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“Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people. Here arguments for inconvenience and economic savings take precedence over arguments for human value and human life… Psychiatrists, social workers and doctors often argue for abortion on the basis that the child will grow up mentally and emotionally scarred. But who of us is complete? If incompleteness were the criteri(on) for taking life, we would all be dead. If you can justify abortion on the basis of emotional incompleteness, then your logic could also lead you to killing for other forms of incompleteness — blindness, crippleness, old age.”

Jesse Jackson, January 1977

There still exists a great disproportionality of abortion of black children vs other races (even other minorities). Instead of providing the compassionate support we claim to want, we take the easy way out of death. To the point that some countries such as Iceland have no down syndrome children births, and more black children in New York are aborted than born.

We also miss out on great lives such as this Michel Petrucciani and other artists like him with a disability that would almost certainly be aborted today. Here’s some other famous celebrities that were almost aborted or advised to be aborted: Steve Jobs (unwanted pregnancy), Oprah WInfrey (teen mom), Tim Tebow (pregnancy complications), Pope John Paul II (mother advised to abort), Justin Bieber (teen mom), Jesse Jackson (pressured to abort), Jack Nicholson, Celine Dion, Cher, and many others.

Yet we have come to accept arguments that a disadvantaged life is a life not worth living – only to have that disproven time and again. I find it fascinating that we greatly applaud kind hearted people that rescue animals missing limbs, that are blind, have deformities, etc – yet if an unborn child has one of these same conditions the public largely attacks people that try to rescue them.

Moving forward, it only took 20 years from Jessie Jackson’s speech for Oregon to pass it’s assisted suicide law in 1997 – as he predicted. I wonder what the next generation, one that has grown up justifying the idea of disposable lives, will do in the next 20-50 years.

Words are meaningless without action. Consider donations to these charities that provide women with the resources they need to keep their children from conception to birth to raising them, education, and beyond:

• Fr Taaffe pregnancy support centers and homes

The greater our knowledge increases,
the greater our ignorance unfolds.
-John F Kennedy

So, by this measure, the greatest and most dangerous fool is the one that posits they are intelligent. Even worse, when they do not have the wisdom to admit they are probably ignorant on the subject or could be wrong. In other words, just about 99% of all conversations on social media.

So lets all do each other a favor. Let us agree that spending 30-60 minutes a day reading articles on a topic from your favorite biased news sources does not make you ‘an expert’ or even ‘well informed’. Let us also take a step back from so self-assuredly believing and asserting everything we think.

Better yet, how about we love and respect each other – discussing our differences while respecting the person. Maybe, while we’re at it, we’ll all learn how not to be controlled by our outrage driven social agenda pushers.

 

 

During the Obama presidency, there were many that were angered by the number of executive orders he issued to work around the gridlocked of Congress.  One notable one was not enforcing deportation laws. Today, many on the other side of the political spectrum are angry at the executive orders that Trump are issuing. Here in Oregon, there is currently a lawsuit against the Trump administration for pulling funding for ‘sanctuary’ cities.

Executive orders are a strange beast. They can be easily passed by the president (without the approval of Congress) but have the full force of law, based on the authority derived from statute or the Constitution itself. Recent presidents have issued in the 100-300 range, which is nowhere near the 1000’s that were passed by some previous presidents (usually during war/Great Depression).

But they set a bad precedent – not for Republicans vs Democrats – but for citizens. Instead of forcing our politicians to follow the rule of law, we seemingly let them violate the checks and balances in our government to ‘get what we want’. It’s important not to let our politicians break the rule of law. The rule of law protects CITIZENS from POLITICIANS. It makes our politicians do their jobs – which is to make, pass, enforce, and abide by the rules of law. When we give them a free pass to violate the very laws/checks and balances, then we as citizens lose the ability to control our own government. We only hurt ourselves. Just like giving a kid scissors to run around the house just to shut them up, we will end up paying a much worse price later for short-term gains.

I plan on holding my politicians to a higher standard. Do what we hired you to do – the hard work of working out our laws and getting them passed. I for one will sacrifice getting something now vs later in order to preserve the important safety guards to hold our government accountable.