Archive for the ‘abortion’ Category

The Supremes are back

Posted: October 5, 2021 by chrisharper in abortion, crime
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By Christopher Harper

This term for the U.S. Supreme Court, which opened yesterday, may be the most compelling in our lifetimes, particularly for conservatives.

Poised with a relatively solid five-vote majority, the justices have an opportunity to make some significant changes in the law. Please note that I have excluded Chief Justice John Roberts from this majority.

At the center of this new-found power, Justice Clarence Thomas came out firing rapid questions in a case involving a dispute between Tennessee and Mississippi. Justice Thomas had been known for saying few words during oral arguments, mainly because he was often a sole voice of reason in years past.

It will be refreshing to see Justice Thomas at the forefront of arguments.

On its first day, the court sent a clear warning to the left when the justices issued a terse decision NOT to grant congressional voting rights for the District of Columbia. The ruling was clear: DC isn’t a state!

The court has agreed to hear appeals that explicitly call for overruling Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that women had a constitutional right to end pregnancy.


The case surrounds Mississippi’s “Gestational Age Act,” which was passed in 2018 and allows abortion after 15 weeks “only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality.” If doctors perform abortions outside the parameters of the law, they could have their medical licenses suspended or revoked and may be subject to additional penalties and fines. The state’s attorney general has argued that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong” and should be overturned.

In September, the court declined to block an even more restrictive Texas abortion law, on a 5-4 vote. Chief Justice Roberts found himself in dissent along with the three liberal justices.

Another case, which is set for arguments in November, challenges a New York state law limiting concealed weapons permits. The court could expand Second Amendment rights to allow handguns in public. In 2008 and 2010 decisions, the court recognized a constitutional right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense.

Several cases reflect the court’s concern for religious expression. In November, the justices will consider a condemned Texas inmate’s claim that the state must let his pastor lay hands upon him while he is executed.

A December argument challenges Maine’s public education system, which relies on state tuition vouchers for private schools. Half the state’s school districts don’t have enough students to justify schools of their own, so the state reimburses tuition at secular private schools. Parents who prefer religious schools argue that the program is discriminatory.

The court also agreed recently to consider whether the city of Boston, which allows outside groups to fly their banners from flagpoles outside City Hall, violated the First Amendment by rejecting a cross-bearing “Christian flag.”

The hollering from the left started even before the court convened, with abortion advocates protesting in front of the court’s building. Moreover, the media have renewed their rumblings about the rightward tilt of the court. For example, The News York Times has declared that the court is “off the rails.”

I guess it’s time buckle up for what is likely to be an interesting year!

With all the COVID hype, you probably missed…

Posted: July 31, 2021 by ng36b in abortion, catholic
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…the vote to kill the Hyde Amendment.

Yup, I almost missed it too.

From https://www.chausa.org/about/about/facts-statistics

Since 1973, every funding bill has contained the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of taxpayer funding for abortions, except in a few key areas. Like most things on social media, most people haven’t actually read the amendment, so I’ve copied it here:

Sec. 506. (a) None of the funds appropriated in this Act, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are appropriated in this Act, shall be expended for any abortion.

(b) None of the funds appropriated in this Act, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are appropriated in this Act, shall be expended for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion.

(c) The term “health benefits coverage” means the package of services covered by a managed care provider or organization pursuant to a contract or other arrangement.

–Hyde Amendment

Sec. 507. (a) The limitations established in the preceding section shall not apply to an abortion—

(1) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or


(2) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed.

(b) Nothing in the preceding section shall be construed as prohibiting the expenditure by a State, locality, entity, or private person of State, local, or private funds (other than a State’s or locality’s contribution of Medicaid matching funds).

(c) Nothing in the preceding section shall be construed as restricting the ability of any managed care provider from offering abortion coverage or the ability of a State or locality to contract separately with such a provider for such coverage with State funds (other than a State’s or locality’s contribution of Medicaid matching funds).

(d) (1) None of the funds made available in this Act may be made available to a Federal agency or program, or to a State or local government, if such agency, program, or government subjects any institutional or individual health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

(2) In this subsection, the term “health care entity” includes an individual physician or other health care professional, a hospital, a provider-sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, or any other kind of health care facility, organization, or plan.

–Hyde Amendment

The Hyde Amendment is estimated to have stopped approximately 300,000 abortions a year. Given that abortion in the U.S. is likely responsible for a 10% decrease in population (calculated by comparing states that have and have not legalized abortion), repealing the Hyde Amendment will likely increase this to 12-13%. Sadly, black Americans are the hardest hit by abortions. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 40% of black pregnancies are terminated through abortion. That’s a staggering number when you think that every year, around half a million black babies are simply executed.

To put that in perspective, in 2016 there were approximately 17,000 murders in the entire U.S. Even with the jump in 2020, these numbers still don’t compare to abortion losses for just black Americans. When you lump in everyone else, we’re close to 1 million.

The good news is that abortion has been on the decline. After hitting a high in 1990, its been falling ever since, although its hard to tell because some states, including California, don’t report numbers to the CDC. This fall is attributed to everything from better education to better access to birth control. So if its declining, why expand funding? Why bother doing this when anyone that wants an abortion can easily get one?

Since its politics, I’m going to answer: money and power. Funding abortion through tax dollars gives places like Planned Parenthood a cash cow to milk. Just like transgender therapy, when the government pays for it, even if they don’t pay very well, you’re guaranteed a pay check. On the power side, given that there are over 600 Catholic hospitals in the U.S., repealing the Hyde Amendment forces them to either dump Medicare or go out of business. Given that these hospitals need Medicare to care for some of the poorest Americans, its a nasty way to pin these hospitals against the wall.

Should the Hyde Amendment go away, the first thing that will happen is a surge in lawsuits on any hospital that previously did not provide abortion service. After that, you’ll continue to see most abortions still performed at places like Planned Parenthood. Just like the bakery lawsuits, none of this will result in better service or better health, because its just a power and money grab, plain and simple.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The Best Advice that anyone is going to ever give to Ted Lieu in his lifetime

Posted: June 19, 2021 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, Church doctrine, politics
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What is it that they want?

Communion with its holy effects? Or do they want to be seen receiving Communion?

Do they want the Eucharist or the “white thing” that symbolizes affirmation?

Father Z ASK FATHER: In what scenario would you give Holy Communion to the divorced and remarried?

There is the sin of Pride and then there is the Ted Lieu Sin of PRIDE:

This is an example of what I like to call: “Catholics for Mortal Sin”. There are plenty of us who struggle with various sins which is why we need the sacrament of confession but it takes a certain type of catholic who loudly boasts of his sins and defies the church to do something about it.

As Fr. Z once put it

If they really get the Eucharist, with the full implications of receiving as Paul describes in 1 Cor 11:27 (“Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.”), and if they really get the Four Last Things, then … would they really want to put at risk their eternal salvation by sacrilegious reception?

If the priest at his parish really cares about Mr. Lieu’s soul (not to mention his own see EK 3: 17) he will talk to him about this and explain to him the danger he is putting himself in. Like a doctor who is caring for a patient he will give him the bad news rather than sugarcoat the risks.

But when it comes down to it, there is also good news in the form of the very best advice that he can get which comes from a fellow by the name of Joel and it repeated in every Catholic Church every year on Ash Wednesday:

Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.
For gracious and merciful is he,
slow to anger, rich in kindness,
and relenting in punishment.
Perhaps he will again relent
and leave behind him a blessing,
Offerings and libations
for the LORD, your God.

Blow the trumpet in Zion!
proclaim a fast,
call an assembly;
Gather the people,
notify the congregation;
Assemble the elders,
gather the children
and the infants at the breast;
Let the bridegroom quit his room
and the bride her chamber.
Between the porch and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep,
And say, “Spare, O LORD, your people,
and make not your heritage a reproach,
with the nations ruling over them!
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”

Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land
and took pity on his people.

He has the rest of his life to take this advice, I’m sure that if he chooses not to he will be celebrated and feted and held up as an example of courage for the rest of his days…

…after that he’s on his own.

Big Media and Big Tech, the left-wing parents who adopted us, believe they know what is best for you

Posted: October 20, 2020 by John Ruberry in abortion, culture, elections, elections, entertainment, media, News/opinion, politics
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Bea Arthur as “Maude.”

By John Ruberry

I was raised by parents who kept a close eye on what my brothers and sisters and I watched on television. As we only had two TV sets, that was a very easy task for them as my folks didn’t socialize outside our home much. Until the early 1970s it was especially easy for them as television fare for the medium’s first 25 years was mostly G-rated fare. Otis Campbell’s drunkeness on the Andy Griffith Show was as bad as it got in the 1960s, although interestingly, the character was rarely shown consuming alcohol. 

So in 1972 when Bea Arthur’s eponymous character in Maude, in a two-episode storyline became pregnant–she pondered an abortion and then went through with it–my parents made sure that our televisions were tuned to a different station those nights.

Abortion was not only very controversial in 1972, it was illegal in most states, although Arthur’s character lived in New York, where it was not. At that time I didn’t even know what abortion was.

Nearly five decades later, Big Tech and Big Media are trying to control what I see on my computer and portable devices. And because broadcast and cable news often takes its lead from what they view as “elite” media, their decisions effect what I see on my TV.

Our “betters” in the media, working for CNN, MSNBC, as well as onetime somewhat fair but left-leaning print outlets such as the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, are attempting to limit what information we consume. And in control of the metaphoric off switch is Big Tech, led by Twitter and Facebook. 

Stories that are harmful to the reputation to President Donald Trump blare across the media, such as reports on Trump’s tax returns. The New York Times did not publish those returns, but it reported on them. The Old Gray Lady won’t say how it got them, but assuming reports on the returns are accurate, who ever gained access to them and gave them to the Times broke the law. The stories on Trump’s tax returns, where it was reported that he paid as little as $750 in federal taxes, were reported pretty much everywhere by the media, and posted, reposted, Tweeted, and re-Tweeted on Facebook and Twitter.

“Kids, kids, come to the living room! You need to see this news story on TV!” 

Contrast Trump’s taxes to reports from the New York Post about the emails it accessed from a laptop that once belonged to Joe Biden’s troublesome son, Hunter. Because Hunter dropped of the computer at a repair shop and never bothered to pick it up, that computer became property of the shop’s owner. Emails found on that computer confirm accusations that Hunter used that Biden name to for influence peddling. Illegal? Maybe not. Sleazy? For sure. And the shop owner did not break the law.

And the media, with the exception of Fox News and other conservative news sources such as Breitbart, ignored or minimized coverage of Hunter Biden’s emails. Last week a Democratic Party shill masquerading as an ABC journalist, former Bill Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos, didn’t ask Biden about the New York Post revelations. Yeah, I get it, the format was a town hall, but ABC chose the participants and it knew what questions they would ask. Contrast Biden’s friendly treatment to the grilling Trump received from Savannah Guthrie at the NBC town hall the same night. Guthrie is married to Michael Feldman, the traveling chief of staff for Al Gore in the 2000 election. Guthrie brought up Trump’s tax returns, among other things. 

That’s bad but what is worse is that Twitter and Facebook for a while blocked the posting and sharing of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden email revelations. And it wasn’t yokels like me who suffered the indignity. Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, saw her Twitter account briefly suspended for Tweeting the Post’s Hunter story. The twisted explanation from Big Tech is that the Hunter Biden’s emails were hacked–they weren’t–and that the story was unverified. Remember, the NY Times never actually published Trump’s federal tax returns, which may have been hacked. But the Post did show images of some of Hunter’s emails. Even the New York Post’s Twitter account was suspended for a short time on the day it published the Hunter story.

“Kids…turn off that TV and go to your room!” 

Of course these media and tech big shots are our “betters.” Jeffrey Toobin, a CNN analyst and New Yorker writer, a product of Harvard University, is one of them. But yesterday Toobin was suspended by CNN and the New Yorker after exposing himself and more–click here for the X-rated details–during a Zoom call simulating election night scenarios. Toobin is a scumbag. He had an extramarital affair with Casey Greenfield, the daughter of journalist Jeff Greenfield. Okay, I know, Trump has been unfaithful while married too. But Greenfield bore his child, which Toobin only acknowledged after a DNA test, and only then began paying child support. And while pregnant Toobin offered to pay for her abortion.

American media can do much better than Toobin and his fellow “betters.” I will write another entry on the sad state of the media after the election.  

But right now we’re headed to Chinese government-style control of the media by the left.

A free press and free association are two things that French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville saw as two key safeguards in his landmark 19th-century work, Democracy in America. 

But Big Tech and Big Media, as well as the increasingly far-left Democratic Party, are trying to minimize both. 

We live in a perilous time.

UPDATE 7:30pm EDT: Correction, the New York Post Twitter account was “not suspended for a short time” as I wrote earlier. There are no new Twitter entries from @nypost since October 14. If the account has been suspended it clearly has been locked out. This is censorship.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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