The Reformed Pastor

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. They’re the folks who have done an amazing job getting various organizations, institutions, and businesses, not to mention churches, to sign on to their “race for the cure” for breast cancer. It’s one of those feel good things that people support without thinking twice. Well, maybe you should, according to LifeNews:

New figures directly from the Komen for the Cure foundation show 18 affiliates of the breast cancer charity gave a total of more than $569,000 to the Planned Parenthood abortion business in 2010.

The donations will certainly prompt the continued boycott of the Komen breast cancer group by millions of pro-life Americans who find it disingenuous that the women’s organization would partner with an abortion business when abortions are linked to an increase in breast cancer and when Planned Parenthood has been proven to mislead the public by falsely claiming it performs mammograms.

The new figures come from an American Life League study of Susan G. Komen affiliates’ federal forms 990 and they show 18 Komen affiliates gave $569,159 to Planned Parenthood in 2010, the latest year for which figures are available. That’s down from the $731,303 Komen officials publicly confirmed in October 2010, when they acknowledged that 20 of the 122 Komen affiliates gave to Planned Parenthood during the 2009 fiscal year.

Komen affiliates in Austin, Texas; Central New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Greater Amarillo, Texas; Los Angeles County, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Salt Lake City, Utah stopped giving to the abortion business while affiliates in Dallas County, Texas; Denver, Colorado; North Carolina Triad; North Carolina Triangle; and Puget Sound, Washington all began new relationships with Planned Parenthood.

What possible justification could there be for a foundation that raises money for breast cancer research to give some of it to Planned Parenthood, which doesn’t do such research and whose business is built on a procedure that has known links to breast cancer?  Rita Diller of the American Life League explains the problem:

“In the first place, Planned Parenthood is not licensed to do anything beyond Level 1 breast examinations – the same exam that can be done by a woman in her shower, or in any clinic or physician’s office.  They do not perform mammograms,” Diller explained. “Add to that the fact that Planned Parenthood’s two big money-makers, abortion and contraceptives, are directly linked to breast cancer by numerous studies conducted from the 1960′s through the present.”

“It makes no sense whatsoever for Komen to give money to Planned Parenthood,” Diller said.  “Komen’s claim that women in some areas would not be able to receive breast cancer care without giving grants to Planned Parenthood is horribly misleading, at best, since Planned Parenthood does not provide breast cancer care – only manual exams and referrals. ”

Diller said she is also disappointed that the list of Komen affiliates giving money to Planned Parenthood includes several highly-populated urban areas where numerous alternatives to Planned Parenthood are readily available.

“To say that there is no other alternative in such areas for women to receive breast cancer screening and care is preposterous,” she said.

Evidently this has been going on for several years now, but I’d never heard it before. Needless to say, the Komen Foundation will get no more support from me until they sever their ties to one of the most anti-women organizations on the planet.

For decades, abortion proponents have argued that the procedure is one without psychological side effects. There’s no doubt that some women have abortions and come through it without problems–some seem almost cheerful about it. What I’ve noticed, however, is that those who have come through unscathed tend to assume that only those who were already mental cases are likely to be harmed by the experience. Not so, says an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Mary Davenport reports on it for the American Thinker:

An important meta-analysis published today in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry demonstrates that nearly 10% of mental health problems in women are directly attributable to abortion.  ”Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995-2009,” by Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green University, shows that women with an abortion history have an 81% increased risk of mental health problems and 155% increased risk of suicide.  This meta-analysis combines 22 studies of 877,181 women, 163, 831 of whom have had abortions.  A meta-analysis is an especially powerful type of study because it includes a large number of subjects, and by combining studies is much more reliable than a single study.

This review, which is larger than any study to date, contradicts the recent and biased and less systematic review by the American Psychological Association, which fails to find a relationship between mental health problems and abortion.  The new meta-analysis also contradicts the stance of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which has been silent on the mental health impact of abortion in its official publications despite overwhelming evidence over the last two decades of abortion’s adverse effects.

This new review in a prestigious psychiatry journal sheds important light on the mental health of women. For example, South Korea not only has had a major increase in suicide but also holds the world record for the highest rate of female suicide.  This country is also called “the abortion paradise” because at least 43.7% of pregnancies end in abortion.   Suicide of young women is also a significant public health problem in China, which compounds the harmful psychological impact of abortion by governmental policy of forced abortion.  The most sobering finding in the Coleman review is found in the section on “Population Attributable Risk,” (PAR), in which the PAR for suicide was found to be 34.9%. PAR estimates the proportion of deaths in an entire population that could be prevented if the cause of death is eliminated (in this case abortion as the cause of suicide in women). By so powerfully linking abortion to mental health problems, the Coleman study helps us comprehend the magnitude of the damage done to entire nations by reckless, permissive abortion policies.

At least a couple of things jump out at me. One is this pair of numbers: “81% increased risk of mental health problems and 155% increased risk of suicide” in women who have abortions. I think  it’s safe to say that if a drug was found to have those kinds of side effects, it would be pulled from the market in short order, with feminist organizations leading the charge. You don’t have to argue for a total ban on abortion to see in these numbers a public health problem of large enough proportions that it should result in it being significantly curtailed. Not that it will, but it should.

The other is Dr. Davenport’s reference to the ACOG and APA. At this point in history, I think one could make the argument that most if not all professional medical associations in the United States are so politicized on the issue of abortion that their judgments are no longer to be trusted. Certainly there are plenty of professionals within those organizations who still look at the facts and render judgment on the basis of them (Dr. Davenport is obviously one of those), but the leadership is another story. Just remember that the next time the American Medical Association, for example, makes a pronouncement on abortion, or for that matter any other cultural hot button issue within their purview.

(Via Stand Firm.)

You can’t read the Bible the same way you always have. The Bible only says what we say it says. We have to know who we are.

–Rev. Althea Spencer-Miller, a “gay Jamaican pastor” and assistant professor of New Testament at Drew Theological School, at the liberal “Sing a New Song” conference for United Methodists

So I’ve been trying to come up with appropriate music to accompany the Great Dominionist Hunt (“be vewy, vewy quiet–I’m hunting weconstwuctionists!”). And I just can’t decide between two of my favorites from the 1980s. So you tell me: what’s the best music for ferreting out theocrats, while at the same time expressing the mindset of the ferrets? The first seems to capture the mood of the stalker who desperately needs the stalked, in this case to validate their paranoia about their political opponents:

The second, on the other hand, captures the paranoia itself marvelously, given that the hunters are convinced that if their prey gets aways from them it’s adios muchachos to everything they hold dear:

So what do you think? Ryan? Fred? Michelle? PAW? T2A? Sarah? Rachel? Bueller?

I don’t normally respond to other bloggers, but this one appeared at the religion site Patheos, so it’s more than just your run-of-the-mill blog. Seems Fred Clark, who writes at Slacktivist, thinks evangelicals should stop whining and admit that Michelle Bachmann is a “Dominionist” (or employs “Dominionists,” or know some, or perhaps has taken donations from them, whatever):

Douglas Groothius clutches his pearls, flutters his handkerchief and collapses on his fainting couch over Ryan Lizza’s scandalous suggestion in The New Yorker that Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., has ties to advocates of “dominionist” theology.

That fainting couch is quite crowded with evangelical critics of Lizza’s piece, all adamantly insisting that Bachmann is far, far removed from anything at all that has anything to do with dominionism. Groothuis provides a fine example of their exuberant protestations, usually mingled with accusations that Lizza is ignorant or confused or deliberately lying, or perhaps all three:

I won’t give the Groothius quote here–you can read it at the link Clark provides–but the fact is that in just a short article Groothius makes Lizza look inept at the very least. Lizza gets wrong all kinds of things that undermine his case that Bachmann is some kind of incipient tyrant, from the influences on her thinking (primarily Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey) to the beliefs of those influences (he claims Schaeffer advocated a theocracy for America, wanted to impose Old Testament law, and called for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe v.Wade was not overturned, none of which is even remotely true). Clark thinks that’s no big deal. I guess he considers those claims fake but accurate.

Anyway, he goes on to offer his own version of “proof” that Bachmann is a closet theocrat:

Warren Throckmorton notes that Bachmann aide Peter Waldron, “was key to Michele Bachmann’s straw poll win in Iowa on Aug. 13 and is now in South Carolina attempting to line up evangelicals for Bachmann.”

In 1987, Waldron co-authored a book titled, Rebuilding the Walls: A Biblical Strategy for Restoring America’s Greatness. A whiff of dominionist “reconstructionism,” perhaps, in that title. But much more than a whiff in the other book Waldron’s co-author, George Grant, published that same year.

That book, Changing the Guard, Throckmorton notices, was published by Dominion Press — the reconstructionist/dominionist publisher of books by Gary North, Gary DeMar and David Chilton, which is to say many of the leading voices in dominionism.

Throckmorton is a psychology professor at Grove City College, an evangelical and a man whose thinking I respect, but this “connection” to Bachmann is ridiculous, as is Clark’s use of it:

The author of that book simultaneously co-authored a book on “a biblical strategy for restoring America’s greatness” with the man who is, at the moment, on Michelle Bachmann’s payroll and coordinating the religious outreach for her campaign in South Carolina.

It is not “paranoia” to suggest that Bachmann is closely tied to dominionism. It is not “confusion, conflation, and obfuscation” to point out that, in fact, Michelle Bachmann is hiring people who are closely tied to dominionism.

So let me get this straight. Michelle Bachmann employs a political aide who wrote a book 24 years ago. Neither Throckmorton nor Clark have read that book–the latter hilariously says that the title has a “whiff” of “dominionist ‘reconstructionism’”, whatever that means. He co-authored it with another guy who neither indicates has any connection to Bachmann. That guy is a “dominionist” who wrote a book 24 years ago. Ergo, Bachmann employs “dominionists.”

After reading this, the only “whiff” I smell if the whiff of desperation on the part of the left to make a ludicrous charge stick.

By this standard, we can see that Barack Obama is “closely tied” to Communism, because he hired Van Jones. He is “closely tied” to terrorism because he served with Weather Underground Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge educational foundation. He is “closely tied” to black racism and anti-Semitism because he spent twenty years in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, himself a good buddy of Louis Farrakhan. See how easy that is?

When people like Ryan Lizza write the kind of tripe they write, they are only doing what the left-wing media does. When Fred Clark and other religious leftists echo the Lizzas, they’re rolling around in the mud with pigs. They’re starting to smell like them.