Pew Poll Confirms Support for Abortion Has Declined

New Pew Poll results from August confirm the March 2009 Pew poll results showing a decline in support for Abortion. A clear majority, over 50%, answered in 2008 that they thought abortion should be legal in all/ most cases. Now this year less than 50% have answered legal in two polls in two polls in a row:

August 2009

Illegal 45
Legal 47

March 2009

Illegal 44
Legal 46

Late October 2008

Illegal 40
Legal 53

Mid October 2008

Illegal 36
Legal 57

August 2008

Illegal 41
Legal 54

Asians in USA Aborting Baby Girls (and Exactly How Did They Say Abortion is a Women's Rights Issue?)

According to Sunday's New York Times, some Asian immigrant groups in the USA are selecting for baby boys. That means aborting baby girls.

Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion.

New immigrants typically transplant some of their customs and culture to the United States — from tastes in food and child-rearing practices to their emphasis on education and the elevated social and economic status of males. The appeal to immigrants by clinics specializing in sex selection caused some controversy a decade ago.

But a number of experts expressed surprise to see evidence that the preference for sons among Asian-Americans has been so significantly carried over to this country. “That this is going on in the United States — people were blown away by this,” said Prof. Lena Edlund of Columbia University.

She and her colleague Prof. Douglas Almond studied 2000 census data and published their results last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys.

Studies have not detected a similar preference for males among Japanese-Americans.

The findings published by Professors Almond and Edlund were bolstered this year by the work of a University of Texas economist, Prof. Jason Abrevaya. He found that on the basis of census and birth records through 2004, the incidence of boys among immigrant Chinese parents in New York was higher than the national average for Chinese families. Boys typically account for about 515 of every 1,000 births. But he found that among Chinese New Yorkers having a third child, the number of boys was about 558.

Progressives who advocate for abortion rights say they are for women's rights. But I am not so sure that abortion and women's rights really go together than seamlessly. I have recently posted a case where the teenage girl was coerced into having an abortion by her father and other family members. And posted about the threat of murder for women who do not abort their babies when the father of the baby doesn't want her to have it. Now here we see that boys are preferred in Asian cultures, and women are pressured into producing baby boys. And that means women being pressured to abort their babies because they are girl babies. I am starting to think that being anti-abortion is the real women's rights position.

How one father coerced his daughter into having an abortion

Northern Plains Anglican has an interesting post, Abortion: The overestimation of "choice" and denial of duress. In response, I am posting here an article from the New York Times Magazine told by a father about how he and his wife coerced their 15 year old daughter into have an abortion. I was stunned when I read the article because the father is so self confident that abortion was the right decision although the daughter wants to have and keep the baby. This is from seven years ago, July 7, 2002, and I have often wondered how the daughter is doing.

My wife knew the girl was pregnant before she did. She was bedridden for several days, and my wife took her to the doctor. According to the laws of my Bible-belt state, a minor needs her parents' permission to have an abortion, but her parents can't tell her not to have a baby. She thought she wanted to keep it and swore she'd be a good mother. My wife and I -- and my oldest daughter -- freaked, and not just because of our dashed aspirations for this girl. We were too old to want to raise another baby -- and we felt sure the raising would fall to us.

Of course there was a boy involved, and he hadn't fled. He lives with his grandparents, and they asked us all to come talk. The grandfather lectured the young couple on responsibility. The boy admitted he wasn't ready to be a father. The only person in the room who wanted the baby was my daughter, but in the face of family advice, she decided she couldn't go through with the pregnancy. My wife scheduled her for an abortion.

The day before surgery, our daughter announced that she had a meeting with a guidance counselor and a county probation officer because of her truancies. She wanted her mother to go with her. Finally, it seemed, we were getting help. My wife came clean, explaining that many of her late arrivals to school had been due to morning sickness. But when she mentioned the abortion, my daughter started crying, and the officer, a woman, ordered my wife to take the girl to a counseling center.

''Like Planned Parenthood?'' the guidance counselor asked.

''No,'' she snapped. She had to go to a pregnancy center that ''tells all sides of the story.'' They drove directly to said ''counseling'' office, which turned out to be an anti-abortion propaganda center, where a counselor showed my daughter aborted fetuses on a video and talked about the after-effects of abortion -- with no mention of the complications of pregnancy. My daughter was right back on the teenage-mommy track. While the counselor went home thinking she had saved a life, we felt we had been sentenced to 18 years of hard labor.

As word spread about the pregnancy, other women called offering to tell about their own abortions. My daughter's friends, her sister, her sister's friends all counseled against having the baby, but she wouldn't listen. [Wouldn't listen or wouldn't agree to have an abortion?]We decided to stage an intervention. When my daughter came into the living room, there were 15 women waiting for her, including four mothers. They asked me to leave; I listened from the kitchen, and though I couldn't hear anything other than sobs and laughter, I could feel the gravity. But when it was over, she still hadn't decided.[Still hadn't decided or still hadn't agreed to have an abortion?]

The next week, I took her to a counseling appointment at Planned Parenthood. As I sat in the waiting room, I thought about my own sister, who had a botched abortion before it was legal. She got kicked out of college for nearly bleeding to death in a dorm room. That night when we got home and my wife asked our daughter what she was going to do, she blurted out, ''I don't have a choice.'' The next day, she turned on Saturday-morning cartoons, as if she'd decided to be a kid again.

We spent a week wondering if she'd change her mind, but she didn't. I realized later that I would have more to worry about if she had easily and immediately decided on an abortion. Ultimately, she did, but she struggled with her decision, and I hope she made the right one.

I remember being most outraged at this paragraph where he claims it was "her decision" after so many paragraphs in which she is coerced into having the abortion although she clearly does not want to have one.

Dr. George Tiller: "Saint and Martyr"

The late-term abortion doctor George Tiller was called a saint and a martyr by the Very Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in an interview on Monday:

"This is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr," she said in an interview before the service. "He was a prayerful man who put his life at risk to protect others and died for it. People are in shock, outrage and mourning. They need a place to go."

In the same Washington Times article a Jewish rabbi also called George Tiller a martyr but did not call him a saint:

Reconstructionist Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Philadelphia-based Shalom Center said Dr. Tiller "joins the list of martyrs for ethical decency and human rights, killed for healing with compassion."

The rabbi said Dr. Tiller was "a religious martyr in the fullest classical sense, killed in his own church as he arrived to worship, killed for acting in accord with his religious commitments and his moral and ethical choices."

Here is the testimony of the one of the many woman for whom Tiller "put his life at risk to protect".



Hat Tip: Midwest Conservative Journal

Is Murder #1 Cause of Death for Pregant Women?

Northern Plains Anglican has a post up that refers to the risk of murder for pregnant women. I remembered that I had heard that murder was the #1 cause of death of pregnant women in Washington, D.C. and some other cities. I wondered if this was "urban legend" or fact, and decided to check.

Here's a May 2009 article from Baltimore news channel WJZ.com that says that murder is the #1 cause of death for pregnant women in Maryland, and sources this to a specific person at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene:

Across Maryland, pregnant women are being killed at an alarming rate. Forty-one pregnant women have been murdered in Maryland since researchers began keeping track in the 90s.

"We were completely shocked to find that homicide was the leading cause of death," said Isabelle Horon, Md. Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The majority of these victims are young, single and African-American.

In December 2004, the Washington Post did a three part series on the murder of pregnant women. The lead article includes this:

Five years ago in Maryland, state health researchers Isabelle Horon and Diana Cheng set out to study maternal deaths, using sophisticated methods to spot dozens of overlooked cases in their state. They assumed they would find more deaths from medical complications than the state's statistics showed. The last thing they expected was murder.

But in their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001, they wrote that in Maryland, "a pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause."

"It was a huge surprise," said Horon, who recalls paperwork covering the researchers' kitchen tables on weekends and evenings as they sought to understand the astonishing numbers. "We thought we had to have made a mistake. We kept checking and checking and rechecking."

Their findings, as it turned out, were no error. Homicide accounted for 50 of 247 maternal deaths in Maryland over a six-year period -- more than 20 percent. It had caused more deaths than cardiovascular disorders, embolisms or accidents.

"People have this misconception that pregnancy is a safe haven," Cheng said.

Building upon the Maryland study and others, The Post contacted 50 states and the District for all possible data about maternal deaths during pregnancy or postpartum months. Few states track homicides in a comprehensive way, but many states could provide some data, mostly from death certificates. The Post combined what it collected with cases culled from other sources.

The resulting 1,367 maternal homicides took place over 14 years.

"That's a formidable number -- and that's just the tip," said Judith McFarlane, who studies violence and pregnancy at Texas Woman's University and who described the void of reliable numbers as "embarrassing." She observed: "You can't address a problem that we don't document. You can't reduce them. You can't prevent them. In essence, they don't exist."

The Post did an indepth study of one year of the homicides they found to try to understand the motives:

One recent year of homicides -- 2002 -- was examined in greater detail to get a closer look at how and why the cases happened. For a group of 72 homicides in 24 states, The Post interviewed family members, friends, prosecutors and police. The analysis showed that nearly two-thirds of the cases had a strong relation to pregnancy or involved a domestic-violence clash in which pregnancy may have been a factor.

The dead included Ceeatta Stewart-McKinnie, 23, a college student in Richmond who was beaten to death by her boyfriend. The couple had dated on and off for years, and she had had abortions previously, prosecutors said. This time, he was married -- and she refused to end her pregnancy. Turkey hunters found her bludgeoned body in the woods.

In Chicago, Chavanna Prather, 17, was a high school student who played basketball and worked part time at McDonald's. Prather became intimate with her manager at work, then became pregnant and asked for money for an abortion, police said. She was found dead in a river on the city's South Side. He awaits trial.

In Rochester, N.Y., Zaneta Browne, 29, was at odds with her married boyfriend about her pregnancy in 2002 when he shot her with a .22-caliber rifle. The killer and his wife secretly buried her on rural land, hoping no one would find out. Browne left three children behind. She was nearly four months pregnant with twins.

Louis R. Mizell, who heads a firm that tracks incidents of crime and terrorism, observed that "when husbands or boyfriends attack pregnant partners, it usually has to do with an unwillingness to deal with fatherhood, marriage, child support or public scandal."

In the article, Pat Brown, a criminal profiler based in Minneapolis explains:

"It is certainly a more dangerous moment in life. You are escalating people's responsibilities and curtailing their freedoms."

For some men, she said, the situation boils down to one set of unadorned facts: "If the woman doesn't want the baby, she can get an abortion. If the guy doesn't want it, he can't do a damn thing about it. He is stuck with a child for the rest of his life, he is stuck with child support for the rest of his life, and he's stuck with that woman for the rest of his life. If she goes away, the problem goes away."

Jack Levin of Northeastern University is quoted as explaining:

"It seems to me that these guys hope against hope for a miscarriage or an abortion, but when everything else fails, they take the life of the woman to avoid having the baby,"

Support for Abortion Declines by Almost 10%

The most recent poll from the Pew Research Center has some interesting news. Support for abortion has gone done in the last year so that we no longer have a majority who say abortion should be legal in most or all cases:



Hat Tip Mollie at Get Religion

Lila Rose visits Planned Parenthood in Memphis TN

Lila Rose visits Planned Parenthood in Memphis TN.



The LA Times has an great article about Lila Rose that includes the information that she is working from the Saul Alinsky playbook Rules for Radicals:

They also found an unlikely source of inspiration: "Rules for Radicals," a handbook on grass-roots organizing by Saul Alinsky, a legendary left-wing activist who was an inspiration to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Among Alinsky's most famous admonitions is one that O'Keefe said he and Rose took to heart: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

Hat Tip Mollie at Get Religion

Is China Aborting Its Baby Girls?

Today the New York Times reported on a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ)on the imbalance in the the number of boys and girls in China. The study claims that there are 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls. The imbalance is attributed to selective abortion of girls in China due to the preference for girls and China's one child policy.

We do know there is a strong preference for girls in China. The New York Times actually did an article last Sunday on boy children being abducted in China and sold to other families there. According to that article, "most of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say."

But are girl babies really being aborted in China in large numbers?

We can imagine it might be true because infanticide was common in China in the early 20th century and we do know the orphanages were a substitute for that practice and filled up with girl babies.

But the article says the imbalance is greatest in the rural area and I am skeptical that the ultrasound equipment needed to practice selective abortion is so available in rural areas. One possible alternative explanation is that the people in rural China are still practicing infanticide, waiting for the birth to determine the sex and then leaving female babies out to die.

Alternatively, the ratio may be due to the difference in the the registering of female and male babies. The BMJ study is based on the 2005 census. As I understand it, this reflects registered population. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health ten years ago showed that the excess ratio of boys disappeared when actual household surveys were done.

EDS Picks Lesbian Pro-Abortion Fundraiser for President and Dean

The Board of Trustees of the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) has selected the Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale to be the new President and Dean. In the announcement in Episcopal Life Online, the Rt. Rev. Thomas Ely, EDS trustee and search committee member is quoted citing Ragsdale's "development skills" and the Acting Academic Dean, Dr. Angela Bauer-Levesque, cites Ragsdale's "experience in fundraising". Of course, they cite her many other attributes as well, but this position is understood within academia to be primarily responsible for fundraising. And EDS, like many of the progressive Episcopal seminaries, is in desperate financial condition. For EDS the situation is so extreme that they sold off some of its buildings last year.

Ragsdale has demonstrated success as a fundraiser for her anti-Right Wing think tank Political Research Associates, as well as Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and other pro-abortion and gay rights groups. I guess this means that the Trustees of EDS see the sources of future dollars for the seminary coming from supporters of abortion and gay rights causes.

While I am concerned with the threat of radical Islam and Sharia Law, Ragsdale and her funders are concerned with the threat of a theocratic state coming from right wing Christians. It seems to me that Ragsdale is still living in the worldview of the time Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale, 1985. She seems to have missed the major event of the new century, 9/11.

Hat Tip to Reformed Pastor

So Much for Mandatory Reporting of Child Rape

Here is the video from Indiana of the Planned Parenthood nurse coaching a pregnant 13 year old how to avoid the law requiring her 31 year old boyfriend be reported for child abuse and how to avoid the parental consent laws in Indiana.

Watching this made me cry. Prop 4 for parental consent lost in California in November. But even if it passed, it would not have worked with dedicated professionals like this taking matters into their own hands.


-

The reporter for the Washington Times, Victor Morton writes:
The nurse, who is referred to on the video as "Diana" but whose face is blurred out, knew neither that the session was being taped nor that "Brianna" really was Miss Rose, a 20-year-old pro-life activist at UCLA.

Kudos to to Lila Rose and the other pro-life activists at UCLA who did the great undercover work to expose this.


Hat Tip to dpulliam at Get Religion

Aquinas Visits Yugoslav Abortionist in Dream, Converted to Life

This doctor says he was visited twice in dreams by a figure who identified himself as "Thomas Aquinas". Remember, Thomas Aquinas is the one Nancy Pelosi and other pro-abortion Catholics use to claim that there has been a difference of opinion among Catholics regarding the beginning of life.

Catholic News Agency

MADRID (CNA) — The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.

“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported. “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.”

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint. He didn’t recognize the name”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,’ St. Thomas told him. “Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

“That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion—something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc. The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby’s heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being,”

After this experience, Adasevic “told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions. Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university.”
After years of pressure and on the verge of giving up, he had another dream about St. Thomas.

“You are my good friend, keep going,’ the man in black and white told him. Adasevic became involved in the pro-life movement and was able to get Yugoslav television to air the film ‘The Silent Scream,’ by Doctor Bernard Nathanson, two times.”

Adasevic has told his story in magazines and newspapers throughout Eastern Europe. He has returned to the Orthodox faith of his childhood and has studied the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

“Influenced by Aristotle, Thomas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization,” Adasevic wrote in one article. La Razon commented that Adasevic “suggests that perhaps the saint wanted to make amends for that error.” Today the Serbian doctor continues to fight for the lives of the unborn.

Hat tip to Jackie at Stand Firm

California Prop 4 and Prop 8 Results

With 94.6% ( 24,073 of 25,423 ) precincts partially
or fully reporting as of Nov. 5, 2008, at 6:43 a.m. the two ballot measures in California are

Proposition 4 - Parent Notification Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy
Yes 4,566,066 47.6%
No 5,020,847 52.4%

Proposition 8 Marriage Between a Man and a Woman (renamed by Atty General "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry")
Yes 5,163,908 52.1%
No 4,760,336 47.9%

Great News: Decline in Teenage Abortions

Anglican Pewster sent me an interesting article on the new Guttmacher Institute analysis of data on abortions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new analysis looks more closely at the previous news that the abortion rate has dropped 33 percent from a peak of 29 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in 1980 to 20 per 1,000 in 2004.

The good news is that the teen abortion rate fell by more than half, from 42 abortions per 1,000 teenage girls at their peak rate in 1989 to 20 per 1,000 in 2004. That is the same 20 per 1,000 as for all women 15 to 44 in 2004, so now teenagers are no more likely to get an abortion than older women.

The new analysis shows that the bad news is the greater frequency of abortions for women of color and women who already have a child.

There are quite a few news articles on this analysis, some emphasizing the reduction in teen abortions and others emphasizing the disparity between socioeconomic groups. The Washington Post had a good article by Rob Stein with a powerful concluding quote:

Michael J. New, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama who works with the Family Research Council, attributed the drop in teenage pregnancies to a combination of factors, including increased contraceptive use, more teenagers delaying sex and state laws requiring parental consent.

"The states with the most active pro-life laws have seen the biggest abortion declines," he said.

And the Catholic News Agency has an interesting article with an emphasis on the Planned Parenthood outreach to African-Americans:

CNA discussed the study in a Wednesday phone interview with Dr. Alveda King, niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a pastoral associate for Priests for Life.

King said people “may miss the implications” from the raw data.

“You’ve got raw data that shows the abortion rate has declined among women, but there’s a disparate rate among African-American women,” she noted.

“The question should be ‘why?’

“The answer is that the abortion clinics are present at a much higher rate in African-American communities.

“Abortion is pitched to black women as therapeutic and so black women are still having more abortions, and that information is not readily apparent in a study like Guttmacher’s.”

FYI Anglican Pewster runs Not Another Episcopal Church Blog

Founder of NARAL Speaks on the Greatest Mistake of His Life

H/T to Northern Plains Anglicans

Monday Morning Heart Warm

Anglican Pewster just alerted me to this heartwarming story about the 2008 bronze medalist Tasha Danvers:

Tasha Danvers chose her unborn child four years ago over her hopes for an Olympic medal. Now she has both.

In early 2004, Danvers appeared to be a good prospect for a medal at the Olympics in Athens. She was the sixth-ranked hurdler in the world. Then, she learned she was pregnant.

Danvers reportedly was pressured by some in the track and field world to have an abortion. She admitted later that she and her American husband-coach Darrell Smith briefly considered that choice.

"[T]he thought did cross our minds as an option," Danvers told the Telegraph, a London newspaper, in May 2004 before citing Mark 8:36. "But this line from the Scriptures kept coming into my head: 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'

"For me, the whole world was the Olympics. At the same time, I felt I would be losing my soul."

Thank you to Pat Dague at Transfigurations for posting this story from Baptist Press and to Anglican Pewster of Not Another Episcopal Church Blog for alerting me to the post.

Progressive Myths and Legends: Abortions Have Risen Rapidly During Bush Administration

There is a new myth being spread by the Progressives regarding abortion. I would call it a Talking Point except that it is easily demonstrated to be false. Please pay attention to the last sentence of this opening paragraph of retired Episcopal Bishop John Spong's recent screed in the Washington Post:

The Saddleback Forum was good theater, but it was theologically naïve. The questions asked reflected an evangelical world view that is one to which educated people today cannot relate. It did reveal that evangelical Christianity is broadening in its interests to concerns about life after birth and the environment, but part of that is because the old hot button issues of abortion and homosexuality are simply fading in importance. Everyone knows that abortions can be greatly reduced by competent sex education in the public schools and by the wide distribution of safe contraceptive devices. The pity is that the same people who fight against abortion also fight against sex education, birth control and the availability of safe contraceptives. It is not a surprise, therefore, that abortions have risen rapidly during the administration of pro-life George Bush.

How rapidly this has morphed from Obama's more modest lie at Saddleback:

And so for me, the goal right now should be — and this is where I think we can find common ground — and by the way, I’ve now inserted this into the Democratic Party platform — is ‘How do we reduce the number of abortions?’ Because the fact is that although we’ve had a president who is opposed to abortions the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.

And the real facts? Perhaps not everyone, but many educated people know that abortions have gone down in the Bush administration:

The total number of abortions among women ages 15 to 44 declined from 1.3 million in 2000 to 1.2 million in 2005, an 8 percent drop that continued a trend that began in 1990, when the number of abortions peaked at more than 1.6 million, the survey found. The last time the number of abortions was that low was 1976, when slightly fewer than 1.2 million abortions were performed.

The abortion rate fell from 21.3 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in 2000 to 19.4 in 2005, a 9 percent decline. That is the lowest since 1974, when the rate was 19.3, and far below the 1981 peak of 29.3.

See also the charts on pages 2, 3 and 4 of this report.


H/T Jackie at Stand Firm for drawing attention to the Spong column and Mollie at Get Religion for documenting Obama's false statement at Saddleback.

Pro-Abortion Professor Will Not Get Chair at Catholic Universtiy

How can this even be a news story? Because the previous dean at the University of San Diego recommended someone who serves on the Board of Catholics for Choice, Rosemary Radford Ruether, to receive an endowed Chair in Roman Catholic Theology. Clearly, there are already pro-abortion professors teaching at the University of San Diego or the dean would not have tried for this. In fact, 54 faculty members have signed a petition in support of Ruether.

What interests me is the language being used to spin this. The petition suggests that not appointing Ruether to an endowed chair in Roman Catholic Theology at a Roman Catholic university threatens "academic freedom". From the AP story:

"We are deeply concerned by this turn of events both because it is insulting to Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether and because of what it portends for academic freedom in a Catholic institution," the petition reads.

And Ruether suggests that people cannot "discuss" controversial issues if someone who disagrees with official Roman Catholic teaching is not put in a position of authority over the discussion. From the San Diego Union Tribune:

Ruether, 71, is concerned about the decision's effect on academic freedom.

“It appears to me that some right-wing group has put pressure on the university,” she said.

And from the AP story:

Ruether said the dispute reflects a larger debate in Catholic institutions about how to treat hot-button issues, including gay and lesbian rights and ordination of women priests.

"There's just a huge conflict going on between whether people can discuss controversial issues or whether you can only give the official position," she said.

Gay and lesbian rights? Hmmm, the news story mentions Ruether is a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. I see Amazon sells copies of her column from November 2005 titled
"Marriage between homosexuals is good for marriage".

I support compassionate pastoral care for gays and lesbians. But orthodox Christian theology, and certainly Roman Catholic theology requires that we recognize homosexual behavior as a simulacrum.

McCain Says Privacy is Fundamental Right?

Last night in the Forum at Saddleback Church, McCain was clear on his pro-life position and commitment to nominating judges to the courts who do not legislate from the bench, BUT, then I heard him say that privacy is a fundamental right. Isn't that the way the Supreme Court found in favor of abortion in Roe vs. Wade?

I found a text of the Q and A to which I refer here. (It is at the very bottom.)

What do we do when right to privacy and national security collide?

McCain: We must preserve privacy because it's a fundamental right (including a secret ballot for union organizers, even though that's a different topic). Technology has gotten much more sophisticated, so we do have to increase our own capability to monitor our enemies. We need Congress and the judiciary both to work on this. But we need to sit down and settle this across party lines. There's a constant tension as technology changes and we have to keep up with it.

This is confusing for me as I do think there is a right to privacy as well as a right ot life. However, I think the right to life "trumps" the right to privacy. Not being a lawyer, I am not sure how this is resolved.

Whose Right to Choose?

People who are pro-abortion as a legal option use the phrase "woman's right to choose" with the implication that this is about a woman's right to control her own body. But mostly I know women who felt coerced into their abortions by the other people in their lives.

The first time I ever heard about an abortion was from an older (17 year old) second cousin of mine who told me that her boyfriend's parents had arranged for her to have the abortion without her own parents knowing when she was 15 years old. So I was interested to see this news from Georgia today.

According to ABC News here:

A Georgia mother who did not think her teenage son was ready to be a father was sentenced to a year in jail last week for illegally signing a parent consent form for his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend so she could get an abortion...

Though she was not present at the clinic for the abortion procedure, the consent note with Cook's signature was used as evidence in the trial.

"Ms. Cook got herself in trouble when she held herself out to be the victim's mother," James said, "and when she executed a document that defined her as such."

"She actually got on the phone and found a clinic that would proceed without her being there," James said. ...

S. Fenn Little Jr., the attorney representing the teenage girl and her family, condemned Cook's behavior and also raised questions about the role of the Northside Women's Clinic, where the teenager had the abortion in May 2007, in the illegal abortion.

"It was very clear from the testimony at the trial that the girl was coerced and very much strong-armed into getting this abortion that she opposed, that her parents opposed and that at one point, the boy opposed," Little told ABC News. Cook's motivation, he said, was a fear that having a child might jeopardize her son's college plans.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution here::

Cook "began to pressure until the young lady relented and agreed to have an abortion," DeKalb County solicitor general Robert James said Wednesday.

Displeased that the baby would ruin her son's chances of going to college, Cook "searched for a clinic that did not require a parent to be present, forged the letter of parental acknowledgement and paid for the abortion" on May 12, 2007, James said.

Last week, a judge sentenced Cook, now 44, to a year in jail —- the maximum for a misdemeanor —- for interfering with custody and violating a parental notification law.

"This conduct is reprehensible," James said. "There's not a parent anywhere who'd be OK with what she did."

James said his office is now investigating whether the facility —- Northside Women's Clinic in Chamblee —- violated state law.

h/t Innocent as Doves