Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday approved new regulations that ”will make it more difficult for clinics providing abortions to operate and potentially close down most of the state’s 22 facilities” http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/capital-land/2011/12/mcdonnell-approves-sweeping-abortion-changes/2045296#ixzz1i3AQv7Gd.

The new health rules are not onerous: They require that facilities that perform abortion “to comply with standards for surgery centers constructed after 2010 — from expanding the width of hallways and the size of operating rooms to providing covered entrances and increasing the number of parking spaces at a facility … They also will require increased medical staffing and allow for unannounced inspections of the clinics and reviews of individual patients’ records” http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2011/sep/15/25/pro-choice-anti-abortion-advocates-address-regulat-ar-1312067/.

The necessity of these standards is demonstrated by the news that two physicians who practiced at a now-shuttered abortion clinic in Maryland have been “charged with multiple counts of murder under the state’s viable fetus law” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2-doctors-accused-of-performing-late-term-abortions-in-md-arrested-and-charged-with-murder/2011/12/30/gIQAfhXOQP_story.html).  The Washington Post reports that “the two doctors were indicted by a grand jury after a 16-month investigation (which) began in August 2010 after a botched procedure at Brigham’s Elkton clinic. An 18-year-old woman who was 21 weeks pregnant had her uterus ruptured and her bowel injured, and rather than call 911, Brigham and Riley drove her to a nearby hospital, where both were uncooperative and Brigham refused to give his name, authorities said. A search of the clinic after the botched abortion revealed a freezer with 35 late-term fetuses inside, including one believed to have been aborted at 36 weeks, authorities said.”

Christians need to be involved in all facets of culture: The arts, media, enterprise both large and small, church ministries, charities – and also politics.  Under former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the State Board of Health – the majority of whose members are appointed by a sitting governor – would never have approved the new regulations.  The nine McDonnell appointees to the Board approved them, to a person.  The regulations themselves would never have been enacted unless first passed by socially conservative majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates and State Senate.  And if Gov. McDonnell and State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had been defeated by their pro-abortion rights opponents in the 2009 election, the regulations would have been stultified in a never-land of litigation and/or inaction.

Politics cannot transform culture nor the hearts of those who compose it.  However, politics can encourage public virtue and constrain public evil.  That’s why elections matter.  Bob McDonnell and his pro-life colleagues in Virginia prove it.

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On December 27, 2011 Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) released it latest Annual Report for 2009-2010.

Here is some of the information included in the report:

- PPFA performed a total of 329,445 abortions during this time period.

- PPFA provided 841 adoption referrals during this same time (therefore for every adoption referral there were 391 abortions performed).

- PPFA had a total budget of 1.0482 billion dollars.

- PPFA had an excess of revenue over expenses of 18.5 million dollars (in other words, this billion dollar non-profit organizations profited 18.5 million during that time).

- 46 percent of the total PPFA budget comes from tax payer dollars in the form of government funding.

I encourage you to take time to read through the report in its entirety at: http://issuu.com/actionfund/docs/ppfa_financials_2010_122711_web_vf?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage.

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On November 25, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its annual report with the most recent data and statistics on abortion in the United States, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2008. 

The CDC has reported on abortion-related data annually since 1969. Generally these reports are very helpful and informative in terms of tracking and understanding larger trends and actual numbers related to abortion in the United States. The 2008 report is dense with information ranging from the ethnic background and age of the mother to the age of the baby when aborted, as well as the kind of abortion that took place. However, because states are not required to provide abortion data to the CDC, while the surveillance report offers important information and numbers about abortion in the U.S., it does not provide a complete and thorough depiction of abortion data in the U.S. By way of background, until 1998, every state annually reported abortion-related data to the CDC. But beginning in 1998, combinations of states began to refuse to submit abortion-related information to the CDC. Over the years non-reporting states have included California (1998-2008), New Hampshire (1998-2008), Oklahoma (1998-1999), Alaska (1998-2002), West Virginia (2003-2004), Louisiana (2005), and most recently, Maryland (2007-2008). Missing any state’s information is problematic, but in particular, because California has the most abortions in the U.S., not including their data significantly skews the overall picture.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that states that do submit data to the CDC may pick and choose which information they provide. “…the level of detail that CDC receives on the characteristics of women obtaining abortions varies considerably from year to year and among reporting areas….because the collection of abortion data is not federally mandated, reporting areas can develop their own forms and do not necessarily collect all of the information that CDC compiles.” (page 2) Since the CDC’s abortion surveillance reports have incomplete numbers, policy-makers and other interested groups and people must rely on the Guttmacher Institute’s statistics and analysis. However, research neutrality comes into question because Guttmacher was originally founded as the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, although they have since formally separated.

The CDC report reads “CDC is unable to obtain the total number of abortions performed in the United States. During 1999–2008, the total annual number of abortions recorded by CDC was 65%–69% of the number recorded by the Guttmacher Institute, which uses numerous active follow-up techniques to increase the completeness of the data obtained through its periodic national survey of abortion providers.” (page 6)  

Also as reported last year, the report is again missing the abortion fatality rate. Page 5 reads, “Although national case-fatality rates (the number of abortion-related deaths per 100,000 reported legal induced abortions) have been published for 1972–1997, this measure could not be calculated with CDC data for 1998–2007; because a substantial number of abortions have been documented in states that did not report to CDC during 1998-2007.”

One might consider that most statistical conclusions in the abortion surveillance reports since 1998 lacked some form of U.S. data. Therefore the claim that the abortion rate can not be estimated as other statistics have been does not appear to be reasonable. It would seem that the abortion rate should be able to be computed with the same limited information obtained by the states that other statistics are computed. The report has also not updated its latest abortion-related deaths from the previous report (with 2007 data).

Last year it was reported that for the states that reported data, in 2007, six women died in the U.S. as a result of complications related to abortion. (page 5) The updated 2008 number has not yet been released. However, while some information is missing, there is still much to be learned from what the data that is included in the report. Below are some basic statistics and numbers on abortion-related information in the U.S. in 2008.  

· More children were aborted in the U.S. (in reporting states) in 2008 than in 2007. “Among the 49 reporting areas that provided data for 2008, a total of 825,564 abortions were reported.” (page 3) In 2007, the total number of abortions as reported by the CDC was 810,582, an increase of close to 15,000.

· Most abortions were performed on women in their 20s. “Women aged 20-29 years accounted for the majority (57.1%) of all abortions in 2008. In 2008, women aged 20-29 years also had the highest abortion rates (29.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 20-24 years and 21.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 25-29 years).” (page 3)

· The report states that the majority of abortions are performed early in pregnancy. “For 2008, the majority (62.8%) of abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and 91.4% were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.” (Page 4) Few abortions (7.3%) were performed at 14-20 weeks’ gestation, and 1.3% were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation. (page 4)

· In 2008, approximately 14.6% of women used RU-486, the dangerous abortion drug, and that approximately 75.9% of abortions
were surgical (“curettage”) for abortion done at 13 weeks or earlier. (page 4)

· Non-Hispanic black women accounted for 35.5% of all abortion while making up approximately only 12.6% of the population according to the Census Bureau); Hispanic women accounted for 21.1% of all abortion, while making up 16.3% of the population according to the Census Bureau. Non-Hispanic white women accounted for 37.2% of abortions, while making up 72.4% of the population according to the Census Bureau.  (page 4)   The CDC annual abortion surveillance reports are very informative and helpful, albeit incomplete, to those interested in women’s health – both those women who are born, and those women (and men, too) who are unborn.

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“The Wonder of Life” is a beautiful 1-minute video from Youth Defence in Ireland.

Happy Christmas!

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It’s the General’s Highway in my hometown of Annapolis. Few of the Christmas shoppers at the Mall probably stop to read the roadside marker. But it is so called because it’s the route that General George Washington took in 1783 to resign his commission to the American Congress. Congress had been meeting in Maryland’s capital city. The members had been run out of Philadelphia for failure to pay the troops. Some things don’t change. A handsome flag, America’s first peacetime flag, was hanging from the Old State House where Congress was sitting.

Congress was eager then, as now, to get out of town. Christmas was fast approaching.

Continue reading »

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Just in time for Christmas, NIH Director Francis Collins has approved more human embryonic stem cell lines for taxpayer funding, bringing the total number of hESC lines at the federal trough to 142. Today’s approval is not all that surprising–the four new lines, from the University of Queensland, were recommended for approval by the Stem Cell Working Group at the December 9, 2011 meeting of the Director’s Advisory Committee. The Stem Cell Working group had also voted not to approve six lines from China.

The four new hESC linies that have been approved are not for clinical use, however. Subsequent to the meeting and before the latest approvals, NIH also approved two other hESC lines, from Mt. Sinai Hospital in Canada. Those two lines are also restricted:

NIH-funded research with this line may only be conducted at Mount Sinai Hospital and “other Canadian laboratories affiliated with the Canadian Stem Cell Network for further research or potential clinical use.”

In the meantime, the current and future patient benefits of adult stem cells continue to be ignored.

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The Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute (CMI) recently posted an article about the war on Christmas, documenting how some in the media ignore or demean attacks on Christmas as “phony” and “fake.” One of the attacks on Christmas that they list comes from JP Duffy’s experience at a U.S. Post Office in Silver Spring, MD.

CMI fellow Erin Brown writes, “Even our ‘tolerant’ Federal government is playing the Grinch card this year. According to FoxNews.com, ‘A group of Christmas carolers was thrown out of a U.S. Post Office in Silver Spring, MD, after the post office manager told them they were not allowed to sing Christmas carols on government property.’”

Brown documents a long series of attacks over the last couple of years, as well as the reactions of numerous liberal media types that ignore or mock the war on Christmas.

“These days, the war on Christmas is fought by the Christian right … [Catholic League President] William Donahue and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, traditional combatants in the war on Christmas, have trained their Yuletide guns on someone, not for railing out put the Christ back in Christmas, but for failing to worship Santa Claus,” Keith Olbermann accused on his old MSNBC show “Countdown” in November of last year.

If you’re not convinced that there’s a war on Christmas, check out the page, and a few of the attacks it documents:

“In upstate New York, one school district has declared that ‘Christmas and Hanukkah will no longer be celebrated in classrooms.’ According to FOX/WROC, The Batavia City School District will no longer allow decorations for either holiday to appear in classrooms as well as teachers are discouraged from writing or saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ In Fairfax County, Va., grade-schoolers are treated to ‘winter celebration.’ In Texas, another school district has declared war on Christmas – this time, classrooms are not allowed to celebrate Santa Claus or exchange gifts.”

Some attacks on Christmas are downright weird. The Huffington Post has the Skeleton Santa story, which Brown also documents in her article.

Thankfully, this hopeful time of year isn’t built on the backs of Christmas displays shimmering on lawns and in storefronts. It’s founded on the birth of hope: Christ Jesus our Lord.

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It is human nature to want to avoid hard choices, and to get angry with those who would compel us to make them.

In a new piece in Forbes, Bill Frezza wisely observes that the era of what he calls “both/and” is drawing to a crashing close: “The era of both/and was a magical time when the elected representatives running city, state, and national governments never had to make hard choices. To be sure, partisanship wasn’t eliminated, but political compromise could always be found. This allowed incumbent politicians from both parties to deliver enough goodies to their constituents to assure themselves reelection.”

Whenever a politician suggests that people be allowed to invest some of their “Social Security Trust Fund” money into private accounts, or that private sector solutions to health care might be preferable to federally-directed ones (which solve nothing, ultimately, except the unemployment of eager bureaucrats), or that Washington’s menagerie of departments, programs, agencies, and line items be streamlined into some form of reasonable coherence, he is vilified as heartless, a tool of big business, a mendacious and reactionary primitive.

Re-election is a politician’s stock in trade. To be a statesman, one must have an ample quantity of moral courage and the wisdom to know when to act boldly. Thus, given that few politicians have the strength and insight to behave in a statesmanlike way, we can anticipate that desirable change will be at best incremental. And, despite our protestations, we want it that way.

We want government’s benefits without its costs. We want its protections without its intrusions. We want its presence in our need and its exclusion in our perceived abundance. We are kidding ourselves, which is to say we are human.

As Frezza argues, we are now at the beginning of an era in which refusing to make hard choices is no longer possible:

… in bad economic times tax revenue craters, leaving massive shortfalls as government spending not only fails to decline alongside revenues, but goes up to pay for “safety net” expenses, which more people tap into as they are left out of work. This has happened both in California and at the federal level. Even more threatening than these oscillations is the fact that the underlying trend line in federal revenue has gone flat as federal spending entered an unprecedented period of exponential growth. To top it off, the Baby Boomer generation has started its massive wave of retirements, calling in the chits on those unfunded entitlement liabilities. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, GDP growth hit its deepest and broadest rut since the 1930s, where it remains mired for the foreseeable future.

We resent it when policymakers, speaking to us like adults, offer necessary and painful choices about policy priorities. That’s why we have long lived in an era of self-delusion and rewarded those who have given it to us.

We cannot abort our progeny and anticipate economic growth. We cannot experience liberty, in its fullness, if we disavow a willingness to fail. We cannot corrode the family unit through divorce, cohabitation, promiscuity, and homosexual “unions” and say we care about our children’s future. We cannot secularize our society without destroying the unspoken Judeo-Christian moral consensus that always has been the firm foundation of our republic.

“It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to understand that borrowing from the future will increasingly become not just inadvisable but outright impossible. The future has arrived, and it isn’t pretty,” Frezza says. He is right.

Americans have long been a brave people. We like to talk about the heroic conduct of our armed forces, and well we should. But just as our men and women in uniform show courage in their sphere, can we show it in ours? It is now time for us to see if we can still summon the personal virtue and political courage without which no economy, or nation, can long endure.

This will mean hard choices. Let us steel ourselves to them, with the concurrent commitment that through the non-governmental institutions of family, church, synagogue, not-for-profit charities, professional associations and small and large corporate enterprise, we will address the needs our sagging Leviathan cannot.

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The State Department annually releases a “report card” evaluating countries’ work and progress on combating the heinous crime of trafficking of human person for either labor or sex slavery. In 2010, the United States was included in the ranking and evaluation for the first time, scoring in the highest tier, although its narrative showed much room for improvement in this area where all can agree that one exploited person is one too many.

On that note, in late November Shared Hope, a non-profit organization dedicated to the eradication of sex trafficking through education and public awareness, released a domestic version of the report, “The Protected Innocence Initiative,” grading individual states on their efforts to combat child sex trafficking.

In their words, “The Protected Innocence Initiative is a comprehensive strategy to promote zero tolerance for child sex trafficking. In partnership with the American Center for Law &Justice, Shared Hope International conducted a comprehensive analysis of each state’s existing laws. The Protected Innocence Legislative Framework solely evaluates a state’s existing laws and does not evaluate enforcement or implementation.

The methodology was vetted by experts in the anti-trafficking field including Ambassador Mark Lagon (U.S. Department of State, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 2007-2009) and directors from the following organizations: the National District Attorneys Association; American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law; the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; ECPAT-USA; Children at Risk, Houston, Texas; and A Future Not a Past, Atlanta, Georgia.”

Criteria used to evaluate states’ grades included criminal provisions addressing traffickers, demand and facilitators, protections for child victims, and criminal justice tools for investigation and prosecution, among others.
According to the report, the worst ranking states in the U.S. include Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, and Colorado, to name just a few. Some of the best states were Missouri, Washington and Texas.

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Earlier this month, Elizabeth Vargas of ABC hosted a special report documenting the appalling practice of sex selection abortion in India. She traveled to India after hearing about the gendercide of girls in India.

“Six months ago, I traveled to India to see firsthand what the prime minister of that country calls a national shame. It is the systematic, widespread, shocking elimination of India’s baby girls. Some 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month in India. Baby girls are often killed at birth, either thrown into rivers, or left to die in garbage dumps. Its estimated that one million girls in India “disappear” every year.”

Ms. Vargas describes what she calls the “dirty little secret” related to ultrasonography in India. “We walked down street after street and saw signs everywhere advertising ultrasound services. There are even technicians who pack portable ultrasounds and travel to villages offering their services. The dirty little secret is that many couples use the ultrasound to find out the sex of their baby.”

She explains the gendercide’s primary motivating factor: money.

“The reason so many Indians do this is financial. A family with a girl will pay a dowry to her husband’s family when she marries. It is a long cultural tradition in India that new laws cannot seem to break. So a girl means the family will lose money, property, or cattle on the wedding day. A boy means the family will gain those things. The illegal ultrasounds and the illegal gender abortions are used by India’s middle class to guarantee they get sons.

Poor women who cannot afford these services will simply kill or abandon their babies. Some will take their newborn girls to a drop box, usually in the middle of the night, and leave the baby there. One drop box is at a place called the Unique Orphanage in Punjab. We went from the village with no women, to the orphanage with no boys. There are only girls here…60 of them…all cared for by a wonderful woman who will raise each and every one. It is striking to see all those little faces, some two days old, others teenagers, all unwanted by their biological families. They are actually the lucky ones. Their parents didn’t kill them. They now have someone who loves them.”

Vargas also describes the disproportionate number of males to females in certain Indian localities. “50,000 girl fetuses are aborted every month in India. It is a staggering number. And it has created whole villages where there are hardly any women. We went to one such village in the province of Haryana. Everywhere we looked, we saw boys, young men, old men, but very, very few women. It was unsettling, especially because we knew this was not some freak of nature, but a result of the deliberate extermination of girls.”

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The unlamented death of “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-Il, the brutal thug who ran an entire nation like a Stalinist mind-experiment, has ushered his son, Kim Jong-Eun, to the helm of the North Korean regime. Calling it a “government” seems too flattering, as governance implies order, justice, and some kind of representation; none of these are characteristic of North Korea.

According to the anti-persecution ministry, Open Doors,

“Of the reported 200,000 North Koreans in prison camps, Open Doors estimates 50,000 to 70,000 are Christians. Both Open Doors and the U.S. State Department report religious adherents are generally treated worse than other prisoners. Extreme forms of torture and execution, as well as forced abortion and infanticide, have been reported in the camps, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.”

North Korea likes to downplay its record of abuse, and even minimize the number of Christians living there (claiming fewer than 13,000 total). Yet a survey released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life argues that of roughly 24 million people living in North Korea, there are more than 490,000 self-identified Christians in “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (that’s Orwell-speak for the dictatorial rule in the North).

From a human standpoint, the outlook in North Korea is not good. According to Christianity Today,

“When Jong-Eun was named Jong-Il’s successor last year, Sam Kim, executive director of the Korean Church Coalition for North Korea Freedom, told CT that Christians in North Korea would likely not see a decrease in persecution. ‘Kim Jong-Eun has not earned the true respect from North Korea’s communist party leaders to effectively govern North Korea. As such, he will be nothing more than a figurehead and his uncle, Chan Sung Taek, will be the person who is really in control,’ Kim said. ‘Unfortunately, Chan Sung Taek is just as ruthless as Kim Jong-Il. As such, Christians can expect to face the same level of persecution’.”

Now is the time for Christians to pray for North Korea: That God would protect and provide for the tens of thousands of believers in the nation’s massive political-prison system; that the new leader, his uncle, and their associates will humble themselves before the Judge of all the earth and transition their country from being a global focal point of oppression into an exemplar of religious and political liberty; and that Christian ministries within North Korea can continue their work and even expand it.

In October, FRC hosted a panel of several distinguished experts in the field of international religious liberty. The event can be viewed here.

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As the year ends there is more news on the education front.  An article by Ben Wolfgang in the Washington Times (12/15/2011, “Record Numbers Fail to Clear No Child bar”).  At the outset of the article, Wolfgang notes, “The numbers keep getting worse for the nation’s education system.”  In the 2010-11 academic year, the No Child Left Behind statute’s standards were not met by 48% of public schools.

There is a great deal of debate even among conservative education scholars whether the NCLB’s standards have become increasingly unrealistic.  There is disagreement over whether NCLB should continue as a national guide.  Whatever one’s feelings about NCLB, it seems clear that many schools and students are not proficient in reading and math.  Proponents note that the law “require[s] states to publish test-score results in math and reading for each school in grades 3 through 8 and again in grade 10.”  Parents can see how their children’s school is doing, but see this article that argues the federal yardstick  is defective.

The debate will continue next year as the NCLB law needs to be reauthorized by the Congress.  That may not be possible in an election year.  As with many other things much depends on the outcome of the presidential election.

One area in which there seems to be positive news is in “virtual” schooling.  “Virtual” education refers to taking classes online using the internet as the teaching device.  It seems completely obvious that online learning – if packaged properly – will revolutionize education.  See the Khan Academy.  A recent article notes the rapid growth in this new avenue for learning.  I think it is a positive development for a market-based approach to make an appearance in schooling.

The New York Times published a lengthy incredibly negative article on virtual learning recently.  Virtual learning probably has its difficulties, but it also strikes at the core of the modern public school power structures by giving parents more choices.  Lindsey Burke at the Heritage Foundation has some good observations on this debate.  One wonders if the Times is more worried about that than learning.

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FRC staff, visitors, and friends on the Web had an extraordinary opportunity this week to hear a lecture by Leticia Velasquez. Mrs. Velasquez is the mother of a Down Syndrome child. She spoke movingly of her experiences and how she viewed this child as a special blessing from God. Nurses told her eight years ago, “we regret to inform you that…” It started off that coldly, that clinically. “Mongolita,” her husband told her, using the Spanish word for Mongoloid. But Leticia is a feisty New Yorker. She answered back: “This beloved child will never shoot up her school or do drugs.” And she’s right about that.

Sitting in the audience, I remembered my first encounter with this subject. I was a graduate student reading the biography of Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle had then only recently retired as President of the Fifth Republic of France.

A military hero during World War I, de Gaulle at 6’5″ towered over most of his countrymen, both figuratively and literally. In the interwar years, Col. de Gaulle taught at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, and was an outspoken advocate for tank warfare. His theories were considered too radical, and he was shunted aside. Only in 1940, did de Gaulle see his ideas put to devastating use–by the Nazis panzers as they plowed through the Ardennes forest. While the divided French Cabinet argued about whether to surrender or keep fighting, the newly promoted Gen. de Gaulle escorted a British friend to the airport outside threatened Paris. Then, without so much as a toothbrush, he closed the door to the aircraft and flew to England. He watched from the air as the battered French towns below burst into flames. His own wife and daughter Anne were down there.

He rallied the French people with a speech delivered over the BBC. And he led the Free French throughout the war. Afterward, he briefly led the government before going into retirement. But in 1958, France was wracked with internal divisions over Algeria, communism, and much else. Called out of retirement, Charles de Gaulle became President of France. He re-wrote the constitution, creating the Fifth Republic that governs France to this day. In World War II, he restored French honor after the debacle of Hitler’s invasion and occupation. As President, he sought to make France respected again throughout the world.

Retiring for a second time in 1969, de Gaulle was asked by an interviewer what gave him the courage, the stamina, and the vision to fight so hard for his country. Unhesitatingly, he answered: “The love of Anne de Gaulle.”

As a student, I was puzzled. But I soon found out what he meant. Anne was born with Downs Syndrome. Charles and his wife Yvonne raised Anne at home. What’s so unusual about that? At that time, most of France’s upper classes, and certainly most ambitious military figures, would quietly place such a daughter in a convent school, where loving and devoted nuns would care for her. There would be visits several times a year, of course, but the child would effectively be banished from the family.

Not the de Gaulles. They rearranged their entire domestic life around the need to love and care for Anne. And Anne returned that love in abundance. One of the most moving scenes I ever read showed Charles and Yvonne standing at the gravesite in a small country churchyard in Colombey Les Deux Eglises. Embracing his grieving wife, the world leader said: “Now she is like all the others.”

As an historian, I’m often asked why it is we don’t seem to have leaders on the world stage who are like the giant figures of World War II. In France today, 96% of unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome are killed. In the U.S., it is 92%. These lethal rates are even higher among the elites from whose ranks we draw our leaders. Might it be that we no longer produce leaders who can love as unconditionally as the de Gaulles? Anne’s love inspired and motivated one of the greatest leaders of the Twentieth Century. Perhaps we need more such lovers. And more capacity to love.

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In case you missed it, the appeal that was filed in the federal embryonic stem cell lawsuit regarding taxpayer funding, Sherley and Deisher et al. v. Sebelius et al., is moving forward.

The briefing schedule runs through March 12, 2012, and oral arguments are scheduled for April 23, 2012.

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Dear Friends,

We at the Family Research Council hope you and yours have a Christmas season that is rewarding, memorable, and Christ-focused.

Perhaps few have captured the magnitude of the Incarnation better than poet Christina Rossetti. In the second verse of her poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” she writes:

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

He came as a baby, and went on to grow “in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). That growth began in the womb: As science documents, babies in the womb are capable of absorbing much information. In the words of science writer Annie Murphy Paul:

The fetus, we now know, is not an inert blob, but an active and dynamic creature, responding and adapting as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will soon enter … The recognition that learning actually begins before birth leads us to a striking new conception of the fetus, the pregnant woman and the relationship between them.

The Savior Who was virgin-born was unique: Fully God and fully man. Yet all infants share a remarkable commonality with Him–they are sacred to God. Whether in the womb or outside of it, they deserve protection in law and welcome in life. The Bible teaches it. Science proves it. The Incarnation vindicates it.

Merry Christmas,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. For a moving presentation on the sanctity and dignity of every person, watch FRC’s lecture, “Down Syndrome: Death Sentence or Divine Smile,” hosted by the Director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, Jeanne Monahan.

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• “Homeschool still a popular option,” Matt Sabo, The Daily Press

Continue reading »

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Joseph Bottum argues in a rather grim new piece in The Weekly Standard that the Anglican Church is on the verge of falling apart, irrevocably, due to the serious theological divisions between Western communions (specifically the U.S. and the U.K.) and much of the rest of the Episcopalian world.

He notes that such things as abortion, homosexual “marriage,” and the ordination of practicing homosexuals are the drivers of the Anglican crack-up.  While these are the immediate causes, they are not the only ones.  For example, the theologically notorious John Shelby Spong, former Bishop of Newark, NJ, denies the authority of Scripture and all the essential doctrines of orthodox faith, including the existence of a “theistic” God and the resurrection of Jesus.  He remains an Episcopal priest in good standing.

The presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, Catherine Jefferts Schori, commenting on Jesus’ claim to the only way to God (“I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father, except through Me,” John 14:6), tells us the following:

I certainly don’t disagree with that statement that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. But the way it’s used is as a truth serum, or a touchstone: If you cannot repeat this statement, then you’re not a faithful Christian or person of faith. I think Jesus as way — that’s certainly what it means to be on a spiritual journey. It means to be in search of relationship with God. We understand Jesus as truth in the sense of being the wholeness of human expression. What does it mean to be wholly and fully and completely a human being? Jesus as life, again, an example of abundant life. We understand him as bringer of abundant life but also as exemplar. What does it mean to be both fully human and fully divine? Here we have the evidence in human form. So I’m impatient with the narrow understanding, but certainly welcoming of the broader understanding … in its narrow construction, it tends to eliminate other possibilities. In its broader construction, yes, human beings come to relationship with God largely through their experience of holiness in other human beings. Through seeing God at work in other people’s lives. In that sense, yes, I will affirm that statement. But not in the narrow sense, that people can only come to relationship with God through consciously believing in Jesus.

Got that?  Jesus didn’t mean what He said, and what He apparently meant is so intrinsically meaningless that He might as well not have said it.

Many in the global Anglican communion have retained an orthodox theology, but the combination of theological heterodoxy and sexual libertinism has doomed its Western branch to ecclesiastical oblivion.

So, if Bottum is correct, one of the world’s great Christian traditions is about to founder on Western insistence that biblical morality be cast off as worn, bigoted and archaic.  And it is those in the non-Western Anglican community who are most stoutly defending both orthodox theology and orthodox practice (e.g., marriage really is between one man and one woman–imagine that).

In his telling conclusion, Bottum writes: “Freed from their African anchor, the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in America will move even further in a pro-Muslim, anti-Israel direction, providing yet more cover for fashionable liberal anti-Semitism. Let loose from their allegiance to Canterbury, the African churches will quickly move toward forming pan-African denominations that will feel entirely distanced from Europe and America—and will help build the belief the global South owes nothing to the West.”

What the “global South owes … to the West” is debatable and secondary, even tertiary.  What Christians owe to their professed Lord is allegiance to His Word.  It is the latter debt that Western Anglicanism seems intent on not repaying.

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Thanks to theologian and author Scot McKnight for linking to my recent article on CNN and to the women at Her*menutics for tweeting on it. My article was related to Jesus’ command to occupy until he returns as contrasted with the nebulous goals and demands of the Occupy movement. The text I explored was Jesus’ parable of Ten Minas from Luke 19.

At the outset, it should be stated that the provocative title, “Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier” wasn’t chosen by me or my team at FRC. CNN changed the title which was originally “Jesus: Occupy Wall Street.”  CNN’s title doesn’t capture the nature of my argument, which was simply that given the Biblical affirmation of work from Genesis through Revelation, Jesus’ use of a market-based system of remuneration in this parable is instructive. Unlike some of those currently “occupying” around the nation, Jesus did not condemn the distribution of wealth based on initiative and diligence.

During my recent appearance on CNN I reiterated that parables use common activity to express a spiritual message.  In this particular parable, Jesus is telling his followers that the kingdom of God they believed he was going to set up on earth was not going to happen for a while, and he goes on to give instructions on what they should do with their lives until His return.  To do this he draws a parallel to certain positive functions of the business world.  He says, “Occupy until I return.”  In the Greek the term actually means “be engaged in business.”  This positive portrayal suggests that return based on honest effort is a just outcome.

Of course, this is in no way an endorsement of unethical or illegal activity that some on Wall Street and in business have engaged in.  Instead, Jesus’ parable refutes the idea that we will or should all be given the same outcomes regardless of what we do

Friday, Scot McKnight shared via Twitter:

“Read K Snodgrass, Stories with Intent. The parable has nothing to do with free enterprise but with kingdom responsibility.”

I agree with McKnight that the spiritual lesson here is primarily about kingdom responsibility. However, implicit in the parable is the idea that merit justifies greater reward – a principle essential to free-market capitalism.

Where greed, graft, and abuse have distorted the marketplace and exploited the vulnerable, Christians should rightly be brokenhearted and pursue justice. Yet to advocate, however, a government system which redistributes wealth en masse as a response to the abuses of the few, would mean losing the benefits of free moral agency available in a free market. One need look no further than levels of charitable giving prevalent in America as compared to socialized Western Europe.

The way to remedy exploitation and injustice is not by destroying the free market but repairing those elements of it which need restoration.  We cannot change human nature, but we can provide safeguards that restrain the excesses of human evil in the context of economic liberty — a liberty that promotes prosperity, freedom, and the health and well-being of individuals, families, and society.

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In a recent column on CNN online, science writer Annie Murphy Paul discusses her astonishment at finding myriad studies about what babies can learn in the womb.

Once considered a mundane field for the researcher, “[n]ow the nine months of gestation are the focus of intense interest and excitement,” she writes, “pregnancy is not a nine-month wait for the big event of birth, but a crucial period unto itself.”

Researchers are learning that much of what a mother experiences in her daily life is communicated to developing child, from the air she breathes and the food and drink she consumes even to the emotions she feels. Paul likens it to “biological postcards from the world outside.”

“The fetus, we now know, is not an inert blob, but an active and dynamic creature, responding and adapting as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will soon enter.” Amen to that.

The findings won’t shock the pro-lifer, but the fact that they’re gaining attention in the scientific community and are being reported in places like CNN online should cheer the pro-life soul. “The recognition that learning actually begins before birth leads us to a striking new conception of the fetus, the pregnant woman and the relationship between them.”

Some of Paul’s conclusions, though, seem to be a stretch. “By attending to such messages,” she writes, “the fetus learns the answers to questions critical to its survival: Will it be born into a world of abundance, or scarcity? Will it be safe and protected, or will it face constant dangers and threats? Will it live a long, fruitful life, or a short, harried one?” A bit deterministic, if you ask me, but I welcome her acknowledgment of the growing child’s sentience.

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This Christmas season has been very memorable for me and my wife especially now that Audrey, our 2-year-old, is old enough to participate in festivities such as decorating the Christmas tree. Since Thanksgiving, Audrey has danced around the house singing “Jingle Bells” and humming the tunes of Christmas carols that she hears throughout the day. Last Saturday, Audrey almost had the opportunity to experience another Christmas tradition for the first time — caroling. The three of us stood in line along with dozens of other customers at the U.S. Post Office located in the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. We were preparing our packages when Audrey tugged on my sleeve, saying “Daddy, Daddy, look.” I turned to see a bright smile on her face as she pointed to a trio of Christmas carolers entering the post office who looked like they had stepped off the theatre stage of “A Christmas Carol.” The gentleman of the group wore a top hat and the ladies were arrayed with shawls and bonnets. Dickens would be proud. Everyone turned their attention to the carolers in anticipation of that annual tradition that we’ve all experienced.

They were only a few notes into their carol when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw a scowling postal manager rushing to confront the carolers. He angrily told them that they had to leave immediately because they were “violating the post office’s policy against solicitation.” Everyone was momentarily frozen in astonishment before customers began booing the manager. Even in the face of protests from his customers, the manager wouldn’t back down.

The carolers explained that they were going to each business within the shopping center to sing a couple of carols — as they have done for many years. However, this was the first time that they had been turned away. The manager said he didn’t care and that they could take it up with the postmaster if they had a problem. “You can’t do this on government property,” he said. “You can’t go into Congress and sing” and so “you can’t do it here either,” he said smugly as the carolers turned sadly to leave. I encouraged them to file a complaint but they had little hope that a complaint would resolve anything and felt they had no choice but to acquiesce.

I later described the incident to a friend of mine who had worked for the post office for 26 years. He couldn’t imagine that there would be any policy that would prevent Christmas caroling at post offices. Indeed, a Google search will show examples of post office caroling during past Christmas seasons.

Over the last several years, we have watched militant secularists team up with federal bureaucrats in the effort to sterilize the public square of anything remotely connected to anything religious. This postal manager has clearly received the memo which has led him to stamp out Christmas caroling. But I have my own memo to all the Christmas carolers out there. Let’s not surrender to the secularist version of Christmas future. Let’s hold onto Christmases of past and do our part to pass that on to our children. As for me, I am taking at least one piece of advice from the postal manager and will send my own comment to the General Postmaster. The U.S. Constitution in no way prevents the government from accommodating Christmas caroling. I invite you to send your own memo (or email in this case) to pmgceo@usps.gov or call 1-800-275-8777.

Ben Franklin, the founder of the U.S. Post Office once said, “So shalt thou always live jollily; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.” The U.S. Post Office and all of us would do well to heed Franklin’s advice.

UPDATE: Sign FRC’s petition affirming Christmas

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There’s something interesting going on here. The Washington Post is reporting the top show for conservatives is the long running home improvement franchise, This Old House. Meanwhile, the tops for liberals is the irreverently humorous and oh so snarky, ”The Daily Show” (The analysis does not include news, sports or music programming).

Now I don’t lean Jon Stewart’s way politically, but I’ve seen enough of his show to catch the appeal. If you like shooting fish in a barrel, and you already believe conservatives are those unfortunate fish, then Jon’s your guy. He’s in the tear-down business, and supplies a lot of Americans (young people in particular) with what passes for news. Not surprisingly, I’m not one of them.

On the other hand, after Saturday cartoons wrap up, my boys and I will often watch This Old House. Or as they like to call it, “The Man Show.” I’ll never forget the day we were watching the program and my oldest son asked me, “Dad, who are the bad guys?” He’s four, so I didn’t tell him, “Jon Stewart.” Only kidding, Jon.

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