“I’ve taken the position as a presidential candidate and someone in Congress that Planned Parenthood funds and does abortions,” Santorum explained. “They’re a private organization they stand up and support what ever they want.”

“I don’t believe that breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization where you’ve seen ties to cancer and abortion,” he added. “So, I don’t think it’s a particularly healthy way of contributing money to further cause of breast cancer, but that’s for a private organization like Susan B. Komen to make that decision.”

Santorum Suggests Abortion Causes Breast Cancer

If you read this far and don’t know what the issue is or why Santorum is an idiot then check out the link where I got the quote.

The gist is that recent studies have debunked any connection between abortion and breast cancer.

Besides that Planned Parenthood isn’t only abortion services.

(source of the chart)

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His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.

This might not be so surprising if Obama had presented himself as a conventional secular liberal. But he has always held himself to a more inclusive standard.

…

As a general matter, it made perfect sense to cover contraception. Many see doing so as protecting women’s rights, and expanded contraception coverage will likely reduce the number of abortions. While the Catholic Church formally opposes contraception, this teaching is widely ignored by the faithful. One does not see many Catholic families of six or 10 or twelve that were quite common in the 1950s. Contraception might have something to do with this.

Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.

Obama’s breach of faith over contraceptive ruling

Dionne’s comments are disturbing because he feels that an exemption to the contraceptive coverage rules should apply to “Catholic universities or social-service agencies and hospitals that help tens of thousands of non-Catholics.”

I agree that the actual church should be exempt to the rule but not their services that help tens of thousands of non-Catholics. Once their services operated “off campus”, as it were, then they should have to abide by rules and laws the rest of us have to abide by too. Especially when it comes to health services, why should a particular sectarian belief system impose their religion on an innocent person, who may not hold the same beliefs, in need of non-judgmental medical help.

It would be interesting to see if E.J. Dionne would support or be against Pharmacists who want to deny medication and services if providing them would conflict with their religious beliefs? What about a Doctor who refuses to treat homosexuals? Or how about Parents who refuse to get their children medical treatment because it is against their religious beliefs?

Why should a hospital, a university, or social service agency be allowed an exemption just because the owner happens to be a church?

The Catholic Church has an easy out if they don’t like it. Close it all down. Get out of the medical, education, and social-service industries.

That is much better than allowing sectarian exemptions to health care insurance rules that affects non-members.

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There can be a community of atheists and they can put up what they choose. I believe this community here is not a community of atheists. I believe this is a community of Christians and it’s exciting to see they’re finally pulling together.

The first sentence sets up her idea that we live in homogeneous communities and it seems that she feels Christians should have a special status in her community but not atheists. Then she builds on that point by claiming – falsely that Lancaster Ohio was only a Christian community. Then she ends by saying she is excited that Christians are pulling together. This infers that her “community” is being attacked.

The Nativity scene in question had been installed in a city park for 25 years and no one complained until an atheist did in 1999. Instead of including items reflecting atheism the city removed it from the park and moved it across the street to property owned by a bank. I was not able to find out if the city adopted special rules for returning the scene to the park.

In Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984):

Justice O’Connor, in her concurring opinion, offered a “clarification” of how the Establishment Clause should be read:

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. One is excessive entanglement with religious institutions …The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.

This is sometimes referred to as the “Endorsement Test.” A law which fails this test is found to be unconstitutional because it “endorses” religion or religious beliefs in such a way that it tells those who agree that they are favored insiders and those who disagree that they are disfavored outsiders. The other side of the coin would be the “disapproval” of religion or religious beliefs in such a way that those who agree with the beliefs are told that they are disfavored outsiders while those who disagree with the beliefs are told that they are favored insiders.

What Justice O’Connor describes is [fill in majority religion] privilege. That is why the woman in the news report was wrong then and would be wrong today if she spoke the same words.

It is not the job of government to cheerlead for a particular religion. It makes those who dissent feel like disfavored outsiders.

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Senators legally could keep the bears, but lawmakers must report any gifts worth more than $25 on their financial-disclosure forms. Some lawmakers do not like to accept gifts that must be reported, and some do not want the hassle of keeping track of them for a report that is due in spring 2013.

Although there has been some question about the cost of a bear, Statehouse sources think it ranges from $30 to $35.

Most senators return anti-abortion teddy bears

But further on in the article was something that gave me a chuckle:

Some in the Statehouse also took notice that the teddy bears, bought from Build-A-Bear, were made in China, a country with a one-child policy and millions of abortions each year.

Yes using a product from a country with millions of abortions to promote your anti-abortion law…. can you say tone deaf and blind.

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The recent Ohio House Bill 125, aka the “Heartbeat” Bill, would prohibit an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected. This usually happens as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. One common argument anti-abortionists use for needing such laws is to save the lives of unborn children. In a recent newspaper interview, one of the authors of the bill stated the real reason anti-abortionists want the ‘heartbeat’ bill passed. It’s all about ending legal abortion not saving lives.

Linda Theis, of Findlay, Ohio, has been involved in the anti-abortion movement since the 1970′s. In a profile and interview in the Findlay Courier she gave her reasons for joining the effort to take away a woman’s right to choose:

Theis said the abortion issue wasn’t really on her radar until she attended a meeting of a Heartbeat pregnancy group in the 1970s, where she was given information about abortion and Roe v. Wade.

Theis remembered thinking, “Oh my gosh, we are killing kids. How can this be?”

During the 1974-75 school year, she spoke about the abortion issue to some high school students in Hancock County.

“A couple of my friends who were teachers called and said, ‘We’ve got to talk to these kids about this. They just think they’re getting unpregnant. They don’t even know what’s going on,’” she recalled.

Theis said it was not uncommon for students to take “field trips” to abortion clinics.

“At that time, there were numbers of schools in northwest Ohio who were taking kids to abortion clinics during school hours. There was no parental notice, no parental consent, there was nothing then,” she said.

She’s at the heart of ‘heartbeat bill’

And then when speaking about drafting the ‘heartbeat’ bill she said:

“We just kept thinking we’d been doing things to legislate abortion a little bit, to regulate abortion a little bit, but we’d never done anything that would legally put an end to any of the procedures,” she said.

Theis, [Janet] Porter and the others discussed several new strategies, but finally settled on the heartbeat.

“A heartbeat makes so much sense because everybody can relate to that,” Theis said. “When my husband’s heart stopped beating last year, he was dead. We don’t bury people with heartbeats. And nobody wants to take away a life that we know is already there. The heartbeat indicates that.”

Yes the ‘heartbeat’ bill was created to “put an end to any of the procedures”. The ‘heartbeat bill’ is about ending legal abortion not saving lives. Abortion won’t end it will just go back to the alleys and secret clinics where women in need will roll the dice and hopefully not be butchered or die during the procedure.

As the ACLU notes:

Pregnancies are among the most important and deeply personal life experiences a family encounters. Every pregnancy is different — and so is every family. When a woman discovers she is pregnant, she often must discuss with her loved ones intensely personal issues such as health concerns, finances, and other needed childcare resources. These discussions often allow families to make the best decisions about healthcare for their circumstances.

H. B. 125 would take the ability to make healthcare decisions away from families. If the bill passes into law, the ACLU has promised a court challenge.

Why Ohio’s “Heartbeat Bill” is Truly Heartless

The idea that women who choose to have abortions feel nothing but only that they are now “unpregnant” is outlandishly irrational thinking and to want to force those women to have their babies is extremely arrogant. Besides it’s opposite of the usual conservative mantra of smaller government. I guess that means smaller as long as it keeps you from having an abortion. These are the same people crying about the individual mandate included in Health Care Reform.

Janet Folger Porter

The other co-author of HB 125 is Janet Folger Porter, who is rock star in the Forced-Birth Terrorist community. After serving for several years as legislative director for Ohio Right to Life, Porter moved up to National Director for the Center for Reclaiming America, founded by Dr. D. James Kennedy. She previous had a radio show on VCY America, a conservative evangelical radio network. Her show was cancelled in 2010 because she was promoting dominionism and VCY thought that was too radical for their network.

Porter’s claim that her radio program was dropped because VCY didn’t like somebody that prayed at her prayer rally is absolutely false, as the station made clear in its announcement that she had ignored the their repeated warnings about her embrace of Dominion Theology.

Once Dropped For Dominionism, Porter Still Insists She “Never Even Heard Of That Term”

So the ‘heartbeat’ bill she is trying to push through is part of her idea to impose her theism onto Ohioians and then the nation.

Another good reason to stop this law.

*Update 01/17/2012*

In the Courier article Linda Theis claimed that public schools were taking field trips to abortion clinics:

Theis said it was not uncommon for students to take “field trips” to abortion clinics.

“At that time, there were numbers of schools in northwest Ohio who were taking kids to abortion clinics during school hours. There was no parental notice, no parental consent, there was nothing then,” she said.

I was too young in the mid 70′s to be aware of this going on so I asked my Mom if she knew of such a thing going on back then. She said that Roe v. Wade was decided in 1972 and that made it legal to get an abortion. There was still a cultural block to getting an abortion. It wasn’t publicized or discussed in public like it is in 2012. Planned Parenthood was in Findlay but there weren’t any clinics around performing on demand abortion except in Toledo.

She said that what might have happened is that some school Counselor might have recommended girls in trouble visit Planned Parenthood and they might have then helped girls locate a clinic.

Except for Toledo, Northwest Ohio has always been very conservative. There would be no way schools would be having field trips to abortion clinics without the community losing its mind. That would be something that couldn’t be done in secret for very long.

When I was in 6th grade, around 1980, our school district started sex education. The religious zealots lost their mind then and I don’t ever remember any major protests about abortion before that.

My guess is Theis is using the classic scare tactic that some nasty abortionists are luring your children to have abortions without your knowledge or consent and that is bad….

But I am still open to reading or seeing actual proof that such field trips took place or school personnel were taking girls to clinics without telling the parents in the 1970′s

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