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Liberal Multiple Choice

Liberal conflict about multiple abortions. Free registration required.

The New Republic Garance Franke-Ruta Post date 11.25.05

When Amy got pregnant during her freshman year of college, she knew that, at 18, she wasn’t ready to be a mother. So she had an abortion. “That was a very easy decision to get to, but a very difficult emotional experience, both before and after,” she says from San Francisco, where she now lives. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.” Six years later, she says, she was living and working in New York City when, after a condom failure, she found herself with a second unwanted pregnancy. “That time, it was like, ‘Oh, no! This sucks. Let me just take care of this.'” She had another abortion. “Oh well, that’s over,” she recalls thinking immediately afterward. “And then I didn’t think about it very much.” She didn’t talk about it very much either, and, even today, she is loath to reveal it. “I rarely talk about the second abortion because of society’s judgments about women who have a second abortion,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re allowed one mistake.'” But not two….

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The poverty of American cities and French suburbs

Christian Science Monitor Patrick Chisholm December 1, 2005

Big-government solutions pull poor people in, and push employers out.

A hurricane exposes the poverty of America’s inner cities, and the champions of big government make political hay out of it. Riots lay bare the underclass in Paris’s suburbs, and the French are astounded that such a thing could exist in their country.

In fact, Democrats have long controlled almost all of America’s inner cities. The Brookings Institution recently ranked the 50 largest cities in the United States according to their concentrations of poverty. A quick check reveals that the 10 cities with the highest concentrations of poverty have Democratic mayors, with the exception of New York City (whose Republican mayor is something of an anomaly in a Democratic-dominated city). By contrast, the few Republican big-city mayors hail mainly from cities with the least concentration of poverty.

This tells us that there is something terribly wrong with the statist policies that Democrats, and to an increasing extent Republicans, favor. The tragedy of the riots in France, where similar policies prevail, illustrates the same point.

…more

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Latest On Legalizing Infanticide in the Netherlands

From Wesley Smith blog.

The Dutch Government is moving to expeditiously legalize infanticide. It has now created a commission to create the rules for the legal killing of “seriously suffering” babies. This is a tremendous violation of human rights. Shame on the Netherlands and the general lack of protest around the world.

The “patriarch of bioethics” Joseph Fletcher once called infanticide “post birth abortion.” Apparently the Dutch agree. Note this quote from a high official, “We wanted to respond to the needs of doctors to create clarity in how to deal with ending the life of seriously suffering newborns as well as the legal consequences of late abortions,” Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and Junior Health Minister Clemence Ross-van Dorp wrote in a letter to parliament.

For shame.

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C. S. Lewis

American Minute

His death went unnoticed, as he died the same day John F. Kennedy was shot, but his works are some of the most widely read in English literature.

Originally an agnostic, he served in World War I and became a professor at Oxford and Cambridge.

He credits his Catholic friend and fellow writer, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of “Lord of the Rings,” as being instrumental in bringing him to faith in Christ.

Among his most notable books are: The Screwtape Letters; Miracles; The Problem of Pain; Abolition of Man; and The Chronicles of Narnia, which include The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.
His name was C.S. Lewis, born this day, November 29, 1898.

Over 200 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide and continue to sell at a rate of a million copies a year, even forty years after his death.

In his book “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis wrote:

“All that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

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Mao more lethal than Hitler, Stalin

WorldNetDaily.com Jon Dougherty November 29, 2005

Expert says Chinese leader’s policies led to death of 77 million countrymen

A noted expert in calculating the number of deaths caused by authoritarian regimes says the late Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung’s policies and actions led to the deaths of nearly 77 million of his countrymen, surpassing those killed by Nazi Party founder Adolf Hitler and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin.

R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and a Nobel Peace Prize finalist who has published dozens of books chronicling so-called “democide,” or death by government, said the new Chinese figure – nearly double his previous estimate of about 38 million – was based on what he believes was Mao’s duplicity in China’s great famine of 1958 to 1961.

…more

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Alito and Abortion

Wall Street Opinion Journal ROGER PILON Monday, November 28, 2005

Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but he shouldn’t say if he’d overturn it.

There’s little doubt any longer: Samuel Alito’s now-famous 1985 memo has changed the dynamics of the upcoming confirmation battle. Not that abortion would not be at the center of the battle in any event, but in that memo Judge Alito stated his view unambiguously: “The Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” That denies him the option of remaining vague on the subject, say senators on both sides. Republicans Olympia Snowe and John Cornyn along with Democrat Charles Schumer are reported as saying Judge Alito now has only two options: He can say he’s changed his mind; or he can say that Roe v. Wade and the cases affirming it since 1973 are now settled law, outweighing his view that Roe was wrongly decided.

Neither option is satisfying, of course, the first for obvious reasons, the second because it elevates precedent over the Constitution. To be sure, liberals of late have a selective regard for precedent–now that they’ve jiggered the Constitution into a shape they like. But conservatives too give the appearance of being less than straight when they imply, as they often do, that precedent should trump the Constitution. If that’s the case, why the conservative enthusiasm for Judge Alito?

…more

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Presbyterian Church USA & Families of 9/11 Victims Delegations Meet with Hizbullah

Dhimmi Watch

From MEMRI:

On October 20, 2005, the Lebanese press reported that a delegation from the Presbyterian Church USA, headed by Father Nihad Tu’meh and with Robert Worley as its spokesman, visited southern Lebanon at the invitation of Hizbullah, and met there with the terrorist organization’s commander in southern Lebanon Nabil Qawuq…

A year previously, on October 17, 2004, a Presbyterian Church USA delegation visiting Lebanon also met with Qawuq. MEMRI TV translated excerpts from a report on the meeting that was aired by Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV. During the meeting, church elder Ronald Stone said, “We treasure the precious words of Hizbullah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people. Also, we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding. We cherish these statements that bring us closer to you. As an elder of our church, I’d like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.”…
[Read more…]

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Mass. Senate approves bill requiring churches to disclose finances

BOSTON (AP) — Churches and other religious organizations would be required to disclose their finances like other nonprofit groups under a bill overwhelmingly approved by the state Senate on Wednesday.

Supporters of the bill, which has met opposition from the Catholic church and other religious denominations, say there’s no reason to exempt religious groups.

They say secrecy helped the Roman Catholic church in Massachusetts hide the burgeoning clergy sexual abuse scandal from public view, even as church officials shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish.

One way to prevent a repeat of the scandal is to bring the finances out into the light, backers of the bill said.
[Read more…]

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Pick-and-Choose Piety Makes Enemies

Ed. Interesting article from Rabbi Daniel Lapin that touches on our ongoing discussion of poverty but from a Jewish perspective.

Toward Tradition Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Heading an organization whose entire purpose is to promote friendship and mutual respect between Jews and Christians, egregious assaults on this friendship really bother me. As I reported last week, it gives me little pleasure to admit that most of these assaults come from my side of the fence. Well, here we go again.

In Bellevue, Washington, just a few miles from my home, a Jewish Reform temple has been upsetting its neighbors by insisting on hosting an encampment of homeless people on its property. Fearful neighbors in this upper middle class enclave of young families point to countless offenses, ranging from assault and relieving in public to drug possession, perpetrated by this group of homeless during their earlier sojourn on the grounds of a church in a neighboring city.
[Read more…]

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Christians Oppressed

Article available seven days only.

Wall Street Journal SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM November 18, 2005

The Second International Coptic Conference, convening this week in Washington, comes amid Egypt’s parliamentary elections and heightened American and international attention to the democratic advances in the Arab world’s most populous country. Often overlooked is the fact that Egypt’s population of nearly 75 million includes the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, over seven million, the vast majority of whom are members of the Coptic Orthodox Church and have in the last half-century experienced institutionalized discrimination that renders them little more than second-class citizens.
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