I’m starting a list of lessons learned.  Please suggest your own via comment.

1. There’s no such thing as a “pro-life” Democrat.  The pro-life side is in conflict with the Democrat side; the Democrat side wins almost every time.  One example is Lincoln Davis, who campaigned for pro-abort Harold Ford in 2008 and was listed as “undecided” on ObamaCare in the days leading up to the vote.
2. There are very few Democrats left in DC.  There are plenty of Democrats out in the country, but very few still in Congress.  The Democratic Party has now morphed into a party led by Alinsky-ites.  People like Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Scoop Jackson, etc., would not recognize the Party they have become.  If you don’t know who Saul Alinsky is, you need to educate yourself.  Read his book, Rules for Radicals.  Alinsky was an atheist who rejected any objective standard for right and wrong.  Any means for achieving the “greater good for the most people,” whatever they deem that to be, is acceptable.  His moral authority is none other than Vladimir Lenin, killer of millions.  (See chapter 2 of Rules for Radicals)
3. Dems were lying all along when they claimed to have the votes to defeat ObamaCare.  The final tally shows they didn’t have the votes until Stupak and 4 or 5 others caved.  For Alinsky-ites, lying is a tactic.  One lie is to always portray their plans as being a “done deal” as a way of disheartening their enemies.  We weren’t fooled by this, but Mr. Stupak was.
4. The coming months will demonstrate that no matter how much the Alinsky-ites (and liberals generally) get, it’s never enough.  They want more.  Harry Reid has already announced their intentions to finalize the destruction of private health care and replace it with a government system.  If you oppose them, you hate poor people, you hate minorities, you hate immigrants, etc.  They will never be satisfied until they control every aspect of American life, especially who gets what.  The best way to manipulate people’s voting behavior is to control what they get to earn, keep, and buy.  (For example, “Those evil Republicans want to take away your Social Security, your medical care, etc.)  The irony is that they want to take away your health care with a single payer system that allows them to give back to you whatever they think you should have.
5. You can never compromise with Alinsky-ites.  They are not interested in compromise.  They are interested in re-making America (a really bad place, in their minds) into their vision of what America should be.  They must be defeated.
6. We have allowed our young people to grow up ignorant of the American traditions of freedom and capitalism.  These are inseparable, because you don’t have freedom if the government controls your economic life.  Freedom means more than choosing which TV to buy.  Our generation grew up under creeping socialism and saw the results of it in the 1970s (high inflation, high interest rates, high unemployment).  We also saw how Ronald Reagan restored the principles of limited government in the 1980s, setting off a 28-yr period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity.  Our children, nieces, and nephews didn’t see all of that.  They don’t learn about the Reagan Revolution in government schools.  People have asked me, “What can we do now?”  My answer: give your sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews a history lesson.
7. If you doubt the serious mess we are in, take a look at Europe.  High taxes suppress economic activity, with the predictable result of chronic unemployment.  Europeans have very little confidence in the future, as evidenced by their fertility rate (less than 2 per woman, well under the break-even rate).  The exception is the population of Muslims in these countries, who are having children at a rate of more than 8 per couple.  They are not assimilating into Western culture; they are maintaining their Islamic culture.  When their numbers are sufficient to control elections and institute Sharia Law, what will that do for human rights?  What about women’s rights?  Demographic experts have estimated that Germans will be a minority in their own country in 5o years.
8. Alinsky-ites have a problem with declining numbers among the voting population in the US.  Liberals they tend to have fewer children than conservatives.  Their most dependable voting group is African Americans, but the population of African Americans is actually on the decline.  (Many Planned Parenthood abortion centers are located in African American neighborhoods.)  Their solution to this problem is to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and promise them a wide range of free goodies out of the public treasury in exchange for their political allegiance.  They will decry any attempt to stop this plan as motivated by hate (e.g., hate against people of color).
9. This ain’t over yet.  Never give up.  The biggest lie they have is the lie that they own us and we can’t do anything about it.  Never give up.
10. Your comments?

Check out this analysis by Michael Barone.

To summarize his major points, a fairly large number of Democrats (especially the thirty-seven who opposed ObamaCare in November) represent districts in which the bill is unpopular to wildly unpopular.  Forty-five of their districts went for John McCain.  Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi are whipping these congress-people to go to the wall for ObamaCare but their constituents are pounding them to pull the plug on ObamaCare. 

We don’t have to get the “undecided” Members to announce their opposition to ObamaCare, we just have to keep them from pledging to support ObamaCare.  And in that pursuit we have the tactical advantage of trying to get these guys to do what comes naturally to them:  The cowardly thing!  Nothing at all!  They just want this to go away without having to vote “no” and getting punished by Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi, or “yes” and losing their seats.  If enough of them stick together and refuse to commit, vote counter Rep. Jim Clyburn (the Dem Whip in the House) can’t tell Mrs. Pelosi that she is now within the six or so vote deficit that would embolden her to bring the bill to the floor and then water-board the weakest half-dozen resisters till they caved.  Mrs. Pelosi thinks she can brow-beat five of these guys into submission with the question called and the vote board open but she knows she can’t brow-beat twenty-five.  And she doesn’t want to risk a very humiliating, televised (C-SPAN) defeat.  That is why Mr. Clyburn (who, remember, is the guy actually counting these votes) says the vote could slip till after Easter. 

 Every day we can keep the “undeclared” from “declaring” worsens the odds for Mrs. Pelosi because there is limit to how long even she and Mr. Obama can tie up the entire mechanism of government on this bill. Our trucks and planes clearly foster indecision and as an obscure Air Force Colonel once observed, “He triumphs who merely escapes defeat till his adversary runs out of gas – or becomes progressively more spooked by the scary mid-term elections which are coming nearer by the day.”  Delay is our friend.  It should be the real focus of our prayer.

Please keep praying.  Try fasting  too.  And please keep calling, e-mailing, facebooking, and twittering (see posting below).

In a previous post, I gave you a list of 30 US Congressmen to call (list repeated below).  Some of you have experienced difficulties getting through.  Some strategies:

• Call the local offices, not just the DC offices.
• Call them after hours, when fewer people are trying to call, and leave a clear message on the answering machine.
• Contact them by e-mail, if you can.
• Contact them through their facebook pages.  This has the added advantage of not being screened out because you live in another district.
• Contact them through Twitter.  Send them a “tweet.”  This has the added advantage of not being screened out because you live in another district.

Here’s the list again:

• Terre Haute, Indiana
• Terre Haute, Indiana
• South Bend, Indiana
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• Evansville, Indiana

We can’t do this by ourselves.  Your gift of $300 will buy a tank of truck fuel, enough to drive two full days.  Click here to help.

Praying and fasting wouldn’t hurt either.  The bill before the House would set back the pro-life movement for decades.

Goverment health care would deliver a lower quality of health care to your family at a much higher cost to you.  What a concept.  Make no mistake — the purpose of this bill is to destroy the system we have, so that people will later cry out for the Government to come back in and “fix” it.  Read Alinsky’s book and other writings of his disciples (Barak Obama being one of them).  Look at how TennCare pushed a lot of people out of private insurance onto the public dole.  Now the government can’t sustain it, leaving people worse off than they were.

Example Blue Dog Truck Sign

Fox News has reported that another US Congressman targeted by CBR’s Blue Dog Campaign has announced that he will not vote for the current version of ObamaCare.  Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) announced that he “would not vote for it” because it funds abortion.  This report came just hours after CBR announced the next phase of it’s campaign urging voters in selected districts to call their representatives and oppose taxpayer-funded abortion.  Rep. Donnelly was one of those targeted.

This is the fourth such announcement by Blue Dogs in the House which have been targeted by CBR’s ongoing campaign.

The campaign features a fleet of billboard trucks bearing large abortion photos to remind voters that abortion is not health care and consequently should not be taxpayer-funded, either directly or indirectly.  The “truth trucks” will continue to operate until the final vote on ObamaCare is taken.  Click here to see the press release.

CBR can do this only through the generous support of people like you.  Click here to help.  Your gift of $100 would buy fuel for a single day of driving.  $600 would buy fuel for a week!

With Rep. Donnelly’s announcement, this next phase of CBR’s campaign will now focus on these representatives:

• Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
• Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN)
• Rep. John Boccieri (D-OH)
• Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN)
• Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
• Rep. Chris Carney (D-PA)
• Rep. Tom Periello (D-VA)

President Obama wants to pass this thing next week. Please help today, because every day counts.

Sharing the healing and hope.

Last night I attended the first fundraising banquet for Deeper Still, a post-abortion healing ministry based here in Knoxville.  Karen Ellison and her team are doing a great job over at Deeper Still.  I first became aware of their ministry when former client and now team member Debbie Picarello volunteered to help with our campus outreach ministry at the University of  Tennessee (UTK).  Debbie is a poster child for what they are doing at Deeper Still.  After experiencing the healing that comes from confession and forgiveness, she is taking that same healing to others.  At UTK, Debbie wore a sign on her shirt that said “I’ve had an abortion; ask me about it!”  Her witness helped us reach post-abortive and other students at UTK in ways we never could have otherwise.  In the following weeks, Debbie took the same message to the students at the University of California at Berkeley.  Hope and  healing are an important part of what we are doing at CBR through our campus outreach project.

CBR’s campus outreach program is already creating a stir at Florida Gulf Coast University. We haven’t even set up yet, and already there are three items in the Opinion section of the student paper! You may add your comments to any of them.

As GAP packs up and moves on to the University of Central Florida, I wanted to share with you some more of the coverage in the University of Florida Independent Alligator. Here is the obligatory rant from the Editorial Board. Our Florida Director responded.

Add this column and this one, it is clear to see that there is no balance on the student paper. That is why our work on campus is so important. Feminists for Life reports that women leaving high school are pro-life by a margin of 47% to 37%. When they leave college, they are pro-choice by a margin of 73% to 24%. Male attitudes are similar. One big reason: pro-life students and faculty have no voice.

The pro-life faculty teach business, math, engingeering (hmm, the logical disciplines), where the subject of abortion never comes up. On the other hand, pro-choice faculty teach sociology, psychology, journalism, etc., where they get multiple opportunities to inject pro-abortion propaganda.

Pro-life students study engineering, agriculture, etc.; whereas pro-choice students study, among other things, journalism. That’s why there is no pro-life voice at the Independent Alligator.

After a few months of this, the freshman pro-lifers at the U of Florida start to get the message, “Sit down and shut up.” When we bring GAP, we help pro-life students get their voices back.

GAP at University of Florida

“Hundreds of students lost their appetites when they walked past the pictures of bloody fetuses displayed on the Reitz Union North Lawn and the Plaza of the Americas Monday.” So reported The Independent Alligator (IA) at the University of Florida. Story here.

IA columnist Paul Murty provides the obligatory editorial rebuttal to GAP. You may add your own comments to both the story and the editorial.

Murty, like many abortion apologists, insists on his own definition of genocide. Like the Turks, Nazis, segregationists, and others before him, Murty just wants a better society. It’s OK because his victims, after all, are subhuman. Then he plays the intolerance card, which is almost comical. He believes the University should be intolerant of anybody he deems to be intolerant, which is the same as anybody who disagrees with him. Mr. Murty, if abortion is just another “choice”, then why do pictures of it make you so angry?

Murty may ignore our message, but thousands don’t. Note the adopted baby pictured in the photo above (GAP sign on bottom row). That baby’s mom saw the GAP signs at the University of Tennessee and changed her mind.

If abortion truly is the holocaust of our time, please help us win hearts, change minds, and save lives on campus.

Here’s what Focus on the Family had to say on the outcome of their Super Bowl ad. Several points:

1. The dialogue between mother and son could have been uttered just as easily by a pro-choice mother and son.
2. Anything stronger than that would probably not have been allowed by CBS.
3. The purpose of the campaign was never meant to change people from pro-choice to pro-life. If that were the case, Focus would have included access to abortion imagery somewhere on their website. Or at least, they would have included some prenatal development video.
4. The purpose of the add was two-fold. First, to communicate a wonderful pro-family message to millions of people. Kudos to both Focus and to Google for that. Google’s French Love Story ad was actually my favorite.
5. Second was to get the attention of donors and potential donors. That’s not a criticism of Focus. They are no different from CBR; we need funding to operate. Standing on my head will not convert anybody, but I’d do it if it would help us get more funding for saving babies and moms. The more attention the better. I hope Focus got their $2.5 million back, many times over.
6. The pro-aborts just walked into the Focus trap for several weeks. The attention they brought to Focus was worth way more than the ad itself! Then, after it was over, they compounded their error by stating that the ad promoted violence against women. More attention for Focus

After the ad, talk-show host Barbara Dooley interviewed me for her radio program.  Click here for the interview.

Sally Jenkins, a pro-choice columnist, had this to way on the Tebow ad:

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening — or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

You can read the entire column here.

I saw the first Tebow ad last night and watched the second on the Focus on the Family website this morning. Could somebody please tell me the point of these ads? Was it only to get a few curious people to visit the Focus website? Was there something I missed? I just don’t get it. Can I get your input? I saw nothing that pro-choicers should complain about, nothing the that pro-lifers could get excited about, and nothing that anyone else would be curious about. Seemed like a wast of $2.6 million. What do you think? I’ll amend this post with your best comments.

Most pro-life ad? Gotta be Google’s French Love Story.

P.S. This question has created quite a stir over at VolChat. Check it out!

We recently took our campus outreach project to the University of Tennessee.  We got an e-mail from a student who did not like our display  I wanted to share with you her question, along with my answer.  Even though this student did not request anonymity, I’ve changed her name because I have no interest in embarrassing anybody, especially one whose objections appear to be thoughtful and sincerely expressed.

E-mail from Female UT Student

To Whom it May Concern:

I appreciate your willingness to promote Pro-Life opinions and realistic images to capture the attention of college students.  However, today, I saw images that were very disturbing to myself and – I’m certain – others around me.  I saw pictures of dead, bloody fetuses.  Now, I am very much pro-life.  However, I think it was very, very unnecessary to have those images shown publicly, largely, and openly.  I realize that the point of the images proves how wrong abortion is on many different levels, but I still think it was wrong to display them and I did not appreciate viewing them as I walked to class.  There are a few reasons why I don’t agree with having these pictures openly displayed in public, and I will list them here.

First of all, I think it is a violation of both the mother and child’s rights to have a child’s pictures displayed so openly.  I don’t think, in any circumstances, should pictures of that nature be displayed that present something so personal to someone else.  I think it is mainly a major violation of the rights of the unborn child to present such graphic, awful pictures to a college campus.

I also do not agree with the displaying of these images due to the emotional nature of some of the students on the campus.  Regardless of your political or moral views, I don’t think you should display something so graphic that could bring back traumatic memories for few, or many, of the students on our campus.  I’m sure many students on the campus have had abortions; regardless of your views, abortion does happen and should not be taken so lightly as to display bloody fetuses largely for everyone to see.  Many women and adolescents are emotionally traumatized or have been psychologically distressed due to abortion.  Maybe they are in constant regret of their decision to abort their unborn fetus. Maybe they previously supported abortion and no longer do, so they wish they hadn’t killed an innocent child.  Maybe it haunts them every day to know that their child was killed by them.  Maybe there are young men on our campus whose girlfriends or wives have had abortions that they did not approve of.  Maybe there are young men on our campus whose girlfriends are emotionally traumatized by the previous abortion(s) that they have had.  These men and women may have a change of heart, mind, or soul, and I do not think it is appropriate to throw them into a guilt trip after they have undergone such an awful experience.  I do not think it is appropriate to force them to dwell on the past.

So, next time, I ask if you would kindly reconsider the displaying of these images on our campus – or anywhere else for that matter – for everyone to see.  These images should not be taken lightly and should not be blown up for an entire college campus to dwell on, laugh at, shudder at, or dismiss.  Abortion is an issue that definitely needs attention in our society, but putting bloody fetus pictures up on our campus is not the way to do so.

Sincerely,
Jane Doe
Student at the University of Tennessee

My Response

Dear Jane,

Thank you for your letter and for allowing me the opportunity to address your concerns. The best way I know how to do this is just to address your points, one by one.

Let me start out by agreeing with you on one key point.  Nobody should be forced to dwell on the past.  We must remind every post-abortive woman (and every man, too, because his guilt is often greater than hers) that God is just as eager to forgive the sin of abortion as he is any other sin. Nobody should be forced to dwell on the past. That is why we support programs in Knoxville like Restoring Hearts (www.restoringhearts.org).  God’s Word tells us that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9)”  I can tell from your letter (and your persistence) that you know people personally who are struggling with past abortions.  Love those people.  Intervene on their behalf.  Encourage them to take the first step toward healing by visiting the caring people at the Hope Resource Center and taking advantage of their Restoring Hearts program (www.restoringhearts.org).  Your persistence will be rewarded.

You said that you are pro-life.  That’s great, but you didn’t say why.  Is it because abortion is the destruction of a human being?  Or is it something else?  Because if you agree with us that abortion destroys a human being, then that means abortion destroys 1.2 million people in our country every year.  Many people have abortions because they have been lied to all of their lives.  The government lies to them.  The abortion industry, including Planned Parenthood, lies to them.  They tell her (and everyone around her) that it’s only a blob of tissue.  They say abortion is just removing some cells.  The so-called “pro-life” church lets them get by with lying because it is too fearful to show the truth, even to its own membership.  It’s a coverup of gigantic proportions.  The only way to pierce through the layers and layers of ignorance and denial is to simply show people the truth, but very few of us are willing to do it.

You said that the images were very disturbing. That is true. They are disturbing to you and others because you have a functioning conscience. Pictures of injustice are irrelevant to people who don’t have a conscience.

You say that abortion pictures are unnecessary. But to make that claim, you have to ignore 150 years of successful social reform movements. Reformers have routinely used two kinds of images in their struggles against injustice: (1) images that helped people relate to the humanity of the victims and (2) images that helped people understand the horror of the crimes. Without seeing images, people just didn’t get it.

The abolitionists in England used images to help people see the horror of slavery. One such image was a diagram of the slave ship Brookes. Thomas Clarkson, a leader in the movement, said that the Brookes diagram “seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it.” Historian Adam Hochschild, writing about this era, said “iconic images have power because they allow us to see what previously we could barely imagine.” And who can forget the powerful scene in the movie Amazing Grace in which William Wilberforce used the Madagascar slave ship to illustrate the horror of slavery to members of Parliament (www.amazinggracemovie.com/video_downloads.php).

Around the turn of the century (1900s), photographer Lewis Hine took pictures of children working in coal mines and textile mills and put them on display. His photos helped end abusive child labor practices.

Dr. Martin Luther King used horrifying imagery to educate the public and confront Americans with the truth about racism. Dr. King’s niece (Dr. Alveda King) wrote, “My uncle knew that the ugly reality of segregation had to be seen visually by the American public. He therefore organized events at which the eyes of the media could broadcast the way our people were treated when water hoses and dogs were unleashed on their peaceful marches. People responded to those images, not simply to abstract concepts of ‘segregation’ and ‘equality.’”

So, if you want to say that the images of injustice are unnecessary to ending injustice, your argument isn’t with us; your argument is with Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Lewis Hine, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Later in his life, Lewis Hine wrote in his memoirs that people would sometimes look at his pictures of child labor abuses and become more angry at him for showing the pictures than at the industrial bosses for creating the abusive conditions that these children were forced to endure.  Your anger at us for showing pictures led you to write e-mails and letters to us, but have you ever been angry enough at the abortion industry to do anything to stop their deadly work?

With regard to violating the rights of mother and child, I can assure you this is not the case. These images of abortion that you saw were lawfully obtained from abortion clinics. If you go to the Holocaust museum, or if you open up any book about the Holocaust, you will see stacks and stacks of dead Jews and other victims of the Nazi death machine. I am not aware of any serious assertion that these photographs should not be shown because the victims didn’t give consent, or that the Holocaust Museum should be closed, or that history books should be removed from the shelves because the pictures they show violate the rights of the dead victims. To the contrary, I would argue that victims of injustice always want their plight to be known.

I find it curious that you would be so concerned about the rights of a dead baby not to have his picture printed on a sign, but not visibly concerned about this child’s right not to be killed in the first place. I think killing a baby is worse than showing a photo of a dead baby.

You say that abortion is traumatic, psychologically distressing, an awful experience, induces constant regret, etc. (your words). You are right to be concerned about the post-abortive woman who needs healing from past abortion(s). But what about the pre-abortive woman? Should we not have compassion for her as well? She is the one who will have an abortion next week, next month, or next year, unless somebody intervenes on behalf of her baby and herself. Shouldn’t we show her the truth so that she can avoid all of this pain in the first place? Who else is showing her the truth about who the baby is and what abortion does? The abortion industry? The education system? The so-called “pro-life” church? At CBR, we are doing everything we can to help her avoid the trauma, distress, and guilt (your words) that follow abortion.  Dr. Alveda King wrote, “As a woman who has had two abortions, I am grateful that the truth is being shown, so that others can avoid this pain in the first place.”

Of course, we must all care for the needs of the woman who has already had an abortion. Many such women have told me that seeing photos of abortion were an important part of the healing process.  Encourage your post-abortive friends to take the first step toward healing by visiting the caring people at the Hope Resource Center and taking advantage of their Restoring Hearts program (www.restoringhearts.org).  (NOTE: I’m pretty sure that women who participate in Restoring Hearts will NOT be shown graphic abortion images.)

You say we take abortion lightly when we display the truth of abortion for all to see. To the contrary, we take abortion lightly when we sweep it under the rug and allow the cycle of violence against babies and moms to continue unabated.

Thank you again for your e-mails and letters.  I hope I have adequately addressed your concerns.  Perhaps you don’t agree with us on every point, but hopefully I have given you food for thought.  Please feel free to reply with your comments and questions.

C. Fletcher Armstrong, PhD
Director, Southeast Region
Center for Bio-Ethical Reform