Friday July 8, 2022
Good Morning!
Abortion providers engage in deception almost as easily as most people breathe.
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest,” wrote Benjamin Franklin.
In our first story, we warn against one of the many dirty little secrets of abortion zealots:
1. Here’s the Secret Pro-Abortion Activists Won’t Tell You About the Abortion Pill: It’s Dangerous
From the Daily Citizen:
If you head over to Planned Parenthood’s website, (for whom abortion is big business) you’ll find that they describe the abortion pill as “safe and very common.”
While it’s true that the abortion pill is becoming an increasingly utilized method of abortion, it certainly isn’t safe.
The abortion pill is the usual name for the two-dose regimen prescribed by abortionists to kill preborn children.
The “abortion pill” is also known as a chemical or “medication” abortion. Though calling the pills “medication” is a misnomer. Medication is intended to treat or cure diseases, and pregnancy is not a disease.
RELATED: Biden to sign abortion executive order amid Democratic frustration over inaction
From the Washington Examiner:
President Joe Biden is expected to sign a highly anticipated executive order the White House is promising will protect access to reproductive healthcare services, including abortion and contraception, after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.
To counter congressional gridlock, Biden will direct Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to secure the availability of medication abortion, emergency contraception, and intrauterine devices, in part, through Obamacare and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the White House.
Biden will also order Becerra to clarify physician responsibilities and protections under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. That will support plans by the White House and Attorney General Merrick Garland to convene volunteer private pro bono attorneys, bar associations, and public interest organizations to be legal resources for patients, providers, and third parties.
“Such representation could include protecting the right to travel out of state to seek medical care,” the White House said Friday.
The executive action will additionally address patient privacy concerns, including health-related data transfers and sales and reproductive health digital surveillance, as well as the risk of inaccurate information, fraudulent schemes, and deceptive practices. HHS will issue new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act guidance and consumer advice on how to safeguard personal data saved on mobile apps.
2. DOE Wants to Redefine ‘Sex’ in Title IX – Erasing Women, Threatening Privacy and Safety, and Endangering Schoolchildren
From the Daily Citizen:
The Department of Education recently announced that it was formulating new regulations for Title IX – the landmark 1972 act that banned discrimination on the basis of sex in education.
When Title IX was passed, of course, “sex” meant being male or female.
But the current administration wants to erase those very real categories. The DOE says “sex” must now include: “sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Dozens of groups are speaking out against the move, including SAVE, an organization which works to assure “fairness and due process on campus.”
SAVE Founder Ed Bartlett told the Daily Citizen the redefinition “endangers women’s sports,” effectively erasing and marginalizing women, and it “provides the legal basis for pronoun mandates,” violating free speech.
3. Does the NRSV Compromise on Homosexuality?
From the Gospel Coalition:
I work hard to make sober judgments about English Bibles, but I’m forced to conclude that the NRSVue has removed two Pauline condemnations of homosexuality—though it has kept other biblical prohibitions of the practice.
Here’s how that latter passage reads in the (usually literal and definitely evangelical) New American Standard Bible. I’ve bolded the key words to watch for:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9–10)
Those two English words translate two Greek words. The word “effeminate” translates the word malakoi; the word “homosexuals” translates the word arsenokoitai (which appears also in 1 Tim. 1:10).
These two words almost certainly refer to the passive and active partners in a male homosexual pairing. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy to translate. Responsible translations go different ways.
The ESV, CSB, NIV, and NASB 2020 take the two Greek words and turn them into one thing expressed in one phrase: “men who have sex with men” (NIV; CSB has “males”) or “men who practice homosexuality” (ESV). Other translations are more like the NASB, assigning one-word equivalents to each of the two Greek words at issue.
4. All Mothers are Working Mothers
From the Daily Citizen:
Two-fifths (32.8 million) of all families in America include children under 18 – and 62.3 percent (20.4 million) of those families who are married contain moms and dads who both work outside the home.
“Working outside the home” is the key phrase here.
The term “working mother” is a redundancy. Of course, I get what the writer and the common parlance are getting at when they use the term, but using it has consequences beyond sloppy or inexact terminology.
Whether intentional or not, using the term “working mother” subtly suggests that mothers who devote their full-time attention to child-rearing and family care are somehow not working as hard. In reality, the opposite is often true.
Motherhood can be exhausting and frequently more difficult and wearing than traditional workplace responsibilities. We all know women who have said as much, commenting that office work is sometimes even a psychological and physical “break” from domestic chores and challenges.
Yet, the point is not to claim or convince you that one role is harder than another. The point is that by using the term “working mother” we’re inadvertently and subtly degrading the efforts of mothers who don’t work for wages.
It’s time to retire the term “working mother.” All mothers work – some for wages – and all for the nourishment and betterment of the next generation.
5. Why Crime Is Scarier Now
Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal:
In New York, and the country more broadly, the scary thing isn’t that crime is high, though it is, though not as high as in previous crime waves. What’s scary is that people no longer think the personal protective measures they used in the past apply. Previous crime waves were a matter of street thugs and professional criminals, and you could take steps in anticipation of their actions. Don’t walk in the park at night—criminals like darkness. Take the subway in rush hour—criminals don’t like witnesses. Don’t be on Main Street at 1 a.m., but do go to the afternoon parade.
You could calculate, thereby increasing your margin of safety.
Now such measures are less relevant because what you see on the street and in the news tells you that more than in the past we’re at the mercy of the seriously mentally ill. You can’t calculate their actions because they can’t be predicted, because they’re crazy.
That is the anxiety-builder. And it’s not only the evidence of your eyes. There was a paper recently by the Manhattan Institute’s Stephen Eide. New York hardly bothers to arrest anyone now, but as Mr. Eide noted, “inmates with any mental disorder and who have been charged with a violent felony constitute a growing share of the city jail population.” People feel uniquely unprotected.
On Highland Park one thing needs saying that hasn’t been sufficiently emphasized: America has grown confused about the rights of the individual and our obligations to society. We believe in beautiful things and incorporate them in our lives: You are free to be your own strange self; all have a right to privacy; we don’t judge or interfere. But of course we are all part of something larger called society, and we have responsibilities there too.
RELATED: Rising fentanyl seizures signal overdose crisis worsening
From the Washington Examiner:
The lethal opiate fentanyl has poured into the United States at astounding rates, with seizures by law enforcement in 2022 expected to surpass those in 2021, indicating that the country is far from its goal of beating the overdose epidemic and that the crisis is instead growing worse.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate up to 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin. An infinitesimal dose can prove fatal, and drug users are often misled to believe the products they’re consuming are pure when, in fact, they are laced with the lethal opioid.
Reported fentanyl-related deaths have increased 56% from 2019 to 2020. Deaths linked to the synthetic opioid climbed a further 23% from 2020 to 2021, from about 58,000 deaths in 2020 to over 71,000 the year after.
Over 11,200 pounds of fentanyl were seized by Customs and Border Protection in 2021, a 134% increase from the year before. In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, law enforcement seized nearly 2.1 million pills containing fentanyl, up from about 42,000 pills seized in the first quarter of 2018, a 4,850% increase.
6. Biden’s Education Department Releases Plan To Cancel Student Debt For Certain People
From the Daily Wire:
The U.S. Department of Education proposed new regulations on Wednesday to cancel student loans for individuals whose schools closed or who are permanently disabled.
According to a press release from the agency, the policy would also apply to students whose schools “lied to them” and “public service workers who have met their commitments” under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which is defined as making payments for 120 months while working full-time for a government entity or nonprofit organization.
The move comes after the Biden administration canceled roughly $26 billion in student loans, including for students who attended for-profit colleges that have shut their doors, according to the press release.
“We are committed to fixing a broken system. If a borrower qualifies for student loan relief, it shouldn’t take mountains of paperwork or a law degree to obtain it,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “Student loan benefits also should not be so hard to get that borrowers never actually benefit from them. … These proposed regulations will protect borrowers and save them time, money, and frustration, and will hold their colleges responsible for wrongdoing.”
7. ‘Cognitive Immobility’ – What Happens When You’re Mentally Trapped in a Place From Your Past
From Neuroscience News:
If you have moved from one country to another, you may have left something behind – be it a relationship, a home, a feeling of safety or a sense of belonging. Because of this, you will continually reconstruct mental simulations of scenes, smells, sounds and sights from those places – sometimes causing stressful feelings and anxiety.
This describes what I have dubbed “cognitive immobility”, outlined in my new research article, published in Culture & Psychology.
Cognitive immobility is a stressful mental entrapment that leads to a conscious or unconscious effort to recreate past incidents in one or more locations that one lived in or visited in the past. By doing so, we are hoping to retrieve what is missing or left behind.
When people cannot remain in locations because of conditions beyond their control, such as a war or family or work commitments, their bodies may physically move to a new world, while their minds are left behind – trapped in the previous location.
WORLD NEWS:
8. Ex-Leader Shinzo Abe Fatally Shot in Shock Japan Attack
From CBN:
Japan’s NHK television says former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has died after being shot during a campaign speech.
Abe was shot from behind minutes after he started his speech Friday in Nara in western Japan. He was airlifted to a hospital for emergency treatment but was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was pronounced dead later at the hospital.
9. Does the Resignation of Boris Johnson Signal Morality Still Matters in Europe?
From the Daily Citizen:
But by now you’ve likely heard that Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has resigned – a dramatic move instigated by his own cabinet’s rebellion over a litany of scandals linked to the politician.
Standing beside a small podium outside Downing Street on Thursday, Mr. Johnson declared, “I want to tell you how sorry I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them’s the breaks.”
“The breaks” involve a myriad of issues, including allegations of promoting someone with a reputation for sexual misconduct, as well as violating COVID protocols during the pandemic shutdown (i.e., smuggling in alcohol for a party in a suitcase), and even hosting a dance party on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral in 2021.
But does Johnson’s resignation, coming at a time when anything and everything seems acceptable in a culture that often seems void of moral standards, signal there really are limits and standards when it comes to morals and ethics in leadership?
Some supporters of the prime minister will likely suggest the campaign to oust Mr. Johnson was nothing more than a raw expression of partisan political power. But whether or not that played a factor, it nevertheless holds that the scandals proved to be too much for him to bear politically.
Once upon a time, morals and ethics mattered a whole lot in political life.
Boris Johnson’s fall may fade into nothing more than background noise for most Americans – but it nevertheless demonstrates that morals and ethics still seem to matter on the world stage, and even in an increasingly secularized, post-Christian Europe.
10. What’s the secret to a good marriage? Couple married 79 years have the answer
From Today:
An Ohio couple, who just celebrated their 79th wedding anniversary, are sharing the secret to their lasting love.
Hubert and June Malicote — they’re both turning 100 next month — have been married since they were 20 and said they have never had a quarrel. (Their 70-year-old daughter, Jo, backs up that claim!)
“We didn’t go through life without problems, but we would never do anything to hurt each other,” Hubert told TODAY Parents. The WWII Veteran said he learned early on that a quick time-out is an effective way to deescalate conflict.
“If there’s controversy, you might have to walk away for a couple minutes,” Hubert said. “Then you come back in and change the subject or you work it out.”
June will turn 100 on July 13, and Hubert on the 23rd. They will celebrate with a joint birthday bash, which will include a backyard church service.
“We will just worship God and thank him for his many blessings that he has bestowed upon this family for a century,” Jo said.
Hope you have a great weekend!
Photo from Shutterstock.
