Hermenuetics

Comments

Gina, good job marshalling all these points into a short, well-written and easily understandable article. How PP has pulled the wool over everyone's eyes so well and for so long is beyond me, except to say that this is yet another one of Satan's successes.

Tim

Posted By: Tim | February 3, 2012 5:12 PM

Gina, great job.

Posted By: Monica Selby | February 3, 2012 5:18 PM

Thanks, Gina, so pulling this information together so quickly and so well.

Posted By: Diane Singer | February 3, 2012 5:26 PM

Tim, I was a bit shocked to see you equate PP with Satan. I have worked with them educating inner-city girls about gynecological hygiene (and yes, we did do a sort of ad hoc sex ed session because these kids were asking so many questions). The point is there were good people doing necessary work with populations most churches won't touch. I can't speak for the larger organization but the people at our branch had their hearts in the right place, and abortions was a really small part of their service >3% IIRC. Please don't paint with too broad a stroke, especially on such a sensitive topic. Not trying to be bossy! I just hate this harsh talk about other people, many of them Christian.

Posted By: Marta | February 3, 2012 5:51 PM

Where's the truth? An abortion every 30 seconds, yet PP claims only does 3% (of what number?) - have not found numbers to compile any reasonable understanding.

That asked, thanks for pulling this together. Along with lifenews.com got a reasonable understanding. We cannot support a non pro-life organization here, and have not for several years now; wife is a breast cancer survivor.

Thanks!

Posted By: Fred Dempster | February 3, 2012 5:56 PM

Marta, I meant no slight to people of good will. I did mean, though, to point out that Satan often uses organizations like this no matter the good will of some of the people involved. He would like nothing more than to get us to laud the care of the poor and underpriveleged occuring up front while we ignore the babies being killed in the back rooms.

For example, I read on another site today a comment from someone who said that it was a shame that PP was doing things the church was supposed to do, and we should be less harsh on PP until the church stepped into the breach. That is reductio ad absurdum - the church hasn't achieved world peace, solved world hunger and provided health care to all, so we need to partner with those who are working in these areas even if they also commit atrocities. That may be how the world works (just look at modern diplomacy), but it's not what God calls us to do.

Blessings,
Tim

Posted By: Tim | February 3, 2012 6:29 PM

Super post, Gina, on a really important topic.

And great logic, Tim.

Many, many lessons to be learned in all this.

Posted By: KSP | February 3, 2012 7:27 PM

Thank you Marta! I'm not a huge fan of PP, but I've also had no connection with them. You've been there and, as you said, are helping people that the church mostly won't touch. I also read that Susan Koman for the Cure takes money from gun manufacturers and that bothered me greatly.

Posted By: TSD | February 3, 2012 9:34 PM

Thanks for clarifying, Gina. One thing I am wondering, what percentage of Planned Parenthood money comes from SGK?

I'm interested to see where all of this goes in coming months. The only really good thing I can think of for all of the back and forth in the news is that some good, pro-life, Christian people I know, who would never have given money to PP had been supporting SGK. Perhaps, with all of this publicity, the truth of SGK-PP connection will dissuade donors until SGK is courageous enough to cut the tie.

Thanks again!

Posted By: Melissa | February 3, 2012 10:30 PM

A good point is that we believers that don't want to support murdering children, but do want to support women need to come up with & grow a well known alternative to Planned Parenthood that does not support abortion. When we htink of "family planning",unfortunatley the only well known organization seems to be "Planned Parenthood". "Life choices" or another group that supports all women (including those in the womb) needs to communicate that they support ALL women's rights . .. not put our light under a bushel . ..

Posted By: Joan Ware | February 4, 2012 9:58 AM

Gina, Thank you for clearly defining the argument. My husband and I had an abortion over 30 years ago believing my ob that it was nothing. It was something. I have also had breast cancer returning several times and ultimately having a bilateral mastectomy. I am also involved in crisis pregnancy center ministry. The pregnancy centers refer women all the time to low cost medical clinics and that would never include Planned Parenthood. I hate the controversy, but I think it opens up the truth so you can choose to support life or abortion. Simple enough.

Posted By: Jerry | February 4, 2012 10:36 AM

Jerry, you make a good point about crisis pregnancy centers doing a lot for women's health without supporting abortion. But pro-choice organizations including PP are doing their best to shut them down.

Posted By: Christine | February 4, 2012 3:06 PM

"This is Komen’s attempt to get the abortion mafia off their backs.”

What about the anti-abortion mafia that's been dogging Komen?. They are just as vitrol as the so called abortionists.

Posted By: veritas | February 4, 2012 8:01 PM

For those who erroneously think that the pro-abortion group just individually stood against the Komen change, nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the Washington state senators immediately flew to Seattle to give speeches at the Planned Parenthood main office here, for the media extravaganza. I'm sure Washington wasn't the only liberal state that put this big show on. Once again, the innocent lose.

Posted By: Casey | February 4, 2012 8:13 PM

Look at the facts. Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of women's health services in the country. For poor women, PP is the primary health resource providing hundreds of thousands of women with breast screening services and mammography referrals, at little or no charge. The Komen Foundation, after hiring rightwing political figures like Ari Fleischer and Karen Handel, cuts off Planned Parenthood and denies the move has anything to do with politics. It creates a new 'funding guideline' that, out of the 2000 organizations recieving grants, applies ONLY to Planned Parenthood. A politically-motivated "investigation" initiated by a rightwing anti-choice Repulican is apparently what SBK considers suitable grounds for denying grants, (while it continues to fund orgs like Penn State). Not surprisingly, this move created a firestorm of protest from women across America -- go take a look at SGK's Facebook page -- who Tweeted, blogged, signed online petitions, emailed and alerted friends and family to SBK's reprehensible decision to inject politics into the issue of women's health. I realize that facts are often anathema to those whose only priority is denying women the right to terminate a pregnancy, but it was SBK, not PP, who injected abortion politics into the breast cancer issue. As a result, they have permanently damaged their brand to such an extent that I would be surprised if they didn't lose half their incoming donations for 2012.
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that such a biased piece of writing comes from someone who can manage to pen whole books in support of Sarah Palin. But Christianity Today certainly has an obligation to provide a higher quality of integrity in its articles that the collection of misrepresentations and cherry-picked factoids in this dishonest article.

Posted By: Kathleen | February 4, 2012 9:20 PM

"the right to terminate a pregnancy", aka killing babies. Assuming that termination of a particular pregnancy is important enough to justify killing a baby, then PP does no harm. Except to the baby, of course.

Blessings,
Tim

Posted By: Tim | February 4, 2012 10:02 PM

Actually, the fact of the matter is, most women get their healthcare from their individual physicians. This country has more private health care providers than probably any other country, as we're not yet socialist, although we're getting there fast with obama. With his continous executive fiats and defiance of the Courts and Congress, it is far closer to fascism.

Yes, other presidents used executive fiat, but they didn't contradict the will of the people to such a major extent, like trying to force everyone to pay for insurance, when it was voted down by Congress a year earlier, and they didn't buy companies like GM, and fire the people who were running the company. He has far overstepped his boundaries countless times. He talks about job creation and then gives Brazil the job of providing fighter jets for us, when the US has always been the leader in building jets worldwide. He talks about jobs in the US building infrastructure, and then hires Chinese companies to build bridges, etc. This is a president who lies and is moving our country fast forward into fascism. American citizens can now be arrested without due cause, they can have their citizenship taken away, and they can be held indefinitely anywhere in the world, tortured, and without having a trial. If you thought Bush went overboard, there is no comparison with this president. And this is the good "Christian" man some people naively post about.

Please, just start researching about things that aren't covered in your newspapers whatsoever.

We have always enjoyed the freedom to have our health care covered by health insurers provided by business owners. For the past 20 years, we have had our own personal choice of physician, totally free health care with no deductables and no co-pays, etc, but of course this is being ruined and changed by obamacare. No, we all don't want the government taking over every aspect of our lives, but that's all we have to look forward to with this president. All hospitals and physician's offices that I have been to accept medicaid patients for those who are on welfare, and in addition, they post signs that they will provide free care for those who are not covered by any plan or medicaid. Are you really going to be happy when you go to one doctor with a problem and you don't agree with their diagnosis or treatment but that's all you're entitled to, is one point of view? Like Ronald Reagan said, watch out when someone from the government wants to "help" you. And he said correctly, that government isn't going to fix the problem, but rather, government IS the problem. I do believe that there should be changes in the insurance industry, especially to cover CITIZENS in the gap, but insurance should be for citizens only, and there should be tort reform, two important things not addressed. When we travel out of the country, like to Australia, the services provided are not free, it is for their citizens, and that's how it should be. A president pushing for open boundaries and endless subsidies for illegal aliens is purposefully trying to ruin our country, because there isn't enough money in the world to cover everything he is demanding.

Obama is so pro-abortion, that he forces countries like Kenya to provide free abortions for their people in order to accept American aide $$$. Someone who is so committed to killing so many innocent babies is no Christian. Funny how he only talks about his faith when he is running for re-election, otherwise he talks about the "holy qaran" which is a guidebook for mutilating little girls and beating and killing wives and daughters in the name of "honor".

Posted By: Bailey | February 4, 2012 10:36 PM

If SGK didn't want to politicize the situation, all they had to do was to say that they were going to stop pass through grants. PP does not do mammograms, they refer clients to other providers. Unfortunately, they made a choice to talk about a questionable investigation creating guilt before actual judgement. Hasn't there been too many situations in the past year or so where the accusations did not pan out after investigation?

If they were trying to do damage to PP, they failed since donations to PP have skyrocketed since the SGK announcement. This whole process was not thought out and SGK has no one to blame but themselves.

Posted By: Steve D | February 5, 2012 11:34 AM

This shares my thoughts better than I ever could: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/komen-go-back-to-your-roots/2012/02/05/gIQABSWqrQ_blog.html?hpid=z3

Posted By: TSD | February 5, 2012 3:18 PM

PP is evil. They provide the services to kill babies still in the womb. Any person who works for PP or gives money to PP is participating at some level in the grusome abortion industry.

Posted By: Dan | February 6, 2012 6:29 AM

I'm pro-life; I consider myself strongly so, because I support legally defining a ban on abortion. I just wanted to state that at the start, so nobody assumes otherwise. This is actually the one major point of contention I have with my current (very liberal) church.

I'm from a lower middle class family. My wife is from a lower middle class family. We're a lower middle class family. Almost everyone we know through everything except church and work are lower middle class or are even worse off. As a result, a lot of us - don't have a large choice of who we see for medical care. I can name five women that have been to the local planned parenthood office for gynecological exams; as far as I know, only one was pregnant. They provide good and worthwhile medical service to all.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: If we, as Christians, don't want to support the medical services provided by Planned Parenthood - maybe we should provide worthwhile alternatives. I've heard that locally, we have at least three such services - and none of them have sufficient funding to provide the kind of service PP does on a regular basis.

Of course, I'm also not a fan of the Komen foundation, for the reasons mentioned in the post by TSD. Breast cancer gets a lot of attention, while other (more lethal and/or curable) cancers get almost nothing. As someone that is at an increased risk for multiple forms of cancer - including breast cancer - this bothers me.

Posted By: Newly Karen | February 6, 2012 11:21 AM

"They provide good and worthwhile medical service to all." Really? So then any organization that provides "some" good services in addition to murdering babies should be recognized as worthwhile? Using that logic, let's then recognize and commemorate the Nazis contribution to medical science.

Posted By: Dan | February 6, 2012 3:38 PM

I think you have some good points here. And I do happen to be pro-life, and have been able to strongly encourage at least two women in my life to keep their babies. And they are glad they did--which is a blessing.
But the fact is, in many rural areas--and some urban environments, PP is all there is. And for people who are lower income--this is their ONLY connection to women's healthcare.
Now, you mention that PP does referrals and it is mentioned as if this is a anomaly. Only they are not unnecessary middleman. This same process is what most private OB-GYN's do. I have personally never had an mammogram in my Dr.'s office(I have always had insurance, thank God). I have always traveled to a breast cancer center, but I had to have a referral. I don't think it's set up for walk-ins. So for the Komen organization to say that they were changing their mode of operation to directly pay the breast cancer screening provider instead was probably not quite the entire truth. At least not anytime soon. I mean, how would the patient obtain the needed referral in the first place? PP provides this screening for little or no money. Do you have any idea what that costs in real life? I do. That is where Planned Parenthood saves lives. They make it possible to go from A to B.

As Reba sings, we need a bit of honesty here.

Now I understand that people have a problem with abortion--but there is a mission here--and it is getting polluted with what project managers call scope creep. I am not going to go into the definition--but this is considered a negative.

I looked up the mission for the Komen organization:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508105/:

OUR PROMISE: To save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering people, ensuring quality care for all and energizing science to find the cures.

Where are the extenuating circumstances? You may think this is overkill--but we actually have a real live presidential candidate who does not believe in birth control. It could get us in trouble, he says. Well, that's good for him. But what's that got to do with me? And we have some who are trying to make an argument that birth control is abortion. (I could get more explicit but I won't.)Think I'm kidding? Ha! Just keep living.

So today, cut organizations off because they perform abortions, TOMORROW, cut organizations off because they offer birth control contraceptives. Where does it end?

I think we also have a disconnect. Picture this: Women with health coverage (or money) cutting off that same coverage to women. hmm. It reinforces the image of the pink ribbon ladies as upper class women who lunch and have oodles of meetings--but who turn out to be desperately out of touch with the regular middle class or poor who are trying to survive in these harsh economic times. Gosh. This is not a pretty picture. Once you tip your toe into the political arena--the lions are pretty fierce. Perception is reality.

Now keep this in mind--until last week, I couldn't have told you what political persuasion the Komen organization was. It was just a great charity that was trying to save lives. It has a wonderful story--a sister telling her beloved sister how she would work to get rid of this hideous disease. And she's working on it! It was all so simple. It had a focus.

You may disagree, but there is a taint now from both sides (pro-life and pro-choice) that did not have to be.

Posted By: vrob125 | February 6, 2012 5:31 PM

Thank you Newly Karen and vrob125 for expressing your opinion. I also know many women for whom PP is the only option for them to receive any kind of gynecological healthcare.

Posted By: MSB | February 6, 2012 6:00 PM

I cannot express how strongly this whole Komen/PP dustup has put a bad taste in my mouth from both the pro-life and pro-choice sides.

Few things make me feel as hopeless about our country's politics as this so-called abortion "debate."

My Facebook news feed has been filled with anger, vitriol and misinformation from friends on both sides--and in both cases certainty that they are absolutely right in God's eyes and the other side is absolutely wrong. As a result, I neither want to speak in favor of nor listen to either side anymore.

Will we ever find common ground?

Also I think "bailey"s comment on the Quran crosses the line.

Posted By: Hannah | February 6, 2012 6:19 PM

@Dan

I didn't say we should commemorate them. But providing abortions is a limited portion of their budget, and we should acknowledge the good they did - much as I do, in fact, acknowledge the scientific advancements the Nazis made. Incidentally, the Nazis are directly responsible for humanity reaching the moon, and for a large part of the massive advance of transplant technology in the 20th century. What they did was evil, a crime against humanity and God, and they should be reviled for the rest of the universe's existence for doing it, but they did have some excellent scientists.

But we're not talking about them. We're talking about Planned Parenthood, an organization that offers the completely legal service of murdering children pre-birth. I believe that it is wrong on multiple levels, but the laws of this nation disagree - and while I would prefer it be banned, if it's available for some it should be available for all. When combined with the fact that they spend a small portion of their money on abortion, that makes the organization worthwhile... for now.

And again: If we (the anti-abortion/pro-life crowd) believe it's so wrong... why don't we create our own, pro-life, pro-women organization to perform counseling and medical services on a national level?

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" doesn't just apply to standing up against evil. It applies equally to helping those that would otherwise succumb to that evil.

Not that I'm not as guilty of that as anyone else, mind.

Posted By: Newly Karen | February 6, 2012 6:31 PM

"So today, cut organizations off because they perform abortions, TOMORROW, cut organizations off because they offer birth control contraceptives. Where does it end?"

This is a joke right? Can you name anything in real life where things are moving to a higher plane of biblical or moral values? Anything??

Obama took the next step by making partial-birth abortions available to women as one of his very first actions. And while in the Illinois senate, he voted 3 times for infanticide. The exact same bill in the White House was voted down by Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer, but Obama voted not once, not twice, but three times to kill a live-born infant. Now he and the Dept of Justice have illegally decided not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. Illegal, because they took an oath of office to uphold the laws and the Constitution. Now he is forcing other countries to have abortions before they receive any money from the US. Also, he is very pro-homosexual, gay, and transgender. And now, others are pushing for polygamy (muslims, mormons), after all they are adults, and they "love each other", and it's "best for them". Then you have the pedophiles who think it is wrong to discriminate against youth solely based on their age, and then you have those who think they should have the right to have sex with horses, cows, etc because they are in a loving "relationship" and who are we to judge?

It is an absolute joke to think that things will move to a higher moral standard until our Lord returns. But, believe me, there are those of us who will follow our conscience and follow God, and will not participate in performing abortions, or prescribing or dispensing abortifacients, despite the law requiring us to. Like someone else said, that, along with his ability to name ANY American citizen a terrorist, strip them of their citizenship, and detain them for an unspecified time, has made THIS president a fascist, and you don't have to worry that someone with higher moral standards will be able to stop you from your "right" to kill an infant. If he has another term, with his obamacare, I wouldn't be surprised to see that certain babies, who for example, they find out will be born with Down's Syndrome, will be required to get an abortion. It's happened in the past, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen again.

Posted By: marty | February 6, 2012 6:52 PM

@NK: re: Planned Parenthood (oxymoron alert!) "II Cor. 7:14 Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? 16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,

“I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM;
AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
17 “Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord.
“AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN;
And I will welcome you."

Posted By: Dan | February 6, 2012 9:06 PM

In the interview with Relevant, conducted on Tuesday, Obama also defended his opposition to restrictions on induced abortions where the fetus sometimes survives for short periods. Obama voted against such a bill when he was in the Illinois Senate. He has said he supported a federal version of the law that contained more specific language because he feared the Illinois proposal would have applied to all abortions.
Here is an article on Obama's lack of support for the bill in question from:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/04/obama-on-late-abortion-me_n_110884.html

"There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the 'Born Alive' bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill," Obama said Tuesday. "The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn't think it was going to pass constitutional muster."

As you can see, nothing is ever as simple as it may seem.

I don't think this needs to turn into a discussion on Obama. The discussion is that women use PP because they have no other choice and too many good prolife Christians are not stepping in to give them any other choice.

Posted By: TSD | February 6, 2012 9:12 PM

TSD, those are just more lies from obama, as you can read at this article. Sorry that your version is not true. The wording of the bill was identical to the bill in the US Senate.

According to this article here (and many others) http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=28732 here is the info regarding the Obama infanticide votes:

"Obama's opposition to bills in the Illinois state Senate from 2001-03 that would have required medical attention be given babies who survive botched abortions and that would have given them legal rights. On several occasions he was the leading opponent.

A nurse at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago testified that she saw babies who had survived abortions left unattended to die, but surviving on their own for several hours. It shocked her so much that she is now a pro-life advocate.

Ever since he ran for U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2004, Obama has defended his opposition to the various bills by saying he would have supported them if they had contained "neutrality clause" language stating -- as a federal version did -- that the bills would not weaken abortion law. The federal version passed the U.S. House and Senate in 2002 by voice vote, with Senate passage coming unanimously.

But public documents released by National Right to Life Aug. 11 show that Obama, as committee chairman in the Illinois Senate in March 2003, voted against a version of the bill (S.B. 1082) that contained a neutrality clause identical to one in the federal bill, leading to its defeat on a 6-4 vote. In fact, the neutrality sentence was copied word for word from the federal bill. National Right to Life charges Obama was part of a "cover-up" and for years has "blatantly misrepresented" the truth.

The news is significant not only because it conflicts with Obama's own stated reasoning behind his opposition to the bill, but also because the federal bill had the support of the U.S. Senate's most pro-choice members, including Democrats Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy. Even NARAL Pro-Choice America -- a leading supporter of abortion rights -- didn't oppose it. Pro-lifers charge that if Obama in fact opposed a federal version of the bill on the state level, then he's further to the left on abortion than anyone in Washington.

FactCheck.org, a non-partisan website sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, has backed National Right to Life's version of the story, saying that Obama did vote against a bill he said he would have supported.

"We now know Barack Obama as state senator voted against identical Born Alive Infants Protection Act legislation that was passed overwhelmingly on the federal level and accepted by even NARAL," the aforementioned nurse, Jill Stanek, wrote on her blog. "For 4 years Barack Obama has misrepresented his vote and must answer for that."

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called Obama "the most radically pro-choice nominee ever nominated by a major party."

"Barack Obama voted against the born alive infants protection act in the Illinois state senate and against the ban on partial-birth abortion, which means that Sen. Obama has never met an abortion he couldn't live with," Land told Baptist Press.

In 2004 Obama told the Chicago Tribune he opposed the state bill because it "lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade." He has repeated that claim, with his campaign telling The New York Times in an Aug. 6 story that Obama would have supported a similar bill as the federal one. Obama himself told CBN's David Brody Aug. 16, "I have said repeatedly that I would have been ... fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported.... That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade." In the same interview, Obama said of National Right to Life, "I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."

Obama's campaign, though, acknowledged to the New York Sun in an Aug. 18 story that he did vote against a bill that was identical to the one on the federal level. The campaign now says Obama opposed the state bill because it would have weakened existing Illinois state abortion law -- a reason pro-lifers say wasn't previously given, and one that amounts to changing the subject. Obama's campaign also says that existing Illinois law already protected babies from botched abortions, although National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru disagrees and says existing Illinois law protected only post-viability babies, and not pre-viability babies. The bill would have closed that loophole, he says.

The neutrality clause that was part of the federal bill and added to the Illinois bill stated that "nothing" in the bill "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right" to a baby prior to being born alive. Both the federal bill and the Illinois bill defined a "born alive" aborted baby as one who is completely outside the mother's body but who still "breathes or has a beating heart," has "pulsation of the umbilical cord" or shows "definite movement of voluntary muscles."

The national controversy over Obama's opposition to the bill has been brewing for more than a year, but is getting far more attention now that Obama is the presumptive nominee, and now that National Right to Life has released the documents.

"Let's be clear about what Obama did, once in 2003 and twice before that. He effectively voted for infanticide," former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican, wrote in a February editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer. "He voted to allow doctors to deny medically appropriate treatment or, worse yet, actively kill a completely delivered living baby. Infanticide -- I wonder if he'll add this to the list of changes in his next victory speech and if the crowd will roar: 'Yes, we can.'"

The procedure that normally resulted in a botched abortion is called "induced labor abortion" and requires inducing the woman, with the goal that the baby will die during labor. But sometimes, as Stanek testified before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee in 2001, the baby survives.

"In the event that a baby is aborted alive at Christ Hospital, he or she is not given any medical care, but is rather given what my hospital calls 'comfort care,'" she testified, according to a transcript. "'Comfort care' is defined as keeping the baby warm in a blanket until the baby dies, although until recently even this was not always done."

Parents were given the opportunity to hold their aborted baby, but most of the time they declined. Stanek then told of how she watched one particular baby die, a moment that helped change her mind about abortion.

"One night, a nursing coworker was taking an aborted Down Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him," Stanek testified. "I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about half a pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had -- trying to breath.

"Toward the end, he was so quiet that I couldn't tell if he was still alive, unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken."

The controversy comes as the Democratic National Convention gets set to adopt a platform with language meant to attract voters who are concerned about the party's pro-choice image. Pro-lifers, though, say the new platform does little to advance the pro-life cause. The organization Democrats for Life says the platform falls far short of its goals.

The new proposed platform begins by saying the "Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right." The "ability to pay" reference -- which was in the previous platform -- apparently puts the party on record as supporting taxpayer-funded abortion. The new platform language asserts that family planning and sex education reduces "the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce[s] the need for abortions." It also says the party "strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs." The new platform deletes the following sentence from the previous platform: "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."

Land, of the Southern Baptists Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says the new platform remains staunchly pro-choice.

"I'm glad that they want programs to support women having their children," Land said. "That's a step in the right direction. We have supported legislation in the Congress -- put forward by Democrats for Life and others -- that would essentially do those things. But then [writers of the platform] turn around and take out the language in the previous platform that said their goal was to make abortion safe, legal and rare. So what the right hand gives, the left hand takes away. This is far from a pro-life platform. It is still an extremely pro-choice platform plank. This is a distinction without a difference.

"One who is taken in by this is being gullible in the extreme."

Posted By: sandy | February 6, 2012 10:40 PM

Really great discussion that most churches wouldn't touch. Thanks for providing the opportunity, CT.

Posted By: Lyndsey | February 10, 2012 10:10 AM

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Posted By: BreastCancerHope | May 4, 2012 1:26 AM