Reasonable Discussion?

Is a reasonable discussion even possible with people who cannot see what is wrong with Planned Parenthood as an organization, or more broadly, how PP is a concrete example of how dealing in the deaths of innocents coarsens moral sensibilities. How can you explain how wrong all of this is when they have lost any concept of what the word actually means?

It may be piling on references to cite 2 articles about the same event, but the more I see about the trafficking in human body parts, the less I can stomach the arguments thrown up by its abettors.

Organ Buyer: Happiness is ‘Another 

50 Livers a Week’

Stem Express founder keeps autographed Hillary photo on her desk

PlannedParenthood Baby Parts Buyer Laughs About Shipping Severed Heads

Ross Douthat has a regular blog article in the New York Times. Affirmative Action hire, maybe. In any case, he posted an outstanding response to the typical Pro-Abortion questions. The comments to the article were saddening. Few, if any of them,  addressed his arguments directly. Most are tired cliches.

But, again, how can they defend ghouls who find 'happiness is "another 50 livers a week"'? Or who laughs about shipping severed heads? Where is their humanity?

 

Abortion and Religion or AS Religion?

Patheos hosts some great bloggers. But it hosts a very wide range of perspectives. So, in following links, I cam across this page:

http://www.patheos.com/Topics/Roe-v-Wade.html

Recent Perspectives on Roe v. Wade

The blog posts selected were about evenly split. I suppose in 1934, if Patheos' page editor had been around, he would have posted 6 articles on why Jews shouldn't be sent to internment camps and 6 articles on why they should.

Body Parts, Schmarty Parts. What’s All the Fuss About?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hedgerow/2015/07/body-parts-schmarty-parts-whats-all-the-fuss-about/

July 20, 2015 by Bethany Blankley

Very dark, snarky satire. Almost passes as what it critiques.

If You Want to Defund Planned Parenthood, Think Through the Consequences First

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/07/19/if-you-want-to-defund-planned-parenthood-think-through-the-consequences-first/

July 19, 2015 by Hemant Mehta

Mehta is the friendly atheist. In this brief post, he tries to pull a Twitchy by posting a Twitter conversation between a Christian and a troll. Unfortunately, the troll steamrolls the poor guy with a non sequitur. If PP closes she will have no recourse but to go bankrupt paying for her gyn services and finally die a painful death due to a lack of free birth control, STD treatments, and abortions on demand. She says there are no other alternatives on her block in the Iowa countryside that take her crappy insurance plan that offer her lifesaving STD treatments. Apparently, she refuses to consider a better policy (couldn’t be she has limited choice among expensive policies with lousy benefits because of ObamaCare? Nah. Its because of ignorant Christians who hate her. And it couldn’t be that $500M in free money from the federal government + tax exempt status gives PP a competitive advantage to other providers – thereby limiting her choices. IOW, could it be that she is defending policies that hav resulted in reducing her choice and increasing her costs? Sure, she should act all superior towards her interlocutor to hide how stupid she really looks.

Why I’m a Christian Who (Still) Supports Planned Parenthood

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2015/07/why-im-a-christian-who-still-supports-planned-parenthood/

July 20, 2015 by Dan Wilkinson

Dan is the Unfundamentalist Christian. Considering his argument in defense of PP harvesting body parts from pre-born children who they have killed, perhaps he should rename is blog the Utilitarian Christian. I'm surprised to say that I hadn’t seen the “they’d just throw it away anyway” argument prior to Dan’s essay: “Why shouldn’t cells from aborted fetuses be used for medical research with potentially life-saving applications? Would those opposed to abortion prefer that these resources be simply squandered? Since the abortion is going to happen anyway, what possible reason is there for not utilizing the aborted tissue?”

That segment probably approaches some sort of record for euphemisms per square inch.

Why I wrote the same thing I always do when the Liars for Jesus attacked Planned Parenthood yet again

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/07/18/why-i-wrote-the-same-thing-i-always-do-when-the-liars-for-jesus-attacked-planned-parenthood-yet-again/

July 18, 2015 by Fred Clark

Fred is some sort of progressive Christian. His take, nothing to see here, you’ve seen it all before.

BTW, how can you tell when a Pro-Life … sorry, Anti-Choice person is lying? A: His lips are moving.  If an Anti-Abortion liar tells a lie and nobody listens, is he still lying? Yes! Because Fred will combine it with some urban legend about Pepsi using aborted babies as a flavor enhancer and ta-da! Whatever he’s saying is a lie. You can tell it’s a lie because he is anti-abortion and he’s talking about PP. Therefore he is lying. Don’t even bother to see for yourself what those two PP executives were recorded saying. Just you go back and call them names.

It must be nice to be a Progressive / Pro-Abort / Democrat / liar – but I repeat myself.

It gives you the ability to hold two contradictory statements in your head and not see the contradiction. The videos discuss human organs. The lackeys lying in their defense can only find “tissue” or “cells”.

Planned Parenthood Isn’t Selling Baby Parts: Unpacking the Lies in a New Undercover Video

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/07/14/planned-parenthood-isnt-selling-baby-parts-unpacking-the-lies-in-a-new-undercover-video/

July 14, 2015 by Hemant Mehta

Our friendly atheist also adds that we are so dumb we think that killing a child in utero and extracting her liver, lungs, heart and brain and then exchanging them for money isn’t selling body parts. Man, we must be way dumber than he is.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rebeccafrech/2015/07/plannedparenthoodsellsbabyparts-so-what.html

#PlannedParenthoodSellsBabyParts….so what?

July 14, 2015 by Rebecca Frech

“Over her salad, she explains how the unborn children are carefully turned to a breech position before the doctor, guided by what he/she sees on an ultrasound, uses forceps to carefully rip off body parts until the fetus has been removed completely from the uterus without destroying the commercially valuable organs such as the heart and liver. She even details what they do about that pesky head that’s often too large to fit easily through a cervix which isn’t dilated enough to extract it easily.”

“This latest video is nothing new. It is the same brutal disregard for human life which is necessary for abortion to be possible.

“There is nothing new in Planned Parenthood, or any other abortion provider, making money off of the destruction of human life. Making money off of killing babies is what they do.

“We shouldn’t be shocked and outraged that they are selling off the organs of these poor massacred children. We should be shocked and outraged that it is legal for them to be killed in the first place.”

We are to the point, in the increasingly evil of our banality that if CMP came out with a video of PP workers eating fried fetus fritters, these people would say just that: “so what?”

Abortion Wars

Early as we are in this presidential election cycle, it seems like the pro-aborts are not enjoying the advantages they have become accustom to.

They came across as entirely unreasonable in the fight over the Human Trafficking bill and the entirely reasonable and decades old Hyde Amendment to it.

“We need to stop trafficking and the Hyde provision is absolutely antithetical to the goal of anti-trafficking,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview, referring to the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortions and that Democrats say is broadened in the trafficking bill. “And to expand the Hyde provision is anathema to the goals of stopping trafficking.”

Not sure how that follows. But Democrats have the advantage of not having to make sense when they say things. Unfortunately, in the end, they will get what they want, a AG who is at least as doctrinaire on Leftist issues as Holder. Hopefully she won’t be as incompetent, but there is no reason in her record to indicate that to be the case. And O’s regime has proven adept at ignoring laws it doesn’t like, so the Hyde Amendment will most likely be simply ignored.

“The stalled trafficking bill and the Lynch nomination are emblematic of a glacial start to the new Republican Senate, which has moved more slowly than recent predecessors as it hits the 100-day mark midweek.”

How exactly it can move more glacially than the Reid Senate, which did nothing after jamming O-Care, is left unsaid. Again, Politico, being part of the Democrat spin machine is not constrained by facts or reason.

“I don’t know why they've all of a sudden decided to draw the line in the sand on [abortion] and kind of make this the holy grail for Democrats,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Republican in the chamber. “Because it just doesn't seem to be, in the end, a position they can prevail on.”

Simply because it is their sacrament, Senator Thune. Killing children in the womb and profiting thereby is just that important to them.

Rand Paul deftly handled a 'gotcha' question on abortion by re-framing it in terms more overt and less easily obfuscated by the pro-abort Democrats and their MSM fellow travelers

"when he gave a characteristically brusque answer to a series of questions about abortion:

“Here's the deal—we always seem to have the debate waaaaay over here on what are the exact details of exemptions, or when it starts," said Paul, waving his hands to the left. "Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a 7-pound baby in the uterus? You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she's OK with killing a 7-pound baby that is not born yet. Ask her when life begins, and you ask Debbie when it's OK to protect life. When you get an answer from Debbie, get back to me."

Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig obfuscates the question in order to maintain a regime that permits the killing of children in the womb up to (and sometimes after) the moment of birth. Would she raise fewer or merely different objections if Paul had said explicitly that pregnant women shouldn’t be punished at all? Of course she would. She isn’t interested in protecting women or children (notice her criticism of laws intended to protect children in utero from poisoning by their mothers). She is interested in protecting the unfettered operation of the abortion industry. Maybe she is a shill for PP. Maybe she is an ideologue who has taken her principle of absolute personal freedom to the point of the absurd, as DWS has clearly done (ESB doesn’t mention DWS’ reply to Paul’s challenge). I don’t know. But I do know that she has proven in this article that she cannot conceive of any acceptable limitation to the killing of children in the womb. To help keep her readers comfortably in their mental cocoon, Bruenig misrepresents a statement by Kevin D. Williamson in National Review Online that she read about in an even leftier, more pro-abort (in fact the website is a front for the abortion industry) article: 

“Anti-choicers like Williamson lack understanding of or just simply deny immutable facts of public health, such as the fact that access to safe abortion care is directly correlated to improved health outcomes for women, infants, and children.”

This is typical pro-abort confusion. It is an immutable fact that killing children in utero is directly correlated to improved health outcomes for infants? – assuming they survive until birth. It also excludes the fact that the unfettered and largely unregulated abortion regime permits the execution of woefully unsafe abortions (see Gosnell et.al.). Careful population selection is vital to preferred statistical outcomes. But the fun thing is that the unreality check propaganda waxes vexedly about a series of tweets by NRO columnist Kevin D Williamson taken out of whatever context they were originally in which are presented to show his barbarism, even to the point of preferring hanging for women who undergo abortions (a sane person might ask: hey, hanging? Really? Hyperbole maybe? Not at unrealitycheck.com)

Unfortunately for rhrealitycheck, the author linked to an actual column by KDW in NRO. I suppose she figured her readers wouldn't bother to click on it, since she had already told them what to think of him. But I did. And the article is merely reasonable. If she had been able to recognize reason, she might have avoided calling attention to it.

And if rrc had perhaps engaged KDW in anything deeper than a tweet war, she might have discovered the uncomfortable fact that he is actually quite reasonable – inpointing out the unreason of her position

Oh, and back to Rand Paul’s question: Democrats Are the Real Abortion Extremists

“On Wednesday, newly announced Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul rebuffed a reporter’s question about his abortion stance by encouraging the reporter to ask Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz “if she’s okay with killing a seven-pound baby that is just not born yet.” Wasserman-Schultz spared him the trouble of asking. “I support letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved,” she volunteered in a statement. “Period. End of story.””

Yes. DWS is OK with killing a seven-pound baby that is just not born yet.

It is part of her party’s official platform:

“The party’s steadfast opposition to any restrictions on abortion is enshrined in its official platform, adopted in 2012: ‘The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.’ 

“The Democratic party of the United States maintains that literally tearing an unborn child limb from limb is a private decision between women and their doctors.”

And it isn't news that it’s not news to the News.

How crazy pro-abort are they? So crazy that like DWS, they won't deny support for killing a seven pound baby before she is born? Yes, that crazy. Even crazier. From Salon.com:

I am pro-abortion, not just pro-choice: 10 reasons why we must support the procedure and the choice

Yes. That crazy.

Why I'm Not a Leftist (one reason among so many)

Things Leftists think are bad: “To find the Tea Party throughline in this election cycle, you have to look past the ballot counts and toward the policies – the radicalism of which the GOP establishment refuses to recognize, much less censure: voter ID, ratcheted down abortion access, bigotry masquerading as "religious freedom", concealed carry.”

A Million Deaths is an Infographic

I came across an interesting post on an interesting web page today. Wait but why  answers questions the authors find interesting using entertaining and informative infographics.

A recent article, The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown addressed "the actual numbers of people that died in key moments throughout history." The author used circles of varying sizes to illustrate the relative death toll of events in recent and not so recent history.

Death Toll

It's interesting, well written and provided a few surprises. For instance, I had no idea that the 2010 earthquake in Haiti resulted in 316K deaths. Or that Pol Pot's Communist genocide in Cambodia killed as many people in only four years as were killed in 200 years of war between Christendom and Islam during the Crusades.

There is one death toll missing, and I wondered where it would stack up along side these other well-known deadly events.

There were roughly 1.2 million abortions performed in 2008

More than 40 million abortions are performed worldwide each year. 

From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions have occurred in the U.S.

There have been an estimated 1,308, 051,000 abortions worldwide since 1980.

Progressive (Eugenic) Science

Strangely, eugenics seems to be cropping up in the news lately.

The social evils that early Progressive eugenicists wished to eradicate are still with us. Poverty, crime, delinquency persists among a seemingly permanent underclass.

Apparently, Progessive eugenic ideas are also still with us. They just changed their name and their approach.

They continue to cloak their arguments in scientific costume. Recall the "abortion reduces crime" hypothesis popularized in the book Freakonomics. The logic behind the argument makes sense. Less underclass youth, less crime, or as an earlier gentleman once said about another violent minority group: "Nits make lice."

I also found some sort of link between the old Progressive eugenics movement and the new scientific fad of evolutionary biology. According to Wikipedia (not an entirely reliable source, but useful nonetheless): "Directly after Roe v. Wade was released (1972), the AES [American Eugenics Society] was reorganized and renamed "The Society for the Study of Social Biology."" The Society also seems to be called, "The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology" Different URLs but identical web content. Neither website has been updated in a few years. The Society for the Study of Social Biology is hosted on the USC Davis school of gerontology website (gero.usc.edu) which is also the home of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health (CBPH) 

From the CBPH web site interspersed with images from AES and similar organizations' archives

Specific aims of the USC/UCLA Center: 

• To support pilot projects and on-going bio-demographic research that integrate epidemiological, medical, and biological information with the demographic perspective on population health.

• To develop models of population health outcomes that will clarify the effects of changes in risk factors and interventions on population health.

Research supported by this center should lead to a better understanding of: 

• The effects of social, behavioral, biological, and medical factors on population health outcomes.

• The causes of observed racial, socioeconomic, and gender differences in population health in later life.

• The interdependence of health outcomes including chronic diseases, functioning changes, disability and mortality.

The Eugenics Record Office was established at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Cold Spring Harbor continues the proud heritage of the ERO, doing research in genomics and Quantitative Biology, the modern high-tech methods of identifying and eradicating the defective from the gene pool.

GMU's History department traces the roots of the eugenics movement from the early Progressives through the adoption of American eugenic theories on a national scale by Adolph Hitler through its rehabilitation as 'genetics' after the war. In 1949, Josef Mengele's boss, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

While sterilizations finally stopped in the US in the 1970's, Roe v. Wade opened up a new method. Abortion has killed 16 million African American children since 1973. "Minority women constitute only about 13% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions." -Black Genocide web site

Oh What a Tangle Web We Weave...

When we try to deceive ourselves.

Convoluted language is never in the service of clarity. In the case of "pro-choice" reporting of a subject touching on the abortion debate, the avoidance of clarity is usually intentional. But they've been at it for so long, that it seems to have caused a deficiency of clarity in the way pro-abortion advocates and reporters actually think.

This otherwise informative article by Niraj Chokshi in the National Journal is a typical example.

Why Might the Cleveland Kidnapper Get Charged With Murder?

The article sheds valuable light on how it is that prosecutors in Cleveland may charge Ariel Castro with murder under current Ohio law for causing the miscarriages of his captives. The law was carefully written to permit the prosecution of those who cause the death of a child in the womb through violence or during the commission of another crime. It thereby cuts out space for those who cause the death of a child in the womb, with the mother's consent, for money.

But the author can't get past the sub-title without running into linguistic trouble: "The gruesome case of Ariel Castro raises questions about the rights of fetuses but don't look for this to change the law."

"...rights of fetuses..."

Actually, the article doesn't really address whether children in the womb have rights. When it veers from the question of how the law has been written to enable the prosecution of violence against children in the womb, regardless of their moral status, that's were it gets confused. And here, before the by-line, it wades into that dark water.

And immediately dives into the deep end: "The government is wading into the murky waters of what constitutes a human life."
1. The laws have been on the books in Ohio for a couple years at least. So to say the government "is wading in" indicates that the author is a bit late to the party. "what constitutes a human life." Actually that is pretty darn clear. Biologically, there is no argument that the fetus is a human life. She is alive and she is human. Questions of personhood and ...

Never mind. Terry Mattingly and the smart people at Get Religion have done a far better job than I would have. Read his article.

If the GOP thows me under the bus, I won't be on their bus

Eric Ericson at RedState warns the GOP establishment against doing what it will very likely do: throw Social Conservatives under the bus.

And why it is a very stupid thing to do.

"What’s really going on here is that the people who voted Republican, but who disagree with pro-lifers and defenders of marriage, have decided it must be those issues. They can’t see how what happened actually happened unless it happened because the issues on which they disagree with the base played a role."

Yeah. That does make sense. While there are vestiges of the old Republican party still bouncing around in the Establishment, to a very large degree, Neo-Cons have become the GOP Establishment. Neo-Cons, as you may recall, were originally Liberals who disagreed with their fellow Leftists on anti-Communism. They were (are) Liberal on everything but national defense, Capitalism and Israel. And what were Mitt Romney's main talking points? Taxes, Israel, and saving the Defense budget. While the GOP platform is strongly Pro-Life and pro family, the candidates selected by the party tend to soft-pedal and trim on social issues.

"The problem is not social conservatism. The problem is social conservatives have gotten so used to thinking of themselves as the majority they’ve forgotten how to speak to those who are not and defend against those who accuse them of being fringe, most particularly the press. Couple that with Mitt Romney’s campaign making a conscious decision to not fight back on the cultural front and you have a bunch of Republicans convinced, despite the facts, that if only the social conservatives would go away all would be fine."

This explains something that's bothered me for a few days.
The majority of Americans favor restrictions on abortion and oppose government funding of abortion;
Yet, they elected the most pro-abortion president in the history of the world

The majority of Americans oppose redefinition of marriage;
Yet they elected the president who will most likely force it on the republic.

The majority of Americans do belong to a church;
Yet they elected the first president to intentionally, blatantly and unappologetically shred the concept of Free Exercise of Religion.

Because Mitt Romney let himself be defined as the man who wanted to cut taxes for the rich and was afraid or unwilling to defend Life, Marriage and Religion in the public square.

If the GOP Neo-Con establishment does in fact abandon the social issues, it'll lose me. I'm not willing to support a party that really is the defender of plutocrats and Randians. And I have no desire to be a member of the permanent minority.

It isn't necessary, though. This election offered one of the starkest examples of the two concepts of government at issue in this country. Obama explicitly embodies the idea that government is the core of society. Romney and Ryan made a fair representation of the idea that government is merely a framework which allows society to function fairly and efficiently.

I'm willing to fight for that principle of limited government. That principle is sound enough to encompass both Social and Fiscal conservatism. It can be expressed in words the electorate understands and accepts. But if the Establishment GOP is unwilling to do that, and merely continues to argue for lower taxes and less regulations because - well because; while conceding on issues of culture that are vital to the continued health of our society, then I am leaving.

Can the Republican Establishment fight for these principles? I can.


Seven Principles Of The Constitution Party:


■Life: For all human beings, from conception to natural death;

■Liberty: Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual;

■Family: One husband and one wife with their children as divinely instituted;

■Property: Each individual's right to own and steward personal property without government burden;

■Constitution And Bill Of Rights: interpreted according to the actual intent of the founding fathers;

■State's Rights: Everything not specifically delegated by the Constitution to the federal government, nor prohibited by the Constitution to the states, is reserved to the states or to the people.

■American Sovereignty: American government committed to the protection of the borders, trade, and common defense of Americans, and not entangled in foreign alliances.

Sometimes the Forces of Evil in the country manage to create nuanced talking points to obscure the evil they are intent on inflicting on us. The sophistry vomited out of the mouth of Ba'al to cover opposition to a law making sex-selection abortion illegal is a case in point.

The way the regime intended the message to be sent:

"The administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but the end result of this legislation would be to subject doctors to criminal prosecution if they fail to determine the motivations behind a very personal and private decision," White House spokeswoman Jamie Smith said in a statement. "The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way."


The way a Congressional witling garbled the Party Line:



Thanks to the incompetence of prominent members of the Left like Shelia Jackson Lee, only the most Kool-Aid-intoxicated drone would fail to see the preposterous position that defending girls in utero from death by abortion is "an affirmation of the devaluing of woman." 

Today's Leftist Lie: "No one is 'pro-abortion'"

The New Abortion Providers


The MiniTru at the NYT never fails to disappoint with the blatantness of its Progressive cant. In this case, an article in the NYT Magazine by Emily Bazelon celebrating the "heroic" efforts of people committed to making abortions 'mainstream' parts of medical practice. It is difficult to square Dear Leader's statement that 'no one is pro-abortion' with this paean to abortionists and their enablers. Clearly the Left understands that the NYT is an internal organ that no right thinking person wastes time reading, so they can openly discuss things they must obfuscate with euphemism and sophistry otherwise.

"This abortion-rights campaign, ...is trying to recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one. Its leaders ...hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s ...embraced rather than shunned."

The NYT celebrates efforts to have abortion 'integrated' and 'embraced.' Hmmm.

"“Some people like to live on the edge — I don’t,” said Emily Godfrey, a 40-year-old doctor who practices at a primary-care clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also does abortions. “I’m a Catholic girl from the suburbs."

She doesn't recognize the razor's edge she is treading... God help her.

"IN 1999, UTA LANDY, a former director of the National Abortion Federation, and Philip Darney, her husband and an OB-GYN professor at U.C.S.F., created the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program. The program gives medical schools two or three years of seed money for abortion training for OB-GYN residents. Through it, 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada have received financing."

I think it is accurate to say that the Landys, who made their fortune from the abortion industry, led its lobbying association and have donated their wealth to facilitate the training of more abortionists are 'pro-abortion.'

"The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family. The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy."

John 3:20 For every one that does evil hates the light and comes not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. 21 But he that does truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest: because they are done in God.

"In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation. They meant the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.
Susan Thompson Buffett was married to Warren Buffett and served as president of the foundation that bears her name. She died in 2004. Two years later, Warren Buffett gave the foundation about $3 billion. He said that he expected the gift to increase the foundation’s annual expenditures by $150 million. And in fact, total giving by the foundation, where two of the Buffetts’ children sit on the board, increased from $202 million in 2007 to $347 million in 2008, according to tax returns.
The tax records also show that most of the foundation’s spending goes to abortion and contraception advocacy and research. According to Access Philanthropy, a research institute that focuses on the giving preferences of foundations and corporate donors, family planning is one of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation’s main purposes. The foundation’s nonprofit 990 tax form shows that in 2008, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in the U.S. received about $45 million; the international arm of the organization got about $8 million. There is no line item for the Ryan program or the Family Planning Fellowship. But the foundation paid out around $50 million to universities with one or both of the programs. "

and

"July 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama met today with Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett "

Coincidence? Maybe...

"It has long been an abortion-rights selling point that almost 90 percent of the abortions in the U.S. are performed before 12 weeks"

The euphamistic sophistry of the abortion industry is galling. This statistic is an abortion selling point. Period. And who looks for selling points for what they don't promote?

"The abortion providers I talked to ... see the moral complexities up close. Two years ago, a young professor at the University of Michigan named Lisa Harris wrote an academic article about performing an 18-week abortion while she was 18 weeks pregnant. Harris described grasping the fetus’s leg with her forceps, feeling a kick in her own uterus and starting to cry. “It was an overwhelming feeling — a brutally visceral response — heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics,” she wrote. “It was one of the more raw moments in my life.”"

There are no moral complexities here. One life is instrumentalized and held without value relative to the convenience of another in a felicific calculus of subjective moral relativism in an attempt to justify an objectively evil act. The moral clarity cannot be starker than in Prof Harris' story. The amazing thing is that Prof Harris persists in aborting children even after the revelation afforded to her. (More commentary on her article at Abortion and the Malleable Conscience on the Stand to Reason blog.