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nlike some folks I know of the other political persuasion, I revel in reading the other side’s point of view, so this morning I read Why I Plan to Emulate Dr. George Tiller by med student Rozalyn Farmer Love on AlterNet.  I really don’t want to put the story into nomination for the Most Ridiculous Story of 2009 because Love has, on the surface at least, tried so earnestly to bridge an all but unbridgeable gap.

That’s worth kudos and shouldn’t lead to catcalls of “Ridiculous!”  Had the author been honest in her examples, I might have been citing this article as a must read instead of including it in this year’s running.

Let’s get the formalities taken care of:  To be considered, a piece must be written by a serious writer about a serious subject in all seriousness, yet go far beyond the sublime, settling heavily into the imbecilic.  By those criteria, I suppose that Love will be an also-ran come December 31 (especially given the stories in the hopper thus far by a couple Rulers of the Ridiculous, Gary Kamiya and Glenn Greenwald), but let’s see how this stacks up.

The author starts by seeking affinity, which may seem odd given that the piece is on the decidedly left-wing AlterNet, but don’t give her demerits for that; it was originally published in the Atlanta daily.  Here’s her pitch:

I’m a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I plan to become an obstetrician-gynecologist. I dream of delivering healthy babies, working with families and supporting midwifery. But as part of my practice, I also envision providing abortions to women who need them.

The road I took to get here isn’t your stereotypical one. My parents are conservative Christians who believe abortion is wrong. Growing up, I naturally shared their view. But I’ve also wanted to be a doctor since I was 4 years old, and in high school, I began to feel drawn to issues of women’s health. In college, I designed my own major to broaden my understanding of women’s health by including psychology, sociology and women’s studies.

OK, so she’s from a conservative, church-going background, she’s focused and driven, and she’s gone out of her way to pursue her life-long dream.  Kudos, we can all relate.  But why, then, does she start the column with this intro:

If I’d passed her on the street, I probably wouldn’t have known her. Her gait is a bit stiff and her left eye somehow different from her right. She’s not famous, exactly, but some people might know her name: Emily Lyons. She’s the nurse who survived the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham at the hands of Eric Rudolph.

It’s a bit curious to me that someone who works in an abortion clinic should get heroic status, but Love tells us:

Watching her walk slowly into our fund-raiser on her husband’s arm — a woman who’d endured more than 18 operations — I thought of all she’d been through and knew that I’d come to the right decision in my support of reproductive rights.

Everyone in their right mind has to feel sorry for the tragedy that was interjected into Emily Lyons’ life.  It should never have happened.  Of course, had she chosen a more morally acceptable field of medicine to practice in, she would have lived a different life.  Providing abortions is hardly a high-risk occupation, with a mortality rate of, what, one a decade or so?  But Lyons’ career choice ended up costing her a lot, because of the evil and irrational reaction it created in Eric Rudolph’s mind.

Next we learn of another moment of inspiration to Love, related in her usual inclusive, mellowing style:

I agree that ending an unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy. When I advocate for reproductive rights, for choice, I don’t claim that abortion is morally acceptable. I think that it’s a very private, intensely personal decision. But I was stunned when one of my professors, a pathologist and a Planned Parenthood supporter, told me that decades ago, entire wings of the university’s hospital were filled with women dying from infections caused by botched abortions.

Really?  Entire wings?!  Let’s assume conservatively that it was just two wings of the university’s hospital and they had, oh, 20 beds in each wing. That means 40 beds filled with women dying from infections from botched abortions at any one time.  Let’s assume, again conservatively, that it took them two weeks to die.  That means we would have been cycling through 40 deaths 26 times a year, or 1,040 botched abortion deaths per year in one hospital.

According to wiki.answers.com, there were 7,569 hospitals in America in 2005, so let’s say, conservatively again, there were 5,000 “decades ago.”  If all these women were in fact dying in all these hospital wings as Love has so gullibly believed from such a credible source as a Planned Parenthood leader, why, we would have been racking up 5.2 million botched abortion deaths a year in this country!

Why didn’t Planned Parenthood do a better job of letting us know this back then?

Any deaths from a botched abortion is horrible, and it presents a morally credible argument for abortion, whether you accept it or not.  Judging the relative value of one human being over another is at its heart a moral issue, and the case can be made that the value of protecting grown women from painful deaths justifies the taking of a pre-born life.  But it is immoral to present your moral arguments with wildly skewed, incorrect evidence.

Another driver for Love was this:

At the same time [she was studying women's health issues], I found myself shocked at how little many of my friends — women who were studying biology and planning to become doctors — knew about their own sexual health. They didn’t know about or couldn’t get the reproductive health care they needed because of barriers put up by their culture, their religion and their parents. (emphasis added)

This is a third-year med student, so we are talking here about women who are currently in their 20s and 30s.  Why are federal, state and local governments giving millions of dollars a year to Planned Parenthood and various sex education/health clinic programs if smart women who are in pre-med can’t get the care they need?  Didn’t the SCOTUS rule that anti-abortion demonstrators can’t block clinics?  Do you need your pastor’s permission to get an abortion?

What did these women need, anyway? Late term abortions on the pew of a church?  I can’t imagine what they couldn’t get.  Honestly, you’d think Love was talking about tribal women in north Africa, not American women in the late 20th and early 21st century.

So Love, who tells us she still goes to church and is considered “a good person” by her old Christian friends, has gradually abandoned the morality of her youth, and accepted the morality of the abortionists.  But late-term abortion?  Letting a baby drop into the birth canal and sticking a gizmo into its brain and scrambling it? Cutting it apart to get it out?  Well, that took her a while:

As I continue my education, my views on abortion are still evolving. Take late-term abortions. When I first heard about them, I was horrified.

It wasn’t until I spent time in ultrasound rooms in graduate school that I began to see late-trimester abortions in a very different light. In one case, the patient’s baby had just been diagnosed with a lethal congenital anomaly. The high likelihood was that it wouldn’t survive after birth for more than a few minutes. As long as the baby remained in her mother’s womb, however, she would live. I asked the physician what this woman’s options were. The answer was, not many. She could choose to continue the pregnancy, but then she might be waiting for almost 20 more weeks to give birth to a baby that would never take more than a few breaths on its own. She was past the point where she could legally terminate the pregnancy in Alabama. If she could get an appointment in Atlanta within the next week, she might be able to have the procedure there. Beyond that, there were only a few physicians in the nation who would perform an abortion in such a case.

I could hardly wrap my mind around the agony that this woman and her husband must have been facing. They needed a caring physician to help them through this dark moment, and if they chose not to continue the pregnancy, they also needed a physician who was both skilled enough and brave enough to provide them with the care they needed. They needed Dr. Tiller.

Again, Love cites a morally defensible position, whether you agree with it or not.  Is a two-breath life a life worth living?  But how many partial birth abortions are like the tragedy she presented as her motivator?  Such stats are all over the board, as you can imagine, so let’s go to the abortionists’ mouth and see what they have to say:

Kansas requires physicians to report reasons for performing PBAs. Of the 240 PBAs [Partial Birth Abortions] reported in Kansas in 1998 and 1999, there were none where the mother’s life was at risk; in every case the attending physician certified “that continuing the pregnancy will constitute a substantial and irreversible impairment of the patient’s mental function” [i.e., she didn't want a baby] and that there was not a substantial physical risk to the mother from the pregnancy.[29] No PBAs have been reported since 1999 in Kansas, but other abortions performed at 22 weeks gestation or later must similarly be reported. For these as well, few if any are cited as involving risk to the mother’s life; typically, risk to the mother of “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” is cited.[29]

Physicians who perform large numbers of PBAs have stated that many are performed for elective reasons. In an interview with American Medical News, M. Haskell stated that about 80% of the PBAs he performed were purely elective, with the remainder performed for genetic reasons.[30] In testimony to Congress, J. McMahon reported that for about 2,000-2,100 PBAs he had performed, 1,183 (56%) were for fetal “flaws” or “indicators”, 175 (9%) were for maternal “indicators” [see next paragraph], and the remainder (about 700, or 35%) were elective.[31] McMahon further indicated that elective abortions comprised 20% of those he performed after 21 weeks gestation, and none of those he performed after 26 weeks.[32]

McMahon’s 1995 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee gave more detailed statistics, which have been analyzed by physicians P. Smith and K. Dowling. Among maternal indicators, the single most frequent was maternal depression (39, or 1.9% of total), with 28 attributed to maternal health conditions “consistent with the birth of a normal child (e.g. sickle cell trait, prolapsed uterus, small pelvis)” (1.3% of total) and the remainder (5% of total) for other maternal factors ranging from maternal health risk to “spousal drug exposure” and “substance abuse”. Those performed for fetal indicators included some for lesser conditions such as 9 (0.4% of total) for cleft lip-palate, 24 (1.1% of total) for cystic hydroma, and other for conditions either surgically correctable or involving lesser degrees of neurologic/mental impairment.[32, 33] (emphasis added, Johnston Archive)

Love picked the easy way out, the minority case she could justify. What will she do when a woman comes into her clinic and says, “I know I’m in my last weeks, but my junkie boyfriend just left me for a stripper and I’d rather not deal with a kid, at least until I’m off parole.  Could you just kill the little f***er for me?” Where’s the nobility of purpose in that? What is the moral justification?

For all her considerable efforts to connect with us so we understand her position, Love leaves us with an argument about as compelling as a Planned Parenthood position paper arguing against letting pregnant women see sonograms.  She has picked her cases very carefully, presented them unrealistically, and created a perfect world for justifying abortions.

Give her credit for bravery and points for trying, but to use a fantasy world to argue a real-world position is just ridiculous.

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I’ve got to run to an all-day meeting.  Watch the video – it’s UCLA student Lila Rose posing as a young teen pregnant by a mid-20s guy.  Planned Parenthood tells her to lie to cover up what would be a rape charge.

Here’s the lenghthy LAT story on the subject, Antiabortion Movement Gets a New Twist. Excerpt:

The girl’s voice in the videotape is tiny and tentative. She is talking to a nursing aide in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Ind. The girl wants an abortion.

The aide explains that the girl will need a parent’s consent because she is only 13.

The girl balks; she does not want to name the father.

“Cause, I mean, he would be in really big trouble,” says the girl. Her boyfriend, she explains, is 31.

The aide drops her head into her hands.

“In the state of Indiana,” says the aide, “when anyone has had intercourse and they are age 13 or younger . . . it has to be reported to Child Protective Services.”

There is a 60-second gap in the tape, according to the running timer on the video. What happens next is meant to be explosive.

“OK,” says the aide, “I didn’t hear the age. I don’t want to know the age. It could be reported as rape. And that’s child abuse.”

“So if I just say I don’t know who the father was, but he’s one of the guys at school or something?” asks the girl.

“Right,” says the aide, who has just stepped into a carefully laid trap.

Good stuff from a brave young woman.

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ale, purveyor of Okie on the Lam and designer extraordinaire – his work surrounds you here at C-SM – has found just how loony the liberal Christian community can become in the words the of new Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, the [NOT] Rev Katherine Hancock Ragsdal:

When a woman finds herself pregnant due to violence and chooses an abortion, it is the violence that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.

When a woman finds that the fetus she is carrying has anomalies incompatible with life, that it will not live and that she requires an abortion – often a late-term abortion – to protect her life, her health, or her fertility, it is the shattering of her hopes and dreams for that pregnancy that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.

Okay, some would argue that in cases of rape, abortion is OK. I don’t agree, but that’s too personal a ground for me to tread on; I just know beautiful mother/child relationships that have grown out of just that situation.  And “anomalities incompatible with life” doesn’t really mean much, does it?  Incompatible as in the fetus dies and miscarries, or incompatible with life as in it will make life harder for the parents?  But again, some can make a compelling case here.  Fine.  But Hancock – who apparently wasn’t aborted herself – goes on:

When a woman wants a child but can’t afford one because she hasn’t the education necessary for a sustainable job, or access to health care, or day care, or adequate food, it is the abysmal priorities of our nation, the lack of social supports, the absence of justice that are the tragedies; the abortion is a blessing.

So if I have this right, if a new living creation of God is just a bit too inconvenient, it is a blessing to snuff out that life?  In the name of the “abysmal priorities of our nation?”  But she’s still not done!

And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.

Even if there’s no reason at all to kill a pre-born life but the mere whim of the mother, it is a blessing from God to kill the child? In whose morality?  It matters not to Hancock; she’s on a roll:

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

Now remember – this sermon was not given by some poor, confused woman in some tiny. ignored church on some forelorn street corner; it was given by the dean of an Episcopal divinity (as in divine) school, charged with teaching the next generation of her faith’s thinkers and evangelists.  No wonder her church is shrinking into oblivion.

That, my friends, may be the blessing in this – that an apostate church’s death is being advanced. I’ll let Dale wrap it all up:

As a 57 year-old adoptee I “know” that, if abortion had been legal, cheap or paid for by the state back in 1952, I would not be here to write this today. I’m still a bit stunned by any “Christian” reverend that would make these statements or have these beliefs.

Evil is as evil does.

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avid Ogden, the porn-lovin’, baby-hatin’, Europe-fawnin’ Obama designee for #2 at Justice, is the kind of guy who would salivate at the opportunity to defend the villain in this case – and the fact that he would, and the fact that he would want to wouldn’t stop his nomination, and the fact that this happened in America in 2009 is a sign of our crumbling civilization:

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure. (source)

Not that it really matters to me since it’s obvious that it’s a kid at conception, note that Williams is about as close as you can get to her third trimester, and her baby was on the cusp of viability outside the womb.

Only Renelique didn’t arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic’s owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant’s umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.

Disgusting.  Shocking. But what actually happened was actually even more disgusting and shocking than this account, which, believe it or not, is sanitized. Here’s how events were described in the lawsuit Williams has filed:

The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.

Williams’ lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby’s umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

It’s just another day at the office for Rodriquez.

As I said, Williams is now suing Renelique – something she has grounds to do, since I’m sure the whole ordeal was far more traumatizing than she anticipated. It’s something no woman should go through, especially an 18-year-old. But in a more cynical view, her lawsuit is just another sign of our crumbling civilization. One minute she was just fine with having Renelique abort and throw out her baby, and in the next moment she sees an opportunity to make some quick bucks through a lawsuit.

Fortunately, our civilization hasn’t crumbled so much that Renelique isn’t at risk of losing his license and Gonzales can’t be charged with murder. The Haiti-trained doctor’s license is indeed at risk, and an autopsy showed there was air in the baby’s lungs, so it was born alive. That makes sticking it in a plastic back and throwing it inthe trash grounds for murder – even if abortion isn’t.

Hat-tip: Jim

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f the Left starts talking about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy in terms of abortion – she should have one to relieve her “burden,” or her parents are forcing her into having a baby instead of an abortion – here’s a rhetoric tip:

Lastly, the Left would be without its Messiah, the One from Hope and Change, Illinois, had Obama’s mother not decided to give birth to him at the age of 17. Where would the world be if she had decided Obama was “punishment?” This won’t stop criticism from the Left, blind in its pursuit for the White House and hatred for George Bush. Hypocrisy is no impediment for the Left. (Right Werds/Korrect Speech)

And here’s a refresher course on what Obama thinks about babies:

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n a bizarre end – and I do mean end, for cryin’ out loud – to the Left’s crazy “Sarah Palin faked a pregnancy” story, we learn this morning that Sarah and Todd Palin’s oldest daughter Bristol is five months pregnant. (Bristol’s on the right in this photo from 2007.) The news pretty much messes up the biometrics of the Left’s vaunted fake pregnancy story, since Palin gave birth to Trig Palin four and a half months ago.

The Palin’s statement:

“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us,” the Palins’ statement said.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said. (Reuters)

Once they catch their breath, expect the Leftist meme to turn, unwarrentedly, to “Palin’s forcing Bristol to have the baby when she should get an abortion.” But they haven’t quite gotten to that point yet; here’s where the rumormonger Kos is as of this moment:

OK, there is a visibly-pregnant Sarah Palin talking with a CBS 11 (Dallas Juneau) reporter at the Governor’s meeting in Texas end of the Alaska legislative session. She clearly appears to be pregnant.

Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now. Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight. Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.

That is all.

The strike-overs are there because the photo was first reported to have been taken in Dallas, which generated an entire meme over whether Palin appeared pregnant to Alaska Airline personnel and whether they should have let a pregnant Palin on the plane and whether she had on a “fake pregnancy suit.”

Yes, it may be a fake pregnancy suit, but we have no evidence of that, other than self-serving testimony of Alaska Airlines crew claiming that they had no idea Palin was pregnant (if they’d had any idea, they should have kept her off the flight).

UPDATE 3: Looking into this further, this is not CBS 11 in Dallas, but CBS 11 in Anchorage.

How, exactly, did they get comments from airline personnel if Palin never got on a plane to Dallas? Sorry; no explanation is provided, so we have no option but to pass it off as Leftist moonbattery.

The utter, vile stupidity of the Left on this entire matter is summed up in the Daily Kos poll question that follows their admission of lunacy:

Is this helping or should I delete this?

Nearly three-quarters of Kos readers vote “yes,” but apparently none is bright enough to point out that “yes” can mean “Yes, it’s helping, keep it up,” or “Yes, it’s not helping, so delete it.”

Meanwhile, back to the Palins: How ironic, and how unfortunate, that the first ticket for national office to include a knocked-up, unmarried daughter is a GOP ticket. It is wonderful to legitimize keeping the baby once pregnant, as Bristol is doing, and as the father of three daughters, while I hope I’ll never have to give a statement like the Palins’, I can’t quibble with a word of it; it would be our statement if we had to face that situation.  But the phenomenon of unwed births is detrimental to society, so even though the GOP ticket is right on the whole choice issue, it’s unfortunate that the McCain/Palin ticket must now embrace [perhaps there's a better word] conception out of wedlock.

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he bloviating hypocrites at Daily Kos is ruminating today that Sarah Palin was never pregnant with a fifth child, but rather was covering up for an unwed daughter’s pregnancy by pulling the old switch-a-roo after the little ‘un was born. Kos offers up this as evidence:

• Palin never looked pregnant. Really? Then who’s that chubby gal with the hair piled up in a Palinesque bun?
• Palin’s daughter “got mono” and wasn’t in school for a while.
• Palin doesn’t support abortion.

Whoa! What a stunningly definitive case. It takes a sick mind to even conceive of this meme, let alone carry on about it willy-nilly about as if it were newsworthy – especially when one considers that nearly a third of births in Alaska are out of wedlock.  Why would Palin take the considerable risk of being caught in such a sordid, dishonest deal when the consequences of having an unmarried daughter with child would be of so little consequence socially or politically?

Worse, the Left has no problem with invading the privacy of Palin and her daughter, and sees no hypocrisy in their cries for a probe into the recent use of their baby-making apparati. Yes, we’re taking about the same Left that howls in genuine outrage if a computer scans data from known terrorists; the same Left that says millions of dead babies is a small price to pay for a woman’s right to privacy.

Kos proves just how hypocritical its fellow travelers are by running a poll asking whether Kos should continue running with the story. 8,778 have responded as of 3:40 p.m. PST:

• 27 percent are sane and stand by liberal principles, saying “No, it’s’ a private matter and you should delete this diary.”
• 56 percent bloodthirsty partisan hypocrites, saying “Yes, the future of the world is at stake [really?!], nothing’s off the table.” [Then can we look into the Obama/Ayres relationship, or should we continue to try to drown out any radio station that gives Stanley Kurtz air time?]
• And 15 percent are postponing their immersion into insanity, saying “Not sure yet, need more evidence.” These numbskulls are not sentient enough to realize that a “yes” answer to the question means more evidence would be gathered since Kos would continue with the story, so “yes” or “no”‘ are the only viable answers.

{Pregnant pause.}

Sometimes, even after all these years, the Left just flat-out stuns me.

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ven though it’s after noon and I still haven’t posted anything on C-SM, I did get up pretty early this morning – 9 a.m. or so – and finding none of the clan ready to get up yet, I downloaded today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal into my Kindle - it took 75 cents and about 45 seconds to complete the transaction – and strolled over to the La Quinta Resort’s restaurant for granola from the breakfast buffet, which I woke up craving.

I used the Kindle’s underlining capability to highlight areas of interest I thought I’d share with my (mostly) non-vacationing (presumably) readers. I’ve linked to the on-line stories, some of which you may need subscriptions to read.

I’ll cover two stories here; the rest may become full posts if vacation time permits.

William McGurn wrote in The NAACP and Black Abortions about the shocking incidence of abortions in the black community and the NAACP’s failure to deal with it. It thought this passage was particularly illustrative; it follows a discussion of Dr. Alveda King, MLK’s neice, now an ardent opponent of abortion in general and black abortion in particular:

What Dr. King is alluding to is that abortion disproportionately affects African-Americans. A fact sheet from the Guttmacher Institute puts it this way: “Black women are 4.8 times as likely as non-Hispanic white women to have an abortion.” The Centers for Disease Control further report what this means: While about one out of every five white pregnancies ends in abortion, it’s nearly one out of every two for African-Americans.

Amazing how terse and unemotional words can be, especially when written by Guttmacher, a primary non-profit supporter of abortion, or a government agency.

Yes, the article does get into the eugenic beliefs that were core to Planned Parenthood’s formation, and the recent expose about Planned Parenthood’s willingness to accept funding from sources posing as racists who wanted the money used to kill black babies.

Now that the frighteningly abortion-radical Barack Obama supposedly represents black America, the chances of this dreadful situation changing any time soon is remote.

The big Page One profile today is of the GOP’s answer to George Soros, Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the money behind Freedom’s Watch, the GOP’s answer to MoveOn.org.

Adelson is an international casino owner with operations in Vegas and China, which means he’s gotten rich of the misery of others, the breakdown of families crushed by gambling debt, and kowtowing to the Beijingoists in order to get rights to build casinos in the People’s Republic.

Am I happy that someone who makes his living in such a dreadful and disgusting manner is bankrolling GOP 521s? Not really. Am I likely to contribute to Freedom’s Watch? Probably. Sometimes in politics you just have to hold your nose, and this is such a case because I’m with Adelson on two out of three of his main beliefs: The threat of Islamofascism and support for Israel. (The third big threat to America in his book is unionization of casinos. Like I say, I’m holding my nose.)

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The Yale Daily News Web site is dead (temporarily) because of this story of a woman who killed (permanently) her unborn babies as an art project:

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

Martine Powers, Staff Reporter
Thursday, April 17, 2008

Art major Aliza Shvarts ’08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.” …

The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

Where do I start? What can I say? I’m not going to fisk this piece because it is too appalling and perverted for words.

Sacrificing human life to create a discourse is, perhaps, the most obscene and horrifying thing ever done in the name of “art.” And her apology — “I didn’t intend to scandalize anyone” — is perhaps the most horrifyingly out of touch statement ever made by anyone not the leader of a totalitarian state.

No, rather than fisk, I’ll just raise some questions.

What sort of society creates monsters like Aliza Shvarts?

Certainly, it is not one that respects life. I know nothing about this woman, but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Shvarts is a liberal and is against the war in Iraq because it is “blood for oil.”

Yet because we live in a society where a holocaust many times over has been perpetrated on the unborn, Shvarts is able to support “blood for art” without so much as a flinch in her horribly deformed morality.

What sort of university condones this sort of thing?

Yale of course is not alone among universities that have lost all sensibility, but it seems to be intent on carving out a place for itself as the most nonsensical of universities: It hired Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Taliban; it employs Dr. LaMont Cole, an environmentalist who taught his students, “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world over population problem;” and, who can forget, it celebrated Valentine’s Day 2004 with university-funded, faculty-supported Sex Week at Yale.

Here’s a description of that last one; hide the kids and the sensitive folks:

One Yale professor gave a lecture on the “History of the Vibrator.” Students gave talks on the secrets of great sex, hooking up, and how to be a better lover. At “Sex Toys 101,” people who admitted to never having used a sex toy were given miniature vibrators. The highlight of the week for most, however, was the presence of Devinn Lane, a bisexual porn star from Wicked Pictures—the adult film company who [sic] co-sponsored many of the Sex-Week events.

Lane participated in a panel on “Sex, Entertainment and the Media” and held a Q&A session with female undergraduates. She topped off her day by participating in a “Porn Party” that was sponsored by Wicked Pictures, which advertised the event on the Adult Industry News website: “All events are free and open to the public, so make this your time to explore Sex Week at Yale, and the exotic world of Wicked Pictures.”

Institutions of higher learning have been entrusted to the 60′s Secularist liberals, and they have converted them into institutions of gutter learning — and still, parents not only allow their children to go to schools like Yale, they pay the schools small fortunes to destroy their children.

Whatever happened to art?

There was a time when art existed to glorify God by showing the beauty of His creation and illustrating the stories of His book. Then came a time when art existed to bring people joy.

Today, art exists, in the words of Shvarts:

“I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity. I think that I’m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.”

There are two extremes there, neither one of which I’d call art. The first, of course, is Shvarts’ miscarried pre-borns, ripped from the womb, mixed with Vaseline and splattered on plastic to create discourse through the processes of killing, defiling, offending and nauseating.

Then there is the manufactured image, commodity art, sold by the thousands of pieces from catalogs to decorate hotel rooms and trailer park community centers.

Does Yale, the art establishment and Shvarts want that to be it? Nothing in between? No serene still lifes, exquisite portraits, or lush landscapes? Not even any Picassos or Hockneys or Lichtensteins?

What right to they have to attack art that gives us serene pleasure in the name of provocation and hack ideologies?

What constitutes crime in America?

People are in prison in America because they got high on crack, but Aliza Shvarts will not be prosecuted for the crime of creating her art, because in America self-aborting a dozen pre-borns in the name of art is not a crime.

Why isn’t she getting help?

The Yale Daily News article never raised the issue of Shvarts’ mental health, but she is either souless and completely amoral, or she has a serious mental illness. If she denies the former, which she basically does through her comments, then she is the latter.

But she cannot be forced to receive the care she needs, apparently. Her parents are now probably aware of what their little girl is doing at Yale. Will they remove her and put her under the care of someone who will help her?

Or will they brag to their friends that their artist daughter is at the forefront of the post-modern art movement?

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It is cause for celebration: That there are 300,000 fewer pre-borns killed in abortions now than there were in 1990. We are now at about the same abortion rate as we were in 1974, the first year after Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure.

That would be 1.2 million abortions annually, as one in five women who become pregnant choose abortion, down from one in three.

Whenever seeing data like this (reported by the LATimes from a Guttmacher Institute study), you have to ask if it’s good data. Guttmacher is a pro-abortion place that has received funding from Planned Parenthood, but the article reports (without citing sources) that “Abortion opponents, however, generally view its statistics as reliable.”

See the Guttmacher package on the study here.

Why the drop? Abortion-lovers will point to the drop in abortion clinics (down 15%) as if anti-abortion forces closed them down, as opposed to falling demand for the clinic’s specialty. But it’s a bogus argument because the fall-off in demand is due at least in significant part to the availability of prescription abortions, which offer all the convenience of killing your baby in the privacy of your own bathroom.

Certainly, availability of contraception is a big part of it, but the pro-abortionists are overlooking three certain and one possible cause for the drop:

• Improved ultrasounds that make it hard for the mom to buy the “it’s just a bit of protoplasm” propaganda from the abortionists when they are looking at the baby’s fingernails

• Related, the dramatic growth of crisis pregnancy centers that offer consulting, free diapers, encouragement … and ultrasounds
• Greater acceptance of what we used to quaintly call “out of wedlock” babies, as evidenced by the film Juno.
• And maybe, just maybe, a greater degree of spiritual connection with God, and the greater understanding that the abortee is His creation, not just the mom’s.

Interestingly, the article says Planned Parenthood’s latest political manual indicates a backing off from strident fights for abortion:

A political tactics manual recently developed for Planned Parenthood asserts that voters respond well to such issues — especially when they’re framed with buzzwords like “prevention,” “protection” and “personal responsibility.”

Dwell too much on abortion, and the broader liberal agenda will bog down, said Kathy Bonk, a consultant who developed the strategy. “It matters where you start the conversation,” she said. “If you start on abortion, you don’t get off abortion.”

Let me just note in passing that Bonk is a perfect name for a sexual agenda consultant.

Notice that Bonk is telling Planned Parenthood that it must rewrite the language — always a key component of a political campaign — by redefining “personal responsibility” from its current meaning of “don’t get pregnant” to a new meaning of “having all the means at your disposal, no matter your age or circumstances, to enable you to prevent having a baby.” They want “personal responsibility” to mean being able to have an abortion, whereas the phrase really means taking control of your life so you can avoid having to have an abortion.

But it seems all this is happening well outside the political purview of Planned Parenthood because:

Oregon, for instance, was rated this week by Americans United for Life as the nation’s “least pro-life state,” yet its abortion rate dropped 25% from 2000 to 2005 — more than any state except Wyoming.

California also was ranked hostile territory by Americans United for Life, but its abortion rate fell 13%, significantly more than the national average. “Abortion rate” refers to the number of abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

How do you raise funds to promote abortion if the states in which you’re most successful at doing that have such dramatic drops in the procedure?

But looked at from the other side, if one assumes that pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics have helped lead to the drop-off in the number of clinics, how do pro-lifers deal with doctors offices anonymously tucked from sea to shining sea writing prescriptions for abortion pills?

To me, the data indicates that the abortion issue has settled down for the long haul. There is no golden middle path here, no way for politicians to bring the sides together. So the Supreme Court matters, the effectiveness of the opposing sides’ advocacy and reach matters … and most of all, how society affects the heart of the mother matters.

The battleground, moms’ hearts, is a vast, complex and sensitive place far removed from Senate hearings over SCOTUS nomination hearings. It’s the battlefield where, clearly, the “rip it out” side is losing ground to the “love it” side.

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