An inconvenient truth

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The Human Life Amendment Belongs in the GOP Platform

By Marie Tasy, Executive Director New Jersey Right to Life

Republicans traditionally don’t win the women’s vote. Even pro-abortion Governor Christine Todd Whitman never won the women’s vote. The pro-life Republican party platform sets forth a goal to right a terrible wrong and it’s a worthy one, indeed. Did the abolitionists succeed in eradicating slavery overnight? No, but they perservered and eventually slavery was abolished in our land. Abortion is the human rights issue of our day. It is deeply disturbing that the Democrat party platform supports abortion on demand and states unequivocally that every American taxpayer should be forced to pay for it. This is truly the extreme position and one that is not supported by the majority of Americans. Every abortion is a tragedy and an act of violence that kills children and hurts women. That is why the pro-life movement offers financial and practical help to women in crisis pregnancies through pregnancy aid centers and maternity homes. We also offer help to the growing number of women who regret their abortion through many organizations and community outreach programs. To suggest that we should stop there is ill conceived and short sighted. Even legal scholars who support abortion admit the Supreme Court’s findings in Roe v. Wade are fatally flawed. The basis for the decision was based on a lie. Will abortion be eradicated in our lifetime? Perhaps not, but for Americans who value life, we have every right to work through political and legal avenues (as did our predecessors in previous civil rights struggles) to try to prevent the violent slaughter of millions of unborn children and the wounding of their mothers. We applaud the GOP for setting forth this goal for our country and will continue to work toward the day when this worthy goal becomes a reality.

Todd Akin admitted he misspoke and apologized. It’s time to focus on and expose Obama’s radical positions. Obama never met an abortion he didn’t like. His positions are so extreme he even voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. His HHS contraceptive mandate which is an attack on the first amendment’s religious liberty and freedom of conscience protections was drafted with the help of Planned Parenthood and other like minded groups who will financially benefit from the new policy. Moreover, his national healthcare plan will force every American to pay for abortion and will ration health care for the elderly. He has given millions of our hard earned tax dollars to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider who has been repeatedly caught on tape aiding and abetting the sexual predators of minors. And there’s so much more! It’s time to expose these positions to the American people and stop playing into the feeding frenzy of the left.

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The bullshit of the abortion debate

Congressman Todd Akin’s asinine comments about “legitimate rape,” pregnancy and abortion have knocked medicare and the economy off center stage in the political debate, at least temporarily.

Akin has apologized.  Yet his comments are unforgivable because he is clueless to the hurt and damage he has caused and continues to cause.  He is clueless to how hurtful his comments are to women, particularly rape survivors.   His apology is empty because he doesn’t realize what he did.

Akin is clueless to the political damage he is causing as evidenced by the fact that he refused to resign his candidacy for U.S. Senate.  He thinks he can win.  He says his campaign is not about him, but about his message, as if he is a messiah with a unique message that no one else can deliver.  Akin is a candidate for a straight jacket and the U.S. Senate.

Republicans are losing women over the Akin gaffe because 1) they failed to get him out of the Missouri U.S. Senate race and 2) their response is too male. Empathy is missing.  The Republican response, which failed, is strategic and politically expedient.  The strategy is sound, but empathy is missing and women feel that.

Much of the empathy coming from the left is false.  It is strategic.  But at least they are trying. Thus the gender gap will expand until Republican males get empathy for women, or at least fake it as well as Democratic males do.

The sin of it all is that on a political level the abortion debate is bullshit.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Kyrillos jumps into the Rape and Abortion fray

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, a GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, set off a national uproar and likely ended his poltical career with his comments comments about rape and abortion over the weekend when he said pregancy from “legitimate rape” was rare and that women’s body have a natural way of “shutting that whole thing down,” during an interview on a St. Louis Fox afflilate wherein he was asked about his views on abortion in the case of rape.

“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” said Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.”
 

Akin issued an apology of sorts on facebook later in the day on Sunday and told Mike Huckabee on the radio that he should have said “forcible rape.”

President Barack Obama called Akin’s comments offensive during his press conference this afternoon.

GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney distanced himself from Akin, calling the congressman’s remarks “insulting, inexcusable and frankly wrong,” according to the Washington Post.

Governor Chris Christie called Akin’s comments “asinine” and “ridiculous” during his press conference in Asbury Park this afternoon, according to Poltickernj.

In a press release, New Jersey GOP Senate nominee Joe Kyrillos took his criticism of Akin one step further than his fellow Republicans by addressing the congressman’s views on abortion :

“Like many I am outraged by Representative Todd Akin’s remarks regarding pregnancy and ‘legitimate rape’ – they have no place in our public discourse. But beyond my concern for our national public discourse, I am saddened and disappointed as a husband and a father to a 10 year old daughter. Not only are Representative Akin’s comments about a horrific act of violence wrong and inappropriate, he and I disagree on the issue of abortion, generally.”
(emphasis added)

Neither Kyrillos nor his campaign have responded to requests for a clarification on what he means by his “general” disagreement with Akin over abortion. 

U.S. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is suggestting that Akin withdrawl his Senate candidacy by the 5pm Tuesday deadline, according to the LA Times. 

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A new trend in gender equality

Fighting back at legislative restrictions to abortion and contraception, female legislators in Ohio, Illinois and Virginia have introduced bills that would regulate the use of viagra.

In Ohio, Senator Nina Turner has introduced Senate bill 307, which would require men to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and produce a notarized affidavit from a sexual partner affirming impotence before getting their blue pills.  The Dayton Daily News article doesn’t say if the therapist can be the person signing the affidavit.

In Illinois, State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a lesbian rights activist appointed to the legislature last April and elected in November, has proposed a gender equality amendment to legislation would require women to get an ultra-sound before an abortion.  Her amendment would require men to watch a video depicting the side effects of Viagra and the treatment thereof.

In Virginia, State Senator Janet Howell submitted an amendment to an ultra sound before abortion bill  that would have required men to receive a digital rectal exam prior to receiving a Viagra prescription.  Her amendment failed but the ultra sound bill passed.

So far, there is no such legislation is proposed in New Jersey.

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Roe v Wade and the Rights of the Father

By Tommy DeSeno, cross posted at ricochet

January 22 marks a contemptible day in American history.  On this day in 1973 a divided Supreme Court issued a spurious decision that led to the deaths so far of 50 million innocent Americans, now claiming more lives than Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s “Great Leap Forward.” The consequence of Harry Blackmun’s announcement of a new government policy outstrips all 20^th century European dictators combined in death toll. 

Current Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg long ago made a statement about the “right” that was being protected and in so doing opened up the soft underbelly of the Roe decision. With the appropriate court case, an attack could be led to end the American holocaust.  Here is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in 1974:

The emphasis must not be on the right to abortion, but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.

Justice Ginsburg thwarts the deceptive and preposterous argument that declares because women hold our children in their womb and only women can physically abort (kill) the child, abortion is therefore an issue saved for women alone.  While “abortion” can’t be equalized, Ginsburg rightly points out that abortion was not the right being protected.  “Reproductive control” is being protected, and that most certainly can be equalized between men and women under the law.

Look at the actual language Justice Blackmun penned in Roe wherein he described what exactly outweighed the Texas Law protecting the baby, and note it was NOT a right to an abortion procedure.  It was this:

Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved.

To solidify this point Justice Stewart in his concurring opinion described the right which outweighed the Texas statute which sought to protect the baby as follows:

That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. “Certainly the interests of a woman in giving of her physical and emotional self during pregnancy and the interests that will be affected throughout her life by the birth and raising of a child are of a far greater degree of significance and personal intimacy than the right to send a child to private school protected in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), or the right to teach a foreign language protected in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923).” Abele v. Markle, 351 F. Supp. 224, 227 (Conn. 1972).

Let us then summarize the rights actually protected by the Roe decision, noting again it was not a right to an abortion procedure (abortion is only the tool allowed to be used to further the following interests of the woman).  Here are the eight [8] legally acceptable reasons for allowing a woman to relieve herself from parental obligation, any of which now outweigh the life of the baby under American law:

1. A woman may find parenting to presently cause her distress.
2. A woman my find parenting to potentially cause her distress in the future.
3. A woman may be caused psychological harm now by parenting.
4. A woman may find child care taxing mentally and physically.
5. A woman may suffer stress because she does not want a child.
6. A woman may find her and her family psychologically unable to care for the child.
7. A woman may find her and her family are “otherwise” unable to care for the child.
8. A woman my want to avoid the stigma of unwed motherhood.

These are the things being protected in American law, not abortion itself.  They are, to say the least, homage to selfishness. But they are the law; the “rights” which outweigh a baby’s life.

Yet therein we find the best legal challenge. While a man can’t have an abortion procedure, he certainly can fit into any of the eight categories described above.  If those are the rights being protected, then those rights can be equalized. Under equal protection jurisprudence, if they can be equalized, they must be.

Note that currently “reproductive rights” are not just imbalanced between men and women; rather for men they are nonexistent.  In 2009 I wrote a column called “Roe v Wade and the Rights of the Father” wherein I describe the legal case needed to equalize reproductive rights between the sexes.  I call it a “Father’s Abortion” (no – it does not require the women to abort their child).  The challenge however will assert, based upon equal protection principles, the equalization under law of a man’s reproductive control currently afforded to women, using precisely the same arguments made in Roe v Wade as cited above.

The father will seek a ruling from the court, one that is routinely granted in courtrooms today, often against a man’s will, regarding his born children:  The termination of his parental rights and obligations.  This will leave the women to decide if she wishes to go it alone and have the child, or to have an abortion.

Please note that if the case were to prevail I personally would find the result abhorrent and inconsistent with morality concerning good fatherhood.  However, the only way to finally awaken the pro-death adherents of abortion is to impose ourselves upon them, by asserting the same claim of rights that they have been imposing on the rest of us for the past 39 years.  Only then will the obvious madness of it all be laid before them in such light to make any denial of it unbelievable.

Some may argue that the Courts will never let fathers unilaterally decide not to be fathers the way Roe has allowed it for mothers. What those people don’t know is that 49 states and Puerto Rico already allow new fathers to do so after the child is born, in what are known as Safe Haven Laws. Like it or not, the cultural shift away from parental responsibility is cemented now in both federal and state law.

The only difference between the result of the lawsuit I propose and the Safe Haven Laws is that the mother will be notified before the child is born that the father is foregoing all parental rights and responsibilities, thus the term “father’s abortion.”

When I first proposed this back in 2009, thanks to the editors at FoxNews.com who printed it, the column got enormous attention and was reprinted in a variety of online media (where is SOPA and PIPA when you need them?).  I jest.  I was happy it was getting attention.

Here is what I didn’t expect:   I was overwhelmed with emails from men who suffered, and suffered greatly, from having their children killed by mothers who refused to carry their children to term.  It was not my intention to bring their issue to the forefront, but it came.

I was emotionally moved to tears reading of their plight.  They are so helpless.  They are so lost in the conversation. The court focuses only on what harm might come to a women for being a mother, but won’t consider for a moment the harm that comes to a man when his child is killed.  The media will not address him.  Instead of programs that focus on his psychological devastation from his child being killed, media will only run stories claiming that the women behind abortions are somehow civil rights heroes.

These men tried everything:  Court injunctions, offers to let the mother have no parental or financial responsibility, offers of ransom money in exchange for their child’s life and more.  Yet they are powerless, held to the whims of a mother who, often for selfish reasons, wishes not to be one.

There is the story of one man I will never forget.  I don’t even know his name.  Someone reprinted my column on Free Republic, and in response he left this poem he wrote for his dead son. It was written in 1973, so this boy was one of the first victims of the American killing of innocents.  It is the rawest, most real and chilling poem I’ve read.  It is so compelling not because it is out of the ordinary, but because it is the common exemplar of what is happening to men and children since Roe v Wade:

I’ve got a son that never came.

One that flew kites and arrow-planes.

One that danced in the springtime rains.

Don’t know why or who’s to blame.

But I’ve got a son that never came.

Bullfrogs and butterflies he’ll never see.

He’ll stroll through an open field, but not with me.

There was a time his heartbeat strong.

It beat with rhythm as in a song.

And to me his love belonged.

Don’t know why or what went wrong.

But there was a time his heartbeat strong.

It’s left in my mind and my heart will tease.

There’s no love in my life for my son and me.

Before I had a chance to fight.

They took my son up a flight.

To a room to take his life

Don’t know why I had no rights.

Before I had a chance to fight.

Then five months early they stole him from his womb.

Laid him in a corner and watched him die in his tomb.

But for one split second I thought I heard him cry…

“I’m gonna have to leave you now. I love you Dad. Goodbye.”

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Is UMDNJ The New Planned Parenthood?

By James Hogan

If you’ve been following the snooze lately, you might have heard that NJ’s own UMDNJ tried to force nurses with religious or moral objections into assisting with abortions, which seems to be a violation of Federal and State law. UMDNJ has countered by arguing that they are requiring their nurses to assist with “pre-” and “post-” care, which sounds like a case of testing semantics to me. Regardless of if their order for nurses to assist at any point violates the federal or state law, there seems to be another, much larger problem that is going unnoticed in the snooze; UMDNJ performs abortions.

Maybe that’s old news to you the reader, but it was news to me because, at least as far as I knew, federal law, specifically the Hyde Amendment, prohibits federal tax dollars from funding abortions. UMDNJ boasts on it’s website “Over the last five years, UMDNJ has attracted $628 million in federal research grants.” In other words, UMDNJ has received $628 million in federal dollars, and performs abortions. They may or may not have received funds directly for abortions, but it wasn’t so long ago that the US House Voted for strip funding from Planned Parenthood after similar concerns about abortions being performed there were brought to light.

It also seems important to note that NJ Governor Chris Christie, who seems to be openly pro-life, and “as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Christie led a federal takeover of UMDNJ in 2005 amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement and political corruption at the institution.” More recently, Governor Chris Christie gave an OK to merge UMDNJ, where abortions are performed and federal tax money is sent, with Rutgers, the State University of NJ, that also receives state, and probably federal money. The best I can hope is that, like me, Chris Christie will find it news that UMDNJ performs abortions, but unlike me, he’ll be able to do something about it. And, in the opinion of this Average No One, this issue should matter to you regardless of if you are pro-life or pro-choice because the issue is really about where your federal tax money is going, and if a federal law is being broken by spending your tax money on abortions.

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Chris Smith’s “No Federal Funding For Abortion” Bill Passes The House

By Art Gallagher

H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, championed by Congressman Chris Smith, passed the House of Representatives this week, 251-175.  All Republicans in the House and 16 Democrats voted for the bill’s passage.

The bill would make permanent the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortion through Medicaid and other federal programs.  Additionally “indirect subsidies” like tax credits and deductions for abortions, insurance premiums on policies that cover abortion, and the use of tax-exempt savings plans to pay for abortion, are prohibited by the measure.

The bill has less of a chance to pass the Democratically controlled Senate than a African American or Hispanic fetus has of surviving its mother’s visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic.

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Hispanics/Latinos Are New Jersey’s Largest Minority Group

By Art Gallagher

Hispanics have surpassed African Americans as the largest minority group in New Jersey, according to the 2010 U.S. Census figures released this week.   The census reported 1,555,144 Latinos living in the Garden State in 2010 compared to 1,204,826 African Americans.  

Over the decade, the Hispanic population grew 39% in New Jersey from 1,117,191 reported in the 2000 census.  The African American population declined .6% from 1,211,750. 

Apparently Planned Parenthood’s Negro Project which seeks to limit the growth of the African American community by encouraging abortions is working in New Jersey.

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Christie: “I Stand With You”

By Art Gallagher

InTheLobby and Capitol Quickies report that Governor Chris Chrisite told a statehouse rally of pro-life demonstrators, “I stand with you,”  adding that he stands “with each and every one of those precious human lives.”

Our old Monmouth County friend Bob Jordan, now a statehouse reporter and blogger, quoted Christie on Capitol Quickies as follows:

“What we need to do each and every day is to live our lives in a way that encourages everyone to understand why this cause is so important,” Christie told those gathered. ”To show that we respect the life of every human being, and that every human being is one of God’s creatures and deserves the love and respect that God gives to all us.”

I was immediately reminded of the last time a governor stood on the statehouse steps and said “I stand with you.”   That was back on June 19, 2006, five months into Jon Corzine’s term as governor. It was 11 days before Corzine and the Democratic legislature shut down the government.

That day, Corzine joined a rally of 10,000 public employees and declared, “I’ll stand with you for your pension rights …”

Maybe Trenton really has been turned upside down.

Governor Christie had quite a day today.  In addition to his unequivocal remarks at the pro-life rally, the governor conditionally vetoed COAH  legislation that failed to reform how affordable housing is provided in New Jersey and increases the unnecessary burden on the State’s municipalities.

In a statement announcing the veto, Christie said:

“If the goal of this legislation is to replace an already broken system for providing affordable housing with a common sense, predictable and achievable process, then this bill sorely misses the mark,” said Governor Christie.  “The Senate has presented a considerably different version of the legislation I originally supported in June – one that was simple and sufficiently close to the recommendations contained in the March 19, 2010, report of the Housing Opportunity Task Force. This version perpetuates the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) nightmare by placing further burdens on municipalities and the environment while creating rather than eliminating additional bureaucracies in order to satisfy the needs of special interests.  I believe this bill should be amended to return it to its original, beneficial form as passed by the Senate in June.”

The original version of S-1 passed by the Senate in June 2010 called for:

 

• eliminating COAH and the arbitrary affordable housing numbers it assigned to municipalities
• requiring that 1 out of every 10 newly constructed housing units be designated as affordable (towns with no growth would have no further affordable housing obligation other than to inventory and rehabilitate its existing affordable housing stock)
• limiting State review of municipal housing plans
• protection against builder’s remedy lawsuits for municipalities 
• elimination of commercial development fees, though residential development fees were permitted to be charged if a developer chose not to build affordable units on-site and decided to pay the residential development fee instead

 

In its current, unacceptable form, S-1:

 

• requires 10% of all the housing units in every municipality in the State to be affordable
• necessitates that 25% of the affordable housing obligation be met by inclusionary development, legislating sprawl by increasing the amount of mandated new housing by 500% to 700%.  
• creates a new regulated entity to review a municipality’s housing plans
• causes towns to have to pay for two planners – one to draft the plan, and the other to certify it meets the requirements of the bill
• provides no meaningful protection against builder’s remedy lawsuits
• requires towns in the Highlands, Pinelands, Fort Monmouth and Meadowlands districts to have 15%to 20% of all new construction as affordable

As if that were not a full day’s work, Christie held a Town Hall Meeting in the Camden County borough of Chesilhurst this afternoon where in touted his pension and public employee health benefit reform package.

The highlights of the Governor’s “fiscal sanity” package are as follows:

Christie Reform Agenda for Public Employee Pensions – At a Glance

The current pension system is underfunded by $54 billion and, unless reforms are enacted, that number will grow to $183 billion by 2041, even if the taxpayers make all statutorily required pension fund contributions.

 

·         Governor Christie’s reforms will reduce total pension underfunding from $183 billion in 2041 without reform to $23 billion in 2041, and

·         Increase the aggregate funded ratio from the present level of 66% to more than 90% in 30 years.

 

A PDF of Governor Christie’s Reform Agenda proposal for pensions is attached to this release.

 

 

Christie Reform Agenda for Public Employee Health Benefits – At a Glance

Today, New Jersey’s unfunded liability, or future costs expected in the health benefits system, is $66.8 billion.  New Jersey spends $4.3 billion annually on public employee and retiree health care costs, and the problem is only getting worse.

 

The cost for operating the health care benefits program for public employees and retirees is slowly sapping New Jersey’s budget to the point where it is becoming impossible for state and local government to fund critical priorities and bring rising deficits into line.

 

·         Without immediate action, costs will increase by more than 40 percent over the next four years.  By contrast, the average cost to an active public employee will increase by less than 10 percent over the same period.

·         The cost of health benefits, as a percent of New Jersey’s annual budget, has grown from 4.5 percent in 2001 to more than 9 percent today.

 

Governor Christie’s reforms will restore fairness to the system by:

·         Transitioning the cost-sharing in the system to a more realistic model,

·         Offering more options for employees to choose from, and

·         Switching to a system requiring employees to pay a percentage of their premium rather than a percentage of their salary.

Personally, I don’t think the pension reforms go far enough, but that will be the subject of a future post.  For this post, I just appreciate how far we’ve come in one year under Christie’s leadership.

Governor Christie will be holding a Town Hall meeting in Middletown on Wednesday morning, 11 AM, at the VFW on Route 36.  The doors open at 10:30.  Seating is first come, first seated.

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