Monday, November 10, 2014

Survivors of Abortion

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Last Saturday I attended the International Pro-Life Youth Conference in Corona, California.  The speakers were phenomenal, and though I was not necessarily taught anything I did not know, the speakers presented the material in a manner I was not accustomed to seeing or hearing.  The speeches were unapologetic, and the message was "show them the pictures of the brutality that is abortion."  The group that put on the event call themselves SURVIVORS.

The event also inspired me to pull an old project out of the mothballs that has been only outlines and notes for two years.  Yesterday I sat down and wrote 70 pages of a new book.  I should finish the first rough draft today.  I need to get a few permissions regarding the retelling of existing stories, and a few permissions for a few photographs I want to use in the book but I am confident I will have the project completed soon, and with plenty of time for you to buy it for Christmas for those you love.

The book, inspired by another message from the conference that "storytelling" is an important aspect of fighting the good fight, is a mixture of stories and facts supporting the stories.

The whet your appetite, I wanted to provide a few snippets of what went into the book.  None of the stories are in samples below, but a good portion of the factual chapters are.

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“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
-- Benjamin Franklin

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” -- John Adams

“[The adoption of the Constitution] will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.”
-- George Washington

“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” -- James Madison

“The good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army.  They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves.” -- Thomas Jefferson


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Those that advocate legal abortion existed long before the time of my birth, but the issue was on the verge of exploding as my mom sat on that bed in a cheap motel pondering the choices of her young life.  A little more than a year after my birth, on June 14, 1967, California Governor Ronald Reagan, a man that would later become known for his pro-life stance as President of the United States in the 1980s, signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, Health and Safety Code.  The new California law legalized the termination of pregnancy by a physician, in an accredited hospital, when there was a specific finding that there was a substantial risk that its continuation would "gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother," or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.  The law set a limit for abortion at the 20th week of pregnancy.

Societal response to the new law, much to the distress of the Governor, who had signed the bill with the addition of some added “protections,” because the Legislature was set to override a veto, was that the number of abortions in California increased dramatically.

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January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, and the perceived result of the federal high court overturning a State law on a constitutionally defined State issue, was that every anti-abortion statute at the State level was rendered unconstitutional.  The ruling established that protection of a nonviable fetus could not be justified as a matter of law.  If the unborn child could not survive on its own outside the womb, the baby is not a person, and no laws could be passed to restrict a woman’s “right” to abort the child.

The court added that if the child is viable, if the unborn baby could survive outside the womb without assistance, States could pass laws restricting abortions, but only with maximum justification.  What resulted was the birth of the abortion culture, the rise of abortion mills, and the emergence of abortion-on-demand through the use of protections created by the federal court system under the guise that killing one’s unborn children is a constitutional right.

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In 1821, America's first statutory abortion regulation was enacted in Connecticut.  The law was designed to protect women from abortion inducement through poison administered after the fourth month of pregnancy.

In 1856, Dr. Horatio Storer established a national push by the American Medical Association (AMA) to end legal abortion.  During the mid-1800s, first trimester abortion was legal or a misdemeanor in most States.

In 1873, The Comstock Act banned the dissemination of information about abortion and birth control by mail.

In 1890, abortion became defined as a medical procedure that was mostly regulated by statutes advocated by the AMA.  Abortion, at that point, was usually only permitted upon conferral of one or more physicians who believed the procedure was necessary to preserve the life of the mother.

In 1939, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and a proponent for abortion and forced sterilization in the United States for the purpose of exterminating undesirable people, Margaret Sanger, proposed that abortion and forced sterilization must be used to support the agenda of those that defended eugenics.  The 1939 Negro Project was designed to convince the black population to participate in the program, and for the black population to accept abortion as an important tool for their well-being as a segment of society.

Sanger’s Birth Control Policy included the “racial hygiene theory.”  Racial hygiene theory, according to Sanger, would cleanse humanity from the  "morons," "human weeds," and the "feeble-minded” that negatively affected our populations.  In 1922, in Sanger’s book, The Pivot of Civilization, she wrote, “Birth Control, which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science… as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.”  (Page 189)

Sanger also wrote that she believed “The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period.... we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.”  (Pages 101-102)

For Sanger, the purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," as she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2).

The drive for racial purification included the extermination of what she considered to be lesser races, including blacks.  "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

Sanger’s writings and influence led to the passage of segregation laws, sterilization laws, and the Immigration Act of 1924 that included a provision excluding from entry any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship.

Despite Sanger’s efforts, the abortion issue from a legal standpoint remained as it had been – illegal unless the medical community recognized, on a case by case basis, that it was absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother.

Though the issue seemed to be resolved in the United States, underground, a culture of death targeting the innocent lives of unborn children still existed.  A number of illegal abortionists performed the procedure in what today those that advocate for legalized abortion call “back alley abortions.”  Europe, however, remained intent upon moving towards making abortion more prevalent, establishing methods designed to make the killing of the unborn “safer.”  In 1961, vacuum aspiration-style abortion spread throughout Europe, and it didn’t take long before the pro-abortion segment of American Society caught on to the idea. 

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Those that advocate legalized abortion have used the Constitution to support their agenda, misconstruing the original intent of the document, and the definitions of the language used by the Founding Fathers.

In the Declaration of Independence the founders explained that our rights are “self-evident,” and that they are “endowed” by our “Creator.”  When listing a few examples of our rights, the document proclaims that “among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The inspiration for the definition of what is considered a right, and what is not considered a right, comes from the concept of Natural Rights.  In the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, our rights are described as being “entitled” by the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

In the final sentence of the Declaration of Independence, the signers again refer to the importance of God in the establishment of the American Experiment.  The final sentence reads, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Divine Providence is defined as, “The care and superintendence which God exercises over His creatures.”

The Constitution does not grant to us our rights.  Our rights are not guaranteed by the Constitution, nor protected by the Bill of Rights.  The task of standing against oppression, and restraining government from compromising our God-given rights belongs to us.

Understanding that our rights are important to us in the American Society, largely due to the fact that a number of those rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, those that support issues like elective abortion have determined that to ensure their agenda is achieved, all they have to do is define their goals as human rights.

The right to abortion is a part of the much larger umbrella of women’s rights.  In recent arguments, the supporters of legalized abortion call terminating the life of an unborn child a “reproductive right.”  Women who advocate legal abortion proclaim, “I have a right to do with my own body what I choose.”  Everything associated with the murderous practices of abortion mills has been labeled a right.

As explained in the Declaration of Independence, and John Locke’s writings regarding Natural Law, our rights are God-given.  We have been endowed with our rights by the Creator, and those rights are “self-evident.”

In a virtuous society, set moral standards are an important part of the proper functioning of the culture.  Right and Wrong are “self-evident,” because the citizens understand that their individual rights were established by God.  Therefore, not only is it tyrannical for government to try to regulate, compromise, or take away those rights, but that government has no part in defining what those rights are.

Since our rights are God-given, that means that the definition of a right includes God.  A right, then, is unalienable, possessed by the individual by virtue of birth, and must be sanctioned by God.  If God, in other words, would not approve of the alleged right, then it is not a right.

Abortion employs the termination of the life of an unborn child while the baby is developing in the womb.  Abortion is the taking of human life, for scripture recognizes that life begins at conception.  According to Psalms 139:13, God fashions us while we are in our mother’s womb.  Jeremiah was called to be a prophet before he was born according to Jeremiah 1:5.  Apostle Paul was similarly called by God while he was still an unborn child (Galatians 1:15).  John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb when the voice of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, was heard (Luke 1:44).  The equality of all babies in the womb is explained in Job 31:15 where it is written, “Did not He who made me in the womb make them?  Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?”

Our time in the womb is nothing more than a stage of our development as a person that continues through adulthood.  The personhood of babies is not only established in biblical text, but so is the blessed opportunity to be with child.  The practice of abortion must be unthinkable to people of God.  The idea of a mother killing her own child is an abomination, a disgrace, and an evil.  The Old Testament is filled with passages of women yearning for children.  Babies were considered a gift from God.  Women prayed to not be barren.

God condemned Israelites that offered their children as sacrifices to the heathen god Molech.  In Leviticus 20:2, God condemned those that offered their children to the fires of sacrifice to a god of sensuality and convenience.  When Israel was in Egypt, the Pharaoh forced the Israelites to kill their newborn babies, a mandate that was looked upon as the height of cruel oppression (Exodus 1:15-22).
Abortion is a terrible blot on our society.  The advocates of killing babies while they remain in the womb do so for the purpose of sensuality and convenience.  The value of life has been cheapened, and the life of a baby, once considered blessed and precious gift from God, is not called a mistake, and an inconvenience that can be terminated at will by an industry driven by a political agenda, ill-gotten wealth, power, sexual perversion and predators, and doctors willing to kill in a barbaric manner when the very definition of their profession is about saving lives.

How can a righteous woman turn against her own children to destroy them?

When a woman enters an abortion clinic, two hearts are beating.  After the procedure, only her heart is beating, and the blood of the baby has been spilled.  God does not sanction the practice of abortion, but instead views it as the height of pagan barbarity.

If God does not sanction an activity, the proponents of that activity can call it a right all they want, but that does not make it so.  Natural Rights are God-given, therefore, abortion is not a right.

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In the United States, about half of all pregnancies are unintended.  Four out of ten unintended pregnancies end in abortion.  There are about 1.21 million Abortions in the United States every twelve months.  Each year about 2% of all women aged 15-44 have an abortion, and of all of abortions during the year, about 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion.  The United States has the highest abortion rate (19.4 per 1,000) of any western industrialized nation.

All abortions kill a human being.  61% of abortions are performed on babies in the first 9 weeks of pregnancy.  18% are slaughtered between 9 and 10 weeks.  10% between 11 and 12 weeks.  11% of babies are aborted beyond the first trimester.

The younger the adult woman, the more likely she is going to have an abortion.  A third of all abortions are with women between 20 and 24.  A quarter of all abortion are between the ages of 25 and 29.  More than half of all abortions are by women in their twenties.

Over a third of all abortions are among blacks, and in New York City more black babies die from abortion than are born alive.  Black women are five times more likely to abort than white women.  Planned Parenthood has located 80% of its abortion clinics in minority neighborhoods, targeting minorities for abortion, keeping the racist dreams of Margaret Sanger alive.

The number of abortions has been on a steady decline since 1980.

In opinion polls, the pro-life movement has increased to a majority in recent years, after claiming only 33% of the population in 1995.

On the front lines has been mobile units, counseling centers, and other health services designed to stop the deadly practice of abortion.  These locations provide ultrasounds so that a woman considering abortion can see that the life inside her is in fact the precious life of a blessed person.  Centers provide counseling to encourage women to choose life, and counseling for those traumatized because the agenda of death convinced them to end the life of their babies.  It is about saving babies, saving lives, and encouraging women to lover her child by keeping her child.

After the birth, then services to assist the woman with her child, or to assist in adoption services, are often also available.

All to save babies.  All to save the life of her child.

Prayer, sidewalk counseling, mobile clinics, and counseling centers have worked together to save thousands of babies, and sway public opinion.  The war to end abortion in our lifetime, however, has only just begun.  The dark forces of death use all tools available to them, including lies, hiding the real numbers, and revealing images of how barbaric the barbaric practice of abortion really is.

As the fight progresses, the reality is that the forces of death are retreating, panicking, and they are losing.  The good news is that abortion may very well be abolished in our lifetime.  The bad news is that when the abortionists realize they are in trouble, their efforts will intensify.

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Resources used:


The Constitution of the United States, with Index, and
The Declaration of Independence.  Washington D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 2013.  iii, v-vi.  Print.

Collins, Phillip D.  “Engineering Evolution: The
Alchemy of Eugenics.”  Hospice Patients Alliance.  January 10, 2005.  November 9, 2014.  .
Forsythe, Clark.  “Pro-Lifers Must be Realistic About
How, When Roe Abortion Case Can be Reversed.”  LifeNews  September 16, 2009.  November 9, 2014.  .
Hogan, Carol.  “Forty-Four Years of Legalized Abortion
in California.”  California Catholic Conference.  June 2011.  November 9, 2014. .
Kengor, Paul and Clark Doerner, Patricia.  “Reagan’s
Darkest Hour.”  National Review Online.  January 22, 2008.  November 9, 2014. .
“Legal History of Abortion (1821-Present)”.  Students
for Life of America Law Students.  November 9, 2014.  .
“Margaret Sanger: Founder of Planned Parenthood – In
Her Own Words”.  Diane Dew dot com.  2001.  November 9, 2014.  .
“Planned Parenthood”.  Black Genocide dot org. 
November 9, 2014.  .
“Planned Parenthood’s Racism”.  Life Research
Institute.  June 1994.  November 9, 2014.  .
“Ronald Reagan on Abortion.”  On The Issues
November 9, 2014. 
.
“Society for Humane Abortion. Records, 1962-1979
(inclusive), 1963-1975 (bulk): A Finding Aide.”  Harvard University Library, Radcliffe College August 1979.  November 9, 2014.  .
“The Negro Project.”  Too Many Aborted.  November 9,
2014.  .
“The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed
Act).”  U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. November 9, 2014.  .
“Timeline of abortion laws and events.”  Chicago
Tribune.  November 9, 2014.  .

Hayford, Jack, ed., “Kingdom Dynamics: Is Abortion
Wrong?, Godliness and Moral Purity.”  New Spirit-Filled Life Bible: Kingdom Equipping Through the Power of the Word – New King James Version.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982.  793.  Print.
Locke, John.  An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding.  Glasgow: R. Griffin and Co., 1836. E-book.

Pro-Ject Life, Breaking the Silence (Proverbs 31:8). November 9, 2014.  <http://pro-jectlife.com/>.

40 Days for Life.  November 9, 2014. 
.
“Abortions in America.”  Operation Rescue.  November
9, 2014.  .
Birth Choice: Real Answers, Real Help.  November 9,
2014.  .
Birth Choice: Temecula.  November 9, 2014. 
< http://birthchoicetemecula.com/>.
Chapman, Michael W.  “NYC: More Black Babies
Killed by Abortion Than Born.”  CNSNews.  February 20, 2014.  November 9, 2014.   .
Corona Life Services.  November 9, 2014. 
< http://clspregnancy.com/>.
EMC Front Line Pregnancy Centers.  November 9,
2014. < http://www.emcfrontline.org/>.
Stanton Health Care.  November 9, 2014.  
<http://www.stantonhealthcare.org/>.
The Constitution of the United States, with Index, and
The Declaration of Independence.  Washington D.C.: National Center for
Constitutional Studies, 2013.  iii, v-vi.  Print.
Scheidler, Eric.  “Accomplishment #1: Countless babies
have been saved by pro-life witness on the street.”  Life Site News.  February 4, 2013.  November 9, 2014.  .

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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