"They kill babies in the crib and say only the good die young."
~ Bob Dylan "Foot of Pride"
Everywhere you look in America people are giving up their rights willingly. Those on the left are particularly prone to this brand of largesse but the right is far from immune, especially in post 9/11 America.
Our right to own the fruits of our labor? Cancel those Lilliputian tax cuts so that we can pay for those 40,000 new Democrat voting union members dining at the public trough and making our airports seem secure. Sounds fair.
Our right to privacy? No problem. If it will catch even one terrorist then feel free to listen in on my telephone conversations. After all, I have nothing to hide and the government means me no harm, right? It's only prudent.
Our property rights? Help yourself. The wars on drugs and terrorism are serious business, you know. If we are going to stop these people from selling their illegal drugs (as opposed to alcohol, tobacco, Viagra, Ritalin and Prozac) we have to make them pay. And if it means that the occasional grandma loses her house because her grandson had a pound of weed hidden in the garage, well that's the price we have to pay. And we'll pay it…for the children.
How about due process? Hey, the feds need to act fast if we are going to stop terrorism and all that presumption of innocence, habeas corpus mumbo jumbo takes time that we just don't have in today's America. Tough but fair, that's us.
Although it looks like Virginia Winter outside my window here in the Valley it appears to be Constitutional Autumn a scant 90 miles away in DC with God given, constitutionally guaranteed rights falling like brightly colored leaves on Skyline Drive in November. Heck, if all those well meaning, trustworthy people in Washington (you know – Ted "Where's the Glenlivet" Kennedy, Tom "Moderate" Ridge, Joe "Conscience of the Senate" Lieberman, and their other associates of sterling character) are willing to offer us something in return, something like security or fairness or a prescription card, then it's probably a good idea. And those offers are coming fast and furious while our rights fly back to DC like swallows back to San Juan de Capistrano.
Big Brother is on board passing out the peanuts as we surrender the rights the Founding Fathers and subsequent generations of American heroes actually fought and died for. The usual suspects (think Hillary and Jesse and CNN) who have been trying to cede all rights and responsibilities to the state for years are buckled in and ready for takeoff, to no one's particular surprise. People from whom we might have expected better are on this flight as well. The "conservative" crowd has taken the exit row aisle seats so they can make sure we don't deplane down the slide and escape across the tarmac. Even Neil Young and Don Imus, both well above average among the chuckleheaded celebrity class, are listening intently to the safety instructions and putting their tray tables up.
Interestingly, however, not all rights are viewed as being quite so disposable. If you dare to even offer an alternative to the cherished American right to a dead baby the full force of the government stands astride the path yelling. "Not so fast!"
It is, apparently, one thing to tell a man that he can't criticize government policy because it might aid terrorists and then drop him into the pokey for doing it. That is considered to be not only a reasonable limit to free speech but a patriotic one. It is, however, quite another to tell a woman that she might want to stop and consider consequences and alternatives before she pays someone to stick a fork in her baby's skull. Trampling on the Constitution is accepted. Even applauded. Any challenge to the Culture of Death is met with force. Human rights can fall by the wayside but "reproductive rights" are sacrosanct. Even Lucifer and Planned Parenthood have standards.
Did it ever strike you as odd that "reproductive rights" has come to mean the right not to reproduce no matter what your behavior? And that Planned Parenthood's plan is to end parenthood? Newspeak is a wonderfully flexible thing and it does great service in the fight to protect America's inviolable right to a dead baby.
One of the most hopeful aspects of the pro-life movement's recent history, along with the emergence of the post Roe v. Wade "Rock for Life" generation, has been the growth of a network of crisis pregnancy centers. These centers offer information and counseling to women who are pregnant and overwhelmed by it. Most of the women who go to these centers are young and in the lower end of the income ladder. They are largely products of the government schools so they do not understand their options or the implications of exercising those options although many retain remarkably high self-esteem and are whizzes at putting condoms on bananas. They have grown up in a country that insists on seeing itself as the planet's paragon of good while aborting 4,000 human lives a day, every day, every year, year in and year out. They have been sold the philosophy of "choice" that says that it is reasonable, therapeutic and even virtuous to stick a fork in a baby's skull, suck his brain out, dismember him and sell the parts in order to increase your own range of lifestyle choices. Your tax dollars at work.
Counselors at crisis pregnancy centers try to explain the lay of the land a little more fully. They let the women know that there is more in the balance than what their high school health teacher and Planned Parenthood have let on. These counselors are not, for the most part, professionals. They are not medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses or federalized professional baggage screeners. They are just people who care enough about troubled pregnant women and the lives growing in their bellies to get off the couch and spend a few hours listening to concerns and sharing information and options. This is unacceptable to the ruling elite. Not only are they steering women away from having abortions but they are not even AFSME members. They probably vote Republican or even Pro-Life, the Neanderthals.
They talk about things like the abortion–breast cancer link. The existence of this link is treated as classified information by NOW, NARAL, NIH and the rest of the Culture of Death's alphabet soup. In the world of it-takes-a-village collectivism the "right to know" is subject to highly the same highly selective application as all other rights except, of course, the right to a dead baby, which is unassailable.
They talk about things like the baby parts industry. When a Planned Parenthood counselor tells a young, frightened, pregnant woman that her abortion could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's or Aids they tend to leave this part out. There are a load of people out there making a nice living in fetal tissue research and its allied commercial efforts. Hey, the fetal tissue has to come from somewhere. Showing a pregnant woman photographs of babies who have been dismembered into parts can shed a new light on this "heroic" research, a light that many would rather not illuminate. Crisis pregnancy center counselors show the pictures and they are not pretty.
They talk about things like brains and hearts and nerve endings and pain. This is tough stuff but, in the grand scheme of things, not as tough as being forked and dismembered.
They talk about tough stuff like the consequences that follow choices.
A government service drone named Eliot Spitzer, crack Attorney General for the state of New York, has had enough of this subversive activity and aims to stop it. He has said as much in a speech made to that high-minded public interest group, NARAL. Now, if a state's Attorney General made a speech to a pro-life group indicating his suspicions about abortion clinics and his intention to get them into step with his beliefs it would be a sign of his partisanship and lack of sensitivity. Spitzer's actions have not been so labeled because the people who print the labels are also NARAL supporters.
Being a cunning bureaucrat, Mr. Spitzer's first move was to subpoena the records of all counselors at his first three target centers. His transparent hope is to intimidate these heroic private citizens with the prospect of years of interaction with the government's legal proctologists. These are real people, you see, with homes and families and jobs and without the political clout afforded dues paying members of the Culture of Death. They cannot afford to spend their time being grilled and vetted by government operatives whose only real goal is to inconvenience and punish them anyway.
Another complaint voiced by the forces of the Culture of death is that "Abortion Alternatives" comes before "Abortion Providers" in the Yellow Pages and therefore many women never even get to their listings. The alphabet is so unfair. Rumor has it that Mr. Spitzer plans to sue the Modern Language Association and the New York Public Library next in an effort to rectify the alphabet's failure to be sensitive to "reproductive rights."
If that effort fails there are other alternatives in marketing the Culture of Death. They say the two color display ads in the Yellow Pages are quite effective. And red in is available as a second color. In order to counter the challenge mounted by these crisis pregnancy centers it might even be worth considering more special offers like the free abortions Planned Parenthood proffered post 9/11. Now that was an interesting thought that says much about the mindset that dreamed it up, wasn't it? Want to feel better about Americans being killed by terrorists? Kill your baby! Free! Limited time only!
How about this one? With every abortion they could give away a 10% discount on that mastectomy that is being introduced into the woman's future by virtue, if that is the word, of the abortion-breast cancer link. It would show sensitivity to the needs of the dead baby's mother and, with the way the value of money is continually trampled by the Fed, the actual future cost will be much less than the present dollar value makes it appear. Perhaps they could validate parking too.
January 24, 2002
