On April 3, 2008, state authorities carried-out an armed raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) facility in Eldorado, Texas.  They were acting on suspicions that some members of this religious sect were sexually exploiting children and others were concealing it. 

Before long, the State of Texas had taken custody of more than 400 children and isolated them from their parents.  Now, even the most ardent defenders of this action are conceding that the evidence being acted upon may turn out to be a little flimsy and the roundup overly broad.  Time will be the judge of that.  My suspicion is that unless mass indictments are eventually returned, the State of Texas is going to have a lot of explaining to do.    

Obviously, any decent person understands that society has an obligation to protect children against sexual predators.  They also have an obligation to act against adults who fail to protect children against sexual predators.  In fact, that is the most common justification given for separating the children in the Eldorado raid from their parents. 

If this all turns out to be legitimate, I say drop the parents in jail right along side the perps.  They deserve each other.  But I also want to know why everyone suspected of being involved in the cover-up of child sexual abuse are not the targets of such investigations.  

As you may recall, we conducted a three-month undercover investigation in which we recorded over 800 calls to Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities across America – including Texas.  Our female caller portrayed a 13-year-old girl who was pregnant by an adult and wanted an abortion in order to hide the illegal sexual relationship from her parents and the authorities.  On the tapes, many of the clinic workers are heard telling the caller that this situation was unlawful and that they were legally mandated to report it to the state.  However, even after acknowledging this, 91% of the 800 facilities contacted agreed to illegally conceal it.  Representatives of these organizations—often operating on tax dollars—routinely instructed a child who they believed to be a sexual assault victim to:

• lie about or conceal her age

• lie about or conceal the age of the man who impregnated her

• participate in illegal activity in order to circumvent the state’s parental notification law

• use a fictitious name, phone number or address when she came to the facility

• keep the situation hidden by altering what she would say when she came to the facility

• be more careful about what information she gave out and to whom

Many clinic representatives told the caller that they deal with this situation “all the time” and that the advice they were giving her is the way they normally handle it.  Any way you cut it, we caught these people red-handed.  The tapes from our investigation prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation are running a nationwide pedophile protection racket.  To read our complete report on this issue, take your blood pressure medicine and go to ChildPredators.com.

The reality is, we have an epidemic of child sexual abuse in this country.  The most reliable studies show that among girls 15 and younger who get pregnant in the United States, 60% to 80% are impregnated by adults.  We also know that 15 to 19 year old girls have the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the country and that the majority were contracted from adult men.  The evidence goes on and on but it always leads to the same conclusion.  Underage girls are being sexually abused at a rate that is unprecedented in American history.         

I would also point out that facilities which offer pregnancy tests, STD treatments, birth control and abortions are, by far, the most common places these girls are going to show up.  So while the situation in Eldorado affects only a tiny fraction of the potential child sexual abuse victims in America, Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities see them by the tens-of-thousands every year.  Yet we have been spectacularly unsuccessful in getting law enforcement to investigate the undeniable fact that these two organizations are openly flaunting every state’s mandatory reporting laws.  As amazing as it sounds, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions, when pro-lifers bring this up to the authorities – they threaten the pro-lifers!  What we have discovered is that most law enforcement agencies in this country are simply afraid of the abortion lobby. 

The bottom line is, America’s epidemic of child sexual abuse is a national disgrace and the response of law enforcement to it is a scandal.  I challenge anyone to show me the difference between an adult who chooses to ignore the sexual abuse of children in the FLDS facility, and the law enforcement official who chooses not to enforce laws designed to protect children who end up at Planned Parenthood or the National Abortion Federation.  Like I said, it’s a national scandal.

Musing 1

So now, we are being asked to buy Barack Obama’s loopy explanation that he had no idea his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, sometimes threw racist hate-filled tantrums in the pulpit.  Of course, Obama is lying through his teeth and even his most ardent supporters would have to be dumb as a box of rocks not to see it. 

But let’s play stupid for a moment and say that what he is claiming is true.  That means he is telling us that he is so oblivious to the world around him that he can be a member of a church for 20 years and not know about the bizarre antics of the preacher.  But at the same time, he wants us to believe that he is bright enough to run the most complex nation on earth with the world’s largest economy and most powerful military.

This guy needs to pick a lie and stick to it.   

Unfortunately, I think these kind of distractions are causing us to miss the most important issue of all.  There are many people who are certain that Obama is some sort of undercover Muslim and many more who think that Wright is a racist who hates America.  While those things may or may not be true, what is undeniably true is that both claim to be Christians when, in fact, they are both heretics.  And that, my friends, it is the real problem.   

Musing 2

Congress recently hauled in the leaders of the nation’s largest oil companies to discuss the skyrocketing price of gasoline.  You could characterize this hearing as a collection of dimwits who couldn’t run a lemonade stand “investigating” the practices of some of the world’s largest financial institutions. 

Interestingly, while these buffoons were grandstanding in front of the cameras about “obscene” profits in the oil industry, nothing was said about the fact that on every gallon of gas sold in the United States, the government makes several times what the oil companies make.  In other words, if “Big Oil” agreed to sell gasoline at no profit, that would not save nearly as much money as it would if Congress reduced the “obscene” taxes on gasoline.  Of course, we all know that’s not happening.  Getting between Congress and a taxpayer’s wallet is like getting between a hog and the slop bucket.  

But what I do want to know is this: when is Congress going to hold hearings on why Planned Parenthood – a multi-national non-profit corporation with about a billion dollars in assets – made more that 60 million dollars profit last year and is still getting over 300 million dollars a year in taxpayer money?  You can bet the family farm that Planned Parenthood’s return-on-investment percentage is significantly higher than Exxon’s and Mobil’s combined.  So why isn’t Congress getting their panties in a wad over those obscene profits?              

Musing 3 

Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, is being rotated over a low flame for saying that Barack Obama would not be where he is if he was not black.  The interesting thing is, no one came forward to argue whether she was right or not.  The statement alone was enough to brand her a racist, set-off the obligatory media floggings, and force her out of Hillary Clinton’s staff.   

There is a beautiful irony in this.  The intellectual disease of political correctness that currently infects American culture, was invented and unleashed by godless liberals exactly like Ferraro.  For years, these people have painted this image of conservatives and the Christian Right as neo-Nazis and the Republican convention as little more than a four-day Klan rally.  And now, like Frankenstein’s monster, this political correctness has turned on one of its masters.

Ferraro’s response was to look wounded on national television and moan about being unjustifiably castigated.  In the future, perhaps she should remember the saying, “If you’re going to swim with sharks, don’t bleed.”  Apparently, that advice is sometimes even appropriate for those who released the sharks in the first place.

As for me, all I can say about the Ferraro incident is, “Ya’ gotta’ love it!” 

Musing 4

Hillary (Rambo) Clinton continues to whine that the media is so infatuated with Obama that it is not treating her fairly.  For example, she claims that Obama’s “Pastor Disaster” got less media scrutiny than did her preposterous yarn about having to dodge a hail of sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. 

My advice, Rambo, is to get over yourself.  No two people in American history have benefited more from the corruption and bias of the media than you and Slick Willy.  Sure, the media may be off the reservation right now, but we all know that if you figure out some way to steal the nomination, they’ll come slinking back.   

Musing 5

Speaking of Hillary, did you catch her ad against Obama in which she asked voters who they would want answering the White House phone at three in the morning if an international crisis had occurred?  It was pretty effective in drawing attention to Obama’s inexperience, but if she gets the nomination I think it could backfire in the general election.  First, if experience is the yardstick, wouldn’t McCain blow Hillary out of the water?  And second, the American people surely realize that if Hillary’s on the White House phone at 3am, it probably won’t be because of some international meltdown.  The most likely scenario will be that she is calling the local topless bars trying to get the name of the pole-dancer who took Bill home with her.        

Musing 6

Returning to Obama for a moment, he recently stated that if one of his teenage daughters got pregnant he would not want them to be “punished” with a child.  He even equated an unplanned child to a sexually transmitted disease.  The pro-life movement’s angry response to this is certainly understandable given that anyone with even a shred of human decency would be outraged at classifying children as “punishment.”  

This episode exemplifies the fact that Barack Obama is evil to his core and, as time goes on, the public is going to become increasingly aware of it.  However, it also brings up what I have always believed is a dirty little secret of contemporary American society. 

We long ago reached the point where science and technology made it impossible to deny the humanity of the unborn.  So the question becomes, why didn’t that settle the abortion debate once and for all? 

There are many explanations for that and one of them is as simple as it is ugly.  As we all know, whenever we start calling for a ban on abortion, a significant number of people will immediately want to talk about the need for exceptions in cases like rape, incest, fetal deformity, etcetera.  But this is a smokescreen that conceals the real agenda.  Sadly, because of the general moral collapse of our country, the most powerful interest in America today is self-interest.  And what the public really wants is for any legal prohibitions against abortion to have a “My Daughter” exception.  They just don’t have the guts to admit it so they camouflage it with phony compassion. 

Musing 7

Has anyone else noticed that (a) many, if not most, of the people being touted as John McCain’s potential running mate are pro-aborts and (b) McCain is saying nothing about what he would do to stop the slaughter of the unborn?   

I have said it before and I will say it again.  America’s politicians are never going to take the pro-life movement seriously until we set some new ground rules.  First, we have to make it clear to these people that we are going to be single-issue voters with a litmus test.  Second, they must also be told that we have no interest in what they “feel” or “think” or “believe” about abortion.  The only thing we want to know is what they intend to do to stop it.  And we are not going to settle for some meaningless political gibberish about “reducing the need for abortion” or “lowering the unwanted pregnancy rate” or “creating a culture of life,” etcetera.  That tap-dance has gone on long enough.

The time has come for us to understand that even the noblest rhetoric is no help for the unborn child whose skull is locked in the abortionist’s forceps.  That will only stop when we demand that pro-life votes must be earned through pro-life actions.  Until the unborn are safe, sending that message is the duty of every pro-lifer.

After the media declared John McCain the Republican nominee, two very revealing things happened.  First, Mike Huckabee gave a concession speech that was not only gracious but inspiring.  About midway through, he began to talk about the issues he considered to be the most important ones facing our country.  The first one he mentioned was protecting the right to life of the unborn.  Later in the evening, Senator McCain took to the air to acknowledge his victory.  Like Huckabee, he also gave a laundry list of what he considers the important issues of the day.  But unlike Huckabee, he never once mentioned the plight of the unborn.    

McCain’s cold indifference should serve as a reminder to the pro-life movement of why it is so abysmally foolish for us to put any faith in the Republican Party.  To begin with, the gated-community, limousine liberals who control the GOP have no interest in the abortion issue. These people are motivated by money and self-interest, and there is simply no money or self-interest in saving babies.  Over the years, their attitude toward the pro-life movement is roughly the same as it would be toward a cockroach they might step on during a 3am trip to the bathroom.

Additionally, even if they were interested in the abortion battle, they are totally unsuited for it.  Since the day this struggle began, it has never been an ivory-tower debate by people in plaid smoking jackets with elbow patches.  And it never will be.  Instead, it is the political equivalent of a brawl in a waterfront bar.  The problem is, while McCain is indeed a war hero, the Republican Party as a whole is made up of a bunch of guys whose mammas used to dress them for college.  On a fraternity dare, they might go into a waterfront bar, but when the first punch is thrown the only thing you can be certain of is that you’re about to hear the unmistakable pitter-patter of fine leather wingtips stampeding toward the door.

On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of fight their opponents relish.  It is hardly a secret that, since the 1960s, the Democrat Party has devolved into a political sanctuary for every brand of godless pervert, social misfit and moral degenerate in America.  Naturally, this is reflected in the kind of candidates they run for office.  In a political bar fight, they are completely amoral people who will lie, cheat, steal, or wallow in the filthiest cesspool if that’s what it takes to win.  In a nutshell, they are the kind of scorched-earth activists who scare the Republicans to death.   

The point is, the Democrats are almost always wrong on social issues and will fight to the death for them, while the Republicans are generally right on the issues but don’t care enough to fight.  Of course, in both cases, the results for the unborn are the same.     

If my fellow pro-lifers want to support McCain as some sort of lesser-of-evils salvage operation, so be it.  But right now, the pro-life movement needs to be real clear about one thing.  Whoever wins in November, it won’t be us.  We’ve already lost.  My suggestion is that we not wait around until after the election to acknowledge that fact.  This is not the time to put the pro-life effort on hold; it is the time to decide how we are going to proceed.  Over 3000 babies are dying every day and they can’t afford for us to be patient.  At this moment, our job is to figure out how to stop the killing without any help from the Republican Party.  The good news is, for the last 35 years we’ve been proving that we can do just that.  We just didn’t realize it.

If the last 35 years have proven nothing else, they have at least shown that, in the American political arena, the pro-life movement is the cheapest date in town.  

The system works something like this.  Along about election time, we can always expect a call from the nation's political hacks - mostly Republicans.  They don't really like being seen in public with us, but if they want to get elected they don't have a choice.  So they kiss us on the ear and whisper how much they love us.  But, they promise nothing and we demand nothing because we know our place.  So once our election-cycle dream date is over, we go back and dutifully wait by the phone until they want us again.  And as this pathetic act is repeated every couple of years, the killing continues.

I think the time has come for the pro-life movement to set some new ground rules.  We can start by making it clear that the days are over when politicians can finesse the abortion issue by giving us their philosophical position.  Our new instruction to these people should be that we have no interest in what they “feel” or “think” or “believe” about abortion.  None.  All we want to know is (a) do they believe that an unborn child is a “person” from the moment of fertilization and, thus, entitled to have his or her life protected by the Constitution and (b) if so, what is their plan to return legal protection to every one of these children?”

That’s it!  That’s all we want to hear.  Anyone who answers the first question with anything other than an unapologetic and unqualified “Yes” is not pro-life.  As for the second question, we instantly dismiss any response that mentions “reducing the need for abortion” or “lowering the unwanted pregnancy rate” or “creating a culture of life,” etcetera.  We bought that sort of mealy-mouthed political gibberish in the past, but no more. 

If you think I am off base for saying that a politician's “position” on abortion is meaningless, consider this.  If you went into a state penitentiary and interviewed every serial rapists incarcerated there, you would find that a significant number would tell you that rape is wrong and that they understood so when they did it.  We also know that a certain percentage of these same people would rape again if released.  So obviously, what they “believe” about rape does not affect their actions and, in the end, that’s all that matters to the victims.        

That same dynamic applies here.  What politicians “believe” about abortion doesn't help the unborn until it becomes action.  Look at it this way, if the economy was in the tank, we would not allow a politician to simply tell us that he “believes” in a sound economy.  We'd demand to know what his plan is for fixing it.  It’s time we insisted on at least that much for the unborn. 

The next thing we need to do is inform these politicians that we are going to be single issue voters.  Simply put, when a candidate is wrong on the slaughter of helpless children, his or her position on other issues is irrelevant.  For too long, the pro-life movement has bought the lie that we should not have litmus tests.  That is nonsense.  There are many perfectly legitimate litmus tests and anyone who claims not to have any is either lying or is devoid of personal convictions.      

Think about it.  A politician could be attractive, intelligent, experienced and have all the right answers to the important issues of the day, but if he was found to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, that would certainly be a litmus test.  If it were discovered that a fully qualified politician had written a law review article saying women should not be allowed to vote, that too would be a litmus test.  You can also bet that if a politician said that the terrorists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center had legitimate reasons for doing so, his or her position on other issues would be irrelevant.  Actually, if you really want to understand about litmus tests and single-issue voting, imagine that a politician admitted that his primary reason for seeking office was to raise taxes on every voter?  Do you honestly think this person could be “right enough” on every other issue to make up for that?      

The point is, if we are serious about protecting the unborn, this is the standard we must start demanding for the politicians we support.  And that is true even when the political office being sought is unrelated to abortion.  If we truly believe that abortion is the intentional execution of helpless children, we must also acknowledge that any politician who is pro-choice is not morally qualified to be dogcatcher.

The foundation of the pro-life position is that, from the moment of fertilization, a new human being exists and has the same right to life as a 5-year-old or a 50-year-old.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems plaguing the pro-life movement today is that so many of our people don't appear to actually believe that.  For me, this was reinforced at a speech I gave recently.  In the “meet and greet” session beforehand, someone came up to me and mentioned that he was a long-time pro-lifer but was working for one of the pro-choice candidates in the presidential race.  His rationale was that there are "other issues" we also need to be concerned about, issues like the economy and the war on terrorism.  He lamented that this had created a nasty and growing rift between himself and some of his fellow pro-lifers, not the least of which was his own wife.  His argument was that he was as pro-life as any of them and was being unfairly attacked despite having worked for years in the movement.   

I asked him if he truly understood what being pro-life means.  He acknowledged that it is the belief that the unborn has the same right to life as the born. So I asked him to imagine that, instead of the unborn, it was his life, or the lives of people he knew, or the lives of anonymous 5-year-olds that his candidate was saying it should be legal to snuff out.  If that were the case, would he still be saying that there are "other issues" we need to consider or does that standard only apply to the unborn?

Recognizing the trap he had set for himself, he never responded.  After making it clear that his mind had not changed, he angrily walked away.  Somehow, this man had convinced himself that helping to put a politician in office that would slaughter unborn children by the millions did not conflict with his claim to be pro-life.

I have often observed that the human brain is the only organism on earth that has the ability to deceive itself.  This guy is a living testament to that phenomenon.  The sad part is, I am seeing more and more evidence that he is not alone.  The problem seems to be that a significant number of the people in this country who claim to be pro-life are only pro-life in the theoretical sense.  As a practical matter, when economic agendas and self-interests collide with their pro-life principle, it's the pro-life principle they will abandon.

Each of us knows that there have always been internal disagreements within the pro-life movement and there always will be.  It is human nature.  Some of these conflicts have been petty and others have centered around matters of legitimate substance.  In either case, however, I think we would all like to see even those pro-lifers with whom we have differences as people of integrity and character.  But when someone says they are pro-life but could support a baby-killer for political office that person can no longer be viewed in that light.  What they have said is that, when push comes to shove, for the right 30 pieces of silver they will drop the unborn in the grease.

By definition, that makes them the same as the people they claim to oppose.  The abortion lobby is willing to butcher the unborn for personal, political and financial reasons, and the faux-lifers are willing to look the other way for personal, political and financial reasons.  It is a distinction without a difference.     

The bottom line is, for those of us who are committed to the pro-life cause, the fate of the unborn will never be merely “an” issue.  It is always “the” issue.  For that reason, a candidate's position on abortion is all we need to know and all that matters.  If a politician is wrong on that, he or she cannot be right enough on anything else to make up for it.  It also makes no difference whether or not the office being sought has any direct impact on abortion.  Those people who contend that it should be legal to execute helpless children are not morally qualified to serve in any public office.  And those who help put them there have no right to call themselves pro-life.

In Kansas, the political landscape continues to get more bizarre.  To bring you up to date, a few years back Attorney General, Phill Kline, announced an investigation into whether abortion clinics are in violation of the state’s child sexual abuse reporting laws and the state’s regulations involving late-term abortion.  In response, Kansas filled up with high-dollar legal talent from out-of-state pro-abortion groups and they brought with them the knowledge that whatever money is needed, is available.  Despite that, however, as the legal machinations ebbed to and fro, it was clear that things could go badly for them.                 

When Kline indicted notorious late-term abortionist, George “The Killer” Tiller, on 30 criminal charges, the district attorney in Sedgewick County, Nola Foulston, was able to pull a legal maneuver to get the charges dismissed.  As an outspoken proponent of legalized abortion and a personal friend of Tiller’s, Foulston was simply doing what any other corrupt political puppet of the abortion lobby would be expected to do.  But everyone knew that this “fix” was only temporary.  The charges could be refiled at any time and in a way that would be insulated from Foulston.  This meant that Tiller, not to mention his competitors at Planned Parenthood, were still in trouble.     

Cue Paul Morrison, the district attorney in Johnson County.  Bankrolled with hundreds-of-thousands of dollars from his good friend, George Tiller, Morrison ran against and defeated Klein for re-election.  Then, to no one’s surprise, he immediately fired the special prosecutor Kline had appointed to pursue the investigation of Tiller and Planned Parenthood. 

The message was clear: when the Kansas abortion mafia buys a politician, they expect results.  And the Foulston/Morrison gang did not disappoint.  But unfortunately for them, the matter did not end there.  Currently, a citizen-led grand jury has been seated to investigate the charges and that panel operates outside the influences of people like Nola  Foulston and Paul Morrison.  

Meanwhile, the story takes a new twist.  It seems that Morrison has been, shall we say, fishing off the company pier.  He has now been charged with sexual harassment stemming from an extramarital affair he admitted he had with one of his employees in the Johnson County district attorney’s office.  Linda Carter, the office’s director of administration, revealed extensive details about their two-year relationship that, as might be expected, are juicy enough to fire-up a Jerry Springer audience.  She also says that the affair continued after Morrison was elected Attorney General and that he pressured her to use her position in the D.A.’s office to influence pending litigation involving Phill Kline.  She refused.  Apparently, despite whatever personal warts she may have, Linda Carter is no Nola Foulston.

Like most Americans, I have some profound reservations about the broad definitions of sexual harassment used in our society today.  Many of them have been so preposterous that they cause people to see the entire issue of sexual harassment as nonsensical.  The effect of that has been to diminish the validity of claims made by people who truly are victims. 

Having said that, it appears that Ms. Carter may have initially resisted Morrison’s advances and only succumbed after repeated pressure.  If it turns out that she finally gave in simply because she thought a little roll in the hay might be fun, she has no claim to victim status.  However, if she gave in because she had a legitimate reason to believe that not doing so would affect her employment, then the relationship was less an affair than it was a capitulation.  Time will tell if that was the situation but, if it was, then Morrison is in over his head.  

It is also coming out that Morrison has a history of this sort of thing.  That, coupled with Carter’s claim that Morrison leaned on her to influence litigation involving Kline, raises two interesting issues.

First, this case puts those leftist groups who inevitably take the side of any woman who raises sexual harassment claims between a rock and a hard place.  Although this story has exploded across Kansas, these groups have remained uncharacteristically silent.  They have apparently figured out that it would be dicey for them to assert that Ms. Carter is telling the truth about the sexual harassment but lying when she says that her pro-choice harasser committed a crime to protect the abortion industry.  So their response has been to just punt and let Ms. Carter take her chances under the bus.   

Second, I have always speculated that the abortion industry keeps files on its high-profile customers–especially politicians–that could be used to “keep them in line” in the future.  If a customer is a publicly known woman, or says she is pregnant by a publicly known man, or is the daughter/wife/granddaughter of a public family, etcetera, evidence of an abortion would be good leverage to keep on hand.  Bill Clinton could be a perfect example of what I am talking about.  During his presidency, even his admirers complained that he was not always loyal to the people and special interest groups who helped put him in office.  The sole exception to this is the abortion lobby.  For eight years, this was the only constituency he never once double-crossed. 

Consider that fact within the context of Clinton’s history.  Gennifer Flowers always maintained that, in 1977, Clinton gave her $200 to have an abortion.  Clinton denied that the abortion occurred and, in fact, denied that he even had an affair with Flowers.  When that turned out to be a lie, it is certainly no stretch to then conclude that his denial of the abortion was also untrue.  Given what we now know about this guy, it is also no stretch to speculate that Flowers’ abortion was not the only one.  To the contrary, the smart money would be that his political career was salvaged more than once when one of his babies was snuffed-out at some abortion clinic. 

It is also perfectly reasonable to assume that (a) the files associated with whatever abortions Clinton may have been responsible for are sitting in the desk of a Washington, DC, abortion-industry lobbyist and (b) Slick Willy understood that any betrayal of their agenda by him could result in these files ending up on some reporter’s desk.

This same phenomenon may explain the abysmal level of corruption we’ve seen when it comes to George Tiller, Planned Parenthood and anyone else involved with the Kansas abortion lobby.  Simply put, their influence is far more broad and deep than could be reasonably expected in a middle-America state.  I guess you could say that when it comes to Kansas politicians, the abortion cartel knows where the skeletons are buried.  After all, they helped to bury them. 

Today, there seems to be a lot of debate about what it means when someone says they are pro-life.  This is especially true for politicians.  For clarity’s sake, let’s define the term.  The pro-life position is that a new human life is created at the moment of fertilization and is, thus, entitled to the same legal protections as any other human being.

Given that, some abortion positions are pretty cut and dried.  For example, someone who supports a universal human life amendment to the constitution is pro-life, while someone who supports the Roe vs. Wade decision is not. 

Then there is the person who says that they are personally opposed to abortion and would never participate in one, but pro-choice when it comes to legality.  As amazing as it may seem, I have actually heard pro-lifers describe people who say this as pro-life.

In reality, this is the most insidious and despicable of all positions on abortion.  After all, there is no reason to oppose abortion other than the belief that it takes the life of a living human being.  So what the “personally opposed” crowd is saying is, "I agree that abortion is the intentional killing of a baby, but if other people want to do it I support their legal right to do so and it’s not my place to interfere."  That is not a pro-life position.  It’s like someone in 1860 saying, “I am personally opposed to slavery and I would never own one, but if someone else wants to own a few that’s their business.”   

Another stance often mischaracterized as pro-life is the “pro-life with exceptions” position.  You’ll hear people say things like, “I am pro-life, but I think there should be an exception when the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest” or “I am pro-life, but abortion should be legal when the baby is handicapped.”

It is a complete abandonment of the pro-life principle to say it should be permissible to kill selected categories of children.  When someone says they are pro-life but that abortion should be allowed in some circumstances, the question is whether they would support killing a five-year-old in those same circumstances.  If not, then it is clear that they don’t see born and unborn children as morally equal.  In other words, they do not subscribe to the most fundamental tenet of the pro-life position.

In the grimy world of politics, a new position is emerging to test the boundaries of what it means to be pro-life.  We are now hearing presidential candidates say that they are pro-life but that each individual state should be allowed to set its own policies regarding abortion.  Of course, the problem with that thinking is that the right to life is specifically listed in the U.S. Constitution.  The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that no person shall be deprived of his or her life without due process of law.  Even Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court justice who wrote Roe vs. Wade, said that if the personhood of the unborn was ever established the right to abortion evaporated. 

When a politician claims to be pro-life, he or she is asserting that the born and the unborn are both persons.  So the question becomes, how can they logically claim that only the born have a constitutional right to life?  And the answer is, they can’t. 

To understand how preposterous this is, imagine that a state legislature passed a law allowing parents of newborn children to take a few days to decide whether they are really prepared to start a family.  Under this new statute, if they decided they were not ready for this responsibility, they would be legally allowed to have a physician slit their child’s throat.  In that situation, how many of these “pro-life” politicians who are now saying that the federal government has no constitutional right to intervene on behalf of unborn children, would say that the federal government has no constitutional right to intervene on behalf of these born children?  Of course, the universal consensus would be that they not only have that right, they have the duty to do so.

The point is, when someone claims to be pro-life but says that abortion is a state matter, that is an unmistakable indicator that either (a) they do not truly believe that the born and unborn are both persons or (b) they are unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution. 

It may also be indicative of something the pro-life movement has done.  For 35 years we have hammered away at legalized abortion when, technically speaking, abortion is not the root problem.  In reality, it is only a symptom.  The disease is the absence of legal protection for the unborn. 

After all, if a woman who is not pregnant wanted to submit to abortion, we might find it bizarre and we would probably question her sanity, but in the final analysis it would probably not concern us any more than it would if she were getting a tattoo or body piercing.

So the problem is not that women have abortions, but that children die.  And that only occurs because our nation took away their right to life.  So maybe we need to talk a little less about stopping abortion and a little more about returning legal protection to the unborn.  Perhaps then, all these people claiming to be pro-life would know what being pro-life actually means.

Whenever the Communists targeted a country for takeover, they would always recruit “fellow travelers” from inside the country to help pave the way.  Often they would be members of the existing government, or the press, or academia, but it was possible for them to come from any disaffected or dissatisfied segment of the society. 

The interesting thing is, once the Communists came to power, they would inevitably have these people executed or, at least, thrown in prison.  Since they had already proven that they were willing to overthrow an established government, they were considered a threat to the new regime.  Besides, they had already served their purpose. 

Although this pattern was repeated over and over, it seemed that there was never a shortage of new fellow travelers willing to help out when the Reds came a calling.  Evidently, these new believers convinced themselves that this phenomenon would not repeat itself in their case.  This sort of thinking earned them the title, “useful idiots.”

Now, it seems that the GOP has decided that this strategy might be right for the 2008 presidential campaign.  In the past, they have relied on the Doctrine of Lesser Evils to entice pro-lifers to vote for those Republicans who were, to say the least, mushy on abortion.  The sales pitch went something like, “Our guy might not be exactly what you want, but he is better than the complete moral degenerate put up by the Democrats.”

The Republican Party hierarchy seemed willing to stay with this strategy for the 2008 campaign as long as their hand-picked boy, Rudy Giuliani, was perceived as a lock for the nomination.  But two things happened they didn’t count on.  First, even though the Democrats are poised to nominate someone who could probably make Charles Manson seem like the lesser of two evils, a significant part of the Republican base does not see the Giuliani as any better.  The second complicating factor is that, to the chagrin of the GOP’s power structure, the polls are showing that Mike Huckabee has turned into a legitimate threat. 

To counter these two problems, it seems that the GOP has decided to field its own team of useful idiots.  In just the last few days, several Republicans who claim to be pro-life have scurried from under the baseboards to urge the GOP’s Christian and pro-life base to rally behind the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Second Amendment, thrice-married, Rudy Giuliani.  Not only that, but they are doing this in the primary when several pro-life / pro-family candidates are still in the race.

The most high-profile turncoats so far are Christian Coalition founder, Pat Robertson, and Texas governor, Rick Perry, both of whom have lavished praise on their new best-buddy, Rudy.  Making this situation even more preposterous is the excuse they are using to justify their treachery.  Their claim is that Giuliani has assured them that he will only appoint “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court. 

The problem is, Giuliani has repeatedly stated that he supports Roe v. Wade.  Obviously, the only way a self-described  “strict constructionist” could take that position is for him to believe that there is a constitutional right to abortion.  But somehow, we are expected to conclude that such a person is going to help return legal protection to the unborn.  Apparently, the GOP Illuminati is designing their 2008 strategy around the theory that those of us in the great unwashed masses are really stupid.

When the Rick Perry and Pat Robertson types are placed in a position where they cannot logically reconcile their pro-life claims with their gushing support for a pro-abort, they inevitably counter that there are other issues besides abortion.  They talk about economics, border security and other issues, but the most common justification they give is that Giuliani would be better than Clinton in the war on terrorism.  While that may or may not be true, let’s assume that it is.  When someone says that they will support a pro-abort for that reason, what they are really saying is, “I’m willing to let unborn babies be dropped in the grease by the millions if that’s what it takes to save my own skin.”

The point is, it is obscene for someone to claim to be pro-life while saying that a candidate’s position on abortion is just “one of the many issues we have to look at.”  For the true pro-lifer, if a candidate is wrong about the wholesale slaughter of children, they cannot be right enough on any other issue to make up for it.  And when people like Rick Perry and Pat Robertson actually endorse them, it only proves that either they were frauds all along or that they never understood the pro-life principle to begin with.

So let’s cut to the chase here.  It has always been known that there are a lot of people within the pro-life movement who are more Republican than pro-life.  What’s happening right now is that the GOP’s useful idiot campaign is smoking them out.  Fortunately for them, when the campaign is over they will not be executed or put in prison.  Instead, they will be exiled into irrelevance until they become useful again.  My suspicion is that this process will take four years.

In the mean time, the unanswered question is whether we will follow the Robertsons and Perrys into the abyss of abandoned principles and auctioned souls.  In short, will we let them play us the way Giuliani and the Republican Party is playing them?    

If we do, I guess we are the real idiots.

Now that the political season is back at our throats, we are again hearing the abortion lobby trot out its usual collection of distortions, half-truths and outright lies.  Of course, one of their favorites is the old line that since women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, we have to protect them against dangerous back-alley abortions.

This assumes that the legal abortions women are getting right now are safe, but we'll let that fairy tail slide for the moment.  We'll also ignore the fact that, if abortion were outlawed today and illegal abortionists started springing up next week, every one of them would be someone who is pro-choice.  In fact, every woman who was ever killed or maimed during an abortion was killed or maimed by someone who was pro-choice.  That means the obvious solution to the back-alley abortion problem is for the pro-choice mob not to do them.  But like I said, we'll ignore that for now. 

What I'm wondering about is this.  If the motivation for legalized abortion really is to save the lives of women, why aren't the people who make that argument also calling for the repeal of laws against rape?  After all, it is not uncommon for a woman to be killed by a rapist so she can't identify him to the authorities.  Legalizing rape would save those women by taking away the rapists' motivation for killing them. 

Legalization could also result in the establishment of rape clinics where rapists could take their victims instead of dragging them into dangerous back-allies.  These facilities could offer clean rooms, condom machines, emergency contraception and perhaps even doctors on staff in case the rapist injures his victim.  We could also issue licenses to rapists requiring them to undergo monthly testing for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. 

Remember, the pro-choice argument is that women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, and that keeping abortion legal will make sure they occur in a clean and safe environment.  Well, those dynamics also apply to rape.  We know that keeping rape illegal has not stopped women from being raped, so why not try to create a more “enlightened” nation where rape is safe, legal and rare?

And by the way, as ridiculous as this suggestion is, if our goal is saving women's lives, it makes as much sense as legalized abortion.

We have seen several examples lately that America’s largest abortion profiteer, Planned Parenthood, is opening new facilities across the country and using deception and dishonesty to do so.  In one high-profile example, they recently completed construction on a new 22,000-square-foot state-of-the-art death camp in Aurora, Illinois, that they readily admit was built with it’s true purpose and real owner’s identity intentionally concealed from the public.

While it is understandable that the pro-life movement would be outraged at the naked corruption Planned Parenthood is using in its expansion plans, we must not allow that outrage to blind us to the motivation behind this expansion.  The truth is that, in this case, our enemy’s motives are far more important than their methods.  

It is well known that an ongoing problem for the abortion lobby is their rapidly shrinking number of facilities.  From the peak years of the late 1980s, approximately two-thirds of the abortion clinics in America have closed permanently, primarily because the abortion industry has been unable to hire enough employees to keep them open.

In the 1980s, most of Planned Parenthood’s death camps had all the abortionists they needed including reserves in case one of the “regulars” went on vacation.  Today, the reserves are long gone and most facilities are forced to make do with just one contract killer on the payroll.  As for the support staff, it’s pretty much the same story. 

Of course, the abortion lobby says their recruiting problems are a result of “pro-life violence” when, in fact, the amount of violence directed at the abortion industry over the years has been incredibly low.  When the U.S. Department of Justice or the FBI publish studies on workplace violence, the rate of violence at abortion clinics is so statistically insignificant that it doesn’t even make it into the final reports. 

So before we go further, let’s put this “pro-life violence” myth to rest once and for all.  Even if you focus on the time period during which the most violence was committed against the abortion industry, it is clear that all of this arm-flapping and hand-wringing about pro-life violence is nonsense.  Of the seven murders that have occurred at American abortion mills in the last 34 years, five occurred in 1993 and 1994 alone.  However, according to statistics from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, during those same two years there were 2,154 other people killed in work-related homicides in the United States including seven school teachers, four members of the clergy, 10 lawyers, nine newspaper vendors, seven writers, six realtors, 22 waiters or waitresses, four groundskeepers, five architects, 40 garage or service station attendants, 23 auto mechanics, 21 janitors, 10 hairdressers, six farmers and four carpenters. 

In other words, during the period of the greatest violence against abortionists in history, more farmers and twice as many hairdressers were murdered on the job than abortion clinic workers and abortionists combined.  This does not even take into account the taxi drivers, convenience store employees, police officers, firefighters, and others who were killed during that same time period.

The fact is, the abortion industry’s inability to recruit and keep employees has nothing to do with violence.  The explanation most often given is the increasing stigma associated with abortion.

The abortion lobby had always counted on legalization to erase the stigma of abortion, but that never happened.  What they refused to accept was that abortion is like pornography and prostitution in that the stigma is related to the act itself and not to its legal status.  That means the stigma is never going to go away.  Today, the abortion industry finally seems resigned to this and has decided that the stench of abortion is something they will just have to live with.

As legitimate an issue as stigma is, however, it is not the only thing that keeps these death camps understaffed.  The abortion industry is also facing a financial crisis that has been brewing since the day this battle began.  And this is a problem they can’t just live with.

In the first few years of legalized abortion, studies were taken to determine the cost of an abortion.  The findings were that, generally speaking, the price was between $300 and $350.  Interestingly, those figures have changed little since then.  That begs the question: with no competition and a seemingly reliable demand, why have they been unable to raise prices in almost 35 years?

The answer is that, contrary to appearances, the demand is not reliable.

In any marketing environment, all decisions fall onto a “marginal / non-marginal” scale.  Decisions based on “want” are considered marginal while those based on “need” are classified as non-marginal.   A major factor in determining where a decision falls on this scale is its degree of price sensitivity.  The more price sensitive something is, the more marginal the buying decision is.  This is true about all purchasing decisions, including the decision about whether to “purchase” an abortion or not.

Since day one, the abortion industry has pushed this idea that when a woman does not want to be pregnant she will crawl through hell on broken glass to get an abortion.  In other words, their contention is that the abortion decision is a non-marginal one.  For that to be true, it would also have to be true that the cost of abortion does not significantly affect the abortion rate.

Contrary to abortion industry claims, the evidence does not support this.  The financial publication, Economic Inquiry, Vol. XXVI, April 1988, produced a study about the relationship between abortion cost and abortion rates and found that, “The significant inverse relationship between the price of abortions and the abortion rate confirms that the fundamental law of demand is applicable to abortions.” In other words, as the cost of abortion goes up, the demand for abortion goes down.  This finding has been confirmed by other independent studies which have also documented that an inverse relationship exists between the price of abortion and the rate of abortion.  

Perhaps even more revealing is a quote from Colorado abortionist, Warren Hern.  During a May, 1997, annual meeting of the National Abortion Federation held in Boston, Massachusetts, the subject was the use of ultrasound in abortion.  Hern complained that paying for the ultrasound machine would increase the cost of an abortion by $25.  In his own words, this would cause the patient load to plummet.  What Hern was saying was that, not only does price affect the abortion rate, even small increases in price have an overpowering impact on it.  This was real-world confirmation—from someone on the inside—that the abortion lobby’s “hell on broken glass” rhetoric is a lie and that the abortion decision is, in most cases, a marginal one.

The obvious solution to the abortion industry’s current financial dilemma would be for them to raise prices to meet their increased costs and simply make more money off fewer killings.  But as fiscally reasonable as that may sound, the abortion lobby knows it is not a viable option.  They have long understood that, in order to maintain abortion’s legality, they need the political and cultural inertia created by a high abortion rate.  This has put them in a kind of “Catch 22” situation.  They need higher abortion prices to solve their financial problems, but the lowered abortion rate produced by these higher prices would threaten their political survivability.

That is why the abortion industry has not raised prices for almost 35 years.  The problem they now face is that the cost of doing business has risen dramatically during that time.  So while a $350 abortion may have been profitable in 1973 dollars, it may not be profitable in today’s dollars. 

That has prevented the abortion industry from being unable to compete for employees with the rest of the medical community.  One result of this has been that the quality of the employees they can hire is abysmally low.  With almost no exceptions, there is no way the typical abortion clinic worker could get a job in any other medical-related field.  Another result has been that, other than the actual abortionists, most abortion industry workers make very little money.  Even for staunchly pro-choice employees who are not bothered by the stigma, this has kept morale low and turnover rates astronomical.

The point of all this is brutally simple.  In order to survive, the abortion industry has to find a way to raise their prices without lowering the abortion rate.

Enter Hillary Clinton. 

Planned Parenthood’s current expansion is their way of betting that Slick Hilly is going to be the next president.  They are also counting on her to install a system of socialized medicine that will include elective abortion.  So even though the Choice Mafia rallies their troops with red-meat rhetoric about Supreme Court appointments who could take away “the right to choose,” what they are most giddy about is the possibility of government-funded abortions.  That is the driving force behind Planned Parenthood’s expansion agenda.  They see Hillary Care getting larger in the rearview mirror and are positioning themselves to be a major player in it.

You may think I’m baying at the moon here, but if there is one thing I know for certain it is this: at the moment national healthcare becomes a reality, the cost to the taxpayer for an abortion that now costs about $350 will, instantly, be many times that amount.  I know this is true because a model for it already exists.  All you have to do is imagine two women sitting in an abortion clinic waiting to have identical first-trimester abortions.  One is paying cash; the second has a health insurance policy to cover her abortion.  The first woman will probably get out the door for the usual $350 or so.  But make no mistake about it, the second woman’s insurance company will be lucky to escape with anything less than a $3000 claim to pay. 

That scenario is repeated at abortion clinics all across America every day.  It is also why the nation’s death merchants see Hillary Care as their salvation.  They are relying on socialized medicine to solve their current financial problems by converting every $350 private-pay abortion into a $3000 government-pay abortion.  The icing on the cake is that, since the customers will be offered these abortions for “free,” the abortion rate is guaranteed to skyrocket.

Like I always say, if you want to understand the abortion business, just follow the money trail.  The signpost ahead reads, Rodham and Gomorrah.

Have you ever noticed that every time the Godless Left promotes any of the moral depravities that they hold so dear, a predictable pattern develops. 

Whatever their “vice du jour” might be, their initial sales pitch will be that it is morally acceptable.  Of course, this inevitably fails because whatever they are pushing is generally so ghastly that it is impossible to sell it on its own merits.  So their fall-back strategy is to play the old “you can’t legislate morality” card.  They will even wrap it around some absurd interpretation of American history in which our founding fathers sacrificed their lives and treasure so we could all live in a nation where laws are made free of any moral considerations.  Then, for good measure, they will toss in something about the constitutional separation of church and state, despite the fact that such a concept is found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. 

Sadly, this scam often works.  America is in such a state of moral and intellectual decay that otherwise decent intelligent people actually suck-up this loopy philosophy.  It is part of the culture of “situational ethics” in which genuine ethics are seen as abnormal and perhaps even unpatriotic.  In our brave new world of unfettered tolerance and moral-relativism, it is not enough to believe that some things are not black and white but shades of gray; you must now believe that everything is a shade of gray and that black and white do not exist.  This philosophy thrives because the American people have become so open-minded that their brains fell out.     

Here are the facts:  No governmental body can pass laws that will make an immoral person moral.  So they don’t try.  Legislation is not about regulating beliefs, it’s about controlling behavior.  When a legislature passes laws against racial discrimination, it does not concern itself with the personal moral beliefs of people who sincerely think racial discrimination is okay.  The legislature has determined that discrimination is not morally acceptable and, therefore, it will not be legally permitted regardless of what some racist might think.  In other words, society imposes its belief system on someone who has a completely different belief system.  Any way you look at it, that is legislating morality.   

So don’t let the Godless Left fool you.  The law is nothing more or less than society’s collective moral values, and it legislates that morality by regulating behavior.  At the moment we abandon that principal, our legislative bodies will be left with no legitimate foundation upon which any law can be justified.  If that happens, our country will be doomed to collapse into a state of bedlam and anarchy.