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When Words Can Kill
Townhall.com ^ | September 10, 2017 | Jerry Newcombe

Posted on 09/10/2017 2:58:03 AM PDT by Kaslin

Jane Hodgson, who died about a decade ago, was celebrated in liberal circles as a pioneer of abortion rights. She was a master at justifying the killing of human life in the womb. Writing about her for the National Right to life News Today (reproduced in lifenews.com, 8/3/17), Dave Andrusko quoted some of her rationalizations:

“[T]here is a medical indication to abort a pregnancy where it is not wanted.”

“I am concerned with the quality of life, not physical existence.”

“A medically necessary abortion is any abortion a woman asks for.”

“Is adolescent pregnancy a disease?” Implied is that the answer is “Yes.” Pregnancy---a “disease”?

This gets me to thinking about how the widespread acceptance of a culture of death has jaded the thinking of so many people. The acceptance of abortion has helped lead the way.

Is the baby inside the womb just…

“a product of conception”?

“a clump of cells”?

"a non-“person”? The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973), said, “…the word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”

Or are we “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as the Bible says? David the psalmist praises God: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well….all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

David’s son, Solomon the Wise, would go on to say that life and death are in the power of the tongue. Think about how words can build up or tear down, affirm life, or dehumanize it.

I remember when Barack Obama said that if his daughter had an unwanted pregnancy, he would not want her to be “punished with a baby.” Wait until he has a grandchild, I’m confident he’ll be saying, “What was I thinking?” Words matter.

The word “fetus,” which some use to depersonalize the baby, is actually just the Latin word for unborn child. Think about even the term “pro-choice.” Someone once asked, “What do you choose when you’re pro-choice?” Pro-choice means being pro-abortion. I’m for choices, but not for abortion.

Humanists love Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. I don’t. Maybe he saw too much blood and guts during the Civil War. He helped ruin America by applying evolutionary principles to the law. As a result, in his view, court precedents outweigh the founders’ intent. As a Supreme Court justice, he famously wrote in favor of mandatory sterilization of a woman who did not want to be sterilized: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” (Buck v. Bell, 1927).

What the Nazis did was evil. No one referenced in this column is being compared to them. But they were masters at dehumanizing the victims they killed.

Many years ago I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. William Brennan, a now-retired professor from St. Louis University. Brennan did a lot of research on the use of words and especially how euphemisms could be invoked to mask killing, including in Nazi Germany.

Dr. Brennan wrote Dehumanizing the Vulnerable. Note the subtitle of this 1995 book: “When Word Games Take Lives.” He provides numerous examples of how dehumanizing takes place before mass killings:

In 1913, Lenin (who authorized a wholesale attack against Christians and others) said: “Every religious idea [is]…‘contagion’ [disease] of the most abominable kind.”

Adolf Hitler said in a 1923 speech, “the Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human.”

A 1944 Nazi propaganda book, “The Jew is a parasite.”

Brennan points out how, in 1920, long before the Nazis, two German authors (a doctor and a lawyer) wrote Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life. These authors spoke about how some human beings, such as the severely handicapped, should not be allowed to continue to live.

Brennan points out the dehumanizing phrases the authors used to dehumanize people: “mentally dead,” “incurably insane,” “complete idiots,” “empty human shells,” “dead weight existences,” “defective people,” “wholly worthless,” “valueless lives,” which were “lives not worth living.”

Brennan once told me: “The Nazis never used the word ‘kill’ when they talked about what they did. They covered it up with an array of code words and euphemisms.”

And he added, “Projecting fifty years into the future, when abortion is illegal, and they look back to this point in time, they will probably look back in astonishment, just as we now look back to the Nazi Holocaust and wonder what happened there?”

Euphemisms happened.

The Bible says that God created us in His own image. This miraculous gift of life is something to be cherished by the words used and the actions taken. It’s the difference between a culture of life and a culture of death.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: abortion; holocaust; prolife; sanctictyoflife

1 posted on 09/10/2017 2:58:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

it’s all to very sad that all with a good conscience can only sit back and watch this horror of a human being die a natural death


2 posted on 09/10/2017 3:15:03 AM PDT by RacerX1128 (Cornered in CA)
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To: Kaslin

Too bad her parents didn’t believe in abortion.


3 posted on 09/10/2017 4:14:40 AM PDT by boknows
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To: Kaslin
I remember when Barack Obama said that if his daughter had an unwanted pregnancy, he would not want her to be “punished with a baby.” Wait until he has a grandchild, I’m confident he’ll be saying, “What was I thinking?” Words matter.

That statement is so far from the truth it is preposterous. That man cares for one person only -- himself. I doubt he would feel sorrow or regret over any murdered baby.

4 posted on 09/10/2017 5:42:37 AM PDT by nclaurel
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To: Kaslin

bookmark


5 posted on 09/10/2017 5:51:56 AM PDT by angryoldfatman
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To: Kaslin

In “Heaven is for Real”, Colton said he met his sister who was never born due to a miscarriage. I wonder if some day these millions of women who have had abortions will have to explain to that unborn child why they murdered them.


6 posted on 09/10/2017 5:54:18 AM PDT by antidemoncrat
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To: Kaslin

There is one silver lining to this cloud, if one can call it that.

Those having the abortions do so for a number of reasons. What they all have in common is that they are able to more or less easily suppress their normal maternal instincts. The ability to do this is, I think, coded in one’s DNA.

Having abortions suppresses one’s ability to have a normal pregnancy later on. The reasons are both physiological and psychological. What this means is that the particular genotype that facilitates one becoming a murderer of one’s own offspring is being weeded out. We are already seeing the result of that trait being systematically removed from the gene pool: fewer women are having abortions and more people are pro-life. The abortion industry is desperately trying to grow its client base, but the number of potential clients keeps shrinking.


7 posted on 09/10/2017 6:06:15 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: nclaurel

‘I doubt he would feel sorrow or regret over any murdered baby.’

one of the most compelling political cartoons I ever saw showed babies hobbling out of an abortion mill after surviving the event...and Barack Obama was waiting outside with an upraised baseball bat, to make sure they died...


8 posted on 09/10/2017 6:08:05 AM PDT by IrishBrigade
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To: nclaurel
That man cares for one person only -- himself.I've said that many times.

You don't even hear or read about his "daughters" anymore.

9 posted on 09/10/2017 6:08:26 AM PDT by Kaslin (Politicians are not born; they are excreted -Civilibus nati sunt; sunt excernitur. (Cicero))
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To: nclaurel

“...I doubt he would feel sorrow or regret over any murdered baby....”

Or a couple million American citizens.


10 posted on 09/10/2017 6:20:17 AM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: Kaslin

Again, separation from liberals ensures that we survive and they pass on into history.

Best forgotten history.


11 posted on 09/10/2017 7:08:38 AM PDT by Molon Labbie (Kim Jon Un. Entered the world stage Unopposed, led Unapologetically, died Unidentified.)
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To: Kaslin

Christ always had His Divine nature.

His Human nature began at His conception, NOT at His birth.

As Biblical evidence refer to Luke’s account of Mary’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth.

“39 And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill country with haste into a city of Juda.
40 And she entered into the house of Zachary and saluted Elizabeth.
41 And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.
42 And she cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
43 And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
44 For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. “


12 posted on 09/10/2017 7:37:53 AM PDT by G Larry (There is no great virtue in bargaining with the Devil)
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To: Coleus; nickcarraway; narses; Mr. Silverback; Canticle_of_Deborah; TenthAmendmentChampion; ...

1973 United States Supreme Court

“The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint
but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear,
carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails
and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.” ~ C. S. Lewis

60+ MILLION Children have been dismembered while alive since Roe.

Note that the only two who voted against the majority in Roe v Wade
(against MURDERING babies) are on the right side of the photo.
Rehnquist standing and White seated.


Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

13 posted on 09/14/2017 7:47:30 PM PDT by cpforlife.org (Abortion is the Choice of Satan, the father of lies and a MURDERER from the beginning.)
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