Not an ending, but a new beginning

At long last, Chen Guangcheng and his immediate family are safe in America.

The Chinese government, of course, has now sentenced his nephew to death for defending his family during a nighttime raid by police.  (He is accused of murder.)  Other family members and friends of Chen have been arrested, detained, and harrassed.  Without outside pressure, this is likely to continue, in an effort to discredit Chen and his message.

The U.S., ever eager in this administration to bow to all the wrong people, didn’t jump to Chen’s aid when he escaped his years-long house arrest and arrived at the U.S. embassy several weeks ago.  Instead, the embassy officials told Chen to go ahead and leave to get medical attention.  (And, right now, anyone who ever received any training on standing inport deck watch in the Navy is groaning; once someone has taken refuge on board, you do NOT LET THEM LEAVE.  Even if the threat seems to have passed and they’re saying, “Oh, it’s ok now, that’s my brother come to take me home,” once you have given them haven on U.S. territory (a Navy ship or an embassy), you can’t make them leave nor let them leave until you are sure they are safe and have authorization from higher authority.  And you certainly don’t encourage them to voluntarily walk off.)

But what did we expect from a State Department that gave the Russians a mis-translated gag gift that said “overcharge” instead of “reset”?  (A gag gift?  In international politics?!?)

Chen devoted his life and sacrificed his safety to document abuses of China’s One Child Policy.  At first, he may have thought he was only bringing to light abuses of the policy (although the policy itself is abusive).  Eventually, it became obvious that the abuses were part and parcel of any coercive, government-mandated birth control program.  And, no, Beijing was not interested in what a self-taught lawyer was telling them about how the policy was being implemented.  Instead of going after officials grossly overstepping the bounds of the law, the government went after Chen, trying him on trumped-up charges and placing him and his family under house arrest.

The U.S. has long made it a policy that we take seriously our responsibilities to support and encourage freedom and democracy and those who fight for them around the world.

Do we love our money so much that we’d rather compromise our principles than offend our lenders?

Fortunately, Chen has supporters in the U.S., too.  This is not the end of his fight to end the One Child Policy, it is a new beginning.

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The faces behind the statistic

The problem with pre-natal testing is that many people (maybe most) don’t use it to prepare for the birth of a child with disabilities, they use it to kill the child before he or she can be born.  This is particularly well documented with children diagnosed in utero with Downs Syndrome; around 90% of children with this diagnosis will be aborted, often under heavy pressure from doctors overplaying the severity of the condition.  (Unlike some diagnoses that are clear cut, Downs is a range.  Someone with mild Downs can function fairly normally, while those with more severe cases will need life-long help.  I would also note that many tests give false positives; I have heard several stories of dire warnings and harrassment to abort from doctors, only to have the child test perfectly normal after birth.)  I’d like to think the March of Dimes and such are trying to help, but promoting pre-natal testing isn’t the way to help, unless by “help” you simply mean decreasing the number of Downs Syndrome children who make it to birth, not the number conceived.

So, a new internet campaign is trying to bring attention to this appalling statistic.  Maybe, if more people understood Downs, fewer would cave into the pressure from the “experts” telling them that their baby would be better off dead.

And, yet again, we have to ask ourselves how many of these children would be allowed to live if our culture didn’t push the idea of one or two “perfect” children and absolutely no more.  If we had space in our hearts for three or four children (or more), would we be more accepting of the less-than-perfect, too?

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Pro-life blog day and the One Child Policy

I’ve been having internet and computer troubles all week, so I’m late to this particular party.

NARAL “Pro-Choice” America is holding a blog day today, in case you missed the few dozen participants (sort of like their *massive* presence every year protesting the March for Life.  All six of them.  Every year.  Watching a river of hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers go by.).  In response, Jill Stanek and other pro-lifers are holding a “Ask them what they mean by ‘Choice’ ” blog day.

I’m sure plenty of other people linked at her blog have covered the usual arguments.  The “choice” is murder.  The baby obviously is not part of the mother’s body, so drop the tired ”My body, my choice” schtick.  Killing the problem and throwing “it” in the trash doesn’t solve the bad relationship/abuse/rape/etc.  On this 38th grisly anniversary of Roe v. Wade, how could you ignore the statistics about the damage abortion has done in our country?  I could cover those again.

But no, I’m going to talk about President Hu’s visit to Washington, DC.

For the first time since 1997, Hu received a state dinner and all the bells and whistles we usually reserve for countries we like.  Meanwhile, the head of his country’s “family planning” office recently shrugged off the thirtieth anniversary of the One Child Policy by saying that it would be continued for decades to come.

Yes, the blog day, the state dinner, and the One Child policy are all linked.

You see, the reason President Bush had a quiet, no-cameras-allowed lunch with President Hu instead of a big state dinner was because of China’s massive human rights abuses.  EWTN’s World Over had lao gai survivor Harry Wu on.  He has made it his life’s work (after more than three decades in the lao gai system) to expose the massive prison system.  Russia’s gulags never came near what the Chinese communists have acheived.  He estimated there are more than 300 million prisoners in the system.

And then there’s the One Child Policy.  In commenting on Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (it’s about strict, traditional Chinese parenting and has raised quite a fuss (and several death threats for the author)), one writer on TownHall (I forget which) got lectured by her son about the incredible suicide rate among Chinese women between 18 and 24.  The writer and her son took it as a sign of excessive pressure to succeed from over-focused parents.  More likely, the root cause is the One Child Policy.

Under the One Child Policy, a Chinese woman is not allowed to carry a pregnancy to term without having had the government’s permission to conceive.  Nobody is given permission before marriage, and second children are mostly forbidden (they are occassionally allowed, either in the countryside or in ethnic minorities, usually as a second chance at getting a boy).  Any woman found to be pregnant without permission is taken in for an abortion.  Women who go into hiding may have their parents arrested and threatened with starvation if she doesn’t get the abortion.  Women who hide their pregnancies have been dragged from their homes or fields at nearly full-term for brutal forced abortions.  Even those who make it to labor aren’t safe; often, their child is killed anyways, and they return home to find their house bulldozed, their farm confiscated, or crippling fines levied on the family for violating the Policy.

Knowing the consequences of violating the policy, many couples choose to abort girls, knowing they likely will not be allowed a second chance to get a son.  Some of those who did not have access to pre-natal gender screenings will abandon their girls, who, if they’re lucky, make it into orphanages.  The unlucky ones are killed at birth or wind up as shadow children, reported as having died at birth, and so having no legal status (which means no schooling, no rights, and no help from police if they’re kidnapped into the sex trade, which is booming in China).  As a result, there are 37 million more men than women among the children born under the One Child Policy, when nature would have caused only a slight predominance of men.

The vast majority of those missing women are dead.

Furthermore, we have to remember that the 37 million only tells us the imbalance, the girls aborted or killed at birth for being girls.  It doesn’t cover any of the coerced abortions the Chinese government orders every day, boy or girl.

And so, China has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, in a country that traditionally had strong taboos against it (given Japan’s culture, for example, a high suicide rate is still very sad, but less surprising).  Even more odd, China’s suicides are predominantly women.  How many of that 18-to-24 suicide statistic is not because of the pressure of parental expectations, but because of the brutality of governmental policies?

Today, President Hu was honored with a lavish state dinner of stereotypically American fare, peopled with the beautiful people from China who have succeeded in this country: Vera Wang, Yo Yo Ma, Jackie Chan, and others.  And why not?  Except for the forced abortions (which China continues to deny), President Hu hasn’t really espoused any position on abortion worse than our own President Obama, who voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and was awarded a perfect pro-abortion score by NARAL.

So, President Obama smiled and proudly announced that he had secured a wonderful new trade agreement with China: the National Zoo will get to extend its lease on the pandas for another five years.

Meanwhile, in China today, another 30,000 abortions took place, many of them forced by the government.  More women, unable to bear the memories of the murders of their unborn children, took their own lives.

Tell me, NARAL, is this what you mean by “choice”?  Because NARAL was not out there with the human rights protesters in front of the White House.

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The book Planned Parenthood sued to keep off your desk

Well, it’s out, because Abby Johnson fought off the lawsuit from her former employer.

If you don’t remember, Abby Johnson was the director of a Texas Planned Parenthood abortion center.  One day, she was asked to assist with an abortion.  In spite of having worked for Planned Parenthood for years, she had never actually observed a “procedure.”  The day changed everything for her.

Read the first chapter of unPlanned here. 

(I will review the book as soon as my copy arrives and I get it read.)

unPlanned released today (Jan. 11) and is already shooting up the bestseller charts.  Jill Stanek, another convert out of the abortion industry, wrote on her blog that she loved the book.  And for the commenters under that blog post who thought we should look down our noses at converts out of the abortion industry instead of “treating murderers like celebrities”… there isn’t much to say beyond, “Wow.  You just don’t get it, do you?”

Speaking of unwelcoming, Johnson’s Episcopal parish, which was ok with her being the director of the local Planned Parenthood, is not so ok with her now vocally adovcating against abortion (the pastor’s statement to the Washington Times was something about having to minister to everyone, on either side of the issue, so you get the impression the official parish stance is “just don’t insist there’s truth”).  News is, Abby is in the RCIA progam, and she and her husband will be welcomed into the Catholic Church this Easter!

(I will note, Johnson is joining notable pro-life converts Randall Terry, Lila Rose (president of Live Action, famous for undercover video stings on PP), and others who finally looked at their various denominations and said, “What do you mean abortion isn’t clear-cut or isn’t that important?!  I don’t care what the denominational poll said, don’t you have the authority to teach?”  And found themselves, often against their previous prejudices, nudged towards the doors to the Catholic Church.)

So, Abby Johnson, congratulations on your bestseller, and, more importantly, welcome to the Catholic Church!  We are thrilled to have you and your family in communion with us, and we will pray for you.

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New York’s Shameful Abortion Truth

If you don’t already get Lifenews.com’s daily e-newsletter, I highly recommend it.  National politics, current events, abortion-related legislation, analysis of political candidates, UN goings-on, stories of persecuted Christians worldwide, population control issues… it’s a whole lot more than “just” pro-life, and they frequently pick up on stories well before the rest of the media has even noticed something’s going on.

And, even if you don’t subscribe, one of their articles today was really moving:

Archbishop Dolan’s Embarassment is New York’s Abortion Shame

It isn’t long, but it is very powerful.

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The not-so-pro-life Democrat goes home

… but not quietly.

A few weeks back, Parade magazine, which comes packaged in my Sunday paper, had a nice, sympathetic piece on Congressman Bart Stupak deciding not to run for re-election this year.  It was quaintly titled, “Mr. Smith Flees Washington.”

Huh.  Now, it’s been quite some time since I saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but I seem to remember something rather significant, plot-wise, about Mr. Smith actually trying to keep his ideals while in Washington, in spite of heavy pressure from the older, *wiser* Congressmen who rolled their eyes and advised him to do backroom deals like everyone else.  Mr. Smith refused to back down and was criticized heavily.  When he continued to be obstinate about his ideals, he fought on alone to block a bill he thought wrong, while trying to let people back home know what was really going on in Congress.

Aside from the “criticized heavily” part, I don’t really see the connection with Mr. Stupak.

Bart Stupak, considered a leader of the pro-life Democrats, fought the Obamacare bill originally, on the grounds that it would allow federal funding of abortion.  He offered an amendment to specifically prohibit tax money funding abortion in any way.  However, after some backroom politicking, arm twisting, and a fat piece of pork for his constituents, Stupak caved in.  He insisted that President Obama’s promise to sign an executive order was good enough for him to trust that the bill wouldn’t fund abortions.  Stupak and most of the “pro-life” Democrats smiled for the cameras and voted for the bill.  They then proceeded to call the non-believing pro-lifers nasty names.

Pro-lifers were stunned.

For years, many pro-lifers have defended pro-life Democrats, insisting that they were the ones with the best chance of ever even hoping to change the Democrats away from their pro-abortion stance.

Others of us seriously doubted if such a pro-abortion party, with such strong ties to both Planned Parenthood and the environmentalist movement, could ever be rescued and turned into a pro-child party ever again.  Frankly, it seemed like the pro-life Democrats weren’t so much influencing the Democratic party as being used as human shields to cover up the depth of the pro-abortion push within the party.

And then Bart Stupak proved the doubters right: there really is (almost) no such thing as a pro-life Democrat.  Maybe one or two, but certainly not an organized caucus of truly, firmly, pro-life Democrats.  After the performances of Stupak and the others who caved in for a not-very-binding executive order, I doubt anyone will believe any Democrat really means it when he insists he’s pro-life.  Since Stupak won re-election, in part, because he could wave his pro-life credentials and voting record, it really wouldn’t make sense to bother to run this time: now, everyone knows exactly how far that alleged conviction does, or does not, go, and nothing he could say on the campaign trail would make any serious pro-lifer vote for him again.

In the Parade article, Stupak bemoaned the “loss of civility” in Washington.  One of his colleagues even shouted, “Baby killer!” at him during a speech.

If that colleague had worked with Stupak on pro-life issues, had defended him to other pro-life colleagues who looked askance at all Democrats, had believed that Stupak really cared and would stand firm… well, I have to say, I can’t blame him.

I would’ve probably said, “Traitor!” but quibbling over the exact wording of the disgust, disappointment, and deep sense of betrayal is just splitting hairs.

I am reminded of something that struck me from listening to Prof. Joseph Pearce talking about Shakespeare recently (I stocked up on CD’s at the homeschooling conference last fall).  Prof. Pearce lamented that his birth country (Britain) no longer has the Ten Commandments, but only one: Thou shalt not be impolite.

Publicly calling Stupak to task for his betrayal was certainly impolite, and Stupak and others are *shocked* and rather noisily offended.

However, in the sense that we have to call all sinners to repentance (and that usually has to start with pointing out to them that, their personal guess aside, yes, their behavior was sinful), I would have to say that yelling the accusation was probably charitable.

The pre-Roe v. Wade laws that banned abortion in almost all states were partly the result of the early feminsts’ campaigns.  The broke many laws of civility: they called it “child murder”, they called it “abortion”, they spoke and wrote about things that proper women weren’t really supposed to be talking about at all, much less publicly.  And they pointed fingers at the guilty parties: the mother who was talked into it, even more so the father who encouraged or insisted on it and paid for it, and the doctors who profited by breaking their oaths to do it.

The pro-life feminists were not always civil.  They were not polite, as their society defined the word.

But they succeeded because they were, ultimately, charitable, in that they called evil by its proper name and made no excuses for it.

To modify the saying, the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing… or only do “polite” things.

(Which leads into the new study of why young people are leaving religion in record numbers, but more on that the next time I get my act together and blog.)

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Return of the Lesser Horned Barfing Newt!

I would like to reintroduce the Lesser Horned Barfing Newt, the poster animal for the not-so-cute-and-fuzzy side of the environmentalist movement!  (He’s become something of a household joke around here since his initial appearance.)

No adorable, heart-string tugging pandas here!  Yeah, sure, it’s on the verge of bankrupting hundreds of farmers because of the waters it lives in becoming protected and, thus, not available anymore for crop irrigation, but, hey, we have to save it!  And never mind that it looks and acts a heck of a lot like several other local newts, which are doing just fine, we have to save this one!  (I will gladly accept any and all donations so that I can continue to ever-so-diligently and selflessly raise awareness of the plight of the barfing newt… and maybe buy myself some extra chocolate while we’re at it.)

It just begged for an illustration.

He will show up at the top of environmentalists-behaving-badly posts from now on, because if you can’t laugh about it, you’ll cry.  And, no, he isn’t real.

What is real, however, is the environmentalist movement’s anti-people ugly underbelly. 

Those of us participating in the local prayer siege got to observe the *beautiful people* arriving for the huge new Planned Parenthood clinic’s big ribbon-cutting gala.  Valet parking, huge catering trucks, ties and dresses, etc.  (Struggling non-profit in need of government funds my… um… foot.) 

The arriving vehicles were interesting.  We saw a couple of Hummers and tons of Lexus, Mercedes, etc.; this was not your average cross-section of vehicles in our area.  What got my attention, however, was an oddly high number of “clean vehicle” license plates and hybrid cars.

As I once snarked at a left-leaning relative, “Save the baby owls, kill the baby humans, huh?”

In the years since, I’ve noted that, when they’re being honest, the environmentalist response is, “Yeah, of course.  So?”

*sigh*  Here’s your barfing newt!

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Sins of the Fathers

Imagine the scene: a courtroom.  Five children are lined up in front of the judge, fidgeting.  The youngest is a newborn, the oldest might be about eight.

Judge: “Ok, Jacob Smith.  Your father has been convicted of embezzelment of $8 million from the bank he ran.  He has been sentenced to ten years in prison.  Since we can’t find him, you will serve his term.”

Child is escorted out in handcuffs.

Judge: “Next.  Anne Johnson.  Your father has been convicted of attempted murder.  His sentence is twenty years, with possibility of parole, so you’re lucky.  He has fled the country, so you will serve his sentence.”

Child is escorted out in handcuffs.

Judge: “And… let’s see… oh, yes.  Ava and Jayden James and John Thompson.  Your fathers held up a convenience store and killed three bystanders and a police officer.  They have been sentenced to death.  We have been unable to apprehend them, so you are scheduled to be executed next month.”

The three children are escorted out in handcuffs.

******

The point?  Well, the point is that we don’t do this.  We don’t sell children into slavery to pay their parents’ debts as the ancients did.  We don’t even assume that an innocent child is completely doomed by their genetics to follow a criminal parent’s footsteps like the Victorians did.  We don’t imprison and starve parents of adult couples trying to evade the One Child policy like China does.  In modern jurisprudence, family members are not held accountable for the behavior of their parents, siblings, adult children, etc.

Except that there is one case where most people in this country would not just put up with but actively advocate for executing the child for the sins of the father: rape.

Campaign ads (and a number of commentators who apparently liked the soundbite) in Florida accused a candidate for Congress of “forcing rape victims to bear the rapist’s child.”  Two problems here: 1) No, the rapist forced her to bear the child (and we have laws and punishments associated with that), and 2) we’ve gotten past medieval embryology, people; we all know now that the child is a combination of DNA from both parents, not just the man’s “seed” implanted into the womb, so it’s the rape victim’s child, too.

The person arguing the pro-life position is simply saying that the child is innocent and doesn’t deserve to die for what his or her father did.  While we’re at it, as a person, the child should be protected under the law, just like everyone else, including from unjust deprivation of life.

On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, liberal commentator Alan Colmes trotted out the usual, tired, cop-out argument: “That’s a religious decision.  You can’t prove when life begins!”

Really?  All these decades after Roe v. Wade and that’s still the best you can come up with?  A variant on “My body, my choice”, as if it’s just a personal moral conviction whether or not some people are really people?  Do we owe slave owners and genocidal regimes an apology for having been so condemnatory?  Wasn’t it just their own personal views that those people weren’t people?  As Justice Ginsburg put it, they built their lives around the assumption of having this [abortion, slavery, genocide] available, so how can we make it illegal?

Ok, then I declare it’s my religious belief that people with glasses (like you, Mr. Colmes) are less than human, and, thus, not covered by the nation’s murder laws.  Are you ok with that?  (I’m guessing “no.”)  Would you like to explain to me what it is that makes you human that doesn’t apply to the embryo?  Is it because you’re smarter (arguable), older, larger, more self-sufficient, or just because you happen not to be located inside a womb anymore?

It seems compassionate, to allow for abortion in cases of rape and incest, but those who say that are arguing that murder will erase the pain of the rape (it doesn’t; plenty of women have testified to that).  Or that the pro-abortion shills are fundamentally right, if a little too lenient: really, really, really not wanting the child makes it not human, even if you still call yourself “pro-life” and say that only two really’s wouldn’t be enough reason to get an abortion.

All it takes is time and care to turn the embryo into a baby; there are no new infusions of DNA or something between conception and birth… just as all it takes is time and care to keep the baby healthy enough to grow into a misguided TV pundit.  And if that is a baby, then no circumstance justifies its- sorry- his or her execution, not age, nor size, nor disability, nor wantedness.  And certainly not the sins of his or her father.

We used to teach logic in schools.

Now, we teach contraception.

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If you don’t understand why people are horrified…

I saw several rather disturbing videos in the Glenn Beck e-newsletter.

Now, as a pro-lifer, I can’t say that the woman advocating smothering a disabled child as a kindness is much of a surprise.  Several American hospitals were investigated a while back for quietly placing disabled newborns in the back of the neonatal wards to die, often with their parents’ knowledge.  Killing the born is only the logical extension of killing the unborn; if you would have aborted the baby for the disability, it isn’t much of a jump to infanticide when you’re surprised by something diagnosed after birth.  It has been denied that that’s where abortion is leading, but it was, of course, also denied that contraception would increase infidelity (it did) or be used for anything other than the minimum responsible child spacing within marriages (yeah, right) and would have no effect on those outside of marriage (anyone believe that anymore?).

As with so much of what President Obama and his appointees have said, the woman in the video simply let the veil drop off the truth… and couldn’t comprehend why the other women on the show were horrified.  She can’t seem to comprehend how a mother could be so “uncaring” as to not smother to death a suffering child.  (Similarly, the Obama administration seems confused as to why Americans get upset about some of their appointees.  It’s like a nasty game of Duck-Duck-Goose: socialist… socialist… socialist… communist!  You’d think they’d at least have the decency to pick people who didn’t publicly espouse doctrines seeking the destruction of the U.S. as we know it.)

The second video is an ad called “No Pressure”.  Believe it or not, it’s from an enviromental group… and I wouldn’t really recommend watching it.  It’s disturbing.  The synopsis (and then you can decide if you want to watch it): teacher (properly un-put-together in a hippie/green kind of look) is rambling on about how the class needs to consider decreasing their carbon consumption and talk to their parents about it to encourage them to change, too.  “No pressure,” the teacher keeps saying.  One white-shirted student after another (British school uniforms) offers how they’re going to become more “green.”

Towards the end, the teacher takes a poll to see who’s going to take this *voluntary* project on board.  Some raise their hands with big, self-righteous grins, some raise their hands tentatively, as if they’d rather say no, but are afraid to.  Two children don’t raise their hands and are identified in front of their classmates by name: Philip and Tracy.  “Good, good!” claps the teacher.  “Oh, wait, I before you go, I just have to… um… [teacher shuffling papers on her desk] oh, here it is… I have to push this button.”  Teacher pushes big red button on her desk, and the two students who didn’t join the *voluntary* project explode.  Not in a cartoonish way, either; the remaining students are spattered with chunks of flesh and sprays of blood.

The teacher then dismisses the class with a reminder about the reading assignment, “except, Philip and Tracy, of course,” she adds with a smile, wiping a spot of blood off her cheek as the shocked students just sit there, petrified.

Following the classroom scene, there are nearly identical scenes in a workplace and a soccer field.  Finally, the voice over lady (Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, who I didn’t recognize) intones, “Care to join us?”  Then, we see her talking to the recording guy in the booth, who asks what she’s going to do.  She declines, saying she thought the voiceover was help enough.  “Oh.  Sure.  No pressure,” says the recording engineer, smiles, and pushes the button.  Voiceover lady explodes, and the video ends with her remains graphically sliding down the sound booth glass behind the words, “Cut your carbon by 10%.  No pressure.”

Or what?  You’ll blow us up?  Or our kids while they’re at school?  And if you don’t blow them up, you’re certainly letting us know that you’re working to turn our kids into green informants on their parents to the eco-fascist state?  This is supposed to make me follow your cause?!?  If this ad was put out by anti-environmentalists, I’d get it.  It would still be grotesque and deplorable, but at least I would understand what they were trying to say.

The spokeswoman for the environmental group who put the ad out defended it as humorous.  (They yanked it and the “making of” video, but it’s all over the web.  As one commenter pointed out, they had big names working on this and spent a considerable amount of money for a four minute video.  This wasn’t an off-the-cuff joke.)

I suppose the good news here is that the people who promote abortion as a kindness and environmentalism as a cause worth forcing down peoples’ throats have become so convinced of their coming victory and/or perfect righteousness that they aren’t cloaking things so much anymore.  “The callousness can show now, almost everyone agrees with us!  They’ll think exploding kids are funny, and it’ll remind them to bike to work and buy mercury-packed CFL’s!”

And, suddenly, more people are waking up to the realization that neither environmentalism nor abortion are kind, loving, or progressive (at least not in the “progress” sense)… nor is either movement particularly concerned about people they have no use for, which is why the movements get along so well.

“You want to get rid of more people?  Really?  So do we!  We should get together for lunch…”

(And their website comes up with a pink smiley face on the tab in the browser.  Nice.  What will you be doing Oct. 10 to help?  Maybe I’ll write a post on Chesterton’s comment about how worshiping animals (or, more broadly in the current context, the environment) usually seems to lead to human sacrifice, one way or the other.)

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The Continuing Pro-Life Messages of “Clone Wars”

If you aren’t a Star Wars fan, I will start by filling you in.  Star Wars: Clone Wars is an animated series currently beginning its third season on Cartoon Network (which otherwise airs a lot of strange and/or objectionable stuff, from what I can tell from their commercials). 

SW:CW is not the same as the anime-style shorts (also called Clone Wars) that came out before Episode III.  (I liked the shorts at first, but find them really flat after having enjoyed SW:CW so much for the past two seasons.)  After beginning with the movie (also called Clone Wars), the series is now starting its third season.  The series focuses on the war between the Republic and the Separatists, which would fall between Episode II and Episode III in the movies.  It centers around Anakin Skywalker and his padawan learner, Ahsoka Tano, with major appearances by Obi-Wan Kenobi and other characters familiar from the movies.  Each episode begins with some sort of theme or saying; they’ve actually been pretty thought-provoking at times.

The earlier anime shorts took their lead from the films.  The dialogue was… well… not quite as bad as what Lucas writes.  The clones were faceless, frequently blown to bits, nondescript background to the super-cool Jedi.  (As a military veteran, I highly object to the characterization of the clones as mindless automatons who blindly obey the order to execute all of the Jedi towards the end of Episode III.  Sure, the movies write it off as the clones’ programming or something, but I have too frequently heard accusations that military members are really just like that and would do absolutely anything, no matter how atrocious, if they were ordered to.)  Like the movies, the shorts play better as silent movies, showcasing dramatic (and usually wordless) battle scenes.  You never see the clones’ faces or any glimpse of personality aside from obedience to their commanders.

The current series is much, much different.

For starters, the clones have faces, names, and personalities.  Anakin is actually an admirable character, talented, but not too overbearing, a bit temperamental and tactless, but not excessively; in the movies, he comes across as downright creepy (hello!?  Senator Amidala, can you say, “stalker”?), not to mention whiny and egotistic jerk (and he’s even worse on the last two in the anime shorts).

Back to the clones.  In the new series, you see a lot more of the clones’ personalities.  They may all share DNA, but they are not all the same.  Some people are disdainful of them, treating them as disposable because they’re “just clones,” but the Jedi don’t.  Some notable pro-life points:

- In season one’s premier (“Ambush”), Yoda, stuck with a small group of clones against bad odds, asks them to take off their helmets so he can see their faces.  The clones protest, saying there’s really no point: “We all wear the same face.”  Yoda smiles and says that, no, they’re each very different.  He points out each one’s weakness or overemphasis, gives a bit of advice, and the clones, much encouraged, go on to do great things.

Today’s headlines hold some of the same.  Clones don’t count, we can make them in the lab, then kill them for research.  Pope John Paul II, however, speaking on the issue of IVF, insisted that every human being, wanted or not, conceived normally or not, has a soul, given by God; each person is a unique individual and must be respected as such.

- In an early episode of season two (“Deserter”, I think), Captain Rex (a repeat clone character) meets a deserter who was the only survivor of a troop transport crash.  The deserter married a local and became a farmer and father.  The ongoing discussion between Rex and his brother was about duty and what they were created to do vs. what they wanted to do.

In the modern world, we have “savior siblings”, created to provide transfusions or stem cells or whatever for a sick older sibling.  They will grow up knowing they were not conceived by love or for their own sake or even by accident (even though God knows no accidents)… but to be a parts factory to save their sibling.  The farmer stood to state that he was not constrained by what some person created him for, but had dignity and a life of his own.  Although Captain Rex chooses to continue to embrace his duty, he doesn’t turn in the deserter, either.

- The most incredible pro-life statement, however, came in the season three premiere.  (WARNING: spoilers!)  We see the clone cadets finishing their training.  Domino Squad is doing particularly badly, and one of the bounty hunters in charge of their training suggests that they should be dumped with the 99′s in the clean-up department or even eliminated.  As we see the clean-up from the training exercise, we meet a 99: hunchbacked, prematurely old, bald, half of his face unresponsive like a stroke victim.  The 99′s don’t even have numbers like the other clones, much less names; they are a batch of clones that went so wrong, they were relegated to maintenance and clean-up… and disrespect.  However, one 99 helps a cadet see his own strengths and individual worth, and even gives him a name: Heavy.  Heavy goes on to lead his squad to a stellar performance on the exercise, after repeated failures.   In thanks for 99′s inspiration, Heavy gives him his medal.  Heavy is critical in an important battle (we see him in season two).  Later, inspired by Heavy’s sacrifice and belief in him, 99 is key to turning the tide of a battle, and sacrifices himself in the defense of Camino (the clones’ home world), bringing ammunition to the more able-bodied clones.

How many have we aborted because they were less-than-perfect, even deformed?  Something like 90% of babies diagnosed with Downs Syndrome are aborted, even though Downs can range from fairly mild to severe.  China, India, and many of the countries of southeast Asia are aborting babies for the “deformity” of being female, in the tens of millions.

Like the 99′s, those aborted children may not have had success as some people would categorize it.  But what would they have contributed?  Who would they have inspired or changed, causing a ripple of effect?  Andrea Bocceli’s mother was told to abort him because he’d be disabled.  Madeline L’Engle’s mother was told to abort her, because the pregnancy was risky and she was unlikely to survive to term.  And Tim Tebow, and how many others who live less noticeable, less incredible, but no less important, lives?

But they’re the fortunate ones, the ones whose mothers said, “No,” to the abortion.  The sad thing is, we don’t even know who and what we’ve lost.

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Yes, my kids watch Clone Wars.  Yes, it is about battles and explosions, but it covers so much more.  And I would rather they be admiring characters who show honor, respect, dedication, and courage (and a number of decidedly pro-life storylines) than, oh, say, SpongeBob or Hannah Montana.

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