Commentary

America had a birth rate of 63 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age in 2013, a new record low. This continues a trend building since the Clinton Administration, in which the U.S. is following the lead of other western nations in failing to produce enough children to replace aging citizens.

The fertility rate now stands at 1.87 children for each American woman over her lifetime, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per female.

Certainly the explanation for America’s collective decision to demographically destroy itself isn’t for lack of the necessary sexual activity. The nation has never been more obsessed with that particular recreational activity. The enormous rate of abortion offers a ready explanation for the dwindling number of new Americans. One sixth of the population has been killed by abortion since 1973. One-in-four African Americans are killed in the womb. As Law Professor Michael Paulsen of St. Thomas notes in a recent article, abortion is the leading cause of unnatural death in America.

The economic and political implications of this demographic implosion are difficult to gauge in their totality; however, we can assume a weakened economic productivity going forward. An aging population will mean fewer resources available to care for aged and a fierce battle over the allocation of capital for production over consumption.

One wonders where to look for the political and social leadership necessary to help our society confront the practical dangers of our present moral confusion surrounding the value of human life.

The new insurance/health care bureaucracy burrowing its way into the Idaho soil celebrated its claim to signing-up some 76,000 Idahoans to an ObamaCare policy. This is a strange thing to be celebrating.  The fact that the State of Idaho is engaged in such self-congratulatory behavior demonstrates one of the most pernicious dynamics at play in the Legislature’s decision to partner with Barack Obama in remaking America’s health care system.

Sen. Russ Fulcher correctly blasted the claimed achievement, pointing out that Idaho is going backwards in the feigned attempt to “cover the uninsured”: While there may be 76,000 Idahoans now bound to an ObamaCare policy – some 105,000 Idahoans have lost their insurance. Only people in government could celebrate the apparent net loss of some 30,000 Idahoans’ access to affordable health care as a “good” thing, particularly when the ostensible goal of the whole enterprise is to help people get insurance.

Fulcher also points out that premiums are beginning to rise, and businesses are facing more perilous operating costs at a time of economic stagnation.

But Fulcher missed one of the darkest aspects of the Idaho ObamaCare Exchange: abortion access is easier and likely expanding because of the Obama Mandate now being peddled by Idahoans for Idahoans.

The policies being sold the “Idaho” Exchange require the purchase of insurance coverage for abortion causing drugs like “Plan B” and Ella.

As we warned during the legislature’s consideration of Governor Otter’s proposal to partner with President Obama, Idaho has become complicit in the evil spewing forth from the Obama Regime. Employers must now provide these drugs, and the state of Idaho is intimately involved.

To make matters worse: We learned late in the last session that you and I – as taxpayers – are being forced to pay for these drugs as part of the group insurance plan covering public employees.

This is the direct result of the Legislature’s failure in 2013 to adopt our Religious Liberty Amendment, which would have protected employers from being forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs.

Granted, Otter is correct when he says that this would be happening anyway through a pure federal insurance exchange. The difference is that Idaho would not be morally compromised by this situation. And sometimes the only choice available to us is to refuse to cooperate with evil.

Which brings us back to the celebrations surrounding the apparent success of the Idaho ObamaCare Exchange: These people are now deeply invested in making this work, in imposing the new federal rules on Idaho families and employers. It is impossible to imagine that they could ever be persuaded to blow the thing up if we ever succeed at freeing ourselves from ObamaCare.

State Treasurer Ron Crane does not have a contested primary this spring, but a word about his fine public service is in order.

Crane has served Idaho for decades, going back to his many days in the Idaho House of Representatives.  He was a leader of conservative forces then, and continues so today.  Crane was one of the very first legislators to receive our “Friend for Life” Award in 1998 for his leadership in securing a Ban on Partial Abortions in Idaho.

Over the past several years, Crane has endured some rather unseemly sniping from anonymous Republican legislators pursuing an agenda yet to be revealed.  They have tried to insinuate that Crane is somehow incompetent or even unethical.  After the headlines appear in liberal media outlets, the facts regarding various allegations never seem to garner the same attention.

Be sure of one thing: Crane is a hardworking, highly ethical public official who has done well by the citizens who have seen fit to re-hire several times as State Treasurer.  We have no doubt they will do so again this year, as he will face one Democrat or another this fall.

While we certainly endorse Crane’s re-election, this posting is not so much an endorsement as it is a public “thank you” for his many years of conservative leadership.

Our friends at Operation Rescue have been digging into the documents filed by Planned Parenthood in its lawsuit to block the new Texas law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.  Apparently the huge Abortion Chain revealed that it was aware of some 210 Texas women and girls admitted annually to hospitals because of complications arising from abortions performed at their own clinics. 

This tidbit is highly significant.  It is, of course, very difficult to come by data relating to the medical histories and complications of women undergoing abortion.  In addition to the standard protections surrounding patient privacy, there is a huge wall of secrecy erected by federal courts to safeguard the so-called “right to abortion” and to shield women from any possible social stigma related to their decision to end their babies’ lives.

Operation Rescue extrapolated the data to find that perhaps 1000 Texas women are hospitalized across the state because of problems associated with botched abortions.  Each year.

That is a rather staggering piece of data, and would seem to put the lie to the notion that legalized, mechanized destruction of preborn children is somehow “safe” and free from physical and emotional consequence.

The rate of complications for chemical abortions – using RU-486 – is many times higher than that of surgical abortion.

Operation Rescue goes on to project that if the Texas experience is applied to all 50 states, American women could be suffering terrible health consequences as a result of legalized abortions.  They believe it is likely that tens of thousands of women and girls – each year – could be rushing to emergency rooms and hospitals as a result of submitting to the deceptions of Planned Parenthood.

As a friend of our used to say, abortion is no favor to women.

To read the complete report, check out LifeNews .

A woman died in an Italian hospital last from cardiac arrest after taking RU-486 to terminate her baby’s life.  According to LifeNews, doctors were unable to revive her.

What makes this story particularly important is the fact that Italian law requires such abortions to be conducted under direct doctoral supervision.  And, at least in this case, the woman was given the two-pill regimen at the hospital.  One of the physicians involved claimed that the woman underwent two separate ultrasounds on each of her visits for the drugs. 

Planned Parenthood has been advocating for the right to dispense RU-486 over the internet without any direct medical examination or supervision.

Four hours after receiving the second drug – designed to cause labor so the dead baby will be ejected from the womb –  the Italian womb complained that she was having a hard time breathing.  Then her heart began to beat irregularly.  Just moments later, her heart stopped.  The woman was only 37.

LifeNews also reports that some 2 million American babies have been destroyed via RU-486 since Bill Clinton approved the drug for use in the United States in 2000.

The number of babies being chemically aborted continues to increase across the nation, as well as in Idaho.

We have been working for nearly twenty years in Idaho to end the horrific scourge of abortion.  That battle requires a ton of research and study to keep up with the complex evil of abortion and the innumerable ways it is corrupting our very civilization.

 But once in awhile, we are plain shocked by how far things have gone.

 The latest outrage comes from that once-upon-a-time bastion of Western Civilization and Christian values, Great Britain.  Not only has that nation helped lead the way toward a broad acceptance of abortion as an “ordinary” part of social interaction – we now learn that some in the medical industry have actually turned to burning the destroyed babies as a fuel source to heart their hospitals.

Numerous media outlets have reported that at least two hospitals in that nation use incinerated babies as a fuel for their “waste to energy” heating systems.

Once the Nazi-like practice became public, the Department of Health issued an order to ban the practice in clinics which are part of the National Health Service.  Health Minister Dr. Dan Poulter pronounced the practice “totally unacceptable”.

A British television station reports that they have documented more than 15,000 babies have been burned for their heat.  You can be sure that is but a small portion of the actual number.

This story is so far past outrageous that words become difficult.  Maybe words are the wrong response anyway.  Maybe we all need to pause and simply feel this closing darkness. 

Can there be any doubt, from a rational, objective perspective, that we are paying a horrific price to maintain the practice of legalized slaughter?  The long-ago predictions regarding the collateral damage to our souls and sensibilities is plainly evidenced by practices like the one uncovered in Great Britain.  Our devaluing of Life costs us all.

The 62nd Idaho Legislature adjourned yesterday, clearly in a rush to return home to begin their campaigns for re-election. The Primary Election is less than ten weeks away.

We are pained to report that this Legislature made absolutely no progress in protecting Idaho’s preborn children from the scourge of abortion. In fact, we probably went backwards over the past two years. There is simply no good spin to put on the matter.

We worked long and hard this session to get legislation enacted that would govern the use of RU-486 in order to protect the health and lives of women and girls using the dangerous pills. At the end of the day, we were unable to get a hearing in the Senate State Affairs Committee for our legislation. Part of that result can fairly be blamed on the pro-Life community itself: We had a very difficult time resolving serious disagreements over the profound question of how Idaho should treat cases of self-abortions. Yet agreement on language was finalized on February 27th, three weeks before the Legislature’s expedited adjournment.

We were then told that there was “insufficient time” to move an abortion bill.

It was a painful and frustrating message. We have seen many times the Legislature move quickly on issues it cares about. In fact, on the last day for a possible committee hearing, the State Affairs Committee took up the pressing matter of raising salaries for constitutional officers. And you can sure that that legislation was moved through the process before they quit.

There were heroes in this session: Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, Sen. Steve Vick, Sen. Bart Davis, Rep. Judy Boyle and Rep. Tom Loertscher devoted many hours to studying the issues involved in regulating the use of RU-486 and offering assistance in negotiating the differences between pro-Life groups.

But their leadership and energy was insufficient to overcome this Legislature’s inertia.

This lack of action carries potentially serious consequences. As we will discuss in future postings, the Legislature has yet to respond to several devastating rulings by federal Judge Lynn Winmill – rulings which have cut a huge hole in numerous parts of Idaho’s Abortion Code.  Those rulings are now some three years old.

The failure to rise in defense of preborn children this year is particularly upsetting given last year’s defeats. As you will recall, the Legislature was determined to partner up with the President in imposing ObamaCare upon the people of Idaho. They then rejected our call for a Religious Liberty Amendment to that legislation which would serve to protect Christian employers from being forced to purchase insurance plans which cover abortion-causing drugs like Plan B and Ella.

Making matters even worse, the Idaho Senate failed to approve modest legislation last year which would have given the state’s pro-Life pregnancy centers support and encouragement by exempting them from the state sales tax – a measure which might have cost $10,000 a year. Good grief.

Time is short and the pro-Life community in Idaho must rally if we hope to move forward on protecting babies and their mothers in the years ahead. Our opportunity to elect a more compassionate Legislature is just weeks away.