Thursday, December 20, 2007

People & Crowds at the Georgia State University GAP, Atlanta, November 12 & 13, 2007

This girl helped man the pro-life students' table.
Studying the image.

Hundreds of students crept by the display--typical rush hour traffic in Atlanta.

The location was in a valley between buildings. People filled the space as they looked and conversed.

With city noise and all the talking in an enclosed space, the enviroment was intense, but everyone stayed peaceful. For a close-up of this (and any other) photo, click on the image. The Meat is Murder person with the green sign was anti-abortion too.

Protestors @ Georgia State GAP, November 13, 2007

Good question. However, she/he is missing the point. We are in the midst of our own Rwanda.
Likely some of these protestors were not students.

The officer ordered this person to move his sheet. "This is not negotable," he said. The person did not move until the officer gathered up the sheet.

The "Dimes Kill Babies" guy. He shouted this absurd message for an hour or more and, naturally, lost his voice.
This, of course, is a lie. Not to mention, ignorant. We should sue them for libel.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Displeased Reader Responds

"You will be taking the pictures of my organization off your blog within 24 hours. You have absolutely no written or verbal consent from me or my members. If the pictures are not down within the given time frame you will be contacted by our legal representation within our national organization. I hope this matter can be resolved without legal interference but I have no opposition to bringing [it] to that level. If you have any questions or would like contact information for our counsel I can be reached through the outlets listed below.

"Thank you and Best,

"Deborah Hinchey

"Deborah Hinchey President,
Temple Feminist Majority
deborah.hinchey@gmail.com"

--Note: Posted in the Comments section under my 11/7 entry below of, "Pro-Abortion/Choice Protestors of the Genocide Awareness Project at Temple University, October 2007." The comment was delivered on December 19, 2007, 1:14 a.m.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Etymology: Abortion IS Genocide

An examination of the appearances in English of the Greek root, genos, or the identical root in Latin, “gen” is insightful. Generation (and generate), genetics, genesis, engender, generous, generic, progeny—all of these strongly suggest that Greek/Latin meanings are not limited to “race” or “nation” (in which case the Greek word ethnos as in “ethnocide” would be more fitting), but actually may be closer to “origin,” or “creation,” or “beginnings,” or “descendents.” The National Geographic Society documentary, In the Womb, says that “fetus” means "offspring," and most online dictionaries agree. Progeny, with the root “gen” also means “offspring” in which case the term “genocide” applies EXACTLY to the killing of humans in their earliest stages of life.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Special Photos Related to the Genocide Awareness Project at Temple University in Philadelphia, October 2007

Philadelphia City Hall--548' high. I took this photo hanging out of Sage's truck on Thursday, November 1, the day after we finished GAP. Since our plane left late, we had time to visit the Historic District.


This is a strong showing of our team, some of whom were members of Generation Life.


Despite the high population in front of the display, there was still space for quiet talk.


Some of the GAP workers drew crowds, others made a more personal contact.

A Few Crowd Scenes at the Anti-abortion Genocide Awareness Project at Temple University in Philadelphia, October 2007

The man gesturing is the Rev. Childress of LEARN
(Life Education and Resource Network) that maintains BlackGenocide.org .



A panorama of the display.


The central figure is none other than Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. Terry engaged in lively debate with a crowd in front of the GAP display. He has a conference/rally planned in Philadelphia for the Thanksgiving holiday.


During class changes, students carpeted the sidewalks all around the GAP display.


Another view of the passing and pausing people in front of the GAP display near the Bell Tower on the Temple campus.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Pro-Abortion/Choice Protestors of the Genocide Awareness Project at Temple University, October 2007

This guy Above got himself up as a white "Jesus" for Halloween. His sign taunts meanly, "May the fetus you save be gay."


This female jester probably wasn't actually protesting, just passing by the display.


The Coathanger Myth platoon.


One of their cheers: "Their pictures are shocking, they've got us flocking here to say, this sexist bullsh--t is not Okay." Though, I am not sure it was "flocking" but maybe another F word.


Pro-death cheerleaders with the Genocide Awareness Project in the background. Some of the pink people handed out pink flyers that said, “Attention Students: Please ignore the LARGE signs clogging up our campus. It’s easier to avoid the propaganda and just continue on to class. Thank you. -Temple University Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance” which basically meant "Move along, move along." How condescending!


Monday, October 15, 2007

Umbrellas and Rain, University of Tennessee at Knoxville--the Genocide Awareness Project, September, 2007

Gary and Larry, (above) our truck/security car drivers and materials handlers (and all around good friends) are decked out for the torrential downpowers of rain that we experienced this particular day at UT-K.


It's hardly possible to get good photos in a toad-strangling rain. Hence, this scene above seems dry. But I like umbrellas.


Another umbrella in this photo above , but she is holding our brochure that someone gave her.


She may be hard to see, but the parka clad figure moving to the left and just about to vanish behind the greenery, toppled over four of our warning signs as she passed.


It rained nearly the whole day, and here at about 4: p.m. the display is down and ready to haul uphill to be loaded onto the truck. Note that the two sets of UT-K photos that follow are in backwards time sequence--meaning that they represent events that occurred prior to each preceding set.

GAP at UT-K, September, 2007

Looking down the walkway from the GAP display.


We have done GAP at UT-K many times, and this gentleman always yells something like, "Roe v. Wade will never change!" when he passes. But this time he didn't yell. I think he was distracted by the blonde who had asked him for directions.


This is the Planned Parenthood table next to the GAP display. You can see our barricades.


Her T-shirt says, "Protect Women's Health." I thought it ironic that she was smoking a cigarette. The PP folks often stand amidst the passing students and offer them condoms. This should be considered sexual harassment.


Jane Bullington of the Center for Bioethical Reform seems dwarfed as she holds forth with this group of UT-K students.

More from GAP at University of Tennessee, September, 2007

Jimmy and his sister Julie (not shown) drove down from Virginia to Knoxville to help.


This is typical UT-K class-change traffic in front of the GAP display.


Members of the Planned Parenthood opposition taking a cigarette break.


Julie in the foreground. Jimmy in conversation with students in the background.




A professor gestures to his class as he helps them interpret/understand the Logos, Ethos, and Pathos of the display.

Friday, October 12, 2007

GAP at Middle Tennessee State University in September, 2007

This Jewish student was unhappy about me taking his photo and said he would sue if I published it on my website. He asked for my name and I told him. He wants it clear that he doesn't agree with our comparison of abortion to the Holocaust.


This above is typical class-change foot-traffic in front of the GAP display.


MTSU Pro-life Collegians set up their table next to the passing pedestrian traffic. Note their outstanding poster--it rolled up into a nifty case like a carpenter's tape measurer. This was a gift from the Center for Bioethical Reform.


These students in the above photo cared a great deal about letting everyone know that they didn't care about anything. They even turned around and posed for this picture.
After hours of bellowing and chanting during each of the two days we were on campus with GAP, maybe some of the Planned Parenthood crew and the Solidarity socialists concluded with a silent salute. I suppose they are prepared to recreate the bloody Russian Revolution.

Keep Abortion Legal?

A student at Middle Tennessee State University wore this terrible shirt to the Genocide Awareness Project display in September, 2007.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

“We were
children;
all of this
is too big
for us.”


-Yitzhak Wittenberg,
betrayed leader of the
Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye
in the Vilna Ghetto.


Resistance v. Collaboration

What is the proper response to atrocity, in particular when human beings are being murdered under the protection of government? When you, your family, and your neighbors are being murdered? This last instance is certainly the case of abortion. Other than merely speaking, if a person attempts, even peacefully, to interfere with aborting children in this country, he or she will be arrested and punished. All of us would agree that Christians, or any human beings with consciences, should try to save the lives of the victims. Where there is disagreement would be the means we should use. Without discussing every ramification of this subject, I wish to compare two opposing methods by telling a story.

Studying the Holocaust is looking through a window to our present day. The Holocaust is one of the most documented, analyzed and examined human atrocities in history, and abortion is one of the least. Because the Holocaust is in the past and because nearly none of us lived in the environment where it took place, we can look at it objectively. But because abortion is an integral part of the culture in which we live, most of us accommodate it; and we breathe a fog of confusion, as did many Europeans when the Holocaust was taking place. The story I wish to tell about resistance and collaboration is from the Holocaust. There are detailed accounts of this story, but I will limit myself to the basic thread.


Partly because of the historical presence of outstanding Jewish scholars, the city of Vilna had been called the Jerusalem of the Lithuania. Vilna had drawn Jewish students from all over Europe and at the beginning of the 20th century, half the city’s population was Jewish. After World War I, both Poland and Lithuania claimed the city, but Poland took control in 1920. Under the terms of the German-Soviet Pact, Vilna, along with the rest of eastern Poland, was occupied by Soviet forces in late September 1939. In October, the Soviet Union transferred the Vilna region to Lithuania. The Germans invaded and took Vilna in June of 1941, when at that time some 70,000 Jewish people lived there, both residents and refugees.

In July, 1941 German Einsatzgruppen squads, helped by Lithuanians, killed 5,000 Jewish men at Ponary Forest a few miles outside of Vilna, and this was only the beginning. The Germans established two ghettos in Vilna and forced the Jews to relocate to them—the weak and the infirm into one ghetto which was liquidated after a few days. By the end of the year 1941, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered about 40,000 Jews in Ponary.

The techniques the Germans used for pacifying the Jews are well known—one being that they spread the lie that those taken from the ghettos were being resettled in labor camps, and the Jews did work in construction projects outside the ghetto, but periodic roundups and killings of those who had no work permits continued until the spring of 1942. Young men were particularly selected for being shot, because they were most likely to resist. The remaining Jewish people, for the most part, went along rather than resisted, in the hope of survival. Resistance, they believed, would mean death. Compliance meant perhaps that they could live another day, even if under tremendous hardship.

Two Jewish figures emerged as representing opposite poles of response to the atrocities.

Jacob Gens rose to a position of respect among the Germans and was appointed chief of the Judenrat—the Jewish police in September, 1941. Gens so pleased his masters that he eventually was appointed chief of the ghettos in all of Lithuania and White Russia.

The next section on Gens is an extract from
The Holocaust Chronicle,
www.holocaustchronicle.org/,

and the Holocaust Research Project.

“Jacob Gens, leader of Vilna (Lithuania) Ghetto's Jewish Council, ruled his community with almost dictatorial power. Derisively called ‘King Jacob the First,’ Gens decided who would live and who would die. Convinced he could save Jews by demonstrating their value to the German economy, he selected those capable of ‘productive’ labor and surrendered to the Nazis those who were ‘unproductive.’ During the 1941 Einsatzgruppen roundups, Gens personally inspected each Jew's work permit. Those too old, too weak, and too ill to work,
or not in possession of the prized ‘yellow card’ were delivered by Gens to the SS, who then executed them.”

“When reproached by Jewish religious leaders for his tactics, Gens defended his philosophy: ‘When they ask me for a
thousand Jews, I hand them over; for if we Jews will not give them on our own, the Germans will come and take them by force. Then they will take not one thousand, but thousands. With hundreds, I save a thousand. With the thousands that I hand over, I save ten thousand. I will say: I did everything in order to save as many Jews as possible…..to ensure that at least a remnant of Jews survive.’"
Yitzhak Wittenberg, a communist in his mid-thirties, and members of other political organizations, including Zionists, began meeting within the ghetto to discuss what they were certain of, that eventually all of the Jews of Vilna would be killed. The Zionists had the goal of fighting to form the nation of Israel, but they concluded that the dignity of the Jewish people imposed upon them a greater demand—that they remain and fight to defend their people in the event that the Germans would attempt to liquidate the entire ghetto. Others argued that it would be better strategically to fight the Germans in the forests. But in the end they all agreed to arm themselves and to resist from within the ghetto while trying to arouse the remaining 20,000 Jews into resistance, though they knew that military success was without hope. In late January of 1942 they chose Wittenberg to be their leader. The organization was named the Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye—the FPO.

From the spring of 1942 until September 1943 there was a lull in the killings at Vilna, and Gens attempted to restore a sense of normalcy. During that time the Gestapo discovered the name of the FPO resistance leader, Wittenberg, and demanded to Gens that he be turned over to them. Gens requested a meeting with Wittenberg with the purpose of arresting him, but backed by FPO fighters, Wittenberg escaped with through the inaction of Judenrat police. The story is dramatized in the book Treblinka. What follows are excerpts from conversation between Wittenberg and Gens, and ruminations of Gens.

Wittenberg: “Listen to me, Gens. I know you believe you are acting for the good of the Jewish people, but you are wrong, for the Germans have condemned us all. All your acts of cowardice, all your betrayals may postpone the end, but the end is inevitable. We have always suffered greatly, and pogroms have been our daily bread, but what is happening now exceeds the worst we have ever known. Before, they killed us with hatred and without method; today they are exterminating us without hatred but with method, and this is serious. It is no longer men we are up against, it is machines. If they still hated us we might try to talk to them, if they had something in particular against us we might try to show them that they are wrong, but they no more hate us than you hate spiders. Our only fault in their eyes is that we exist. We are all dead, Gens—you, me, your son and mine. It is merely a question of chronology. But we still have one thing left to save: our honor.”

Gens: “The future may prove you right, Itzak, and my name may be cursed; and yet something tells me you are wrong. You talk about honor like a Gentile, not like a Jew. Honor for a Jew is honoring God, as Moses us commanded us to do. In Spain when the Gentiles tried make us deny our God, we died at the stake. But today it is not our honor that is being threatened, it is our lives.”

“Therefore, Itzak Wittenberg, I say that you are wrong, because you are mistaken when you talk about Jewish honor. Why God has imposed this punishment on his people, I do not know. But one thing I do know, and that is that God can not want His whole people to be exterminated, for if He wanted that, He would be denying His own Word. He would be breaking His Covenant. This is why I know that I am obeying Him, even when I betray you to save Jewish lives. Moses delivered the Jews from Pharaoh’s clutches, and Esther from Haman’s; perhaps God has chosen me.”

Wittenberg: “You are mad, Gens! Mad with pride! You are nothing but a puppet in the hands of the Germans, and you think you are the savior of the Jewish people!….”


“Gens did not sleep that night. He saw his own strategy collapsing because of one man, when 40,000 had been exterminated in Ponary. What was one man compared to the 40,000 already dead and the 20,000 who were going to die?
He did not care about his own life, he had already sacrificed it for his people, but all his efforts reduced to zero, the ghetto liquidated because of this imbecile who should have gone to the forest if he was so determined to fight! Since he could not count on his police, he considered setting the ghetto against him, but he remembered what the sages had written: ‘When the idolater says, “Deliver one of your people to us, we will kill him, but if you refuse we will kill you all,” let all consent to perish and let not one soul of Israel willingly be delivered to the idolater,’ and he was shaken for a moment.”
Gens believed that by betraying Wittenberg he could save the Jews in the ghetto, and those Jews were persuaded of this also, turning against the FPO. Even many of the partisans agreed—and, disheartened, Wittenberg said to them, “We don’t even have the right to die fighting. We were children; all of this is too big for us” and turned himself over to Gens and the Judenrat. The next day, July 16, 1943, Wittenberg died, though the stories conflict about how this took place. Wittenberg apparently requested cyanide so that he could take his own life rather than be subjected to German torture. Some stories say that he was denied the cyanide; one story says that Gens supplied it to him.

In September 1943 the Germans completed the destruction of the Vilna ghetto. The FPO revolted and some fought to the death, while others escaped. Most Jews did not resist. Gens was shot by the Gestapo on September 14. One source said that Germans had accused him of aiding the underground. Most Jews that had remained in the Vilna ghetto were sent to forced labor camps, death camps, or they were shot at Ponary Forest. About 2,500 Jews were kept in labor camps near Vilna.


On July 13, 1944 Soviet forces liberated Vilna, but in anticipation, the Germans had already murdered those Jews in the labor camps. A few hundred Jews escaped the massacre and hid in the forest. Of the original 70,000, only between 2,000-3,000 Vilna Jews survived the war—they who fled during the German occupation, or found hiding places in the city. A few of them survived in concentration camps in Germany.

Sources:
Beth Hatefutsoth, Museum of the Jewish People, www.bh.org.il/Communities/Archive/Vilna.asp

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team,
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/vilnius.html

Noar Family, www.noarfamily.net/Vilnaghetto.html

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/

Shoah Resource Center,
www.yadvashem.org/

Treblinka, by Jean-Francois Steiner, 1966

For further study, see the “docurama” film, Partisans of Vilna, 1986, available on DVD and featuring interviews with the real person of Abba Kovner, Israeli poet and leader of the Vilna Jewish resistance after Wittenberg’s death. The surrender of Wittenberg, Kovner declared, was, “one of the greatest acts of heroism of the Jewish fighting underground in the ghetto.” Also, you may wish to study the paintings of Vilna child-survivor Samuel Bak.

End Note: I believe that there are many parallels between what happened in these events and what is taking place now with abortion, especially with regard to the “Blue Moon Group” here in Asheville, featured in the Time magazine cover story of February 26, 2007. Of course, there are differences. But, I will leave you to consider your own conclusions. -MEH


Wednesday, June 6, 2007

A student at the University of Alabama meditates upon images of the Genocide Awareness Project in the spring of 2007.

"Legalized Destruction of Life"

Human life begins at fertilization and abortion kills small babies? Is this the ridiculous claim of a rabid anti-choicer?

No, it is the admission of a once practicing Asheville, North Carolina abortionist! What follows is an excerpt from an article (written by me) that appeared in the now defunct magazine, the Life Advocate. To see the whole article, go to:
www.lifeadvocate.org/9_98/pov.htm .
In the early days of this modern war against pre-born children, and when there yet was real debate, some raw truth sometimes leaked out in the mainline press. Never in the charged atmosphere of today would an abortionist publicly say what Asheville abortionist Arthur Sherman Morris, Jr. admitted back in 1976.

The admission appeared in a full page article on the front of the Asheville Citizen-Times' Community Life (Life?) section on Sunday, April 4, 1976, little more than three years after Roe v. Wade... The title of the article, written by Citizen-Times staff member Ginger Furness, was, "The Status of Abortion in Buncombe County."

When asked by the reporter "When does life begin?" abortionist Morris of Femcare, answered, "Life begins with fertilization and abortion is legalized destruction of life."

These other remarkable quotes appeared toward the end of the article: "Patients are told that abortion in the second trimester is accomplished by injecting a saline solution into the amniotic sac. Right-to-Lifers call it 'salt poisoning.' The fetus is killed and usually within 24 to 48 hours it is expelled from the body."

"Inducing a miscarriage is a bad trip," said Dr. Morris. "We tell the patients they will hurt; they'll experience cramps and bleeding. We tell her exactly like it is; we don't mince words, including when they abort, they'll be aborting a small baby."

"Dr. Morris and his associates administer the saline injections at Memorial Mission Hospital, then send the patient home to await the miscarriage. When she expels the fetus, she is instructed to bring it to the hospital. Any woman who did not know the fetus at this point would be a fully recognizable human infant would doubtless experience a devastating and permanent shock."

Unbelievable.


I have in my possession an actual copy of that 1976 newspaper.

Abortionist Morris is retired, and the last I heard is with poor health and little memory in a nursing home. The person who took his place (and bought the abortion business) is Lorraine “Lorrie” Cummings, M.D. Cummings, like her predecessor, sometimes makes strange confessions in public. What follows is a letter to the editor I wrote to the Asheville Citizen-Times, appearing in print June 1, 2007. The title of the letter, “View of violence depends on which side of fence one is on” supports exactly what my letter criticizes.

By close textual proximity, the commentary, “Abortion regains spotlight as polarizing cultural issue,” (AC-T, May 20), seems to suggest that the thrice-weekly peaceful pro-life presence outside the abortion site on Orange Street in Asheville is violent. It is common for the press and pro-legal-abortion commentators to project violence upon those who publicly and non-violently stand against the hideous, tragic violence of aborting children.

For a hint of this violence listen to Asheville abortion-M.D. Lorrie Cummings as quoted in the commentary: “There are times when there are 13-weekers and 14-weekers and the head is not accounted for. If you do an ultrasound and see that it’s still in there, then you have to go back as a separate procedure,” Cummings said. “People are worried that that is what they are going to call a ‘partial-birth,’ that part of the fetus was removed without the other part.

How macabre.

Cummings says that she only aborts up to 12-weekers, but she sounds like an expert on 13-14 weekers.

Those who wish to decrease the chance of violence in our community would do well to stop collaborating with the perpetrators.


That last line of my letter has a public meaning, but its private meaning may require an explanation. Someday, I hope to recount here a powerful story from the Holocaust about Collaboration v. Resistance.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Abortion Is Still Genocide

Today I ran across an article in the journal, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, published by Oxford University Press. Titled, “Perspectives: Abortion and Genocide: the Unbridgeable Gap”, it is written by Jessica Woolford and Andrew Woolford, and appears in the Spring 2007 issue that came out first on March 23.

From the article: “Jessica Woolford recently completed her M.A. in English at the University of Manitoba. Andrew Woolford is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba.”

The abstract follows:
“This article examines The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's claim that abortion is genocide, assessing it against legal, trait-based and "dynamic process" definitions of genocide. The purpose of this exercise is not to give credence to what many consider an outrageous claim, nor is it to merely refute this claim based upon a close reading of existing definitions of genocide; instead, by subjecting The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's claim to an ethical and performative evaluation, our goal is to illustrate how the term genocide can be "misused." In the end, we argue that The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform uses the term genocide for its own totalizing and essentializing purposes, and in doing so engages in practices that share an affinity with the exclusionary discourses that help make genocide thinkable.”
The entire article can be found at the following web address. Access to the article requires registration and a $23.00 payment.

http://sp.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/14/1/126

I will be writing a response to the article when time allows, but for now I will say that its arguments are fairly easy to answer. In discourse with professors and students on university campuses throughout the United States [and in Canada] we have encountered them in many varied forms, expressed at various levels of sophistication.

Friday, April 27, 2007













The lady waving is, I was told, a professor at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Her sign is in honor of our appearance with the Genocide Awareness Project on the UAB campus on April 16 & 17, 2007. She seems to be unaware that she is making an invalid ad hominum argument. But since she values this, I will answer that because Seven Men (and Zero Women) voted in favor of Roe v. Wade, it must be 100% bad and out of touch. Also, approximately 52% of aborted children are female-more in places like India and the PRC. My favorite response to her argument, however, is to tell its proponents that I, a man, bore three children before my sex change. And while we are being absurd, I will suggest for the anti-abortion side that men as men, who can not become pregnant and are not as personally involved, will thereby actually be more reasonable and objective on this subject.

Abortion Is Genocide

In August 1941, Winston Churchill called the German’s "methodical, merciless butchery" of Jewish people in occupied Soviet Russia “a crime without a name.” Polish born advisor to the U.S. military, Raphael Lemkin, gave that kind of crime—the destruction of groups of people—a name when he coined the word “genocide.” The word appeared in print for the first time in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In chapter IX of this book, Lemkin began by saying, “New conceptions require new terms.” [See http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/crimewithoutaname.htm ]

Another significant milestone in Genocide awareness was reached when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the final text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Since then, 137 nations have ratified the Convention. Genocide is viewed as the worst of the class of the worst imaginable crimes called, “Crimes Against Humanity.” The Convention [and the International Criminal Court] define genocide as:

"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” [See http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html ]
In addition to ratifying the language above, many world states have their own statutes that define genocide in terms differing from the international standard. Some laws are more narrow (and weaker) and some broader. Amnesty International [at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGIOR400192004?open&of=ENG-385 ] lists a dozen states whose laws against genocide either increase the number of protected groups or increase the scope of offenses that qualify as being genocide. Amnesty International sees the development of broader definitions of genocide to be positive. For example, in Ecuador, groups are expanded to include those defined on the basis of political condition, gender, sexual orientation, age, health, or conscience. The official French definition of genocide begins with the recognized target groups of “national, ethnical, racial and religious” but adds, “or of a group determined by any other arbitrary criterion.” [See http://195.83.177.9/code/liste.phtml?lang=uk&c=33&r=3680 ]

The group of human beings intended for destruction “in whole or in part” in the case of abortion is determined by size, age, degree of dependency, location, level of function and a vague, imposed condition of unwantedness; abortion therefore qualifies as genocide under the French definition, and that of a few other nations, because those criterion are all arbitrary as excluders from the human family.

There also are definitions of genocide other than legal. Words are defined according to how they are used, and commonly genocide is used to describe human caused mass deaths.

Rightly or wrongly, on April 4, Cuban leader Fidel Castro called the Bush administration’s promotion of food crop conversion to biofuels the “internationalization of genocide.” [See
http://www.alcaabajo.cu/design/read.tpl.html?news_id_obj_id=1002228 ]

Words are defined in different ways, by different people for differing purposes. University of Hawaii Professor Emeritus of Political Science, R.J. Rummel illustrates how there are three broad categories of definitions: legal, common, and general. Moving from the legal definitions to general, the tendency is to lose specificity, so that in general genocide is any mass killing by governments of innocent people. In this regard, “genocide” becomes watered down, and yet there is no word in common use that relates to governmental killings of this nature. Rummel states: “The problem with the generalized meaning of genocide is that to fill one void it creates another. For if genocide refers to all government murder, there is then no name for the murder of people because of their group membership, or the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part?” [See http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/GENOCIDE.ENCY.HTM ]

Our use of the word “genocide” to describe the massive world-wide killing of pre-born children certainly does not create a void by undermining the strength of the term; rather it points to an evil occurring presently in our own nation and communities to which all of us to one degree or another are complicit.

In any case, words are defined how they are used. In dictionaries a particular word is often defined in different ways and in numerical order of that definition’s popularity.

Some critics claim that abortion is not “systematic.” That term is not specifically used in the United Nation’s definition of genocide, but if a
person insists on this qualifier, in abortion, governments issue killing permits (a medical license) to specialists who employ various physical and chemical methods. Such governments often fund the killing, and anyone who attempts to interfere with the killing, including the father of the child, (other than simply speaking) will be forcibly stopped and punished—in other words where abortion is “legal” it is state sponsored and protected. The world-wide organization Planned Parenthood makes its agenda clear with the motto: “Every child a wanted child,” which means that it wishes for every unwanted child to be dead before he or she is born.

There are many points of comparison between genocide and abortion. The president of Genocide Watch, Gregory Stanton, has developed a list of eight stages of genocide: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, denial. All of these stages occur to some extent with abortion. In referring to abortion as genocide and using graphic images, we in the Genocide Awareness Project [a creation of the Center for Bio-ethical Reform - http://www.abortionno.org/ ] emphasize certain similarities: violence committed against the victims and depersonalization of the victims. One factor we deal with a lot on university campuses is denial. [See http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stages.htm ] The use of euphemisms in abortion, as in other atrocities, is common. The National Abortion Federation, a “professional association of abortion practitioners” refers to destroying one’s preborn child as “health care.” [See http://www.prochoice.org/ ] Often killing pre-born children is referred to as “reproductive choice.” These are samples of denial in language, but denial is also exhibited in many ways by most women who have aborted. Even “pro-life” people engage in denial by not responding appropriately. Theologies are developed to justify inaction, or worse, collaboration….

The 1985 PBS Frontline documentary, Memory of the Camps, is made of post-war commentary and footage taken by allied forces as they liberated Nazi death camps at the end of WWII. The film shows shocking images of death and starvation. You can watch it at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/ . Everyone should see this documentary. It ends with these words:

“The dead have been buried; it remains for us to care for these, the living. It remains for us to hope that Germans may help to mend what they have broken, and cleanse what they have befouled. Thousands of German people were made to see for themselves, to bury the dead, to file past the victims. This was the end of the journey they had so confidently begun in 1933. Twelve years? No, in terms of barbarity and brutality they had traveled backwards for 12 thousand years. Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall, but by God’s grace, we who live, will learn.”

The pictures of aborted children and other victims of atrocities in the Genocide Awareness Project teach the same lesson as do the images in Memory of the Camps.

There are many similarities between Shoah, the Jewish name for the Holocaust, and abortion—the essential one is that all the victims were and are human beings who were and are depersonalized. One example: Jewish people were called parasites; the National Geographic film, In the Womb refers to pre-born children as parasites. When you see horrible images of the emaciated bodies of dear people being dragged and slung into pits, and when you see the images of 10 week aborted children in GAP… you can imagine. There are heads, arms, legs, torsos, eyes…

Considering everything, including the magnitude (55 million dead per year around the world, and women are the secondary uncounted victims) while not perfect, “genocide” describes abortion better than any other word we have. The generic “abortion” does not do it justice. Maybe someday another more specific and descriptive expression will be invented, but until then, human abortion remains a crime without a name.

[Note: This article is a work in progress. All comments and suggestions will be given serious consideration. I am engaged in a lifelong study of Shoah. Books I am currently reading are Surviving Treblinka, by Samuel Willenberg, and Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. One book that I highly recommend is Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach.]

[Some background on the International Criminal Court can be found at
http://www.un.org/law/icc/]

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Conversation at the Edge

http://conversationattheedge.com/2007/02/24/merediths-side-of-the-story/

Go here to see an extended discussion I engaged in with several people. The conversation began with thoughts from me about the Time magazine cover story of 2/26/2007.

Friday, March 2, 2007




South Dakota, October 2007. We took the Genocide Awareness Project (Center for Bio-ethical Reform) to three South Dakota university campuses to educate people about abortion prior to the vote on the state's protective law.

The Ministry of Presence

"When did we see you in prison?” …. Matthew 25:44

Your child is ill & in the hospital. You & your spouse arrange for one or the other of you to be there around the clock. You sit by the bed & hold your baby’s hand, or read a story out loud, or sing lullabies. There is nothing else you can do.

This is the Ministry of Presence.

You visited your grandmother every day at the nursing home. You sat in her room & talked & watched TV with her. Sometimes you read a book to yourself or took a nap. Later, when she was very ill & seeming to be unconscious, you read the Bible to her & prayed.

This is the Ministry of Presence.

At your grandma’s funeral you wept & hugged your relatives. There was nothing that you could say to them, but you were there. Everyone will remember that you loved her.

This is the Ministry of Presence.

The desire to be near a loved one who is hurting or who is in a desperate need is natural, normal, & human. There is no substitute for being physically near another person. Our Creator Himself came as a man & walked among us. He touched people, he stood by them, & he wept. Presence is so important to us that Jesus left his Holy Spirit to dwell with us & among us after his own body departed this world. He gives us His presence in the wine and bread of the Eucharist.

When Jesus hung on the cross, some of those that followed & loved him, came to watch from a distance. Almost all of them were women. Of the men who became apostles, only John was present. The other men were hiding in fear.


Jesus as a Pre-born Child

When Mary came to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the Lord Jesus was only a week old in his mother’s womb. Elisabeth’s baby in her womb leapt for joy to be in the presence of the Christ. Children bear the image of God, & abortion, as do other forms of murder, not only sheds innocent blood, it is an attack upon the image of God. Jesus summed up the Law & the Prophets in two commands, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, & with all thy soul, & with all thy mind” & “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” [Matt 22:37&39]

Preborn children are our neighbors, & many of these neighbors are killed not very far from where we live & where we worship in our churches. Does not every good parent love his own children as much as he loves himself? We sacrifice & labor for our children. We hug & teach them. To love preborn children as our neighbors, we would love them as we do our own children, & we would want to be near the places of death & suffering, if for nothing else than to silently testify to their humanity. The biblical logic is inescapable, that those who love God will want to sometimes & periodically come to the places of abortion & offer their love to the children about to be killed.

Who would believe that we loved our elderly grandmother or our sick children if we did not try to be near them whenever possible? How will the world believe us when we say abortion is wrong if we will not act on behalf of those about to be killed in the simplest human way that demonstrates the truth of what we say?

Pregnancy support ministries are wonderful, but those that are not purposely planted right next door to the killing sites do not make the last attempt to save the 1.3 million who are killed each year in the United States. There is a need for all pro-life people to come to the abortion places.

Another aspect, of course, is the witness for life we give to the abortionists who kill children for a living & to the parents. We find increasingly that people who come for abortion have Christian symbols on their cars.


Ways to be Present

The beauty of the Ministry of Presence concept is that it is perfectly applicable for nearly everyone who believes that abortion kills a child. Young or old, bright or simple, trained or untrained -most people- can come at least once a year, many can come once a month, & a dedicated handful will make themselves available weekly. You can come as an individual, a family or a church. The three basic ways we have organized & identified here in Asheville are: the annual Vigil; Churches Praying once a month; & regular Sidewalk Counseling at the abortion location.

a. Vigil
Every year we in Life Advocates sponsor an all-night Vigil on the weekend nearest to January 22nd -the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Churches sign up for an hour to pray, sing, read scriptures & fellowship at the place of abortion in Asheville. We created “Milk Jug Luminaries” (numbered by the years since 1973) that we burn through the night. Please consider organizing an annual vigil outside the abortion site in your community. Come prepared for any & all weather. 2007 marked our eighth consecutive Vigil.

b. Church Praying
A number of churches, led by pastors, elders & others come once a month to the abortion site to pray, watch & support our sidewalk counselors. If your church will not come officially, you may be able to come with several families or as an individual family or person. Typically a church will take, for examples, the second Saturday of each month, or third Wednesdays. In our area there likely are 50,000 pro-life Christians within an hour’s drive of the abortion building. Imagine what it would look like if everyone who was pro-life in the United States came to the abortion places near them a few times a year.

c. Sidewalk Counseling
“Let Your Baby Live! We Will Help” our sign says. Sidewalk Counseling is simply offering loving help, information & encouragement to people coming to abort their children, so that they do not feel that they must do this desperate act. We use a battery powered speaker & a microphone [Not a bullhorn!] & we offer a literature packet, including our own resource brochure. We are there whenever people are arriving for abortion. About once a week, a woman changes her mind to let her baby live, & we offer her a nice ‘baby-bag’ stuffed with things for her & her child. We have an Ob-Gyn backup. Sidewalk counselors make up a close community of people from varied backgrounds. We need new people here in Asheville & all over the country. If you are interested in Sidewalk Counseling, e-mail or call me at 828-298-5757 & I will help you get started here in our area or anywhere—where you live. If there is Sidewalk Counseling already in your community, just go & see what it is like, get to know those who are doing it, & in time you may decide to take a more active role.

“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” -Matthew 25:34-40 [KJV]

Are not pre-born children who are threatened by abortion to be deprived of food & drink? Are they not strangers needing taking in? Are they not naked? Are not some of them sick, or all of them to be deprived of health—their very lives? Is not the abortion place a prison where they are to be executed?

Please help us save precious pre-born children!

Please help us save precious men and women from harming themselves by abortion!


Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The author in 1973.
abortion site in Memphis