6 October 2012. A Point to Ponder. Just What IS “Pro-Life?”

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Let’s not take forever on this. “Pro-Life” is so much more than anti-abortion… it’s being against the death penalty for non-state crimes (hey, that was Tsar Aleksandr‘s stance, and he was no weak sister)… it’s being critical of promiscuous warmongering… it’s being for economic justice in the marketplace for workers and consumers. The late John Cardinal O’Connor called it the “seamless garment“. He was right… if you advocate war in foreign parts on flimsy pretexts… if you advocate the death penalty for crimes that aren’t against the state or the society as a whole (that is, Timothy McVeigh and the Minsk Metro bombers were examples of legit capital punishment)… if you advocate anarchic libertarian nihilism (“economic freedom” and “shrinking the state”)… if you defend a tax system that cheats the working class to enrich the Wet Willies… you’re NOT Pro-Life… not at all.

Let’s put it plainly… if you support the Republican Party, you’re not Pro-Life… their platform is antipodes removed from Christianity and justice. That’s the way it is…

BMD

Study Suggests that the Affordable Care Act Would Slash American Abortion Rate

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According to a new study, providing birth control to women free of charge, a measure contained in new healthcare legislation signed by US President Barack Obama, would “significantly” reduce unintended teen pregnancies and abortion rates in the USA. On Thursday, Dr James Breeden, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said after the study was published, “It’s just an amazing improvement. I’d think if you were against abortions, you’d be 100 percent for contraception access”.

The study, conducted by the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis and the pro-choice organisation Planned Parenthood, showed “a clinically and statistically significant reduction in abortion rates, repeat abortions, and teenage birth rates” among subjects who received free contraception. The study was conducted in the St Louis area over a course of four years and comprised 9,256 women and teens between the ages of 14 and 45. It simulated the free contraceptive mandate under Obama’s controversial Affordable Care Act, which critics referred to “Obamacare”. All of the subjects in the study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, were uninsured low-income women or those otherwise considered to be at risk for unintended pregnancy. The researchers said that when cost wasn’t an issue, the women chose the most effective and permanent methods of contraception including implants, that usually cost several hundred dollars. This resulted in significantly less unintended pregnancies and abortions compared to the national average.

The researchers said, “We observed a significant reduction in the percentage of abortions that were repeat abortions in the St Louis region compared with Kansas City and non-metropolitan Missouri”, adding that overall abortion rates amongst the study group were less than half the regional and national averages. The study showed 6.3 births per 1,000 teens who received free contraception, compared to a national teen average in 2010 of 34 births. It also showed there were 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study versus a national rate of 20 abortions per 1,000 women. The findings came two months after the Affordable Care Act began requiring private insurance companies to provide free contraception. The law stipulates that any insurance contract starting on or after 1 August must offer free access to birth control along with seven other women’s health services, including pap smears. Obama’s opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, vowed to repeal the healthcare law if he’s elected.

6 October 2012

Sasha Horne

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20121006/176435384.html

Editor’s Note:

There’s something called “zeal without knowledge”. The Church condemns it; always has, always will. Foxy ol’ Bishop Mensurius of Carthage showed us what this meant back in the day… he decreed that anyone who was a “voluntary martyr” was no saint. That is, if you died in the persecution because the pagan authorities dragged you off, you were a saint. If you goaded the authorities and forced them to kill you, you weren’t a saint, you were just a misguided putz.

We have Orthodox loudmouths such as Reardon, Josiah Trenham, Fathausen, and their konvertsy claque, who shout that contraception’s a sin. That’s bullshit, full stop. Fr Vsevolod Chaplin said that contraception’s licit via oikonomia. That ends the discussion, because when Fr Vsevolod talks, he’s usually talking for HH. We don’t agree with the papists on this.

The real Church agrees with the Affordable Care Act (HH is FOR state-provided healthcare for all); it doesn’t agree with the Republicans who want to repeal it. The real Church blesses economic justice and it denounces the Free Market as a fraud, where only the workers suffer. Don’t be fooled by the loud konvertsy ignoramuses on the internet. They don’t inform themselves of the doings of the real Church; everything that they spout is nothing but idiosyncratic ungrounded babbling. As for me, I prefer to find out what real leaders like HH say… that’s much safer. After all, whom would you trust? Some jumped-up semi-converted Episkie/Evangelical frauds or the real leaders of the Orthosphere? For me, there’s no contest…

Never forget, anti-abortion does NOT equal pro-life!

BMD

No Boost to Romney from Tampa Convention

HERE is Romney’s base and pampered pets… any questions? He has no shame… he makes it clear that you and I don’t count.

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According to a Gallup poll, last week’s Republican convention in Tampa failed to give Mitt Romney a boost in his presidential race with Barack Obama. Romney’s support was flat, at about 46 percent, whilst Obama’s numbers are about 47 percent. In the run-up to the Democratic National Convention on 4 September, President Obama slammed his Republican rival for not caring for the nation’s healthcare system and accused him of pushing to repeal the new protection initiatives for millions without offering a plan of his own. At a visit to the University of Colorado at Boulder, Obama said, “Governor Romney promised that on his first day in office he’s gonna sit right down, grab a pen, and repeal Obamacare. What that means is that right away he’d kick 7 million young people off their parents’ plan. He’d take hope away from tens of millions of American with pre-existing conditions by repealing reform”. So far, Mitt Romney unveiled only a few details of his plans to replace the law he wants to wipe off the books.

In turn, Vice President Joe Biden accused the Republicans of trying to undermine Medicare, a medical program that millions of senior Americans have relied upon for years. David Plouffe, one of Obama’s top White House aides, insisted, “The Romney path would be the wrong path for the middle class, the wrong path for this country”. The Affordable Care Act (called Obamacare by its opponents) is controversial; Democrats consider it a great achievement by, whilst simultaneously providing the Republicans with a unifying platform, from where they have been launching continuous attacks against the Obama Administration, arguing that its healthcare plan amounted to a government takeover of the whole healthcare system and a budget-buster to boot. Meanwhile, around 800 demonstrators marched through the streets of the city of Charlotte NC, protesting corporate greed as well as US drone strikes overseas, which they said killed children as well as terrorists.

3 September 2012

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_09_03/No-boost-to-Romney-from-Tampa-convention/

Editor’s Note:

The Grand Old Phonies’ attack on the Affordable Care Act is schizophrenic. At the time, Wafflin’ Willy was PROUD of his achievement with healthcare in Massachusetts… and the ACA is a carbon copy of that law. You see, it was a good thing when Willy advocated it, but bad when Obama advocated it. However, don’t get too riled. Even with the “convention boost”, Willy couldn’t surpass Obama… and he’s at his zenith. More and more people will abandon him as they realise what a coward and tax cheat he is, and when people realise that the ACA is the EXACT same law that Mittens signed to great fanfare in Massachusetts. In short, the Republicans are dead in the water. Mind you, we do have to “get out the troops”, and we have to make a cogent case FOR social justice, but the Republicans have no substantive policy, it’s merely, “Perpetual war in foreign parts, no taxes on the rich, and let’s pull the plug on grandma… we can’t discommode the affluent effluent”. The GOP has the most objectively evil programme seen in the USA in history without exaggeration… it’s time for all decent and moral people to say, “NO”.

Let me reiterate it… the Republican programme is objectively evil and at variance with what all REAL Christians believe. The “Greed is Good” ideology of the New GOP is directly opposed to traditional Christian doctrine and completely against what Our Lord Christ taught personally… Ye cannot serve both God and Mammon. It’s a selfish and individualistic rejection of the selfless communitarianism that Christ taught. Mind you, Real Christians have fallen short of their profession of social justice, tragically so, at times. However, it’s not the blasphemous undisguised Mammon worship of the Right. That’s made all the worst by its “religious” posturing… especially, on the single issue of abortion (I find the self-satisfied and self-aggrandising posturing of the so-called Pro-Life Movement sickening and repulsive… as repulsive as I find abortion, by the way)… remember Satan can quote Scripture, turn himself into an “Angel of Light”, and pervert things good-in-themselves to his use… the Church teaches us that. We MUST reject the Religious Right (we Orthodox must reject the lunacies of Fathausen and the konvertsy)… our immortal souls ARE at stake.

Remember, God can’t act unless we do. Evil triumphs because the good did nothing… NEVER forget that.

BMD

2 July 2012. Ann Coulter Backstabs John Roberts… NOT a Wise Move

Ann Coulter‘s backstabbed Justice Roberts in public… and without any warning. She’ll regret that in future, to be sure. 

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Read this. Note this, in particular:

Coulter stressed the historical problem with whisking through these “blank slate” type “stealth” nominees. It appears in Roberts’s case, according to Coulter, that he was more career-driven and wanted to be on the high court more than anything else. One of the ways he accomplished this, writes Coulter, was by keeping his personal opinions to himself throughout his career up until his confirmation. Coulter recently tweeted, since Justice Roberts sided with the liberal half of the court on the recent Obamacare decision, Roberts would “go down in history as the Warren Burger of the 21st Century”.

Queen Ann shall regret ever having written such twaddle. It’ll turn John Roberts not only against her, but also against all conservative pundits (who’ve done nothing but savage him since the ACA decision). In any case, John Roberts has read the tea leaves, and they tell him that Mittens is going to lose big-time in November. That’s why he refused to let the Court be used by the woollier elements of the GOP. If they wish to repeal the ACA, they’ll have to muster the votes to do so. By the way, they don’t have them now… and they never shall, for the demographic changes in the American population (brought about by the greed of American libertarian entrepreneurs) shall guarantee that the GOP as we know it is a dead duck.

Texas will be the bellwether, as Hispanic births outnumber Anglo births by 50 percent. When Texas flips, you may as well bury the GOP outside of Born Again precincts. That can’t happen soon enough for me.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Monday 2 July 2012

Albany NY