Bobby Schindler: Legacies of Terri Schiavo, Robert Schindler Inspire My Family

These bastards are truly evil.

Thread by Morgana.

“Abortion is as American as Apple Pie” — The Culture of Death Finds a Voice

Abortion is now one of America’s most common surgical procedures performed on adults. As many as one out of three women will have at least one abortion. In some American neighborhoods, the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births.

Most Americans will pay little attention to the 39th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to arrange the killing of the unborn life within her. Since that decision was handed down, more than 50 million babies have been aborted, at a rate of over 3,000 each day.

One of the most chilling aspects of all this is the sense of normalcy in American life. Abortion statistics pile up from year to year, and each report gets filed. Moral sentiment on the issue of abortion has shifted discernibly in recent years, as ultrasound images and other technologies deliver unquestionable proof that the unborn child is just that — a child. Nevertheless, the larger picture of abortion in America is basically unchanged. With predictable regularity, cultural authorities call for the emergence of a moderating position between the pro-life and pro-abortion positions. But efforts to achieve a stable compromise on the abortion issue are doomed to failure. The two positions hold irreconcilable views of reality. The pro-life movement holds that the central issue is the unborn child’s right to live. Abortion activists have staked their entire case on the claim that the only determinative issue is the woman’s unrestricted right to choose.

A middle position would require pro-lifers to accept that the deaths of some unborn children are acceptable, and abortion rights activists to accept that some decisions for abortion are wrong. Given the logic of their positions, there is no means of compromise.

In recent years, some on the pro-choice side of the controversy have called for abortion proponents to use language indicating that abortion is a painful and wrenching, but sometimes necessary procedure, and to accept that some reasons for abortion are just not sufficient. Nevertheless, this is received as a call for treason within the abortion rights movement, and these voices are regularly sidelined.

At the same time, there has been an effort to protect abortion with euphemism and evasion. Abortion rights activists speak of being pro-choice, not pro-abortion. The unborn child is reduced to a fetus, or a bundle of cells. Abortion clinics are described as women’s health centers.

There are some abortion activists who will not join that bandwagon. With chilling candor, they defend abortion as abortion, they defend the decision to abort as a morally superior decision, and they lament the evasiveness of their colleagues in the abortion rights movement.

Just recently, Merle Hoffman, a major voice in the abortion rights movement and founder of Choices, a major center for abortions in New York City, has written a memoir, Intimate Wars. In telling her story, Hoffman calls for her colleagues in the abortion industrial complex to defend abortion as a moral choice.

Abortion is the ultimate act of empowering women, she argues. “The act of abortion positions women at their most powerful, and that is why it is so strongly opposed by many in society,” she asserts.

A central portion of her memoir deals with the abortion rights movement’s attempt to defend abortion in the face of pro-life arguments that the fetus has a right to life.

“The pro-choice movement had to find a way to navigate these narratives,” she explains. “The simplest option was to negate the claims of the opposition. And so many pro-choice advocates claimed that the fetus was not alive, and that abortion was not the act of terminating it. They chose to de-personalize the fetus, to see it as amorphous residue, to say that it was only ‘blood and tissue.’”

As she explains, the pro-life movement thought that, if women really knew what abortion was — the killing of an unborn human being — they would decide to keep their babies. She rejects the argument.

Hoffman argues that women do know what an abortion is. Abortion does stop a beating heart and that it is not “just like an appendectomy.” Her conclusion is that women know that abortion is “the termination of potential life.”

She then makes this statement:

“They knew it, but my patients who made the choice to have an abortion also knew they were making the right one, a decision so vital it was worth stopping that heart. Sometimes they felt a great sense of loss of possibility. In the majority of cases, they felt a great sense of relief and the power that comes from taking responsibility for one’s own life.”

Rarely do we see abortion defended in such unvarnished terms — “a decision so vital it was worth stopping that heart.” Merle Hoffman goes on to explain how she can speak of abortion so directly. She has, she tells us, no conception that life is sacred.

“Abortion is as American as apple pie.” Hoffman made that statement in a recent interview about her book. She laments that abortion is the cause of shame in some women and that shame attaches itself to abortion in the larger culture, even now. In her view, if women would start talking more honestly and directly about their abortions, the shame would be removed and women would discuss their abortions like they speak of “a bikini wax.”

Is Merle Hoffman right? Is abortion “as American as apple pie?” To our great shame, she has a right to make that claim. How can it be refuted when abortion on demand has been legal in this country for almost forty years, when one out of three American women will have an abortion, when within some communities far more babies die by abortion than are born?

In Merle Hoffman, the Culture of Death has found a new voice. Almost forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion remains a central part of the nation’s moral landscape. Over 50 million unborn children have been aborted within the span of just one generation.

A titanic clash of absolutes is taking place in full view, and this clash indicates just how much work remains to be done in the great effort to protect the dignity of every single human life. As those who contend for the sanctity and dignity of each human life try to reach the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens, others are at work as well. If they have their way, Americans will one day openly speak of abortion as nothing more shameful than a bikini wax.

NOTE: I revised the first sentence of the article on advice of medical authorities. Without doubt, abortion has been the most common surgical procedure performed on American adults in some years. This fact was cited in Congressional testimony during the debate over the Obama Administration’s health care proposal. More recently, other surgical procedures may have surpassed abortion in number in some years. The data is drawn from the Guttmacher Institute.

There was violence when conservatives ended slavery, and there will be violence when the American Holocaust ends.

Thread by ReformationFan.

The end of abortion (will not be pretty)

I’ve been reading a fascinating book by economist, Stanford University professor, and Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell called Black Rednecks & White Liberals. In an essay titled “The Real History of Slavery,” Sowell analyzes the complex reasons why most Americans who were morally opposed to slavery did not side with the radical abolitionists. A whole host of reasons stopped good men — including Washington and Jefferson — from supporting any endeavor to simply declare slaves free and release them into the wide world, and foremost among these concerns was the well-being of the slaves themselves.

Thomas Sowell knows things you will never know. Sowell quotes Edmund Burke, the 18th century British philosopher and opponent of the slave trade.

… Burke put the problem, as he put so many other problems, in the context of the inherent constraints of circumstances. While seeing slavery as “an incurable evil,” Burke was concerned with what would happen to the slaves themselves after they were freed, as well as the implications of their freedom for the society around them.

The “minds of men being crippled” by slavery, Burke said, “we must precede the donation of freedom” by developing in the enslaved people the capacity to function as responsible members of a free society…

[N]owhere did Burke view this is an abstract question without considering the social context and the consequences and dangers of that context.

Slavery is almost as old as humanity, and as widespread as the globe. The Islamic world was notorious for its slave trade. Slavs were notoriously slaves. In fact the word “slave” comes from slav. Arabs and North Africans enslaved Europeans, Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Africans enslaved other Africans. Everyone enslaved someone.

(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...

The "new" Doctor Death.

Thread by me.

After the death of Jack , Lawrence Egbert is the new public face of American assisted suicide

Egbert, a slightly built, genial and energetic retired anesthesiologist with a snowy goatee, turns to his computer, his back to me, content to answer an e-mail while I sort through the pile. Once I finish untangling, I hold in my hands a curious plastic sack, about 21 inches long and 18 inches wide. A bunched white elastic strip, reminiscent of a garter, circles the mouth at the open end. A thick plastic tube runs into the sack, stretching 37 inches before branching into a T-shape with 12-inch arms extending from each side of the joint.

Egbert calls it an “exit hood.” It’s a contraption that can end a life in minutes. The 84-year-old doctor, who formerly served as a campus Unitarian Universalist minister and has taught as an assistant visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, offers to explain how it works. The tube connects to two helium tanks, he says. He lifts the hood over his head and lowers the open end, letting go as the garter clamps to his forehead. Then, he says, you release the valves on the tanks, streaming helium into the hood.

“You fill it up until it feels like a New York chef’s hat,” he says, stretching the hood to demonstrate.

Then, he says, you pull the hood down. And he does just that, easing it past his eyes, his nose, his chin, and cinching it even tighter at his neck with a sweatband. His face goes hazy behind the plastic, a blurry image of a man whose life and work are prone to distortions and intrigue. His breath fogs the plastic, but he holds the hood there for a moment, saying something that I can’t quite make out.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Seven years after Terri's murder the Schindlers continue to fight to protect the innocent.

Thread by BykrBayb.

Brother testifies in favor of “Terri Schiavo Day”

by Matt Lacy –

Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo testified on Tuesday in support of a New Hampshire bill proclaiming March 31 of each year as a day to remember Terri Schiavo.

Schiavo, who spent 15 years on a feeding tube, became a focal point over the right to die issue and highlighted the need for individuals to have a living will specifying their wishes..

On February 25, 1990 Schiavo collapsed while at home. After being admitted to the hospital, doctors were unable to determine an exact cause of the collapse, but records indicated she had suffered hypoxic encephalopathy, a brain injury caused by oxygen starvation to the brain. After a few weeks on a ventilator, Schiavo would begin to breathe on her own.

The following year rehabilitation center recorded in their notes in 1991 that Terri was speaking during the physical therapy sessions using words such as “no”, “stop” and “Mommy.”

Eventually a battle would develop between her husband Michael and Terri’s parents. The parents wanted her to receive therapy and Michael who wanted to withdraw her life support which would involve starving her to death.

After working its way through the courts, Terri’s feeding tube was eventually removed. At the time, advocates for the right to die said that there was no pain involved in a death by starvation and dehydration. After 14 days without food and water, Terri Schiavo died on March 31, 2005.

The New Hampshire bill states that “the governor shall annually issue an annual proclamation calling for March 31 as a day to remember the tragic death of Terri Schiavo.”

Bobby Schindler praised State Representatives Jerry Bergervin and Daniel Itse for their sponsorship of the bill.

“My family is truly grateful to see a bill like this to remember my sister, Terri. I continue to be profoundly touched by the people who are deeply impacted by Terri's death. As a nation known for protecting its weakest citizens, we must never forget the inhumane manner in which my sister was deliberately killed and at the same time, recognize there are hundreds of thousands of others like Terri that need our compassion, love and protection."

"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."

As if there is any doubt where Romney really stands on abortion.

Threads by topher and me.

Former Mitt Romney advisor supported compulsory abortion for American women

DUNEDIN, FLORIDA, January 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As polls show Mitt Romney poised to win the Florida primary, some are questioning his wisdom in seeking the advice of a climate scientist who wrote in favor of compulsory abortion for American women.

...

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney asked current Obama administration Science Czar John Holdren for advice on a plan to impose statewide limits on carbon emissions from power plants. President Barack Obama has made a similar proposal as president.

A December 7, 2005, press release states, “In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts. These include John Holden, [sic.] professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy.”

In the 1977 book “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment,” Holdren wrote, “it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.” (Emphasis added.)

(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...

_____________________________________________________________

Mitt Romney skips third pro-life personhood event

WINTER PARK, FLORIDA, February 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – On Saturday, Mitt Romney skipped his third pro-life campaign event hosted by Personhood USA, this time in Florida. Romney’s rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum attended the event, which was simulcast on the organization’s website.

Romney chose not to attend after turning down requests to participate in Personhood USA’s Iowa Tele-Town Hall, and Personhood USA’s Live Presidential Prolife Forum in South Carolina.

While Ron Paul, who was not campaigning in Florida, also did not attend the Florida Personhood forum, he did attend the South Carolina event.

The Iowa Tele-Town Hall was attended by Santorum, Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry.

“Governor Romney was the only Republican presidential candidate who claimed to be pro-life, yet refused to sign Personhood USA’s Personhood Pledge, which quoted and affirmed the Republican Party Platform on abortion,” a press release from Personhood USA said.

Devout Christians are going to persecuted in a manner not seen since the days of Nero.

Thread by The Shrew.

Lincoln bishop: prepare for 'suffering' under HHS mandate

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of LincolnLincoln, Neb., Jan 30, 2012 / 06:14 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics may have to suffer for the integrity of their institutions, Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska announced in his response to the Obama administration's contraception mandate.

“We cannot and will not comply with this unjust decree. Like the martyrs of old, we must be prepared to accept suffering which could include heavy fines and imprisonment,” Bishop Bruskewitz wrote in a letter he ordered to be read at every Sunday Mass in his diocese on Jan. 29.

“Our American religious liberty is in grave jeopardy,” he warned, describing the impact of new rules that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has instituted as part of federal health care reform.

Those rules, confirmed as final on Jan. 20, will require most religious employers to cover contraception and sterilization, including some abortion-causing drugs, in new health care plans. Sebelius has given religious groups an extra year to comply, but rejected calls for a broader exemption clause.

“This means that all of our Catholic schools, hospitals, social service agencies, and the like will be forced to participate in evil,” Bishop Bruskewitz explained.

The bishop recalled that the Church “has pleaded with President Obama to rescind this edict, but all pleas have been met with scorn and have fallen on deaf ears.”

He described Secretary Sebelius as a “bitter fallen-away Catholic,” and called her one-year deadline extension for non-exempt religious employers “an act of mockery” – because, he noted, “during that year, they must 'refer' people to the insurance that covers wicked deeds.”

A proposed U.S. Senate bill, the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” would amend the health care law to let employers opt out of covering some services. Bishop Bruskewitz urged Catholics to call their elected representatives in support of the bill, and to protest the “outrage” of the contraception mandate.

Meanwhile, he said, the faithful should “pray and do penance that this matter may be resolved.”

The bishop of Lincoln was one of a large number of U.S. Church leaders voicing alarm over the weekend, in letters distributed to parishes and read at Mass regarding the Health and Human Services order.

In the Diocese of Phoenix, Catholics heard a message from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who declared that people of faith would not be “made second-class citizens” and “stripped of their God-given rights.”

In Marquette, Michigan, Bishop Alexander K. Sample said that if the rule takes effect, “we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so.”

New Orleans Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond stressed the need for action in his letter to the faithful over the weekend, as he decried the “unprecedented attack on religious liberty” by which the state was “violating our rights to make choices based on our morals and Church teaching.”

Archbishop Aymond is in Rome for meetings with Vatican officials as well as Pope Benedict XVI, who issued his own warning to the U.S. Church just before Health and Human Services finalized the mandate.

In remarks to bishops of the Mid-Atlantic states on Jan. 19, the Pope said all U.S. Catholics must “realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.”

The Bishop's Letter in Total

Office of the Bishop

This letter is to be read at all Masses in the Diocese of Lincoln at which the faithful are present the weekend of January 28-29, 2012. The reading is obligatory and is not to be a substitute for the homily, but is to be read as a part of parish announcements.

+ Fabian W. Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, January 26, 2012.

To the Clergy, Religious, and Faithful Laity of the Diocese of Lincoln:

Beloved in Christ,

The Catholic Bishops of the United States, led by Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, are joining together to call the attention of all Catholics in our country to a serious attack upon our faith, upon our consciences, and upon our cherished freedom of religion. I am happy to join my voice and efforts to these Successors of the Apostles and to protest most strongly against a mandate, not even a duly passed law, issued by the Obama Administration that requires all Catholics in the United States to violate their consciences and support abortion, abortion-causing drugs, contraception and sterilization.

As you know, the buying of health insurance by every citizen of the USA is now compulsory by federal law. The same law gives to the Cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority over all health insurance. The present Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, a bitter fallen-away Catholic, now requires that all insurance, even when issued privately, must carry coverage for evil and grave sin. This means that all of our Catholic schools, hospitals, social service agencies, and the like will be forced to participate in evil. The Catholic Church has pleaded with President Obama to rescind this edict, but all pleas have been met with scorn and have fallen on deaf ears. This mandate is accompanied by new attacks by the federal government on Catholic Relief Services and on the Bishops' work in immigration and refugee settlement services.

Secretary Sebelius, in an act of mockery, said that those who might quality for a conscientious exemption (almost no one), have one year to comply, but during that year they must "refer" people to the insurance that covers wicked deeds. We cannot and will not comply with this unjust decree. Like the martyrs of old, we must be prepared to accept suffering which could include heavy fines and imprisonment. Our American religious liberty is in grave jeopardy.

All Catholic are asked to pray and do penance that this matter may be resolved. All should contact their elected representatives to protest this outrage and to insist on the passage of the "Respect for Conscience" act which is now before Congress.

With my blessing and prayers for all of you and your loved ones, I am

Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus,

The Most Reverend Fabian W. Bruskewitz

Bishop of Lincoln

Of all of Satan's evil plots, NONE has succeeded like eugenics.

Thread by me.

Eugenics, euthanasia and American race improvement

“Passive eugenicide allowed babies deemed “defective” to starve, or be denied medical attention.”

The “Unfit” defined: Eugenics as an instrument of race improvement was inspired by animal husbandry that improved livestock through selective breeding, and culling undesirables from breeding stock. Eugenics sought to apply the principle to human breeding.

Eugenics “ideal” for America’s racial stock was the Nordic blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan. The “unfit” included the “feeble minded,” homosexuals; persons evidencing criminal traits, alcoholism, blindness, deafness, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and a wide range of “mental illnesses.” To eugenicists even “laziness” was understood as a genetic trait to be eliminated from the race.

Also slated for elimination were “emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark- haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.” To secure the racial stock eugenics promoted strengthening existing laws prohibiting sexual contact between whites and non-whites (miscegenation). Race-segregated population centers was another humane option. As regards the Jews, at least in the years before National Socialism in Germany, eugenics promoted anti-immigration laws, which were discussed last week.

But there was another instrument of racial cleansing that, while not formally legal, was still selectively applied.

Euthanasia and the “unfit”: Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population. Point No. 8 was euthanasia.

“The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a ‘lethal chamber,’ public locally operated gas chambers.” Other methods employed, particularly by physicians and other medical practitioners involved allowing the patient to die, “by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency." Passive eugenicide allowed babies deemed “defective” to starve, or be denied medical attention. In 1916 New York urologist William Robinson wrote a widely read eugenics textbook, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics) in which he advocated, “The best thing would be to gently chloroform these children [of the unfit] or to give them a dose of potassium cyanide.”

“[M]any mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln… Other doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.”

On December 6, 2011, Edwin Black testified before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on eugenics. His introductory remarks included the following:

“INTRODUCTION: Preface: I come not as a Democrat or a Republican, nor as an advocate or adversary of the legislation now under consideration but rather as a historian who has chronicled the dark chapters of racist and genocidal eugenics in America and Nazi Germany… My remarks will trace the early 20th Century collusion by government, academia, and tax exempt philanthropic organizations in a county-by-county and state-by-state crusade to eventually eliminate an estimated 90 percent of Americans. The population control and social engineering techniques debated and proffered to legislators included gas chambers, euthanasia, abortion, forced sterilization, confinement, and internal deportation. Many of these techniques were adopted into law, some were debated by legislatures, and some were adopted as de facto policy by governments. Targets were Blacks, Native Americans, Southern Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Hispanics, the poor, criminals, the intellectually unaccepted, the so-called “shiftless,” Appalachian whites with brown hair, and many others. Eventually, American eugenics proliferated its medicalized concept of racial supremacy into Nazi Germany which then emulated and expanded on what the U.S. had done. This was not less than a genocidal movement by the government against its own citizens, done in the name of progress. This movement did not end until the 1970s.

“I attach some in-depth materials for the record to be considered in tandem with my testimony.”

In 1927 the Supreme Court ruled on Virginia’s sterilization law in Buck v. Bell.

Carrie Buck was a patient who was compulsorily sterilized. (Wikipedia)

Carrie Buck was an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Diagnosed “feeble-minded” she was ordered to undergo compulsory sterilization Under Virginias eugenics-inspired Racial Integrity Act. In finding for Virginia United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”(In its infamous 1927 decision upholding states rights regarding eugenic sterilization laws, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." It turns out that Carrie, was not "feeble-minded" at all, but that she had been put away to hide her rape, perpetrated by the nephew of her adoptive mother.”

“Nazis on trial at Nuremberg after World War II cited the influence of American eugenics programs on their policies and mentioned Buck v. Bell in their testimony.” They specifically referred to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in their defense.

Empty poison Zyklon-B canisters, found by the Allies at the end of World War II(Wikipedia).

As we will see in future writings American eugenicists actively trained, funded and, in the end, were envious of Hitler striving for an eugenic society, a genetic ideal, the German Master Race. Which raises questions regarding how far American eugenics would have gone in achieving its own Aryan ideal had the United States not entered the war, or been defeated; had the pro-Nazis Henry Ford or Charles Lindbergh decided to run for president and defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt for president?

"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."

A beautiful story!

Thread by me.

Assisted suicide: I claim the right to live as I am - imperfect

When I was a teenager I was extremely lucky, landing in the middle of a cultural and social revolution. Driving into assembly on the back of a motorbike, having a fling with an unsuspecting English teacher and being desperate to get myself laid at 15 gave me immediate membership to the only club worth joining - the club that was 'the 60s'. Apart from occasional doses of teenage angst, I was what you might call very, ‘alive and kicking’; anything I could kick against, I did. And therein lays the problem - the one about being alive. Consider the figures reported below to be accurate statistics:

In Scotland 69 per cent are in favour of assisted suicide for people suffering from cancer or chronic diseases, while 76 per cent believe that relatives should not be prosecuted for helping.

Well of course they do, because they don’t know either the whole story or the consequences of adopting such a foolhardy policy. Because in the main when you’re young, fit, or thinking you’ll live forever, like I did, you simply want 'it' - that’s death - to go away. If you’ve seen a relative die slowly or lost someone suddenly, then you will know that most palliative care is wanting and that in general people don’t handle death very well in this country.

So where’s ‘the rub’ for someone who thought she’d live forever? Well it came to me late one February night when I sneezed without stopping for several hours. I was in my 30s, working freelance as a dramatherapist and still, I’d like to think, kicking a bit. I’d captured myself a young husband and had a one year old son. By the evening of that very same day I was completely paralysed. Not just a bit - completely.

I couldn’t breathe, speak, shit or scream, only my autonomic organs worked. I was in agony everyday, fully conscious and facing my death. It took me over five months to breathe on my own, six to begin to talk and nearly two years to feed myself without sticking things down my ears.

As I lay there I thought only about being alive. You see that’s the dichotomy about life - when you’re dying you think about living and when you’re living, well, you’re going to die.

That doesn’t mean planning it for the sake of convenience or because there are those in society who find age and disability abhorrent and want to escape it at any cost. Rather like the Royal College of Physicians who planned to get rid of 6,000 ‘minimally conscious’ people but were halted in their tracks by Judge Baker during the ’M’ case. I will not pay that cost with my life.

I claim the right to live as I am, imperfect. I claim the right for others like me to live, despite it all and because of it all. I know what it’s like to be truly alone on a sea of pain and to have someone discuss your future, your place in society.

I know what it would be like if you knew that euthanasia was possible and that was your fate. Death is the undiscovered country; some, for bent love, good intentions or money would have you take the trip. Don’t take it.

So, to Margo MacDonald and to her followers who once chose to leave rather than stay and listen to us I say, "If it was down to you I wouldn’t be here."

So Margo, for you: I’m still kicking.

The Darwinists can protest all they want, but their legacy is pure evil.

Threads by ProgressingAmerica and me.

Birth Control and Eugenics are identical - Margaret Sanger

In an article titled "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda" in the Birth Control Review, Margaret Sanger wrote the following:(Page 43)

The eugenic and civilizational value of Birth Control is becoming apparent to the enlightened and the intelligent. In the limited space of the present paper, I have time only to touch upon some of the fundamental convictions that form the basis of our Birth Control propaganda, and which, as I think you must agree, indicate that the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of Eugenics.

I have made it a point to immerse myself in the history of progressivism so that I could demonstrate and display it for others, but eugenics is one of those things that's so profoundly evil that it leaves me absent for words. Nearly the entirety of the second half of this short article is quotable:

The almost universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one of the most hopeful signs that the masses themselves today possess the divine spark of regeneration. It remains for the courageous and the enlightened to answer this demand, to kindle the spark, to direct a thorough education in Eugenics based upon this intense interest.
Birth Control propaganda is thus the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator. In answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands of submerged mothers, it is possible to use this interest as the foundation for education in prophylaxis, sexual hygiene, and infant welfare. The potential mother is to be shown that maternity need not be slavery but the most effective avenue toward self-development and self-realization. Upon this basis only may we improve the quality of the race.
As an advocate of Birth Control, I wish to take advantage of the present opportunity to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the "unfit" and the "fit", admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit though less fertile parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.
Birth Control is not advanced as a panacea by which past and present evils of dysgenic breeding can be magically eliminated. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism.
But to prevent the repetition, to effect the salvation of the generations of the future–nay of the generations of today–our greatest need is first of all the ability to face the situation without flinching, and to cooperate in the formation of a code of sexual ethics based upon a thorough biological and psychological understanding of human nature; and then to answer the questions and the needs of the people with all the intelligence and honesty at our command. If we can summon the bravery to do this, we shall best be serving the true interests of Eugenics, because our work will then have a practical and pragmatic value.

Birth control is the sacrament of eugenics.

_______________________________________________________________

Darwinism the root of the culture of death: expert

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common?

All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored.

Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.”

Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele, who infamously experimented on Jews during the Holocaust, Hitler himself, and other Nazi leaders as devotees of Darwinism who saw Nazism and the extermination of peoples as nothing more than a way “to advance evolution.” Darwinism was also the “foundation” of Communist ideology in Russia through Vladimir Lenin, said Owen, who showed a photograph of the only decorative item found on Lenin’s desk: an ape sitting on a pile of books, including Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and looking at a skull.

“Lenin sat at this desk and looked at this sculpture as he authorized the murder of millions of his fellow countrymen, because they stood in the way of evolutionary progress,” Owen said. He also said accounts from communist China report that the first lesson used by the new regime to indoctrinate religious Chinese citizens was “always the same: Darwin.”

In America, the fruit of Darwinism simply took the form of eugenics, the belief that the human race could be improved by controlling the breeding of a population.

Owen said that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a prominent eugenicist, promoted contraception on the principles of evolution. “She saw contraception as the sacrament of evolution, because with contraception we get rid of the less fit and we allow only the fit to breed,” he said. Sanger is well-known to have supported the spread of “birth control,” a term she coined, as “the process of weeding out the unfit.”

Alfred Kinsey, whose “experiments” in pedophilia, sadomasochism, and homosexuality opened wide the doors to sexual anarchy in the 20th century, also concluded from Darwinist principles that sexual deviations in humans were no more inappropriate than those found in the animal kingdom. Before beginning his sexual experiments, Kinsey, also a eugenicist, was a zoologist and author of a prominent biology textboook that promoted evolution.

Owen, a Roman Catholic, strongly rejected the notion that Christianity and the Biblical creation account could be reconciled with Darwinism. He recounted the story of his own father, who he said was brought up a devout Christian before losing his faith when exposed to Darwinism in college. He was to become the first ever Secretary General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

“The trajectory that led from Leeds and Manchester University to becoming Secretary General of one of the most evil organizations that’s ever existed on the face of the earth started with evolution,” said Owen.

The Obama Regime's entire agenda has been about killing the innocent.

Thread by Salvation.

Pro-Abortion Fingerprints on HHS Mandate

Here's a shocker. In drafting the infamous contraception regulation, and the subsequent compromise, there apparently was little or no input from the pro-life community, but plenty of guidance from the pro-abortion crowd. Amazing.

As you know, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its mandate, requiring religious institutions, such as religious schools and hospitals, to include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception in their insurance policies for employees. A so-called "accommodation" was then issued. The fact is both the mandate and compromise violate the deeply held religious beliefs of millions of Americans.

In testimony before a Congressional panel, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) questioned HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who admitted that she never sought the input of Catholic Bishops, who opposed the mandate and the so-called "accommodation" announced days later.

"I did not speak to the Catholic bishops," Sebelius said. But when pressed about whether pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL participated in advance, Sebelius said she would "assume some of those groups were talked to."

It's worth watching this exchange by Sen. Hatch, a stalwart defender of religious freedom, and Sebelius, who admitted the measure was never reviewed or analyzed by attorneys at the Justice Department. You can view it here.

So, Sebelius assumes the pro-abortion groups were consulted in advance. It turns out that it's more than just an assumption. LifeNews is reporting that a pro-life group has discovered that the committee that made the recommendation to the Obama Administration concerning the flawed mandate was dominated by pro-abortion organizations. Members of Planned Parenthood. NARAL. National Organization of Women.

Disappointing, but not surprising.

This revelation comes as testimony on Capitol Hill continued today about this troubling measure that violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise of Religion Clause as well as the conscience rights of millions of Americans. Dr. William Thierfelder, president of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Gastonia, North Carolina, called the measure a "morally objectionable" mandate. As the college president put it: "We’re not trying to enforce our beliefs on anybody . . . What we’re asking is that we’re not coerced into violating our beliefs."

More than 60,000 Americans already have signed on to our petition to demand that this mandate and compromise be reversed. You can add your name now.

A government that will not support the most vulnerable is an unjust government.

We will NEVER forget Terri!

Thread by me.

Wesley J. Smith: Terri Schiavo Law As It Really Happened

Yesterday, I bemoaned the latest historical revisionism about the passage of the federal law to protect Terri Schiavo. I am so sick of the pretense that it was a Republican theocratic game–when in reality, it was a very bipartisan bill choreographed through passage by the leaders of both parties–that I decided to become an accurate history writer. From “Obama and Santorum Agreed on Terri Schiavo Law” in the Daily Caller:

Newt Gingrich likes to write “alternate history” novels, such as “Gettysburg,” in which the South wins the epochal battle that in the real world saved the Union. Such fantasies are harmless fun because everyone knows they merely are a game of let’s play pretend. But some historical revisionism is politically pernicious. Case in point: Now that Rick Santorum has emerged as a credible candidate for the Republican nomination for president, some in the media and the Democratic Party are weaving a blatantly false narrative about the passage of the 2005 federal law intervening in the Terri Schiavo case. Supposedly, the alleged religious fanatic Rick Santorum — he wants to outlaw contraception, don’t you know! — along with Republican theocratic coconspirators, overcame courageous Democrats’ objections to pass a law interfering with a husband’s loving quest to give his wife the merciful release.
But that isn’t even close to what happened seven years ago. In actuality, the Schiavo law was one of the most bipartisan laws passed during the entire Bush presidency.

I get into the details of why the law was proposed and note, as I did yesterday here and have repeatedly in other forums, that the bill received unanimous consent in the Senate, allowing it to be passed by voice vote without a quorum. I didn’t write this, but behind the scense–I know because I was hip deep in the whole debacle–some liberal senators were active drivers of the law, for example Tom Harkin.

The House of Representatives showed the bipartisan nature the bill’s support:

Of course, it takes two houses of Congress to tango. So, in the House of Representatives, it was all Republican theocrats all of the time, right? Wrong. The New York Times reported at the time that leaders of both parties “negotiated the final [terms of the] bill.” Moreover, the Democratic leadership did not take an “official position” for or against the measure, surely an odd thing if the country was facing The Attack of the Theocrats. Most notably, because of the emergency nature of the bill, it needed 2/3 of the members voting to pass — meaning it would be very difficult for the Republicans to enact the bill without Democratic help.

And they got that help:

The bill passed by 203-58. As in the Senate, the actual vote demonstrates that few Democratic members saw the bill as an assault on American freedom at the time. How else can you explain the fact that 102 Democrats were so unconcerned — or less charitably, just unsure which way the political wind would blow — that they didn’t vote at all. (Seventy-one Republicans took the same easy way out, including Texas Representative Ron Paul.) Of the 100 Democrats who did vote, 47 voted yea and 53 nay — meaning that in total, only 25% of the House caucus actually voted against the bill. Supporters included such notable Democrats as Jesse Jackson Jr., the powerful James Oberstar and Tennessean Harold Ford.

I describe how I think both sides of the argument came from places of integrity and honor. I then describe the genesis of the revisionism:

When polls showed in the wake of Terri’s death that most Americans opposed the federal law, suddenly the Democrats started finger-pointing. In a breathtaking example of rank opportunism, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean — who had remained silent when the bill was up for a vote — declared Democrats intended to make the law a partisan issue in the 2006 election, as if his own elected officials hadn’t been full participants in the process.

I point out that Obama said in a 2008 debate that allowing the Schiavo Law through was his biggest mistake, and conclude:

One can believe Congress was right or wrong in passing the Terri Schiavo law. But no one should be allowed to rewrite history for rank partisan advantage. Those who now decry the law as an outrageous Republican power play are about as factual as Gingrich’s novel is about the Battle of Gettysburg. But Gingrich was just having fun. The history revisers are dancing a political jig on Terry Schiavo’s grave.

Facts (still) matter.

"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."

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