Whiskey and Gunpowder Bulls Eye Investing Demography is Destiny

As we continue, or more to the point as American women continue to desensitize their natural reproductive imperative, with birth control and abortion, a looming crisis is developing across the Western and in some cases Asian demography.

China is experiencing an unbalanced female to male population, leaving much of the young men without marriage partners. This creates social and political instability. The "one child" policy of communist China and soon America (if the totalitarians in our nation have their way) has circumvented God's will to go out and be plentiful. When a government and their citizens work in the Natural and Moral Law, there is peace and security for that nation, When they do not there is no peace and no security. Our nation is fast becoming a house of cards built in the sand of human egocentricity and elitist leadership. This is the natural extension of spoiled baby boomers

Increasingly our brave, our strong, our productive, and our successful like Gulliver are being tied and hamstrung and blamed by the unproductive no nothing elite Lilliputians who purport to have a law and an answer for all of the woes they created in the first place. 

Abortion and contraception are literally killing off our population, our moral persuasion; it is increasing our moral ambivalence, indecisiveness, and political contention. Our nation must be viewed holistically. These parts of our souls, our morality, culture, religiosity, of what is sacred (if anything) are internal to the American heart and mind, while the economy and the social contract are their extensions.   

Ahh, but Jesus said it much better: "..where your treasure is there your heart is also."

Where is America's treasure? I say in the dumpsters of abortion centers.

And so in 2005 John Maudlin wrote a book Bull’s Eye Investing. The forward of this book was included in a commentary piece at the website  whiskey and gunpowder. 

For me this is not so much a book about investing but much much more about national suicide resulting from eugenics, abortion, and contraception. It is about a war of spiritual attrition which within America is gradually and purposely being lost by Obama and his sycophants.

You say to yourself ,"Whiskey and Gunpowder is a website?"  Eh! I don't know.. maybe sumptin to do with colonial history, but the web site is about:

 "Whiskey & Gunpowder explores the crossroads of liberty, finance and moral philosophy. Frankly, we don’t believe these things can be examined separately.....


Here is a taste of this forward (or maybe I should say a shot), that is at this PLACE


John Mauldin, in an excerpt from his book Bull’s Eye Investing, outlines the retirement problems the world faces.

There is no free lunch.
-Milton Friedman

NOW, LET’S LOOK away from the United States, and focus on the rest of the world. If we think the

retirement problems facing the United States are severe, then the facts suggest the rest of the

developed world is facing a major crisis. Over the next few decades, we are going to see a shift in

economic and political power that is simply staggering in its implications. Let’s look at facts first,

and then draw conclusions.

I am going to quote at length from a study by the respected Bank Credit Analyst. Martin Barnes and

his crew at BCA Research have a stellar reputation for having been as accurate as any letter in the

world for decades. They give us some sobering thoughts.

The populations of the developed countries will drop rapidly over the next 50 years, while those of

undeveloped countries, especially Islamic countries, will rise dramatically. (See Figure 11.1, Figure

11.2, and Table 11.1.) Germany will experience no population growth and will remain at 80 million

people, while Yemen will grow from 18 million to over 84 million. Russia will drop from 145 million

to slightly over 100 million. Iran will grow from 66 million to 105 million. Japan will drop to 109

million, while Iraq and Saudi Arabia will grow to 110 million each. Italy will decline from 57 million

to 45 million, while Afghanistan will grow from 21 million to 70 million.  read more here 

In the words of Margo Channing aka Betty Davis: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

Are You Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? Watch This and Let us Know.

Debating Abortion

I've used this line of reasoning, but with little success. Maybe it's the medium. Maybe it's the people I'm engaging. Maybe it's me.

What do you think of this video?

What Would You Do?

The ABC TV show "What Would You Do" (a sort of updated "Candid Camera") went to Texas to see how people would react to a boy pressuring a girl to get an abortion:



(H/T: Creative Minority Report's Matt Archbold writing at National Catholic Register.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Lake County Right to Life salutes both our Congressmen, Bob Dold and Joe Walsh, for voting in support of HR 3, to ban federal funding of abortion!

Disappoipnted pro-aborts are lashing out already.

Just When You Least Expect It

I've noticed two things about the abortion debate.

First: We're winning. More and more people identify as pro-life, more and more people report that they support legal restrictions on abortion, and more and more young people are pro-life.

Second (and counter-intuitively, considering the first point), the pro-life side doesn't usually drive the debate. Whenever abortion percolates to the top of our national discussions, it's most often because of something that the pro-abort side has said or done.

For example, what preceded the recent House vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood? A series of videos were released by LiveAction showing the eagerness of Planned Parenthood employees to provide their (government-funded) services to pimps running rings of (fictitious, as it turned out) illegal immigrant underage sex slaves.

This week the blogosphere is all over the recent post at the Wonkette blog that demonstrates liberals' visceral hatred of Trig Palin, the Down Syndrome baby of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Due to pre-natal testing, 90% of Down Syndrome babies are aborted in a fit of American Lebensunwertes Leben. Of course, liberals hate little Trig, who turned 3 this week, because his existence stands as a rebuke to their bankrupt philosophy and as a testament to the dignity and sanctity of human life. Such a famous Down Syndrome child provides unacceptably counter-cultural example of selflessness. Liberals believe that Trig should have been aborted, and they could not care less about anyone's "choice" in the matter. And a large number of people who last week were emphasizing the importance of fiscal policy in choosing our next president are now discussing how vile the pro-abortion tendencies of the left really are.

As you look back, it's the same story. What were the big abortion-related stories in 2008, during the last presidential campaigns? There were two: Barack Obama said that the question of when a baby gets human rights was "above my pay grade". And in a press conference, Obama said that if his girls, having reached their teen years, were to "make a mistake," that he wouldn't want them to be "punished with a baby."

So what do you think? What will the pro-aborts do next to draw unwanted and embarrassing attention to themselves?

Abortion Ensures Wisconsin Will Be Conservative

James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal has done the math (H/T: The Other McCain):

There probably are many more like Tricia Willoughby, aren't there? After all, her parents are "pro-life activists," which means they have a tendency to follow the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. People on the other political side are more inclined toward subtraction (or as they call it, "choice"), as we explained in our 2005 paper "The Roe Effect."

Here are some Badger State numbers: Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. The Wisconsin Department of Health has statewide figures on the annual number of abortions going back to 1975. Tot up the numbers through 1992, and you come up with 316,457.

Scott Walker won the governorship last year by a margin of 124,638. That may not be within the margin of abortion; after all, some of the missing 316,457 would have voted Republican had they existed, and many would not have voted.

But JoAnne Kloppenburg, the left-liberal state Supreme Court candidate who was supposed to save Wisconsin's labor monopolies from Walker's reforms, lost by just 7,316 votes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (this figure is pending a possible futile recount). It's almost inconceivable that the Roe effect alone is insufficient to account for Justice David Prosser's victory.

Oh, and in four years, Tricia Willoughby will be old enough to vote, while an additional 54,522 will not be.

Abortion; it's not an evolutionary survival technique.

Why They Hate Trig Palin

Every politician makes political appearances with their kids. Every candidate makes campaign appearances and produces campaign materials that include their kids. The Clintons did it with Chelsea, the Obamas do it with their daughters, I did it with my kids.

But one politician -- just one -- has taken flack for appearing with one -- just one! -- of her kids. That politician is former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. And the child they hate to see her with is her youngest, Trig, who has Down Syndrome.

Make no mistake. The left hates Trig Palin:

Now Wonkette is at it again, in an even more crude manner, this time authored by 2010 Georgetown grad  Jack Stuef, Greatest Living American: A Children’s Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday.

Replete with PhotoShops of Trig next to a pulsating pole dancer (image right), and links to videos in which various Democrats mock Trig in profanity-laced tirades, Stuef has a good laugh with text such as this:

Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.) It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are privileged to live in a time when we can witness the greatest prop in world political history...

What’s he dreaming about? Nothing. He’s retarded.

Wonkette is no fly-by-night outfit.  Here is how it describes itself on its Advertising page:

Wonkette.com is a top 5,000 site and No. 63 Technorati blog that reaches over 1 million monthly unique visitors, 88% of which are in the U.S. The site is wildly popular among a mostly male, very affluent and well educated adult crowd. The typical visitor reads Gawker and subscribes to the Economist and Vanity Fair.

Winner of three consecutive Bloggies and a regular source of outrageous quotes and jokes for the political class, Wonkette is Washington's non-stop campaign cocktail party.

Wonkette is a sick publication.  But it sure is popular with the liberal D.C. crowd.

Outrageous. Some some folks complained to the advertisers on that site, and three of them pulled their ads. Papa John's, Huggies and Vanguard. The editors at Wonkette defend the post:

“We beat up on Sarah Palin’s craven use of her son as a political prop. Child protective services should take Trig away.”

“On whose account are you requesting that Jack Stuef remove a post mocking Sarah Palin’s well-documented use of her special needs child as a political prop?..."

It's easy to see that the left hates Sarah Palin with the hot, hot fire of a thousand suns. And the real reason for this hatred is Trig. They hate Trig with every fiber of their being. They hate him with a passion beyond description. Murder would not satisfy their hatred of Trig, because they hate most of all the fact that this baby was ever born.

If Sarah Palin had aborted Trig, she would be a hero to the left. But she kept him, she loves him, Down Syndrome and all. And they hate that.

The abortion ethic holds that only the perfect baby is worthy to be born. The abortion ethic holds that only the wealthy baby is worthy to be born. Trig stands as a living rebuke to the pro-aborts, who, in him, are revealed not to be pro-choice at all, but only pro-abortion. Trig Palin, by simply living, is a testament to the dignity and sanctity of all human life. The pro-abort left cannot abide, and cannot tolerate, his witness.

And so they make up lies and excuses for their hatred about Sarah Palin's "exploitation" of her son. Of course, if Trig was never seen in her materials and appearances, they would claim that she was ashamed of him, that she was hiding him. It's not that they see Trig that enrages them; it is that Trig lives at all. Modern liberalism is a philosophy of hatred, of jealousy, of death. The left's reaction to Trig Palin is the logical expression of that philosophy.

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

RedState: Abortion Numbers in Perspective

Dan McLaughlin at the conservative blog RedState has a reminder about just what's at stake in the abortion fight, compared to other losses of human life:

With the recent debate over federal taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood bringing the abortion debate back to the surface, it is sometimes useful to look at the numbers to get a little perspective on why this issue is such a large one. (All of these are estimates, and sources vary, but there’s no serious debate as to the scale of the numbers).

Number killed or missing in action in all wars in U.S. history: 1,343,812. Adding the wounded: 2,489,335.

Number killed or missing in action in U.S. wars since 1973: 12,387. Adding the wounded: 96,680.

Number of executions in U.S. history dating back to 1608: 15,269.

Number of executions in U.S. history dating back to 1930: 3,859.

Number of executions in U.S. history dating back to 1977 (after the Supreme Court lifted a decade-long moratorium): 1,099 through 2008.

Number killed in the September 11 attacks: 2,977.

Number of detainees waterboarded by the CIA under President Bush: 3.

Number of abortions in the U.S. since 1973: 53,310,843 through 2010.

Number of abortions per year in the U.S. since 1973: 1,402,917.

Number of abortions per month in the U.S. since 1973: 116,910.

Number of abortions per week in the U.S. since 1973: 26,979.

Number of abortions per day in the U.S. since 1973: 3,841.

Number of abortions by Planned Parenthood in the U.S. in 2009: 332,278, more than 900 per day, or 27.6% of all abortions in the U.S.


You know, there are a lot of issues I care about, as a conservative Republican. I don’t especially like having to draw lines in the sand over abortion, and if you’re reading this, even if you’re pro-life, chances are you don’t either. But it is useful at times to prick our consciences with the sheer scale of this atrocity, happening daily under our noses. Liberal activists and lawyers devote massive efforts every year to battling the death penalty - yet all the executions of the post-Roe era don’t even add up to a third of a day’s worth of the number of abortions. We agonize, and rightly so, over the cost in life of our wars - but the toll of abortion is equal to fighting the Battle of Antietam, or two Battles of Okinawa, every single week, or two entire Vietnam Wars every month. Our commentariat was racked with paroxysms of moral reproach over three prisoners being waterboarded, yet considers it gauche to even mention well over three thousand abortions daily, each of which destroys a biologically unique human being. (Your religion may override your regard for the science, but there’s no way around the fact that an unborn child has his or her own unique genetic code, the definitive scientific hallmark of an individual).

Numbers alone can’t make the moral judgments that constitute public policy for us. But they can certainly inform our sense of perspective. And looking at the number of abortions is a reminder that maybe, sometimes, we go too far in trying to make this just another issue.

Lake County Legislators Oppose Women's Health

Readers of this blog, and subscribers to the Lake County Right to Life email service, already know about State Rep Darlene Senger's HB3156, which would bring abortion clinics under the same regulatory structure as other clinics that perform outpatient procedures. Dorie wrote about the bill here, and I wrote about it here. The bill was placed on delayed consideration yesterday after an initial tally fell three votes short of passing the bill. Another vote will be taken today.

As you can see from the above image (courtesy of Illinois Review), our Lake County delegation seems to want to keep those back alley abortions going strong.

When Bill Clinton said that he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare," we knew he was lying about "rare," but now we see that pro-aborts aren't too interested in abortions being "safe," either, even for the mother. Our friend former State Rep. Cal Skinner at McHenry County Blog has more on regulating abortion clinics.

In the image above, we can see that:

• State Rep. Mark Beaubien (R-52, 847-487-5252) was not voting. (UPDATE: Rumor has it that Beaubien is ill; we hope for his speedy recovery.)
  
• State Reps. Karen May (D-58, 847-433-9100), Carol Sente (D-59, 847-680-5909) and Sandy Cole (R-62, 847-543-0062) all voted in opposition.
  
• State Rep. Rita Mayfield (D-60, 847-599-2800), who professes to be pro-life, voted present, which has the same effect as a "nay" vote.
  
• Of the Lake County delegation, only State Reps. Ed Sullivan, Jr., (R-51, 847-566-5115) and JoAnn Osmond (R-61, 847-838-6200) voted yea.
  
• We can also see that GOP Leader Tom Cross likewise voted "nay", while Democrat Speaker Mike Madigan, who claims to be pro-life, voted "present."

Another vote will be taken today; we hope that you will contact your state representative immediately.

Another Good Reason to De-Fund Planned Parenthood

They're not licensed!

McHenry County Blogger (and former GOP State Representative, and former libertarian gubernatorial candidate) Cal Skinner made a Freedom of Information Act request of the Illinois Department of Public Health to see all the licenses for Planned Parenthood clinics in Illinois.

As it turns out, there are no such licenses. No wonder they're so adamantly opposed to the regulation of abortion clinics!

Dems: If We Can't Fund Abortion, We Won't Fund Anything

I never doubted it would come to this.  If they can't fund the nation's largest abortion provider, they'll shut down the government.   Isn't 53 million innocents lost enough?  Do they have to involve you and I in it as well?  Jake Tapper has the story:

His meeting with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., having concluded, President Obama came to the White House briefing room this evening to report “additional progress” had been made and “differences have been narrowed.”

But outstanding issues remain, he cautioned, ones so important – to both sides - the president said he wouldn’t express “wild optimism” that there will be a deal.

Democratic sources tell ABC News that things “feel better now” in terms of a deal being cut, but the major sticking point remains the GOP rider prohibiting any federal funding to Planned Parenthood or any of its affiliates.

...“The stickiest issue will end up being Planned Parenthood.”

The House voted earlier this year to de-fund Planned Parenthood but 41 Democrats in the Senate already have said they would not support legislation ending funding to Planned Parenthood, making the matter one that could be filibustered. The White House has said the president would not agree to any ban on funding to Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is already prohibited from using any federal funds for abortion-related services. Officials of the organization say more than 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood clinics do has nothing to do with abortion, but rather focuses on women’s health services such as pap smears and breast cancer screening.

Abortion opponents say federal funding for other services means money freed up for the purposes of conducting abortions, which they regard as ending human life.

The claim that the bulk of Planned Parenthood's operation is not abortion is simply a lie.  A boldfaced, easily disproved lie.  And it's also been proved that they don't do breast cancer screenings, either, but they're still harping on that one as well.

That President Obama would take this to the brink to protect Planned Parenthood comes as no surprise.  This is the most pro-abortion president in history.

(Cross posted from the Northern Illinois Patriots blog.)

Coming Soon To A School System Near You

French teacher suspended, fired, and forfeits public social benefits for showing pro-life film in class (H/T: Acts of the Apostasy):

Philippe Isnard, 40, a history teacher who was suspended last November for having provided pro-life materials and shown images of aborted babies during a debate about abortion in his 10th grade class in Manosque, France, was fired from the National Education system on Thursday.

Isnard lost his position without salary, benefits or any right to financial compensation via the social welfare system.

He told LifeSiteNews.com he was “stunned” by the severity of the decision, even though he was beyond hoping for complete exoneration.

Revocation constitutes the harshest possible disciplinary measure for a teacher in the French public education system. Graded 4 on a scale of 1 to 4 of possible disciplinary measures, a full revocation can only be pronounced by the Education minister himself. It puts a full stop to the father-of-two’s teaching career in all state-funded schools.

The controversy around Isnard began last fall when several parents started a public campaign against the history teacher after he showed students aged 15 to 16 graphic video footage entitled, “No Need to Argue.”

The French mainstream media were quick to pick up the story. Fueled by a pro-abortion feminist organization, “Prochoix,” the campaign provoked angry media reactions calling on the Education ministry to take measures against Isnard.

The education minister, Luc Chatel, responded by publicly criticizing the teacher, saying: “What has happened is unacceptable. Professors are under obligation to respect neutrality and to have respect for the person.”

Shortly after Isnard was temporarily suspended in November, a “psychological counseling unit” was set up at Les Iscles high school to support students who had participated in the abortion debate. Reportedly no students have made use of its services.

The local Planned Parenthood was also invited into Les Iscles high school to follow up the debate, meeting with the students in groups of five.

For his part, Isnard has argued that he encouraged debate in the class. Students were encouraged to bring their own material, either for or against abortion, while Isnard himself provided Simone Veil’s Assembly speech promoting the first French law legalizing abortion, now known as the “Loi Veil,” pro-life video clips, a pro-life tract and “No Need to Argue.”

He says he warned his students about the shocking nature of some of the materials to be presented and told them they were free to leave the class if they wished.

Here in Illinois, biennial School Board elections take place on Tuesday of this week. When you go to vote, will you know how tolerant to pro-life views the people on your school board ballot are?

More liberal tolerance of opposing views.

Pay to Play

Gov. Quinn Nominates Supporter to Key Post

Illinois' premier pro-abortion activist, Terry Cosgrove, Executive Director of Personal PAC, claims credit for electing Democrat Pat Quinn as Illinois Governor last November, and well he might. His organization's vile, lying, misleading and mean-spirited ads, mailings and calls slandered Republican Bill Brady -- and many other candidates besides.

Is Governor Quinn grateful? You bet your sweet bippy!

Last week, Governor Pat Quinn nominated abortion rights leader Terry Cosgrove to fill an opening on Illinois' Human Rights Commission. Next Thursday, Cosgrove's nomination will be heard before the Senate Executive Appointments Committee.

Cosgrove, the 58 year old CEO of Personal PAC, plans to continue directing his pro-abortion political action committee while he serves part-time on the commission. Personal PAC's generous $400,000 campaign donation to Governor Quinn's campaign in 2010 is stirring another round of Quinn "pay to play" buzz.

Cosgrove's Facebook photo (right) is pretty indicative of his pro-Quinn, anti-Brady partiality in the 2010 governor's race. You've got to wonder how impartial he'd be voting on the Human Rights Commission, don't you?

Certainly, no one could reasonably hope that Cosgrove would support human rights for all humans. Cosgrove's vision of "human rights" is something that mere humanity doesn't qualify you for.

And Quinn's vision of public service is something that mere public service isn't a qualification for. In both cases, something... extra is required.

And, oh yeah, this is the same guy who sent out this mailing about me during my campaign in a Republican primary.

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

Ellen McCormack RIP

1976 Pro-life Democratic Presidential Candidate passes on...

Michael J. New at National Review On-Line has the story:

This past Sunday, longtime pro-life activist Ellen McCormack passed away. Since the pro-life movement often devotes little attention to its own history, her name may be unfamiliar to many young pro-lifers.

However, pro-lifers of a slightly older generation will remember her as one of the most famous pro-life activists of the 1970s. McCormack was a wife, mother, homemaker, and a pro-life activist. She got her start in politics in New York, which was a hotbed of pro-life activism when it became among the first states to legalize abortion in 1970.

McCormack is most well known for running for the Democratic party’s nomination for president in 1976 on a pro-life platform. Her story is chronicled in Professor Jane Gilroy’s recent book A Shared Vision.

Throughout her campaign, McCormack had little money, name recognition, or media coverage. However, she still received more votes than better known, better funded Democratic presidential candidates in a number of primaries and caucuses.

McCormack became the first female presidential candidate to qualify for federal matching funds and her campaign commercials which focused on pro-life issues reached tens of millions of voters. She received three delegates and received a nominating speech and a seconding speech at the Democratic National Convention that summer. Her campaign educated many about abortion and demonstrated that there was a sizeable contingent of Democrats who were willing to support a single-issue pro-life candidate.

Pro-life pioneers like Ellen McCormack deserve credit for the gains the pro-life movement has made in recent years. In its early years, the pro-life movement was very short on resources and received precious little attention from the mainstream media. As such, it was up to articulate volunteers and single-issue candidates like EllenMcCormack to keep voters informed.

Furthermore, McCormack’s campaigns raised the salience of sanctity of life issues and gave countless campaign workers valuable experience. McCormack went on to run for lieutenant governor of New York in 1978 and for president as a single-issue pro-life candidate in 1980. Her steadfast devotion to the pro-life cause will be missed. RIP.

It's hard to imagine today that anyone might run for the Democratic nomination for President on a pro-life platform. I can only imagine the abuse they'd receive. Today, the Democrats are at least as wedded to abortion as they once were to slavery.

Planned Parenthood Lies

Quelle Surprise...

(H/T: Illinois Review.)

If this bill ever become law, perhaps they will no longer be able to afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of our own money to lie to us! Defund.

Thank you, Congressman Joe Walsh, for supporting the Pence Amendment!

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

It Never Stops Getting Worse

A few hundred years ago, if you wanted a miracle cure for ailed you, or just a really nifty new hair tonic, you might buy something made from ground up ancient Egyptian mummies. Seriously:

From the 1100s until opinions changed in the 1700s, powdered or chopped up pieces of a mummy were considered a cure for many different health problems, including diseases, poisoning, open wounds, and even broken bones. Mixed with other ingredients or used straight, mummy medicine became a popular drug in the West. King Francis I of France even took powdered mummy with rhubarb daily.

When Egyptian mummies became hard to acquire, a new market for the dearly departed opened up. Merchants substituted the corpses of slaves and others, “embalming” the bodies themselves and marketing them as genuine mummies.

"Mummy Brown" or “Egyptian Brown” was a paint composed of powdered mummy. Most often used in watercolor and oil painting during the 1500s and 1600s, artists enjoyed its pleasing color and texture although it was prone to cracking. Mummy Brown abruptly fell out of use in the 1800s after its gruesome composition became known.

In Britain during the 1830s and 1840s, mummy “unwrapping” parties were popular. Tourists traveling to Egypt would bring back a mummy and invite friends over to witness the unwrapping of the mummy, followed by refreshments. Victorians also found it interesting to keep the hand or foot of a mummy as a display piece ... accounts include mummies used as firewood by travelers and the export of mummified cats to Europe as fertilizer in the 1800s.

Today, of course, we are too refined to use mummies for such mundane purposes. Instead, we use aborted fetuses to make flavor enhancers in our food:

A pro-life group that monitors the use of cells from babies victimized by abortions is today highlighting a biotech company, Senomyx, which it says produces artificial flavor enhancers using aborted fetal cell lines to test their products.

The group Children of God for Life is calling for a public boycott of major food companies partnering with Senomyx.

Debi Vinnedge, the director of the pro-life organization, tells LifeNews.com today that, in 2010, her group wrote to Senomyx CEO Kent Snyder and pointed out that moral options for testing their food additives could and should be used. But when Senomyx ignored her letter, the group wrote to the companies Senomyx listed on their website as “collaborators” warning them of public backlash and threatened boycott. They included food giants PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Campbell Soup, Solae and Nestlé. (See update below.)

“The company’s key flavor programs focus on the discovery and development of savory, sweet and salt flavor ingredients that are intended to allow for the reduction of MSG, sugar and salt in food and beverage products,” the Senomyx web site says. “Using isolated human taste receptors, we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor.”

... “What they don’t tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 – human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors,” she said. “They could have easily chosen animal, insect, or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors.”

Vinnedge says she has contacted the food companies working with Senomyx, but said it took three letters before one company, Nestlé, finally admitted its relationship with Senomyx and company officials claimed the line of cells from abortions was “well established in scientific research”.

Both PepsiCo and Campbell Soup also responded.

PepsiCo wrote: “We hope you are reassured to learn that our collaboration with Senomyx is strictly limited to creating lower-calorie, great-tasting beverages for consumers. This will help us achieve our commitment to reduce added sugar per serving by 25% in key brands in key markets over the next decade and ultimately help people live healthier lives.”

Campbell Soup officials told the pro-life group: “Every effort is made to use the finest ingredients and develop the greatest selection of products, all at a great value. With this in mind, it must be said that the trust we have cultivated and developed over the years with our consumers is not worth compromising to cut costs or increase profit margins.”

...

UPDATE: Within hours of its press statement to LifeNews.com, the pro-life group received notice from Campbell Soup that the company has severed its ties with Senomyx. Juli Mandel Sloves, Senior Manager of Nutrition & Wellness Communications at Campbell Soup Company, told Vinnedge, “We are no longer in partnership with Senomyx. This fact was discussed during the Senomyx conference call with its investors earlier this month.”

Don't mistake: now that abortion on demand is legal through all nine months of pregnancy, the goal is to involve you in abortion, directly or indirectly, with or with your knowledge or assent, and as deeply as possible.

Abby Johnson's New Video from the SBA List

(H/T:  Creative Minority Report)

Kids Being Kids

From one of my favorite blogs, Shoved to Them relates a story about her unborn baby's first encounter with a big brother:

I had my monthly OB appointment yesterday with my midwife. This time, I took the 4 youngest Little Kids with me. The eldest was off doing some kind of Irish dance performance or something with her two best friends. She missed seeing #6. We didn't. Lucky us!

#5 freaked out a bit in the exam room. He doesn't like "new", and was on the verge of tears the entire time. I tried to explain that she was the nice lady who delivered him, and that it would be okay. He's 23 months old and didn't seem to care. I finally sat him up on the exam table next to me and he calmed down a bit...

Then came the midwife with the ultrasound machine. (Hooray!) The children all piled around me to get their first peek at our littlest one.

It was clearly sleeping. Nestled in peacefully and curled up in the fetal position. Then the machine beeped and #5 screamed.

#6 threw its arms wide in the classic infant startle. Then, the little hands flew instinctively up to cover the ears from a big brother's offensive racket.

The little face turned towards the direction of the crying brother, and it's mouth opened slightly. Then, its chin began to quiver. Clearly, obviously crying.

Awakened from a nap, scared, and disturbed, our sweet #6 cried. Undeniably sobbed while holding hands tightly over tiny ears.

We all laughed at the sweet humanity of the moment which only made my two babies cry harder. 17 weeks into pregnancy. Barely 4 months. Hearing. Responding. Displaying emotion. Reacting logically. A blob of tissue? Product of conception? No. Thinking, feeling, emoting. Human.

Abortion Thrives In Blue States

Unsurprisingly to pro-lifers, abortion is most often resorted to in states that support pro-abortion leaders. From Publius Forum:

As every good liberal pretends to know, the cause of high abortion rates is religious conservatives’ refusal to cooperate with “family planning” advocates, toward the supposedly common goal of reducing the number of abortions. If only those snake-handling bumpkins would see the wisdom in making abortion “safe, legal and rare,” the argument goes, fewer abortions would be “necessary.” Thus, the liberal media explain, those simple-minded anti-abortion activists are unwittingly defeating their own cause.

It follows, then, that abortion rates should be lowest in places where social conservatives have the least influence. Then why aren’t they? According to New York City’s Department of Health, 41 percent of all pregnancies there end in abortion. Planned Parenthood, feigning displeasure with that figure, is blaming it on the city schools for not embracing its preferred sex education curriculum. So you see, even in one of the most liberal cities in America, the frequency of abortion is the fault of those meddlesome right-wing Christians, as usual.

But wait a minute. The same week that the NYC health department report was published, the Alan Guttmacher Institute released its figures on the state-by-state abortion rates for 2008, the most recent year on record. The Guttmacher Institute was originally created as the research division of Planned Parenthood, and was named after a former president of that organization, so the pro-abortion side presumably wouldn’t dispute its findings. The five highest per capita abortion rates were in the decisively blue states of Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California. The five lowest were in Wyoming, Mississippi, Kentucky, South Dakota and Idaho.

How can the “don’t call us pro-abortion” crowd look at those statistics, and still claim with straight faces to be striving to lower the abortion rate? If they say the carnage in New York City is due to a lack of liberal sex education, then how do they explain abortion rates being lowest in the Southern and Western red states, whose schools are not likely to invite Dr. Ruth Westheimer as a guest lecturer? It turns out they don’t have to, because few in the media ever examine the pro-abortionists’ claims, regardless of how counterintuitive they may be.

Only by indulging in mindless go-along-to-get-along bipartisan feelgoodism could anyone possibly expect abortion advocates to cooperate in lowering the abortion rate. Planned Parenthood owns and operates the largest chain of abortion clinics in the world. When their employees “counsel” pregnant women, they do not merely present abortion as one among several options, let alone as being less desirable than the others. Their job is to sell abortions. Crisis pregnancy centers that counsel women against abortion are stealing their customers. It should be needless to say that this arrangement precludes any cooperation between the two sides.

The only thing that disturbs the abortionists and abortion salesmen about a 41 percent abortion rate is the fact that it has been made public. That number represents not only a great deal of money to them, but also the fulfillment of their purpose, which is not “women’s health” or “reproductive freedom,” but population control. Sure, they promote contraception and sterilization for the same reason, but the effects of those things cannot be quantified. There’s no way for them to know when they’ve prevented the birth of a child who’s never existed. Only abortion provides them with affirmation of their success.