Posted on 07/21/2014 4:02:49 PM PDT by NYer
Did you know that John F. Kennedy had more than four children? That writers Christopher and Peter Hitchens had two other siblings? That Marilyn Monroe actually had a large number of children?
I’m not particularly fond of the argument that I’ve heard many pro-lifers use: “Abortion is wrong because of all the amazing people we’ve aborted. One of them could have had the cure to cancer!” Abortion is fundamentally wrong because it ends the life of a developing human being, whether that human being would turn out to be a drug addict or the president of the United States. However, it is an interesting thought experiment—not least of all because so many people considered heroes by the Left have aborted their children or had their children aborted.
For example, I think of liberal icon President John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy Family is probably the closest thing America had to a royal family, although revelations over the last several decades have rather firmly repudiated the idea of an impossibly happy Camelot, as historians reveal anecdote after sordid anecdote of relentless philandering. Anecdotes of President Kennedy’s devastation at the 1963 death of his two-day old son, Patrick, are well-documented. The Kennedys also lost a daughter in 1956—Arabella, as her parents intended to name her, was stillborn.
Revolutions famously do not discriminate in their grim reaping of human life. The Sexual Revolution is no different.
But stories abound of JFK’s affairs ending in abortions. Mimi Alford, a White House intern that JFK had a relationship with for over a year, reported that when she told the president she believed she was pregnant, he “took the news in his stride.” Shortly afterward, she was contacted by a White House staffer named Dave Powers, often assigned to protect the president’s reputation.
“An hour later,” Alford recalls, “Dave called the dorm and told me to call a woman who could put me in touch with a doctor in New Jersey. The intermediary was a necessary precaution, because abortion was illegal. That was pure Dave Powers: he handled the problem immediately, and with brute practicality. There was no talk about what I wanted, or how I felt, or what the medical risks might be.”
Another of JFK’s famous mistresses, Judith Campbell Exner, reported having an abortion in 1963 after becoming pregnant by the president. Not all Kennedys, it seems, end up in Washington, D.C. Some of them end up in trash cans behind seedy clinics, victims of their parents’ sexual ideology.
Another icon of the Left that comes to mind when I think of the human cost of abortion is the late author and columnist Christopher Hitchens. Fans of the Hitch are fierce in their devotion, with his brother Peter, a well-known conservative author, noting that his brother’s fans often burn with fanatical hatred against him, furious that a conservative Christian (who wrote his brilliant book The Rage Against God partially in response to his brother’s philosophically feeble atheist tome God Is Not Great) could bear the same last name as their hero. Both brothers are extraordinary writers and journalists, having collectively written dozens of books and published essays and columns in the most prestigious publications.
What many people don’t realize is that there were originally four Hitchens siblings, not two. As Christopher relates in his Vanity Fair essay “Fetal Distraction”:
I was in my early teens when my mother told me that a predecessor fetus and a successor fetus had been surgically removed, thus making me an older brother rather than a forgotten whoosh.
Christopher noted further that at least two children of his own had their lives ended by abortion, recalling sombrely that, “at least once I found myself in a clinic while ‘products of conception’ were efficiently vacuumed away. I can distinctly remember thinking, on the last such occasion, that under no persuasion of any kind would I ever allow myself to be present at such a moment again.”
Perhaps this was because Christopher Hitchens allowed himself no illusion, writing that, “Anyone who has ever seen a sonogram or spent even an hour with a textbook on embryology knows that emotions are not the deciding factor. In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain, and, whatever the method, break some bones and rupture some organs.”
Although to my knowledge Peter Hitchens has never addressed the fact of his aborted siblings in print, on abortion he has much to say. “Those who wonder what they would have done had they lived at the time of some terrible injustice now know the answer,” he has said. “We do live in such a time. And we do nothing.”
When considering the lives and careers of the Hitchens brothers we know, we cannot help but wonder what the lives of the two that we do not would have been like.
The list of politicians, writers, and cultural figures who have discarded their own children are myriad. Comedian Chelsea Handler has talked openly about having an abortion. Sharon Osbourne calls having an abortion at seventeen the mistake of her life. According to author Norman Mailer, the tragic Marilyn Monroe had twelve abortions by her late-twenties. Whoopi Goldberg of The View, Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy, Judy Garland of The Wizard of Oz all aborted children. Ava Gardner reportedly aborted two of Frank Sinatra’s children, while the smut-peddling rapper ‘Lil Kim aborted the Notorious B.I.G’s child, which they conceived during an affair. Famed singer Sinead O’Connor had an abortion while on tour in Minneapolis.
It’s especially bizarre, I think, when those on the Left turn out to enthusiastically celebrate any new revelation of a cultural figure having an abortion. The more they admire the person, it seems the happier they are at the “courage” of said person having had an abortion. A bit unintentionally insulting, don’t you think? I admire you so much! I’m so glad you terminated a child that might have had your talent or been a lot like you!
Revolutions, however, famously do not discriminate in their grim reaping of human life. The Sexual Revolution is no different, even though we’ve replaced guillotines with Planned Parenthood clinics. The crowds cheered both, and the similarity between a howling mob and a pro-choice rally is striking to say the least. Perhaps it is Peter Hitchens who has the best explanation: “I think that abortion is much beloved by revolutionaries,” he noted gravely, “because they always like the mob to get their hands in blood and commit some sort of crime of their own.”
Abortion is evil because it violently destroys a human being. But one of the reasons abortion is tragic is that it has robbed us of so many who might have given so much to humanity.
I’ve always said it’s a testament to the ethics of conservatives that they fight so hard for the lives of future Democrat voters.
In a private letter, Reagan labelled JFK a Marxist in 1960.
JFK is also responsible for destroying us when his immigration goals to replace American voters passed in 1965.
JFK was more lefty than people remember.
Like with Putin, people cherry pick and then declare someone to be a good dude
In 1975, in “Conversations With Kennedy,” Mr. Bradley revealed off-the-record confidences like “he said he was all for people’s solving their problems by abortion (and he specifically told me I could not use that for publication in Newsweek).”
There is story that Bette Davis has a abortion too when she was marry to her first husband
I saw it on TCM Stardust documentary she was interview by Mike Wallace in old interview
She claim that her husband fear he lose the meal ticket
Also Joan Crawford she brag to somebody it was story in Mommie Dearest the book that she aborted her then husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr child
Right you are!
Every child is a child of God too.
Pro-Life bump
It would be interesting if someone could compile an accurate list of Hollyweird’s finest from the days of silent films till now of those who who murdered their babies,who were or are sodomites,and who were or are Communists.
They aren't. The "Kennedy Royalty" mythos is repugnant. The Kennedy's themselves are repugnant. Killing their kids wasn't wrong because the kids were Kennedys, but because killing kids is WRONG.
I know for a fact there was silent movie actress that had numberbous abortion I think Renee Abdoree from Big Parade with John Gilbert
Cause she died of TB but I hear autopshy they reveal she probably died of complication of recent abortion
“Judy Garland of The Wizard of Oz all aborted children”
My innocence is shattered forever! I could not ever imagine her being anything but a virgin!
Do you have a copy of that letter?
JFK is also responsible for destroying us when his immigration goals to replace American voters passed in 1965.
Do you have the vote count from Republicans and Democrats on this bill?
JFK was more lefty than people remember.
You may be right, but I don't remember it that way. A "lefty" never want's you to have more of your own money.
Sincere Regards..
KS
From Vietnam, to the 1965 Immigration Act, to homelessness (permanently emptying the mental hospitals in 1963 legislation) to unionizing government, to stealing the 1960 election and giving us LBJ, JFK was the end of America.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s.
In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960.
In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin.
After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
Dear Mr. Vice Pres.
I know this is presumptuous of me but I’m passing on some thoughts after viewing the Convention here in L.A.
Somehow the idea persists that someone should put an end to the traditional demonstrations which follow each nomination. True they once had their place when their only purpose was to influence the delegates within the convention hall. Now however TV has opened a window onto convention deliberations and the “demonstration” is revealed as a synthetic time waster which only serves to belittle us in what should be one of our finer moments. One has a feeling that general gratitude would be the reward for any one who would once and for all declare the “demonstration” abandoned.
Starting with the opening speech and continuing through all the speeches until Kennedy’s acceptance speech I thought the Democrats could pick up some campaign money by selling the collection of addresses as, “talks suitable for any patriotic occasion with platitudes and generalities guaranteed.”
I do not include Kennedy’s acceptance speech because beneath the generalities I heard a frightening call to arms. Unfortunately he is a powerful speaker with an appeal to the emotions. He leaves little doubt that his idea of the “challenging new world” is one in which the Federal Govt. will grow bigger & do more and of course spend more. I know there must be some short sighted people in the Republican Party who will advise that the Republicans should try to “out liberal” him. In my opinion this would be fatal.
You were kind enough to write me to comment on the “talk” I had given and which you had read. That is why I’m presuming on your busy day with these thoughts. I have been speaking on the subject in more than thirty eight states to audiences of Democrats & Republicans. Invariably the reaction is a standing ovation—not for me but for the views expressed. I am convinced that America is economically conservative and for that reason I think some one should force the Democrats to publish the “retail price” for this great new wave of “public service” they promise. I don’t pose as an infallible pundit but I have a strong feeling that the twenty million non voters in this country just might be conservatives who have cynically concluded the two parties offer no choice between them where fiscal stability is concerned. No Republican no matter how liberal is going to woo a Democratic vote but a Republican bucking the give away trend might re-create some voters who have been staying at home.
One last thought,— shouldn’t some one tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with it’s proper age? Under the tousled boyish hair cut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Govt. being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his “State Socialism” and way before him it was “benevolent monarchy.”
I apologize for taking so much of your time but I have such a yearning to hear some one come before us and talk specifics instead of generalities. I’m sure the American people do not want the govt. paid services at “any price” and if we collectively can afford “free this & that” they’d like to know it before they buy and not after it is entrenched behind another immovable govt. bureau.
You will be very much in my prayers in the days ahead.
Sincerely,
Ronnie Reagan
Good reply. I guess I will drown my sorrows and let God be the judge of it. Thanks.
JFK was not a Liberal Icon, another example of Myth becoming reality.
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