Abortion: Who will speak up for the little ones? Part 2

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By Slim Killens

In the second of this three-part series “Abortion: Who will speak up for the little ones?” we will look at some Abortion statistics in the United States, some of Sanger’s quotes and how the consequences of abortion continue to divide and reverberate throughout this nation, and some dissenting comments on the atrocious Reproductive Health Act recently passed in New York State – which legally authorizes the killing of an innocent unborn baby prior to delivery – up to the end of the ninth-month.

STATISTICS (from Abort 73.com)

U.S. Abortion Law – An overview of the history and legality of abortion in the United States.  The single decision of seven non-elected justices had defined federal abortion policy in the United States since 1973.  Largely regarded as the most radical decision ever issued by the Supreme Court, it was explicitly defended on the basis of ignorance – under the false claim that “no one knows when life begins.”

State Abortion Laws (U.S.) – Prior to 1973, abortion was a States issue; most abortions, in most states were illegal.  Though individual states have retained some narrow, legal outlets for regulating abortion, Roe vs. Wade forbids them from outlawing abortion during the first trimester and binds them to an extremely broad “health” exception during the second and third trimester. 

Fetal Homicide Laws (U.S.) – Unless the context is abortion, it is a federal crime to harm an unborn child.  As the law stands today, if a pregnant woman on her way to an abortion clinic (where her child will be legally killed), is assaulted in the street, causing the death of her unborn child, those who assaulted her would be guilty of manslaughter.

According to the Guttmacher Institute (AGI), from 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred in the U.S.  (Currently an estimated 60 million abortions in the US).

When Do Abortions Occur and How does Abortion take place?

Of the 1.6 million abortions performed in the U.S. each year, 91 percent are performed during the first trimester (12 or fewer weeks’ gestation); 9 percent are performed in the second trimester (24 of fewer weeks’ gestation); and only about 100 are performedin the third trimester (more than 24 weeks’ gestation), approximately .01 percent of all abortions performed (Fox News, January 2015).

89% of all abortions happen during the first trimester, prior to the 13th week of gestation (AGI/CDC)…In 2015, 73% of reported abortions were accomplished by curettage (which includes dilatation and evacuation). Most curettage abortions are suction procedures (CDC).

Only 5% of U.S. abortions occur in hospitals; 2% occur in physician’s offices. The rest occur in freestanding abortion clinics – without any established doctor-patient relationship (NAF). In other words, up to 93% occur in Planned Parenthood clinics. Italics added mine.

Who Has Abortions?

In 2015, unmarried women accounted for 86% of all abortions. Among married women, 4% of pregnancies currently end in abortion. Among unmarried women, 27% of pregnancies end in abortion…Women in their 20s accounted for the majority of abortions in 2015 and had the highest abortion rates…Among white women, 10% of pregnancies currently end in abortion. Among black women, 28% of pregnancies end in abortion (CDC – Center of Disease Control).

Abortion and Minors

40% of minors having an abortion report that neither of their parents knew about the abortion.  39 states currently enforce parental consent or notification laws for minors seeking and abortion…The Supreme Court ruled that minors must have the alternative of seeking a court order authorizing the procedure…17 states use public funds to pay for abortions for some poor women. About 14% of all abortions in the United States are paid for with public funds – virtually all from the state. In 2014, 88,466 abortions in California were paid for with public funds. Public funds paid for 45,722 abortions in New York (AGI).

African American women have 30% of all abortions but according to the 2010 census Black females make up less than 14% of the female population of the United States.  However, there are several factors that lead to these statistics – Unintended pregnancies, Relationship stability, Contraception use and Income… blackdemographics.com

[While Black women make less than 14% of U.S. population, Black women in the U.S. have 30% of their pregnancies end in abortion – approximately 360,000 abortions annually.] Brackets added mine.

Quotes by Margaret Sanger – Sept 14, 1879 – Sept 6, 1966

“Greater understanding and practice of Planned Parenthood, through the use of contraceptive measures prescribed by doctors and clinics, will mean that there will be more strong and healthy children and fewer defective and handicapped babies unable to find a useful or happy place in life.”

“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

Article 3. A Marriage licenses shall in itself give husband and wife only the right to a common household and not the right to parenthood. Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit for parenthood. Article 5. Permits for parenthood shall be issued upon application by city, county, or state authorities to married couples, providing they are financially able to support the expected child, have the qualifications needed for proper rearing of the child, have no transmissible diseases, and, on the woman’s part…maternity is likely in death or permanent injury to health. March 1934, America Needs a Code for Babies.”

“Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.”

“It is our experience, as it was our aim, that as a result of child-spacing, and adequate care of mothers, death rates would be reduced. It is now a fact that as a result of birth control, the survival rate among mothers and children is higher. There is less suffering for all groups.”

“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”  1920, Woman and the New Race, Chapter 5.

“Everywhere we look, we see poverty and large families going hand in hand…We see that those parents who are least fit to reproduce the race are having the largest number of children; while people of wealth, leisure, and education are having small families.”

“Eugenics imply or insist that a woman’s first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state…we further maintain that it is her right regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother.”

“Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that the problem is hers – and before it can be his, it is hers alone…As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.”

“The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly.” (Some have claimed Black Leader W. E.B. Du Bois made this statement, not Sanger)

“It seems to me from my experience where I have been in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, that while the colored Negros have great respect for white doctor’s they can get closer to their own member and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with the white people…The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach.  We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”  December 10, 1939, Excerpts of letter to Dr. CJ Gamble.

In an interview with Mike Wallace in 1957, Sanger said, “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world, that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically.” “Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born.  That to me is the greatest sin – that people can – can commit.”

In light of Margaret Sanger’s own troubling family history, it is reasonably understandable why she was passionately compelled to fight for woman’s rights. What she believed was an injustice against women encouraged her desire to secure protections for women through the legalization of abortion (contraceptives/birth control).  Nevertheless, no matter how sincere her actions and comments are, it still does not justify taking the life of an innocent unborn child through abortion.  As a side note, I am convinced that the last 160 years, by the culmination of events such as Charles Darwin’s book on Evolution, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life; the removal of any vestige of God in our culture and finally, the introduction of eugenics has contributed directly to the slaughter, not only of innocent unborn babies, but hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

A slippery slope, as we had predicted, would emerge to produce unjustifiable atrocities. That is why I was saddened, although not surprised, when I heard that New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo passed the amended legislative S240 bill, Reproductive Health Act, in January 2019 – now forty-six years after the US Supreme Court decision defending the constitutionality of abortion,I call it the “Third Trimester Infanticide” bill –– authorizingthe murder of an unborn child up to the final moments of pregnancy. Sadly, abortion advocates joined the New York State Governor with fanfare and excitement as the bill was passed.

In a response to the recent legal developments in New York State, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council matter-of-factly states, New York’s political leaders have stirred the moral conscience of the nation, not by just adopting the nation’s most far-reaching abortion law, but for actually celebrating the ability to take the lives of unborn children…In an abhorrent display of moral callousness, abortion supporters cheered wildly as Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) signed the Reproductive Health Act into law as the spire of New York’s One World Trade Center was lit up in it’s-a-girl pink…From now on, nothing stands in the way of a woman taking her baby’s life — days, hours, or even a minute before she’s born!  Under the Reproductive Health Act, late-term abortion is the new normal… We must educate the citizens across the nation about the lies and deception that have been used to promote anti-life laws like New York’s. As shocking as it is, we shouldn’t be surprised. This is the new Democratic Party. This is exactly what the Democrats have stated they wanted to do in in their platform. The only reverence they have now is for abortion, at any stage, for any reason, at cost of everyone.  They have shown the reality of what New York has become and what all of America would look like under the policies of liberals like Governor Andrew Cuomo (D).  Right now, there’s a war raging over Roe v. Wade.  

Although the father also contributes to the reproductive process, he has no legal standing in the decision making regarding the abortion of his own child – except where the law requires that the father pays child support – then and only then, is the father legally responsible by the courts to provide the financial needs and care for the child whether he wants the child or not.  If the mother wants the child and the father doesn’t, he pays. But if the father wants the child and the mother doesn’t, he is denied his right to fatherhood.  This is becoming the Civil War of the twenty-first century, between Left-wing Liberals (Democrat Party) and Right-wing Conservatives (Republican Party).  We, Prolife advocates, will continue this just and courageous fight to defend the unborn child in the womb until Roe v. Wade is overturned. Norma McCorvey seeking an abortion, became the poster child of the 1973 US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade, ruling that individual state laws banning abortion are unconstitutional, legally authorizing the murdering of a child in the womb for practically any reason up to the end of a nine-month pregnancy. Of course, this realization became apparent to Norma McCorvey (named Roe in the case) who seeking an abortion delivered her third child prior to the US Supreme Court decision.

In her 1998 book Won by Love McCovey informs us how she came to change her mind on the abortion issue, “I was sitting in O.R.’s offices when I notice a fetal development poster.  The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them.  I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. ‘Norma’, I said to myself, ‘They’re right’. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself.  I should have known.  Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I understood the truth – that’s a baby! I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It wasn’t about ‘missed periods’.  It was about children being killed in their wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong.  Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff.  Abortion – at any point – was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”  Her views changed on abortion as she became a Roman Catholic activist in the prolife moment and later a Christian. 

Sadly, based on “a woman’s right to her own body” law, our nation remains divided over whether or not the mother has a legal right to (abort/murder) terminate her pregnancy. Abortion advocates still believe the unborn child, during the performance of an abortion, is not recognized or protected under the law as a human being.  Due to, as I believe, the undoubtably sincere efforts of Margaret Sanger in the 1920s along with many others today that support Planned Parenthood’s claim ‘protecting the woman’s right’ promoting safer abortions (through contraceptives and abortifacients) as a justification for their activities. However, since 1973 United States Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, some 46 years later, approximately 60 million babies have been legally murdered in the womb.

This is not objective science, it’s based on pseudo-science, “it’s the woman’s body.” No woman has ever had a baby without the reproductive sperm of the male – it necessitates both the father and mother: neither two female eggs, nor two male sperm, can produce a child. Therefore, the child in the mother’s womb “is not her body” it is only an incubator to provide nourishment to the baby and the child is distinct from her body – the baby has half of the genetic coding from the father and half of the mother’s – which dwells in her body and is not a part of her body. 

The conflicting laws related to the 1973 legalization of abortion in the United States only creates confusion, as can be demonstrated in the two examples below.

1)  Fetal Homicide Laws (U.S) – Unless the context is abortion, it is a federal crime to harm an unborn child.  As the law stands today, if a pregnant woman on her way to an abortion clinic (where her child will be legally killed), is assaulted in the street, causing the death of her unborn child, those who assaulted her would be guilty of manslaughter.  Abort73.com Facts About Abortion

 2)  In 2004, Scott Peterson is convicted of murdering his wife Laci and their unborn son.  A jury of six men and six women delivered the verdict 23 months after Laci Peterson, who was pregnant, disappeared on Christmas Eve from Modesto, California…The bodies of Laci and her baby were found washed up on shore near the marina where Scott Peterson kept his boat on April 13 and 14, 2003.  Within a week, Scott Peterson was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with the special circumstance of double homicide, which opened the door for prosecutors to seek the death penalty…Finally on this day in 2004, after seven days of deliberation that involved the replacement of two jurors, Scott Peterson was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife and the second-degree murder of his unborn son. Google.com – Scott Peterson convicted, History.com Editors

It is clearly evident as someone once noted that, “Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas make actual victims.”  If the mother wants to terminate her child, through abortion, it’s not a homicide (because it is legal), yet Scott Peterson is charged with two counts of murder – his wife and his unborn child in the womb.  According to SCOTUS, and many politicians, such as New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo or as Virginia Governor Ralph S Northam stated, “When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother (not the father), with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician, by the way,” Northam said. “And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable.  The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother. So I this this was really blown out of proportion.” is appropriate.  Based on the mother and the physician, the unborn child, has no protective rights inside or outside the womb.  

It is clear to me, as I have always known; legality does not necessarily equate morality.  When courts approve contradicting laws – Abortion – legally allowing a pregnant woman “to kill” their child even to the end of the ninth month, it becomes a devastating slippery slope that devalues the true meaning of human life and opens the doors for even more extreme cases of unjustified homicide (remember American Slavery and Nazi Germany).  I am glad that there are hundreds of prolife advocates, legal & religious groups around the country defending the freedoms this nation was founded upon. To name only a few, such as California Family Council; Confidence Pregnancy Center; Sanctity of Human Life Network.org (sohlnet.org); Radiance Foundation.org; Roman Catholic church organizations; Focus on the Family; Family Research Council and Legal groups such as ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice); PJI (Pacific Justice Institute); Alliance Defense Foundation, etc.  However, if we really want to make a significant change, we will need more citizens and groups to publicly challenge (peaceful protest, boycotts, etc.) and denounce this ever-increasing genocide.  I am happy that many groups around this country are continuing to fight and defend the unborn child in the womb by opposing this horrendous and evil act called ABORTION.  

In our third and finally part of this series “Abortion: Who will speak up for the little ones?” we will show the Biblical position on the protection and defense of the unborn child (which has been consistently held throughout Judeo-Christian history), comment on the recently passed Reproductive Health Act in New York State, excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, and finally our responsibility as the Church to stand in the gap and make a difference – not quietly ignoring these sensitive issues – but taking the lead in the defense of moral principles and extinguishing this brutal atrocity against our innocent children in the womb.

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