Abortion

Earlier this week, the National Black ProLife Coalition, in conjunction with TooManyAborted.com, announced the launch of another anti-choice billboard campaign in Atlanta and other major metropolitan areas. These billboards are designed to offend, featuring slogans such as “The 13th Amendment Freed-Abortion Enslaves” and “Abortion Makes Three-Fifths Human Seem Overly Generous.”

According to the press release, these billboards are supposed to show “how Roe v. Wade has made a mockery of Civil Rights history by offering destruction and bondage instead of possibility and freedom,” but in reality they just show the insensitivity of some pro-life organizations. Timed to coincide with Juneteenth, a day celebrating the abolition of slavery, one billboard company refused to display the images, though another eventually accepted.

Joining other Religious Right activists who have held President Obama responsible for the deadly tornadoes in the Midwest because of his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah is now directly linking Obama's speech on Israel's borders to the disaster in Joplin, Missouri. He even suggests that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as a result of President Bush's foreign policy decisions:

Bible prophecy may have a bad name in the light of Harold Camping's misguided date-setting, but the biggest sign of the end may have been overlooked in all the rapture hysteria of the May 21st weekend.

Once again, we saw the U.S. hit with a series of deadly superstorms following Barack Obama's pledge to return Israel to pre-1967 borders.

Just days after Obama insisted Israel must give up lands it won through military victory with its enemies, some 200 people were killed by a tornado in Joplin, Mo.

There's a pattern here.

We saw it in Katrina, when George Bush forced Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. In fact, as everyone from Israeli rabbis to U.S. senators have noted, it seems to happen every single time the U.S. pressures Israel to divide the land.

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It goes right back to Genesis and God's pledge to bless those who bless the children of Israel and curse those who curse them.

That is a prophecy that has seen every empire of the world come and go – yet Israel remains. It may be chastened by God. It may be dispersed. It may be divided according to His will. But God has punished every nation that has come against Israel. Each one has been judged.

Phyllis Schlafly is out with another article on the rise of single motherhood. According to Schlafly, the usual culprits are to blame: feminists, Barack Obama, ‘big government,’ and gay people who want the right to marry. Schlafly also says that single motherhood is increasing and marriage is declining because the legalization of abortion is “diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.” Schlafly’s nostalgia for forced marriages shouldn’t be a surprise, as she is also a long-time apologist for marital rape.

Schlafly writes:

Prior to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, husbands and fathers provided for their families. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock babies born last year and their unmarried moms now look to Big Brother as their financial provider.

The left is content to let this problem persist because 70 percent of unmarried women voted for Barack Obama for president. They vote for the party that offers the richer subsidies.

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Among other unfortunate effects, the trends toward non-marriage and toward same-sex marriage are a direct attack on fathers. The bond between a child and his mother is an obvious fact of nature, but marriage is the relationship that establishes the link between a child and his father.

There are many causes for the dramatic reduction in marriage, starting with unilateral divorce, which spread across the United States in the 1960s and '70s, putting government on the side of marriage breakup. Then came the legalizing of abortion, diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.

The feminist notion that women should be independent of men, followed by affirmative-action/female quotas in employment, tended to carry out the goal stated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the concept of husband-breadwinner and wife-homemaker "must be eliminated." These feminist ideas and practices demean marriage by discriminating against men and also against fulltime homemakers.

In another stinging defeat for the burgeoning “personhood” movement, a Louisiana personhood bill which would ban all abortions was defeated in the state legislature. The legislation, sponsored by Republican State Rep. John LaBruzzo, was hailed by Personhood USA as one of their best chances to pass a personhood law this year.

Personhood legislation gives legal rights to zygotes, banning all abortion without exception along with procedures to treat problem pregnancies, certain forms of contraception, and even in-vitro fertilization. Incidentally, the federal Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds for abortion procedures, was the rationale used by the bill’s opponents to table the measure to send it back to committee. Personhood USA lamented that “The Hyde Amendment had a chilling effect on prolife legislators.”

Personhood USA is still counting on Mississippi voters to pass a personhood amendment this November, a referendum backed by other Religious Right groups like the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel along with top Republican politicians. The Mississippi effort is led by a proponent of Christians creating their own separate, theocratic country in America. In 2006 and 2008, personhood amendments were overwhelmingly defeated in Colorado.

The Associated Press reports:

A Metairie lawmaker's attempt to force a direct challenge to the Roe v. Wade decision by banning abortion outright in Louisiana was derailed Wednesday to the House budget committee.

The 65-30 vote of the House to send Rep. John LaBruzzo's bill to the House Appropriations Committee could shelve the measure for the legislative session.

"This would basically defeat the bill by running out the clock," LaBruzzo said. Only two weeks remain in the legislative session. LaBruzzo is proposing to define a fetus as a person from the moment of conception, which would ban abortion entirely, in violation of current federal law. Anti-abortion groups are split on the worth of the idea.

Lawmakers who supported sending the bill to the Appropriations Committee cited the possibility it could jeopardize $4.5 billion in federal health care funding Louisiana receives for its Medicaid program. A financial analysis said the proposal would put Louisiana at odds with a 1976 federal law requiring Medicaid to cover abortion services to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest. Rep. Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, pushed for the diversion of the bill.

"I am truly and completely opposed to abortion, but that's off the table," he said.

LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, disagreed with the financial analysis done by the Legislative Fiscal Office.

According to the Des Moines Register, Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum will take part in Iowa’s Tea Party Bus Tour. The bus tour is led by a coalition of right-wing groups: the Leadership Institute, FairTax Nation, and the American Principles Project’s affiliated groups, Preserve Innocence and American Principles in Action.

Founded by noted anti-gay activist Robert George, the group is also closely linked to the Manhattan Declaration and the National Organization for Marriage, which it worked with to defeat marriage equality in Maine. Thomas Peters, the APP’s communications director, even participated in a conference tied to the notoriously anti-Semitic Polish broadcaster Tadeusz Rydsyk of Radio Maryja.

The APP is best known for instigating the boycott of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference due to its inclusion of GOProud, a group of gay conservatives, and rallied other Religious Right organizations to leave the summit.

Preserve Innocence is the APP’s education watchdog and is mainly a voice against comprehensive sex education and anti-bullying programs. The group outspokenly opposed the role of Kevin Jennings, the White House’s outgoing Assistant Secretary for the Department of Education’s Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools and the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, asserting that his views represent a “moral atrocity”:

Kevin Jennings aggressively advocates using our schools to teach children—including young children—about homosexuality and homosexual practices. He is the author of a Foreword to a book called Queering Elementary Education, and as the former Director of GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network), he supports a radical agenda that includes bringing sexual liberationist teachings into public schools. That’s what he means by “queering” elementary education.

“Queering” our elementary schools means destroying the innocence of our children. Please help us to stop that moral atrocity from happening.

The APP also bizarrely claims that President Obama was establishing “death panels” and working with Planned Parenthood to encourage students to have abortions:

“There is a frightening disconnect between what American parents believe their children should be taught about sex and by whom, and the liberal, even promiscuous sex education the Obama administration wishes to inflict upon our children through Planned Parenthood”, stated Andy Blom, Executive Director of the American Principles Project and American Principles in Action. “But this goes beyond sex education. This is opening the doors of our schools and their health programs to the nation’s largest abortion provider.”

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President Obama’s Health Care plan threatens babies through Government mandated, taxpayer funded abortion. It threatens parental rights, pre-teens and teenagers through Planned Parenthood SBHC sex indoctrination. It threatens the elderly and disabled through rationed health care and end-of-life “Death Panels.”

• Michael Keegan @ Huffington Post: Why I Support "The Ronald Reagan Tax Reform Act of 2011."
• Andy Birkey @ Minnesota Independent: Bradlee Dean takes credit for passing anti-gay marriage amendment.
• Julie Ingersoll @ Religion Dispatches: The Limits of David Barton’s “Freedom of Religion” Argument.
• Marie Diamond @ Think Progress: Herman Cain Pledges Not To Sign Any Bill Longer Than Three Pages.
• Meghan Malloy @ Iowa Independent: Santorum touts anti-abortion activism.

Congressman Allen West (R-FL) joined Phyllis Schlafly at Eagle Forum Collegians to slam marriage equality, saying: “the term ‘gay marriage’ is an oxymoron.” He even tried to link gay marriage with the country’s debt and legal abortion. West, who recently criticized the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because he believes that gay and lesbian servicemembers “can change [their] behavior,” warned the audience of young conservatives that if gay marriage becomes legal then “it just becomes a matter of time before we don’t have society.”

Watch:

The term ‘gay marriage’ is an oxymoron. Because marriage is a union and a bond between a man and a woman to do one thing: the furtherance of society by procreation, through creating new life. Have you ever read the book America Alone by Mark Steyn? It’s about demographics. And if we continue with a cycle of debt and punishing our unborn then it just becomes a matter of time before you don’t have society.

Last week we stumbled upon the website for an organization called Transformation Michigan, which appears to be one of those New Apostolic Reformation prayer networks dedicated to transforming the nation via intercessory prayer.

The website had posted several recent conference calls hosted by Transformation Michigan with the likes of Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle, Jerry Boykin, and Janet Porter.  And while the calls were mostly rather dull, they did contain some revelations ... such as the fact that there is a prayer team in Michigan that is dedicated to praying over every mosque in the state; an idea Boykin would like to see spread all over the country:

Janet Porter spent her conference call arguing with supporters of the radical "personhood amendments" who were intent on attacking Porter's own "Heartbeat Bill" for not going far enough, to which Porter responded by comparing her effort to that of Oskar Schindler:

For her part, Cindy Jacobs declared that were it not for abortion, "our housing industry would be stellar [and] the economy would be booming":

Finally, Lou Engle declared that the next The Call rally to be held in Detroit on 11/11/11 would be an opportunity where "Whites must repent for any racism" while "Blacks must forgive [white people]" because, if they don't, "you are actually holding us as slaves":

• Andy Birkey @ Minnesota Independent: Bradlee Dean fundraises off prayer fiasco – to hire publicist.
• Warren Throckmorton: David Barton on John Adams – The Trinity.
• Justin Elliott @ Salon: Dubious Muslim-bashing "expert" hired to train cops.
• Tanya Somanader @ Think Progress: Kansas Lawmaker Says Women Should Plan Ahead For Rape: ‘I Have A Spare Tire.’
• Eric Kleefeld @ TPM: Zell Miller Co-Chairing Gingrich Campaign.
• Steve Benen: Cantor demands spending-cut ransom for Missouri aid.