Pro-Life, but Anti-Logic

You know, sometimes, your junkmail can provide hours of fun. Or at least brief moments of humor.

For example, I get emails from a group calling themselves "Americans for Life," a particularly humorless bunch of irony-deprived pedants (or at least one pedant – I have no evidence that there’s anybody in this group except for Jonathan Ball, the purported author of all these emails).

Anyway, today’s message from Mr Ball is a fascinating note entitled

The Depravity of Planned Parenthood

Now, think about that statement for just a second. Apparently, family planning is depraved; you should never take control of your own life or responsibility for your breeding habits – God wants you to breed like dogs in heat, dropping a litter of puppies every year.

And to be honest, in the end, that's exactly what they believe. Why do you think that so many fundie families involve eight or ten kids?

Dear Bill,

As Christmas approaches, I find myself full of joy and appreciation of the many blessings God has bestowed upon me and my family.

He always starts off friendly, but it invariably goes downhill quickly.

But an email I received recently has greatly upset me.

An Americans for Life supporter informed me recently of Planned Parenthood’s Christmas campaign, “Choice on Earth.”

Well, it’s a cute marketing campaign. Why does this upset you? Because their PR people are better than yours? (And yes, the semi-random use of underlining is entirely a stylistic choice on his part. It’s like “Underscore Tourette’s” or something.)

You see, this Christianity-mocking campaign hopes to spread their message of "choice" by seeking donations to make abortion more available in 2011.

In years past, Planned Parenthood even sold “Choice on Earth” Christmas cards and t-shirts as a fundraising gimmick.

This has left me deeply disturbed.

Aw, Jonny, I think you’re giving entirely too much credit to this email - I'm thinking you were disturbed wa-a-ay before this.

The Abortion Lobby would have you and I believe that the best choice for poor, unwed teenage mothers is to end the life of their child rather than facing hardship.

That it is better for these unborn children to be killed than face a rough childhood.

Well... yes, actually. Don’t you want people to live by the words of the Bible?

“And I declared that the dead, who had already died,
are happier than the living, who are still alive.
But better than both is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 4:2-3)

Oh, sorry, was that rude?

However, you and I have to look no further than the birth of Christ, the very reason for the celebration of Christmas, to see why every child, no matter the parent’s situation, deserves a chance at life.

You see, Mary was young and unwed at the time of her pregnancy. She was forced to give birth to Jesus in a stable and use a feeding trough as a cradle. This was far from ideal.

How could a child born into such a situation ever grow up to be anything worthwhile?

It’s a fascinating argument. Of course, one counter position might be that in April of 1889, a child was born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. But that might be considered an unreasonable attitude. Plus, it's in direct violation of Godwin’s Law, and I'm already in trouble with the Internet Police. So we’ll just terminate that thought; let it die a’borning, so to speak.

Ball goes on for a while after that, yammering about the sanctity of life (something rarely found in nature, but we’ll move on), and then to his main point (and again, it’s underlined, just because he can).

Planned Parenthood must be defunded to force the closure of as many abortion clinics as possible.

Which openly ignores the fact that only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual budget covers abortion; the other 97% goes toward other health and reproductive needs for poor and underserved citizens. But that might be too much honesty for Mr Ball to handle.

And then, of course, he begs a lot; there are three separate links to donate money to this fine organization scattered through the last four paragraphs. Really nothing new - these guys are rarely known for their imagination.

Now, as far as I can tell, Jonathan Ball's Americans for Life is entirely different from this Americans for Life - both were founded in 1996, but have different leadership, And neither one of them seems to have any connection to the older Americans United for Life. However, it's probably important to note that Black Americans for Life is entirely unrelated to any of these previous groups - they're part of the National Right to Life Coalition

I'm assuming this is some sort of "People's Front of Judea" type of situation.



(I also think I may have stumbled on to one reason why Roe v Wade is still around.)