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Operation Rescue published a report on October 20 concerning alleged fraudulent activity at Abortion Clinics Org INC of Nebraska in the city of Bellevue.

Not much has changed since that report titled, “Fraudulent Practices at ‘Don’t Care’ Abortion Center in Bellevue, Nebraska: Is a Dead Man Committing Abortions at 1002 West Mission Avenue? ” The name of the former medical director, LeRoy Carhart, who died in April 2023, is still prominently displayed on the large sign outside the building, and his name is still on the abortion facility’s website.

However, at least one thing has changed.

Less than two weeks after Operation Rescue’s report identifying a number of abortionists seen stealthily entering the building’s one-car garage, one followed so closely in Carhart’s footsteps that he also died — quite suddenly.

Garry Siegel, the abortionist who was listed on the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services website as a dispensing practitioner at the notorious Bellevue facility, succumbed to brain cancer.

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He was seen entering the building on October 27,  just five days before his “brief battle with brain cancer” came to an end on November 1. Siegel’s dispensing practitioner license was rendered “null and void” as a result.

Operation Rescue regrets that both men, Carhart and Siegel, committed abortions at the 1002 Mission Avenue location in Bellevue, neither ever showing any evidence of repentance – both killing babies to the very end.

Those managing this killing center apparently saw no reason to delay the killing after Siegel’s death. Just one day later,  eyewitnesses observed nine clients entering the facility while three clinic escorts were present – an unfailing indication that abortions are taking place.

Abortionist Jill Meadows was seen entering the facility that morning. No evidence has been located that Meadows holds a Nebraska dispensing license, so it is unclear, if not suspicious, concerning the legality of what occurred that day.

Operation Rescue and a Bellevue resident have already filed formal complaints with the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office after a whistleblower provided information about alleged illegal activity involving abortionists who distributed abortion-inducing drugs without Nebraska dispensing licenses on May 3, 2023. Therefore, the possibility of another day of illegal dispensing is certainly not farfetched.

Just today, another abortionist was seen leaving the scene. Aaron Campbell, the son of deceased abortionist Morris Campbell, was previously employed as a funeral assistant. Operation Rescue verified that he recently secured both his Nebraska medical license and dispensing practitioner pharmacy license, but he also has a history of ignoring legal requirements in his anxiousness to commit abortions.

Incidentally, today after sidewalk counselors witnessed Campbell leaving, Janine Weatherby, the administrator and daughter of the late Carhart, expressed her unhappiness with the observant sidewalk counselors by waving goodbye using her middle finger.

“The blood-thirsty, money-hungry individuals running the Bellevue killing center obviously have no conscience and believe they will never be held accountable for their evil, reckless, fraudulent behavior,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

“But, ultimately they will stand before God, just as LeRoy Carhart and Garry Siegel now have. We will continue to keep a close watch on this dangerous abortion facility and do everything within our power to ensure the state of Nebraska holds it accountable.”

LifeNews Note: Anne Reed writes for Operation Rescue.

The post Abortionist Dies Just Five Days After Killing Babies in Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The parents of little 8-month-old Indi Gregory laid her to rest today in a funeral service with family, friends, and supporters.

Last month, Indi died has after a British hospital yanked her life support over her parents’ objections and after a court rejected their plea to let her live.

During the ceremony, father Dean Gregory called Indi his “beautiful warrior” and said he finds comfort in knowing that she’s in Heaven.

“But, my greatest comfort at this difficult time is knowing where Indi is and with whom she is with now. I had Indi baptized to protect her and so she would go to heaven. It gives me peace to know she is in Heaven and God is taking care of her,” Gregory said.

Here’s more on today’s ceremony:

Before a service led by the Bishop of Nottingham, Reverend Patrick McKinney, at Nottingham Cathedral on Friday (December 1), Indi’s white coffin, adorned with pink and white flowers, was carried through the city’s streets in a horse-drawn carriage. A procession of eight Rolls-Royce cars transported Indi’s family behind the carriage.

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Inside the cathedral, over 100 people, including a delegation from the Italian government, gathered for the 10.15am service. The ceremony featured a choir and organ music. During the service, a tribute was read by Canon Paul Newman on behalf of Mr Gregory, describing Indi as a “true warrior.”

He said: “I honestly and truly feel, deep in my heart, that Indi was not only beautiful, strong and unique. I just knew, from the start, she was very special. Nonetheless, I could never have imagined the sort of journey we and Indi would have to go through to fight for her life.

“She didn’t only have to battle against her health problems, she had to battle against a system that makes it almost impossible to win. Yet, it was her weakest point, her health problems, that distinguished Indi as a true warrior.

“Indi overcame so much: she had seizures, two operations, sepsis, e-coli, including other infections, that even another child would struggle to beat. But Indi’s determination to fight for a chance of life really inspired me.

“The strength she had for an eight-month-old child was incredible. And this is one of the reasons I would have done anything for Indi to have the chance to live which was denied her.”

Before her death, a UK appeals court ruled that a hospital can proceed with ending Indi’s lifesaving medical care despite her parents desperate efforts to get her to a hospital that would provide it. The hospital removed her life support yesterday and Indi died this morning.

The 8-month-old Gregory died in her mother’s arms in a hospice at 1:45 a.m. on Nov. 13, according to British advocacy group Christian Concern.

After her death, Indi’s parents said they “are angry, heartbroken and ashamed. The NHS and the Courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi’s dignity to pass away in the family home where she belonged.”

Indi suffered from a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease. She had been receiving life-sustaining treatment on a ventilator at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, England.

As LifeNews had reported, a Vatican hospital had stepped up and agreed to provide care for 8-month-old baby Indi Gregory, where a British court ruled her life support could be revoked even though her parents are fighting for her life. But, that was not enough for the parents of this little girl to get a British appellate court to rule in their favor.

Indi’s parents got her baptized after a UK appeals court ruled a hospital could yank her life support without their consent.

After that decision, Indi’s parents, who are not religious, have decided to get their daughter baptized, saying they have seen the “pull of hell” in this entire spectacle with the courts denying their daughter the care she needs and blocking their efforts to transport Indi to an Italian hospital for appropriate care and treatment.

“When I was in the court, I felt as if Hell pulled at me,” said Dean Gregory, Indi’s dad. “I thought that if Hell exists, then Heaven must exist too.”

“It was like the devil was there,” he told an Italian newspaper. “I thought that if the devil exists, then God must exist too.”

“I have seen what hell is like and I want Indi to go to heaven.”

In fact, Dean says that he’s decided he should also be baptized. “We want to be protected in this life, and go to heaven.”

Dean praised the testimony of a Christian volunteer who has visited Indi every day, and who told him that baptism “opens Heaven’s gates.” He also noted the work of his legal team provided by the Christian Legal Centre.

The post Funeral Held for “Beautiful Warrior” Indi Gregory, Father Rejoices That She’s in Heaven appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Sometimes, in the course of pregnancy, testing reveals a genetic or developmental problem with the unborn child—a “defect,” “abnormality,” “anomaly,” “deformity,” or condition “incompatible with life” (an odd way of saying “fatal”).

These revelations can be gut-wrenching. Many people think abortion is justified. In fact, medical professionals have frequently presented abortion to parents as the only or default option.

In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren once pointed to such “devastating stories” as a reason to oppose any legal limit on abortion late in pregnancy. Denying abortion would be “cruel,” she said.

Is she right?

A disability, disease, or deformity doesn’t justify killing

An unexpected prenatal diagnosis often isn’t fatal. Non-terminal conditions range from cleft palate and Down syndrome to heart defects and sickle-cell disease.

These diagnoses pose real challenges to families. But is abortion an appropriate response? Not if the unborn child is a valuable human being.

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Parents may not kill their toddler if they learn that she will be less intellectually capable than other children. They may not execute a 10-year-old with spina bifida because they think she would be better off dead. They may not terminate a Down syndrome teenager because raising her has become too burdensome.

If unborn human beings have a right to life, like toddlers, 10-year-olds, and teenagers, then killing them because of a disability or disease is equally unjustified.

Of course, some people think that unborn humans (whether or not they are sick or disabled) do not have the same value and right to life as older human beings. But this is only a different form of wrongful discrimination. Just as ability and health are irrelevant to human rights, so too are age, size, location, and the desires and decisions of others.

All human beings are equal by virtue of their shared humanity. That’s why killing disabled, sick, or “deformed” people, whether in the womb or out, is unjust.

The fears that drive abortion, moreover, are often unfounded. Many parents worry about the difficulties of raising a child with special needs. But caring for sick or disabled children, though hard, is enriching and rewarding, as many parents and caregivers attest.

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital found that 79 percent of parents of children with Down syndrome say their child has given them a better outlook on life. Only 4 percent regret having their child in the first place.

“[T]he experience of Down syndrome is a positive one for most parents, siblings, and people with Down syndrome themselves,” the researchers conclude.

Some parents express concern about their child’s future “quality of life.” Yet people with disabilities or medical limitations live meaningful and often happy and fulfilling lives. A major study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, for example, found that 99 percent of people with Down syndrome are happy.

“In our [survey], people with Down syndrome encouraged parents to love their babies with Down syndrome, mentioning that their own lives were good,” the researchers note. “They further encouraged healthcare professionals to value them, emphasizing that they share similar hopes and dreams as people without Down syndrome.”

Frank Stephens, a man with Down syndrome, testified before a congressional committee. “[People with Down syndrome] are the canary in the eugenics coal mine,” he said. “We are giving the world a chance to think about the ethics of choosing which humans get a chance at life.”

Everyone deserves that chance.

A life-limiting condition doesn’t justify killing

What about when a child in the womb is diagnosed with a lethal condition, such as anencephaly, Trisomy 18, or Potter’s syndrome? She will likely die before, during, or shortly after birth. Surely, many people think, a pregnant woman should not have to endure such a traumatic pregnancy.

But the fact that someone will soon die is no justification for killing her. We may not kill terminal patients in the cancer ward or elderly grandparents in the nursing home. Indeed, all of us will die at some point in the future, but we ought to be treated with dignity and respect in the present.

Natural death (by disease) doesn’t make unnatural death (intentional killing) okay.

Nor is the alleviation of trauma a good reason for killing. Imagine a father whose 5-year-old daughter is dying of leukemia. This is an agonizing experience for him. May he end her life to “get it over with,” avoid painful conversations when someone asks about his family, and “move on” to his next child? Of course not.

If unborn human beings really matter—like cancer patients, grandparents, and 5-year-old daughters—then they likewise may not be killed on account of a terminal condition.

Moreover, abortion in these circumstances does not actually serve the emotional and psychological health of pregnant women. Research suggests that it does precisely the opposite.

A study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology, for example, concludes that abortion after a terminal diagnosis is a “traumatic event” that “entails the risk of severe and complicated grieving.” A 2016 Swedish study finds that “women who terminate a pregnancy due to a fetal anomaly express considerable physical and emotional pain, with psychosocial and reproductive consequences.”

Another study, published in 2015 in the journal Prenatal Diagnosis, compares women who aborted because of a fatal condition to women who did not. “Women who terminated reported significantly more despair, avoidance, and depression than women who continued the pregnancy,” the Duke University authors conclude. “There appears to be a psychological benefit to women to continue the pregnancy following a lethal fetal diagnosis.”

Abortion in life-limiting cases isn’t healthy for pregnant women—or for their unborn children.

A better way: Dignity, equality, and love

Human beings in utero are valuable members of the human family. We ought to treat them accordingly.

That means we should respect their dignity, recognize the equal rights of those who have disabilities or diseases, and love them even when their time is short. It means that, at the very least, we should never choose to dismember or poison them to death.

None of this, of course, is to deny the challenges of an adverse prenatal diagnosis. But support and options are available. Numerous organizations and programs help families deal with unexpected diagnoses. Many couples seek to adopt children with special needs.

In the case of a life-limiting diagnosis, perinatal hospice and palliative care is a healthy alternative to abortion. It acknowledges terminally ill unborn children as real patients and real children. It gives parents time to process and to make memories. It provides support and closure to grieving families.

One study found that 75 percent of parents choose this option if it is simply offered to them. Another study determined that 85 percent make that life-affirming decision.

Amy Kuebelbeck, a Minnesota writer, authored a book recounting her own pregnancy with a child who received a terminal diagnosis. It’s called Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby’s Brief Life.

“I believe that [abortion] would have caused us real emotional harm,” she writes, “as well as closed us off from the extraordinary gifts that we and our families and close friends were able to experience as we all waited with Gabriel.”

Many parents tell a similar story of meaning, beauty, and life in the midst of hardship. Testimonies can be found through organizations and websites like Prenatal Partners for Life, Be Not Afraid, Carrying To Term, and PerinatalHospice.org.

“Yes, Gabriel was going to die,” Kuebelbeck says. “But first he was going to live.”

LifeNews.com Note: Paul Stark is a member of the staff of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a statewide pro-life group.

The post Don’t Kill Babies in Abortions Just Because They Might be Disabled appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a major setback to the abortion lobby in Arkansas, the state’s Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin has denied an attempt to put an Ohio-style pro-abortion constitutional amendment on the state’s 2024 ballot for the time being.

The rejected measure was known by the popular name of “The Arkansas Reproductive Healthcare Amendment.” It was shepherded by “Arkansas For Limited Government,” a pro-abortion group explicitly formed to put the measure on the ballot, similar to the group that was behind Ohio’s successful Issue 1 amendment.

The amendment’s text stated that if it passed Arkansas would not be able to “penalize, delay or restrict access to abortion within 18 weeks of conception, or in cases of rape, incest, in the event of a fatal fetal anomaly, or when abortion is needed to protect the pregnant female’s life or health.”

In a Tuesday letter to a representative of “Arkansas For Limited Government,” Griffin stated that he took issue with the amendment’s ambiguous wording and “misleading” title.

“Having reviewed the text of your proposed constitutional amendment, as well as your proposed popular name and ballot title,” he wrote,

I must reject your popular name and ballot title due to ambiguities in the text of your proposed measure that prevent me from ensuring that the ballot title you have submitted, or any ballot title I would substitute, is not misleading.

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Specifically, the attorney general indicated that the amendment did not provide clear definitions of the terms “access” and “health” to its prospective voters.

“My decision to certify or reject a popular name and ballot title is unrelated to my view of the proposed measure’s merits,” Griffin added. “I am not authorized to consider the measure’s merits when considering certification.”

Jordan Boyd of The Federalist pointed out that Griffin’s action could make all the difference where pro-life efforts in Ohio failed.

“Ohio’s recently passed constitutional amendment was so deceptively worded that it left even the most staunch of abortion activists scratching their heads,” Boyd noted:

By demanding clarity and exposing abortion activists’ deceptive petitioning practices, Griffin and other Republican Attorneys General like Ashley Moody in Florida and Marty Jackley in South Dakota ensured their states would not immediately fall prey to the unlimited abortion-for-all activism sweeping the nation.

In October, Moody penned an op-ed in Florida’s Voice blasting the proposed pro-abortion ballot initiative in her state as “one of the worst I have seen.”

“As just one example of how misleading this initiative is, the initiative creates a right to abortion through ‘viability,’” she explained. “As any mother knows, ‘viability’ has two meanings when it comes to pregnancy.”

In early November, Jackley conveyed a similar tone in a letter to a representative of the pro-abortion group behind South Dakota’s proposed referendum.

“Any suggestion that your proposed abortion amendment makes abortion legal only for the first trimester is contrary to the language of the proposed amendment,” he wrote.

LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Arkansas Attorney General Blocks Attempt to Legalize Abortions Up to Birth appeared first on LifeNews.com.

According to a Brown University professor, ExxonMobil threatens our democratic republic by purchasing another company. The totalitarian woke atmosphere in American higher education is the real threat.

Original Article: Is ExxonMobil's Acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources a "Threat to Democracy"?

“Is it okay to have a child?” That question lay at the center of a book review titled, “The Morality of Having Kids in a Burning, Drowning World,” which ran in Monday’s print edition of The New Yorker magazine. By the title’s framing, you might well guess that the question received remarkably serious treatment from the author, New Yorker editor Jessica Winter. The 3,000-word article pitted climate alarmism against the “private and primal” desire to bear offspring, with self-conscious philosophical ignorance framing the contest. Conspicuously absent was the Source of all truth and Standard of all morality, who has plenty to say on the ethics of childbearing.

Winter reviewed two recent books, “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth” by Elizabeth Rush and “The Parenthood Dilemma: Procreation in the Age of Uncertainty” by Gina Rushton. Rush decided “to try to grow a human being inside of my body” the same year she visited Antarctica, which she used as a metaphor of motherhood. Rushton “had resolved to remain child-free” because of climate change until a medical emergency nearly compromised her reproductive system and threw her into a philosophical crisis.

In both books, not having children was portrayed as the only rational response to climate change, while having children was portrayed as an irrational choice but an overwhelmingly instinctual one. “Should I have a child, their greenhouse gas emissions will cause roughly fifty square meters of sea ice to melt every year that they are alive. Just by existing, they will make the world a little less livable for everyone, themselves included,” wrote Rush, who wanted a child anyway.

On the other hand, Rushton had made up her mind not to have children because of “climate anxiety” and various reasons related to feminist theory and intersectionality, but when she nearly lost an ovary in a medical emergency, “she was saddened and panicked by the prospect of her fertility being compromised. … She felt free in her choice until, all at once, it no longer seemed hers to make.” Her ensuing confusion felt “like an identity crisis: if you don’t know what you want or what you think, can you say with any confidence who you are?” After exploring various philosophical reasons for the indecision, she concluded the solution to the problem “rest[ed] in the author’s relationship with her own mother,” which had grown icy after her parents divorced.

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Winter defined the genre as “commentary on parental ambivalence.” Strictly speaking, this term would mean not caring one way or the other about having children. But she and the writers she discussed care intensely about the question. The way she actually uses the term, “parental ambivalence” is a euphemism for when anti-motherhood ideology — either feminist or environmental — clashes with the God-given desire to produce offspring.

These two authors are not the first to consider parental ambivalence a logical reaction to climate change. Winter noted “the short-lived BirthStrike movement” of the past decade, in which women “renounced having children on account of the ecological emergency, although their message was often misconstrued as a Malthusian appeal for population control.” This is likely because Thomas Malthus endorsed not having children to avoid an ecological emergency. In 2010, Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer — known for endorsing “post-birth” abortion, also known as infanticide — asked in The New York Times, “Should This Be the Last Generation?” Winter herself once “declared, ‘I am never having children,’” due to climate change. But, like the women who abandoned the BirthStrike movement, Winter later had two children of her own.

In a sense, Winter voices the confusion of a whole culture adrift with no compass. “Among people who already have kids, more than half say that climate anxiety does influence how many children they plan to have,” she wrote, citing a 2023 Morning Consult poll of multiple Western countries. But, among those without children who were unlikely to do so, only 5% listed climate change as the determining factor in a 2021 Pew survey. In any event, “the freedom to hem and haw over having kids is a recent development in human history,” only made possible by the 20th century innovations in birth control and abortion, she mused, “and not a dilemma faced by those who currently lack reproductive rights” — again, code for abortion.

Indeed, while she emphasized the human-interest elements, Winter could not avoid politics. She mentioned the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and a “lodestar” essay, “Is It OK to Have a Child?” In that essay, Columbia University writer Meehan Crist claimed, “Having a child is at once the most intimate, irrational thing a person can do, prompted by desires so deep we hardly know where to look for their wellsprings, and an unavoidably political act.” Many women throughout history would likely be surprised.

The overall tone of Winter’s essay was that of a people perishing for lack of knowledge. She lamented “the perils” of resolving parental ambivalence based upon anecdotes and feelings alone but confessed it was “probably inevitable.” According to Yale professor of philosophy and cognitive science Laurie Ann Paul, cited by Rushton, someone who has never had a child before is in “an impoverished epistemic position” (epistemology is the study of knowing). “In other words, you cannot know ahead of time what it is that you are choosing,” summarized Winter. “You haven’t even met the people you are choosing for — not your future child, not your transformed future parent-self, and definitely not the parent-self whom your partner, if you have one, will become.”

This framing seemingly reduces decisions about childbearing to a utilitarian thought experiment, where the right answer depends on unknowable future circumstances. “Your happy childhood is no guarantee of the same for your kid, especially if they will grow up on a planet that will be warmer by nearly three degrees Fahrenheit,” wrote Winter. For people with unhappy childhoods, Winter endorsed writer Sigrid Nunez’s reasoning, which assumed she would perpetuate the cycle of abuse, making the question “Is it OK for a child to have me?”

“Perhaps having a child under any circumstances, given the unimaginably high emotional, financial, ecological, and existential stakes, is an act of outrageous presumption,” concluded Winter. She articulated a “fear of doing harm not to the planet but to the person on it whom you love most, who likely has to live on it much farther into the future than you do. It was you, after all, no one else, who asked her to be born, who never wanted anything so badly, and she obliged you, and now look what you’ve done.”

On that sour note, Winter’s article ended.

Setting aside any question of climate change or politics, a worldview that results in “parental ambivalence” represents a sadly diminished view of every human being’s inherent worth. It also represents a tragic rejection of family, gender, and God himself.

When God created the heavens and the earth, he created a man and a woman — male and female — in his own image and blessed them with the mandate, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it …” (Genesis 1:28). Children are a blessing. Not just one or two or whatever number is currently fashionable, but enough to “multiply and fill the earth.”

Some people who spend most of their time in densely crowded urban areas may think the world is filled enough already. I’d encourage them to sometime visit America’s many wide-open spaces. Did you know there is a county in Texas, three-fifths the size of Rhode Island, which had a population of 64 people in the 2020 census? That’s slightly less than 0.1 people per square mile. Humans haven’t filled the earth so much as clustered together in certain places.

Utilitarians will counter that some children are doomed to lead lives of poverty, sickness, or suffering. But that doesn’t change the fact that children are still a blessing. After mankind sinned, and God placed the world under a curse that brought pain to the woman’s childbearing and the man’s toil, Scripture reaffirmed that children are a blessing, heritage, and reward:

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.

“Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!

“He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Psalm 127:3-5).

This is the only expert testimony that matters. God is utterly truthful, utterly good, and utterly in control. He created mankind, creates every new human being, and ordained the institution of marriage to provide children a safe, protective, loving context for their early years.

Winter and those she quotes are correct that non-parents cannot know quite what it will be like to become a parent, how they will change, or who the child they bring into the world will grow up to be. They can observe parents, read about them, or ask them for advice, but they still don’t know what it is like to become a parent until they become one. One might similarly say that a high schooler does not really know how college will change him, what career path he will settle on, what friendships he will form, or whether he will meet a spouse. Learning and growing is the whole point. Is that a reason not to go? Parenthood is better than college because it is founded, organized, and overseen by a kind and loving heavenly Father, not imperfect human administrators.

Recall Winter’s conclusion: “Perhaps having a child under any circumstances, given the unimaginably high emotional, financial, ecological, and existential stakes, is an act of outrageous presumption.” Let’s first clarify that she means choosing to have a child or, more accurately, not choosing to abort or artificially prevent the conception of a child that would otherwise be born naturally. As she acknowledges, this choice is a luxury of recent origin.

In other words, having a child was not ethically presumptuous or controversial — an entirely natural and normal phenomenon — at some point in the past. Then came technological innovations that allowed people to prevent childbirth, but that it in itself didn’t make childbearing evil. Other technological innovations allowed us to monitor and track global climate patterns, leading some scientists to infer a warming trend caused by mankind. But technological innovations that increase our knowledge of the natural world should not, in and of themselves, transform a good act into an evil one. How exactly did childbearing come to be controversial or presumptuous? I suggest the answer lies more in the author’s feminist assumptions than in climate science.

Another word in Winter’s claim that requires clarification is “presumption;” toward whom (or what?) is it presumptuous to have a child? The author makes no mention of accountability to God. Is nature the offended party? Oneself? One’s spouse? Society at large? From reading further, Winter seems to suggest that bearing a child is presumptuous toward that child. You wanted a child, so you brought it into a world full of suffering (and with climate change!) without asking its permission first, she argues. Of course, a child that has not yet been conceived in the womb cannot possibly grant consent to its own conception and birth. To insist that such consent is ethically required to bring such a child into the world is to commit a logical fallacy known as “begging the question.”

I think Winter’s logic goes astray here because she misunderstands the nature of the family and family relationships. Nowhere in her lengthy discussion of childbirth does she mention “marriage” or “husband.” The word “partner(s)” appears only three times in as many thousands of words. And there were only a couple other oblique references to males in any context. Winter seems to think of members of a family as autonomous individuals, where parent, child, husband, wife, father, and mother are just so many interchangeable labels. That’s not how families work at all. There is a God-ordained structure of authority in the family, which provides an order, security, and beauty greater than the sum of its parts.

Most relevant here is that parents have a God-given authority over their children. Children are commanded to obey their parents, while parents are to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1-4). Why do parents have authority over their children? Because they created them in their own likeness and image, as God created them (see Genesis 5:1-3). To say that it is presumptuous to have a child is logically quite similar to saying that God was presumptuous to make mankind.

The real act of presumption is for a person created by God, in his image, to transgress his commands, or to disregard the user’s manual for life, his own Word. God created human beings as men and women, male and female. One man and one woman are joined together in marriage to form a new family unit. Within the exclusive, protective, covenant bond of marriage, man and wife “hold fast” to one another and “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) — language both metaphorical and literal. Children are the natural fruit of that union, as husband and wife enjoy another of God’s good gifts — a uniquely pleasurable one — which he designed only to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage. Any attempt to distort, alter, or disregard the natural order God designed for marriage, family, and childbearing is a rebellion against his law.

Sadly, too many in our world don’t know about God’s good design for marriage and family. Either they have never seen it modeled, or they have never even heard about it. In Rushton’s book, she evidently recorded the lack of love and warmth in her own broken childhood home, events that shaped her later resolution not to have children of her own. Family brokenness has even marred and scarred many families and people in churches.

Christians have an opportunity to show a better way. Churches should preach on God’s good design for family. Christian families should model it. Perhaps some people will be attracted by Christians’ happy alternative to the lonely brokenness of the world, and thereby be drawn to Christ.

This charge begins with the men. The biblical model of a Christian family is not complete without us displaying godly authority as husbands and fathers, leading our families spiritually and in other ways. Godly authority begins in the fear of the Lord and ends in the good of those under authority. It requires “lov[ing] your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). It requires loving the Lord and knowing his commands so that you can “teach them diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:7).

The call may be challenging, but it reaps abundant rewards. It consists largely of sowing self-sacrifice and reaping the flourishing of not only you, but everyone under your authority. “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord” (Psalm 128:3-4).

LifeNews Note: Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand, where this column originally appeared.

The post Ignore the Radical Environmentalists, Having Children is a Good Thing appeared first on LifeNews.com.

There’s no such thing as a drama-free December in D.C. — even without a government shutdown on the holiday horizon. Before Congress calls it quits on 2023, there are plenty of things for the parties to squabble over, including the mammoth National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In a city where consensus is rarer than a Santa sighting, the troop bill is probably the only area of consistent compromise. In fact, the military’s budget passes so reliably that it hasn’t missed a year since “West Side Story” was in theaters and gas cost $.27 a gallon. But that six-decade streak is on the line right now, and there’s no one to blame but radical Democrats.

As most people in D.C. have learned, getting the military funded is usually a battle in itself. “I’m optimistic we will find a reasonable compromise that both chambers can support,” House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told reporters this week. It was a sanguine view for a debate mired in everything from abortion politics to cryptocurrency fights.

As onlookers know, the House and Senate each passed versions of the NDAA earlier in the year — the trouble now is finding language that the two chambers, both led by different parties, will support. For the last several weeks, one of the most significant snags centers around a 2022 decision by President Joe Biden to put taxpayers on the hook for military abortions, a policy that Republicans (rightly) fume is illegal without Congress’s approval. It’s that same White House decision that sparked Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s (R) move to put a hold on high-ranking military promotions. He’d hoped his stand, now nine months strong, would force Democrats to the negotiating table.

Instead, the White House has preferred to battle it out in the press, absurdly blaming Tuberville for everything from the military’s recruitment woes to readiness issues. Realizing the Left has no interest in actually solving the problem, conservatives are turning to the NDAA in the hopes that they can not only break the logjam on military promotions but also stop the Biden administration from crossing a bright red statutory line.

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Fortunately, there’s language in the House bill that rolls back Biden’s taxpayer-funded abortion con. But as both sides of the Capitol hammer out the final text, the big question is whether Republicans will have the stomach to hold the line on what Family Research Council President Tony Perkins calls “a very, very significant issue.”

“If Republicans fold on this basic principle of life, post-Roe, it’s a policy disaster — and it’s also a political disaster,” he told The Washington Stand. “Because the pro-life community will see the Republicans surrender, and it will cause more elected officials to walk away from the life issue, which means more pro-lifers will walk away from the ballot box. So this is very, very significant.”

The predominate view among Senate Republicans, Perkins said, “is that after a little pressure, we’ll wave a white flag on social issues and move on.” It’s a trend pro-lifers have watched unfold as more GOP liberals openly attack Tuberville. “I don’t think it’s that way in the House,” Perkins insisted.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was living proof of that on “Washington Watch” Wednesday, when he reemphasized his support for the House NDAA. Asked if the amendment he and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) attached to stop the Pentagon’s radical policy would have sufficient support, he replied, “That is certainly my position. It’s certainly the position of the Freedom Caucus, and I hope it will continue to be. … The position of the current administration, the Biden administration, has been to expand — contrary to law — the ability of members of the military and the Department of Defense to travel to go get abortions, all at taxpayer expense. … Well, that’s against the law,” he argued.

“We worked in July to pass in the National Defense Authorization Act limits on that to constrain the abuse of the law by the Biden administration. And unfortunately, they’re trying to ignore that in the Senate,” Roy explained. “What’s happening right now is that [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer and some of the Republicans in the Senate are trying to pregame out a compromise on this to water it down, take out the abortion protections, take out the transgender surgeries restrictions, take out the critical race theory and DEI [prohibitions] that we put in there to limit the abuses and the woke stuff.” Walking away from that bill, the Texas congressman agreed, should be a “nonstarter.”

What’s different this time around, Roy pointed out, is that the House has a very strong conservative as Speaker of the House. “And so I’m hopeful that [Speaker Mike Johnson] … will adhere to those agreements that we made in January and force the Senate to do their job. … We need to make sure that we’re fighting to defend the House’s position. We passed a good bill.”

For Democrats and squishy Republicans, who are desperately looking for a way to move the 350-plus military promotions forward, this is an easy fix. “Is this not the off-ramp they’ve been looking [for]?” Perkins asked. “Just adopt the NDAA as passed by the House that addresses this issue. This takes care of the promotion issue as well.”

“One hundred percent,” Roy agreed. “And let’s be clear to everyone out there listening. Coach Tuberville deserves praise for having the courage to stand up and try to [stop the] taxpayer funding of abortion and abortion tourism. I wish more of his Senate colleagues were standing alongside him.” Then, after a pause, he said, “I want to be very clear. There are a lot of senators who run as pro-life senators who are not standing with Coach Tuberville and who are all too happy to move an NDAA that removes our protection for life.”

Presumably, he was pointing the finger at the outspoken social liberals in the Senate GOP: Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Todd Young (R-Ind.), and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who not only voted to redefine marriage but openly sided with Biden on this issue of taxpayer-funded abortion.

And yet, as Perkins pointed out, there’s absolutely no reason for Republicans to cave on this issue. “No reason. This is a 60, 65, 70% issue across the board in America.”

Roy agreed. “I know that the vast majority of the American people, regardless of where they fall on the spectrum on abortion … don’t want taxpayer funding. They want us to stay focused on a military doing its job. So let’s pull all that out. It’s Democrats who want to politicize our defense, and we’re the ones who want to get it focused on its job.”

FRC’s Quena Gonzalez has been disgusted by the media’s biased characterization of this debate. “We didn’t change the ground rules, President Biden did. We did not inject these issues into the military, Democrats did. Voters need to remind their senators and congressmen of that and tell them to keep taxpayer-funded abortion out of the Defense bill.”

It’s been an uncontroversial, bipartisan principle for decades that Americans shouldn’t be on the hook for the killing of innocent unborn life. “And we shouldn’t be the ones that have to surrender that stated policy,” Perkins insisted. And yet incredibly, Roy said, “Democrats are complaining that we’re the ones injecting social issues into this.” He shook his head. “No, they’re the ones that injected cultural and social issues. And Coach Tuberville stood up. We stood up in the House. And, dadgummit, the Senate needs to stand up and … help us hold the line with the House-passed bill from July.”

LifeNews Note: Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.

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During the debate last night between himself and pro-life Governor Ron DeSantis, radical pro-abortion governor Gavin Newsom refused to support any limits on abortion.

Host Sean Hannity asked Newsom if there “should there be any restrictions on the issue of abortion that you support at all?”

He refused to answer the question but called DeSantis “extreme” on abortion because of his six-week abortion ban, protecting unborn babies with beating hearts. He then turned to attacking Hannity, accusing him of covering for DeSantis.

Late-term abortion is “an extreme, extreme exception,” he claimed, something that should be “up to the mother and her doctor and her conscience.”

Newsom’s refusal to answer the question is no surprise because he knows Americans oppose abortions up to birth.

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser slammed Newsom for his refusal to support any limits.

“Last night’s debate shocked the national conscience when California Governor Gavin Newsom refused to support any protections for babies in the womb. Even when given several opportunities, No-Limits Newsom would not list a single limit he supports on abortion – not even in the seventh, eighth or ninth month. This stunning declaration from Newsom confirms to the American people that the former Democratic platform of ‘safe, legal and rare’ abortions is now in the ash heap of history. Today’s Democratic Party stands for all-trimester abortions, for any reason on demand. That position is not only inhumane but wildly out of step with the nearly three fourths of Americans who want limits on abortion after 15 weeks when science shows babies feel pain.”

But this isn’t the first time…

It wasn’t that long ago that Democrats were allowed to dissent on the issue of abortion. There were routinely Democrats who were proudly pro-life. Today, pro-life Democrats are verboten. Today’s Democratic Party talking points forbid them from answering even one limit they would support on abortion. Just look at when Fox News directly asked Sen. Ben Cardin if Democrats support abortion up to birth and if he supported any cut-off point, he gave a firm, “No.”

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Unfortunately, Democrats’ lack of diversity of thought on abortion never gets shown to the American people because the corporate media and reproductive rights journalists run cover.

Just look at what happened when an NBC reporter tried to factcheck Gov. Ron DeSantis in real time after he truthfully shared Democrats’ up-to-birth abortion stance. She hastily spit out, ”There is no indication of Democrats pushing for that.” She felt the need to gatekeep the truth from her audience despite having the facts at her fingertips.

A quick check reveals that there are already six states plus Washington D.C. that allow abortions up until birth for any reason. Forcibly gaslighting the American people and running cover for the extreme abortion position of the Democrats has become a full-time job for these reporters.

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How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy
by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato
Yale University Press, 2023; 304 pp.

How States Think surprised me. John Mearsheimer is a well-known critic of American foreign policy, and his analysis of the Ukraine war has been deservedly influential. As result, I anticipated that this book would expand his critique. The book does contain some critical discussion of American foreign policy, but, for the most part, the aims of Mearsheimer and his coauthor, Sebastian Rosato, lie elsewhere.

They endeavor to show that most of the time states are rational actors in their relations with one another, and their arguments for this thesis take them into areas that students of Austrian economics will find of great value. Their criticisms of competing theories of rationality have parallels in Austrian theory. After Mearsheimer and Rosato set forward their theory of rational action, they apply it to a number of case studies. In these studies they proceed to show that the states they discuss were rational actors, distinguishing between “grand strategy,” roughly a state’s long-term plans, and “crisis situations.” They also give examples in which states acted irrationally, but they conclude that these are atypical.

I have said that Mearsheimer and Rosato raise points of interest to Austrians, but you might suspect from the book’s title that they ignore a basic fact about human action often stressed by Ludwig von Mises: only individuals act and, one presumes, think. If that is so, how can the authors ask how states think? States aren’t individuals. But the authors are well aware of this issue, contending that state actions must be “cashed out” in the plans and decisions of the leaders of these states.

But if state actions consist of the actions of those in charge of state policy, what determines whether these actions are rational? Do rational actors try to maximize expected utility? According to this approach, an actor ranks the utility of each course of action open to him numerically or quasi numerically. Each course of action results in different possible outcomes, depending on what other actors do. The utility ranking of each action is then multiplied by the probability of its outcome, and the action with the highest product is said to have the greatest expected utility.

Mearsheimer and Rosato sound like Austrians in what they say about this theory of rationality. The utilities of the courses of action cannot be ranked cardinally, and the probability estimates of the outcomes are often unknown. They discuss Frank Knight’s views on uncertainty and then say:

In an uncertain world, actors cannot acquire the information needed to evaluate the likely consequences of pursuing different strategies. When “knowledge” is “uncertain,” observes John Maynard Keynes, “there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability estimate whatever.” . . . The difference between worlds of risk and uncertainty—or what are called “small” and “large” worlds—cannot be overemphasized.

The defenders of expected utility have a response to this. Even if the relevant numbers are unknown, we can act as if they were known so long as doing so leads to successful predictions. Austrians will recognize that this was Milton Friedman’s strategy, and Mearsheimer and Rosato reject it:

Friedman went so far as to maintain that the best theories “will be found to have ‘assumptions’ that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions.” This assertion is implausible: a theory whose starting assumptions are descriptively false is unlikely to offer a good explanation of how the world works. As Ronald Coase wrote in response to Friedman’s claim, “Realism in our assumptions is needed if our theories are ever to help us understand why the system works in the way it does. Realism in assumptions forces us to analyze the world that exists, not some imaginary world that does not.”

What do Mearsheimer and Rosato propose to put in place of expected utility theory? They tie rational action to having a credible theory about the way the world works. As they put it, “rationality is about process rather than outcomes.” As it turns out, a whole host of theories meet these requirements, so passing the test amounts to less than the authors take it be. The test doesn’t require that the state actor’s theory of the world be better than competing accounts but only that it has something to be said for it. The authors count as reasonable theories that they themselves believe are bad ones. For example, Mearsheimer was a trenchant critic of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s expansion after the end of the Cold War, but the expansionist theory still counts as reasonable. Among the credible theories are several others, such as mutually assured destruction, which could result in the annihilation of human life on earth. This is a low bar indeed for what counts as a credible theory. (By the way, we learn that the technical term for having so potent a nuclear arsenal that you can wipe out your enemy’s ability to retaliate is a “splendid” first-strike capacity.) There is an additional requirement for rational state action, but this too is not very demanding. The policy chosen must result from deliberation among the main policy makers rather than be the decision of a leader in “splendid” isolation.

If Mearsheimer and Rosato’s account of reasonable state action isn’t very demanding, it isn’t vacuous either. Some theories are unreasonable, for example those that go counter to clear historical evidence.

Forcible democracy promotion theory and domino theory [which holds that a revolution tends to spread to neighboring states] are both noncredible. It is clear from the historical record that attempts to force democracy on other states almost always fail. . . . The United States’ dismal track record before the Iraq invasion made this clear. . . . There is also hardly any evidence that domino theory works as advertised.

Though the authors make many valuable distinctions in their discussion of alternative theories of rationality, and though their work rests on prodigious scholarship, they need to toughen up what they require of a credible theory. My readers won’t be surprised that I criticize a view for too much tolerance.

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