In the past 3 weeks, the Haditha coverage really kicked into high gear. The coverage of the allegations have garnered 3 hours and 30 minutes of news coverage on the big 3 news organization’s shows; morning, evening, primetime and late night.

Since the war on terror began on 9/11, the military has awarded top medals to 20 people. The coverage of these heroes by the same news shows has totalled 52 minutes.

Let me say that again. In 3 weeks the bad news, all allegations and leaks and quotes from Congressman Murtha, got 3.5 hours of coverage. In the 5 years since 9/11, the top heroes of the war have rated only 52 minutes. The Media Research Center has the details.

Keep this in mind when anyone suggests that the media only reports the bad news because that’s the only news to report. The excuse that the media only covers sensational stories is exposed when the MRC notes that indeed news coverage can pick up on the heroes, if it wants to and if it takes the time to. But more often than not, bad news, even it it’s the same bad news that’s been mentioned over and over for a week, gets pushed to the front. It fits the narrative they’re trying to sell us on.

But don’t forget the heroes just because the media does.

UPDATE: By the way, when the bad news about Haditha is countered, the networks go silent.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

I sometimes listen to the local Air America station when the other two talk stations I typically listen to are at commercial (and when I can bear the vitriol). Well, looks like I won’t be able to do that anymore. The ratings were so poor in Atlanta that a new owner is buying the station and removing all AAR programming except for Al Franken.

The article notes that WWAA, the AAR affiliate, was tied with WGKA, the main Salem Radio Network station I listen to, in the most recent Arbitron ratings, so WGKA is just as low. Though that’s with far less media coverage than AAR got when it got going. The individual shows, nationally, are generally doing better on SRN than AAR (for example, Bill Bennett and Al Franken started their shows at the same time, but Bill’s beating Al quite well). WGKA has had more of a billboard campaign than WWAA. Heck, I didn’t even know WWAA existed until someone told me about it. Of course, I travel through the more “red” areas of Atlanta during my commute, so that could explain why I didn’t see much in the way of AAR ads.

Anyway, while my earlier prediction of the demise of AAR proved to be wrong, losing a market like Atlanta doesn’t bode well for it.

Depiction of religion–religion is really believed and acted upon, not just mentioned or scorned–now is enough to incur a PG rating for a movie.

A new family film featuring miracles and a pro-God theme has earned a rating of “PG” from the Motion Picture Association of America due to fears it might offend people who have no faith or a different faith.

The decision surprises many who believed the “parental guidance” warning was reserved for the likes of violence, foul language and nudity.

“Facing the Giants,” the story of a Christian high-school football coach who uses his undying faith to battle the giants of fear and failure, was given the rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, the group which brands films according to their content.
…
“It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about,” film spokesman Kris Fuhr told the Scripps Howard News Service.

Fuhr noted the association “decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It’s important that they used the word ‘proselytizing’ when they talked about giving this movie a PG.”

Imagine the TV version if this movie. An announcer intones prior to the show, “This movie contains uplifting scenes, raw faith, and answers to prayer. Viewer discretion is advised.” What is with this fear of religion?

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

The latest casualty in the war in Iraq is a major one; the most wanted man in Iraq.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding that his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

It was rightly cheered by all present when it was announced.

Loud applause broke out among the reporters and soldiers as [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki, flanked by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told a news conference that “al-Zarqawi was eliminated.”

This is an opportunity for Iraqi insurgents to re-evaluate their purpose and their means to that purpose.

Thamir Abdulhussein, a college student in Baghdad, said he hopes the killing of al-Zarqawi will promote reconciliation between Iraq’s fractured ethnic and sectarian groups.

“If it’s true al-Zarqawi was killed, that will be a big happiness for all the Iraqis,” he said. “He was behind all the killings of Sunni and Shiites. Iraqis should now move toward reconciliation. They should stop the violence.”

These may be the words of an idealistic college student, but the hope is there that such a thing could happen Depending on how much al-Zarqawi’s death becomes a blow to their morale, it could represent the perfect chance for this to happen.

On the other hand, it may not.

Amir Muhammed Ali, a 45-year-old stock broker in Baghdad, was skeptical that al-Zarqawi’s death would end the unrelenting violence in the country, saying he was a foreigner but the Iraqi resistance to U.S.-led forces would likely continue.

“He didn’t represent the resistance, someone will replace him and the operations will go on,” he said.

I’d guess that this outcome is more likely, but at least now the chances for decreased violence have been given a renewed possibility.

But the Left is still looking at the cloud instead of the silver lining, just as they did when Hussein was captured. Hesiod at the Daily Kos, in his diary about Zarqawi, starts out with promise…

Finally, some genuine good news from Iraq. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed in an air raid last [n]ight in Northern Baghdad.

We can all analyze what this means for the Iraq occupation later. But, right now, we should all be happy that a man who was responsible for the murders of hundreds, if not thousands of men women and children in Iraq — and for the demise and maiming of our troops — has been taken out.

…yet he soon degenerates into back-handed slaps.

No matter whether you support, or oppose the war. No matter whether you believe Bush is doing the right thing, or is a lying snake who got us into this war for the most cynical of reasons and then screwed it up — this is good news.

Yes, I know. Bush had a chance to take out Zarqawi BEFORE we ever invaded Iraq and “allowed him to escape” because he didn’t want to eliminate one of his principle excuses for the invasion.

But, still — this is good news!

And, yes, I know that the major problem in Iraq isn’t so much the insurgency anymore, as it’s the growing sectarian civil war that we are barely able to keep from exploding.

But, this is good news, right?

And, true…the Haditha killings are not exactly endearing us to the Iraqi population.

But…this is some good news!

So, tip your hats to Jordanian intelligence and our military forces. Everything is now hunky dory in Iraq, and we can all declare victory! And , more importantly, we can all expect our military forces to start coming home now because the war is over!

Right?

As the news story noted, Zarqawi was one of the essential elements in the sectarian violence, so this indeed does deal a blow to that situation. Hesiod can’t manage to report good news without “balancing” it with 3 or 4 problems, real or perceived. There are always problems in war, always setbacks, created by ourselves or the enemy. This is not new, but Hesiod has to bring this up to keep his opinion of the war in Iraq consistent in his own mind. When Hussein was captured, Hesiod was the most positive of all the tier-A lefty sites. He’s losing his objectivity.

The same goes for Steven Benen, guest blogging for Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly.

Iraqi and U.S. officials agreed that his death would not necessarily stem the violence and insurgency — and as if to prove the point, an explosion ripped through a busy outdoor market in Baghdad just a few hours after Zarqawi’s killing was announced. Regardless, when a dangerous terrorist can no longer wreak havoc, it’s good news.

One relevant angle to this story, however, that has not been emphasized (or even mentioned) by most news outlets this morning is that Zarqawi could have been taken out years ago, on several occasions, but Bush decided not to strike.

Benen goes on to quote an NBC article that says the National Security Council couldn’t decide how to proceed; no mention of Bush in that meeting. No mention of what the causes for concern were, but here’s an idea; the intelligence they were acting on talked about Zarqawi making ricin and cyanide production. Yet we haven’t really seen those chemicals used by the insurgency. As we all know, pre-war intelligence gave us some false positives on a number of fronts; perhaps this was one of them and the NSC was wary of it. Imagine if we’d sent in cruise missiles and wound up destroying, oh, say something like an asprin factory. Imagine the outrage by Democrats then. So here’s Benen speculating that maybe, not knowing himself the nature of the intelligence, that we might have been able to take out Zarqawi before the war. He calls the intelligence “air-tight”. Interesting he doesn’t use the phrase “slam-dunk”, a phrase used about other pre-war intelligence. Thus he has to form the wisp of a cloud just so he can try to tarnish any silver lining that appears during a Republican administration.

Atrios is “pleased”.

Was never quite sure why we didn’t go after him when we had the chance.

Anyway, I’m supposed to give the obligatory “YAY USA!” cheer here, but while it’s good to get the bad guys I don’t really think it’s going to improve much. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Top al-Qaeda guy in Iraq out of the picture, and the best he can do is be curt and “obligatory”.

Josh Marshall leaves us all wondering what he thinks, since he doesn’t say.

Zarqawi dead. Juliette Kayyem explains what it means. Ivo Daalder explains that one thing it doesn’t mean is an end to the violence in Iraq.

For the deeper background, just out from The Atlantic: Mary Anne Weaver’s The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

That’s the sum total of his response; curt and not even obligatory.

As I said before, the view of the Left, as it was for the Hussein capture, is “This is good news, but let us remind you of all the bad news and our dire predictions.” Some don’t even say much at all about the good news. Nope, there’s a Republican in the White House, you see, and we can’t bee seen as cheering for anything. I’ll close this blog post as I did the one for Hussein.

You gotta wonder what these folks said when Milosevic was captured. Ah, but you see, that was a non-UN-sanctioned war run by a Democrat. Therein lies the whole story. Leftists are showing their true, extreme partisan colors all over the blogosphere.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out, Blogger News Network and Redstate. Comments welcome.)

The culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published the particular group of Mohammed cartoons, says that European political correctness is to blame for the riots, not his newspaper. It’s a question that was on a lot of peoples’ minds and he answers “Why I Published the Muhammad Cartoons”. Flemming Rose lays it on the line for Europe.

And yet the unbalanced reactions to the not-so-provocative caricatures — loud denunciations and even death threats toward us, but very little outrage toward the people who attacked two Danish Embassies — unmasked unpleasant realities about Europe’s failed experiment with multiculturalism. It’s time for the Old Continent to face facts and make some profound changes in its outlook on immigration, integration and the coming Muslim demographic surge. After decades of appeasement and political correctness, combined with growing fear of a radical minority prepared to commit serious violence, Europe’s moment of truth is here.

Rose goes on to explain his hippie creds, and his eventual awakening to the lie of a leftist, utopian bliss. That relates to Europe’s current problem, as exposed in the riots, because he shows how out of that mindset came incorrect views on the integration of immigrants.

This kind of thinking gave birth to a distorted approach to immigration in countries like Denmark. Left-wing commentators decided that Denmark was both racist and Islamophobic. Therefore, the chief obstacle to integration was not the immigrants’ unwillingness to adapt culturally to their adopted country (there are 200,000 Danish Muslims now); it was the country’s inherent racism and anti-Muslim bias.

Sound familiar? Sounds like the “why do they hate us” blame-America-first mentality we hear from the Left in this country. There’s nothing wrong with legal immigration, but integration with the culture of the new host country, including accepting a shared morality and value system, is critical. Instead, Europe became a continent of self-loathing, and there are many in America who think we should take that route as well.

A cult of victimology arose and was happily exploited by clever radicals among Europe’s Muslims, especially certain religious leaders like Imam Ahmad Abu Laban in Denmark and Mullah Krekar in Norway.

“A cult of victimology”. Sounds so familiar.

The role of victim is very convenient because it frees the self-declared victim from any responsibility, while providing a posture of moral superiority.

And again, such familiarity. It’s as though Rose is reading from the playbook of our very own American Left. Never mind self-determination; there’s got to be someone to sue or blame or stick it to. Let someone else pay for it or provide it or do it instead. This kind of thinking, Rose contends, led to the sort of riots and killing and mayhem over cartoons. They didn’t happen here, and America is clearly to the right, politically speaking, of most of Europe. Those two facts are not coincidence.

So what’s the answer? Rose answers this first by noting what the problems are.

I am a Dane because I look European, speak Danish, descend from centuries of other Scandinavians. But what about the dark, bearded new Danes who speak Arabic at home and poor Danish in the streets? We Europeans must make a profound cultural adjustment to understand that they, too, can be Danes.

Our melting pot in America has aided us in this. We didn’t have as much of that to overcome, though it certainly did exist and still does, but to a lesser extent.

Another great impediment to integration is the European welfare state. Because Europe’s highly developed, but increasingly unaffordable, safety nets provide such strong unemployment insurance and not enough incentive to work, many new immigrants go straight onto the dole.

Professing to be caring, they instead discourage self-reliance and encourage slothfulness. We, too, have this problem. Should society care for its needy? Absolutely, but not on a way that bankrupts society both financially and morally. As Rose notes, however, we are still ahead of Europe in this respect.

While it can be argued that the fast-growing community of about 20 million Muslim immigrants in Europe is the equivalent of America’s new Hispanic immigrants, the difference in their productivity and prosperity is staggering. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study in 1999 showed that while immigrants in the United States are almost equal to native-born workers as taxpayers and contributors to American prosperity, in Denmark there is a glaring gap of 41 percent between the contributions of the native-born and of the immigrants. In the United States, a laid-off worker gets an average of 32 percent compensation for his former wages in welfare services; in Denmark the figure is 81 percent. A culture of welfare dependency is rife among immigrants, and it is taken for granted.

In America, for those who can work, there is a big incentive to work. In Europe, there is a disincentive. Again, I don’t think these two statistics are a coincidence. They go together.

Rose has other points to make as he discusses how Europe must go forward. But why did he publish the cartoons? His answer is one, interestingly, of inclusion.

Equal treatment is the democratic way to overcome traditional barriers of blood and soil for newcomers. To me, that means treating immigrants just as I would any other Danes. And that’s what I felt I was doing in publishing the 12 cartoons of Muhammad last year. Those images in no way exceeded the bounds of taste, satire and humor to which I would subject any other Dane, whether the queen, the head of the church or the prime minister. By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion; an act of respect and recognition.

An act of inclusion. Some may find that ironic, and I confess that wasn’t the first thing that popped into my head. But it makes sense. If you want equality, you must take the bad with the good, the satire with the atta-boys. If you won’t, you don’t really want the equality. This doesn’t mean you can’t protest over the satire, of course. It just means that you must still act within the law if you want the law on your side.

A very interesting piece, and there’s quite a bit more to it. Worth the read.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

An editorial in the NY Sun puts the lie to the idea that if we’d just play nice with terrorists, they’d leave us alone.

The arrest of 17 residents of Canada with three tons of ammonium nitrate in a plot to attack targets in Ontario is a reminder of the nature of the enemy that America faces in the war on Islamic terrorists. Contrary to the beliefs of some on the American extreme left and extreme right, the terrorists aren’t simply reacting against the American-led war in Iraq or against America’s support for Israel.

Canada sent no troops to liberate Iraq. Our neighbor to the North so opposed the Iraq War that at least one American deserter fled there for safe harbor, as draftdodgers did during the Vietnam War.And while Canada is mildly pro-Israel, and more so under its new conservative government, its arms sales to the Jewish state are peanuts compared to America’s, and at the United Nations on key votes it’s likely to abstain rather than join the America, Micronesia, and Palau in voting with Israel.

This is in reference to the arrest of 17 Canadian residents “mainly of South Asian descent”, a number of whom go the same mosque. According to police, they had a list of targets. “At the news conference, officials emphasized that the targets were all in Canada.” Thus these were terrorists who were there, not to use Canada as easy entrance to the US, but to attack Canada itself.

The idea that our Mideast policies or support for Israel were some sort of understandable reason that we “asked for it” on 9/11 are completely, and have always been, wrong. The editorial brings the point home.

What the Islamic extremists oppose in Canada is neither its support for Israel nor its behavior in Iraq but the mere fact that it is not a country governed by Islamic law. An Associated Press dispatch on the bomb plot noted that Canada, with the America, Britain, Spain, and Australia, was listed by Osama Bin Laden as a “Christian” nation that should be a target for terrorism. Nothing short of dropping Christianity and converting to Islam will satisfy the Islamist terrorists.

“Living While Christian” is the charge by the Islamic terrorists, for which their punishment is death. Reasonable debate can be had about choices made in our public policy, and hindsight can be employed ad infinitum, but the reason we were attacked in New York, or on the USS Cole, or even in Beirut, and the reason even Canada is a target, is not because of a policy debate. It’s because simply we are who we are, and because we stand for freedom (take a look at these pictures, especially the 4th one down). Certainly that is no legitimate reason for the war that has been waged against us.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

Based on some sources from the inside, the NY Times has a rather good article on what went into Bush’s decision to offer direct talks with Iran–which haven’t happened for decades–on the nuclear situation. Changes in postures and a talk over lunch. A very interesting read.

Where do the abortion issue and teacher-student sex intersect? At the “Constitutional right” to privacy.

A former high school teacher facing sexual assault charges says his arrest on suspicion of having sexual relations with a student violates a fundamental right guaranteed by both the state and federal constitutions.

Matthew Glasser, a former music teacher at Northwest Catholic High School, was arrested last year under a provision of the state’s criminal code that makes having sex with students a crime, even if the student has reached 16 – the age of consent.

But in a motion filed in Superior Court in Hartford, Glasser claims the statute infringes on his constitutional right to privacy, which, he argues, includes engaging in a sexual relationship with another consenting adult. Glasser was 29 when the relationship is alleged to have taken place; the girl was 16.

“We believe that the statute infringes on a fundamental right to sexual privacy and therefore does not hold up under constitutional scrutiny,” said Jeremy Donnelly, one of Glasser’s lawyers.

The “Constitutional right” to an abortion was based on the idea that the Constitution itself, in its “emanations” and “penumbras”, conferred a general right to privacy. Now, that right isn’t specifically enumerated, so there’s no way to legally explain what it really means. It meant whatever Justice Douglas said it did then, and it’ll mean whatever a judge today says it does now. If we need a right to privacy (and I think we probably do these days) then either that should be written specifically into the Constitution or privacy issues should be dealt with at the local level. But when you create a right out of whole cloth, there’s no way to limit it.

Which brings us to Mr. Glasser, who says that this emanation encompasses him and his 16-year-old, legal adult, student. Were it not for those pesky sexual harassment laws that prevent him from using his position of authority, this wouldn’t be an issue.

I’m don’t intend to speak on age-of-consent laws specifically, although 16 does seem to be quite young for someone to make a rational sexual decision. But I’m really hoping that folks who have been proponents of this “Constitutional right” to privacy will see how playing fast and loose with what is and isn’t Constitutional is affecting society and what doors it is opening that ought to be kept shut.

Being a “strict Constitutionalist” is something of an insult liberals put on conservative judges and justices. When you consider cases like this, however, it ought to make more sense why our judiciary ought to be just that. The “Constitutional right” to privacy is not concrete; it is a a vapor. The penumbras of that vapor will continue to emanate out unless more strict Constitutionalists insist on text that has been properly ratified by the States.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out, Blogger News Network and Redstate. Comments welcome.)

First the background:

Club foot is one of the most common birth defects in Britain. About one in 1,000 babies is affected, meaning that 600 to 700 infants are born with the condition every year. It results in the feet pointing downwards and inwards, and in severe cases can cause foot deformity and a limp.

However, it is relatively easy to correct and in recent years techniques of splints, plaster casts and boots to set the foot into the correct position have replaced the need for surgery.Club foot is occasionally connected with serious but rare chromosomal defects, although specialists point out that these can also be screened out before birth with additional tests.

Relatively common, but easily correctable. The article that this comes from notes a couple of families where the child has recovered well enough to, in one case, play football. It mentions celebrities like Dudley Moore and Kristi Yamaguchi.

So do you think that should an ultrasound detect this condition in a fetus that a normally illegal 3rd trimester abortion should be allowed? In England, where they are illegal except for cases where the child would have a “serious handicap”, the goal posts keep being pushed, and they’ve arrived at a new low on the slippery slope.

MORE than 20 babies have been aborted in advanced pregnancy because scans showed that they had club feet, a deformity readily corrected by surgery or physiotherapy.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics covering the years from 1996 to 2004, a further four babies were aborted because they had webbed fingers or extra digits, which are also corrected by simple surgery. All the terminations took place late in pregnancy, after 20 weeks.

Last year, according to campaigners, a healthy baby was aborted in the sixth month at a hospital in southeast England after ultrasound images indicated part of its foot was missing.

News of the terminations has reignited the debate over how scanning and gene technology may enable the creation of “designer babies”. In 2002 it emerged that a baby had been aborted late – at 28 weeks – after scans found that it had a cleft palate, another readily corrected condition.

Safe, legal, and increasingly common, abortions are now the way we tolerate imperfection; we don’t. It used to be that abortions were a last resort in serious cases. Today, they happen over minor imperfections. Tomorrow, a government-run medical system may be deciding who stays and who goes.

Some parents, doctors and charities are increasingly worried by what they see as a tendency to widen the definition of “serious handicap”. The handicap provision, which does not exist in most other countries, permits abortions to be carried out until birth. It was intended to save women from the trauma of giving birth to babies likely to die in infancy.

And the law of unintended consequences, aided by those who see abortion as somehow “freeing” and by those who have a buck to make on it, has taken that foot in the door and opened it wide, allowing all manner of simple contraception to be passed off as “serious handicap”. Compromise when a life is on the line is a death sentence in the abortion debate. This is not a matter of prediction, or personal or political opinion; it’s our planet’s history. This was no doubt a compromise “for the children”, but it’s clearly been turned into one against them.

By the way, not all doctors are “increasingly worried”.

“It was strongly suggested that we consider abortion after they found our baby had a club foot,” said David Wildgrove, 41, a computer programmer from Sheffield, whose son Alexander was born in 1996. “I was appalled. We resisted, the problem was treated and he now runs around and plays football with everyone else.”

Pippa Spriggs from Cambridge, whose son Isaac will celebrate his second birthday in July, was also dismayed when a scan halfway through the pregnancy revealed that her baby had the defect.

“Abortion certainly was not openly advised, but it was made clear to me it was available,” she said. “In fact he has been treated and the condition has not slowed him down at all.”

There are still enough for whom the phrase in their oath “do no harm” is given wide latitude.

But our convenience society and the push by the Left to let people feel better about aborting their babies has caused some to turn a deaf ear to their own children.

Others take a different view and decide not to accept the risk of an imperfect baby. Sue Banton, who founded the group Steps for parents of children with foot disorders, was troubled that a home counties couple last year decided to terminate their baby, despite counselling to reassure them it would have a worthwhile life even with a section of foot missing.

“We gave them other families to talk to, but they just didn’t want to know. The baby was aborted just before the 25th week,” she said.

“It is terrible. I know lots of perfectly nice people with this condition, and you just can’t imagine them not being here.”

Let me say that I am not advocating the total criminalization of abortion. I still believe there are some situations, but very few, where I think abortions are acceptable, most notably for the life of the mother. And I am under no illusion that making the choice to abort is often a difficult one. Further, I never had to deal with this question of a handicapped child; all four of mine were and are fine and healthy.

At the same time, I think that giving parents the choice of killing their slightly handicapped child isn’t in anyone’s best interest. I think that allowing abortion to become the contraceptive of last resort is morally wrong, not only for the loss of life of the child, but also for the behavior that it becomes an enabler for. (Essentially, those performing abortion as contraception become codependents for the parents who made poor choices, especially unmarried ones.)

But what’s at issue at this point is not the line where a zygote becomes a life, but when a life becomes worth living, and who gets to decide. Is it really the parents’ right to kill their otherwise healthy child? If so, the next stop on that slippery slope will be blurring or completely removing that artificial line between inside and outside the womb. Think that’s not going to happen?

A GOVERNMENT adviser on genetics has sparked fury by suggesting it might be acceptable to destroy children with ‘defects’ soon after they are born.

John Harris, a member of the Human Genetics Commission, told a meeting at Westminster he did not see any distinction between aborting a fully grown unborn baby at 40 weeks and killing a child after it had been born.

Harris, who is a professor of bioethics at Manchester University, would not be drawn on which defects or problems might be used as grounds for ending a baby’s life, or how old a child might be while it could still be destroyed.

Harris was reported to have said that he did not believe that killing a child was always inexcusable.

In addition, it was claimed that he did not believe that there was any ‘moral change’ that occurred between when the baby was in the womb and when it had been brought into the world.

Harris, who also gives advice to doctors as a member of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association (BMA), is understood to have argued that there was no moral distinction between aborting a foetus found by tests to have defects and disposing of a child where the parents discovered the problems at birth.

That’s from 2004, also from Great Britian, and that’s certainly not the first time such ideas have been proposed. And this time by a “professor of bioethics”, no less. No, if the status quo remains, it won’t be the status quo for long.

Again, this is not an issue of personal opinion. There’s a plain history to chart of the pushing of the envelope, and plenty of folks in high places ready to continue the push to make abortion safe, legal, and oh-so-convenient for our 21st century lifestyle. This must stop.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out and Blogger News Network. Comments welcome.)

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