a mouthpiece and allowing a major media figure like O'Reilly to continually profile an abortion provider as bloodthirsty as Caligula means you are all have as much blood on your hands as the actual terrorists who pulled the trigger. Sorry, we really don't want to hear any of your cynical, self-serving "regrets." Conservatism: the party of illegal war, torture and murder. Congratulations. Hope you are really proud of yourselves. Go to hell, murderer.

Thank you, our moral superior! "Maine Cat Woman's" blog is called Bill Kristol's Brain. And Becky Brindle's blog is called . . . uh, BeckyBrindle.com. Take a look at both sites and ask yourself which one might aptly be described as "People With Minds That Hate."

UPDATE: Speaking of "people with minds that hate," NTCNews chronicles the latest wretchedness. Remind me of this the next time someone calls me a misognynist . . .

UPDATE 8:24 EDT: Ed Morrissey:

Playboy has pulled the article, with no explanation, Allahpundit reported on Twitter. I think we know the reason, though.

And the latest via Allah's Twitter:

@AmandaCarpenter Playboy thought they'd get away with it bc they didn't realize they'd targeted bloggers, who talk back. Simple as that

Yep. BTW, I'm on Twitter. Not all the time, like some people, but I'm on there. And as for Playboy, don't believe any guy who says he only reads it for the articles . . . Rule 5, anyone?

'How Should Congress Respond?'

Salvation through legislation is the liberal gospel, and Ezra Klein is in the pulpit:

[The murder of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller] is the final, decisive act in "an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services." That campaign stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder. . . .
This was, in other words, a political act. Tiller was murdered so that those in his line of work would be intimidated. In conversations with folks yesterday, I heard well-meaning variants on the idea that it would be unseemly to push legislation in the emotional aftermath of Tiller's execution. I disagree.
[I]n my view, [it would be] a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively prove [the murderer's] action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive.

Murder is already against the law, but liberals can't save the world if they let mere facts get in their way.

'This is not pro-life . . .'

"My Facebook feed is blowing up with pro-life leaders posting this story and condemning the murder of Dr. Tiller . . . because murdering someone in cold blood like this is not pro-life."
-- Becky Brindle

MORE AT NTC NEWS

Oh, God, not this: Tiller assassinatedMORE UPDATES:: Suspect arrested

6:10 p.m. EDT:

• LATEST NEWS UPDATES HERE
• MORE COMMENTARY HERE

PREVIOUSLY (4:35 p.m.EDT): While we await the police press conference, pro-life blogger Becky Banks Brindle has aggregated reaction from pro-life activists, including condemnation of the assassination by National Right to Life.

4:45 p.m.: Steve Marshall of USA Today is trying to outblog me on this story. Good luck with that, Steve. Beers to the winner, eh?

Reaction from Rude News, and linked at Comments From Left Field. Someone else has linked, proving again the truth of Rule 4 that linky-hate is the same as linky-love.

Expect further updates . . .

PREVIOUSLY: 3:45 p.m.: KMBC-TV reports:

A man sought in connection with the shooting was taken into custody south of the Kansas City area on Sunday afternoon. . . .
Police were not immediately identifying the name of the man arrested.
Attorney Dan Monnat said Tiller, 67, was shot at about 10 a.m. as he served as an usher during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church. Monnat said Tiller's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time of the shooting.

4:05 p.m.: Details about the suspects arrest are still very sketchy. The Wichita Eagle is on the story:

The suspect in this morning's fatal shooting of George Tiller is in custody, according to emergency dispatchers.
Authorities have yet to release more information about the arrest. Wichita police have scheduled a 4 p.m. news conference to discuss the case . .

Patterico is also blogging, as is Gateway Pundit. Meanwhile, some self-proclaimed "Putz" counterfactually accuses me of "blaming the victim."

Sigh. I've laid aside an essay I had worked on for four hours, so that I could try to get the updated news here, and put it in historical perspective. This insulting response is the thanks I get. So to the Putz, I say, in the famous words of Rahm Emanuel . . .

UPDATE 4:20 p.m.: Sweet mother of pearl! I'm not going to link Andrew Sullivan on this one, but Professor Donald Douglas does. Go read that and come back, because big news is breaking, and I'm holy unshirted hell on deadline when news is breaking.

PREVIOUSLY (2:36 p.m. EDT): While I was working on a long Hayekian essay today, the New York Times reported this awful news:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning inside the lobby of his Wichita church.
Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.
Police said they are looking for white male who was driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB . . .

Via Memeorandum, which links reaction by Professor Donald Douglas, among many others. Prayers for the law enforcement officers who seek the killer, and prayers for the families and friends of both Tiller and his assassin.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same . . ."
-- Romans 13:1-3 (KJV)

Sometimes, when the stubborn wickedness of a people offends God, the Almighty witholds His divine protection, permitting those sinners to have their own way, following the road to destruction so that they are subjected to evil rulers and unjust laws. Never, however, does the wise and faithful Christian resort to the kind of lawlessness practiced with such cruelty today in Kansas.

And so much for finishing my Hayekian essay, I suppose.

UPDATE: One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin.

From Brutus and the other republican Senators who slew Julius Caesar to Charlotte Corday, from John Wilkes Booth to Gavrilo Princip, and so onto Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, assassination seems inevitably to work against the purposes of its practicioners.

Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat's death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth's pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.

UPDATE II: Checking the major conservative blogs as of 3 p.m. EDT, Professor Glenn Reynolds seems not to have noticed this story yet. Nothing as yet from Michelle Malkin, either. Gateway Pundit is on it. Will check others. If anyone else is aggregating, please be sure to link here.

UPDATE III: More news reports from AP/Fox News.

Expect further updates . . .

'Common ground'?

"President Obama called for 'common ground' on the issue of abortion. . . . So, exactly what 'common ground' can be found with someone who doesn't believe that a 'non-viable' infant born alive after an attempted late term abortion should receive medical care?"

Patriarchal misogyny triumphant!

NEW GALLUP POLL:

More Americans "Pro-Life” Than
"Pro-Choice" for First Time

And why? Because they hate women! Because abortion is the most important part of a woman's existence, anyone who opposes abortion is an oppressive hater. (You tell 'em, Amanda Marcotte!)

Too bad Gallup couldn't have announced this poll during National Offend A Feminist Week.

(H/T: Memeorandum.)

The Demographics of Dhimmitude

DEMOGRAPHIC CRASH

Monique Stewart, Impressing Feminists

By Smitty
HotMES sounds as though her Master's thesis, which probably won't be finished this week, will be a strong contender for That Which Offends Die Drachen most. It's a thesis on our national scourge.

That the American public is fooled into thinking that this is about a woman’s right to choose, or a child’s right to life but, realistically, this is about a multi-billion dollar industry.

Monique reveals this in a post concerning a conversation with such a "fierce woman" in I’m sorry, I don’t speak retarded. Go, Monique, go!

Atomization, anarchy and abortion

"If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds. . . . In this way, any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism. At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life."

Culture of Death

"We need to create a world where a woman having an abortion is as respected and supported as a woman having a baby. As the movement for abortion pride and the recognition of women's human rights progresses, we will continue to speak out with our voices, our experiences, our bodies - and our lives. YES - ABORTION PRIDE!"

Cornell Law professor Sherry Colb compares fetus to a rapist

Thanks to the Creative Minority for pointing out this professor's atrocity-by-analogy:

Particularly at the later stages of pregnancy, the right to abortion does not protect an interest in killing a fetus as such. What it protects instead is the woman's interest in not being physically, internally occupied by another creature against her will, the same interest that explains the right to use deadly force, if necessary, to stop a rapist. Though the fetus is innocent of any intentional wrongdoing and the rapist is not, the woman's interest in repelling an unwanted physical intrusion is quite similar.

Right. Merely by not wanting the baby, a woman empowers herself to use deadly force. Her will alone is sovereign, and all other considerations must yield. Professor Colb, how do you sleep?

UPDATE: Linked at Sundries Shack.

UPDATE II: Linked by Pundette (a mother of 7).

UPDATE III: Linked by Daily Gator.

Do I Need A Vanity Plate?

by Smitty

It started at Politico. It picked up steam over at Hot Air. It culminated in a Fetus Hater of the Month 'award' for Nancy Keenan over at LaShawn Barber. All because Virginia Governor Kaine's decision to allow "Choose Life" license license plates in Virginia is a "divisive political ideology".
Never mind the First Amendment. Never mind that

Kaine defended the move by pointing out that Virginia has a "long-standing program" allowing customized license plates and said that if Planned Parenthood applied for a plate he would grant it.

Maybe life itself is a political ideology for Ms. Keenan.
I've never had any interest in a vanity plate. They seem so well named. As Ancient Commenter Solomon observed:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?--Eccl 1:2-3

Thumbing the nose in a positive way at ideas as suck-tacular as Keenan's, while small profit indeed, may be worth the price. What to put on a vanity plate? I've been thinking of "SEK E 1ST". Ideas?

What's killing Russia?

Russia has been described as "sliding into a demographic abyss":

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian fertility rate plummeted from 2.19 children per woman in 1986 to 1987 to 1.17 in 1999. In 2001, the fertility rate was 1.25 in Russia.

This is unsustainable, and a big part of the explanation is that Russia has long relied on abortion as a primary form of birth control. The Bolsheviks had pro-abortion views nearly as extreme as NARAL and the liquidation of Christianity under Soviet rule meant that there was no political, moral or cultural opposition to the practice. Abortion-on-demand thus became deeply engrained in the medical and social traditions of the nation, a Culture of Death that has outlived the regime that spawned it.

A new documentary, Killing Girls, chronicles the brutal reality of this, as St. Blogustine explains:

The film follows three teenage girls in Russia from the time they enter the abortion clinic until after they leave, delving into their circumstances for being pregnant, their reasons for having late-term, labor induced abortions, and the state of moral decay in today's Russia that would result in such an alarming trend (80% of today's Russian women have between 2 and 10 abortions in their lifetimes).

Here's the trailer for the film: