Tea at Trianon: Abortion is Not a Human Right

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Abortion is Not a Human Right

From Life Site:

In presenting the annual U.S. report on global human rights, Ambassador Michael Kozak told reporters that abortion is not a human right and therefore "reproductive rights" was no longer included in the report.

"Reproductive rights" was a rather recent addition to the report, included by the Obama administration that, Kozak claims, never intended the term to include abortion. He said it only acquired that meaning in recent years through its use by partisans on both sides of the abortion debate. If this were true, the question arises as to why the term abortion is used under the "reproductive rights" section in the 2013 report on Ireland. Pro-lifers would point out that at least in general usage, the term has always included abortion. Kozak did correctly describe abortion as a largely unsettled question of national policy around the world.

Kozak said that forced abortions and involuntary sterilization would be considered violations of human rights. He said, "it is internationally recognized that somebody should force you to have an abortion or coerce you to be sterilized."

Kozak said, "We’ve really gotten at it by flipping back to the original U.S. statutory language. It’s in places like China where in order to enforce their – now – two-child policy that there are reports of coerced abortion and involuntary sterilization [or] in North Korea, where the government also coerces [or] forces abortion – although sometimes that’s for political punishment rather than family planning."

The U.S. report and Kozak’s statements on abortion certainly run afoul of the political left. The report has already been blasted by Amnesty International which says this is further proof the United States under President Trump is moving farther away from human rights globally. The pro-abortion Center for Human Rights maintains that abortion is a human right through customary international law. (Read more.)

Why Tucker Carlson hates abortion. From Live Action:

As it turns out, the abortion issue is deeply personal one for Carlson. His father Richard was born in Boston in 1941 – to a fifteen-year-old girl – before being sent to an orphanage. If abortion had been legal at the time, Carlson believes, his father probably would never have been born. “If it had been 1973,” he told a pro-life audience, “I wouldn’t be here.”

The story of his father’s growing-up years is “a really messy story,” Carlson related. “Just because you make the right decision doesn’t mean it’s easy. That’s one of the reasons people make the wrong decisions – because they fear that messiness.” For Carlson, though, that story had a happy ending. “In the end it worked out great, and I’m here because of that decision,” he said. “I have lunch with my dad every Friday, and talk to him every single day.”

Carlson’s pro-life convictions have been strengthened by his own experiences as well. When he and his wife discovered they were expecting their second child – they now have four children, three girls and a boy – their physician informed them that testing showed that their pre-born son had Spina Bifida. As doctors so often do, he recommended that the Carlsons procure an abortion. “My wife responded with a very bad word,” Carlson recalled. “THE very bad word, to indicate that no way this was happening.” Susan Carlson informed the doctor in no uncertain terms that “you’re not allowed to kill that child. You know why? Because you’re not God.”

That son, incidentally, is a tall, strapping young man with no health issues whatsoever. The doctor who had advised the Carlsons to abort him had gotten in all wrong – and only the pro-life convictions of Tucker and Susan gave him the chance to grow up and embark on his own career. Sadly, many stories do not end the same way. His father and his son are two reasons why Tucker Carlson is so passionate about the pro-life issue. (Read more.)

And there is nothing funny about abortion. From The Stream:

There is nothing the least bit funny about abortion. Not for the baby’s mother. Not for the baby’s father. Not for the abortion workers. And, above all, not for the baby, who is brutally terminated in the womb. There is nothing funny about the remains of abortion (clinically called the “products of conception”). Nothing funny about the severed parts of tiny humans — little hands and little legs and little eyes. Nothing funny about Planned Parenthood making money off these dismembered babies. There is nothing funny about the after-effects of abortion. Nothing funny about the grief and guilt experienced by many a mother (and father). Nothing funny about the women who are unable to conceive after an abortion. Nothing to laugh about at all. Yet in the midst of a vulgar, over the top “comedy” routine at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, Michelle Wolf decided to joke about abortion. (Read more.)

A bishop speaks. From Word on Fire:

It might be helpful to remind ourselves what Ms. Wolf is referencing when she speaks of “knocking that baby out of there.” She means the evisceration, dismemberment, and vivisection of a child. And lest one think that we are just talking about “bundles of cells,” it is strict liberal orthodoxy that a baby can be aborted at any stage of its prenatal development, even while it rests in the birth canal moments before birth. Indeed, a child, who somehow miraculously survives the butchery of an abortion, should, according to that same orthodoxy, be left to die or actively killed. Sure sounds like fun to me; hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

I realize that these attitudes have been enshrined in American law for some time, but what particularly struck me about the Correspondents’ Dinner was how they were being bandied about so shamelessly for the entertainment of the cultural elite. Let’s face it, the people in that room—politicians, judges, writers, broadcasters, government officials—are the top of the food chain, among the most influential and powerful people in our society. And while the killing of children was being joked about—especially, mind you, the children of the poor, who are disproportionately represented among the victims of abortion—most in this wealthy, overwhelmingly white, elite audience guffawed and applauded. (Read more.)