Red Parts of Blue States Looking to Split

The two teens stood across from me at the March for Life Expo in January. They weren’t yet old enough to vote. But perhaps when they are, they’ll cast their ballots to excise their part of Virginia to make it part of West Virginia–a harkening back to our Civil War. (Or our first Civil War?)

They are frustrated by legislators from the northern part of the state threatening to limit gun ownership and having voted to expand “abortion rights” more broadly than all but a few places around the world.

They are not alone in that way of thinking. Those hoping for Southern Virginia’s secession to West Virginia have company in Oregon, some of whose voters want to become part of Idaho. California also has its own initiative brewing. But that effort isn’t pushing to become part of an existing state. The plan calls for the establishment of the 51st state–New California.

Imagine what these efforts–if successful–might lead to.

Political pundits speak of the conservative part of my own Pennsylvania in terms of the T across the north and through the center with Philadelphia in the east and Pittsburgh in the west–although Pittsburgh sometimes joins the T.

The T carried our Keystone State for Trump in 2016–even the heavily Democratic Cambria County–coal country.

If voters in the T decided to follow suit with southern Virginia voters, the bulk of Pennsylvania might also join West Virginia–or ally with rural voters in New York to form a 52nd state.

Even the bluing state of Texas could end up splitting over voter ideology.

It sounds far-fetched. But perhaps we are closer to making such dividing lines than we realize.

Rural voters want to keep their guns. On farms or in nearby forests, guns have practical purposes completely unrelated to crime and unfathomable to many city-dwellers.

Conservative and liberal voters can only remain at an impasse over abortion. Room for compromise on this issue is scant because the unborn one either lives or dies. There is no state of in-between.

While these proposals for state-splitting are still in their infancy–or perhaps in their early childhood–it seems a good time to consider some of the ramifications.

For example, would Philadelphia decide to become part of New Jersey? Could Jersey support the costs of the City of Brotherly Love that rural PA taxpayers have helped to bear for decades?

What if the rural/conservative voters of every state thought it best to cut themselves free from every city that wanted to limit guns and fund abortions at any time during gestation?

Would cities’ leaders moderate some of their views to stem the traffic moving to a new place? Would rural folks bend? Can both sides occupy a middle ground for long?

Beyond the disputes over abortion, gun control, and other divisive pursuits, both city and countryside struggle with opioid addiction, isolation, loss of purpose.

The answer is the same whether in unity or division. Shining light into the darkness. The darker the night, the easier it is to perceive the light.

Shine your light while you can. Where you can. All you can.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Dehumanizing of America

In Ohio this week, a jury refused to convict a teen accused of killing her newborn to keep her secret that she had been pregnant.

In Ohio vs. Richardson, the defense argued that the baby was stillborn.

The prosecution argued that Ms. Richardson had searched Google for “how to get rid of a baby” before giving birth.

In her own back yard, Richardson buried the newborn girl, whom officials didn’t find for two months, ensuring that evidence of any violence against the child would be beyond reach.

A doctor, whom Richardson saw only once, testified that at her only prenatal appointment–when the doctor confirmed the pregnancy and determined she was in the eighth month–Richardson made it clear that she didn’t want a baby. The doctor urged her to tell her mother–to tell someone.

But she didn’t–not even while she was in labor.

Not even as she was delivering the little girl on the floor of her bathroom in the middle of the night.

Not even, supposedly, when the child was born not breathing.

And not even after she dug a hole in the yard and covered the baby in two inches of dirt.

Ultimately, the jury found her guilty of abuse of a corpse. She will serve no jail time.

As I watched part of the proceedings against Richardson on Courttv last week, I couldn’t help but wonder how much our liberal abortion laws have affected such cases. Did it go through the minds of jurors that, but for a few days, the child could have been disposed of without dragging a teen through a trial?

In many places in this nation, it would have been legal for Richardson to abort her daughter–even when she found out she was pregnant at eight months–even right before birth. And she would never have to tell her mother.

A.E. Samaan: “Humanity has overcome the food chain, and having surpassed all other predators, has now turned to a strange form of cannibalism: humanity preys upon itself. We cull our own herd. We murder our own children. This is what we call ‘progress’.”

In Ohio, a young woman thinks she has her life back. She won’t be going to jail for murder.

She is free.

Or is she?

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

What It Means to Know the Truth

Does the one who shaped the ear not hear?
    The one who formed the eye not see?
Does the one who guides nations not rebuke?
    The one who teaches
man not have knowledge? Psalm 94: 9-10~

If they lose, it will cost them 10 more years. It’s already consumed much of their past three years.

David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt are enduring a preliminary hearing to precede their trial on 15 counts of illegally recording individuals who worked for or with Planned Parenthood (and perhaps still do).

Daleiden and Merritt, you may recall, went undercover, assumed false identities, and recorded conversations with people in the abortion industry.

Several people referred to as numbered “Doe”s (the court requires the concealment of their names) admitted to Daleiden that they were harvesting organs and manipulating the abortion process to preserve desired organs–including intact brains and hearts.

That means they were adjusting the process for their own gain rather than for the mothers’ safety. It also means that some of those abortions were illegal partial-birth abortions.

One person even admitted to Daleiden that, for their work, hearts couldn’t come from babies who died during the abortion process.

They had to come from living children.

“[A]biotech company CEO who worked with Planned Parenthood could not deny that they harvested aborted babies’ hearts while they were still beating

Liberty Counsel reports other atrocious acts–and that the US Department of Justice is investigating those involved with such abortions and body parts trafficking.

Of course, much money is at stake: the price for each abortion and the money paid for the harvested body parts.

But Daleiden and Merritt face jail time for violating a law that doesn’t apply to other journalists in California.

When the issue was just unfolding three years ago, the liberal Los Angeles Times said charges against the two were “disturbing”.

It’s disturbingly aggressive for [California Attorney General] Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy.” (Emphasis the Times)

And the Times makes an astonishing parallel.

“In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy.”

How can two people go on trial for “behavior” that is not yet “criminalize[d]”?

And while the Times didn’t agree with Daleiden and Merritt–and while they refuse to recognize the obvious wrongdoing of Planned Parenthood–the Times recognizes that seeking out wrongdoing and pursuing the change of public policy is part of what makes us and keeps us free.

Further, in this early op-ed, the Times referred to Daleiden’s videos as “edited”–Planned Parenthood’s assertion from the beginning.

Yet one Planned Parenthood “Doe”, while at first claiming that the videos had been altered “to make her say things she didn’t say,” last week in the preliminary hearing, admitted the videos had not been edited. (The Fifth Circuit Court had ruled earlier that the tapes were unaltered.)

So now we know that it’s all really as horrible as the videos show it to be.

Daleiden and Merritt are doing our nation a great service. They have put their lives on the line to reveal the truth.

It’s sad though that the Times can’t recognize the parallel between “horrific and illegal abuses of animals” and the same kind of abuse happening to the weakest and most innocent of human beings.

It’s sad that most of the mainstream media keep the volume turned way down on this story.

It’s sad that so many Americans just don’t know what goes on behind the closed doors of Planned Parenthood.

America needs to put a stop to this abuse of the unborn.

The One who formed the ears and eyes of these innocents will hear and see. The One who teaches us knows.

And now we know the truth. That makes us responsible to protect the innocents. That means we need to stop the horror.

Now.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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