Reproductive Health

Today on the 700 Club, Pat Robertson said that Margaret Sanger “was the one who set the stage for Adolf Hitler, she didn’t copy him, he copied her.” After running a story about how President Obama postponed his speech at Planned Parenthood in order to attend a memorial service in Texas for victims of the fertilizer plant explosion, Roberston said that the group founded by Sanger is “evil” and targets black people.

“What they said was, they said ‘what we’ve got to do in order to get the black people in America to have abortions, we have to have some noted black leader who will come out for Planned Parenthood and we’ll give him the Margaret Sanger award and therefore he will be our poster boy showing the black people they should have abortions,” Robertson maintained, “it was strictly genocide.”

Watch:

While Sanger was tied to the eugenics movement, the claim that she intended to exterminate black people and use black leaders to hide such a plan is based on a quote taken badly out of context.

As PolitiFact reports, the eugenics movement was widely popular at the time of Sanger’s work, but there is “no evidence that Sanger advocated - privately or publicly - for anything even resembling the ‘genocide’ of blacks, or that she thought blacks are genetically inferior”:

"I have never run into any serious academic reference of Sanger or others wanting to ‘kill black babies,’" Indiana University professor Ruth Engs, a eugenics movement expert, told PolitiFact Georgia in an e-mail.

The Washington Post also “found nothing to confirm these allegations” that Sanger targeted the black community for genocide and noted that even Martin Luther King, Jr. had praised her work.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org debunked the claim when Herman Cain made the same argument as Robertson:

Cain isn’t the first to believe that birth control advocate Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) wanted to stop the birth of black babies. Just do an Internet search and see what happens. Sanger made more than her share of controversial comments. But the quote many point to as evidence that Sanger favored something akin to “genocide” of African Americans has been turned on its head.

Sanger, who was arrested several times in her efforts to bring birth control to women in the United States, set up her first clinic in Brooklyn in 1916. In the late 1930s, she sought to bring clinics to black women in the South, in an effort that was called the “Negro Project.” Sanger wrote in 1939 letters to colleague Clarence James Gamble that she believed the project needed a black physician and black minister to gain the trust of the community:

Sanger, 1939: The minister’s work is also important and 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.

Sanger says that a minister could debunk the notion, if it arose, that the clinics aimed to “exterminate the Negro population.” She didn’t say that she wanted to “exterminate” the black population. The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University says that this quote has “gone viral on the Internet,” normally out of context, and it “doesn’t reflect the fact that Sanger recognized elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow south, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”

It goes on to characterize beliefs such as Cain’s as “extremist.” The project says: “No serious scholar and none of the dozens of black leaders who supported Sanger’s work have ever suggested that she tried to reduce the black population or set up black abortion mills, the implication in much of the extremist anti-choice material.”

On today's "WallBuilders Live," David Barton and Rick Green interviewed Frank Pavone of Priests for Life where they discussed the trial of Kermit Gosnell. Following the interview, Barton asserted that the Gosnell case "the biggest mass murder trial in American history" before declaring that activists should not be afraid of placing the blame on the Democratic Party because the Democrats "have wrapped Gosnell around themselves":

The news has done a very, very, very poor job of covering the Gosnell trial which is one of the mass murder trials, the biggest mass murder trials in American history. You know, just basically decapitating a hundred babies or sniping the spinal cords and all the screaming, it's just unbelievable.

Democrats are the ones who have owned the abortion issue. In their platform they proudly proclaim [it,] so why do I feel like I have to tread on neutral ground and not call out Democrats versus Republicans? Hey, the Democrats are the ones who have wrapped the flag of abortion around themselves, they have wrapped Gosnell around themselves. Gosnell is a product of the Democrat thinking and philosophy ... If you're in the Democrat Party,  this is what your party believes, this is what your party platform says, this is what you've wrapped yourself around, this is what you promote as president, this is it.

Barton went on to proclaim that the key to winning the abortion battle is to educate people about the graphic nature of what abortion entails ... just like they should do with the issue of homosexuality in explaining how truly "reprehensible" it is:

Bill Dannemeyer, a Lutheran guy, he said "you Democrats, you're wanting to fund all this homosexual activity, let me describe to you what homosexuality is."  And he just took a homosexual handbook that described the different types of homosexual sex and it grossed all the congressmen out. He said "why are you grossed out, this is what you're funding" and he literally read it into the [Congressional] Record and they wanted to purge the record. But once you get education, you go man, this is gross stuff, whether it's homosexuality, whether it's abortion.

You know, even my grandad, when I got involved in the Republican Party ... he had been a lifelong Democrat, he said "why'd you do that?"  And I said "well, Grandad, because of where they are on abortion and where they are on religious expression and where they are on homosexuality."  We were building a fence at the time and I vividly remember it, we were putting the barbed wire up and nailing it on the post and he just listened to me and for about five minutes, he didn't say anything and about five minutes later he said "sometime you're going to have to tell me what homosexuality is. I hear people use that and I'm not sure what that is."

And there's a guy who has been in the Democrat Party his whole life but because of the reprehensible nature of what it is, he didn't know, it had never been described. The Founding Fathers called it the crime not to be mentioned, it was that reprehensible.

Sen. Rand Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford appears to be scrambling to explain the Senator’s recent comments during a CNN interview where he said there would be “thousands of exceptions” to his “Life at Conception Act,” a federal personhood bill that would ban all abortion by granting legal status to embryos. He added that “each individual case would have to be addressed” and that there will “be a lot of complicated things the law may not ultimately be able to address in the early stages of pregnancy that would have to be part of what occurs between the physician and the woman and the family.”

Understandably, many people interpreted his comments to mean that the government shouldn’t be intruding on the medical decisions that are unique to each woman, or the opposite of what his sweeping anti-choice law would do.

But in an interview with LifeSiteNews, Stafford stressed that Paul’s mention of “thousands of exceptions” only “meant that a singular exception to save the life of the mother would likely cover thousands of individual cases.”

So the “thousands of exceptions” was only really one exception.

And when Paul said that women, their doctord and their families would be free from government interference during the early stage of the pregnancy, Stafford said that Paul was only referring to emergency contraception that prevents fertilization.

Emergency contraception, of course, only works up to 120 hours after sexual intercourse.

Stafford noted that such methods won’t be covered by the law because “it is not practically possible to legislate things like the morning after pill or other emergency contraception,” while stressing that Paul still seeks to ban RU-486.

Some pro-life activists were left scratching their heads after a recent interview Senator Rand Paul did on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show “The Situation Room,” in which the senator seemed to say he supported “thousands of exceptions” to his general belief that abortion should be illegal. But Paul spokesman Doug Stafford told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview on Wednesday that the senator’s remarks were misunderstood, reiterating that Paul is staunchly pro-life.

…

After the interview, the Atlantic Wire ran a story with the headline “Rand Paul Isn’t 100% Pro-life Anymore,” arguing that the language Paul used in his answer sounded remarkably similar to pro-choice rhetoric claiming abortion should always be a private matter between a woman and her doctor.

But Paul’s chief of staff, Doug Stafford, said the Atlantic got it wrong.

Paul “was speaking medically,” Stafford said.

By “thousands of exceptions,” Stafford told LifeSiteNews.com, Paul meant that a singular exception to save the life of the mother would likely cover thousands of individual cases – for example, ectopic pregnancies or others that directly threaten the mother’s life.

The senator is not in favor of the more nebulous “health of the mother” exception that pro-life advocates argue can be applied to any woman facing an unwanted pregnancy.

But what about Paul’s statement that the Life at Conception Act may not be able to address early abortions? That, too, was a misunderstanding, according to Stafford. He said the senator was talking about things like emergency contraception pills, which may cause very early abortions, but since they contain the exact same drugs used in standard birth control pills, the senator believes they will be nearly impossible to ban.

Senator Paul “has always said it is not practically possible to legislate things like the morning after pill or other emergency contraception,” Stafford said. “It simply isn't possible to do so. The law will likely never be able to reach that.”

“You can legislate abortifacients like RU-486, and he would,” he said. “But you can’t legislatively ban artificial estrogen and progesterone.”

Brooklyn’s Roman Catholic Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio is out with a column arguing that voters who supported President Obama’s re-election have brought America a “step deeper into the culture of death” and aided “the forces of death.” He claims that Obama “has been a proponent of an expediency that is shameful and criminal in the eyes of Almighty God” and is behind “an assault on the people of faith in our country” through his support for a woman’s right to choose.

DiMarzio concludes that unlike Abraham Lincoln, Obama has not “stood on the side of freedom for all” but instead “stands on the side of political expediency.”

On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This Executive Order freed the slaves in the 10 states that were in rebellion. It was not until 1865, with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, that slavery was abolished in the United States.

How far we have come as a Nation that 160 years later we will celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.

Yet, we also commemorate the 40th anniversary of our national shame: the lamentable Supreme Court decision, Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy.

The so-called “pro-choice” movement has its roots in the ideology of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who understood her call to be one who would “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.” Of course, a young Barack Obama was precisely the sort of unfit child that Sanger and her allies would want to eliminate.

Tragically, the President has not been an advocate for those young children faced with similarly difficult circumstances. He has chosen to use the bully pulpit not to call upon us all to be nobler and to embrace each child, regardless of origins and circumstances; rather, he has been a proponent of an expediency that is shameful and criminal in the eyes of Almighty God.

The forces of death press on from every side in contemporary American culture. It is clear there is an assault on the people of faith in our country. For instance, there are the current health insurance reforms that were imposed on our Nation obligating Catholic institutions to provide employees with medical procedures and services we believe to be in defiance of the will of God.

…

In my view, those who voted for President Obama bear the responsibility for a step deeper in the culture of death. Under the cover of women’s issues, we now see an assault on religious freedom and personal conscience.

In our own state, Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed the largest expansion of abortion rights in New York State history. The irony is that our leadership is proposing this at a time when increasingly more Americans oppose abortion and support greater restrictions upon abortions. New York State, which already holds the record for the most abortions in our country, is now expanding this culture of death. We may lose, but we will stand up for what we believe.

Some may think my tone a bit strident and even un-nuanced. Maybe the time has come for more direct conversation on these matters, if we hope to preserve what is left of our God-given and Constitutionally-protected rights.

Abraham Lincoln was a man who understood the intersection between politics and nobility. He never would have been able to pass the Thirteenth Amendment in 1863. But he started by freeing “slaves” in the Confederate States with his Emancipation Proclamation.

I would have hoped that the first African-American president of the United States would have stood on the side of freedom for all. Instead, he stands on the side of political expediency. Mr. Lincoln, with great difficulty, put out into the deep and paid with his life. Would that our political leaders today would have some of the same courage.

On the latest episode of Generations Radio, Pastor Kevin Swanson recounted the Religious Right’s political drubbings last year, especially the failure to defeat President Obama. He claimed Obama’s re-election “solidified our doom” and will encourage the election of “a bunch of softy-wofty, weeny socialists for the years to come.” Swanson maintained that women put Obama over the top because they tend to have “more communist” views. Later his cohost, pastor Dave Buehner, agreed and said Obama “doesn’t have a mandate; he’s got a woman-date. The men didn’t vote for him, it was the women who voted for him.”

They further speculated that TIME had trouble deciding whether to name Obama or North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “Man of the Year” since they are “both committed to Marx.”

Swanson: It solidified our doom, it effectively said there is no way out of this thing at least for the time being unless we get back to the foundations, reconstruct the foundations, which is something we’ve been talking about for a long time. Unless we rebuild families, fatherhood, young men, unless we bring back manhood, a biblical manhood, we are going to be a bunch of softy-wofty, weeny socialists for the years to come. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s going to be the single women that run most of the households in America voting and they almost always vote more socialist, more government, more communist, because they find their security in the state and not in the social structure of that family. Dave, we’re headed in that election. I think the 2012 election really was a turning point for America.

…

Swanson: The man has tremendous influence. He has got a mandate; he’s got a lot of support—

Buehner: He doesn’t have a mandate; he’s got a woman-date. The men didn’t vote for him, it was the women who voted for him, which is why he’s their ‘Man of the Year.’

Swanson: He’s got a woman-date, big time. You know, the North Korean president got the most votes from the audience for ‘Man of the Year,’ he was a close second. If you had a choice between Barack Obama and the North Korean president, they’re both committed to Marx. They are, think about it. If you interviewed both of them and you said: what do you think about Marx and the redistribution of wealth? Remember what he said on that radio station in Chicago, Barack Obama some ten years ago, he said they should have had redistribution of the wealth in the Constitution. He is so committed to Marxism and so is the North Korean president, but it was a tossup for TIME Magazine.

After attacking Obama’s “woman-date,” they then went on to ridicule Sandra Fluke. Buehner later falsely claimed that the health care reform law included “free access” to abortifacients, and said Fluke didn’t win TIME’s honor because “there’s some question about how ladylike she might be.” Swanson wondered if Fluke is a woman at all.

Buehner: This is the year that we learned that it is a fundamental right for women to get free access and their abortifacients provided free. Sandra Fluke was there telling us how it’s unconscionable that women would have to pay.

Swanson: Time did not make her ‘Woman of the Year’ though; I’d like to point that out. I think that’s a positive.

Buehner: Well there’s some question about how ladylike she might be.

Swanson: So they were like, ‘Man of the Year,’ ‘Woman of the Year,’ we’re not exactly sure.

Buehner: Yeah, you know.

Swanson: I understand.

The Christian Right activists later went on to mock Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was recently hospitalized for a blood clot, with Buehner joking that her recent medical problems were a “dog ate her homework” excuse and that “her tummy’s upset.” Swanson expressed shock that Egypt elected a Muslim president and said that Clinton is elated over the election of a Muslim because “it involves killing Christians.” They agreed that Clinton “might even put on a burka” to put Christian-killing Muslims in power, which makes sense because that’s what any “softy-wofty” would do.

Swanson: The Egyptians placed a Muslim into the presidency, which does not bode well for freedom in America. Dave, I wonder what the Secretary of State of the United States thinks about the election in Egypt. I mean, they were pretty excited about the revolution.

Buehner: They were, the Arab Spring. And Hillary Clinton the Secretary of State was unavailable for comment. It turns out that she slipped on something and maybe banged her head—dog ate her homework. She’s not feeling well, her tummy’s upset and she’s not going to make a comment.

Swanson: It’s a sad, sad day in Egypt.

Buehner: The Muslim Brotherhood, not just a Muslim but a Muslim Brotherhood, we’re talking about the radical jihadists.

Swanson: So Egypt, out of the frying pan and into the fire for Egypt. I’m afraid that a lot of these secularist nations are going to flip-flop from secularism into hardcore Muslimism and that’s not going to be a very nice transition because the Muslims have never really been known to be much kinder than the secularists, socialists and communists that have ruled these nations.

Buehner: No, they tend to be a little on the violent edge.

Swanson: If you were Hillary Clinton and you had a choice between a Christian president and a Muslim president, which would you go for?

Buehner: If I was Hillary? Well Hillary would choose the Muslim.

Swanson: Oh yeah, of course. It involves killing Christians, I mean yeah.

Buehner: She might even put on a burka to get that done.

Swanson: Yeah.

Conservative organizations have come out strongly against the UN Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities, with Rick Santorum leading the charge. The groups are upset about the treaty ensuring that people with disabilities have equal rights because they claim it is “pro-abortion.”

Article 25 of the Treaty reads in part: 

States Parties recognize that persons with disabilities have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure access for persons with disabilities to health services that are gender-sensitive, including health-related rehabilitation. In particular, States Parties shall:

(a) Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programmes;

Anti-choice activists are angry about the inclusion of the phrase “reproductive health” in the nondiscrimination clause, according to LifeNews:

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, has previously noted the pro-life concerns, saying abortion advocates put language in the treaty in Article 25 that requires signatories to ‘provide persons with disabilities… free or affordable health care including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based health programs.’” “Translation: the global community could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled–at taxpayer expense” he said. “Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tried to neutralize the threat during the mark-up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Unfortunately, his amendment (which would have stopped the treaty from forcing abortion policy on countries that sign) was thwarted by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) after a debate.”

Several pro-life groups are on record opposing the treaty, including Eagle Forum, Family Research Council Action, CitizenLink, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel, and others.

In addition, the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) have also came out against ratification.

But Perkins’s claim that the treaty “could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled-at taxpayer expense” is simply false.

The State Department makes clear that the treaty “does not include abortion” and the phrase “reproductive health” in Article 25 “does not create any abortion rights, and cannot be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion.”

The Convention is firmly rooted in the principles of equality and non-discrimination. As the Chairperson and many other delegations, including the United States, have noted on countless occasions over the course of negotiations, the treaty reinforces existing rights and is aimed at assuring that persons with disabilities will be treated on an equal basis with others.

This approach was reflected in oral statements and in various places in the written travaux preparatoires, including in a footnote to the draft text of Article 25 that appeared in the report of the Seventh Ad Hoc Committee.

In this regard, the United States understands that the phrase "reproductive health" in Article 25(a) of the draft Convention does not include abortion, and its use in that Article does not create any abortion rights, and cannot be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion. We stated this understanding at the time of adoption of the Convention in the Ad Hoc Committee, and note that no other delegation suggested a different understanding of this term.

Even the National Right to Life Committee reported after the text was adopted that no delegate interpreted “reproductive health” to mean abortion and that “delegates from pro-life nations ultimately accepted this language.” “The committee responsible for enforcing compliance to this treaty would be going way beyond their mandate if they were to interpret the term ‘reproductive health’ to include abortion,” the NRLC said:

The legally undefined and controversial term "reproductive health" remains in the document despite the fact that the term has never appeared in any other UN treaty. However, all parties maintained that the term does not include abortion and that its inclusion in this treaty cannot be interpreted to create any new rights such as a right to abortion.

The final version of Article 25 (a) on health states that nations signing and ratifying the treaty shall: "Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health. . . . ."

Delegates from pro-life nations ultimately accepted this language because they were assured and became confident that it does not include abortion or create any new human rights such as a right to abortion.

For example, during the debate the Treaty Chairman, Ambassador McKay of New Zealand, stated repeatedly that the use of the term "reproductive health" in this treaty does not create any new human rights such as abortion. He even added a non-binding footnote to the record of negotiations, not the treaty itself, which he claimed would preclude any such misinterpretation of the term.

Numerous delegates from nations throughout the world including the European Union agreed with Chairman McKay that the term "reproductive health" does not include abortion. No delegate from any nation stated that it does.

In light of all these statements and the language of the treaty, the committee responsible for enforcing compliance to this treaty would be going way beyond their mandate if they were to interpret the term "reproductive health" to include abortion. It is crucial that they do not because nations that sign and ratify a treaty are required to change their laws in order to comply with the treaty.

But for the Religious Right, even definitive evidence that the treaty’s language does not refer to abortion doesn’t change their mind that the Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities must be defeated.