No this is not a rhetorical question. Of course it sounds absolutely ridiculous to even ask it, but we live in ridiculous times, and now such questions do not seem all that far-fetched to many people. Thus the question has to be asked, and some solid answers have to be given as well.
The short answer is this: no, we should not kill babies, and yes, we should actively seek to save babies. But a traveller from outer space landing on our planet, looking at some recent news headlines, would probably think just the opposite.
Increasingly we are being told that it is a good thing to kill babies, and a bad thing to seek to prevent babies from being killed. Consider three news items which have just appeared in the international media. They involve three different Western nations, and all have to do with the killing or saving of babies.
The first story comes out of the UK, and it is a real shocker – at least to anyone who still has a shred of conscience left. It seems that an agony aunt (OK, I had to look that one up – evidently it is an advice columnist) has suggested on live television that the best thing any mother can do to a suffering baby is put a pillow over his or her head and kill the child.
The looks on the faces of the host and the other panellist tells it all (see the video clip, linked below). This advice giver even said that all mothers would do the same! And this is the 21st century, in what was until recently regarded as Great Britain! It doesn’t seem that great any more.
If this is the sort of advice now being given out on prime time television, then we are in very bad shape indeed. Indeed, this same expert said that abortion “can be a moral and unselfish act… Sometimes the decision of a good mother is not to have the child.”
Talk about calling good evil and evil good. Vices have now become virtues, while virtues have become vices. The prophet Isaiah warned about this two and a half millennia ago (Isaiah 5:20). Obviously his warnings have fallen on deaf ears, at least in modern, secular Western culture.
But the tragedy does not end here. In other parts of the Western world those concerned about the slaughter of the innocents – whether unborn or newborn – are now being viewed as aggressors, trouble-makers, and even criminals. Consider two more recent news items.
In Canada five students were arrested for a grievous crime – showing the product of abortion. Here is how one news item describes it: “Four pro-life students at the Carleton University and one from Queen’s University were arrested this morning by Ottawa city police as they prepared to conduct a peaceful pro-life demonstration on Carleton’s campus.
“The students were arrested around 9:00 a.m. as they were preparing to set up signs in the university’s Tory Quad, a central outdoor location, for the Genocide Awareness Project, which compares abortion to past atrocities through graphic imagery.”
It is now a crime it seems to let people know what actually takes place in an abortion. Of course the act of abortion itself is perfectly legal. That makes about as much sense as saying that to show pictures of the Holocaust should be illegal, while the Final Solution itself should be fully legal.
This is simply about shooting the messenger in other words. Pro-abortionists do not want to be faced with the reality of their destructive choices – and they don’t want others to know the truth about it all as well. The dirty little trade secrets of the abortion killing fields are just not meant to get out into the public arena.
After all, if people actually knew what took place in our abortion mills, there might be a mass movement against it. Just as Wilberforce and other abolitionists had to let the public know what really occurred in the slave trade before real change could be affected, so too in the abortion wars.
But Canada is not alone in this crackdown on freedom of information and freedom of speech. In California similar moves are under foot. Consider this headline: “Police Detain Young California Activists for Pro-Life Witness on Public Sidewalk”. Here is how the story has been reported:
“Members of the Survivors’ Campus Life Team were detained for holding graphic images and advocating the pro-life message on public sidewalks in front of Nipomo High School on Monday, September 27, 2010. The activists were offering literature to students as they left the school when they were approached by campus administrators and guards shortly after school dismissal and instructed to leave the area or face arrest.”
Same story all over again. Abortion is just fine, but trying to tell others about what it actually entails is not. Killing babies is legal and perfectly understandable, but seeking to slow down the slaughter is illegal and the act of crazed loons. This is a massive case of moral inversion.
When we get to the place where killing babies is regarded as virtuous, and attempting to save them as seen as a vice – even an illegal one – then we have well and truly lost our moral compass. Indeed, we have clearly descended into barbarism, and perhaps terminally so.
This march marks the second anniversary of the Victorian parliament passing the Abortion Law Reform Act – one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world. Abortion is now legal in Victoria right up until the moment of birth for any reason whatsoever.
It is very important that this march continues to grow to publicly demonstrate to politicians and the public alike that some Christians do want to stop this industrial scale murder which now claims the lives of nearly one in every three unborn babies.
Attendance is particularly important this year because the State Election in November is the first opportunity Victorians have to vote out the politicians who voted for this Act. (You can get the list for your electorate at: http://www.lifevote.org.au ).
Hope to see you there,
Mansel Rogerson
Hi Bill,
It is already happening here. Trevor Grace, an Independent candidate in the SA state elections last March, has a website – http://www.abortsa.com. Among other things, the website includes (with warnings beforehand) some photos of unborn babies who have been aborted.
Following complaints from members of the public, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) referred the website to the Classification Board – most of whose members were appointed last year by the Rudd Labor government. The Classification Board ruled that the photos of aborted babies “required an adult perspective” and classified the website “R18+”. In contrast, the film “Schindler’s List” – showing scenes of dead bodies of Jews being thrown into a pit of fire, along with other horrors – was classified “M”.
An SA senator asked the federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to seek a review of the R18+ classification for abortsa.com – but he refused.
The R18+ ruling means that filter software now blocks Trevor’s website – with all its important information on abortion which you won’t readily find elsewhere.
Our new paradigm has topsy-turvy values!
Ros Phillips
Bill I was just thinking that a graphic campaign in Victoria is exactly what we need. Might be interesting to see the response.
Vickie Janson
I often wonder what would happen if an abortion was shown on TV as part of a show like RPA which already shows medical procedures. I also noted the other day that House which shows most of it’s procedures had not shown an abortion, despite having pro-choice episodes on abortion and euthanasia for that matter. Pro-choice people claim it is just another surgical procedure yet the fact it is hidden from the public should set of warning bells that this is far more than the removal of a lump of tissue.
The truth may be offensive but I’d rather a woman be offended before she has an abortion than find out the truth after it’s too late.
Kylie Anderson
Hi, Bill!
Well, it’s not just overseas where people are getting arrested and fined for standing up for the unborn babies. Here, in South Australia, I attend the Pregnancy Advisory Centre (the name is merely a euphemism for a killing centre of unborn babies, 3,000 a year in fact), and have been fined and threatened with court action. But only because I refused to pay the fine and said I was prepared to go to court, was the fine withdrawn.
Now, all of this was for simply offering help and support to pregnant women on the footpath before they went into the abortion mill. I didn’t show any graphic pictures. However, it appears offering help and support is somehow regarded as offensive.
Robyn Grace
It also seems that Marxist politicians, who have either lost an election, been sacked or deselected, like Neil Kinnock, Peter Mandelson and Christine McCafferty are miraculously elevated over our heads to the European Union that writes 80% of Britain’s laws.
David Skinner, UK
We grieve when a troop member is killed, we grieve when someone is killed on the road or a baby lost in a house fire, yet most Australians have no concern, care or compassion for the nearly 2000 babies in Australia who are aborted weekly.
Judith Bond
Judith, we grieve for a troop member, a road fatality and a fire victim because our reporters see their deaths as worthy of reporting. With abortion it’s out of site, out of mind, these tiny humans don’t even get a burial or any other recognition that they once lived. Except for the guilt and grief of the mothers who come to their senses and then have to suffer alone as well.
Kylie Anderson
Doctors in Victoria are required to refer patients on for abortion. http://www.lifevote.org.au
Kylie Anderson
Ros Phillips, that’s a very good reason why Christians should not be sucked into supporting Labor’s plan to censor the Internet. The question is always: who decides what to censor? If parents are worried about what their child might see, then they should be the ones to put filters on their computer, rather than relying on the Nanny State.
Jonathan Sarfati, USA
Some little premature newborn babies are rushed to intensive care to receive all necessary care, yet others are dumped in sluice rooms crying and struggling to breath until they die. As we know, this can happen in adjacent theatres in many hospitals here in our “civilised” nation. And that’s only a part of the nightmare. May God have mercy on us, especially those who take part in or permit such evil.
Anna Cook
There was a moment of great shock when Ironside (the agony aunt) said what she said about smothering babies. The expressions on the faces of the other panelists and the compere showed their disbelief at what they were hearing and their contempt for the strangely impassive older woman. To think she has given out advice all these years! She seemed to think she was a modern thinker for “this day and age”, with her streak of purple hair and clashing patterned skirt. She was appalling but still dangerous as many feminists will be impressed by her radical views. I hope she stays as miserable as she looks. People are also becoming increasingly suspicious of the motives of the left-leaning British Broadcasting Corporation.
Rachel Smith
We are fast going back to the culture of ancient Rome, where killing in the arena was national sport and entertainment, and infanticide was fully accepted. In the light of what Ros Phillips relates above I would urge all who have websites to put up pictures (with due warnings) of abortion procedures and aborted babies and literally flood cyberspace with them, such that there are so many the Classification Board will not know what to do. Is the Board going to slap an R18+ rating on every last website? The power of numbers is going to have an impact in the end.
Oh, and one other thing: the killing children penchant by the left has shown itself again this past week in the vidclip produced by 10:10, an environmental group promoting the global warming scare, which shows an erstwhile “cuddly” teacher educating her class about the need to cut “carbon emissions”. When two children show a lack of interest the teacher reaches to her desk for a box with a red button. When she presses the button the two children are blown to bits, and blood and flesh are splattered all over their classmates. And that’s not all. So revolting is the video that it has been called “Splattergate”, and has rebounded on the supposedly mainstream green group quite adversely, as well it might. What is it with the Left and violence to children??
You can see the video here (if your stomach is up to it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE3g0i2rz4w
Murray R. Adamthwaite
I agree with Jonathan Sarfati above. Christians should oppose plans to censor the Internet. Who knows which sites will be blocked? CultureWatch, perhaps?
Once the power to censor the Net is in the hands of the government, there is no going back. And it’s not just Labor who would abuse that power.
Lucy Zubova
Being someone who was adopted, I wonder that if I was born now, would I have survived?
There is certainly a serious problem with our current classification boards – but this problem will not be solved by having no classification system or ISP filtering of any kind.
Labor’s proposed ISP filter would not block http://www.abortsa.com – it would only block RC (“Refused Classification”) sites such as child pornography. However private filters on home PCs do block websites classified R18+ such as abortsa.com. The problem is the misclassification of this site – and that problem needs to be addressed.
I can certainly install filters on my home PC to protect my family – but most parents do not install them, and their children, influenced by porn, can abuse children in my family. The incidence of children sexually abusing other children after viewing internet porn is increasing at a disturbing rate.
Many public libraries agree with your “no censorship” ideal and refuse to install filters on library computers. Newspaper journalists have reported men downloading porn from public libraries, watched by children.
Labor’s ISP filter plan needs accountability – but the increasing availability of child porn, suicide promotion and other harmful sites cannot be addressed merely by filters on a small minority of home computers.
Ros Phillips
Perhaps, Ros Phillips, rather than being on the defensive in trying to filter this poison, governments should attack the source and deal with the producers of this pornography in their own countries. I know this raises a host of questions about civil liberties but surely civil liberties cannot trump the rights of children, born and unborn.
David Skinner, UK
In the latestest edition of the Population Research Institute magazine ‘Review’, Steven Mosher has printed a photo of a 23 year old (unmarried) Chinese woman on a bed after being forced to abort her child by cesarian section as she was in her third tremister. The dead baby was returned to her in plastic bag (picture shows dead baby laying on the bag) as the state refused to bear the cost of her criminal misconduct. China’s birth control program forbids single motherhood.
I wonder what would happent to this picture if it was posted on a web page? Fr. Frank Provone from Priests for Life states that until people see abortion they will not stand up against it.
Abortion is a barbaric procedure that should be banned.
Madge Fahy
I hope all of Bill’s Victorian readers will attend the March for the Babies to Parliament House this Saturday 9th October.
http://www.marchforthebabies.org.au
This march marks the second anniversary of the Victorian parliament passing the Abortion Law Reform Act – one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world. Abortion is now legal in Victoria right up until the moment of birth for any reason whatsoever.
It is very important that this march continues to grow to publicly demonstrate to politicians and the public alike that some Christians do want to stop this industrial scale murder which now claims the lives of nearly one in every three unborn babies.
Attendance is particularly important this year because the State Election in November is the first opportunity Victorians have to vote out the politicians who voted for this Act. (You can get the list for your electorate at: http://www.lifevote.org.au ).
Hope to see you there,
Mansel Rogerson
Hi Bill,
It is already happening here. Trevor Grace, an Independent candidate in the SA state elections last March, has a website – http://www.abortsa.com. Among other things, the website includes (with warnings beforehand) some photos of unborn babies who have been aborted.
Following complaints from members of the public, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) referred the website to the Classification Board – most of whose members were appointed last year by the Rudd Labor government. The Classification Board ruled that the photos of aborted babies “required an adult perspective” and classified the website “R18+”. In contrast, the film “Schindler’s List” – showing scenes of dead bodies of Jews being thrown into a pit of fire, along with other horrors – was classified “M”.
An SA senator asked the federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to seek a review of the R18+ classification for abortsa.com – but he refused.
The R18+ ruling means that filter software now blocks Trevor’s website – with all its important information on abortion which you won’t readily find elsewhere.
Our new paradigm has topsy-turvy values!
Ros Phillips
Bill I was just thinking that a graphic campaign in Victoria is exactly what we need. Might be interesting to see the response.
Vickie Janson
I often wonder what would happen if an abortion was shown on TV as part of a show like RPA which already shows medical procedures. I also noted the other day that House which shows most of it’s procedures had not shown an abortion, despite having pro-choice episodes on abortion and euthanasia for that matter. Pro-choice people claim it is just another surgical procedure yet the fact it is hidden from the public should set of warning bells that this is far more than the removal of a lump of tissue.
The truth may be offensive but I’d rather a woman be offended before she has an abortion than find out the truth after it’s too late.
Kylie Anderson
Hi, Bill!
Well, it’s not just overseas where people are getting arrested and fined for standing up for the unborn babies. Here, in South Australia, I attend the Pregnancy Advisory Centre (the name is merely a euphemism for a killing centre of unborn babies, 3,000 a year in fact), and have been fined and threatened with court action. But only because I refused to pay the fine and said I was prepared to go to court, was the fine withdrawn.
Now, all of this was for simply offering help and support to pregnant women on the footpath before they went into the abortion mill. I didn’t show any graphic pictures. However, it appears offering help and support is somehow regarded as offensive.
Robyn Grace
Thanks guys
And when there is a right to something (like abortion) there will be laws forcing doctors and others to ensure that right is carried out. Consider the situation in Europe: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/8044387/Doctors-rights-to-refuse-abortion-on-conscientious-grounds-under-threat.html
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Let us not forget or cease to pray for, Linda Gibbons:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_best_get_convictions_the_worst_get_medals
It also seems that Marxist politicians, who have either lost an election, been sacked or deselected, like Neil Kinnock, Peter Mandelson and Christine McCafferty are miraculously elevated over our heads to the European Union that writes 80% of Britain’s laws.
David Skinner, UK
We grieve when a troop member is killed, we grieve when someone is killed on the road or a baby lost in a house fire, yet most Australians have no concern, care or compassion for the nearly 2000 babies in Australia who are aborted weekly.
Judith Bond
Judith, we grieve for a troop member, a road fatality and a fire victim because our reporters see their deaths as worthy of reporting. With abortion it’s out of site, out of mind, these tiny humans don’t even get a burial or any other recognition that they once lived. Except for the guilt and grief of the mothers who come to their senses and then have to suffer alone as well.
Kylie Anderson
Doctors in Victoria are required to refer patients on for abortion.
http://www.lifevote.org.au
Kylie Anderson
Ros Phillips, that’s a very good reason why Christians should not be sucked into supporting Labor’s plan to censor the Internet. The question is always: who decides what to censor? If parents are worried about what their child might see, then they should be the ones to put filters on their computer, rather than relying on the Nanny State.
Jonathan Sarfati, USA
Some little premature newborn babies are rushed to intensive care to receive all necessary care, yet others are dumped in sluice rooms crying and struggling to breath until they die. As we know, this can happen in adjacent theatres in many hospitals here in our “civilised” nation. And that’s only a part of the nightmare. May God have mercy on us, especially those who take part in or permit such evil.
Anna Cook
There was a moment of great shock when Ironside (the agony aunt) said what she said about smothering babies. The expressions on the faces of the other panelists and the compere showed their disbelief at what they were hearing and their contempt for the strangely impassive older woman. To think she has given out advice all these years! She seemed to think she was a modern thinker for “this day and age”, with her streak of purple hair and clashing patterned skirt. She was appalling but still dangerous as many feminists will be impressed by her radical views. I hope she stays as miserable as she looks. People are also becoming increasingly suspicious of the motives of the left-leaning British Broadcasting Corporation.
Rachel Smith
We are fast going back to the culture of ancient Rome, where killing in the arena was national sport and entertainment, and infanticide was fully accepted. In the light of what Ros Phillips relates above I would urge all who have websites to put up pictures (with due warnings) of abortion procedures and aborted babies and literally flood cyberspace with them, such that there are so many the Classification Board will not know what to do. Is the Board going to slap an R18+ rating on every last website? The power of numbers is going to have an impact in the end.
Oh, and one other thing: the killing children penchant by the left has shown itself again this past week in the vidclip produced by 10:10, an environmental group promoting the global warming scare, which shows an erstwhile “cuddly” teacher educating her class about the need to cut “carbon emissions”. When two children show a lack of interest the teacher reaches to her desk for a box with a red button. When she presses the button the two children are blown to bits, and blood and flesh are splattered all over their classmates. And that’s not all. So revolting is the video that it has been called “Splattergate”, and has rebounded on the supposedly mainstream green group quite adversely, as well it might. What is it with the Left and violence to children??
You can see the video here (if your stomach is up to it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE3g0i2rz4w
Murray R. Adamthwaite
I agree with Jonathan Sarfati above. Christians should oppose plans to censor the Internet. Who knows which sites will be blocked? CultureWatch, perhaps?
Once the power to censor the Net is in the hands of the government, there is no going back. And it’s not just Labor who would abuse that power.
Lucy Zubova
Being someone who was adopted, I wonder that if I was born now, would I have survived?
Jeffrey Carl
Thanks guys
And it keeps getting worse: “BABIES that are surviving late-term abortions at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital might be being left on shelves to die, according to an Anglican minister.” http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/aborted-babies-being-left-to-die-20101006-167u0.html
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Dear Jonathan (Sarfarti),
There is certainly a serious problem with our current classification boards – but this problem will not be solved by having no classification system or ISP filtering of any kind.
Labor’s proposed ISP filter would not block http://www.abortsa.com – it would only block RC (“Refused Classification”) sites such as child pornography. However private filters on home PCs do block websites classified R18+ such as abortsa.com. The problem is the misclassification of this site – and that problem needs to be addressed.
I can certainly install filters on my home PC to protect my family – but most parents do not install them, and their children, influenced by porn, can abuse children in my family. The incidence of children sexually abusing other children after viewing internet porn is increasing at a disturbing rate.
Many public libraries agree with your “no censorship” ideal and refuse to install filters on library computers. Newspaper journalists have reported men downloading porn from public libraries, watched by children.
Labor’s ISP filter plan needs accountability – but the increasing availability of child porn, suicide promotion and other harmful sites cannot be addressed merely by filters on a small minority of home computers.
Ros Phillips
Perhaps, Ros Phillips, rather than being on the defensive in trying to filter this poison, governments should attack the source and deal with the producers of this pornography in their own countries. I know this raises a host of questions about civil liberties but surely civil liberties cannot trump the rights of children, born and unborn.
David Skinner, UK
In the latestest edition of the Population Research Institute magazine ‘Review’, Steven Mosher has printed a photo of a 23 year old (unmarried) Chinese woman on a bed after being forced to abort her child by cesarian section as she was in her third tremister. The dead baby was returned to her in plastic bag (picture shows dead baby laying on the bag) as the state refused to bear the cost of her criminal misconduct. China’s birth control program forbids single motherhood.
I wonder what would happent to this picture if it was posted on a web page? Fr. Frank Provone from Priests for Life states that until people see abortion they will not stand up against it.
Abortion is a barbaric procedure that should be banned.
Madge Fahy