For those who have been enjoying the waning days of summer away from news and social media, basking maskless by a refreshing body of water or hiking in a cool forest with a face as naked as a newborn babe’s, here’s what set ablaze the perpetually burning neurons of leftists: Texas banned all abortions performed on small humans whose hearts are beating and made anyone who facilitates the illegal killing of humans with beating hearts open to litigation. Sounds reasonable to me, but then again, I’ve never been a fan of killing defenseless humans who have committed no crime.

Following Texas’ prohibition of human slaughter after the first six weeks of life, the left lost what’s left of their minds.

With their feticidal minds unhinged at the prospect of mothers not being free to hire hitmen who identify as “physicians” to off their offspring, leftists proved again why they’re not known for skill in the use of evidence, sound analogical thinking, respect for science, respect for human rights, coherence, consistency, or morality.

Let’s take a cursory look at the darn things cultural regressives are muttering, sputtering, and tweeting:

Joe Biden, the self-identifying Catholic who claims his “avocation” is theology, recently said,

I respect people who … don’t support Roe v. Wade. I respect their views. I respect … those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that. Don’t agree, but I respect that.

But wait, in 2015 Biden said,

I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God-fearing, non-God-fearing people that have a different view.

So, which is it? Does he believe that at the moment of conception a new human life comes into existence or does he not? If not, what new science convinced him between age 72 and 78 that the union of human egg and sperm no longer marks the beginning of the life of a new human being?

(As an aside, why can’t leftists who claim to believe that women can be born in men’s bodies and that men can menstruate and give birth be like Biden and respect the views of God-fearing and non-God-fearing people who disagree?)

Disgraceful CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, brother of disgraced former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, tried to suggest that 6-week-old human fetuses don’t have heartbeats because they don’t have hearts. The Mayo Clinic dares to dissent:

Growth is rapid this week [sixth week]. Just four weeks after conception, the neural tube along your baby’s back is closing. The baby’s brain and spinal cord will develop from the neural tube. The heart and other organs also are starting to form and the heart begins to beat.

Please note, the Mayo Clinic refers to the baby as a “baby.”

CNN’s Joy Reid fretted that the Texas law signals the Handmaid’s Tale is coming to America—you know, the story of fertile breeding women being forced to have sex with ruling elite men while their wives watch. Reid’s guest, failed presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, nodding in agreement, fretted about the law’s impact on the “most vulnerable among us”:

This law is about bearing down on the most vulnerable among us. It’s bearing down on the woman, or the transperson, or the nonbinary who’s workin’ three jobs.

Warren views pregnant “transpersons” who are workin’ three jobs as more vulnerable than the babies whom they seek to kill.

Bette Midler tweeted,

I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress.

Midler forgot to specify the direct object of the transitive verb “choose.” To be clear, she means the right to choose to have incipient human life killed.

I completely agree with Midler that if a woman plans to chemically starve her baby fetus or have her fetus dismembered as her back-up contraception plan, it’s best she not have sex.

Millionaire leftist co-founders of the ridesharing company Lyft, Logan Green and John Zimmer, have gone all out in support of killing tiny humans:

Lyft is donating $1 million to Planned Parenthood to help ensure that transportation is never a barrier to healthcare access.

Killing humans is not “healthcare” no matter how many times leftists use this Newspeakian euphemism. Anyone who cares about the health of womb-dwellers ought not use Lyft.

And any leftist who believes that practices that have a “disparate impact” on persons of color are racist practices should know that black babies are killed in utero at much higher rates than are white babies:

Black women have been experiencing induced abortions at a rate nearly 4 times that of White women for at least 3 decades, and likely much longer. … In the current unfolding environment, there may be no better metric for the value of Black lives.

The millions of dollars donated by racists Green and Zimmer are going to facilitate the racist practices of Planned Parenthood.

The ever-snippy White House spokesperson Jen Psaki scolded a reporter for asking about how Biden reconciles his Catholic faith with his support for human slaughter. Psaki’s retort was revelatory in that it demonstrated how un-woke she is.

Without even asking for the reporter’s pronouns, Psaki just assumed the reporter was a man, presumably because he looks like a man and sounds like a man. Psaki asserted presumptuously that the reporter has never been pregnant. How does she know? Doesn’t Psaki know that in the woke playbook, some women have men’s bodies, and some men have women’s bodies and can get pregnant? I guess Psaki is an intolerant, hateful, ignorant bigot.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin claimed that the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Texas law constitutes “a real blow against the U.S. Supreme Court’s institutional reputation.”  It’s strange to hear Toobin, who pleasured himself on a work Zoom call, express concern over “reputation.” But then again, Toobin has a vested interest in keeping abortion legal: He pressured a former paramour with whom he had had an extramarital affair to abort their now 12-year-old son. Toobin may be planning for his future “needs.”

Toobin also described Roe v. Wade as the “second most famous opinion of the last 100 years.” He should have said “most infamous opinion of the last 150 years.” Here’s what liberal legal scholars and pundits have said about the infamous Roe v. Wade opinion:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor)

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible.” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun)

• “Blackmun’s [U.S. Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer)

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” (John Hart Ely, former law professor at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford universities)

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous.” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist)

• “[T]he finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor)

• “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor)

• “Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor)

One law professor who has no need of constitutional grounding for abortion is UC Irvine law professor and cheerleader for legalized human slaughter, Michele Goodwin. Goodwin is a long-time and influential advocate of the legal right to kill the preborn. She and co-author Erwin Chemerinsky set forth their goals in a 2017 paper titled, “Abortion: a Woman’s Private Choice”:

We begin by justifying the protection of rights not found in the text of the Constitution. … Foremost among these rights is control over one’s body and over one’s reproduction. … Finally in Part III we discuss what it would mean for abortion to be regarded as a private choice. In this Part, we identify three implications: a) restoring strict scrutiny to examining laws regulating abortions, which would mean that the government must be neutral between childbirth and abortion; b) preventing the government from denying funding for abortions when it pays for childbirth; and c) invalidating the countless types of restrictions on abortion. (emphasis added)

Goodwin rightly condemns the “notorious eugenics period in the United States,” in which allegedly defective preborn babies were forcibly killed by the government. Goodwin fails, however, to acknowledge the difference between the government mandating that a doctor perform a surgical procedure on the body of a woman without her consent and the government prohibiting a doctor from dismembering or in other ways destroying the body of a human fetus without his or her consent.

Goodwin also believes the Texas bill to preserve human life is analogous to the Fugitive Slave Act. She believes that the grotesque law that incentivized citizens to help send humans into bondage is analogous to a law that incentivizes citizens to help prevent the slaughter of humans. Some might counter that the Texas law is more akin to laws that offer rewards for the capture of killers than it is to the Fugitive Slave Act.

Now that leftists have lost control of the U.S. Supreme Court, they’re stomping their angry feet and demanding the Court be jampacked with leftists, something conservatives have not called for to repair the grievous harm done by seven Justices in 1973. Neither the Constitution nor the will of the people matters to “progressives.”

There is no constitutional or moral right to have humans killed because of their dependency status, location, absence of self-consciousness, lack of full development, disabilities, anticipated future, maternal inconvenience, insufficient maternal finances, or crimes of their fathers. A civilized, compassionate, moral, and just society does not find the final solution to poverty, disease, disability, or any other form of human suffering in the killing of others. And in the Constitution, there is no free-floating absolute right to privacy in which humans can do anything they feel like doing to other human beings. Leftist U.S. Supreme Court Justices invented such a “right” out of whole blood-stained cloth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Progressives-Say-the-Darndest-Things-About-Killing-Tiny-Humans.mp3

One of the more grotesque demonstrations of leftist non-sense and hypocrisy was demonstrated a week ago following an episode of the wildly popular Disney show The Mandalorian when “Baby Yoda” eats the unfertilized eggs of a Frog Woman who is transporting her eggs to her husband so he can fertilize them thereby preventing their species’ imminent extinction. Fans of Baby Yoda freaked out, incensed at the lighthearted treatment of what they deemed genocide by the beloved Baby Yoda.

The moral incoherence and hypocrisy should be obvious. In the Upside Down where leftists live, when a human mother hires someone to dismember her own fertilized human egg—aka human fetus/embryo/baby—they demand that society affirm, celebrate, and shout the execution of those tiny humans. In fact, the voluntary dismemberment of fertilized human eggs at any gestational age is so morally innocuous and such an unmitigated public good that leftists think all Americans should pay for the executions of humans in utero.

In the Upside Down, the genocidal killing of all fertilized human eggs with Down Syndrome is at best morally neutral if not morally good, but the fictional devouring of unfertilized Frog Critters’ eggs is morally repugnant. Just wondering, if fertilized human eggs are parasites so devoid of personhood as to render them morally legitimate objects to kill, if it’s okay to dismember them because they’re imperfect non-persons, would there be anything wrong with eating their remains?

Leftists views on the slaughter of fertilized human eggs is just the most grotesque of their many morally incoherent views. Here are a few more:

• According to leftists, concerns of conservatives about possible 2020 election “irregularities”—including via computer malfeasance and malfunction—are evidence of paranoid conspiracy theories, but when leftists express such concerns, they’re sound, reasonable, and legitimate. In 2019, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden proposed an amendment titled “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act” to the “Help America Vote Act of 2002.” His proposed amendment was signed by 14 co-sponsors—all Democrats—including a who’s who of presidential wannabes: Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth, Brian Schatz, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Baldwin, Bernie Sanders, Maria Cantwell, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, and Patty Murray. Wyden provided a summary of his amendment that includes the following:

Votes cast with paperless voting machines cannot be subjected to a manual recount, and so there is no way to determine the real election results if they are hacked. H.R. 1 …  mandates paper ballots.

In order to detect hacks, this bill requires election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

• Leftists heartily endorse bodily damage and disfigurement as sound “treatment” protocols for those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their sexual embodiment as male or female, but bodily damage and disfigurement of those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their whole or healthy bodies (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who identify as amputees or paraplegics) are considered barbaric and ethically prohibited.

• Leftists condemn conservatives as “science-deniers” for disagreeing with them on the degree to which climate change is caused by human action or on how to respond to climate change. At the same time, the purported science-worshippers claim that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chestfeed,” and they claim that the product of conception between two persons is not a person. Anyone who refuses to concede to such nonsense is mocked, reviled, de-platformed, and fired. Just ask Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling or Wall Street Journal writer and author of Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier.

• Leftists claim that marriage has no connection to either sexual differentiation or reproductive potential. They vociferously claim that marriage is solely constituted by love, and that “love is love.” And yet most leftists don’t think two brothers in a consensual loving relationship should be able to legally marry.

• Leftists claim there’s no story behind or within Hunter Biden’s emails and texts that prove Joe Biden straight up lied to the American public, and yet they claimed there was a story of such magnitude and enormity within Christopher Steele’s imaginative “dossier,” that it necessitated 24-hour coverage for years.

• Leftists claim that eliminating the Electoral College and filibuster and packing the U.S. Supreme Court constitute necessary changes to enhance “democracy,” but implementing legal processes to ensure an election was fair undermines democracy.

• Every gathering of leftists, including mostly violent protests, a takeover of six city blocks, trips to hair salons (Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), a post-election street celebration (Lori Lightfoot), a holiday boating excursion (attempted by husband of Michigan Governor Christine Whitmer), restaurant dining (California Governor Gavin Newsom, CNN narcissist Chris Cuomo), a funeral/Democrat campaign event (i.e., John Lewis’ faux-funeral) are COVID-immune and justifiable. But an Orthodox Jewish funeral, an entirely peaceful protest of draconian COVID restrictions, and a march in support of a transparent and fair election are denounced as super-spreader events.

• Serial killer of senior citizens, Andrew “Quietus” Cuomo, commands citizens to “admit” their “mistakes” and “shortcomings” with regard to how they responded to the Chinese Communist virus even as he refuses to apologize for his policies that killed scores of elderly.

• To leftists, social science is the god that determines all moral truth, and yet despite social science demonstrating repeatedly that children—especially boys—need fathers, the left refuses to discuss how fatherless families may be contributing to the anti-social behavior that is destroying our cities.

• Leftists claim to value free speech, religious liberty, inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and unity while condemning not just the beliefs of those with whom they disagree, but also the persons themselves. Many leftists share an uncharitable, presumptuous, ugly, tyrannical, oppressive, and scary desire that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral, who believe marriage has an ontology, who believe biological sex is immutable and meaningful, and who believe bodily damage and disfigurement are improper treatment protocols for gender dysphoria should be unable to work anywhere in America.

To create the illusion that they’re not hypocrites and to defend their intolerance, exclusion, divisiveness, hatred of persons, book banning, speech suppression, demand for ideological uniformity, and efforts to circumscribe the  exercise of religion—which for Christians extends far outside the church walls—leftists resort to fallacious reasoning. The fallacies they employ are too numerous to list, but two of their faves are the ad hominem fallacy and the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Ad hominem is an informal fallacy in which an irrelevant personal attack replaces a logical argument. It proves nothing about the soundness, truth, or falsity of a claim. Instead it appeals to emotion and silences debate through intimidation.

The fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion presumes the premise (i.e., the initial claim) is true without proving it true. So, for example, leftists–ignoring their purported commitment to the First Amendment–argue that homosexual acts are moral acts and, therefore, there is no need to tolerate the expression of dissenting views. But the intolerance they are trying to defend is based on the truth of their premise that homosexual acts are moral—a premise they simply assume without proving is true.

Here’s another: Leftists assert that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings, and, therefore, the government has no reason not to recognize unions between two people of the same sex as marriages, because such couples can experience love and erotic desire. But the premise—i.e., that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings—hasn’t been proved.

And here’s yet another claim about marriage based on circular reasoning: Leftists argue that the reason government is involved in marriage is to grant public legitimacy or provide “dignity” to erotic/romantic unions and, therefore, the government has an obligation to recognize homoerotic unions as marriages. The problem is that those who make this argument fail to prove their claim that the reason government is involved in marriage is to recognize, provide, or impart “dignity” to unions. Those who make this argument just assume their premise is true.

After employing fallacious circular reasoning and hurling ad hominem epithets at their opponents, leftists sanctimoniously wipe the dust off their dirty hands and assert that their hypocrisy isn’t really hypocrisy after all.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Ideological-Non-Sense-and-Hypocrisy-of-Leftists.mp3

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The Thomas More Society filed a complaint in federal court stating that both the state of New York and New York City are discriminating against pro-life advocates.

The complaint, which was filed Jan. 21, 2020 on behalf of Evergreen Association, Inc., accuses the State and City of New York of disregarding the charitable organization’s First Amendment rights. Evergreen operates maternal health and pregnancy centers under the names “Expectant Mother Care” and “EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers.” The Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Chris Slattery, Director of EMC Frontline, described the discrimination: “We are all about saving the unborn lives threatened by abortion. Thus, we are all about offering alternatives to abortion. New York’s discriminatory laws undermine our charitable mission. How could we in good conscience hire someone who advocates abortion to encourage expectant mothers not to pursue that deadly route?”

According to a media release from the Thomas More Society, the complaint charges discrimination against pro-life organizations in the following ways:

• Violation of the right to association (First Amendment)
• Violation of due process (Fourteenth Amendment)
• Violation of free speech (First Amendment)

In a public radio program in Jan. 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo denounced pro-life advocates as “extreme conservatives,” saying that “they have no place in the state of New York.” Despite repeated calls for him to apologize, the governor has refused. In the same pattern, the Thomas More Society states, “A recent string of New York attorney generals has sought to silence peaceful citizens offering abortion-bound women information on life-affirming alternatives.”

In remarks about the legislation, Thomas More Society Special Counsel Timothy Belz stated, “This is especially egregious when you consider that the law was packaged with other bills specifically designed to strip away any regulation of abortion. New York’s ‘Boss Bill’ was passed in tandem with the state’s Reproductive Health Act, which legalizes abortion until the birth of the child, and the Comprehensive Contraception Coverage Act, which requires health insurers to provide no-cost birth control, including abortifacient drugs, in their health plans.” In Illinois, the Reproductive Health Act (SB 25), passed by the General Assembly at the end of the spring 2020 session, also requires all employers in the state to provide no-cost birth control and abortions up to nine months in their health plans.

According to the Thomas More Society release, “The case challenges the constitutionality of New York’s so-called ‘Boss Bills,’ laws that make support of abortion a protected class in the employment nondiscrimination laws of both New York State and New York City, thus forbidding employers from making hiring and promotion decisions  based upon ‘reproductive health’ decisions of employees or applicants, including the decision to have or promote abortions. The laws pose existential threats to pro-life organizations because they impose debilitating fines and also provide for statutory damages.”

Belz explained, “These laws violate our client’s rights in multiple ways. Expectant Mother Care and EMC Frontline exist for the purpose of advocating for and providing desperate women with alternatives to abortion. Forcing them to hire someone who promotes abortion would completely undermine their mission.”

“It’s ludicrous,” said Belz, “and tramples all over Expectant Mother Care and EMC Frontline’s right of expressive association guaranteed by the First Amendment. These state and city laws also violate our client’s right to free speech and right to due process. Finally, the state’s failure to define ‘reproductive health decision making’ makes the laws unconstitutionally vague.”

The Thomas More Society is a not-for-profit law firm headquartered in Chicago and Omaha, dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty. 

To read the complaint visit https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Complaint-for-Declaratory-and-Injunctive-Relief-1-16-20.pdf.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

This article has been updated to correct errors and add additional information.

Full-Term, Preborn Babies Can Be Killed For Virtually Any Reason

Why, I kept asking myself last week, are so many Americans so livid about Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signing into law a bill passed jubilantly by the state legislature that makes it possible for women to abort full-term babies. Sure, the bill is morally repugnant and the jubilant applause by the legislature was grotesque, but 19 other states—including Illinois—allow full-term babies to be killed and for the same reasons. Seven other states and the District of Columbia allow full-term babies to be killed for any or no reason. Two other states allow full-term, healthy babies to be aborted if they were conceived during rape or through incest.

Toward the end of last week, just as outraged pro-life voices were dying down, it came to light that a new bill was proposed in Vermont which many mistakenly believe would legalize unrestricted abortion throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. They were mistaken in that unrestricted access to abortion through the entire nine months of pregnancy has been legal in Vermont since 2014. The bill proposed in Vermont merely enshrines in state law the existing legal right as a “fundamental right.” Pro-baby-killing advocates are preparing for the day Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Late-term abortions are banned in 20 states except if the mother’s “health” is deemed at risk by allowing the baby to grow to term. But here’s the catch: “health” includes any physical, emotional, psychological, or familial factors that affect “well-being.” With that ambiguous and wildly broad definition, virtually any woman can have her baby killed at any point in her pregnancy.

Two states allow healthy babies to be killed in the womb in the 9th month if they were conceived in rape or through incest (AR, UT). Killing full-term babies is no less barbaric because they were created via criminal acts of someone else’s doing.

Seven states allow full-term babies to be killed if the babies have “lethal” abnormalities, which is de facto infanticide.

Take a gander at the chart provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation which lists the 20 states that allow late-term abortions for “health” reasons and the 7 that allow it for any or no other reason.

Also, take note of Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Those places are virtual killing fields. They don’t even require the pretense of a “health” reason for women to abort their full-term babies. In those 7 states, there are no bans on abortion at any stage. It’s open season on babies who, through no fault of their own, have the misfortune of being conceived in the wrong womb.

Since all 50 states and D.C. allow late-term abortions that threaten a mother’s life—as distinct from her “health”—it’s important to understand the inconvenient truth “progressives” don’t want Americans to think about: There is no life-threatening condition that would ever necessitate the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby in the womb. There are relatively rare occasions in which continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, but ending a pregnancy does not require the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby.

Doctors can induce delivery or perform a C-section to save a woman’s life in a life-threatening or emergency situation without dismembering, crushing, burning, or chemically inducing cardiac arrest in a baby. In some induced deliveries or C-sections, babies will not survive, but that is wholly different from intentionally killing them. Obstetrician-gynecologist and former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains:

Let me illustrate with a real-life case that I managed while at the Albany Medical Center. A patient arrived one night at 28 weeks gestation with severe pre-eclampsia or toxemia. Her blood pressure on admission was 220/160. A normal blood pressure is approximately 120/80. This patient’s pregnancy was a threat to her life and the life of her unborn child. She could very well be minutes or hours away from a major stroke.

This case was managed successfully by rapidly stabilizing the patient’s blood pressure and “terminating” her pregnancy by Cesarean section. She and her baby did well.

This is a typical case in the world of high-risk obstetrics. In most such cases, any attempt to perform an abortion “to save the mother’s life” would entail undue and dangerous delay in providing appropriate, truly life-saving care. During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of such cases by “terminating” pregnancies to save mother’s lives. In all those cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.

GET WOKE, AMERICANS! Full-term babies can be legally exterminated in the womb for virtually any reason or no reason in most states in the U.S. Take your righteous anger at this barbarism and do something useful.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Cuomo-Re-Recording-3.mp3

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There are two dates on my mind today. The first is January 22, 1973, the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, opening the door for virtually unlimited abortion on demand. Since that day, over 61 million Americans have perished at the hands of medical practitioners who shun the Hippocratic Oath. Let that number sink in for a minute. 61,000,000. That equates to about the total populations of California and Texas combined!

There have been so many deaths from abortion that many Americans are becoming desensitized to the issue. I remember the initial response to Roe v. Wade. There were grief-stricken people of faith across the nation standing in peaceful protest and turning out for marches, walks, and human life chains so long they passed through cities. But today, the silenced innocents are all but forgotten. To most, they are nameless, faceless, soulless numbers. But God remembers.

Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15)

Medical science has revealed that these babies were far more than numbers. Even though they were doomed never to take their first breath, they had beating hearts, working organs, functioning brains, and souls that cried to the Lord for justice. We didn’t hear their screams. But God heard.

Imagine the horror of seeing such things done to the bodies of our living children. God doesn’t have to imagine. He sees.

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. (Psalm 56:8)

But these realities are not stopping “progressive” politicians from doing what they can to facilitate more deaths. On the 46^th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade, Illinois’ new governor, J.B. Pritzker, while signing an executive order supporting taxpayer-funded abortions, declared that Illinois “will be the most progressive state in the nation when it comes to guaranteeing women’s reproductive rights.”

Equally damning, the majority of elected state lawmakers in New York erupted in applause at the passing of the Reproductive Health Act, a measure which legalizes the death of babies, even up through the ninth month of gestation. The bill was quickly and joyfully signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. New York, the state with the highest percentage of abortions per capita, will see even more innocent babies executed—legally. These forsaken children will have no memorial, outside of those detailed in Planned Parenthood’s annual report.

Ironically, there is one famous public memorial that urges New Yorkers to remember and to validate the lives of New Yorkers—an eerie reminder that human life is precious—all human life. Regardless of sex, race, creed, color, or age, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. In this place, there is a statement affirming the value of the unborn.

That is the memorial to those lost on September 11, 2001, the second date on my mind. A day of great tragedy and heartache—one that still haunts America to this day. Almost 3,000 innocent people died that day. The victims of the tragedy could not protect themselves. The decision to terminate their lives was made by others.

Yet, we remember and honor these precious lives. A solemn monument was erected in downtown New York City called the 911 Memorial. At this sacred site, the names of all those who perished are forever chiseled into the American psyche—inscribed in gray granite for future generations to see and remember.

Ten of those listed include unborn children. The unborn who perished inside their mothers are listed for the world to see and mourn! They are not callously called “fetuses.” They are not referred to as a “biological mass.” They are called what they are: children!

The names of each individual are there to remind us about the horror of deaths of innocent people caused by the decisions and actions of others. This memorial is in the center of New York City, ironically a place where the lives of many other babies are extinguished daily.

And, we are not to forget—unless you happen to be a “progressive” politician with an agenda.

“DEANNA LYNN GALANTE AND HER UNBORN CHILD.”

“LAUREN CATUZZI GRANDCOLAS AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

“JENNIFER L. HOWLEY AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

“HELEN CROSSIN KITTLE AND HER UNBORN CHILD.”

“VANESSA LANG AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

‘PATRICIA ANN CIMAROLI MASSARI AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

‘RENEE A. MAY AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

“SYLVIA SAN PIO RESTA AND HER UNBORN CHILD.”

“RAHMA SALIE AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

“DIANNE SINGER AND HER UNBORN CHILD”

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Illinois’ newly installed governor, billionaire J.B. Pritzker, looked at the mess that decades of “progressive” rule has made of Illinois and had an epiphany: OMG, the problem here in Illinois is that it’s not progressive enough! That set him on a quest to out-“progressive” every “progressive” state in the union—well, at least regarding feticide. At a press conference pregnant with symbolism held at Chicago’s Planned Parenthood (PP) office on Tuesday, Pritzker issued this proclamation:

On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I’m proud to declare under my administration, the State of Illinois will be the most progressive state in the nation when it comes to guaranteeing the right to choose for every single woman…. And today, I’m proud to sign an executive order that will further protect and expand the right to choose in Illinois.

Someone just arriving from Mars may wonder about the odd construction of those sentences. They might ask, “Right to choose what?” A translator would then explain that Pritzker was using a script written by the denizens of the Upside Down. For those who are unfamiliar, the Upside Down is “a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to you and you don’t even see it.” Those denizens are the monsters of Planned Parenthood, and the “choice” they and Pritzker avoid identifying is the choice to have one’s offspring offed.

Pritzker knew it would be challenging to follow in the colossal footsteps of that colossal failure Pinocchio Rauner who became the first governor in the country to mandate public-funding of abortion. Pritzker knew he had to do something BIG to capture the hearts and wallets of those who celebrate human slaughter and shout the killings of their children, like Amelia Bonow, seen here indoctrinating children in a lighthearted discussion of the absolute, unrestricted right to abortion:

In the service of his morally disordered fan-base, Pritzker signed an executive order to ensure that all state insurance policies are quickly up to snuff in ensuring that women can snuff out their babies on the public dime.

Americans must disabuse themselves of the notions that killing humans is healthcare and that PP is deeply invested in providing mammograms. In an recent interview, PP president, Dr. Leana Wen, who absurdly claims there is “no more important organization than Planned Parenthood,” shared that,

The last thing I would want is people to get the impression that we are backing off of our core services…. What we will always be here to do is provide abortion access… it’s who we are.”

While everyone is aware of PP’s body-snatching-for-profit business, few remain aware that “Planned Parenthood is one of the largest sources in the US of transgender healthcare.” According to The Guardian,

[Planned Parenthood’s] centers use a newer model for gender transitioning that gives the patient input on whether to start their transition, rather than turning the decision over entirely to a psychiatrist. Some clinics have staff with detailed knowledge of how to update driver’s licenses, passports and social security cards to reflect someone’s name and gender.

Perhaps that’s another reason for J.B. Pritzker’s personal and political investment in PP. Who can forget his first cousin James/”Jennifer” Pritzker. Since not everyone who wants to masquerade as the opposite sex is a billionaire, maybe J.B. thinks the public should pay for their chemically and surgically constructed flesh costumes as well. If he’s willing to use public money to destroy the tiny bodies of young humans, why not use public money to destroy the bodies of bigger, older humans?

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also used the shameful occasion of the 46^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to sign into law a bill that guarantees the legal right of women to have their offspring killed in the womb without restrictions until 24 weeks of pregnancy and to have their offspring killed up until birth if the “health” of a woman is deemed at risk or the baby is “not viable.” Prior to the passage of this law, New York—which legalized abortion in 1970, three years prior to Roe—has had a law on the books that “defined homicide as ‘conduct which causes the death of a person or an unborn child with which a female has been pregnant for more than 24 weeks.’”

New York mothers now have a legal right to have their babies killed for virtually any reason one day prior to their  birth day. One day after birth, such a killing would be murder. Nowhere in America do we permit the non-voluntary killing of terminally ill humans, so we shouldn’t permit the non-voluntary killing of 40-week-old “non-viable” humans.

Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont have no restrictions on late-term abortions, and now New York joins the ranks of the 23 other states that permit abortions up until birth days if the non-defined “health” of the mother is deemed at risk by preventing the killing of her baby. “Health” includes factors pertaining to well-being, including physical, emotional, psychological, and familial. In other words, anyone who wants an abortion can get one in these states.

The product of conception between two humans is inarguably a human. Slowly, over decades, proponents of the legal right to kill humans in the womb have been forced to abandon their intellectually untenable early claim that the unborn were mere clumps of cells. Feticide-advocates now admit that humans in the womb are, indeed, human. What they say now is that, well, yes, it is a human but it’s not a person because essential to personhood are some abilities. One’s person-ness is constituted not by what one is but by what one can do. But if that’s the case, then the whole foundation for the Leftist “social justice” project is threatened. As philosophy professor  Francis Beckwith writes,

For if human ability (or achievement) is the sine qua non [i.e., something essential] of an individual’s right to life, then it is difficult to explain why we shouldn’t abandon the idea of human equality, since all our abilities come in degrees at every stage of human development.

If our moral status as persons with unalienable rights depends solely on our abilities—rather than on our existence as humans—then on what basis can we argue for the importance of equality in human affairs? To “progressives,” ability—a continually shifting phenomenon—precedes and determines personhood and, therefore, the rights conferred by personhood. According to the pro-abortion ideology, all humans are not equal. Equality based on humanness alone does not exist. I guess a panel of personhood judges is going to have to evaluate human worth and award those coveted and hard-to-earn rights. Woe to those who, once deemed persons, lose cognitive or physical abilities.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Pritzker-Recording-3.mp3

Save the Date!!!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information!

Leftists, controlled by “LGBTQ” activists and in thrall to their dogma, have redefined yet another term: bullying. They seek to impose their redefinition on all of society in their relentless quest to socially condition everyone into affirmation of their sexuality ideology. There’s no better evidence that they have redefined “bullying” than their claim that Melania Trump’s campaign against cyberbullying is hypocritical because her husband allegedly cyberbullies.

The often-foolish Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recently made that claim in a column in which he argued that President Donald Trump cyberbullied former CIA director John Brennan by calling him a “political hack.” Milbank also accused Trump of cyberbullying special counsel Robert Mueller, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, John Dean, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), Governors Andrew Cuomo, (D-NY) and John Kasich (R-OH). Milbank’s evidence that Trump cyberbullied these people? He called them names on Twitter.

Milbank’s argument raises the question “What is a bully?”

My Random House Dictionary defines a bully as “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.”

My American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a person who is habitually cruel, esp. to smaller or weaker people.”

My Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak.”

My Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “a person who uses strength or power to coerce others by fear.”

Is calling famous adults in positions of cultural power names “cruel”? Are John Brennan, Robert Mueller, Chuck Schumer weak? Are they terrified by Trump’s tweets? Does tweeting mean things about famous adults in positions of cultural power constitute the use of coercive strength and power?

Apparently, the spanking new Leftist definition of “bully” omits all references to smaller or weaker people, which means that untold numbers of people—including countless “progressive” pundits, politicians, professors, teachers, and actors—are guilty of bullying.

If all epithets constitute bullying, then was former Obama press secretary, Jay Carney a bully when he called Milbank a “hack.”

When Milbank called U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) a coward and said the president is “surrounded by hooligans,” was Milbank bullying?

When perpetual power-seeker Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables,” was she bullying?

When Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn called opponents of the legal recognition of homosexual unions as marriages sophomoric Bible-thumpers, hankie-twisters, and poisonous debaters, was he bullying?

When the editor and publisher of the “progressive” magazine The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, said former president George Bush was incompetent, untrustworthy, and dishonest, was she bullying?

When former President Barack Obama called Kanye West a “jackass,” was he bullying? When Obama called a segment of the population bitter Bible-clingers was he bullying?

Are “progressives” bullies when they call theologically orthodox Christians ignorant, hate-filled bigots for their belief that homosexual acts are immoral?

Was Jesus a bully when he called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers?”

If someone is a hack, a jackass, or a viper, is it bullying to say so?

If we use the true definition of bullying, it becomes clear who the bullies are. Bullies are those who possess cultural power—and by cultural power, I mean our dominant cultural institutions—and wield it against those with little or no cultural power.

It is “progressives” who control government schools, academia, the arts, professional medical and mental health organizations, mainstream media, social media, and corporate America. When Trump tweeted that John Brennan is a “political hack,” he was not guilty of bullying. When Carney called Milbank a hack, he was not bullying. When cultural power-brokers call an elderly florist a bigot, they’re bullying.

For tactical reasons, “progressives” have decided that when it comes to adults talking about adults, bullying no longer refers to coercive, threatening, cruel treatment of weaker people. They do that all the time. Now it refers to any speech by conservatives that’s not pleasant, sufficiently obsequious, or ideologically aligned with their views. But remember, no one has an obligation to acquiesce to Leftist language rules.

This is not an endorsement of speech that is uncivil or intemperate, but not all unpleasant speech is uncivil or intemperate. There is even a cultural place for expressions of hatred. Decent people with properly formed consciences will hate wicked acts and will say so even in the face of coercive bullying by the culturally powerful.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Leftists-Redefine-Bullying.mp3

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Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-New York) has arrogantly proclaimed that “extreme conservatives” have no place in New York. And who are these “extremists”? Those who Cuomo hopes will leave New York include those who believe that women do not have a moral right to murder babies in utero, those who believe that homosexual acts are immoral, and those who believe marriage has a nature central to which is sexual complementarity.

I assume that Cuomo seeks voluntary relocation of those who dissent from his “progressive” dogma, but who knows what presumptuous “progressive” oppressors will desire for untouchable “conservative extremists” in a few years.

What’s really rich in Cuomo’s statement about “extremism” is his apparent ignorance of history and logic. Cuomo seems to be implying that the number of people who hold a particular moral belief determines the truth or rightness of the belief. So, if most New Yorkers believe in the absolute right of mothers to murder the babies growing within them, then dissenters are wrongheaded extremists and have no place in states in which their views are in the minority. 

A few questions for Cuomo:

1. What if the majority of people in every state were to believe that women have a moral right to murder their babies in utero? Where then do dissenters belong? Where is their place?
   
   
2. Which moral and political beliefs must one hold in order to have a place in New York? Is it just conservative beliefs on feticide, assault weapons, and homosexuality that abrogate one’s right to live in New York, or are there other ideological litmus tests for New York residency?
   
   
3. Historically, Cuomo’s perverse views on feticide and homosexuality have been the extreme views. During those periods of history when Cuomo’s views were extreme, were they objectively wrong as well? And during those periods of history, did extreme “progressives” lose their “place” in all the states in which conservative  views dominated?

Some, including Cuomo, are now trying to argue that Cuomo was merely describing a political reality in New York. They’re arguing that Cuomo was simply saying that since New York is a liberal state, conservative “extremists” will have a difficult time effecting their desired political ends. But here’s what Cuomo actually said:

Are they these extreme conservatives…right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are….Figure out who you are, and figure out if your extreme conservative philosophy can survive in this state. And the answer is no.

Does Cuomo apply this pragmatic philosophy consistently? Does he think extreme progressives have no place in conservative states? Should all extreme “progressives” exit predominantly red states, counties, or cities?

“Progressives” have been fashioning their re-education camps for some years now (i.e., public schools), but perhaps the resistance of “conservative extremists” to curricular propaganda and censorship, and the increasing number of free-thinking “conservative extremists” who are exiting government schools is leading anti-intellectuals like Cuomo to entertain the fanciful idea of sequestration of non-compliants.

Seven years ago as a member of the English Department at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, I was working in the writing center. At that time, I was urging colleagues who introduced students to homosexuality-affirming resources also to expose students to the work of dissenting scholars. A colleague in the writing center—who, by the way, claimed to be Catholic—told me that she was so sure my views on homosexuality were wrong that she didn’t think they should be allowed to be presented in public schools. This is the astonishing view that dominates public schools around the country. Teachers simply assume that their unproven, non-factual moral and political assumptions (as well as re-definitions of terms) are true and arrogantly censor competing assumptions—all the while proclaiming their impassioned commitment to diversity, tolerance, and intellectual inquiry.

Cuomo inadvertently let the dirty, flea-bitten, nasty cat peak its head out of the extreme “progressive” bag, but he’s far from alone. Remember when Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel said, “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values…. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values,”? Chick-fil-A was unwanted in Chicago because its president Dan Cathy believes that marriage is inherently sexually complementary.

The pernicious reality is that many “progressives,” particularly those in positions of power and influence (e.g., those in the mainstream press, academia, Congress, and the entertainment industry), violate virtually every one of their shibboleths: They hate diversity of ideas; they censor with carefree abandon; they’re arrogant and elitist; they’re intolerant; they hurl epithets, and they’re illogical. And they reserve for themselves the right to decide who gets to speak, work, live, move, and have their being in America. 

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