The Abortion Solution

Some people didn't get that my last post (Green Government) was a parody. Actually, it was an attempt to demonstrate how anyone can lie with statistics using a logical fallacy. When you see a magician make a quarter disappear right before your very eyes, you have at least three choices. You might assume it was a trick and wonder how it was done. Or, you can believe the quarter actually disappeared. Or, you can be a magician yourself who knows how the trick is done and simply admire the magician's skill. Almost everyone who sees this trick for the first time believes, at first, that the quarter disappeared. What makes this trick so entertaining is that you don't know how the trick was done.

Your brain, which is forever trying to make sense of the world by filtering you senses through your memories and experiences, is momentarily confused. The magician used a technique called "misdirection" to distract you, basically tricking your brain to pay attention to the wrong thing.

People use the same trick in politics to convince you that something is true when it's not. Like the magician, these people are tricking you on purpose and they're often very skilled. If you're not extremely careful, you might think the quarter really did disappear. When watching a politician, or a magician for that matter, you should question everything you see or hear because it just might be a trick.

But I didn't intend to write about magicians or misdirection today. Today's post is serious. It's about abortion, a controversial issue that most people don't really understand.

Some of my friends tell me the issue has been settled by a Supreme Court case, Roe v Wade, which made abortion legal back in January 1973. The case wasn't even close, they tell me. It was 7-2 in favor of legal abortion.

Some of my friends tell me the court got it wrong. Abortion is the murder of an unborn human child. Since killing is more wrong than denying someone their right to privacy, abortion should be illegal.

Actually, Roe v Wade does suggest that some abortions are murder. The tipping point is something called viability, which is where the art of misdirection can be applied. At what point does mommy's egg and daddy's sperm turn into a human being who is CAPABLE of continued life outside of mommy's tummy?  (By the way, I defy the gay marriage supporters to prove that a baby can be made by anything other than one man and one woman. But that's another blog post, I guess.)

Most of my friends don't know this, but Jane Roe was a fake name, like John Doe. The real person involved was a redhead named Norma Leah McCorvey, and her life story is pretty tragic. She was born in 1947 in Louisiana and moved to Houston at a very early age and raised as a Jehovah's Witness. Her father took off when she was too young to know what was going on. Her mom, Mildred Nelson, was a violent drunk. But wait, it gets worse.

Norma dropped out of school when she was 14. Despite the fact that she was sexually attracted to other women, she married a guy named Woody McCorvey when she was 16. She got pregnant two years later and decided to split up with Woody. She gave birth to her daughter Melissa.

Apparently, she was still sexually active, maybe even with Woody, and got pregnant again. She gave birth to another daughter, Paige, and gave that child up for adoption. Then Norma moved back in with her mother. When Norma told her mother she was gay, Her mother disowned Norma and kicked her out of the house, taking custody of her granddaughter Melissa.

Norma went to live with her father and took some low paying jobs to support herself. Apparently, she wasn't as gay as she thought, since she managed to get pregnant a third time in 1969. Unemployed and depressed, her friends advised her to move to Dallas and claim she was raped. Under Texas law at the time, you could get a legal abortion if you got pregnant after being raped. There was just one little problem with Norma's plan. She couldn't prove she was raped. There was no police documentation or evidence, so her appeal for an abortion was denied.

She tried to get an illegal abortion, but the clinics she'd planned to use were shut down by the authorities. She ended up being referred to a couple of lawyers named Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. According to Norma, these were activist lawyers who were searching for a case they could use to overturn the anti-abortion laws. It took three years, but they finally managed to get the case up to the Federal Supreme Court where they prevailed by a 7-2 decision. During the proceedings, Norma gave birth to her third daughter, Mariah, who was also given up for adoption.

Many of my friends see Norma (who they call Roe) as the Rosa Parks of the pro-choice movement. Actually, the story is much more complicated than they think. Norma was confronted by a pro-life activist minister named Philip "Flip" Benham. It made her think about what she'd done, and it made her confused and depressed.

She stayed in Dallas living with Connie Gonzales for many years. She became a pro-life activist. She fell into deep depression and ended up abusing drugs and even trying to commit suicide. At one point, Jesus took the wheel and Norma's life got turned around. Norma ended up getting baptized in a swimming pool on television.

Norma published her autobiography, I Am Roe, in 1994. She published her second book called Won By Love in 1998. She was received into the Catholic church. She announced that she was no longer a lesbian.

Did you know any of this? You should read her books! Not shocked enough yet? Let me continue.

In 2005, Norma asked the Supreme Court to review Roe v Wade in a case called McCorvey v Hill. She wanted to present new evidence to prove that abortion harms women. Her petition was denied.

Norma has now endorsed Republican Ron Paul in his race to become president in 2012, saying, "I support Ron Paul for President because we share the same goal, that of overturning Roe v Wade. He has never wavered on the issue of being pro-life and has a voting record to prove it. He understands the importance of civil liberties for all, including the unborn."

Norma participated in a pro-life demonstration at the University of Notre Dame on May 17, 2009 before President Barack Obama was scheduled to deliver a commencement address to the graduating class. His invitation to speak at this Catholic school raised a lot of controversy, given his pro-abortion stance.

Norma got arrested on the first day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor after she joined another protester who was yelling at Senator Al Franken during his opening address.

You'll even get a chance to see Norma in a movie called Doonby that is scheduled for release this month. It's been called It's A Wonderful Life without the Wonderful part. I intend to see it.

When I explain all this to my pro-choice friends, many of them are shocked to learn that Roe never actually had an abortion. I'm always surprised by the number of people I meet who don't know the story behind Roe v Wade.

But I wanted to talk about viability. That, I believe, is the key ingredient in the controversy. The exact date when a fertilized egg turns into a person cannot be determined. The fact is, this is different for every fertilized egg. Based on observations and such, it was determined that a baby becomes viable an AVERAGE of seven months into the pregnancy.

But this is just an average. A baby has a 50% chance of survival, on average, after only 24 weeks.

My pro-life friends tell me that this doesn't matter. Only God can make a baby, and it is a living thing right from the start. Science has done some amazing things. We can fertilize an egg in a test tube, but it has to be planted back inside a mom in order to grow into a baby. We cannot create a human being from just an egg and a sperm, at least not yet.

So the question becomes, is it murder to kill ANY living thing, or only a human being?

Personally, I'm in favor of abortion, provided the unborn child waives his or her right to live. Seriously, since you can't know for sure when viability occurs, any abortion can result in the death of a viable human being. That would be murder, and that would be illegal despite Roe v Wade. If you know with absolute certainty that the fertilized egg has not become a viable human being yet, then abortion would simply be the termination of a non-human life, albeit a life that most likely would have become a viable human being at some point if not aborted.

You can't have it both ways, by the way. When someone murders a woman who is found to be pregnant, her attacker is usually charged with two murders, one for the mother and one for her unborn child. If killing her resulted in the death of two human beings, and these cases have been won and have, therefore, set precedents, then ANY fertilized egg must be considered viable. Again, since we don't know for sure when viability occurs, we are left to assume that this particular mother, this victim of a horrible crime, would not have aborted her child and would, therefore, have given birth to a brand new human being. The murder did take two lives. One was certainly a human being, while the other may have been, but almost certainly would have been. Still with me?

I'm easily surprised these days, I guess. But I'm still amazed at the number of people who think Roe v Wade was all about preventing kids from being raised by parents who can't take care of them. It had nothing to do with that, even though from what you now know about Norma, her baby would probably have been in that category, at least for awhile. In fact, Norma admits it. Norma now has a good relationship with her daughter Melissa, who has blessed her with two granddaughters.

Norma McCorvey

I hope Norma, her daughters Melissa, Paige, and Mariah, and all their children, get together one day in  Heaven. I'm sure they'll have a lot to talk about, and an eternity to do it.

References:

Robin Acton - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 01-20-2008

Cornell University Syllabus - Roe v Wade Supreme Court Case

Roe v Wade - Wikipedia Article

Norma L. McCorvey Wikipedia Article

Flip Benham Wikipedia Article

Operation Save America Wikipedia Article

Operation Save America Published Statement

Purchase I Am Roe by Norma McCorvey on Amazon.com

Purchase Won By Love by Norma McCorvey on Amazon.com

Green Government

There's no argument that mankind emits carbon dioxide and other gasses into the Earth's atmosphere, nor that these emissions have been increasing over time. The contentious debate has been about the cause of these increases, as well as the consequences if they are not controlled. It's also been assumed that the only way to control these emissions is through government intervention. To put it bluntly, government must identify the sources of these emissions, then force those responsible, through legislation and regulation, to monitor, report, and reduce their carbon output. Simply charging offsets to encourage carbon limits will not work. These offsets simply raise the cost of production, and those increases are eventually passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services. The amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere, meanwhile, continues to increase.

Current theory suggests that increased industrialization correlates directly with the increase in carbon in the atmosphere, and therefore must be the direct cause. Opponents argue that changes in the atmosphere and global climate are cyclical and have been constantly changing over time. If there is indeed a cause and effect correlation, one could argue that there's another factor to consider: The expansion of government also directly correlates with these changes in the Earth's atmosphere.

As government has grown larger, the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere has increased in direct proportion.

Nobody can argue that government hasn't been getting larger. Over just the past few years we've witnessed explosive growth in the Federal government in the United States. This expansion of central government may be responsible for the ultimate destruction of the planet!

Since we know a correlation exists, and we can't prove there's not a direct cause and effect linkage, we must act now to radically reduce the size of central government, not only in the United States, but all over the world. America should make the first move, setting an example for other nations to follow. If we cut the size of the Federal government in half, we may be able to turn things around before the Earth becomes an uninhabitable planet like our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus.

The reduction of government will not be easy. We've created many entitlement programs that lots of citizens have come to depend on over the years. Able-bodied people will have to return to work. We will, of course, take care of those who cannot work. But, instead of relying on a large central government to protect them, we will have to move this responsibility to our local communities. Neighbor helping neighbor, friends helping friends, and family helping family, will take the place of the dangerous central government and, ultimately, bring down the levels of greenhouse gasses that threaten us all.

One thing is certain, we have no time to lose. The time to act is now. Let's reduce the size of government immediately, before it's too late. Every creature on Earth depends on us.

In The Beginning

Never before have I been this interested in politics. My interest has grown geometrically like Al Gore's infamous Hockey Stick graph. Since time is finite and constant, this has naturally impacted my productivity in a negative way. But I have children. They mean a lot to me. It's my duty, I believe, to do whatever I can to make sure they have at least the same opportunities I've had to succeed. These opportunities did not just happen. Unlike Al Gore's ManBearPig, they really are man-made. They were purchased with blood, sweat and tears (not the musical group) over two hundred years ago.

America didn't have a normal delivery. It was more like an emergency caesarean section that didn't go well, but ended up breathing life into a healthy baby country. Despite British attempts to perform an abortion on the new nation, our forefathers bravely fought until victory was assured and independence was certain.

After they fought, they thought. You might say they Blogged. They knew what they didn't want their new country to become. It would not resemble any other place on Earth at that time, or at any time in man's history. It would be a place where people could live free; assemble and express opinions freely; share thoughts on paper freely; own land; make their own rules; and, in short, protect each citizen's rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Before my seventh birthday, I lived in the 1950's. This was a very interesting time to be alive in America. It was a time of great pride because we had recently defeated not one but two evil dictators who were hell-bent on world domination. Our enemies were on opposite sides of the planet physically, and on the opposite side of liberty and freedom, philosophically. The war was difficult, but America met the challenge. We were the heroes of the world who had come to rescue peace-loving people from tyranny and persecution. They saw what America was able to accomplish and stood in awe of it's might. That made every American very proud, and as a result, they worked hard to push our country to new heights. They built roads and bridges. They expanded railroads and ship yards. They pushed skyscrapers  ever higher until the man-made mountains of our largest cities could be seen miles away, while their impact was felt around the world. Oh, and people were so happy and proud, they had plenty of time to produce babies. So many babies, in fact, that the population surge they created was given a name: Baby Boomers. I was one of them.

During my school years I watched things change. In the 1960's, the doo-wop music on my little transistor radio turned into something else. They called it the British Invasion. We'd had one of those a couple of hundred years before and it was nasty, even though it ended pretty well. But this one was much more fun. It was led by an army of clean cut kids with bad teeth and haircuts that looked like mops. They spoke with an accent that intellectuals to this day automatically associate with intellect. Did you ever notice how people who try to sound intelligent take on a British accent? The music was still the same, but different. Mostly it was about love. Love desired; love acquired; love abandoned; love unrequited. But one thing I noticed was that these invaders didn't share my feelings about America. Instead of being the proud policemen who sailed across the Atlantic to help beat back the Nazi devils, they were the victims who we saved. Most people didn't even remember how just a century and a half earlier, these folks were the ones we were trying to escape.

Folk music crept into popular music and changed the soundtrack of my life. We'd gotten ourselves in trouble as the policemen of the world trying to beat back more evil dictators in a distant land called Vietnam. The place was full of cities we couldn't pronounce and a culture that was completely alien to ours. This wasn't like the big war. It wasn't even like Korea, which was basically an echo of the big war fought with leftover equipment and soldiers. This new war didn't pull our country together like the big one did. It left many people wondering why were there at all. Folk music evolved into protest music and, when embraced by young minds full of mush, like me, it helped divide the country.

The division was sold to us as peace-loving youth versus an older generation of war lovers. Never trust anyone over thirty. But the culture it created wasn't all that peaceful. There were violent protests, and they escalated until four college kids lay dead on the campus grounds in a place near my home called Kent. The war was quickly shut down and we moved along like nothing ever happened. But something did happen. Radicals were born, and those radicals studied the radicals who came before them and became the evil dictators of countries we never wanted to emulate. I didn't know it at the time, but America had been infected by people with an agenda. There were Progressives among us. Joseph McCarthy called them out, but he was quickly squelched. Those intent on taking America in a different direction had already gained enough power to wrestle enough control to keep themselves alive.

The distant war was over, but the fighting never stopped. It just moved into America. It was a stealth war fought with the very freedom of speech we took for granted. As I started my adult life in the 1970's, politics became more real for me. I had an opportunity to vote, but I took that about as seriously as I did my homework in school. Not much. I remember going in to vote not knowing anything at all about the names on the ballot. I'd just pick the names that sounded most "American" to me. By the laws of probability, I'm sure I got it wrong half the time.

As the 1980's passed, I watched America move back toward those good old days of the 1950's, at least a little bit. We'd just tossed out a President who seemed to embrace the Progressive ideas that were still bubbling under the collective consciousness of most Americans. We knew something was wrong because gasoline started to cost a lot more money, and short supplies meant standing in long lines at the pump, sometimes not being able to fill up. That didn't sit well with folks like me who were used to racing their hot rods in the streets at night. Something was wrong, and we all knew we needed a "good" man to get it fixed. Along came Ronald Reagan. A good man.  He may have been the first guy I ever voted for on purpose. I liked what he had to say as much as I liked the way he said it. My friends didn't agree with me. We were starting to go in different directions. I like to think I was getting more mature, while most of them slid into a plateau and stopped growing up.

I started a business in the 1980's, mostly by accident, and watched it set down roots and blossom into something bigger than I'd ever expected. Maybe it was just coincidence, but I still credit some of my success to the big man in the white house. Ronald Reagan, I believe, kept big government away so I could get on with the business of growing a business. He gave me back some of my hard-earned pay so I could expand and hire more people. Instead of just feeding my family, which had just expanded to three people, I was now able to feed multiple families. It was an exciting time and I never wanted it to end.

I wasn't happy to see Bill Clinton become President in the 1990's, but I didn't think of it as a tragedy. I trusted our system of government to keep the Federal government arms length away from me and my business. But when his wife started conducting secret meetings right away with the intent to suck the health care industry into a bigger central government, I got more concerned. Hillary made me pay closer attention to politics. I thought Bill was just a big dumb hick lawyer who was having some fun at the taxpayers expense. Turns out, I was right. I watched very closely when his sexual indiscretions started to come to light. I had a good feeling about what was going on. It was entertaining to watch on the then-new 24/7 news channels. The President I didn't like very much was going down. All the while, I came to admire Newt Gingrich and his Contract for America. When I hear people talk about Clinton being impeached for having sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky, I always try to correct them. He was impeached for lying under oath. That's a thing a lawyer knows all about, and certainly not something you want your President doing. But, here it is more than a decade later and lots of people still get this point wrong. That has to be a red warning flag of some kind, don't you think?

When my kids started going to school, I was fortunate enough to be able to send them to private school. I watched as public schools went from the healthy learning environments I wasted my time attending to indoctrination centers run by those Progressives who were now growing stronger. The infection was spreading. I started to wonder how we were ever going to cure it. I assumed America would heal itself. I still had faith in the Constitution. It would see us through. The invaders, I thought, might always be around as a chronic low-level infection, but I didn't see the disease being terminal.

The new century brought with it some real crazy stuff. I watched the towers fall in New York City in real time on my television. People I knew, who I had met while working in that great city, died in that building. New York was my city, at least for several months back in the 1980's when I helped launch a new radio station there. I worked in the Monkey Building (Empire State), up on the 86th floor above the first observation level. I sat in the open window eating lunch sometimes, gazing in awe at the carpet of humanity below and the vast array of skyscrapers all around. New York City made me proud. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. That's true. That song doesn't lie. I'm here to tell you.  But someone had just attacked my adopted city, and in doing so, they wounded me as well. I would never be the same after that. I started to take politics even more seriously.

When Barack Obama got elected, I felt at first a little proud that America had finally sent petty racial discrimination to the graveyard. We elected a guy who wasn't white. That was historic. But, I was also very concerned. In our haste to make a change of any kind, we also elected a guy who didn't seem to have the experience needed to do the job, or at least do it well. When I found out that Mr. Obama had also been a devout Progressive, I really began to take politics seriously. In fact, it threw me into panic mode. I remember hearing the election results while sitting on an airplane somewhere over Germany. I turned to my friend and told him I wasn't happy about the news. I think I was the only person on that airplane who felt that way. But I'm sure they all know what I meant now. He's demonstrated that my worst fears had been underestimated. Things were actually worse than I thought. My country was being fundamentally transformed by a Progressive. The disease had taken hold of the body. The condition was upgraded to critical. It's time for me to learn enough political medicine to see if I can help save my country, just as my dad helped save Europe and Asia in the 1940's. This is war, and like the big one, the impact will be felt all over the world. We must prevail. Never give up. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, that's almost the only thing.

I've started this blog to think out loud about how we can stamp out the infection. I fully expect opposition as well as support. Feel free to leave your comments. If you are obnoxious, rude, vulgar, or stupid, that's ok. You won't make ME look bad if you do that. But you'll tell us all we need to know about YOU. If you'd prefer a healthy debate, I'm up for the challenge. Give it a go. Let's see if we can wiggle our way out of this mess and get back to the Leave It To Beaver days when government was smaller and life was a whole lot bigger and better.