Save Malta!!

This is a blegging letter, but it's not for me. It's for Malta's only active pro-life and pro-family organisation, formed this summer, to start their work pushing back against the Culture of Death, the Culture of Nihilism and suicidal despair, that has turned its sights on their little Catholic island. We need help to fund a single person (not me) to go there and start running workshops training the Maltese Catholics to defend their home from the Ideology of the New Paradigm.

Read and then follow the link to their PayPal account. They need £250 to cover airfare for this person to fly down from England.

Again, this is not for me. It's for Malta.

~

So, y'all know I've been kind of in love with Malta in the last little while... well, there's problems down there in the little Catholic paradise.

I know we all know that Malta is the Last Man Standing. With the fall of Ireland, there is now not another single EU nation that entirely outlaws abortion for any reason. For many years, we enjoyed covering the news from Malta's interactions withe the gender ideologues, including the pro-abortion feminists at the UN. Time after time, they would dutifully show up at the annual CEDAW meetings and ever so politely tell the UN abortion-pushers where to put their ideology.

But a few years ago, that started to change:

Malta’s MEPs were among a small bloc at the EU who worked against the recent failed proposal by socialists and abortion activists that would have forced member states to consider direct abortion a “right”. But a December 12th op-ed in the Times of Malta warned that the Estrela Report is not going to be the last attempt to impose the rest of Europe’s abortion regime on their country.

“The daily sifting through pro-life articles makes me feel uneasy at the status quo of the pro-life work being done in Malta. Are we doing enough by way of educating our society as regards building a culture of life? Are we getting prepared for the next onslaught by some EU body on Malta,” Miriam Sciberras asked.

As we know, the reason we use the term "totalitarian" to describe it, is that the Ideologues of Death cannot leave a single corner of the world un-converted. There will be no exception made for any little corner, any little Shirefolk who want to just be left alone.

And brother, are they working on Malta! In 2005, the government, seeing the social catastrophe it precipitated everywhere else, said they would never legalise divorce. It was legalised in 2011. Since then the dominoes have been falling quickly. In incredibly rapid succession, (almost as if it had been planned) homosexual "civil unions" were legalised this year. This month, as the first civil unions were legally registered, Helena Dalli, the Socialist government's Minister for Social Dialogue (I'm not kidding) went to Budapest...

Dalli was head of the Maltese delegation to UN’s Universal Period Review, which took place in the fall of 2013. According to the report, Dalli’s delegation affirmed that Malta’s “new Government was fully committed to the protection of the rights of LGBTI persons.”

The document noted that only “a few weeks after being elected,” the Labour Party government, which came to power in March last year, amended the Maltese Civil Code “to allow persons who underwent a legally recognized gender change to be recognized in the new gender acquired, in those remaining areas where it was hitherto not acknowledged.”

Last month, we saw the passage of the "transgender anti-discrimination" bill. This was the fulfilment of a promise by Helena Dalli to a “transgender” congress in Hungary in May that while her government’s focus had been mainly on homosexuals, they would shortly be turning their attention to “trans” people.

“A month ago, we enacted a Civil Unions law with rights and duties on a par with marriage for same and different-gender couples,” she said.

“On the same day, we amended the Constitution in such a way as to provide protection on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. I am told that we are the first country in Europe to have included an express reference to gender identity in the Constitution.”

As one of the most useful barometers of the homosexualist ideology's advance, Wikipedia's LGBTQI pages, put it:

"Rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in Malta have improved in recent years. Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is legal in Malta. A bill creating civil unions equal to marriage in all but name, with the same rights and obligations including joint adoption rights and recognition of foreign same sex marriage, was enacted in April 2014."

So rapid has been the advance of the New Paradigm in Malta that it received somewhat surprised praise from no less a source than ILGA Europe who named Malta, with Montenegro, one of Europe’s two “fastest climbers”.

Paulo Côrte-Real, co-chair of ILGA-Europe’s executive board, said in a statement attached to the organization’s Annual Review, “It is very encouraging to see countries like Malta and Montenegro make such huge progress in the space of one year. It shows that so much is possible when there is political leadership, especially when it is coupled with meaningful engagement of civil society.”

The ideologues must be licking their chops, because Malta is ripe for the plucking, their people softened and their leaders distracted and divided. And we know what's coming. The country's slide from the Faith, its adoption of easygoing European hedonism, along with European subsidies, will, as it always does, be inseparably coupled with European materialism, European ant-Catholicism, European anti-natalism, European socialism and, finally, the logical conclusion: European auto-genocide.

Why is it important? Malta's tiny. There are just under 420,000 people in the whole place.

Why was it important to Suleiman the Magnificent to bring the island to heel? Why did the Axis bomb the place to pancakes? Why is it important to totalitarian ideologues to have no tiny little place left in the world willing to stand up to them? Why did ILGA Europe hold their annual general meeting in Valletta last year?

On the whole, the reason the country is under threat is simple: the Maltese have not bothered to do anything to stop it. Indeed, they seem barely to have noticed. They are a Catholic country, and as is common among cultural Catholics of our post-Conciliar times, they have simply assumed that this was enough. In a nation with 95-98% of the population calling itself Catholic, it seems not to have occurred to anyone that they need to defend themselves against the incursions of this foreign ideology. They are Catholics who do not care about being Catholic. Not the laity nor the clergy nor the episcopate. Malta has also adopted Novusordoism without a single twitch of a qualm.

And the results are, as we would imagine, depressingly predictable.

In the last ten years, Malta's rate of Mass attendance has fallen from about 80% to about 50. From my own observations, I can attest that while their churches may be full, it is the usual story of cotton-tops and their grand children, dragged reluctantly along.

And perhaps most tellingly of all, the total fertility rate is barely above the European standard, at 1.45 children born per woman. Contraceptive use is rampant, and, as everywhere else in what used to be called Christendom, has been met in the Church by a determined clerical silence.

At the moment, the Maltese news is full of dark implications that there is a "power struggle" going on within the Maltese Church. Who knows what that means. And, given the general tenor of life in the Catholic Church at the moment, who knows how it is going to affect the situation there.

But in the midst of this unprecedented rise of the Big Dark, there is one little ray of hope. I recently wrote a column in which I said that Malta's third Great Siege is coming. Indeed, is already inside the gates, which the new ideological invaders found standing open and largely unguarded. Well, it turns out someone there was paying attention.

My recent visits to Malta haven't all been about swimming and pastizzi. I met each time with members of the nation's newest, (and as far as I can tell, only) comprehensive pro-life, pro-family, anti-New Paradigm organisation, the Life Network.

I recently spoke on the phone with their leader, who told me that there had been a meeting with the Maltese president, who had "assured us that the government would never legislate for abortion."

Just like the government of equally Catholic Ireland would never legalise abortion?

Just like your own government would never legalise divorce?

I warned her not ever to believe anything a politician says about abortion.

As I said, we had meetings, and we had a few dinners, which were also meetings. And I told them that they are the last ones. That in all the western world, there is no other place who has said no to the Culture of Death, who has stopped them covering the world in their shadow.

I told them that as grim as it looked, there could be a chance in Malta of turning back the tide. They have three things in their favour. However corrupted their Church has become since the Council, the Maltese are still a deeply Catholic nation. They may have been lulled to sleep with promises of soft pillows and a quiet night, but that 98% rating is still meaningful there.

And it's a tiny country. If they wanted to, if they were determined enough, they really could actually go door-to-door and talk to nearly every person in the country.

And third, Malta has them. This little group of people have been woken up. They've heard the drums and have they are starting to understand the threat their ancient and beautiful country faces.

A few weeks ago, the leadership of this group held a small backyard barbeque for pro-life students at the University of Malta with a view to founding a pro-life and pro-family student group. It was in July, and Maltese university students often spend their summers away on work placements, and still 23 students showed up, with about the same number sending a message saying they would be ready to join such a group. There are plans to go ahead with a campus pro-life group in the new academic year, which starts in October.

This group, that meets in a small office every Saturday, told me that they felt they were ready for any fight that might come, but that they needed to be equipped to make the case in the public forum. So, I have put them in touch with a group in England who trains pro-life leaders. This group has arranged for one of their members to go over there. This person has just done a four month training internship in Calgary with the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform to learn to do exactly this work. Their work is to go to other countries to teach pro-life people how to make the case and fight in the public square.

The ticket has been purchased, and the workshop booked.

We just need some help paying for it. They need about £250.

If you want to be a part of the Great Pushback in the world's last pro-life country,

go to their page and donate.



~

You can't kill people to solve your problems... or theirs

The peculiar British, utilitarianism-derived terror of "being a burden" is being exploited by the Death-peddlers.

As someone who was recently "a burden" on my loved ones, I can affirm that it made me a better person, more able to love and accept love from others, less interested in maintaining my white-knuckle grip on my own way in life.

The Brits are suffering from 200 years of philosophical and moral corruption that was visited on their culture by the secularist instinct that grew up like a cancer in the 18th century after the compromises and logical contradictions of the English Reformation failed to hold.



~

Recreational organs

Just chatting with a young fellow who is doing the GAP right now and who is meeting and talking with students on a university campus somewhere:

"Many of them have separated sex and reproduction to the point where they actually see them as independent from each other, thus the language of getting 'accidentally pregnant' (did you trip and fall?) and 'I don't know how that happened.' I often have to remind them when they talk about 'recreational sex' that they have reproductive organs, not recreational organs. The level of ignorance is mind-boggling."

Hmmm... what does it remind me of?

I can't quite...

Oh yeah!

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control.

Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.

Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation — need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.

Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires,

no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

But of course, the thing we have to remember is that contraception has nothing what. so. ever. to do with abortion.

Nothing.



~

A few little notes on the news

OK, I get the whole "let's not kill off our future" thing that the American black pro-life movement is saying, and I'm with it all the way...

But I have to say, I really don't understand American race issues at all. Never have. I mean, in what universe is this person "black"? What counts as "black" in the US seems to be more a political question than a question of genetics.

And finally, what the hell difference does it make what colour you are? Isn't there something... well... racist about the 'black pro-life movement' altogether? Is it asserting that people have value in spite of their colour or because of it? I'm really not sure, since the message is so confused. I understand that the people who founded Planned Parenthood, and the people who run it today, have been and remain very interested in killing as many black children as possible, both domestically and abroad.

Some years ago, I was having a conversation with a woman in the pro-life movement about some issue or other, and she asked me, "I'd like to know what you think of this as a woman." I had absolutely no idea what she meant. I don't think things "as a woman". I just think things. I told her that it was a meaningless question. The moral law does not make such distinctions. I have not looked very closely at the "pro-life feminist" sub-branch of the movement, but I can't help think that there is some deep contradiction at work there, some profound misunderstanding either of what feminism is and where it came from or what the pro-life philosophy means taken in its entirety.

I don't think the "black pro-life movement" is saying that it is more wrong to kill children who are black. But maybe they are saying that it is more wrong to kill a child because he is black, and I'm not sure I would go with that. The end result is the same. A child is dead. The child is just as dead if you kill her because she is black, or because she has Down's syndrome, or because the mother simply didn't feel like having a child. Dead is dead.

The same question can be applied, and is being applied, to this latest kerfuffle in the UK over sex-selective abortions. What difference does it make if you kill a child because she is female or kill the same child because she cramps your personal style?

We've got a video clip that illustrates perfectly the absurdity of British abortion laws and procedures. In Britain, you can get an abortion, paid for on the public dime, if you give the right reason. The kerfuffle now is over women getting abortions after giving the wrong reason. This means that if you want to kill your child because she's a girl, that's "morally wrong" (according to Andrew Lansley, the health secretary) but if you want to kill the same child because you're "not ready for pregnancy" that's just fine, morally respectable and perfectly legal.

So, the Telegraph reporter and the pregnant woman go to the abortion facility and she says, "I want to kill this child because she's a girl..." What happens next?

"Is that the reason?” asked the doctor, who introduced himself as Dr Raj. "That's not fair. It's like female infanticide isn't it?"

When the pregnant woman asked if he could put down a different reason for the termination, the doctor said: "That's right, yeah, because it's not a good reason anytime

… I’ll put too young for pregnancy, yeah?"

So there we have it. That this is how the law works in Britain is, I suppose, something very few people ever think about. So, despite the whole thing seeming utterly silly to us, people who do understand why the entire premise of the UK abortion law is insane and self-contradictory (not to mention evil), this is probably the first time that regular, normal people, people who do not have a lot of training thinking logically, are being confronted with such a stark presentation of that insanity that we all know so well.

If this matter gets enough attention, and if the pro-life people in England make the right points, this may actually do some good. It seems possible that this will open a debate in Parliament in which something might get said that makes some sense. At last.



~

Those damned graphic images!

They Just. Don't. Work!

I have observed that the people (always claiming to be pro-life) who object to the use of graphic images use precisely the same arguments against them that the pro-aborts like to use: "But what if children see them?!!" (People who have experience with actually using the images will tell you every time that it is the adults who become upset. Children know the difference between truth and bull____, at least until their teens.)

In addition, the people who get all shrieky over the nasty pictures love to claim that they "don't work". "They just put people off". The claim is that the pictures "shut down the argument". That "they are just so horrible that the only reaction you ever get is anger. All people do is flounce away in a huff. There's no opening for discussion."

What I have noticed is that for the most part, the people making this claim are those who have never actually used graphic images in a pro-life demonstration. I usually want to ask the people making these claims how many times they have participated in projects like the Genocide Awareness Project. If they had, they would know from their own experience that the exact opposite is the truth.

Here is one of the many reports from people who use the images all the time, who work exclusively with them on college campuses and on the streets of towns all over the US and Canada.

abortion advocates often insist that the debate is over- no one wants or needs to discuss abortion. However, we have found that this is not the case, especially on a university campus like Florida Gulf Coast University, when we hold the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).

For example, whenever we hold GAP on university campuses, Planned Parenthood representatives usually react by putting on their pink t-shirts and setting up a table with free candy and condoms. They have a supply of signs with various slogans like “Women’s Health Matters” and “Pro-Woman, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice”. This is a positive and attractive message, and always gathers a crowd of supporters.

In contrast, we put up graphic, ugly, bill-board sized pictures of babies that have been killed, along with victims of other terrible injustices. One might think that this would turn people away, and be a barrier to dialogue but we have found just the opposite.

These terrible images are the catalyst that many students need in order to seriously engage in the abortion debate.

The one thing that the claim does make clear, however, is just how utterly self-serving it is. They just don't like graphic images. The dead baby pictures upset them. Why? I don't know but I could hazard a few guesses from experience.

I've seen much the same reaction from people who don't like Trads but who like to claim to be deeply devout and faithful Catholics, who become angry and defensive whenever the issue of the Traditional Mass comes up. Underneath their indignation is a nauseating kind of smarmy, self-congratulatory patting of their own backs. They don't like Trads because they don't like the implication that there's something they need to do, a few things they might need to know that they don't know already. Something they might need to give up or repent.

I've seen people become hysterical, actually shrieking and ready to launch into a physical attack at the sight of the pictures. But these are the same people who become hysterical and violent at the mere mention of an opinion opposed to abortion. These are the people we want to upset. The people who really need to be upset.

And yes, in many cases they are post-abortive themselves. They have often never had anyone say anything to them but the usual lies of the abortion movement. The politically correct crap that they've been fed from the day of their abortions, "I'll support you whatever decision you make." "You had a hard choice but in the end you did what was best for you."

And, frankly, so what if they're upset? Is it going to kill them? Are they going to leave your dead baby pictures display and go immediately to be incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital? Why do we bother our heads about the passing, temporary emotional reactions of some people to an unpleasant and powerful truth?

There's been a kind of hypersensitivity to being "upset" in recent decades. All sorts of arm-chair pop psychologizing that gives an excuse to the sort of people who want to be thought fragile and delicate to claim that they have been "traumatized". Mostly this is a means of controlling everyone around them. "Be nice to me at all times, never disagree with me, or I'll be traumatized."

But a real psychologist will tell you that the human psyche is extremely resilient and tough. People don't react well to being lied to and duped, but if the thing they are seeing is verifiably true, they will adjust to it after an initial moment of shock.

The fact is, abortion is horrifying. If you are not horrified by it, by the very thought of it, perhaps you are not actually a fragile delicate flower; perhaps you are exactly the opposite. Perhaps the real problem is that you are hard of heart, as it says in the Big Book, that you have had your conscience deadened and eroded away by a lifetime of listening to too many lies, and seeing too many conscience-deadening things on television.

People who become angry when presented with an unpleasant truth have a few things in their conscience that they really do need to deal with. By making them "upset" and telling them the truth, forcing them to confront these unpleasant realities, you are helping them.

That it is unpleasant to be yelled at and called names is something I suggest you offer up, for the sake of your soul or for theirs.



~

Starting to forget

Ray Comfort who made this video said that one of the things he had to overcome in doing these interviews was his own shock and disgust that these people knew nothing about the history of Nazism and the War. He said that at first his involuntary reaction showed and it would put people off so much that they wouldn't talk to him any further. He learned to school his expression and to expect the level of ignorance he hadn't been prepared for.

As for the apologetics aspect of it, it's fine, but somewhat unrefined. The people he's talking to evidently have no intellectual capacity at all, and so their ideas are easy to refute and their minds are easy to change. But I wonder how fast they can be convinced right back again when confronted with the usual abortionism/feminist slogans.

I was taught pro-life apologetics by Scott Klusendorf and he has a much more rigorous approach that can be applied to people who are capable of rational thought. I don't fault Ray Comfort for his efforts, but I think he'd be in trouble with his somewhat sketchy method if he were up against someone of more substance.



~

Do they hear themselves?

Just reading some of the pro-aborts little outbursts on why abortion in the US has to remain totally unrestricted.

Let's play a game! I'm going to paraphrase some of the real things real famous pro-abortion people have said in public and we can do a little deconstruction excercise. Come on! It'll be fun.

A white male rock star:

"1) If abortion had been illegal when my girlfriend became pregnant, I would not be in the position I'm in. My career would have been stalled at the outset. I would not have been able to tour around the world and see how other more liberal countries have handled this issue. I would not be speaking to you (the interviewer) today.

2) Maybe later I'll be able to support a child.

3) But free people must have the right to choose when the right time is.

4) This rule especially applies to poor people since welfare and public health programmes are inadequate to raise a child and public schools are overcrowded and underfunded."

Translate:
1) My career is more important to me than human life, even the life of my own child. It is much more important to me to fulfill my personal jet-setting ambitions than be responsible for the care and protection of another human being.

2) Even though I am the lead of one of the world's most highly paid acts, I'm still unable to adequately support a child. By extension, I believe that anyone who makes less money than I should also not have children. Only the super rich should be allowed to have children because material poverty, which I define as being less than super rich, is worse than death.

3) The definition of being free is the freedom to kill another person with legal impunity whenever we want.

4) It is better for the poor that they be killed before birth than attend a public school or be dependent upon state benefits. Kill the poor.

* ~ *

A black Rap star: "Gold-digging women use pregnancy to trap rich men into either supporting them or paying for expensive abortions. Use condoms to prevent pregnancies."

Translate:
Legal abortion is not for the safeguarding of the rights of women, it is to enable men to use them for sexual entertainment without consequences. But abortion can be more expensive than you realise, so in order to continue to use women as your own personal meat puppets, you should diligently use contraception.

* ~ *

Some kind of presenter (female, white) on MTV: "I am glad I had an abortion at 16, otherwise I would by now have a 20 year-old child.”

Translate:
Being a mother is bad. Being a mother of a child who is a grownup would reveal that I'm old enough to have a 20 year-old child. And that would be bad.

* ~ *

What am I demonstrating here? That celebrities are shallow, selfish and materialistic? And stupid? Isn't that something we all know already?

So if we all know this, why do we hang on their every word? Why do the idiotic and frankly evil things that come out of their mouths subsequently pop out of the mouths of the ordinary 17 year-old kids who follow them?

I feel a bout of cultural cognitive dissonance coming on...



~

A distinction without a difference

I wrote this some time ago.

I'm not saying that it is in any way more relevant now to anything or anyone whatsoever than it was before.

"I'm not pro-abortion. I'm pro-choice!" How many times have pro-life advocates come across this indignant exclamation? Vian has here presented the quintessential "liberal Catholic" position (perhaps not unconnected to the secular humanist position), that the best, highest, most moral stance is that there must never, under any circumstances be "confrontation." There is no greater evil than to take an "ideological position." Peace in our time, and at any cost.

It sounds fine, to some, when we are talking about abortion, a subject upon which there is much moral disagreement. But try changing the discussion just a little. Imagine for a moment we are talking about moral evils upon which there is no dispute. Can there be a non-confrontational position on genocide? Imagine for a moment the editor of the Vatican's newspaper praising Barack Obama for his non-confrontational stand on slavery. On rape. On wife battery.

When a person says, "I'm pro-choice," he is trying to find a middle point between two things that are simply opposed, an obvious intellectual squirm.

But let us examine the "pro-choice" assertion. Say a person were to tell you that he is "pro-choice" on slavery. He would say, with a noble lift of the brow perhaps, "I don't like slavery. I don't feel it is right for me to own another human being. But I also don't believe that it is my right to impose my personal beliefs on another. I believe in personal choice. It is between a man and his god whether he should own a slave".

It is obvious, isn't it? The thing chosen must be moral before the concept of being "pro-choice" can also be moral. For Vian to say that Barack Obama is merely "pro-choice," and to imply that this is a position superior to the "ideological" pro-life stand, he is, first, kowtowing to the abortion industry who invented the slogan to soothe troubled consciences, and second, but most importantly, he is saying that abortion is a moral thing to choose.

In championing the pro-life position, we simply say that between life and death, there is no third thing. You are either alive or you are not. Abortion kills or it does not. It is morally permissible or it is not. There are simply some things that do not admit of a "neutral" third position. Between these two opposed possibilities, there can only be "confrontation," distasteful as that may be to some sensibilities.

In fact, Obama's (and presumably Vian's) ideological ancestors did actually make precisely that argument about slavery.

Something that is not, for obvious reasons, widely admitted these days is that it was the Democrats who argued for the continued existence of legal slavery in the Union. I am ready to be corrected by my American readers, but was it not exactly opposition to slavery upon which the Republican party was founded?

The Lincoln/Douglas debates are still famous (among the segment of the US population still interested in reading books) because in it, the Democrat candidate for the presidency, Stephen Douglas, argued that slavery should remain legal on the same principle that would later be used to defend a woman's "choice" to kill her child.

He said, in a nutshell, that while he would not own slaves, and it should not be something that right-thinking people should want, there is no way to judge a man's personal beliefs and to legislate against slavery would be an unjust imposition of the state in his personal affairs. Or an imposition of the federal law into state law, if I recall it correctly.

Douglas proposed "peace in our time" on slavery and lost.

And it is often conveniently forgotten that Lincoln was the Republican candidate.

Not sure how it would go today, however.

You see, slavery was a deeply "divisive" issue, (as our Democrat/liberal Catholic friends would say today)...

"Uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible or desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere..."

So, if I were, purely hypothetically, examining the pro-choice vs. pro-abortion issue in, say for argument's sake, a civil court, I might ask the self-described personally-opposed-but, "pro-choice" person, "What choice, exactly, are you defending?"

If the person answered, "The choice to have an abortion," I might then be inclined to ask, "But isn't this the thing you have just said you are against?"

"Oh yes, of course, abortion is terrible."

"Why is it terrible?"

"Well...err...ummm...Well, it's, ahhh,

...

divisive."

Indeed.



~

Sourpuss

...and everyone knows that pro-lifers are all sour, cranky and no fun...

Pro-life activists:

they're all just a bunch of angry old wife-beatin' redneck white supremacists...



...oh wait...

Pro-Life 101: I'm not pro-abortion, I'm just pro-choice

Post pending.

Pro-Life 101 - "Yeah, but what about rape?"

Today's popular Abortion Slogan is a favourite of young men wanting to look good to the girls in the class.

I won't bother spending the time re-typing it all out. I'll just re-post:

~

Now, I know that the principles of rational thought are not popular these days, equally in schools as in parliaments, but one has to wonder at the willingness of so many to have their intelligence, whether real or imagined, so brazenly insulted, and their compassion manipulated, as it is by the abortion lobby in the case of the "rape exception".

The rape exception is the one argument that most irritates me. Not because of its inherent dishonesty - one expects only dishonesty from people conniving to murder helpless infants - but for the blind, drooling stupidity of the people who buy it, normally without the slightest examination. Or perhaps I should say the willing connivance of the marks. It is said that people who go to carnivals with a few shillings to spend on the ring-toss game, actually want to be swindled. Why else would one to go a carnival?

When I am talking to school groups about abortion, naturally after we have painstakingly gone through and demonstrated the existence of a human being in the womb (don't they tell these kids any more where babies come from? What are they doing in all those sex-education classes in kindergarten anyway?) someone in the back of the room will invariably put his (it is always a he) hand up and say "Yeah, but what about rape?"

He says this for two reasons: he has been taught that favouring abortion for rape is a mark of deep sensitivity and that "sensitivity" is a sure fire method of getting girls into bed, and that it is a stumper. He believes, in effect, that because the pro-life position is inherently flawed by its hatred of women and desire to oppress and subjugate them, that this is The Big One that will always end the discussion. This, he believes will establish his feminist political cred...which is also a sure fire method of getting girls into bed.

He expects me to have no answer, and sadly, this is the case with most of the people who consider themselves pro-life.

What is saddest, and most ironic, about the eagerness of most of our progressively-minded modern people, as well as many "pro-life" people, to defend the rape exception, is that they love it because it is held up as a model of compassion and toleration towards the victimised. This is especially tempting to pro-lifers who are possibly tired of being called EVIL FASCISTS. They long to be included in the ranks of the tolerant and compassionate. The same people will, with precisely the same earnest expressions, tell you all about the evils of capital punishment. They have such strong feeeeelings, you see, for the downtrodden, the oppressed, the victimised.

But who has told them that abortion is a requirement in cases of pregnancy due to rape? And what are their motives?

But these goodthinkful people will not question the motives or origin of the received wisdom. That's why we call it that. When you ask them why they support the death penalty for the children of criminals, they simply look at you with a fullwise goodthinkfully blank expression and you can almost see their grey cells desperately rushing to batten down the hatches and close the sea doors.

I once had a conversation with a Parliamentary Aid who had great ambitions. He was a member of the the-Canadian Alliance party and was clearly keen to Go Places. He had an idea, generally, that abortion should be curtailed, but of course, with his skinny under-dressed girlfriend on his arm, was very quick to say that the exceptions should include rape.

I asked him why he supported the death penalty.

He jumped like he had been stuck with a pin. "What?! I don't!"

"Oh good," I said. "For a second there, I thought you wanted to bring in the death penalty for the children of criminals."

Once again, the application of a few pieces of objective reality, connected together with the indestructible ties of rational thought, will create a Logic Grenade that will blow the feathery traces of the "rape exception" to smithereens.

In a discussion with someone who supports the death penalty for the innocent children of rapists, the following questions are often helpful:

Where do babies come from?

Who should be punished for the crime of rape? The woman? Her children?

Since abortion is a procedure that involves risk to the woman, and can be traumatic, wouldn't it be better to wait until the child is born and kill him then?

Maybe, in cases of pregnancy due to rape, we can keep a loaded gun in the delivery room, and if the sight of the child reminds her unpleasantly of the rape, we can give her the gun and she can shoot the baby right away.

Something to remember about the "rape exception" is that it is a red herring. It is not, in fact, an argument for legalised abortion in the exceedingly rare cases where pregnancy has been caused by rape. It is just a slogan, and a slogan is, as I've said before, neither an argument nor a reason. It is a claxon. A noise meant to end discussion and induce a powerful emotional reaction.

Studies have found that rape frequently does not result in pregnancy. There are chemical changes that occur in a woman's body that tend to prevent it. But the rape exception has been extremely politically useful to the abortion movement. It has been used as an emotional wedge issue to force the door open to legalising abortion in all and any circumstances.

As Scott Klusendorf likes to say, "If I change my position to support legalised abortion in the 0.01 per cent of cases of pregnancy due to rape and incest, will you then drop your support for abortion on demand?"

Its effectiveness can be seen in the fact that even in countries that have retained some legal restrictions on abortion, many of them have not dared to cross the line of the "rape and incest" emotional button-pusher. The fact that the "rape exception" collapses on the application of the slightest logic and medical facts, deters politicians not in the least.

Politicians are mostly men. And, like our high-school friend above looking to use his sensitivity to lever down a girl's trousers, politicians cannot afford to risk the shrieking and hysteria opposition to the "rape exception" would cost them.



~

Thoughtcrime of the Day: a woman doesn't have a "right to choose"

because there is no such thing.

Here's a new series.

Pro-Life 101: abortion slogans debunked.

"She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her."

Orwell, 1984.


For a brief time a few years ago, I gave talks to students in Catholic schools about the life issues. It was fun, sometimes. One of the things I did was to ask them to tell me what they heard in the media or wherever, about abortion. What is the first, the very first thing that pops into people's heads when they hear about abortion in the news or in movies or TV?

It was always interesting to see that, like everyone else, they had heard all the slogans and more or less accepted them, but never actually thought about what they meant. Very often, the kids would have their eyes opened after we had taken a closer look. I think it helped them think more clearly about other things too.

The first one they invariably came up with was the old "right to choose" chestnut, which while being the most pervasive, is probably the easiest one to knock down.

I used to explain this to students: it's simple grammar. You don't even have to get into discussing rights or medicine or law. The slogan itself doesn't make sense grammatically.

"Choose" is a transitive verb, which (...I then invariably had to explain...) means it requires an object. There are two kinds of verbs; transitive and intransitive.

You can't just "choose" in the same way you can just run, or work or cook. You have to choose a particular thing. There has to be an object. You choose a career. You choose a husband. You choose a colour for your bathroom. You choose things all the time. But you don't, and can't, just choose.

So whether you have a "right" to choose something, depends entirely upon what the thing, the missing object of the slogan, is.

The sloganeers were pretty clever with this one because it sounds good. Of course you have a right to choose which university to attend. You have a right to vote (unfortunately). You have all kinds of natural rights to choose things. What the Newspeakers have done with this slogan, by knocking the object off the sentence, is to imply that anyone who opposes them is trying to take all rights of choice away from women.

Gramatically, "A woman has a right to choose," means that she has a right to choose absolutely anything. It is a statement of total solipsistic license and as such, is more or less the operating principle of The New Society we, or I should say our parents and grandparents, launched in the 1960s.

This little manifesto of the New World came from the website of an artist and more or less sums up the whole package:

The “right to choose’ means women control our own bodies. We will decide to have a baby or not–even if we’re young, single, or poor! To really “choose” we need abortion services, health care, and child care! Many states have Parental Notification laws. They try to stop teens from having abortions by making us tell our parents first. What’s up with that? Teen sex is healthy and natural. We need birth control and safe sex information. We demand health care and child care for teen moms. Abortion must be safe, legal, and affordable for women of all ages. Fight to keep abortion legal! Not all women think abortion is cool for themselves, but all women have the right to make their own choice.

Do your own thing, man. Groovy.

And more to the point, shout down, bully, and silence anyone who tries to tell you different.

We have been so programmed in the last 50 years to think only of our rights and freedoms (licenses) that the idea of someone opposing the total liberty to do anything and everything one wants all the time is utterly anathema. In the all-or-nothing new world any restriction on any action is an affront. Anyone making a such a suggestion must simply be beyond the realm of rationality and can be instantly dismissed as either a crank with severe mental problems or as an evil megalomaniac bent on destroying everyone's fun.

I recommended to the kids that any time they heard anyone repeating this slogan they should ask "choose what?"

Orwell taught us that slogans work not by giving information but by taking it away. A slogan is not an expression of an idea but a noise meant, with a certain amount of training, to elicit a powerful emotional response either of outrage or shame. A response strong enough to overwhelm rational thought. A person who opposes the sloganeer is supposed to be cowed with shame at his opposition, as many people were who did not agree with the legalisation of abortion.

Believe it or not, I have heard a lot of pro-life people (or perhaps simply people who are generally afraid of rocking the boat in either direction,) say "How can we oppose women's rights?" This is the response of shame that prompts the weasel position, "I don't like abortion but I wouldn't impose my opinion on anyone else." (This, btw, leads directly to the Stockholm Syndrome Pro-lifer of which I have written extensively elsewhere. It turns you into a turncoat, but more on that later.)

An effective slogan is not meant to arouse discussion, but to squash it. It is not meant to be analysed or discussed. It is meant for one thing alone: to whip up a mob. And on abortion, (as well as so many other things) the mob won.