Ideas on citizenship and abortion reveal the left’s extremes

Commentary by James Shott

Hillary Clinton devalues citizenship

Apparently, nearly anyone who wants to be a full-fledged citizen of the United States ought to be able to gain citizenship, regardless of who they are or how they got into the country, with a few notable exceptions, according to Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

She recently said, “We can’t wait any longer. We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship” for those who crossed our border illegally or deliberately over-stayed their visas.

Demonstrating how one’s strong opinions can change due to political considerations, Mrs. Clinton reversed her previous position, likely to appeal to Hispanic voters. Last June, she said that children who traveled from South America to the U.S. through Mexico should be sent back where they came from.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked her, “So should they be sent back?” 

“Well, first of all, we have to provide the best emergency care we can provide,” Mrs. Clinton said, but “they should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are.” She also said, “We need to do more to provide border security in southern Mexico.” And perhaps on our southern border, too?

“We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she said. “So we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws...” By that reasoning, adults who sneak in or stay beyond the limits of their visa ought to be sent back, as well.

But that was last year. Now her thinking is if they sneak in, oh, well. If they sneak their kids in, well, we can’t keep families separated, you know? Therefore, award citizenship to them.

And no Clinton campaign would be complete without a degree of distortion and exaggeration. “This is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side,” she said. “Make no mistakes — today not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship. Not one. When they talk about legal status, that is code for second-class status…”

What Republican candidates generally support is granting legal status, but then legal immigrants can follow a path to citizenship, like the system that millions utilized to become citizens in the past.

American citizenship once was something of extremely high value. People came here through the approved process and they adopted American principles and values and made the country better.

Now more people than ever want to come here, but for the wrong reasons. Our foolish policies about immigration and pandering to illegals have turned citizenship into a path to welfare. Today there are more than 11 million illegal aliens in the country, and more coming every day.
 
The March for Life Rally in Ottawa

Organizers of the March for Life rally in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada said the rally drew 25,000 people and was the largest in the event’s 18-year history. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, however, pegged attendance at a much lower 8,000, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

However large or small the pro-life contingent was, it dwarfed the faction of pro-abortionist demonstrators on hand for the event, which was estimated to be between 50 and 100. One thing must be said for the abortion lobby, however: What they lacked in numbers they more than made up for in support of their radical position.

A TV interviewer named Marissa Semkiw talked with an abortion supporter named Alex, who made some startling claims about what he thinks ought to be the universally accepted position on unwanted pregnancy. Carrying a sign that read, “Guess What, A Woman’s Body Is Her Own F***ing Business,” Alex proceeded to defend his statement. And he took it to a level that no moral person should be able to support.

Advancing the idea that the only person involved in the decision of whether and when to end pregnancy is the pregnant woman. When asked by Ms. Semkiw if a woman should have the right to end her pregnancy one month before the child was born, Alex said that the woman alone should make that choice. Asked if a woman should have the right to end her pregnancy one week before child was born, he gave the same answer. And Alex gave the same answer when asked if the woman ought to have the right to end her pregnancy one day before the child would be born.

And finally, asked if after the child was born a woman ought to have the right to have the baby’s life ended, Alex said, “I’m not advocating for murder of any kind — again, it’s not my choice.” But apparently it is the woman’s choice.

Abortion at any time is radical enough a position. Is it now the position of abortion advocates that a child’s life can be ended even after birth?

Two points: First, if when we die the heart stops beating, what do we call it when the heart starts beating? Life? And second, have you noticed that everyone who advocates for unfettered abortion has already been born?

Cross-posted from Observations

A Scottish “slam poet’s” sad story of her abortion while a teenager

“I Think She Was a She” is a poem written by “slam poet” Leyla Josephine, in which she talks about the abortion she had as a teenager.

Before getting into the content of this poem, you might like to know just what a “slam poet” is. “A slam itself is simply a poetry competition in which poets perform original work alone or in teams before an audience, which serves as judge,” according to poets.org, the online site of the Academy of American Poets. “The work is judged as much on the manner and enthusiasm of its performance as its content or style, and many slam poems are not intended to be read silently from the page.” 

This slam poem was delivered via an online video. “I think she was a she,” the poem begins. “No, I know she was a she, and I think she would have looked exactly like me,” Ms. Josephine declares. With a heavy Scottish brogue that is sometimes difficult to understand she then goes into much detail, explaining how that as a mother she would have taken pains to protect her baby daughter, would have talked about her grandfather when the daughter was older, and would have taken pains to teach her all the things the poet’s mother had taught her.

The poem is touching and almost melancholy, something that might have been written by the mother of a child unfortunately lost before birth. But, of course, that is not what this poem is about. Here, Ms. Josephine condemns the cultural shame forced on her ever since making that fateful decision.

The tone of the poem then takes a sharp turn: “But I would’ve supported her right to choose; to choose a life for herself, a path for herself. I would’ve died for that right like she died for mine. I’m sorry, but you came at the wrong time."

Ms. Josephine is not sadly recounting a miscarriage; instead she is proudly describing why she had an abortion and how it was truly the right decision for her. “I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed. I’m so sick of keeping these words contained. I am not ashamed," she says of her decision to abort her child. She said that the child she created with the “boy I loved” was just too much responsibility for her as a teenager.

Lines of rationalization follow, as she tries desperately to justify what she did. She stubbornly claims dominion over her own body. And she regurgitates the statistics on how many abortions occur in a year in order to justify hers as just one more. And then this, in conclusion: “But this is my body, and I don’t care about your ignorant views. When I become a mother, it will be when I choose.”

Let’s review some of what she said.

Ms. Josephine states, "I would have died” for her aborted daughter’s right to choose, “just like she died for mine." The right to choose what? Aren’t we told abortion is just the process of eliminating a mass of unwanted cells, like having a tumor excised?

But she said her daughter had “died” for her right to choose, tacit recognition that her baby was living person; that abortion ended the life of her child. In which case abortion is murder, the deliberate killing of the child she and her lover created through a willful act.

"I'm sorry, but you came at the wrong time." You “came” at the wrong time? The child decided to create itself without first checking with mom and dad? Among the three persons in this story, the child, as the creation of mom and dad, had no choice whatsoever in this situation.

However, the artfully designed words that are intended to justify what she did in fact subvert that effort. She and her boyfriend willingly indulged in a sexual act, likely unprotected. For her, abortion is nothing more than a way to be rid of the consequences of her behavior.

Abortion is not a crime only because it has not been legally established that life begins at conception or at some point prior to birth. However, Ms. Josephine admits abortion ended her child’s life.

But her statement that she lacks shame at the same time reveals the contempt she holds for the life she created, and her comfort with being able to wash away that inconvenience at will.

Once accepted as a solution for inconvenient situations, abortion takes on even more bizarre forms.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sees abortion as a means to reduce the number of poor children. 

“Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v Wade] was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.” … “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.” 

That is a stunning perspective from an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and helps explain why our country is in such deep trouble today.

Planned Parenthood president thinks when life begins isn’t relevant

Commentary by James Shott

Many of us living today remember when pregnancy was regarded as the beginning of a new life, was usually a welcome and celebrated event, and religious people often viewed pregnancy as a gift from God. There were baby showers where the mother was treated to gifts for use after the birth of her child, and a positive air about the “blessed event.”

Abortion was considered taboo by society and was illegal, and because of the social and legal strictures, it was rare. As a result, abortions were usually performed in secret by the woman or by some shady character. It was dangerous to the mother because of the unsanitary “back alley” conditions of the procedure. A physician rarely performed an abortion, unless the life of the mother was at stake, or some other unusual situation required it.

Back then, people accepted responsibility for their behavior and took great care to prevent pregnancy until they were ready for parenthood. In those comparatively rare times when an unwanted pregnancy occurred, the man and the woman most often became parents, or perhaps the mother gave the baby up for adoption. Unwed mothers were a rarity.

Through the decades unintended and unwanted pregnancies have increased from rare episodes of bad luck and careless behavior to epidemic proportions, and instead of being seen as a reason to make changes to accommodate the new life that had been created, unwanted pregnancy is viewed today as an intrusion on the woman’s freedom, an inconvenience that demands relief, not so different from a headache or a cold. And to accommodate many women’s preference not to have the baby they have created, abortion has evolved from a rare thing to a routine procedure performed thousands of times each year. Now, many view a woman deciding to end the life of the child developing inside her as a right she may exercise as freely as the right to speak her mind.

Today, half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about 40 percent are terminated by abortion. Twenty-one percent of all pregnancies, excluding miscarriages, end in abortion.

In 1981, world-renowned scientists and physicians testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that life begins at conception, which was the traditional view through the centuries. However, the question of when life begins is now being questioned by abortion advocates, and knowing the exact instant that life begins after conception and before the birth of a child is an important, if difficult to identify, piece of data to determine the point after which abortion becomes murder.

However, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards thinks when life begins is not important.

Appearing on Fusion TV's America with Jorge Ramos, she was asked, “For you, when does life start? When does a human being become a human being?”

“This is a question that I think will be debated through the centuries,” she said.

“But for you, what's that point?” Ramos asked.

"It is not something that I feel like is really part of this conversation,” she said. “I think every woman needs to make her own decision,” she finally said.

"But why would it be so controversial for you to say when do you think life starts?" Ramos pressed.

"I don't know that it's controversial. I don't know that it's really relevant to the conversation," she replied.

“I'm the mother of three children,” she finally said. “For me, life began when I delivered them,” adding that her children have “probably” been the most important thing in her life since their birth.

“But that was my own personal, that's my own personal decision,” she said.

The abortion industry certainly does not want to know the absolute point at which life begins, because then it would be clear that aborting a fetus is at some point killing a child. That would not be a good thing for those who perform abortions for money, for organizations like Planned Parenthood that get federal money for advising women on unwanted pregnancies, or for those who think women should have a right to end an inconvenient pregnancy at anytime.

From this less strict attitude about when life begins all sorts of horrors might evolve. And they have.

For example, some Planned Parenthood officials have gone so far as to advocate infanticide, giving women the right to end their child’s life after it has been born.

And only a little further down that slippery slope are the preposterous acts of Kermit Gosnell, the disgraced and imprisoned former physician who was in the habit of ending the lives of babies who were inconsiderate enough to survive his efforts to abort them by clipping their spinal cords after they were born alive. He is in prison for life after being convicted of murdering three babies.

An interesting sidebar to this story is that the baby-killer managed to spare himself a death sentence when he waived his right to appeal in return for a life sentence, an option millions of aborted babies never had.

It must be pointed out that all of those who support the unfettered right for women to abort their babies have already been born.


Cross-posted from Observations