William F. Buckley has died at age 82. A paragon of American conservatism, Buckley died Wednesday morning at his desk.
William F. Buckley, 1925-2008
Of the copious tributes that have been written since his death, I will quote but one from Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher, who at one time worked for Buckley:
The thing that occurs to me at the moment is how civil he was. I’ve mentioned before in this space what a great example he was in that regard. On the occasions I had dinner with National Review editors at the Buckleys’ townhouse in Manhattan, there would always be an Ur-liberal present. Once it was Ira Glasser, the former ACLU head, and the next time it was Mark Green, the NYC politician. It was fascinating to watch Bill—and he insisted that he be called Bill, signaling to me to knock off the Mr. Buckley stuff—interrogate these opponents with intellectual seriousness, but also with unfailing respect and courtesy. He didn’t care for their political opinions, but he liked them as people, even as friends. He was the kind of man who, though absolutely clear in his dismissal of liberal ideas, would not stoop to trashing someone’s character for the sake of political gain.
May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.
Planned Parenthood Takes Money to Kill Black Babies
This week, UCLA pro-life students, led by junior Lila Rose (who made national news last year when she posed as an underage girl and secretly recorded a conversation in which a Planned Parenthood Los Angeles employee recommended that she lie about her age to avoid being reported as a victim of statutory rape, and was then threatened by PPLA with a lawsuit), have just released the latest edition [PDF] of their newspaper, The Advocate.
It’s an eye-opener:
Over the summer, The Advocate… [had] an actor call [Planned Parenthood] clinics across the country and pose as a donor. The actor… communicated… a very racist agenda, the one Margaret Sanger, PP’s founder, envisioned.
He… asked to donate money specifically for the abortions of African-American babies… to “lower the number of blacks in America.” Despite his bigoted requests, no PP employee (or director of development, in one case) declined the tainted money…. In fact, some even went as far as agreeing with the antiblack agenda….
You can see — and hear — for yourself here.
Woman Hangs Herself After Aborting Twins
As if there were any doubt any longer about the profoundly damaging effects of abortion on women, we hear a horrible story out of the United Kingdom about Emma Beck, a 30-year old artist who hanged herself after aborting her twins. She left a note saying:
I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does.
The article also notes:
The inquest at Truro City Hall heard that Miss Beck had split up with her boyfriend, referred to as “Ben” after he “reacted badly” to the pregnancy…. “She was only going ahead with the abortion because her boyfriend did not want the twins…. She was pleased when she became pregnant, but Ben reacted badly to the news.”
As pro-lifers have noted countless times before, it’s shockingly obvious that abortion enables men to shirk their responsibility to be men. Women, in turn, primarily suffer the consequences of men’s dereliction of duty.
As Catholic writer Mark Shea has quite rightly observed, “Abortion corrupts everything it touches.”
