Pro-lifers Gone Bort

A large part of the pro-life movement has been taken over by Planned Parenthood.  In ignorance, hard-working and dedicated folks are killing far more children than they save.

An intelligent pro-life friend pressed me the other day, asking for clarity about the destruction of the pro-life movement.  I had pointed out that support for immigration restrictions kills millions of children overseas, and thousands of “pro-lifers” who are saving children with one hand are killing far more children with the other hand.  They work hard in front of abortion clinics, saving thousands of children; then work hard to tighten the border, killing millions of children.  Explain, he demanded.  Why do I say that a large portion of the most pro-life movement today works for Planned Parenthood?

I think he wanted a bumper sticker.  But I want him to understand the problem, thoroughly.  If I had betrayed a movement accidentally, I’d want to understand what happened, so I could reverse some of the damage.  Here are the questions to research.  If you pursue the data yourself, you are less likely to think I’m lying and distorting.  So here’s my outline; Google the data yourself.

Six steps.

First: get an orientation.  

(Optional but highly recommended.  30-45 minutes.)

Read my “Introduction to Eugenics.”  American Life League has taken my name off it, but it’s still available on line, at www.all.org/abac/eugen02.htm.  You don’t need to read the booklet, but it will make it much easier to assemble pieces sensibly in your mind.  The master race ideology – eugenics – is the source of the rabid and hateful anti-immigration movement, and is also the source of the abortion movement; they are cousins in contempt and careless death.  For decades, International Planned Parenthood Federation was housed within the offices of the Eugenics Society in London.  In particular, make sure you see and understand the links between global population control, funded by America and Europe, and its back-up policies of restrictive immigration in the funder nations.  Get a grip.

Second, understand the eugenics initiatives of the 1920s ...

... their three major legislative initiatives.  They started forced sterilization in 29 states.  They passed anti-miscegenation laws in many states.  And they pushed through the “Johnson Acts,” tinkering with laws to restrict immigration.  Our immigration laws today are a reform (under Reagan) of a reform (under Pres Johnson) of those laws.  The bland assumption that of course we can decide arbitrarily whom to admit and whom to exclude, without any accountability, is based on the 1920s eugenics campaign.  Why and how did we tighten the borders?  Get a clear picture of the American Eugenics Society, the Eugenics Record Office, and the Johnson Acts.

Third, immigration restrictions here kill people there.  

Nail that down tight in your mind.  “BS!” you retort. “Name one!”  Make sure you have a firm understanding of the impact of immigration restrictions on what happens overseas.  The anti-immigrant legislation of the 1920s was written to keep out many people, but that generation of arrogant killers had a particular animus against the “feeble-minded” Jews.  American eugenicists were proud allies of the German eugenicists.  When Hitler was preparing his Final Solution, and foresighted Jews were beginning to flee, America deliberately and firmly shut the door against them.  Our immigration policies here killed Jews in Europe.  Oh, yeah, you squawk?  Please, friend: read the story of the St Louis, which sailed from Hamburg with Jews aboard, sailed past Miami, was refused entry, and returned to Hamburg.  The Holocaust Museum has a list of the passengers who saw the lights of Miami and then sailed east to die in Nazi death camps.

Fourth, Golden Venture

Update the St Louis story a little, and get a firm grasp on the Golden Venture story.  For decades, China has killed far more babies than we do, with their one-child-only forced abortion policy.  The United States has debated whether to support the Chinese policy.  When people flee from China, to save a child, or planning to have others in the future, will we welcome these refugees?  President Reagan and Rep. Chris Smith (R, NJ), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus for many years, fought hard to open that door a crack.  Bottom line: pro-lifers understood in the 1980s that restrictive immigration policies supported forced abortion policies.  If you don’t understand that story, you are putty in the hands of a killing machine.

Fifth, Tiananmen Square

refresh your recollection of Chinese history.  25 years ago, there was a drive for freedom, focused in Tiananmen Square.  The month before the tanks rolled into the square, Planned Parenthood’s magazine, People (not the celebrity magazine, but a British publication) focused a whole issue on how well the Chinese were handling the population explosion.  There were 17 articles praising different aspects of China’s policies.  For generations, Planned Parenthood was the link between focused depopulationist eugenicists and sloppy Western feminists.  Even now, it’s easy to discern the alliance between sincere “pro-choice” activists and advocates of forced abortion.  The deep and painful irony is that sloppy Western pro-lifers have imitated sloppy Western pro-choicers; today, forced abortion has as many allies among pro-lifers as among pro-choicers.  Read People magazine, pre-Tiananmen.

Sixth, John Tanton

Peruse the life and work of John Tanton.  He is the key figure in the American anti-immigration movement of our time.  He founded and/or supported and/or inspired the key organizations that “pro-lifers” gone over the right edge quote freely – FAIR (Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform), CIS (Center for Immigration Studies), Numbers USA, English Only, etc.  He is not the devil incarnate; but he does provide a clear snapshot of a nation-deforming transition.   Just as Margaret Sanger took an idea (eugenics) from the rightwing of imperial Britain and made it appealing to the left, so Tanton took an idea from the left (Planned Parenthood and Sierra) and made it appealing to the right – even to history-free pro-lifers.  If you understand Tanton’s goals and tools, the immigration fight gets clear.  He started in Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club and ZPG (Zero Population Growth), but was frustrated by their lack of progress toward a stable eugenic world, so he switched over to immigration work.

Bottom line is simple: inhospitality is inhospitality.  

When you read the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, it might be startling that Jesus provides a list of roads to hell, and all of them involve sins of omission.  The reason is actually pretty simple: most of the colossal damage we do, including murder, is disguised in our minds.  We don’t bomb Nagasaki’s Catholic community; we deter Japan.  We don’t kill babies; we choose to be pregnant later.  We don’t kill the poor overseas; we protect our borders.  Am I my brother’s keeper?

Straight Guilt

I am posting a draft of my book on marriage.  It's a companion piece, balancing the work I did on immigration.

I am convinced that there is a need for open and honest dialogue between the right and the left -- across the nation, but beginning within the Church.  If people of faith cannot bridge political differences, who on earth can?  On the cross, the Lord reached right, and reached left,and got himself nailed on both sides.  But he is tougher than hell, and if we hang onto him -- on the right or the left -- then we can't more than about five feet away from the people on the other side, can we?

Anyway, marriage.

I have tried hard to find ways to state clearly and honestly what I think, but to be respectful of people who think differently.  I worked hard, but had a good time.  If you don't laugh at some of this, you aren't paying attention.

I am posting seven pieces.  The appendices are not posted yet. I wrote three ideas that are part of this book, but do not fit into its format.  That is, I want to talk about immigration, eugenics, and Sodom.  But the book is written in one-bite-at-a-time pieces -- 90 vignettes, independent, 500 words apiece.

Should I tell the truth about the 500 word fetish?  Sure -- no one on FB expects me to be ultra-refined.  Some people find a little quiet, away from demands, sitting on the throne.  Some people even read there.  Perhaps -- I don't know -- maybe 500 words at a sitting.  I hope this book will find a place in your life.  500 words at a time.

But the material about immigration and eugenics and Sodom is extended.  Long-winded?  Anyway, way over 500 words.  If I can't slice it and dice it, and won't toss it, then I'll just nail it on awkwardly.  Three appendices.

Anyway, I have posted a draft.  I'm hoping for comments.  (On a phone, open page menu under HOME arrow.)

Spiritual Placenta

Give me, Lord, a new spiritual placenta.

The child in utero is not inert or totally helpless.  Kids need protection, but that doesn’t mean they are stupid.  The child is in there inventing a brain and building one.  Can you grow a finger?  You forgot how!  You are post-birth senile, totally out of it!  The child is inventing and building a heart, a whole blood system, a nervous system, a spine, a knee.  And then doing what all living things do: that kid is in there dancing!

The Lord gave the child one complete cell, a warm place to live, and access to nutrition via mom.  And then the building began!

Access to nutrition: after a few days, the child develops a complex interface with mom’s uterus, a placenta.  That’s so this smart little inventor, the little bloodsucker in there, can get the sweetness out of mom’s blood, without all the red stuff.  The interface unit – the placenta – has a boundary line that is far more complex than the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay: it twists and winds and intermingles, but there is not a single cell that is confused about whether it is part of mom or part of the baby.

Sucking blood – but not like a mosquito!  Mosquitoes spit!  That’s disgusting, and rude!  (And painful.)  But a placenta just sucks quietly, taking in nutrition and sweetness, offering joy in return.

Oops.  Not a good time for mom!  She is going to evict the little bloodsucker, and skip the joy part!  This isn’t good!

But it’s not all bad.  Everyone dies, and some people die mid-dance.

Bishop Taban of southern Sudan said his people knew how to die, and they wished they could teach the rest of the Church what they had learned.  What a waste!  Torit, a town of 30,000 people, was besieged by the government of Khartoum in the 1980s during the Sudanese civil war, and only 2,000 survived.  That’s a lot of death!  They learned a lot, and wanted to share it – but we didn’t want to hear about it!

I do not know all of what they wanted to teach in Torit, but I know a little.  When you draw near to death, Jesus draws near to you.  When you are totally messed over, you can look sidewise and see the face of another totally screwed over person – who understands what you are going through, and shares the struggle.  He looks you in the eye with com-passion.  He is a com-rade, in your com-munity, in com-plete com-munion with you, and his eyes are full of intelligent com-passion.

He is not com-placent; he is not sucking blood.  Instead, he offers you his blood, and you can suck his blood, and draw life from it.  You need a new kind of placenta – a new life, a new birth, a new heart, a new spirit – and a new placenta.  He does not share your placenta; you attach your placenta to him, and suck the sweetness out of him.

Pro-life + Pro-migrant Memorial Service

Pro-life + Pro-migrant Memorial Service, January 19, 2013

In 1986-87, eight people retrieved hundreds of bodies from dumpsters in back of four abortion clinics in the DC area.  The bodies were buried respectfully: one outside the Portiuncula at Franciscan University in Steubenville, most at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax.  But before we lined up church support, we buried 75 bodies in unconsecrated and unmarked land.

There will be a memorial service for these children, including prayer for their mothers, on the Sunday before the March for Life.  The service will be from 1 pm to 3 pm, Sunday, January 19, 2014, at St. Paul Catholic Church in Damascus, Maryland.  The service will include (1) Mass, and (2) a time of reflection and prayer, with music and speakers. After the service at St Paul, anyone who wishes to visit the grave site is welcome, weather permitting.  Then there will be an informal reception near the grave site (details to be announced).

The service is principally a pro-life (anti-abortion) event, but it will include prayer for all people buried in unmarked graves.  That is, it’s a memorial service for unborn children, but also for migrants.  There will be several speakers, including a pro-immigration speaker.

January 19 is the 100^th World Day for Migrants and Refugees.  Each year, the Vatican leads and encourages a day of prayer for peace, a day for youth, a day for the sick, a day for vocations.  There are a dozen such days; it is a short list.  The best known are World Youth Day and World Day of Peace, but the World Day for Migrants and Refugees is one of the oldest, going back 100 years.  So it is especially appropriate to remember migrants on that day.

In Maryland, the unfortunate division between pro-lifers and pro-migration activists was made obvious in our two referenda in 2012.  Immigration and same sex marriage were both on the Maryland ballot.  The Catholic bishops took very strong stands on both issues, but their combination of positions was not common; they were pro-immigrant, and against re-defining marriage.  The leaders of the fight against immigration, opposing the bishops on immigration, were well known pro-lifers.  And most of the leaders of immigration advocacy, supporting the bishops on immigration, took clear positions in favor of same-sex marriage.  (Abortion and marriage are not the same issue, of course; but there is a very high correlation of positions.)

I find the split bizarre.  Nothing in Scripture or the history of the Church or the teaching of the popes and bishops for the past century encourages such a split, pitting personal morality against social justice.  So it seems important to me to re-build ancient links.  And on January 19, 2014, we will re-shape a pro-life event a little, and reach out to pro-immigration activists.

The Church is one.

Testing the Cardinal's Guts

God give me the strength to explain this clearly.

Cardinal O’Boyle was an extraordinary man, but one of his best moments is generally forgotten, and when it is remembered, it is more often than not by people who resented what he did.  In August, 50 years ago, he threw away a large portion of his fan club, because he had to get a job done.  The civil rights movement was wrestling toward real strength, but could still be undermined and destroyed from within.  He saw the threat, confronted it, and prevailed – pretty much alone – and he was reviled for it.

The problem was violence within the civil rights movement.  To this day, after the world has seen nonviolence prevail in Gandhi’s India, in the American civil rights movement, in Solidarity’s Poland, in Aquino’s Philippines, in Mandela’s South Africa – still! still! after a list of stunning victories – most people are blissfully ignorant about how this thing works, totally unaware of the fragility of a campaign of nonviolence.  A huge campaign of nonviolence can be destroyed from within, by violence within.

Years ago, there was a great movie produced about Gandhi, entitled simply Gandhi.  In it, there’s a scene in which the British governor is confronted by civil disobedience all over the country, and asks a subordinate if there has been any violence.  The officer goes over a very short list of incidents in which the police had cracked a few heads.  No, stupid, the governor responds contemptuously, I’m asking about violence on the Indian side!  The officer responds with some embarrassment that there has not been a single incident of violence among Gandhi’s followers.  This is a disaster for the British rulers.  A little violence amongst the Indians would justify a military response.  They didn’t need much violence, but they needed a little, and Gandhi’s campaign had maintained discipline nationwide.  One incident of violence on the Indian side would have been a sweet gift to the British rulers, a bitter defeat in India’s drive toward independence.

One generation later, O’Boyle showed that he had absorbed the lessons from India.  When the March on Washington was taking shape, there was a broad coalition making things happen, and some of them were ready for riot – or at least ready to threaten riots.  One of the speakers for the event was a young hero, a courageous leader, articulate and fiery John Lewis.  He had led lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville in 1960, and he had been one of the Freedom Riders in 1961.  In 1963, Lewis became the chairman of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).  Now he was on his way to Washington, and he had earned a spot on the program.  But in the speech he had prepared, he seemed to threaten that if nonviolence failed, civil rights activists would move on to violence.  (And in fact, in 1969, after King’s assassination, SNCC changed its name, replacing “Nonviolent” with “National.”)

O’Boyle confronted the challenge, and demanded that Lewis tone his words down.  O’Boyle had desegregated the Catholic churches of Washington, and he understood how poisonous a threat could be.  O’Boyle had the credibility to intervene, and he prevailed.  Had he not done so, it is possible that Lewis would have dominated the event.  It was possible that Lewis’s threat would have overshadowed King’s dream.  If O’Boyle had not made Lewis back off a little, the whole event, King’s speech included, could have disappeared into the sands of history.  Sure, historians would remember that there was a march, but no one would remember or celebrate the transformative spirit of that great day.

Years later, Lewis was still annoyed at the arrogance of that white guy who demanded moderation in the middle of a revolution.

But the list of nonviolent campaigns that have failed is far, far longer than the list of campaigns that have succeeded.  A campaign of nonviolence cannot be destroyed from outside; you can kill every single participant, and still their blood cries out eloquently from the grave.  But from within, it doesn’t take much violence to poison the whole body.

I make this claim based in part on personal experience.  I helped to build a campaign of civil disobedience that was larger than King’s, if you measure by arrests.  But the campaign I was in turned sour and failed.  I helped build the rescue movement, protecting unborn children and their vulnerable mothers by a campaign of nonviolent action.  Gandhi said that nonviolence is never a failure: it is measured by fidelity, not results.  And even judging by the results, it had measurable success.  Not a total failure: we saved many lives.  Not a total failure: the story is not over yet.  But it was a campaign that involved hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands – and then disappeared. 

Many observers and even participants and even leaders would argue that the rescue movement was defeated by FACE, which increased the penalties for rescues dramatically.  That’s nonsense.  Are Americans congenitally weaker than Indians, Poles, Filipinos, South Africans?  We could have continued a campaign in the face of long jail terms.  But we could not continue when the violence in our midst scrubbed our claim to nonviolence.  In the 1990s, across the country, rescue leaders blurred the difference between violence and nonviolence. 

When one well known activist shot and killed an abortionist, pro-lifers tut-tutted; but not one leader had the grit, the guts, the self-sacrificial determination, to demand a solid front movement-wide against the drift into violence.  And the rescue movement sank into obscurity.

My hat is off to O’Boyle.  He was smart and tough and effective.  And when he was tested, he held his ground.

On August 28, remember Cardinal O’Boyle’s work, and celebrate his courage.  Rev. Martin Luther King’s speech fired the nation, and King deserves the credit he gets.  But remember that we met him astride the shoulders of giants, including Cardinal O’Boyle.

Remember Cardinal O’Boyle, and Celebrate!

Cardinal Patrick A. O'Boyle:
Stand firm in the faith!

Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle was a civil rights pioneer, and a strong voice for personal morality. In a time when the nation is so bitterly divided that we don’t expect Congress to pass a budget, let alone any other significant bill, we need a Church that is capable of love and justice.  It’s crazy when the right (pro-family, pro-morality) and left (pro-immigrant, pro-justice) wings of the Church attack each other!  Every single healthy bird on the planet has two wings!  Every single prophet in the history of the Church has called for morality and justice, both!  How did we get so polarized?  Can we stop it?

Recall Cardinal O’Boyle, and celebrate his work!

On August 28, the nation will mark the 50^th anniversary of a great event in our history, the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  It was a great event in the midst of great change.  Understanding the speech matters.  It was about America, not about African Americans.  It was grounded solidly in Scripture (particularly Amos and Isaiah), not neutral secularism.  And it was a culmination of decades or labor, as well as a call to a new future.  It had roots – including the work of Cardinal O’Boyle.  When King spoke, honest observers across the country knew that desegregation without violence was possible – because O’Boyle had done it in his archdiocese. We should celebrate King’s speech, but not forget Cardinal O’Boyle!

O’Boyle was a civil rights pioneer.  After he was appointed as the first archbishop of the newly independent archdiocese, one of his first initiatives was to de-segregate the churches.  He worked hard to avoid publicity, because he thought the glare of cameras tempted people to adopt rigid postures, but he never stopped pressing.  He was a strong voice for justice.

He is also remembered for his determination to protect the Church’s clear teaching about human sexuality and family life.  In 1968, after Pope Paul VI published his encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, O’Boyle fought fiercely to ensure that Catholics in his archdiocese heard the teaching proclaimed without ambiguity or apology.  If sex and babies are unrelated, if sex is merely a game and babies are optional, then a deep aspect of human life is downgraded, women can become toys, and families can be smashed apart.  He saw clearly that the work of King could be undermined completely by a new assault on family life.

O’Boyle was a far-left liberal in 1967.  He was an ultra-right conservative in 1969.  Without moving.  Or (maybe) he was just an honest and consistent Catholic leader in a time of deep divisions.  

In August, remember his work!  Celebrate his life!  Embrace his vision!

Golden Venture aground 20 years ago

Today, Storycorps has a 20th anniversary vignette from one of the most revealing episodes in American immigration history, the Golden Venture.  Restricting immigration here supports forced depopulation there.  "There," of course, varies -- sometimes China, sometimes Africa, most often today latin America.  Anti-immigration propaganda encourages Americans to feel that we are crowded and being pushed beyond our capacity to help, even though we the richest country in the world with a population density that is about 2/3 of the global average.  If we are over-crowded, then the world is tremendously over-populated!  But beyond the propaganda, when we refuse to accept immigrants and refuse to offer an escape, we are complicit in the brutal depopulation policies of emigrant nations.

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/07/189222117/finding-an-anchor-for-a-life-set-adrift-by-a-shipwreck