Abortion Workers Speak Out
by Sarah Terzo
Sometimes former abortion workers come forward with their stories, and these stories can shed light on what goes on in abortion facilities.
First-Trimester Surgical Abortions
In the Fall/Winter 2016 edition of Feminists for Life’s The American Feminist magazine, former abortion workers spoke about working in abortion facilities., former abortion worker Julie explained how she and other workers kept people having surgical abortions from seeing their aborted children.
In first-trimester suction aspiration abortions, the abortionist inserts a tube attached to an instrument called a cannula into the woman’s uterus. The doctor also connects the tube to a suction machine and a small jar. When the doctor activates the suction machine, it forcefully tears apart the preborn child and the pieces travel down the tube into the clear glass jar.
See a former abortion doctor, Beverly McMillan, explain this procedure:
Seeing (and Hiding) a “Head, Body, Limbs”
If the pregnant person is in the ninth to tenth week of pregnancy (the seventh to eighth week after conception) or beyond, one can observe recognizable body parts in the aftermath.
Abortionist Dr. Willie Parker describes this:
I inspect what has just come out of the woman’s body: what I’m looking for is the fetal sac, which, at a later gestational age, becomes the placenta, and, after nine weeks, every one of the fetal parts—head, body, limbs—like a puzzle that has to be put back together.
I make sure I find every part, and I place them together, re-creating the fetus in the pan. I have done this so many times that it is has become routine…1
In Julie’s abortion facility, the workers wanted to prevent people having abortions from seeing the contents of the jar.
To hide the blood and body parts, the workers covered the jar with a “cute calico cover.”2
This way, post-abortive people wouldn’t glimpse a dismembered arm or leg. The abortion workers could maintain the illusion that a preborn baby is just a clump of cells.
Lies About Body Disposal
Former abortion worker Margo spoke about a lie abortion workers told those having abortions at a different clinic:
We lied to patients all the time! … People asked, ‘What’s going to happen to my baby [after the abortion]?’ We were told to tell them whatever made sense, that it’s like, if someone is in a bad car accident and lost a leg. It’s medical waste, and it goes into an incinerator …
Instead, they ground up the remains and sent them down the sewer.3
Dr. Susan Poppema, in her 1996 book Why I am an Abortion Doctor, wrote about how she thought flushing aborted baby remains down the sewer was the best way to dispose of them.
Poppema commits abortions through sixteen weeks. She refers to the dismembered bodies as “tissue,” and this sanitized language hides the reality.
She says:
Realistically, the best and safest way medically to dispose of tissue from the uterus is to put it directly into the general sewage system.
Waste of every kind, after all, eventually winds up being disposed of in one manner or another, and short of sacred burial rites it is safe to say that disposal of organic matter (which uterine tissue is) is generally a fairly straightforward proposition. The matter leftover from surgery is all natural tissue and blood.4
She does say, “Could it be infected? Yes.”5
The Problem with Flushing Aborted Babies into the Sewers
Poppema concedes there may be one problem, though. She says, “[T]he obvious problem is presented when considering that the larger pieces of tissue can block disposal pipes.”6
Below is a sonogram of a sixteen-week-old preborn baby.
These “larger pieces of tissue” are arms, legs, etc.
Poppema ordered an industrial-strength garbage disposal for her abortion facility to grind up fetal parts. The man who came to install it broke down in tears and refused to complete the job.
Poppema says, “[M] y colleagues and I found the poor man on the floor literally sobbing at the thought of a disposal system at an abortion clinic.”7
Someone else finished the installation. The man reported Poppema’s clinic to the health department, which led to added hassles for her. She complains about this in her book.
People having abortions do sometimes ask abortion workers what they do with the bodies. In Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling, a manual for abortion workers, it says that “How do they get rid of it, it is burnt?’ is one of the “difficult” questions patients ask. 8
Former Abortion Workers Who Come Forward
Margo also commented on the guilt she felt at being involved in abortion for so long. She laments that she took part in “tens of thousands” of abortions and says, “It literally took my breath away … I helped murder almost a football stadium of people.”9
Because of the emotional trauma they experience and the difficulty of coming to terms with their actions, many abortion workers have a hard time discussing what went on in their clinics.
This is similar to soldiers who suffer PTSD and don’t like to talk about what they experienced in war. When veterans come forward and speak about atrocities they witnessed or the details of battles they took part in, it’s valuable, as it is when former abortion workers speak.
Expected to Book Forty Abortions a Day
Two former Planned Parenthood workers, Rhyan and Annette, said Planned Parenthood expected them to book forty abortion appointments a day.
Rhyan, who worked for Planned Parenthood in Kansas for four months in 2016, was hired as a receptionist, but says her actual job turned out to be “selling abortions.”
According to the article:
The sales began with the automated answering system that picked up all calls first. The pleasant, recorded voice invited callers to press one number if they wanted birth control, another for a well woman exam, and another for abortion. All abortion calls were automatically jumped to the front of the calling queue.10
Rhyan says, “If you were calling for birth control, you could wait 20 minutes to get a phone operator.”11
Rhyan was required to schedule women’s appointments before discussing costs. There also appeared to be an unwritten rule to ask Black-sounding callers if they needed financial assistance, but not white-sounding ones.
Annette found herself getting in trouble when she took extra time counseling ambivalent pregnant people or sending them home to think about their decision. According to her interview:
Annette observed the clinic director meeting with a client. To Annette, the woman was asking endless questions and seemed anything but certain about her decision. The patient kept repeating, ‘I’m really not sure.’
When Annette and the director left the interview room, the director told the staff that the patient was ‘just fine’ and ready to proceed. Annette spoke up and said she didn’t see it that way.
The director responded, ‘She’s here. If she doesn’t want it done, she’ll say so.’ Annette got such heat for speaking up she did not do it again.11
Annette says, “We were always told that it’s all up to the woman.”12 But that was not what she saw in practice. “The emotional manipulation of others,” she says, “is what got to me the most.”
At a staff meeting, she challenged the higher management, and asked if Planned Parenthood had an abortion quota. Annette says, “I just kept saying, ‘This really feels like you’re running a herding clinic.’ All of the other staff chimed in and said, ‘Yes, that’s exactly how we feel…’”13
By the end of the conversation, Annette had learned that “Yes, they expect a certain number of procedures a day, but no, this is not a quota.”14
For all intents and purposes though, it was.
Substandard Medical Care Puts Patients at Risk
A nurse named Jayne wrote about the lack of medical training manuals in one abortion facility. She was asked to administer strong medications intravenously without detailed instructions and no manual to refer to. Without this vital medical information, she didn’t know the proper way to administer the medication.
Jayne, who had been a nurse for twenty-eight years, spent twenty-three days at Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware before quitting because medical care at the facility was so substandard.
According to the article:
The obligatory crash cart was filled with medicine that was not just out of date but “way out of date.” The oxygen mask on the cart was so old, it was no longer pliable.15
All of these abortion workers who have come forward with their stories are showing courage. They (and others like them) should be supported by the pro-life movement.
Footnotes
- Willie ParkerLife’s Work: from the Trenches, A Moral Argument for Choice (New York: 37INK, Atria, 2017) 95-96
- Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry” The American Feminist Fall/Winter 2016
- Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry”
- Susan T. Poppema, M.D. and Mike Henderson. Why I am an Abortion Doctor (New York: Prometheus Books, 1996) 162-166
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Joanna Brien, Ida Fairbairn Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling (London: Routledge, 1996) 94
- Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry”
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
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For more of our post on workers in violent institutions, see:
Healing for the Perpetrators: The Psychological Damage from Different Types of Killing
Abortion Doctor Says: We are the Executioners
“But I was Empty”: The Story of a Doctor Who Left Planned Parenthood
Disability Rights – Babies, Women, Numbers
by Rachel MacNair
This was originally written for a referendum to allow late-term abortions on our project website Peace and Life Referendums. The measure never made the ballot, but we don’t let write-ups go to waste, so it became one of several topic pages.
Fetuses with Disabilities
One of the most common reasons given for making late-term abortions available is that the unborn child is diagnosed with some form of disability. (Around the world, that “disability” can often mean being female; this is much less common in the U.S., but not unheard of).
Studies show a troubling impact of disability-selective abortions. In the United States, after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990, this anti-discrimination and pro-accommodation legislation should have had a positive effect on how people with disabilities were seen. For those well beyond infancy, it did. However, one study noted a dramatic decrease in the birth rate for Down Syndrome babies after its passage. With no reason to believe they were conceived at different rates before and after passage of ADA, and prenatal screening abilities being the same, authors attributed the decrease to demeaning and negative portrayals in the media.
Another study showed how this worked, looking at newspapers from 1998-2006: disability was presented negatively. It was because of positive portrayals of prenatal testing. The reports were commonly positive about terminating the pregnancy when there was a disability diagnosis. Therefore, the ready availability of abortion and its positive portrayal sabotages the cause of disability rights.
Pregnant Women with Disabilities
Women with disabilities are already subjected to many forms of discrimination. Telling them they can’t handle a life event such as pregnancy can involve having disdain for them. It’s also discriminatory. Abortion availability can be used as an excuse to avoid providing pregnant women with disabilities the extra services they need and deserve. Stigma associated with having disabilities is increased when it’s used as a reason to avoid reproducing.
Numbers
A figure of 13,000 yearly abortions over 20 weeks in the U.S. is based on applying the CDC report of late-terms being 1.3% of abortions to the Guttmacher Institute’s report of around a million abortions. The Guttmacher Institute itself, however, has reported 15,000. Official figures have been as low as around 10,000.
These figures are comparable to gun-related homicides in the entire United States. Few people think such homicides are “rare.”
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For more of our posts on defending people with disabilities, see:
Abortion and People with Disabilities
How Ableism Led (and Leads) to Abortion
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
Bigotry against Babies with Down Syndrome
Bigotry against Babies with Down Syndrome: International Experiences
A Lawyer’s Turnaround on Baby Doe with Her Own Down Syndrome Baby
Kate Cox and Stories of Trisonomy 18
“Oh, the Hateful A-Bomb!”: Survivors’ Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
collected by John Whitehead
August 6 marks the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and August 9th the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Below are some testimonials from hibakusha [bombing survivors] about their experiences.
These stories serve as a reminder of both the evil done in 1945 and the fate that may await all of us if we don’t check the threat of nuclear weapons.
Stories from Hiroshima
The stories and drawings of hibakusha from Hiroshima were collected in Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors (New York: Pantheon, 1977). The excerpts below describe their experiences from the moment of the bomb’s impact onward:
Haruko Ogasawara:
As I looked up at the sky from the backyard of my house, I heard the faint buzzing of a B-29 but the plane was not visible….I looked up and suddenly saw a strange thing. There was a fire ball like a baseball growing larger becoming the size of a volleyball. And then something fell on my head…
I found myself lying on the ground covered with pieces of wood. When I stood up in a frantic effort to look around there was darkness…When I came to my senses I found my clothes in shreds…
I discovered my mother in a water tank. She had fainted. Crying out, “Mamma, Mamma,” I shook her to bring her back to her senses…
[My sister] was crushed under the collapsed house and only her head could be seen… Mother and I worked desperately to remove the plaster and pillars and pulled her out with great effort. Her body had turned purple from the bruises and her arm was so badly wounded that we could have placed two fingers in the wound. Strange to say, my mother was thankfully not hurt…
We three ran away, heading for Mt. Eba. A crowd of people were running along the street car track. All were wounded. There was a man with his skin trailing; another man was breathing faintly, all blood-stained; a third man had blood spurting out his head…
The sky was red with flames. It was burning as if scorching heaven. (43-44)
Yoshiko Michitsuji:
Everywhere was a sea of fire. No road was open for us anymore except for a narrow path and that was barely passable…We dipped our clothes in the water that was stored in an air-raid shelter and dashed through the fires desperately.
“Awfully hot! Is this the end of my life?…Oh God!…Help me!” I murmured and prayed.
When we managed to come to a safer place…even at this safer place, I found many dead bodies lying in the air-raid shelter, under fallen trees, and everywhere. (29)
Terumi Nishida:
A woman with her jaw missing and her tongue hanging out of her mouth was wandering around the area of Shinsho-machi in the heavy, black rain. She was heading towards the north, crying for help. I wonder if she survived. (49)
Masato Une:
A first year junior high school student asked me to give him some water. I heard that if people who had been exposed to the A-Bomb drank water, they would die. So, I would not give him water.
The next day, when I passed by the place, he was lying on the ground dead. I wished then that I had let him drink some water, even if he would have died sooner. I clasped my hands and chanted a prayer to [Amitabha Buddha]. I started to worry even more about my own child, for whom I was looking. He might have died in such a miserable condition or be suffering pain. I left there wiping away the tears which welled up in my eyes.
I heard in the evening that my child had been calling “Daddy,” “Mommy” and that he had taken his last breath alone without seeing us. That was the short life of a thirteen-year-old!
It is twenty-nine years since my son died, and his memory, and the miserable image of the junior high school boy asking for water always haunts me.
Oh, the hateful A-Bomb! (68)
Stories from Nagasaki
Dr. Takashi Nagai, a hibakusha from Nagasaki, recorded the stories of fellow survivors, including his relatives, in We of Nagasaki (1951).
Kayano Nagai:
Dr. Nagai’s four-year-old daughter witnessed the bombing from the countryside outside the city:
All of a sudden there was a great big flash, like lightning. I didn’t know what it was—I was so surprised! Then there was a big noise, then a big strong wind came and pushed me. I was scared. I got on the floor and stayed there with my hands over my ears…
From the other side of the big green mountain [Mount Kawabira] there was a great big red thing like a tree sticking up into the sky. It was a big big tree made out of fire. The top of it kept opening and opening and it looked as if it was alive. It kept swelling and swelling and it went up and up, higher and higher, like smoke from a chimney, all the way up to the sky, and then it kept going up even higher, right past the sky. First it was all red but it began to be different colors—oh, so bright! It made my eyes hurt!
I kept watching it and after a while the colors weren’t so bright any more, then the whole thing turned grayish and spread all over the sky. (11)
Fujie Urata:
As I came nearer to Urakami [a Nagasaki neigborhood], I began to meet many injured people. They must have been workers from the [factory], young men and women, all of them naked…They were stumbling along unsteadily, trying to escape behind Mount Kawabira, weeping crazily, forgetting even to be ashamed of their nakedness. Their faces, necks, and hands were blistered and on some of them I could see sheets of skin that had peeled right off and hung down flapping, all black with dust. The hair of the women was singed and frizzled. Many of these people had been wounded and were smeared with blood.
I tried to find out what had happened to them, and cried “For heaven’s sake, what is it! What’s happened!” Always the same answer—“I don’t know, all I saw was a sudden flash, then everything went to pieces!” Some just stared with blank expressions, unable to answer at all.
Sometimes one of them would stumble in the road and sprawl on his face, lying there without trying to get up. (32-33)
Sadako Moriyama:
Ms. Moriyama took cover, along with teachers and students, in an elementary school air-raid shelter in the city:
I was blown into the far corner of the shelter. I lost consciousness at once. I didn’t see the flash everybody tells about, or hear any noise, or feel any pain.
I came to quickly…A little light was beginning to come in the entrance…I got up and went outside, stepping over the people on the floor. There was no sun. It was like dawn, or twilight, and chilly. Near the mouth of the shelter lay a woman teacher from the school, dead and completely naked. Her body seemed relaxed and her face was peaceful…
Four children were lying in the sandpile…They were all naked and they were skinned. The skin of their hands had been torn away about at the wrists. It was hanging from their fingertips just behind the nails, turned inside-out like a glove. In the dim light I thought I saw many other children lying about the yard. (135-137)
Matsu Mariuchi:
Ms. Mariuchi, a member of Nagasaki’s Catholic community, had to care for her pregnant niece, Hatsue, in the aftermath of the bombing:
All of a sudden Hatsue complained of pains in her belly. She groaned, “Oh, oh!” then she gasped, “The baby must be coming!” I rushed out to find a midwife, but what chance was there of that?…
I stood there in the ashes. The sun was going down behind Mount Iwaya and the sky was red as blood…I was standing there all alone when a Mrs. Yamaguchi came along… “What’s the matter?” she asked.
I said, “It’s my niece Hatsue, she’s having labor pains!” Mrs. Yamaguchi cried, “Oh, my! What a fix to be in! I’ve just come from helping a woman. Goodness, how many miscarriages and premature births!” She said it had happened to practically all the women around there. “I guess the atom bomb even killed the babies inside them! What an awful thing! War is war, but after all!”…
I went back to the shelter and found Hatsue sound asleep. Evidently the pains hadn’t come again. I watched her. It was long after dark when she suddenly awakened and screamed, “Auntie Matsu! The baby! It’s stopped moving!…
She sobbed and sobbed, weak as she was. Death had entered Hatsue’s womb and sooner or later it would take Hatsue too. She knew it. She kept praying, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, I commit my body and my soul into your hands…”
Past midnight I heard a loud sound like a snap—it was the child being born. Before I could light a candle the afterbirth came out and it was all over; there was no bleeding after that. The child was a little boy. There had been one big light and this child was robbed its life before it had even been born. (127-129)
The mother, Hatsue, died shortly afterwards.
Makoto Nagai:
Dr. Nagai’s son reflects on the world after the bomb:
Down to my father’s generation, everybody considered bravery in battle something to be proud of. Everybody admired that and tried to be that way. It’s up to my generation to make the courage to stop war something to be proud of—that’s what we should admire and that’s the way we should all try to be. (29)
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For more of our posts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see:
“Everybody Else in the World Was Dead”: Hiroshima’s Legacy
The Danger That Faces Us All: Hiroshima and Nagasaki after 75 Years
Rejecting Mass Murder: Looking Back on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion
by Sarah Terzo
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, allows poor individuals and families to buy food they need. A proposal by the chair of the U.S. House Agricultural Committee has been made to cut these benefits drastically.
Myths Vs. Reality
Many conservatives claim programs like SNAP allow lazy people to avoid working. They imagine a “welfare queen” who lives high on the hog on government benefits while refusing to work. They resent their tax dollars going to help such a person.
People aren’t eating lobster and steak on SNAP. The average monthly benefit is $157 per person. Next time you go shopping, check your grocery bill to get an idea of how much that covers.
Second, only a tiny fraction of people on SNAP are nondisabled adults who aren’t working. Let’s look at some statistics.
The Majority of People on SNAP are Disabled, the Elderly, or Children
Here are some numbers. In 2022 in the United States, nearly 40% of those receiving food stamps were children (with 11.6% of those younger than five). People 60 or older made up 18.3% of recipients.
And in 2015, 28% of adults under age 60 who received SNAP were disabled, meaning either they received disability-related benefits or reported health problems.
Using available numbers from 2015 about the total number of people who receive SNAP and specifically adults 18-59 without disabilities who receive SNAP, we can estimate that about 36% of SNAP recipients are non-disabled adults of working age. This means that a majority of SNAP recipients are disabled, over 60, or children.
Now, let’s look at households. In 2019-2020, 36% of households that received SNAP benefits contained at least one member who was older or disabled, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
In addition, 65% of households receiving SNAP had children in them.
Most Nondisabled Adults on SNAP Are Working Full-Time
According to the US Government Accountability Office, 51% of adults on SNAP (between the ages of 19 and 64) were working full time in 2018. An additional 21% were working full-time part of the year (49 weeks or less). Thus, over 70% of those on SNAP between the ages of 19-64 were working full time at least part of the year. The remaining 30% would include at least some of the 28% of people on SNAP who are disabled.
And these numbers don’t include those working part time.
Wages are so low, and the cost of living so high, that many people working full-time can’t afford food.
My friend who worked in a homeless shelter told me many people she worked with had full-time jobs, but still couldn’t afford housing. They slept in their cars, showered at the shelter, then went to their jobs.
These were all single men only trying to support themselves. A single parent trying to raise kids would have an even harder time making ends meet.
It’s impossible to get an exact percentage for people on SNAP who aren’t disabled, are of working age, and aren’t working. Statistics are from different years, some disabled people work, and some people work part-time and aren’t included in any of these percentages.
However, if only around 36% of people on SNAP are nondisabled adults of working age to begin with, and we know that 70% of working age people on SNAP are working full time at least part of the year, and at least some of the remaining people are working part time, we can guess that the percentage of able-bodied people on SNAP not working at all is very low.
We can surmise that the vast majority of people on SNAP are disabled, older, children, or working.
Most People Are on SNAP Only Temporarily
In contrast to the myth of the lazy person living on food stamps, most people are on SNAP only for a short time.
According to data from 2012, over 30% of SNAP participants were off benefits within a year. Almost 50% were off them within two years. And over 60% were off within three years.
SNAP is often a temporary safety net utilized only until people or families get back on their feet.
The Proposed Cuts
The new proposal would freeze benefits, so the increasing cost of food is no longer considered. This would lead to $30 billion in cuts over the next decade. These cuts would affect everyone on SNAP, including children, the elderly, and the disabled.
The proposed cuts to the SNAP program would affect:
- 6 million individuals aged 60 or older.
- 4 million disabled people
- 17 million children.
- 5 million young children under age 5.
Hunger interferes with a child’s education and cognition, inhibiting their ability to learn and leading to lower grades, which can impact a young person for a lifetime. A lack of nourishment during a child’s formative years can also lead to long-term physical and cognitive problems.
SNAP and Abortion
Many pregnant people have abortions because they can’t provide for a child or another child. In a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 73% of people having abortions gave not being able to afford a baby as a reason.
Only 16% of women of childbearing age live below the poverty line. But in 2014, they had 49% of all abortions. Thus, about half of all abortions are done on the country’s poorest women. Sixteen percent of women are having half of all abortions.
Additionally, 26% of women having abortions had incomes of 100% to 199% of the poverty line. They are the second-poorest women in our country. Yet they make up only 18% of the population.
A relatively small proportion of the population is having the majority of abortions, and they are the poorest groups in our society. The 66% of American women who are not poor or close to poor account for only about a quarter of women having abortions.
In other words, for every abortion a middle class or wealthy person has, there are three abortions among the nation’s poor.
Having a child is something many poor people feel they cannot afford. Researcher Laura Hussey, in her book The Pro-Life Pregnancy Help Movement: Serving Women or Saving Babies? (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2020), asked women who had abortions the following question:
Other countries provide a lot of assistance to women and their families that the government, employers, and schools in the US do not provide. These countries give women things like free childcare, free healthcare, money they can use to pay their family’s expenses, and the chance to take months or even years off of work with pay after giving birth.
Would you have made a different decision about your pregnancy if you could get that kind of help? (pp. 207-208)
Twenty-two percent of the women who responded said that if such programs had been available, they would have rejected abortion and had their babies. Another 34% said they were unsure.
Only 44% of the woman said they still would have aborted. This means more than half of people having abortions might have changed their mind if the United States had a better social safety net.
Government programs to help the poor, then, would save the lives of roughly between 22% and 56% of babies being aborted today.
Overturning Roe v. Wade, it should be said, didn’t do that. Abortions are more common now than they were before Dobbs. The abortion rate has not gone down since Roe was overturned—it’s gone up.
For those of us who hoped overturning Roe would prevent most abortions, we have been sorely disappointed. When you factor in people who are ordering the abortion pill online (an unknown but likely high number), the situation is even more dire.
Dobbs has barely made a dent.
Twenty-two percent of one million abortions is 220,000. We pro-lifers have the power to save at least 220,000 babies a year just by creating a more robust social safety net.
And this is something we could easily do. Most pro-abortion people won’t fight us on it.
Those conservatives who propose such cuts must choose which they want more. Either they can know for sure that not one, single undeserving person gets government assistance, or they can save the lives of over 220,000 preborn children every year.
Is the fear that someone will get benefits they don’t deserve really more important than saving 220,000 innocent babies? Are there conservatives who are so determined that not a penny of their tax dollars go to help poor children, disabled people, the elderly, working families, and a tiny fraction of nonworking adults that they would let all those preborn babies die?
I don’t want to believe so.
Some conservatives have pointed out problems with government safety net programs. The answer is to reform them, not eliminate them.
Cutting SNAP could lead to more babies being aborted as parents struggle to put food on the table. It’s a step in the wrong direction.
To send an email to your congresspeople opposing cuts to SNAP, go here. All you have to do is click a button.
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For similar posts on our blog, see:
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
The Impact of Family Caps on Abortion
Home of the Brave? A CLE Response to City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion
Successes We Never Know About
by Sarah Terzo
Being an activist can be discouraging when we don’t seem to have an impact. But sometimes, victories happen – hearts and minds are changed, and lives are saved—but we never know it.
A Fetal Model Saves a Life
In a 2021 article in Newsweek, Jessica Riojas says that in 2017, as a sophomore at Fresno State University, she visited the table of a pro-life student group. The group was handing out little models of 12-week-old preborn babies, small but fully formed.
At the time, Riojas didn’t consider herself “either pro-life or pro-choice,” but she thought the models were cute. She took one of them and hung it from the rearview mirror of her car as a decoration.
Time went by, and Riojas didn’t think about the abortion issue. But then she found herself pregnant.
Riojas says:
Like most other college-age women in my situation, I felt alone, scared, unsure of my future and incredibly underprepared.
I visited a local Planned Parenthood, where a counselor tried to convince me that I was irresponsible, that I wasn’t ready to be a mom, and that abortion was my only option.
Troubled by the Planned Parenthood “counselor’s” words, Riojas went back to her car. While sitting in her car, wondering what to do, she looked at the fetal model hanging from her mirror.
Riojas says:
Its features, so similar to my own, reminded me that the baby in my womb was a fellow human being. After speaking with my boyfriend, I decided to choose life for my child.
A few months later, Riojas gave birth to her daughter.
Being a new mother didn’t slow Riojas down. The same semester she gave birth, she earned a 4.0 GPA. She graduated and then got her Master’s in Speech Language Pathology. She now works full time as a speech language pathologist.
Riojas told her story in Newsweek to show that women don’t need abortion to succeed. Riojas says, “My daughter motivates me to do my best in every aspect of my life. She is the reason I excelled in college and graduate school, and now in my career.”
As an undergraduate, Riojas joined the pro-life group on campus that had given her the fetal model and told them her story. She eventually took a leadership position in the student group and got involved in helping provide resources to pregnant and parenting students on campus.
The pro-life students at the table who gave Riojas the fetal model did not know that months later, a baby would be saved because of their efforts. Members of the club who hadn’t graduated by the time Riojas joined the group would eventually learn her story.
But there may have been people who were involved in the pro-life outreach who never knew their efforts saved a life.
A Life-Saving License Plate
A pro-life couple wrote about a woman they knew of who decided to have an abortion. But:
On her way to the abortion clinic, she followed a car with a “Choose Life” license plate. As she got closer, she could not bring herself to keep her appointment. The message on the plate spoke so loudly to her. She followed through with her pregnancy and now has a nine-month-old son.1
The owner of the car with the license plate never knew that his or her message saved a life. Because of the simple act of putting a pro-life license plate on a car, a pro-lifer changed the world—every human being this child’s life touches in the future will be directly affected by the unknown pro-lifer’s actions.
This little boy may grow up to have children of his own. Even if not, his impact on the world and the people in it will reverberate through the years. Like ripples in a pond, the pro-lifer’s actions will echo down the generations. This is the case whenever a life is saved.
The pro-life person in this story doesn’t know. By the same token, whenever we share the pro-life message, whether face-to-face, on social media, or through any other type of outreach, we don’t know the impact it has.
This also goes for changing hearts and minds on other life issues.
Initial Anger, a Life Saved Later
In his 2017 book, Seeing Is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Jonathan Van Maren makes the case for the effectiveness of showing pictures of abortion victims. This remains a controversial tactic, and analysis of it is beyond the scope of this article.
Van Maren, along with others, shared photos of aborted babies on college campuses. His observations are also relevant for other forms of outreach.
He discusses how some people, when shown photos of aborted babies, become very hostile and angry. One would think that people who yell and swear at pro-lifers would be the last people to accept the pro-life message.
In fact, one might think that people who are infuriated by pro-life activism would become even more entrenched in their pro-abortion views, hardened and pushed away by a message and tactics they find repulsive.
However, Van Maren has found that this is not necessarily the case.
He tells the story of one woman:
One girl who yelled and swore at us during one campus display came up to us a year later and revealed that when she found herself pregnant several months later, she couldn’t go through with having an abortion – even though she hated us for showing her the pictures, she couldn’t escape the truth those pictures conveyed. Her baby was saved as a result.2
If Van Maren hadn’t returned to the same campus and if the woman who had her baby didn’t run into him when he was there, or hadn’t wanted to share her story, neither Van Maren nor anyone else who took part in activism that day would ever have known they saved a baby’s life.
Another time, a nursing student argued with Van Maren and his fellow pro-lifers for hours on campus, defending the pro-choice position. At the end of the lengthy discussion, she showed no signs of changing her mind.
But three years later, Van Maren ran into her again. She told him:
I remember when you were here about three years ago. And I was like a lot of the angry people out here. I walked by and I was so furious. I was pro-choice . . .
But what it comes down to is very basic: We don’t want anyone to impose feelings on us. And these pictures make you feel guilty and sad and they’re bad feelings, and someone else is putting those on you, and it’s a stranger, but you can’t look at that and really, seriously support it.
I saw these pictures and I went home and looked up a video of an abortion, and I cried until I thought I was going to puke. And I changed, because of this, to pro-life . . .
[Seeing the pictures] changed my life. I support it, and I appreciate it.3
Van Maren says he has had this experience many times, where people who initially showed no sign of accepting the pro-life argument later told him they changed their minds.
The Impact of Dialogue
This phenomenon isn’t limited to the showing of graphic photos. It can also apply to dialogue.
Any time one engages in dialogue on a life issue, whether online or off, they are exposing people to new ideas and new information. Or, perhaps, they are sharing information a person already knows but in a unique, new way.
Even people who argue with you and show no sign of changing their minds might continue to think about the conversation in the days and weeks that follow. Something you say may inspire them to do their own research, as it did in this case. Whether the person gets angry or experiences “bad feelings,” every conversation plants a seed.
People who teach marketing often say that a person needs to see an ad multiple times before they buy a product. One conversation can plant a seed that bears fruit in the future.
Sharing your beliefs respectfully may make a difference even when you don’t witness it.
In my pro-life work, I have emailed back and forth with pregnant women considering abortion, then had them stop writing, leaving me not knowing the outcome. Every once in a while, though, I have gotten an email from someone I spoke to months earlier with a picture of her new baby and a thank you.
You never know what impact you’ve had. Don’t give up when you don’t see results. You might be making more of a difference than you realize.
- From Judy Madsen Johnson Stories from the Frontlines: The Battle against Abortion (Independently Published, 2014) 97
- Jonathan Van Maren Seeing Is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion (Fort Collins, Colorado: Life Cycle Books, 2017) 89-90
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
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For another take on success we didn’t know about, this time with the peace movement, see:
Documentary Review: The Movement and the Madman
For more of our blog posts on persuasion, see:
Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion
Dialog on Life Issues: Avoiding Some Obstacles to Communication
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
by Jacqueline Abernathy
As I write this, Governor John Carney has the fate of generations of citizens at his mercy should he sign HB 140 making Delaware the 12th U.S. state where assisted suicide is legal. I wrote a letter urging him to veto HB 140 which I documented from my scientific research as a scholar and author of peer-reviewed studies on assisted suicide on the significant dangers that come with killing rather than caring.
I cited a recent journal article detailing cases where people were not terminally ill but subverted safeguards to obtain lethal medications by refusing food and fluids until they would die of dehydration if not given a deadly prescription. I explained how these abuses inspire reforms –
but not to protect citizens. Rather, they create more victims when used as a rationale for reforms that expand access to euthanasia for more desperate people. Rather than close loopholes meant to keep people safe, safeguards are simply eliminated.
Any provision in the law that might mistakenly assuage the governor’s concerns about abuse is a mere illusion. There is no safe way to kill someone. Those citizens the governor might be okay with killing according to HB 140 as written won’t be the only casualties. I warned him that he wouldn’t be disregarding only those lives he thinks aren’t worth protecting, but that it would likely cost the lives of people he believes still matter.
I urged the governor not to legalize killing for some by warning him about the risks to others, just in case that might inspire him not to kill anyone. I certainly don’t hold an ableist viewpoint on whose lives are worth saving from suicide, but public opinion polls show the majority of Americans now do. They support assisted suicide for those with catastrophic physical illness, but suicide prevention for the healthy.
Informing them of misdiagnosed patients like Jeanette Hall who sought assisted suicide nearly 25 years ago and is still alive today can get through to people about the perils of helping people end their lives prematurely when hit with a devastating diagnosis. Jeannette needed to be asked why her life was still worth living despite having cancer. This inspired her to fight just long enough to see her son graduate from police academy. Instead, she beat cancer completely. The truth remains that Jeanette Hall would still deserve to live even if she only had a few months left instead of decades. But her story reminds us that doctors can be wrong. It inspires many to wonder who would still be with us if assisted suicide wasn’t a legal option.
Pleas made to avoid taking a human life that someone doesn’t value by appealing to their desire to protect lives they do care about are beyond disturbing. But sadly, they’re sometimes necessary. Any form of legal killing requires placing some humans below the rest, deeming them less human and valuable than others.
It’s not just assisted suicide that implies the old and ill are less human and valuable than the young and well. Abortion suggests the unborn are less human and valuable than the born. Capital punishment declares death row inmates are less human and valuable than the unconvicted.
Some people are restrained from hurting others by self-interest and avoiding punishment. Someone must hold some humans’ existence in lesser regard to justify killing them, and those willing to kill another or themselves clearly think some criteria make human life worthless. Knowing this means we sometimes have to appeal to concerns for the humans whose humanity they still acknowledge in hopes of saving humans they would kill.
We wouldn’t have legal killing if all lives were considered equal. A sidewalk counselor urging a mother of twins to spare her unwanted unborn daughter with Down syndrome because the abortion could cause her to lose her non-disabled son (the baby she still wants) might save the little girl.
To convince an enraged gunman to put the rifle down because if he shot his cheating wife, the bullet could hit their son in the next room – that might be the best hope of saving the hostage. If it did, I doubt the freed wife would take offense to that argument, nor think her rescuer honestly believes her child’s life is more valuable than her own, even if her captor does. I think she would just be relieved and grateful to be alive.
Likewise, those who preach about how the sanctity of innocent human life demands murderers face the ultimate punishment could be moved by concerns about accidentally executing the innocent, because innocent lives are precious to them. Any doubts about the inmate’s guilt can compel a stay of execution where arguments against the immorality of capital punishment probably wouldn’t work at all. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and sometimes the only way to protect a powerless human from death is to highlight the equal worth of those the powerful still think worthy of protection.
While I attempted to make an objective case in favor of a veto, not from my subjective and personal convictions as a consistent life ethic adherent, but as a scholar, detailing that this bill could cost the lives of people beyond those it intentionally destroys assaults my conscience. Because I certainly don’t think the terminally ill in Delaware are any less human and deserving of human rights than anyone else, I departed from my fact-based argument and rebuked this form of human inequality.
I wrote:
Governor, the bottom line is that you should not be at peace with signing any law that declares entire groups of human beings as disposable. My goal here is to inform you that what supposed safeguards may comfort you in the current draft of HB 140 are more than just arbitrary criteria for determining what lives don’t matter: these limits for who may access poison are clearly fungible and changeable for the worst. History proves it. On principle, you should reject any unjust law that relegates any population to a lesser status as second-class citizens who get suicide assistance vs. everyone else who gets suicide prevention when they cry out for help. You may be okay with how HB 140 decides what Delaware residents in desperate circumstances get pushed off the ledge on request to fall to their death (rather than talked down from the ledge as we usually do), but I assure you that the qualifications on which lives don’t matter will likely expand to other populations if you make the mistake of signing HB 140 and opening this Pandora’s Box.
In sum, regardless of what violence a consistent life advocate is trying to prevent, testifying to be equal worth of every human being is vital so we don’t undermine our message even if the intention is to save lives. If arguing against abortion exceptions includes the point that some other babies could also die or that mothers might make false reports of sexual assault, it is still necessary to reiterate that human beings are entitled to exist regardless of how they were conceived.
Abortion is wrong not because a mother refuses to take responsibility for her child who she freely created: it is wrong because her child is a human being entitled to their life and limbs. I made my case to spare all lives at risk from HB 140 by informing Governor Carney of how it endangered more than just the terminally ill, but I ended my letter to him by reminding him that terminally ill humans deserve protection too.
In a world rife with bigotry and oppression where the powerful routinely destroy the powerless, we must combat the most lethal forms of inequality without abandoning our witness to this fundamental truth that all humans deserve the basic human right to exist free from violence.
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Update: Good news! Delaware Governor Carney did veto the the bill, so assisted suicide in Delaware is not legalized for the time being.
For more of our posts focused on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Testimony Opposing the End-of-Life Options Act.(Maryland)
Beneath Layers of Lies: The Surge in Efforts to Legalize Euthanasia
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Will I be Treated the Same Way Now?
The Danger of Coerced Euthanasia: Questions to Ask
Home of the Brave? A CLE Response to City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
by Sonja Morin
(published July 2, 2024)
Americans everywhere are preparing to celebrate the United States’ 248th anniversary of independence this Thursday. Many recall their own history of living in the U.S., or their families’ reasons for calling this land their home. The national anthem’s famous line “o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave” echoes in concerts, sports events, and celebrations everywhere. Yet for many in the same country, this July 4th arrives with a fear that they will be deprived of their freedom to find a home in this land.
Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson. The 6-3 decision declared that cities may choose to criminalize homeless people for sleeping in public spaces. Forty-eight states and Washington, DC already have some form of statewide law criminalizing homelessness , in addition to hundreds of city-wide ordinances. Grants Pass v. Johnson now gives these laws the highest judicial grounds for enforcement.
In his majority opinion for the case, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch identified that people who endure homelessness “cannot help but undertake” last-resort measures (such as sleeping outside) to survive. He maintains that, since laws like the Grants Pass ordinance prohibit sleeping in public places for everyone, that it therefore must not be a case of discrimination against a certain group based on their status. To the judicial majority, it does not count as a case of “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
No one expects the Supreme Court to solve the increasing plight of homelessness. After all, the primary task of the Court is to determine whether or not laws are constitutional. However, the Grants Pass v. Johnson decision was not only contradictory to the Constitution, but is poised to worsen the crisis facing homeless people in America.
The Eighth Amendment’s phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” has been typically interpreted as ensuring that a penalty for a crime is proportional to the crime itself. In the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the crime is sleeping in public space, and the penalties are steep fines (up to $1,250) and jail time (up to 30 days).
While ordinances like the one upheld in Grants Pass ban everyone from sleeping outdoors in a public space, it stands to reason that the majority of people who are doing so are experiencing homelessness. No one intends to become homeless, or to stay in the state of homelessness. Regardless of the circumstances that led them to that state, people are often forced to stay in that state based on external factors out of their control (such as overcrowded shelters or job-hunting difficulties).
In a just society, penalties for crimes are lessened or removed if the person was forced into the crime itself. With that in mind, penalizing people who sleep outside when they have no other feasible options seems excessive. The SCOTUS majority giving the green light to the Grants Pass ordinance (and, by extension, other ones like it across the country) defies the same Amendment it claims to protect.
The issues with Grants Pass v. Johnson don’t stop at its flaunting of constitutional intent. Instead, it permits the proliferation of violence and discrimination against people facing homelessness throughout the U.S., and perpetuates the cycle of poverty and human rights violations.
For starters, public encampment bans are not the end of “cruel and unusual punishment” for people experiencing homelessness. According to a nationwide study, an estimated 14-21% of homeless people are victims of violence, in comparison to 2% of the general population. They are also much more likely to be subject to “excessive force” by police, even if they are not suspected to have committed a crime. If sleeping outside is an arrestable offense, it gives even more opportunity for these violent incidents to happen, and to protect the perpetrators under law. Most people who are homeless do not know of or have access to resources that will protect them in unjust cases like these. They will be brutalized, have their dignity ignored and unprotected, and have no ability to protect themselves from continued abuse.
Homeless people are already much more likely to be imprisoned, solely for the “crime” of being homeless. Shelters and resources are severely underfunded and overcrowded. When one has no home or transportation, and cannot be admitted into a shelter, their only other option to exist is outdoors. When this last option is an arrestable offense, many end up in what is called the homeless-jail cycle. Time in prison not only makes people far less likely to be able to get a job or obtain housing once released, but predisposes them to be thrown back into prison, often for the same “crime” of being homeless.
The crisis of poverty worsens the likelihood of other injustices against life. In neighboring Canada, people suffering from poverty or homelessness face much stronger pressure to choose euthanasia via the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Program. As more U.S. states consider or authorize euthanasia, the possibility for the same situation in this country grows. Three-quarters of people seeking abortion are below or at the federal poverty level. A Guttmacher Institute study surveying women who had abortions found that 73% chose it because of financial concerns. If homeless criminalization makes the path to financial stability all the more impossible, and the reaches of homelessness more broad, then it will force countless people into literally choosing between life and death.
Many people who have lived in the United States, including myself, are proud to be Americans. This approaching holiday is always a reminder of the privilege it is to live here, and enjoy the freedoms therein. But it is also a call to action to do our part to enshrine those freedoms for everyone here. And when there is a whole segment of the population in this country who cannot exist or sleep without being criminalized or violated, it demands soul-searching and change on our part. There is no “land of the free” or “home of the brave” without the equal opportunity to find a home without fear.
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For our posts on similar topics, see:
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion
The Deserving and Undeserving Poor vs. the Worthy and Unworthy of Life: How Both Major Political Parties Pick and Choose Who They Help and Whom They Kill
Ramiro Gonzales
by Sarah Terzo (published June 25, 2024)
Nearly twenty years ago, Ramiro Gonzales was convicted of the murder of Bridget Townsend and sentenced to die. His execution is set for June 26, 2024.
A Childhood Full of Abuse, Loss, and Suffering
Ramiro is an abortion survivor. His father abandoned his sixteen-year-old mother when she became pregnant. He isn’t even listed on Ramiro’s birth certificate. Ramiro didn’t meet his father until he was nineteen.
Ramiro’s teen mother suffered from addiction. She attempted to abort Ramiro through drugs. She abandoned Ramiro at birth, and he was raised by his grandparents who, according to psychologist Dr. Kate Porterfield, “had tremendous problems, emotionally and mentally.”
Ramiro’s grandfather was an alcoholic, and his grandmother worked very long hours for $12 an hour. He lived on a desolate ranch with his extended family, and they were desperately poor.
Ramiro’s mother, along with her four sisters, were sexually abused from a young age by members of the family. According to Dr. Porterfield:
All of these young women grew up to attempt suicide, to have substance abuse problems of their own, to have trouble with violence. So, Ramiro as a small boy is put in a home that has already created generations of trauma.
Although Ramiro’s mother abandoned him, she later married and had two children she raised. When her family visited the ranch, Ramiro’s stepfather would beat him.
Far more damaging, however, was the sexual abuse that was rampant in the family.
Ramiro was sexually abused by multiple male relatives. One abuser, in particular, sexually assaulted him for many years. He was also sexually abused by a female cousin who babysat him.
According to Dr. Porterfield:
Ramiro Gonzalez suffered extraordinary trauma over the course of his life, events that are some of the most toxically stressful that a child can experience . . .
The toxicity of sexual abuse really cannot be overstated. This was a young boy who was actually abused by multiple perpetrators across many years of his childhood . . .
When Ramiro was in elementary school, one of his uncles married a woman named Loretta. She would ask Ramiro questions like, “Why are you always by yourself? Where are you going? Why are you home so late?”
Loretto was the first person in Ramiro’s life ever to ask him questions like this, or to take any interest in how he was doing. With a positive influence in his life, Romero started completing his homework and doing better at school.
But tragedy struck. When Ramiro was fifteen, Loretta was killed by a drunk driver.
Ramiro began using drugs to cope with his grief and soon became a full-blown addict. He dropped out of school at sixteen and attempted suicide at seventeen. He had several other close calls with suicide, including once when he climbed up a bridge and prepared to jump and the police were called.
But he never got any psychological help or counseling.
Notably, at Ramiro’s trial, the prosecution painted his childhood as idyllic, claiming that he grew up on “a beautiful, gorgeous ranch” where he “got privileges and opportunities that a lot of other kids don’t have.”
Ramiro’s court-appointed attorneys never mentioned the abuse Ramiro suffered, leaving the jury thinking Ramiro’s childhood was happy and privileged. This false picture influenced the sentence.
Ramiro himself doesn’t use his childhood trauma as an excuse to evade responsibility for his crime. He says:
Everything that happened in my past had some influence, [but] responsibility means you know what, that doesn’t matter because I have to take sole responsibility for what I did.
Ramiro’s Crimes
To support his drug addiction, Ramiro stole and forged checks. When he tried to steal from his drug dealer, he was caught by Bridget Townsend, the dealer’s girlfriend. To cover-up the theft, he murdered Townsend.
Eight months later and under the influence of drugs, Ramiro kidnapped a woman and raped her. He was arrested. Overcome with remorse, Ramiro also confessed to killing Townsend. The Townsend case had gone cold. It may have never been solved otherwise.
In Ramiro’s murder trial, prosecutors used the testimony of a criminal who claimed he knew Ramiro to paint him as a sociopath. Later, the witness recanted. But the damage was done. The state’s expert had used this false testimony to depict Ramiro as a monster and a danger to the public.
Today, however, the same expert says that Ramiro “is now a significantly different person both mentally and emotionally.” He now supports clemency.
Ramiro’s Life in Prison
I gave my life to Christ on March 2, 2006. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew that I had to follow God, I just knew that I had to give my life to God. And that I needed him to help me get through with this . . . this life I was living.
Ramiro ordered theology books, visited with pastors on death row, corresponded with Christian clergy, and studied the Bible.
He became committed to repentance, faith, and nonviolence, even becoming a vegetarian. His favorite Bible verse is Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.”
Terry Solley is the Executive Director of Texas Prison Outreach. He set up a faith-based program on death row in 2021. From the very beginning, Ramiro was deeply involved.
According to Solley:
There’s men who pretend that they have remorse for the legal system. And then there’s men who truly are remorseful for the things that they’ve done in their life . . . [H]e’s really remorseful for what he did . . . He’s no longer the person he used to be. He’s found his purpose in life, and his purpose is to help other men become better men.
Solley says Ramiro has done much to encourage other prisoners and promote the Christian ministry. Partly because of Ramiro’s efforts, he says, the whole atmosphere on death row has changed:
[Ramiro] can’t sing worth a lick. But whenever we would start our program and everything he would even sing, just to get the other guys to sing . . . And it was contagious. Because now they’re singing all day long, you can’t shut them up. Now they have their own church services. They mentor and counsel each other. And [Ramiro] was a big part of that.
There are guys who still struggle with life and death, especially being on death row. They want to know . . . what Christianity says about life after death. They want to know if God is real, I think I think the greatest part is being able to speak into their lives and minister to the point where they know who they are so that they can actually rise up. Discover the potential, the purpose, the meaning for their lives.
Ramiro has also done quite a bit to support people who aren’t inmates. Sully says Ramiro comforted him when the emotional impact of his ministry became overwhelming:
I walked through 16 executions, and I was with the men all the way up until they took them out for their last visit. And that was difficult, you know, and it affects you . . . I really didn’t have anybody to talk to about because nobody could understand I would go and talk to RG, and he would be able to just comfort me . . . And that’s what I needed in my life.
A female prison guard recalled that when her mother died, Ramiro must have found out about it by overhearing conversations between the guards. Ramiro expressed his sorrow and told her that he was praying for her. “[T]hat’s who he is,” she says.
Another of Ramiro’s advocates is Clinton Young, a death row exoneree whose wrongful conviction was overturned in 2021.
Young wasn’t friends with Ramiro when they were both in prison, but he appeared in a video in support of him. Young said:
I’m not gonna drive for five hours to come speak for everybody . . . because I don’t know that everybody’s changed… But I recognize the changes in the man that [Ramiro] became . . . He’s a living example.
Ramiro is now a peer coordinator for the prison ministry. He spends much of his time reading and studying theology. He writes devotionals, religious poetry, and sermons, which he shares with his fellow prisoners.
Ramiro is an artist who makes gifts for people he knows. For example, he drew portraits of his attorney’s dog for him, and painted a picture of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the son of a member of his legal team.
But Ramiro hasn’t forgotten the reason he’s on death row. He remembers his crime every day. He says:
Remorse means taking responsibility, knowing what you did, knowing how it affected everybody around you. And not just everybody, but specifically the family of Bridget Townsend. And even more specific, the mother, and I just want her to know how sorry I really am.
I took everything that was valuable from a mother as just because of my stupidity because of what I did, because my actions, and you can’t give that back . . . Every day, it’s a continual task, to do everything that I can to feel that responsibility for the life that I took.
Some people who consider themselves friends of Ramiro have been trying to get his death sentence changed to life in prison. It’s true that Ramiro’s crimes were heinous. No one, including Ramiro himself, says he should be set free. If he isn’t executed, he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Ironically, many who would have happily volunteered to drive Ramiro’s teenage mother to an abortion facility are now trying to save Ramiro’s life. And many who would have protected Ramiro in the womb are now calling for his execution.
Ramiro is the same person now as he was when he was an innocent preborn baby threatened with abortion. If you would have supported protecting him then, please consider protecting him now.
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For some of our other posts on the death penalty, see:
Open Letter to Governor Stitt: the Pro-life Case against the Death Penalty
Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty
The Death Penalty and Abortion: The Conservative/Liberal Straitjacket
Apocalypse Imagined: The Urgent Message of Nuclear War: A Scenario
by John Whitehead
Among the recent signs of renewed attention in the United States to the threat from nuclear weapons, perhaps the most important is the book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. Published earlier in 2024, the book was a New York Times best-seller for several weeks and the focus of a well-attended webinar organized by the Back from the Brink Campaign and co-sponsored by the Consistent Life Network.
Having read Nuclear War: A Scenario, I would say the book is well worth the attention it has received to date and should receive still more. Jacobsen has written a fascinating, profoundly disturbing book about the potential nuclear catastrophe hanging over humanity. If enough people read the book and take its message to heart, Jacobsen’s work may help to inspire the action necessary to diminish or even end the nuclear threat.
Imagining the End of the World
Jacobsen begins her book with an arresting, detailed description of the effects of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb hitting the Pentagon. She reviews the physical effects—the initial fireball, the blast-wave, the subsequent fallout and firestorms—and what the consequences would be for Washington, DC, and its inhabitants.
When the fireball hits Nationals Park, two-and-a-half miles from ground zero, Jacobsen writes, “The clothes on a majority of the 35,000 people watching the game catch on fire. Those who don’t quickly burn to death suffer intense third-degree burns. Their bodes get stripped of the outer layer of skin, exposing bloody dermis underneath” (p. xix). This would happen within a few seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Amid the later firestorm, Jacobsen describes how, within a seven-and-a-half mile radius around ground zero, “Asphalt streets turn to liquid from the intense heat, trapping survivors as if caught in molten lava or quicksand” (p. xxiii).
After this shocking opening, which made a particular impression on me as I live in the greater DC area, Nuclear War: A Scenario becomes only more disturbing.
The book provides some brief chapters of historical context: the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, the US build-up of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and American planning for nuclear war. In these introductory sections, Jacobsen devotes special attention to a fateful meeting of top US military officials in December 1960.
During the 1960 meeting, the officials received a briefing on US plans for carrying out a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union or China, should the order to do so ever come. This briefing on nuclear war planning was recounted more than 40 years later by John H. Rubel, a defense official who attended the meeting and wrote a memoir shortly before his death.
As Rubel recalled, US plans called for massive nuclear bombing of the adversary nations: the total explosive power used on Moscow would be about 4,000 times that used on Hiroshima, for example. The resulting death toll would be in the hundreds of millions, many in neighboring countries that would not be directly targeted but would be affected by nuclear fallout. Such numbers did not take into account the hundreds of millions of Americans and others killed in the inevitable counter-attack.
Having provided this historical context, Nuclear War: A Scenario proceeds to its main topic, announced by the title: imagining a scenario in which a planetary holocaust like that discussed in 1960 might come to pass.
Jacobsen bases the nuclear war scenario on an impressive amount of research, drawing on government documents, news reports, and interviews with scientists and former government officials. She uses this research to describe, within the limits of what is publicly known, how the military establishments of the United States and other nations would react to a nuclear attack, including how they would carry out their likely counter-attacks. The book gets into the nuts-and-bolts of such matters, describing which kinds of a satellites and early warning systems would receive data on an incoming attack, which civilian and military officials at which locations the warnings would be relayed to, and so on.
The account of a hypothetical nuclear war is written in a quasi-novelistic way that imagines the thought processes and conversations of the various participants, but Jacobsen intersperses the narrative with explanations of the various technical concepts involved and other relevant information.
Nuclear War: A Scenario imagines North Korea launching a limited surprise nuclear attack on the United States, with the American retaliation consequently drawing Russia into a general nuclear war. I don’t know whether this is the most plausible scenario for how nuclear war would break out (and I’m not keen to find out), but the plausibility of the war’s political context isn’t really the point.
The book’s purpose is to describe the practical details of how nuclear war would unfold once initiated and what the consequences would be. Moreover, Jacobsen’s scenario is undoubtedly correct in two crucial respects: once nations use nuclear weapons, the conflict will likely spin out of control; and nuclear war will unfold very quickly—Nuclear War: A Scenario imagines it happening over roughly an hour.
Jacobsen’s account is filled with information that underlines both how easily the nuclear threat could become a reality and what the nightmarish results would be. To pay Jacobsen a dubious but sincere compliment, I can say that after spending 20 years of my life reading, thinking, and worrying about the nuclear threat, her book found new ways of scaring me.
To highlight just a few of the book’s points that will keep me from sleep:
- Both former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists confirm that nuclear missiles fired from the United States at North Korea would have to fly over Russia to reach their targets. Thus, a nuclear exchange between the United States and North Korea (a horrifying enough possibility by itself) could very well accidentally spark a wider nuclear exchange between the nations with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals.
- Although in theory only the president of the United States can order nuclear weapons’ use, a contingency exists for the president to authorize “the universal unlock code.” This code effectively delegates nuclear launch authority to officials further down the chain of command. Intended to preserve the nuclear deterrent in the event the country’s political leadership is killed, this “universal unlock” policy effectively means that in a crisis a military officer outside the civilian leadership may be given the discretion to use nuclear weapons at will.
- A single nuclear weapon, if detonated at a certain altitude and position over the United States, can generate an electromagnetic pulse that effectively destroys the entire American electric grid. The resulting collapse of the country’s electricity-dependent infrastructure means, as Jacobsen writes, “No more fresh water…No sanitation. No streetlights, no tunnel lights, no lights at all…No gas pumps, no fuel…No hospital equipment that works” (p. 267). Even absent any other nuclear detonations, a single weapon can destroy an entire nation.
This information and innumerable other facts provided by Jacobsen drive home the central reality that “human beings [who] developed slow and steady over hundreds of thousands of years, culminating in the creation of vast and complex civilizations, [can] get zeroed out in a war that takes less than a few hours from beginning to end” (p. 267).
Coming Back from the Brink
Nuclear War: A Scenario makes indelibly clear the catastrophic threat we are all living under. The book makes equally clear the catastrophic moral reality we are living in today: the world is currently governed by people willing and able to unleash global mass murder at a moment’s notice.
In his account of the 1960 nuclear war planning briefing, Rubel drew a parallel between the US officials’ meeting and the 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which high-level officials in Nazi Germany planned the Holocaust. A crucial difference, as Jacobsen points out, is that officials in the United States, and presumably their counterparts in Russia, China, and elsewhere, are planning the deaths of far more human beings. Another crucial difference is that, unlike the Nazis, contemporary officials have not carried out their plans—yet.
This situation cannot be allowed to continue. Humans need to step back from the nuclear precipice, and the Back from the Brink campaign has identified some important practical steps to take.
As the panelists in the webinar with Jacobsen observed, the time is now ripe for a revived mass movement against nuclear weapons. Nuclear War: A Scenario can play an important role in reviving such a movement. Everyone who can read it should.
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For some of our posts on nuclear weapons, see:
Are We Finally Waking Up? Signs of New Awareness of the Nuclear Threat
Sleepwalking toward Nuclear War: The Lessons of the Able Archer Scare
The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons / John Whitehead
Catastrophe by Mistake: The Button and the Danger of Accidental Nuclear War / John Whitehead
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
The Effects of Climate Change on Marginalized Communities Near and Far
This is the third of three posts by this author on the environment; see Part 1 and Part 2.
by Christina Yao Pelliccioni
By now, you probably have gotten the idea that climate change produces real and tangible threats to human life and wellbeing. But where are these most being felt? According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, carbon-fueled climate change has been causing people to leave their homes for years now. This comes from both climate-fueled catastrophes and slower-moving disasters, such as rising sea levels, lower crop yields due to changes in temperature, or changes in rainfall.
In Alaska, the villages of indigenous people are washing away as permafrost melts. In Bangladesh, frequent flooding and the loss of farmland are pushing more people to the cities. In Pacific Island countries, people are watching their homes disappear to rising sea levels. Most shockingly, in Louisiana, tribal residents lose a football field of land to the rising sea level of the Gulf Coast every 90 seconds!
The recognition of climate migration is relatively new. In 2016, President Barack Obama formally observed the relationship between migration and climate change in his memorandum “Climate Change and National Security.” World leaders have also recognized that something needs to be done. In 2015, a Task Force on Displacement was created at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21). This paved the way for the creation of the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration and Global Compact on Refugees in 2018.
In 2018, the World Bank estimated climate change would displace more than 140 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin American by 2050. A report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies stated that in 2020 98% of disasters were related to “weather and climate” and 30.7 million people were displaced. The climate crisis disproportionately affects Black, Indigenous, and people of color, especially women. Women are more likely to be caretakers of those not easily moved, more likely to be living in poverty, and more likely to be at risk of gender-based violence.
Keeping all this in mind, it is not surprising that the poorer countries that are living with the results of climate change are not the main countries that are causing the climate crisis. The statistics, however, are jarring. Between 1990-2015, the 63 million people living with the 1% of highest incomes globally emitted twice the amount of carbon as the 3.1 billion people living in the bottom 50% of global incomes.All these statistics are shocking, but it makes the climate crisis seem a bit far away and unapproachable. Doing further research, I found a large source of local pollution is something I have passed by a million times without even realizing what it was: the BRESCO trash incinerator.
Every time I drive into Baltimore City from my home further to the south in the DC suburbs, I see a big smokestack that has the city’s name boldly painted on it. It always makes me strangely happy, like it is welcoming me, an unfortunate suburbanite, into the city. But that was before I knew it was Baltimore City’s biggest source of pollution, putting 653,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year! This is especially jarring when one considers the fact that 150,000 people live within four miles of the incinerator. The incinerator was originally known as Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems, Co., and now just known as BRESCO. Many people in Baltimore have been protesting this incinerator, but even if the city stopped sending BRESCO its trash, three neighboring counties and private enterprises would still be able to send trash to the incinerator. There is a limited amount of pollution-controlling equipment that can be added to the incinerator, due to its age(it was built in 1985) and its physical structure. The incinerator released up to 4x more greenhouse gasses than coal-fired power plants. It realizes nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxides, lead, mercury, and other pollutants that cause health problems such as asthma.
It might seem daunting to do something to address the climate crisis after reading all these statistics. But hopefully if we do our part to keep the planet healthy for everyone, as well as advocate for the poorest and most marginalized among us, we can all make a difference.
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For more of our posts on the environment, see:
How Caring for the Earth Fits into the Consistent Life Ethic
The Dangers of Climate Change for the Pregnant and Pre-born
Stewardship and the Consistent Life Ethic
Climate Change and the Consistent Life Ethic: An Opportunity to Connect Issues