Pro-lifer Challenges Obama in Dem. Primary 2012

Randall Terry, the controversial pro-life activist, will challenge pro-abortion President Barack Obama in the Democratic primary with the sole mission of bringing up the issue of abortion.



UPDATE 3/7/12: Randall Terry succeeds with Super Bowl ads, and wins Democrat delegate in primary election against President Obama

-- From "Abortion foe plans Obama challenge" by Dan Hirschhorn, Politico 1/18/11

An outspoken anti-abortion activist says he wants to unseat President Barack Obama next year — and he wants to do it via the nearly impossible path of a Democratic primary challenge.

Randall Terry, who founded the group Operation Rescue and has been arrested numerous times for his aggressive approach to opposing abortion rights, plans to announce a primary challenge against Obama on Thursday outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Besting a sitting Democratic president from far off his right flank is exceedingly unlikely. In an interview with POLITICO, Terry was blunt about being an underdog and said his main goals are to bloody up Obama politically and draw more attention to the abortion fight.

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From "Activist Vows Graphic Anti-Abortion Ads During Super Bowl" by Devin Dwyer, ABC News 1/18/11

Veteran anti-abortion activist Randall Terry says he's mounting a Democratic primary challenge to President Obama in 2012, in part to be able to run graphic TV ads showing aborted fetuses during next year's Super Bowl.

"I want to pummel Obama. I despise this presidency. He is the arch child killer of the Western Hemisphere, so I'm going to go head-to-head with him," Terry said in a phone interview.

"My ultimate goal is to make child killing illegal again. And for child killing to be made illegal, there has to be a crisis of conscience; we have to show the victims like we show the Holocaust victims and say never again."

While TV networks occasionally reject ads based on controversial or graphic content, the Federal Communications Act requires broadcasters to provide legally qualified political candidates fair access to ad time and forbids them from censoring ads "in any way, or for any reason." Terry said he's confident he can raise the $2.5 million for a Super Bowl spot and that CBS would broadcast it.

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From "Pro-Life Activist to Challenge Pro-Abortion Obama in Democratic Primary" by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com 1/18/11

Terry understands he has absolutely no shot of winning the Democratic nomination over the president, but he says his goal is to expose Obama’s pro-abortion record and energizing pro-life voters to oppose him in the general election, where Obama will face one of numerous potential pro-life Republican candidates.

He said the goal of his campaign is to “create a crisis of conscience for Americans regarding” abortion and to “pound on President Obama’s agenda” starting with abortion.

“America has never truly debated child killing, because America has never truly seen child killing. We will use FEC and FCC laws for federal candidates to bring America face to face with this massacre of the innocents,” he said.

But Wesley J. Smith, a respected bioethics attorney, called the move by Terry a [publicity] stunt and said it would ultimately help Obama.

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Swiss Government Considers 'Plant Rights'

Adoption of a "biocentric" moral view means you can be accused of "decapitating wildflowers"

For background, read Swiss Grant Rights to Animals, Considering Same for Plants

-- From "The Silent Scream of the Asparagus" by Wesley J. Smith in the Weekly Standard 5/12/2008, Volume 013, Issue 33

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called "plant rights" is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is enough to short circuit the brain.

A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."

. . . Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

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Academics Now Advocating Suicide for the Mentally Ill

From "Death on Demand" by Wesley J. Smith, posted 7/5/07 at The Weekly Standard

SHOULD LAWS AGAINST assisted suicide be rescinded as "paternalistic?" Should assisted suicide be transformed from what is now a crime (in most places) into a sacred "right to die"? Should assisted suicide be redefined from a form of homicide into a legitimate "medical treatment" readily available to all persistently suffering people, including to the mentally ill?

According to Brown University professor Jacob M. Appel, the answer to all three of these questions is an unequivocal yes. Writing in the May-June 2007 Hastings Center Report ("A Suicide Right for the Mentally Ill?"), Appel argues in that assisted suicide should not only be available to the terminally ill, but also to people with "purely psychological disease" such as victims "of repeated bouts of severe depression," if the suicidal person "rationally might prefer dignified death over future suffering."

Given the emphasis assisted suicide advocates and the media normally give to the role of terminal illness in the assisted suicide debate, it might be tempting to dismiss Appel as a fringe rider. But he most definitely is not. Over the last several years, advocacy for what is sometimes called "rational suicide" has been growing increasingly mainstream, discussed among the bioethical and academic elite in mental health publications, academic symposia, and books. Indeed, it is worth noting that Appel's essay appeared in the world's most prestigious bioethics journal...

You may be tempted to dismiss this but please don't. The philosophies generated in our universities and institutions of 'higher learning' eventually make there way down to our children's and grandchildren's classrooms, shaping the future for generations to come.

Academics ultimately rule the world from the grave...

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