Working (and Waiting) for Justice

"Men have never wearied of political justice; they have only wearied of waiting for it." G.K. Chesterton

Planned Parenthood's Eugenic Racism

On this day in 1939, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood announced the organization’s new “Negro Project” in response to requests from southern state public health officials—men not generally known at that time for their racial equanimity. “The mass of Negroes,” her project proposal asserted, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”  The proposal went on to say that “Public Health statistics merely hint at the primitive state of civilization in which most Negroes in the South live.”

In order to remedy this “dysgenic horror story,” her project aimed to hire three or four “Colored Ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities” to travel to various Black enclaves and propagandize for birth control.

“The most successful educational approach to the Negro,” Margaret wrote sometime later, “is through a religious appeal.  We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Of course, those Black ministers were to be carefully controlled—mere figureheads.  “There is a great danger that we will fail,” one of the project directors wrote, “because the Negroes think it a plan for extermination.  Hence, let’s appear to let the colored run it.”  Another project director lamented, “I wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be entrusted with . . . a clinic.  Our experience causes us to doubt their ability to work except under White supervision.”  The entire operation then was a ruse—a manipulative attempt to get African Americans to cooperate in their own elimination.

The program’s genocidal intentions were carefully camouflaged beneath several layers of condescending social service rhetoric and organizational expertise.  Like the citizens of Hamelin, lured into captivity by the sweet serenades of the Pied Piper, all too many African Americans all across the country happily fell into step behind Margaret and the Eugenic racists she had placed on her Negro Advisory Council.

Soon taxpayer-supported clinics throughout the South were distributing contraceptives to African Americans and Sanger’s science fiction dream of discouraging “the defective and diseased elements of humanity” from their “reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning” appeared at last to be on the road to fulfillment.  Planned Parenthood had its first real success in social engineering.

What Choice?

Sex-Selection in America: Undercover in NYC

A Dreadful Anniversary

On this day in 1923, the legalization of an infanticide procedure called “abortion” first occurred in the United States when Governor John Love signed a Colorado bill into law.

Corporate Complicity

A pro-life organization that has spent decades working to try to get corporations to stop giving financial donations to the Planned Parenthood abortion business has released a revised listing of companies backing the abortion giant.

Life Decisions International has released a revised edition of "The Boycott List," which identifies corporations that support Planned Parenthood, which does more abortions than any other business in the nation. Kenneth Garvey, the communications director for LDI, says the boycott has been successful over the years.

“As a direct result of the commitment, action and prayers of pro-family people, at least 281 corporations have stopped funding Planned Parenthood,” he said. “It is estimated that the boycott has cost Planned Parenthood more than $40 million since the Corporate Funding Project (CFP) began. This should serve as a testament to those who think it impossible to change corporate behavior.”

Garvey noted that the great success of the Corporate Funding Project is due to the tenacity of pro-life people who “understand the power of the dollar and are willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of preborn children.”

New boycott targets include Mesa Air Group and Trinity Investments, but the main portion of the boycott list is dedicated to corporations that LDI has been targeting for their Planned Parenthood donations for some time.

Some of the companies that occupy a continued place on the LDI boycott list include:  Adobe, AOL, Bank of America, Bayer, Chevron, Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, etc.), eBay (PayPal, etc.), Laureate Education, Midas, Nationwide (insurance), Nike, Select Comfort (Sleep Number bed), Southwest Airlines (Jet Blue, etc.), Starwood Hotels (Aloft, Element, Four Points, Le Méridien, Sheraton, St. Regis, W, Westin, etc.), Symantec, Wells Fargo, and Whole Foods.

The pro-life group also maintains a list of prominent nonprofit organizations that LDI says “are associated with Planned Parenthood and/or its agenda.” The organizations may not necessarily make donations to the abortion business but may have some sort of relationship with it, such as joint programs, allowing Planned Parenthood leaders access to its members, or in other ways.

That list from LDI includes the following new groups: Comic Relief, Eagles Clubs, Elks Clubs, Elton John AIDS Foundation, and the Red Cross. Continuing members of the list of nonprofits that associate with Planned Parenthood include: AARP, American Cancer Society, Amnesty International, Audubon Society, Boys & Girls Clubs, Camp Fire, Dr. Phil Foundation, Girl Scouts, Girls Inc., Human Rights Watch, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Kiwanis Clubs, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Lions Clubs, March of Dimes, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Rotary Clubs, Salvation Army, Save the Children, Sierra Club, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, YMCA, and YWCA.

The pro-life group says the boycott list “includes corporations that have donated to Planned Parenthood, at any level, in any amount, within the past five years, but whose officials refuse to say donations will not be made in the future. Some officials claim their respective company no longer supports Planned Parenthood. If officials refuse to say donations will not be made in the future, the company remains on a boycott target until grants to Planned Parenthood have ceased for five years.”

That explains how some pro-life people receive information from corporations saying they do not support Planned Parenthood, but see the name of the company listed in the boycott.

“This is done to prevent corporations from donating five times as much money every five years and claiming for four years that they do not support the pro-abortion groups,” LDI says. “We learned early on that corporate leaders will turn to devious methods to continue supporting Planned Parenthood. For example, one corporation had donated $5,000 to the pro-abortion group every year since 1991. After becoming a boycott target, the corporation donated $25,000 and for four years told consumers they do not support Planned Parenthood. Therefore, do not be surprised if a corporation responds that it is no longer supporting Planned Parenthood.”

All corporations listed have received information about Planned Parenthood, along with a request that it stop its donations, LDI says, which could include cash donations, gifts in-kind and matching gifts. LDI does not track donations made to United Way or other organizations that bundle gifts individuals make through a third party.

“A corporate name is added to The Boycott List only if, after a reasonable amount of time, its leaders refuse to change the philanthropic practice,” LDI says. “A company will be dropped as a boycott target if it stops funding Planned Parenthood for at least five years (automatically) or if a corporate official states that the pro-abortion group will be made ineligible for support in the future (immediate removal from The Boycott List). It is the responsibility of corporate officials to notify LDI if a company qualifies for removal from The Boycott List.”

The Closing of the American Mind

“There is a grave danger for American democracy that the two parties not only can't agree, they can't even discuss. Left and right live in their little ghettos of the mind, unwilling to listen to anything that doesn't reinforce their own views. If you only hear what your opponents are thinking through the warp of second-hand caricatures, then there is no chance of understanding their point of view. Thinking gets trapped within a very narrow box--one that often bears little relation to problems in the real world.”  BBC’s Mark Mardell

An Abortion / Breast Cancer Victim

Schaeffer 100 Conference

Killer Angel: Margaret Sanger in Her Own Words

“We must discourage the defective and diseased elements of humanity from their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning.”

“The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”

“We propose to hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

“The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

“The government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws the breeding--with a breakneck rapidity--of idiots, defectives, diseased, feebleminded, and criminal classes.  Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation of these classes.  Year by year their numbers are mounting.  Year by year more money is expended . . . to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.”

“We can all vote, even the mentally arrested.  And so it is no surprise to find that the moron’s vote is as good as the vote of the genius.  The outlook is not a cheerful one.”

“The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, the simpleton, the weakling, and the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers--intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, literally threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying get.”

“Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches.  I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism.”

“Even if we accept organized charity at its own valuation, and grant it does the best it can, it is exposed to a more profound criticism.  It reveals a fundamental and irremedial defect.  Its very success, its very efficiency, its very necessity to the social order are the most unanswerable indictment.  Organized charity is the symptom of a malignant social disease.  Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding, and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents, and dependents.  My criticism, therefore is not directed at the failure of philanthropy, but rather at its success.  These dangers inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human waste.”

“The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents.  These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devestating curse on human progress and expression.  Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large.  Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering.”

Freedom of Speech (But Only for Some)

Christocentric Pro-Life

"Fight for the Children" is a powerful new music video from a new generation of Pro-Lifers--offering great hope that the struggle for the sanctity of life will continue uninterrupted into the future.

Basil of Caesarea

My article on the life and ministry of Basil of Caesarea has now been translated into Russian for the leading pro-life website for Russia and Eastern Europe.

Strange Nexus

The strange nexus of modernist architecture, political correctness, and the culture of death is in evidence in the EU's brash new monument to nonsense.

The Morning Center

The Morning Center from Samaritan Ministries on Vimeo.

Public School Teaches Multiple Genders

The Ongoing Terror

"The ghouls who run the abortion industry, and their shills in the halls of Congress, kill more Americans every day than bin Laden did in his one major flame-out, and the Navy Seals aren't coming after them." Douglas Wilson

Arrested for Reading the Bible

PP's False Mammogram Claim

PP Aids Underage Sex Ring

38 Years of Roe

In perhaps its most divisive and controversial decision since Dred Scott, the Supreme Court overturned the infanticide and homicide laws in abortion cases in all fifty states by legalizing child-killing procedures from the moment of conception until just before the moment of birth. Delivered on January 22, 1973 the Roe v. Wade decision sent shock waves throughout the nation--the effects of which are still felt. In a remarkably argued majority opinion, Associate Justice Blackmun introduced several creative constitutional innovations--including a heretofore unrecognized “right to privacy.” Like the infamous Dred Scott slavery decision before it, this case actually only exacerbated the debate the court set out to resolve.

Interestingly, in 1996 Norma McCorvey, the woman named as “Jane Roe” in the case, asked the Supreme Court to reverse their ruling in light of the fact that the case was based on fraudulent evidence. The court declined.

38 years, 52 million lives, and culture in tatters: this is the sad legacy of Roe v. Wade.

Phil Keaggy's "Little Ones"

Dympna of Gheel

Dympna Caelrhynn was born near the end of the eighth century, the eldest daughter of a heathen Celtic prince, Eadburh. When she was still just a child, her beloved Christian mother was claimed by a plague. Apparently stricken mad with grief, Eadburh conceived a perverted passion for his daughter. In order to escape his incestuous intentions, she fled abroad with her chaplain Gerebernus, first to the newly Christianized port city of Antwerp, and then to the small village of Gheel about twenty-five miles away. There she began to rebuild a life for herself.

With the help of Gerebernus, she devoted herself to the care of the needy and the forlorn. She rescued dozens of orphaned children from a life of begging in the streets. She gave shelter to the lame, the mentally impaired, and the infirm. She fearlessly lobbied for justice for the poor. And she fought to expose the dark secrets of abortionists whose flourishing contraband was wreaking havoc among the peasantry.

There in the Flemish lowlands, Christian medievalism was progressively making its mark. As a result, many of the most insidious practices from antiquity were passing from the scene—including the age old pagan procedures of infanticide, abandonment, and exposure. Even so, when there were serious problems with a pregnancy or when handicapped children were born, many families reverted to the pagan practices.

Dympna boldly challenged this, arguing that if human life is sacred, then all human life must be protected—regardless of how unlovely or inconvenient it might be. She sought to demonstrate that there was no such thing as an unwanted child. She made her home a haven for the otherwise unwanted. In the span of just three years, her household grew to include more than forty handicapped children and another twenty mentally impaired adolescents and adults.
Before long, she had gained a remarkable reputation for selflessness, graciousness, and charity. Eadburh, upon hearing of his daughter's whereabouts, followed her to Gheel. There was an awful confrontation. When she refused to return home with him, he flew into a rage and brutally slew her on this day in 795.

Amazingly, Dympna's vision did not die with her that day. Stricken with sorrow, the citizens of Gheel decided to continue her mission of mercy. That work continues to the present day. It includes a hospital for the mentally ill, a foundling center, an adoption agency, and the world's largest and most efficient boarding-out program for the afflicted and disturbed run as a private association by the Christian families of Gheel.

The Fatal Flaw in Public Education

"It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of atheism the world has ever seen." A.A. Hodge, 1890

Christmas, the Gospel, and Life

The Scriptures command a reverence for life. Embedded in every book and interwoven into every doctrine is the unwavering standard of justice and mercy for all: the weak and the strong, the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the lame and the whole, the young and the old, and the born and the unborn. This truth is at the very heart of the Gospel.

The Bible declares the sanctity of life in its account of God's creation:

Woe to him who strives with his Maker. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him who forms it, "What are you making?" Or, shall your handiwork say, "He has no hands?" Woe to him who says to his father, "What are you begetting?" (Isaiah 45:9-12).

The Bible declares the sanctity of life in its description of God's sovereignty:

For You have formed my inward parts; You have covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your Book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them (Psalm 139:13-16).

The Bible declares the sanctity of life in its discussion of the incarnation:

The thief does not come except to kill, and to steal, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

The Bible declares the sanctity of life in its explanation of Christ's redemption:

But has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:10).

The Bible declares the sanctity of life in its exposition of ethical justice:

I call heaven and earth today as witnesses against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:19).

The Bible declares the sanctity of life in its exhortation to covenantal mercy:

If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Deliver those who are drawn toward death, hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, "Surely we did not know this," does not He who weighs the heart consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? (Proverbs 24:10-11).

From Genesis to Revelation (Genesis 2:7; Revelation 22:17), in the Books of the Law (Exodus 4:12; Leviticus 19:16), in the Books of History (Judges 13:2-24; 1 Samuel 16:7), in the Books of Wisdom (Psalm 68:5-6; Proverbs 29:7), in the Prophetic Books (Amos 1:13; Jeremiah 1:5), in the Gospels (Matthew 10:31; Luke 1:15; 41-44), and in the Epistles (Galatians 1:15; 1 Corinthians 15:22), the pro-life message of the Bible is absolutely inescapable.

It is this "Word of Life" (Philippians 2:16) that we have believed--and it is this Word that we must act upon faithfully.

This is why the early church was so adamant about the connection between the Gospel and the sanctity of life.

The Didache was a compilation of Apostolic moral teachings that appeared at the end of the first century. Among its many admonitions, it asserted an unwavering reverence for the sanctity of life, "There are two ways: the way of life and the way of death, and the difference between these two ways is great. Therefore, do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant."

The Epistle of Barnabas was an early second century theological tract that was highly regarded by the first Christian communities, Like the Didache, it laid down absolute strictures against abortion and infanticide, "You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not slay a child by abortion. You shall not kill that which has been given life by God."

In the third century, the brilliant and prolific Tertullian composed his Apology. There he connected the sanctity of life with the very integrity of the Gospel, "Our faith declares life out of death. Therefore, murder is forbidden once and for all. We may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man killing. Thus it does not matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth."

Ambrose, the renowned and revered bishop of Milan, was forthright in his condemnation of those engaged in child-killing procedures, "They deny in their very womb their own progeny. By use of parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs. In this way life is taken before it is given. Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating our own children."

Athenagorus and Augustine, Athanasius and Basil, Cyril and Jerome: the fact is, every father of the early church was unanimous in their defense of the sanctity of life.

As we celebrate Christmas, let us remember that at the heart of the message of Bethlehem is the fulfillment of the promise of God to destroy the final enemy: death.

Calvin on the Sanctity of Life

John Calvin, the leader of the Swiss Reformation said:

“The unborn child...though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being...and should not be robbed of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy an unborn child in the womb before it has come to light.”

Defense of the innocents, he argued was so integral and indistinguishable from a defense of the Gospel that believers ought to be just as willing to risk severe persecution for the one as for the other:

“Now to suffer persecution for righteousness' sake is a singular comfort. For it ought to occur to us how much honor God bestows upon us in thus furnishing us with the special badge of His soldiery. I say that not only they that labor for the defense of the Gospel, but they that in any way maintain the cause of righteousness suffer persecution for righteousness. Therefore, whether declaring God's truth against Satan's falsehoods or in taking up the protection of the good and innocent against the wrongs of the wicked, we must undergo the offenses and hatred of the world, which may imperil either our life, our fortunes, or our honor.”

TR: Pro-Life Stalwart

“Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the murder of the helpless.”

Theodore Roosevelt was convinced that the family was the fundamental cornerstone of society. Anything that eroded the family’s strength or vitality, anything that sought to undermine its authority or integrity, and anything that subverted its holy purpose or virtue was a dastardly threat to everything that he held to be good and right and true.

In his State of the Union message in 1905, he highlighted his grave concern for America’s deteriorating moral climate in general and the family’s diminished cultural relevance saying: “The transformation of the family is one of the greatest sociological phenomena of our time; it is a social question of the first importance, of far greater importance than any merely political or economic question can be.”

He went on to describe a rather simple agenda for protecting the family against the encroachment of those men and women he called “the foes of our own household.” He said: “There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality. All else is immorality. There is only true Christian ethics over against which stands the whole of paganism. If we are to fulfill our great destiny as a people, then we must return to the old morality, the sole morality.”

His analysis was utterly scathing: “All these blatant sham reformers, in the name of a new morality, preach the old, old vice and self-indulgence which rotted out first the moral fiber and then even the external greatness of Greece and Rome.”

In a very real sense, Roosevelt was the original family values social conservative.

It is not surprising then, that when a new wave of Eugenic Racists and Child-Killing Abortionists made their way onto the American scene and into the public arena, Roosevelt was one of their chief opponents—in fact, apart from the hierarchy of the Catholic church, he was one of their only opponents.

He railed against their “frightful and fundamental immorality,” calling their cause a submission “to coldness, to selfishness, to love of ease, to shrinking from risk, and to an utter and pitiful failure in sense of perspective.” As he argued: “Artificially keeping families small inevitably involves prenatal infanticide and abortion--with all its pandering to self-indulgence, its shirking of duties, and its enervation of character.”

But he did not simply hurl invectives their way--he acted. He was instrumental in mobilizing Republicans, Democrats, and Progressives against the awful specter of Eugenic Child-Killing—building a solid coalition that was to resist the siren’s call of abortion for another three-quarters of a century. As he said: “The foes of our own household are our worst enemies; and we can oppose them, not only by exposing them and denouncing them, but by constructive work in planning and building reforms which shall take into account both the economic and the moral factors in human advance. We in America can attain our great destiny only by service; not by rhetoric, and above all not by insincere rhetoric, and that dreadful mental double-dealing and verbal juggling which makes promises and repudiates them, and says one thing at one time, and the directly opposite thing at another time. Our service must be the service of deeds.”

He went on to assert: “The most dangerous form of sentimental debauch is to give expression to good wishes on behalf of virtue while you do nothing about it. Justice is not merely words. It is to be translated into living acts.”

The infamous Eugenic Racist, Margaret Sanger, who founded the vast Planned Parenthood abortion network, rightly saw Roosevelt as “a holdover from the old Christian religion,” and thus a serious obstacle to her revolutionary program which called for “no Gods and no masters.” She railed against him as “a disgraceful blight upon any modern scientific nation’s intent to advance.”

For a leader who had staked his reputation and risked his career for the sake of traditional family values, that was high praise indeed. For, no commendation can be greater than the condemnation of one’s fiercest sworn enemies.

Crafting a Winning Plan

Samuel Taylor was a proto-typical mild mannered small town pharmacist in the mid-nineteenth century. A family man, community leader, and life-long Methodist, he had a natural Midwestern aversion to controversy.

But when the daughter of one of his customers was nearly poisoned by a dose of mail-order abortifacient pills, he sprang into action. He discovered that the abortifacient business was booming all over the United States--and that it was an entirely unrestricted, unregulated, and unmonitored industry.

Without the benefits of a government agency, an institutional largess, or a corporate sponsor, he began a one-man educational campaign--first with his fellow pharmacists, later expanding to physicians, and finally with state legislators--to alert the public to the physical dangers and the moral liabilities of the child-killing trade. Taylor testified before the Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana legislatures--winning their support for a ban on the sale of all chemical parricides and abortifacients--and he drafted model legislation that was approved by fourteen other states.

New Hate Groups!

File this one in the You've-Got-to-Be-Kidding-Me Department: the Southern Poverty Law Center has now listed most of the nation's most prominent and respected pro-life, pro-family, Christian organizations on its roster of dangerous "Hate Groups."

The notoriously Off-the-Left-Side-of-the-Political-Chart organization is now targeting such mainstream ministries as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Coral Ridge Ministries, Liberty Council, Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, and the National Organization for Marriage.

According to Gary Cass, of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, "The SPLC has been reduced to a far left propaganda organization that uses hype and hysteria to enrich a few liberal attorneys at taxpayer expense and has long out lived its usefulness."

Indeed. In fact, increasingly the SPLC has itself become so entranced by its marginal prejudices against Christians and Conservatives that it may very well qualify as a "Hate Group" itself--in accord with its own definition.

Surely, they've set themselves up to be "hoisted by their own petard," as Shakespeare might put it.

Now Groping at an Airport Near You!