She meant that she was repulsed by having to be shown the reality that abortion is murder.
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Live births:63% |
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TEEN PREGNANCY |
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Live births:52% References for information contained above are available at |
In Virginia, 147,310 of the 1,580,350 women of childbearing age become pregnant each year. 63% of these pregnancies result in live births and 23% in abortions.
Virginia's teenage pregnancy rate ranks 26th nationally. Of the 19,040 teen pregnancies each year in Virginia, 52% result in live births and 34% result in abortions.
Legislators deal with very few true life or death issues ..... abortion is one of them ...... and there is no decision ever more important than one that has life or death consequences. This man's priorities are severely skewed.
There should be three mandatory places every congressman and senator should be required to visit and be briefed on the events that transpire at them (and the consequences of those events) - it should be a law - a requirement to serve in these offices:
#1: An abortion clinic to see an acutal abortion and view the aborted fetus.
#2: An aids clinic to see dying AIDS patients and the results of the homosexual lifestyle.
#3: A morgue in a large city that collects homeless unclaimed bodies so they can see the pitiful condition of a society that no longer cares about the value of life or the concept of loving one's neighbor as they would love themself.
Mission accomplished.
His message to legislators was clear: ``I want each one of them to know what they're talking about when we talk about killing children. ... It's my belief that abortion is going to end in America within 10 years.''
I hope and pray...
Pro-Life libertarian FReegards...MUD
Feb 06, 2003
 Some state senators were not happy to receive a plastic fetus with a letter asking, "Would you kill this child?" (BOB BROWN) |
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Some Virginia state senators are complaining about an anti-abortion letter from Del. Richard H. Black that included a small plastic doll Black said was the size of an 11-week-old fetus.
"Would you kill this child?" asked Black in the accompanying letter dated Feb. 3 sent to all 40 senators.
Black, R-Loudoun, is sponsor of a number of anti-abortion bills that are poised for passage in a General Assembly session that has dealt with an unprecedented amount of legislation on that issue.
"Abortionists kill most babies at this stage of development," Black wrote in the letter. "The struggling infants are chemically scalded or slashed apart with jagged knives. They receive no pain killers and experience excruciating pain and terror during the final moments of life."
Black's "in your face" anti-abortion tactics were not sitting well with some legislators who feel he crossed the line.
"I think this is an assault on the decorum of the General Assembly," said Sen. Leslie L. Byrne, D-Fairfax.
"I could send around gory photos of women before Roe v. Wade. I am not going to do that. I think this creates a hostile work environment for the people who have to open this."
Roe v. Wade is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Before then, say abortion-rights supporters, women sometimes died or were maimed by illegal, botched abortions.
Byrne said she had filed complaints with the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee and with the Senate clerk about Black's letter and doll. An employee in the Senate clerk's office confirmed getting complaints from two senators.
"This is the most inappropriate thing I've seen since I've been in the General Assembly," said Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax. He showed reporters the doll and letter during a news conference by Democratic legislators who support abortion rights.
"It's unfortunate that this is where this thing has gone to," Saslaw said. "The people who saw this were pretty repulsed by it. I don't know any other way you can describe it."
Black, asked later about the letter, said his office sends out the little plastic babies all the time.
"What I did was take a little model of a baby - it's a first-trimester baby - and I sent that because I want each one of them to know what they are talking about when they talk about killing children," said Black, surrounded by reporters when he walked into the state Capitol yesterday.
The abortion discussions can get clinical, he said. "But you see the child, and all of a sudden you say, 'This is what we are doing. We are killing children like this,'" he said.
He was unapologetic about his efforts to see abortion outlawed, with Virginia leading the way, and compared the anti-abortion drive to the civil-rights movement.
"Years ago, I was involved as a teenager in trying to break down segregation," he said. Segregation was accepted, then the tide started to turn.
"You can see, at a certain point, it was all coming unglued," he said. "I am sensing that on the abortion issue."
He said there was nothing improper about his use of state letterhead, which Saslaw questioned.
With Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, legislators this session have approved anti-abortion measures that have been defeated in years past.
Approved bills include legislation that would ban what abortion opponents call "partial-birth infanticide" and legislation that would require girls younger than 18 to get a parent's consent before they could get an abortion. Virginia already has a law requiring minors to notify a parent or other responsible adult before getting an abortion but does not require permission.
Bills approved by the House or Senate are now before the other body for consideration.
The infanticide and parental-consent bills appear to have enough votes to withstand a veto by Gov. Mark R. Warner, who has expressed concerns about the legislation. He vetoed a parental-consent bill last year.
Democratic critics of the bills say legislators who in the past have been more moderate on the issue, are switching sides out of fear of election-year losses. All seats in the House and Senate are up for re-election this year.
"A great deal of what is going on is due to redistricting," said Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple, D-Arlington.
"There are very few competitive districts. If you don't have a competitive district, then the biggest threat is from somebody in your own party wanting to get a nomination."
Women are not up in arms over the legislation, Saslaw said, because they erroneously feel they have protections in the courts.
"That is one vote away in the Supreme Court from being yanked," Saslaw said.
Also posted here: Republican sends Senate members plastic fetus doll
He's up for re-election this November. Please support a true conservative.
Feb 11, 2003
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Delegate Richard Black produced the intensity of reaction he perhaps wanted last week when he mailed small plastic fetuses to the 40 members of the State Senate. Along with the fetuses he sent a letter asking, "Would you kill this child?" Abortionists, he wrote, "kill most babies at this stage of development," and he added some graphic descriptive language about what happens in an abortion.
If Black harbored the foolish hope that he would change the minds of lawmakers who do not share his anti-abortion views, he surely was disappointed. Those who vehemently oppose abortion seem epidemically tone-deaf in this regard - witness the anti-abortionists who display posters with photos of mutilated fetuses in public; even those sympathetic to their cause take offense at their tactics. Several lawmakers took offense at Black's. State Senator Leslie Byrne called the mailing an "assault on the decorum of the General Assembly" that created a "hostile work environment." Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw said those who received it were "pretty repulsed."
The interesting question is: Why?
POWERFUL, often discomfiting or disturbing imagery is used in advocacy all the time. Charitable organizations broadcast images of emaciated children to encourage contributions. Health organizations publicize pictures of rotted gums and burnt-out lungs to discourage tobacco use. Animal-rights organizations disseminate images of animals tortured in scientific experiments or cruelly confined in factory-farming operations. Those opposed to war promulgate pictures of war's horrific consequences: Look what Lyndon Johnson did to Barry Goldwater with a negative ad showing a mushroom cloud. Those hoping to inform and enlighten the public about genocide show pictures of corpses by the hundreds.
News organizations actually hand out awards for disturbing or discomfiting images. Recent Pulitzer Prizes for spot-news photography have gone to those who captured on film the September 11 attacks, the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, the embassy bombing in Kenya and Tanzania, the conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi, and so forth.
On the other hand, there is a line almost no one crosses. Human-rights activists have publicized the barbarity known as female genital mutilation - but not with photographs. Children's advocates fight child abuse and child pornography - but do not broadcast images of children being violated. The savages who beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl made a videotape of the act - but the media did not play it. (Ms. Byrne says she could "send around gory photos of women before Roe v. Wade" - but she won't.)
Black's little plastic fetus, however, does not rank anywhere near such material. It is not a grotesquerie. It looks nothing even like the photos of aborted fetuses on anti-abortionist posters. Asked why the innocuous thing gave such offense, Ms. Byrne says Black should have given "some thought to what [such a package] does to the staff" who open the mail. She objects to Black's use of inter-office mail, saying he should have delivered the object in person instead of taking "the cowardly way out." Which does not really answer the question. And given the tenor of this year's session, her complaint about assaulting the decorum of the Senate sounds a bit like "Fear Factor" host Joe Rogan defending the dignity of the contestants. (Saslaw did not return a phone call.)
Advocates use props all the time to underscore points at the Assembly. A few days ago a lobbyist for the Restaurant Association brought a bottle of liquor and a gun to a committee hearing, and no one said boo. So again - why the bitterness over a plastic trinket?
HERE'S A GUESS.
Pro-abortion advocates cloak their arguments in the language of choice, and defend women's autonomy - "Keep your laws off my body." (This column's policy view on abortion resembles that regarding gangsta rap: It's something difficult to abide but wrong to outlaw.) The more extreme activists will not even use the term "fetus," but refer merely to the "product of conception." Feminist author Naomi Wolf, writing in The New Republic some years ago, asserted that "many pro-choice advocates developed a language to assert that the fetus isn't a person, and this, over the years, has developed into a lexicon of dehumanization." For this she was nearly read out of the sisterhood. Pro-abortionists seek to minimize as much as possible any discussion of what, precisely, is being aborted. Solzhenitsyn called such behavior in another context "the desire not to know."
Yet pro-abortionists can't hide the truth - especially today, when ultrasound can give the expectant mother a picture from inside her womb. And sometimes, by accident or design, they acknowledge the reality of abortion, as when Planned Parenthood's Grace Sparks said women who have chosen abortion "have made an incredibly difficult decision." The statement constitutes an admission that "keep your laws off my body" does not cover the moral complexity of the situation. There's another body involved, and that's what Black's little plastic fetuses make graphically clear.
But do legislators need graphic reminders? (Planned Parenthood's former lobbyist Karen Raschke used to think so; she was rarely seen without a small gold coat-hanger dangling from her necklace.) Black said that in sending around his little plastic fetuses, he was merely giving his colleagues the truth. "I want each one of them to know what they are talking about when they talk about killing children," he said - as if none of them ever had taken a health class in school, or had been pregnant or fathered a child, or had given any thought to the subject at all before receiving his mailing.
In short, Black delivered a truth that some find uncomfortable, that a few have a strong investment in not acknowledging - and that everyone already knows. Unlike Pulitzer Prize-winning photos, his dolls offered no new insight, information, or understanding. He condescendingly acted like Moses bringing the tablets down from Mount Sinai, when in reality he was a tardy mailman bringing yesterday's disquieting news. The result was to generate a great deal of heat, but no additional light.
RTD
