A Lethal Change in Language

In the passion of progressives to replace the historic and noble ideals of Western Civilization with secularism, hedonism, and statism, they understood that one of the first steps in their plan of conquest was to change the language in which the issues were framed.  For instance, the violent, immoral, and lethal act of elective abortion was eased into the social landscape by calling it a “voluntary interruption of pregnancy” or “an evacuation of uterine content” or the “restoration of normal menstrual function.”  The change in language helped progressives persuade the gullible and thus created dramatic changes in social practice.

It wasn’t rational.  It wasn’t right.  But, for passive people who had already surrendered much of their Christian heritage, their thinking, and their moral code for the self-centeredness of secularism, it worked.

Another vivid illustration of how changes in expression preceded (and thus helped to accelerate) dramatic culture shifts had taken place several years earlier and it too concerned abortion. The issue in that case was early abortions caused by chemicals and devices. You see, the proponents of the sexual revolution and its “sister cause,” the population control movement needed to overcome not only the obstacles of moral traditions, but they had to somehow get around the basic science governing human reproduction.  

For the science itself couldn’t be clearer. Indeed, any embryology textbook will lay out the fact that conception occurs when the sperm fertilizes the egg.  At that very moment a new life begins. After that, it's all about growth and development.  The scientific realities do not change. They cannot change. But distorting and denying the science, controlling social trends, and using false propaganda to change minds -- including the sinister manipulation of language? Well, those are other things altogether.

The language employed to describe human reproduction first began to change in the 1960s when population control advocates were looking to sell so-called “birth control” chemicals and devices among cultures that had a high respect for prenatal life. The problem was that the action of the pills and IUDs acted (at least some of the time) after conception. That is, they didn't always prevent conception. But they did prevent the embryonic human being from developing any further. That is abortion.

The primary techniques utilized by these misnamed drugs and devices was to prevent the developing person (already begun at conception and now growing quite rapidly as he or she made their way down the fallopian tube) from implanting in the wall of the cervix or, if implantation did occur, to forcibly dislodge the embryo from its new home in the womb. But remember, this is all after conception. These drugs and devices destroy lives that have already begun.

Once again, the science couldn’t be clearer.  And the science cannot change.  Therefore, for the progressives to fool the public, they went after the words. The population control advocates (and others who wanted to promote the sexual revolution) pressured groups like the American Medical Association to simply ignore the science and change their definition of conception, moving it somewhere “further down the line” from fertilization.

But where along the timeline of the prenatal child’s development could that new definition be placed? For claiming that conception occurs anywhere except the moment of fertilization would be completely arbitrary, completely unscientific, and completely untrue. For, once again, the scientific reality couldn’t be clearer -- a new life has already begun at fertilization and will continue until…well, until death.

The response from the population controllers? “Put the new definition of conception anywhere you want -- as long as it’s after the abortifacient action that these new drugs and devices utilize. You see, we can’t push the product in certain countries (like Catholic Mexico or Hindu India or Muslim Syria) if the people there realize they act post-conception. They don’t want abortion on their conscience. So, help us change the definition so that we can sell these ‘birth control’ drugs and devices as preventing pregnancy rather than stopping a pregnancy that’s already underway.”

That’s exactly what happened. Though it makes no scientific sense, though it’s a lie of the most arrogant and dastardly design, the definition of conception was disconnected from fertilization and linked instead to the embryo's implantation in the uterine wall. The effects of this lie have been universally damaging to life, health, family, and culture. And, of course, along the way, untold millions of preborn boys and girls have been destroyed. 

Of course, re-defining conception isn’t the only case where changing language was a sinister prelude to cataclysmic social change.  We see the tactic used everywhere in the culture wars.  Indeed, we live in an Orwellian world in which lies, distortion, omission, manipulation, and obfuscation fill the very air we breathe.  It is an atmosphere whose pollution is added to daily by politicians, academia, Hollywood, judges, Madison Avenue, the mainstream press, and the diversity classes your employer now requires you to attend.

But make no mistake, behind all these sources is the father of lies, he who has been wickedly determined (from his very first rebellion against God) to blind men’s minds, to spread lies, to hinder the proclamation of truth, to call evil good and good evil. Tragically, there have been many men and women giving the devil a lot of help in this campaign.

In stark contrast, however, the faithful Christian calls things by their right name. No snow. No spin. No shuck and jive. We are called to be truth-tellers, light-bearers, and prophets -- courageously, consistently and, as winsomely as possible, speaking the truth in love.

In this post-Christian phase of American history, there are certain lies which need to be opposed with particularly intense and concerted efforts. And among them are the ones I’ve described above. They are lies that have ushered in the silent holocaust of abortion as well as stimulating such corollary evils as physician-assisted suicide, lethal human experimentation, infanticide, and the deliberate cheapening of human life throughout all levels of society.

It was to help counter this dissembling culture of death that Claire and I formed Vital Signs Ministries more than 40 years ago. And, because the liars and cheats haven’t gone away, it is what we’re still about today. Of course, we serve in this mission alongside many, many others who haven’t given in or given up. For despite the enveloping cloud of lies in our era, the Holy Spirit reminds us that the obedient Christian can indeed overcome evil with good. Not only can we escape the tyranny of lies ourselves, but we can also even beat them back as they try to claim new victims. 

So refuse to compromise with the lies, distortions, and manipulations of language for evil purposes. Instead, shine as a light in the darkness; speak the truth in love; and call things by their right names.

Postscript -- Do the exhortations in this brief essay also apply to the Christian’s responsibility to address the lies about evolution, sexual practice, gender manipulation, the claims of false religions, and so on? No doubt about it. 

What Did They Say About Abortion? (Part 1)

Here are several appropriate quotations regarding the sanctity of life and the abhorrent evil of abortion. They are from a variety of sources, some that may well surprise you. But please note that the reason I’m posting these brief statements is not merely to encourage and inspire you, but that you yourself will now pass along these quotes in your letters, conversations, social media posts, etc. Never forget that these truths are under constant attack in our culture so we must take our responsibility to counter the lies with the truth. 

To that end I suggest this – copy these quotations; put them on your text edit page or in a notebook; and use them in the weeks to come (one or two at a time) in your correspondence. And, yes; look for another couple of installment of quotes here on Vital Signs Blog in the coming days.

And one more suggestion. Please utilize the other resources of Vital Signs Ministries relevant to the purpose of shining the light of truth regarding the sanctity of life including Key Scripture Passages Relating to the Sanctity of Human Life, Views on Abortion From Church History, An Old Testament Defense of Preborn Children: A Brief Exposition of Exodus 21:22-25, and so on.

“Thou shalt not destroy thy conceptions before they are brought forth; nor kill them after they are born. Thou shalt love thy neighbor more than thy own life. Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion.” (Barnabas, The Epistle of Barnabas 14:11, circa AD 125)

“We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life “the unborn “without diminishing the value of all human life.” (President Ronald Reagan)

“The first feminists were pro-life. Elizabeth C. Stanton called abortion ‘evil.’ Sarah F. Norton called abortion a ‘crime.’ Susan B. Anthony called abortion ‘child murder.’ Alice Paul called abortion ‘child murder.’ Alice Paul called abortion the ‘ultimate exploitation of women.’” (Lila Rose)

In answering the slanderous charge that Christian that Christians were cannibals who took the body and drank the blood of Jesus Christ, Athenagoras wrote in his Legatio (165 AD): “How could we kill a man -- we who say that women who take drugs to procure abortion are guilty of homicide and that they will have to answer to God for this abortion? One cannot at the same time believe that the fetus in the womb is a living being -- as such in God’s care -- and kill one already brought forth into the light.”

“Moreover, those, too, who give drugs causing abortion are deliberate murderers themselves, as well as those receiving the poison which kills the fetus.” (Basil the Great, Canon, 4th Century)

From a 1963 pamphlet by Planned Parenthood: “Abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.”

“A high view of Scripture and a high view of life go hand-in-hand. You cannot be faithful to what the Bible teaches about the value of human life and be in favor of abortion.” (Francis Schaeffer)

“We regard the destruction by parents of their offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against God and against nature.” (Presbyterian Convention, Pittsburgh 1869)

“To accept the fact that, after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical conception. It is plain experimental evidence.” (Dr. Jerome Lejeune, French geneticist and recipient of the Kennedy Prize and the William Allen Memorial Medal for his discovery of the genetic basis of Down’s syndrome.)

“You shall not slay a child by abortion.” (The Didache or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles which was a 2nd century catechism for young converts to Christianity. Also from this document comes this statement, “The Way of Death is filled with people who are…murderers of children and abortionists of God’s creatures.”

“The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion…because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for me to kill you and you to kill me…there is nothing in between.” (Mother Teresa) 

“We’re living in an age of genocide…And we do believe that there is not only the genocide of war, and the genocide that took place with the extermination of the Jews, but the whole program…of birth control and abortion is another form of genocide…They claim the poor are bringing forth tremendous numbers of children and so the solution is to kill them off.” (Dorothy Day, American advocate for justice and peace; founded the Catholic Worker Movement.)

“There are women who swallow drugs to stifle in their own womb the beginnings of a man to be -- committing infanticide before they even give birth to the infant.” (Minucius Felix, Octavius, circa AD 180.)

“There was a time when our enemies wore white hoods and drove old pickups. But today, they wear white lab coats and drive Jaguars. For our [black] community, the real weapon of mass destruction is the suction machine at the local Planned Parenthood.” (Dr. Johnny Hunter)

“Once impregnation has taken place it is no longer a question of whether the persons concerned have the responsibility for a possible parenthood; they have become parents.” (Helmut Thielicke)

“The child, by reason of higher physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.” (United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of the Child, November 1959)

Melinda Gates a Heroine? An Open Letter to Costco

Dear Costco,

I have appreciated your general policy in keeping your company out of the intense controversies that so divide the country. Therefore, I was greatly disappointed to see you feature Melinda Gates, one of the most prominent and powerful proponents of abortion, in the cover story of the May issue of your magazine. To hail someone who has championed so ardently for surgical and chemical abortion (under such deliberately deceptive terms as “family planning” and “reproductive health care”) is to join in the sorrowful business. And that’s much different than avoiding the tensions of the culture wars.

The article does emphasize that there are grave, complicated problems that need to be addressed throughout the world. And those problems do include health care, malnutrition, housing, transportation, empowerment and responsibility. But the answers to such difficulties will never be solved by organizations that so utterly fail to appreciate the inherent right to life of all human beings...including the unborn children that are so crassly dismissed by pro-abortion organizations like the Gates Foundation.

By the way, one of the photos that accompanied that story showed Gates involved with a project organized by Marie Stopes International, one of the largest, most notorious abortion businesses in the world. Very sad.

I humbly suggest that Costco be more sensitive to the moral convictions of so many of your family and faith-oriented customers and therefore carefully avoid highlighting people, organizations, and ideologies that present such extreme and, in this case, such unjust and violent actions as destroying preborn boys and girls.

Thank you for your consideration of this very serious matter.

Rev. Dennis Hartford
Director, Vital Signs Ministries
Omaha, Nebraska

What To Read on Inauguration Eve? (Try These.)

* “7 Things Trump Should Include on His Religious Freedom To-Do List” 
(Liberty McArtor, The Stream)

* “Sponsors of Anarchy” (Michelle Malkin, Creators Syndicate)

* “After Ignoring Obama Scandals For 8 Years, Reporters Are Now Making Them Up About Trump” (Editorial, Investor’s Business Daily)

* “Brennan, the Russian Dossier and Obama's Grand Political Strategy” (Lee Smith, Weekly Standard)

* “What Trump Is Up Against” (Steven Hayward, Power Line)

* “Why liberals just love to set terrorists free” (Bob McManus, New York Post)

* “Obama scores the worst legislative record in history: Signed fewer bills into law than one-term Carter” (Stephen Dinan, Washington Times)

* “Report: Schools Are Teaching Kids To Hate America Under The Guise Of ‘Civics’” (Joy Pullmann, The Federalist)

* “Border Patrol Alters Stats to Hide Release of Criminal Aliens, High Recidivism” (Judicial Watch)

* “A list of the most insane things uttered by the abortion activist speaking at the Vatican next month” (Claire Chretien, Life Site News)

Midweek Roundup (And Really Good Ones, At That)

* “Obama’s Commutation of Manning Sentence Sends a Horrible Message to Service Personnel” (Cully Stimson, Daily Signal)

* “The Assassination of Donald Trump: Except it’s not working.” (Ben Stein, American Spectator)

* “Outgoing Obama has granted more commutations than the past 12 Presidents Combined” (Will Kirby, Daily Express)

* “‘Women’s March’ Ousts Pro-Life Feminists from Protest” (Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart)

* “Safe Spaces for Fascists” (Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine)

* “CNN Contributor Considers These Men ‘Mediocre Negroes’? (Michael Brown, The Stream)

* “Democratic Senator: Russian Interference Had An Impact On The Election Results — No, They Didn’t” (Matt Vespa, Town Hall)

* “Trump's NATO blunder” (Washington Examiner editorial)

* “These eight US states have shrunk in 2016: U.S. population growth is at an 80 year low.” (Shannon Roberts, Mercator)

* “Dear Younger Me, Don’t Abandon Orthodoxy” (Chelsen Vicari, Juicy Ecumenism)

* “EPA Stiffs the People It Injured” (John Hinderaker, Power Line)

A Few "Don't Miss" Articles

There are a still a few journalists worthy of the name -- men and women and publications that care about truth, relevance, character, and moral virtue. Here are a few from recent days that I heartily recommend.

* “America’s Worst President?” (Myron Magnet, City Journal)

* “It Took 19 Tortured Interpretations of the Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook” (Rachel Alexander, The Stream)

* “Rigged 101” (Rich Lowry, Jewish World Review)

* “Potential Trump VP on abortion: 'Women have to be able to choose’” (Vaughn Hillyard & Carrie Dann, NBC News)

* “Obama and Company Decline to Speak Honestly About Dallas” (Paul Mirengoff, Power Line)

* “Socialism’s Support for Abortion Drove Whittaker Chambers to Faith” (Jonathan Leaf, The Stream)

* “Orgy of Guilt” (Mona Charen, Jewish World Review)

* “Media Ignore the Tsunami of Black Violence against Cops” (Colin Flaherty, American Thinker)

*  “The meaning of the baby bust” (Joel Kotkin & Wendell Cox, Orange County Register)

Doomsters vs Boomsters? In Which Camp Are You?

Who do you side with, the Doomsters or the Boomsters? Have you, for instance, bought into the alarmism over population growth? Do you believe in the violent end of society as we know it because we’re running out of oil? Do you still feel the chills when you remember what your public school teachers taught you from the books of Paul Erlich and Rachel Carson?

Then you need to check out the calmer, more sensible perspectives from people who value reality over panic, genuine scientists who bring evidence to the table instead of political and ideological fixations.

A great start — and, I mean, a really great start — is to watch these two short videos. They are enlightening to the max. They’re also very well done, using both facts and fun to communicate remarkably important messages. Theses quick films are entitled “Why Haven’t We All Starved to Death” and “Why Haven’t We Run Out of Oil?” They are produced by Passing Lane Films from Pacific Research Institute. They are written and directed by Erin Michelle Kruger and are based on “Environmental Alarmism in Context: Hysteria’s History” by Dr. Amy Kaleita with Gregory R. Forbes. 

(Thanks to Stephen Hayward over at Power Line for the alert.)

Ten Eco-Villains the Green Movement Ignores

To mark last week's global commemoration of Earth Day, the wise and witty guys over at Mercator opted to skip the whining against big oil which mark practically all the stories you hear from the old guard media. Instead, they listed 10 major ecological problems that never get mentioned.

I'm going to list the ten eco-villains they name below but you really need to go check out the paragraph or two of supporting information that the Mercator writers provide for each culprit. It makes for eye-opening reading indeed.

It’s Earth Day again, an occasion on which to reflect on our sins against the environment and make resolutions to clean up our act. We are familiar with the usual suspects: overpopulation, oil companies, overpopulation, chocolate, cattle farmers, the coal industry… and did I mention overpopulation?

Well, forget all that. Here’s our top 10 eco-villains, most of them getting away with ecological murder to date.

1. Underpopulation. 

2. Big cities. 

3. Consumerism.

4. Solo living. 

5. Big government. 

6. Coffee. 

7. Weather in the United States. 

8. People who don’t like being cold (and that’s most of us). 

9. Facebook. 

10. Al Gore. 

A Few "Oh, My" Articles You Shouldn't Miss

* “President Obama, disregarding his own red line, dithers on Ukraine” (Editorial Board, Washington Post)

* “Thousands die of thirst and poor care in NHS” (Padraic Flanagan and Laura Donnelly, Telegraph)

* “Obama to free hundreds of drug felons under clemency rules designed to un-do mandatory sentences from 'War on Drugs' era” (David Martosko, Daily Mail)

* “10 million new babies? China’s hope for boom likely to become policy bust” (Cheryl Wetzstein, Washington Times)

* “Less Than Half of GA ObamaCare ‘Enrollees’ Have Paid for Plans” (Wynton Hall, Breitbart)

* “How Media Helps Push Us Off Suicide Cliff” (Wesley J. Smith, National Review)

Income Inequality -- The Professionals Are Ignoring The Breakdown of the Family

Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can't change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn't some suspect that the scientists who raised these claims were driven by something—ideology, tobacco money—other than science?

Yet in the current discussions about increased inequality, few researchers, fewer reporters, and no one in the executive branch of government directly addresses what seems to be the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States: the rise of single-parent families during the past half century…

As Lucianne Goldberg said in her link to this article, “Some things are so simple.”

But then again, to progressives who are hellbent on destroying those values of Western civilization that made society work (religious freedom, property rights, justice, marriage and the family, a strong work ethic, individual responsibility, limitation of government interference, etc.), even the simplest truths will be ignored.

Read the rest of “Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families,” the excellent article by Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch article here in the Wall Street Journal.

Overpopulation? Really? Here's a Revealing Look.

I know the graphic below is just a picture but it certainly makes one think quite differently about those continual alarms about how Planet Earth is collapsing under the sheer weight of way, way too many people.

I mean, if the whole world's population (read that carefully, the whole world's population -- that means India, China, Nigeria, and everywhere else!) could fit in Texas and still have the individual living space that New York City residents have...Well, I guess those overpopulation alarms are just as wild, as politically-motivated, and as dead wrong as they can be.

This isn't to say that there are not extremely serious problems we need to tackle -- hunger, health, housing, poverty, crime, and spiritual desperation -- but it does underscore that the problem is NOT the number of people the earth contains. So, please...can we not finally stop the counter-productive efforts that fly under the flag of "population control" and get to work instead on the true needs of hurting people?

Tuesday's "Two Cents Worth"

Actually, each of the articles I'm listing this morning are worth a lot more than two cents. Indeed, some of them are invaluable.

* “Obama's Loafer Nation” (Ed Lasky, Weekly Standard)

* “Obama Rewrites ObamaCare: Another day, another lawless exemption, once again for business.” (Editorial, Wall Street Journal)

* “Planned Parenthood Gets Away With Killing a Woman in an Abortion” (Cheryl Sullenger, LifeNews)

* “The One Child Policy Revisited” (Marcus Roberts, Mercator)

* “Socialism, Not Access to Care, Is Obama's Prize” (David Limbaugh column)

* “Poof: A Scandal Disappears” (Mona Charen column)

Behind the Olympic Glitz, Russia Is a Sad Nation

Communism is not a good thing. Nor does its various elements (godlessness, tyranny, violence against its own, irrational economic planning, corruption, repression, and an anti-life social agenda) bring anything but poison to the people controlled by it.

Here's a look from Ann Morse over at the Population Research Institute that takes into account Russia's long history of poverty, hopelessness, and abortion.

Russia should be a population controller’s dream come true: it has had consistently low fertility, vast amounts of natural resources and a shrinking population—in fact, Russia has shrunk by 13 million people [in the last 20 years].

But instead of being the poster-child for the population control movement, Russia is instead a public health disaster.

* Russian women on average have 3 abortions for every 4 births, which is actually an improvement from their past; only since 2007 has the number of annual births in Russia outnumbered the number of annual abortions.

* Russia has dangerous patterns of alcohol consumption: the average Russian consumes 10-12 gallons of vodka per year (that’s a half cup of vodka per day).

* Suicide rates in Russia are 2-3 times higher than in the US or Europe: they have the second highest rate of male suicide in the world, and their female suicide rate is also among the top ten worst in the world.

* The average Russian lives only 70 years. Russian men fare even worse with an average life expectancy of a mere 64 years.

* Among countries with more than a million people, Russia has the highest divorce rate in the world.

Read the rest of Morse's article here.

Japan's Population Problems Are Serious...And Strange

How goes post-modernism in Japan?

Let's see...

The dreaded birth dearth.

Love hotels.

A dramatic stigma against working women and the most unhelpful of dads.

And the hikikomori (hundreds of thousands of young men who eschew human contact and spend their days playing video games and reading comics in their parents' homes).

Read about all this and more in "Everything you need to know about Japan's population crisis” from Sarah Eberspacher at The Week.

Contrary to Reports, China Is Not Ending It’s Brutal “One Child Only” Policy

Under the misleading headline “China to Ease One-Child Policy,” Xinhua News Agency reported last Friday that China will now lift the ban on a second child, if either parent is an only child. It is already the case that couples can have a second child if both parents are themselves only children. This minor adjustment will not “ease” the one-child policy. It will merely tweak it.

Indeed, in apparent response to quell overly optimistic speculation that this small change represents a major reform, Xinhua ran another report over the weekend: “Birth Policy Changes Are No Big Deal.” In this second article Xinhua states that Wang Pei’an, deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), told Xinhua that “the number of couples covered by the new policy is not very large across the country.”…

He concluded that “the basic state policy of family planning will be adhered to over a long period of time.”

In other words, the minor modification of the policy announced Friday: 1) will not affect a large percentage of couples in China; 2) is not subject to a timetable in which to implement it; 3) retains the dreaded “birth intervals” between children (if a woman gets pregnant before the interval has lapsed, she may be subject to forced abortion); 4) makes no promise to end the coercive enforcement of the policy; and 5) promises to continue the one-child policy “over a long period of time” — which could be decades.

To say that China has “relaxed” or “eased” its one-child policy under these circumstances is entirely unwarranted. Furthermore, all the reasons given for this adjustment are economic or demographic:  China’s dwindling labor force, the country’s growing elderly population, and the severe gender imbalance. The adjustment is a tacit acknowledgement that continuation of the one-child policy will lead to economic and demographic disaster. The policy was originally instituted for economic reasons. It is ironic that through this very policy, China has written its own economic, demographic death sentence.

Noticeably absent from the Chinese Communist party’s announcement is any mention of human rights. Even though it will now allow some couples to have a second child, China has not promised to end forced abortion, forced sterilization, or forced contraception. The coercive enforcement of China’s one-child policy is its core…

…Last Friday the mainstream media ran such headlines as “China Reforms: One-child policy to be relaxed” and “China to ease One Child Policy.” Such headlines are detrimental to sincere efforts to stop forced abortion in China, because they imply that the one-child policy is no longer a problem. In a world laden with compassion fatigue, people are relieved to cross China’s one-child policy off of their list of things to worry about.

But we cannot do that. Let us not abandon the women of China, who continue to face forced abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy. The one-child policy does not need to be adjusted. It needs to be abolished.

(From “China Hasn’t ‘Eased’ Its One-Child Policy” by Reggie Littlejohn, NRO)

It's Not Only China and India: Gendercide in the Caucasus

Xavier Symons issued this brief report in BioEdge.

An international team of researchers has identified massive sex-selection problems in the Caucasus. The study, published this month in the journal International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, indicates that three post-Soviet states have boy-to-girl ratios at birth of at least 116. The normal ratio is about 105.

Armenia (117), Azerbaijan (116) and Georgia (121) have overall ratios equal to or higher than China and India (118 and 111 respectively). In Armenia the situation is particularly dire; the first child sex ratio is 137 and if the first child is a girl, the ratio for the second is off the charts at 154.

The authors provided a number of possible causes for the sex disparity, which has greatly increased since the 1980s. One key factor is the increasingly availability of ultrasounds from the mid-1980s.

They also speculate that ethnic conflicts may have indirectly influenced sex-selection: “such situations, by virtue of their extended nature and the general mobilization they entail, might greatly diminish women’s bargaining powers in the public and private spheres, such that men’s preference for sons determines couples’ reproductive and family planning practices.”

The Economist suggested that there has been a revival of traditional ‘son-valuing’ and a breakdown of the egalitarian attitudes of the Soviet era. 

International Day of the Girl Child

Today, October 11, is International Day of the Girl Child.  It was established by the UN in 2011 “to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.”  It is a “girl’s right” not to be deleted from existence just because she’s a girl.  It is the “unique challenge” of girls in China and India to emerge from their mothers’ wombs alive, so that they may draw breath upon this earth and see the light of day.

For most of us, hearing “it’s a girl” is cause for enormous joy, happiness and celebration.  But in many countries, this announcement is a death sentence.  Experts estimate that up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to gendercide, mostly in China and India.

This should not be a pro-choice or a pro-life issue.  This is a human rights issue. Gendercide is violence against women and girls.  No one supports the systematic elimination of females.

Or so I thought.  Just last week it was reported that it is now legal to selectively abort girls in the UK.

Where is the “feminist” outcry? How does it advance women’s rights to selectively abort hundreds of millions of girls, simply because they are future women? When faced with human rights atrocities of this scale, silence is complicity...

Read more of Reggie Littlejohn's essay right here.

Don't Miss These

* "The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain" (John Nolte, Breitbart)

* "Obama Overplays His Shutdown Hand" (Investor's Business Daily editorial)

* "Why The Left Can Never Be Trusted With Power" (Steven Hayward, PowerLine)

* "It’s obvious why people don’t trust ObamaCare" (Michael Tanner, New York Post)

* "No such thing as 'population explosion'" (Marcus Roberts, Mercator)

* "Obama As Chaos" (Victor Davis Hanson, PJ Media)

* "Why is Violence Against Teachers Being Covered Up?" (Scottie Hughes, Town Hall)

About Those Words, "Unwanted Child"

Transnationalists Have a Wonderful Plan for Your Life (And They Will Make Sure You Follow It!)

If you thought the very idea of a sovereign republic (not to mention, your personal freedom) was under attack by judges, Nanny State bureaucrats, and United Nations busybodies, I hate to tell you this but...you're right. 

Globalism is passionately alive. And aided most willingly by the Obama administration, this transnational movement is growing by leaps and bounds.

Below are several excerpts from an alarming article published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, "American Sovereignty and Its Enemies." Written by Sohrab Ahmari, the article depends heavily on an interview with former Senator and veteran conservative, John Kyl. It is an article that deserves careful reading.

Proponents call this movement "legal transnationalism," and as Mr. Kyl writes in a recent Foreign Affairs magazine article (co-authored with Douglas Feith and John Fonte of the Hudson Institute), "the idea that a U.N. official can sit in judgment of the U.S." is one of its main innovations. Transnationalists want to rewrite the laws of war, do away with the death penalty, restrict gun rights and much more—all without having to win popular majorities or heed American constitutional limits. And these advocates are making major strides under an Obama administration that is itself a hotbed of transnational legal thinking.

"Transnationalists are a group of people who are convinced they are right about important issues," Mr. Kyl says as we sit down for a chat at the plush Washington office of the law firm Covington & Burling, where the 71-year-old Arizona Republican has served as an adviser since leaving the Senate in January. "But they are in too much of a hurry to mess with the difficulties of representative government to get their agenda adopted into law—or they know they can't win democratically. So they look for a way around representative government."…

Take Cedaw. If the Senate ever ratifies this piece of "1970s feminism preserved in diplomatic amber," as one commentator described the treaty, the U.S. would become subject to oversight by a Geneva-based committee that requires signatory states to, among other things, "achieve a balance between men and women holding publicly elected positions"; "ensure that media respect women and promote respect for women"; and "modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of . . . stereotyped roles for men and women….

To be clear, transnationalism isn't a conspiratorial enterprise. In the legal academy, its advocates have openly stated their aims and means. "International law now seeks to influence political outcomes within sovereign States," Anne-Marie Slaughter, then dean of Princeton's public-affairs school, wrote in an influential 2007 essay. International law, she went on, must expand to include "domestic choices previously left to the determination of national political processes" and be able to "alter domestic politics."

The preferred entry point for importing foreign norms into American law is the U.S. court system. The Yale Law School scholar Howard Koh, a transnationalist advocate, has written that "domestic courts must play a key role in coordinating U.S. domestic constitutional rules with rules of foreign and international law." Over the past two decades, activist judges have increasingly cited "evolving" international standards to overturn state laws, and Mr. Koh has suggested that foreign norms can be "downloaded" into American law in this manner…

…President Obama has given them [transnationalists] an opening to shape U.S. policy. Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Koh held top posts at the State Department during Mr. Obama's first term, and their tenures coincided with an aggressive push to ratify or recognize as customary law Cedaw and a host of other progressive causes.

For proof that the transnationalist threat isn't merely theoretical, look no further than the European Union. Says Mr. Kyl: "What they have now is a situation where their sovereignty has largely been supplanted by others who are not accountable to voters in individual European countries."

It was in Europe where these ideas were first implemented, and it is to the EU that transnationalists look as a model. Today over half of the regulations that affect Europeans' lives are made by administrators in Brussels, not by national legislatures.

These regulations include the EU's ban, announced in May, on restaurants serving olive oil in traditional glass jugs or terracotta bowls (to protect the "image" of olive oil); the prohibition against insurers charging women drivers lower premiums (sexism); and Commission Regulation 2257/94, otherwise known as the "bendy banana" law, which until recently required farmers to discard irregularly shaped bananas (don't ask).

American transnationalists look with admiration on Europe. "Once those laws are passed, EU institutions . . . look over national shoulders to ensure that they actually do what they commit to do," Ms. Slaughter has written. "This European way of law is precisely the role that we postulate for international law generally around the world."

Mr. Kyl is less sanguine. "When your society is regulated to that extent by someone who has no accountability to voters, something is very, very wrong," he says. "The transnationalists should be the last ones lecturing anybody about what ought to be because what is is the U.S. Constitution, which recognizes sovereignty in the American people. That is embedded in everything about our country. It's not outmoded—it's who we are. And if you're not willing to accept that, then you haven't signed on to the most basic notion of what it is to believe about our country."