The ‘A’ Responses to Pregnancy

If the question was put to a thousand Americans what word beginning with the letter ‘A’ they associate with unwanted pregnancy the vast majority, if not every single one, would most likely respond abortion. As a Western society with what has come to be considered a metropolitan attitude in which anything that causes life to become troublesome must have an easy resolution which frees the citizen from any responsibility for their actions. In the case of what is euphemistically called an unwanted pregnancy, the easy, no fuss, no muss answer is to get an abortion and presto, no more pregnancy. Abortion was presented as the simple and neat way to avoid one of the consequences of having unprotected sexual encounters which, of course, are nobody’s fault as such can occur to any woman at a moment’s notice.

 

Abortion came to the fore as the responsible way to resolve the situation of an unwanted pregnancy replacing its predecessor, adoption. But the modern metropolitan answer to pregnancy in the new, no responsibility, fast paced, immediate resolution of all problems had to find an instant, microwave fast resolution to pregnancy that did not require actually going full term and giving birth to a baby then giving the child up for adoption. Adoption was too messy and required the consequence of carrying the pregnancy for the full nine months and might even cause the unthinkable, ruin a girlish figure. Not in this modern world was it even thinkable to make a woman carry a baby to term just because she and her interest of a moment had pleasured each other without bothering to take precautions which might have actually delayed such actions and possibly even ruined the mood which drove the desire for such actions. Thus, adoption was out and abortion was in. Everything was now sped up to keep pace in the no consequence, fast paced, modern metropolitan world.

 

The ghastly, repulsive, repugnant details of what abortion is in reality was glossed over by changing the argument to make pregnancy resolution simply a choice and the zygote or fetus, dependent on length of pregnancy before detection, was minimalized and dehumanized into being nothing more than a collection referred to as a cellular mass. Everything about the actual pregnancy had to be redefined into a non-humanized, new world, metropolitan denotation which masked the entirety of what was actually occurring. But that is all falling apart and in the coming months this wondrous clean metropolitan lifestyle is going to have to face some very unpleasant and grizzly truths. The first shot across the bow was fired by the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. The abortionist who kept jars with baby’s feet on his desk and other jars of various baby parts as mementoes decorating his clinic. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell ran a less than perfect clinic which lacked refinement, cleanliness, or observance of the law. Kermit Gosnell performed late term abortions beyond the legal limit, delivered live births and then performed what was referred to as clipping which severed the spinal cord at the base of the neck disconnecting the brain from the rest of the body. Every single horrific practice which one could imagine in their worst nightmare was a weekly occurrence in Kermit Gosnell’s clinic. Kermit Gosnell also preyed upon those women who really had nowhere reputable for them to turn to and were the most vulnerable in our society. This should make our indignation even more strident and purposeful for if our society does not protect the most vulnerable among us, what can be said to mitigate such callousness.

 

There are already the faint rumblings of even more Kermit Gosnells operating similarly grotesque abortion mills from other states. What we should fear but also prepare to face is a torrent of similar findings from numerous more cities and towns than we may care to admit, but that will not prevent witnesses from coming forward in the coming months. Initially the Kermit Gosnell case will be heard despite the near total media blackout and refusal to give this horrid and sordid case the attention deserved and that will start the first smattering of other such clinics being made known. The growing number of such clinics will force coverage from a reluctant media which will only serve to bring more cases into the light of day. We had best brace ourselves for the shocking horrors that are the truth about abortion as it will be coming into our consciences and there will be no way of avoiding the truth. The only honorable result of this entire sordid affair will hopefully be the awakening of our society to the actual truths about abortions and a return to a more sane approach to unwanted pregnancy and a return to the other ‘A’ answer, adoption. If the horrific witnesses testimony and horrifying evidence uncovered and brought before the courts and the public results in a renewed debate over the appropriateness of legal and easy abortion as an acceptable alternative for adoption, then some goodness may yet be salvaged from this shockingly graphic tale of criminal malfeasance. Maybe we as a society can demand that much of the needless expenses and overtly complicated legal forms and many layered administrative demands be streamlined and simplified and return adoption as the societal default answer to an unwanted pregnancy. Where our societal discussion went wrong was confusing the concept of an unwanted pregnancy with the fallacious concept that the child, which would result from the pregnancy going to term, would be equally unwanted. Nothing could be further from the truth as is witnessed by the long lists of people wishing to adopt and being circled around the system like an airplane at an overcrowded airport waiting for clearance to land. It is time our society weighed the truthful facts about abortion and gave equal consideration in the debate for adoption. If we prove to be half as civilized and removed from barbarism, then we will choose life over destruction, promise over regret and fulfillment of dreams over nightmares of hope dashed and kindness discarded.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Secure Roads From Rock Terror Before Worry Over Price Tag

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is once again putting the cart before the horse. She is making a grand display of where her heart lies and it is not with the victims of real terrorism but with a phantom crime which has yet to produce all that many solid arrests, let alone actually taken lives. The vast majority of so-called “Price Tag” crimes have never been solved while those that have produced a perpetrator were found to have been committed in a set-up by Arabs trying to place blame on neighboring Jews for a self-inflicted crime. Yet this same justice and law enforcement system which expends inordinate amounts of manpower and investigative hours chasing phantoms and detaining innocent Jewish youth from the communities in Judea and Samaria only to have to release them due to lack of evidence while not arresting those hurling deadly, life-threatening projectiles including large rocks and fire-bottle-bombs at private vehicles and government vehicles with literal abandon free of any consequences. But you are doing that which government is best at doing, turning the real priorities upside down. You choose, Minister Livni, to chase after the least criminal act in both severity and numbers while turning a blind eye in order to ignore the threat to countless lives of the innocent and challenge to the authority of the State of Israel. Let us simply compare your priorities of placing “Price Tag” crimes above rock and firebomb terror attacks for concerted legal efforts.

 

“Price Tag” crimes are an illegal act against property. Much of the “Price Tag” crimes are a committing of vandalism which in and of itself often would only even be qualified as a misdemeanor and not rise to the level of felony except that the vandalism which qualifies as a “Price Tag” crime automatically becomes classified as a crime against the State. Such an inflation of the perceived importance of “Price Tag” crimes is purely political and minimally a legal classification. Yet a “Price Tag” crime which amounts to under a thousand shekels in damages has become a critical focus for the Justice Ministry. Meanwhile, the potentially fatal barrages on our streets and in our communities targeting our children and our adults, our police and our troops, the youth and the elderly, a universal and lethal threat which is not being taken even as a criminal act yet you want to invest more enforcement assets and resources chasing after phantom criminals and false-flag crimes.

 

Meanwhile, the standing orders which for the police, the IDF, the Border Police, and any other enforcement personnel is to run away should they come under assault by rocks, bricks, or fire-bombs if retreat is at all possible. Israeli citizens have been assaulted, some, like Asher Palmer and his infant son literally days before his first birthday, have died as a result of these so-called nuisance attacks and an innocent little three years-old girl named Adelle Biton continues to lie comatose while fighting for her little life as the result of the large rock that crushed her tender skull weeks ago and still nobody has been arrested for this crime. The Palestinians behind these attacks are having a propaganda field day posting videos on You-Tube of Israel’s cowardly IDF troops running from their brave stone-throwing Palestinians. Free the arms of law enforcement to complete their assign tasks of enforcing the laws using passive, non-lethal measures and arrest the leadership and as many as continue breaking the peace after the first week’s enforcement. A show of fortitude and resolution is all that is required, that and taking the first step and it is all up to you. It could not be any simpler.

 

This is an even worse example of misplaced priorities than your interference with Minister Bennett’s efforts to find accommodations which would satisfy both the religious and the Women of the Wall ending a terrible strife in the religious fabric of the State. What could be your reason to interfere in the procedures being taken by the Minister of Religious Services attempts to reconcile a rift between two factions of Judaism except for your endless efforts to place your name in the headlines. Often your actions seem to have no other explanation beyond that you missed yesterday’s headlines and you refuse to miss them two days in a row. Make a positive headline stating that the rock and fire-bomb terrorism will no longer be tolerated and relative quiet will return to the streets and towns within two weeks; refuse to change the stand-down order against terrorism and you would start the countdown to the Third Intifada.

 

The people have petitioned the Justice Ministry for protection, troops and police on the front lines obey restrictive do-not-shoot orders against such attacks, and the government including the Prime Minister and his Cabinet kowtow to world opinion by allowing these crimes to continue unopposed. You, Justice Minister Livni, if you wish could take steps to enforce the law and provide safety for all Israelis from such attacks. Both Arab and Jew have been targeted at one time or another by these viscous attacks. Knowing that there is little you would love more than to once again be considered for the position of Prime Minister and before you is the golden ticket to that office. What is even more amusing is all you need do is enforce the law and allow whatever measures are necessary and end the attacks on motorists and other civilians. Step up and show that the rock and fore-bombing attacks will no longer be tolerated and they will soon stop because they continue solely because there is no enforcement. End the capitulation to world pressure and protect all Israeli citizens as your position requires and reap the rewards of standing up for justice. A golden opportunity stands before you Ms. Livni and all that is required is for you to grasp a situation and do the right thing by all the people of Israel.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Horrors of Prisoner Hunger-Strikers

What a dilemma for the government on how to address the prickly problem that hunger striking terrorists and other assorted prisoners being held on security issues. According to International Law it is illegal to force feed such prisoners unless they can be ruled in mortal danger or are suffering from some form of mental instability. This applies even if the prisoners should become in danger of death. Even then the prisoners can continue to refuse food and the government authorities holding them technically must not take actions even to save the prisoners’ lives. But when there are approximately one-hundred prisoners who have all joined the hunger strike demanding immediate trials or to be released what does the government do to address the situation? This is especially true when their claims seems so reasonable, especially those who are being held on political charges of being potentially dangerous as planners and organizers of terrorist attacks and training. Such prisoners have not actually committed any crime yet have been determined to be a serious threat of fomenting or aiding terrorist functions including attacks on the public.

 

Making this situation even more difficult is that the prisoners’ hunger strikes are being taken up by a number of human rights activists who are demanding that the government either charge and give a speedy trial to these hunger striking security prisoners or release them if there are no charges to be brought. What should be done with prisoners who it has been determined require being held for a thus far undetermined amount of time as the threat they are suspected of posing warrants such imprisonment by the government acting in the protection of the people, all the people, both their own citizens and those of others throughout the Western World. The human rights activists claim that since some of those held have not actually committed any crime and are simply being held due to the positions they held in what the imprisoning country has classified as a terrorist organization which allow their claim that the leaders of such a group may be imprisoned without charge as a precautionary action. It is likely that eventually the human rights activists will refer their charges against the government’s position claiming the right to preemptively hold these political prisoners to the ICJ in The Hague (International Court of Justice). This will present a particularly difficult challenge should the right to detain security prisoners without charge attempt to be defended by the government.

 

What has been most interesting about these particular hunger strikers has been the lack of news coverage either their hunger striking or the objections and protests of the human rights advocates have received. With the coverage that the mainstream media, especially the European media, has given the Palestinian hunger strikers held in Israeli prisons one would expect equal vociferous protest headlines in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, the AFP and other international mainstream news sources denouncing the continued incarceration and the ongoing forced feedings being foist upon these prisoners against their wills at the United States high security facility at the Guantanamo Naval Base on the Cuban Islands. One would expect the human rights activists to be even more incensed about these particular hunger strikers as well as the rest of the terror security prisoners continuing to be held at Guantanamo as President Obama made promises he would close the facility. Especially since it has been at Guantanamo is where torture has been rumored to have taken place as well as other deprivations which had been vociferously protested at the end of the Bush Administration but have been mostly silent since President Obama was sworn in as President. We will have to wait and see whether the recent pronouncement by President Obama to finally close the Guantanamo Holding Facility using the impetus of the sequester cuts as the leverage to at last accomplish this. The problems of whether or not to release these prisoners or, if it is decided they continue to require being held, where can the government imprison the most dangerous of these terror threats. This issue will very soon become an issue that’s time has come and the human rights advocates will finally be granted the front page coverage they have thus far been denied. Will the public display of the realities of the situations that must be confronted when guarding and fighting against terrorism in all of its manifestations by the United States mitigate the position and condemnations the Israelis have faced in their difficult fight against terrorism or will the world continue to pretend that terrorism against Israel is completely separate from the terror faced by the rest of the world and terror against Israel is understandable while terrorism against everybody else is an evil they fight out of necessity. My deepest fear is that the moral relativism which allows many progressives to differentiate between terrorism against Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world to be completely separate and worthy of a united effort to eradicate while expressing understanding and tacit, or even vociferous, support of terrorism which targets Israel, Israeli interests around the world, or Jews because such terrorism has a worthy cause.

 

Beyond the Cusp