By Scott Tibbs, February 19, 2013
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. -- John 3:19-20
On February 17, I said in the comments section for a letter to the editor on HeraldTimesOnline.com that "abortion always kills an innocent human being" and "abortion ends a human life." One of the responses to my comment was very interesting, and very telling about the commenter's personality:
I have decided to start reporting his abuse using the HTO red flag. Perhaps if others do the same, we can get some results.
In the abuse report, I wrote "How much longer are you going to allow this speech which greatly harms women who have had abortions? He is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts. No "innocent human beings" have been killed. A human being is defined as "an individual of the genus Homo." For example, a zygot is not individualized and is not an individual and is not a human being. These hateful, hurtful lies should be taken down." |
After some shrill whining by Leftists a couple years ago, the Herald-Times invented a new rule that disallowed the use of the word murder to describe abortion in HTO comments, though the editor specifically allowed the use of the word killing. (Application of that policy has been wildly inconsistent.)
But banning the legal term murder is not enough for pro-abortion HTO posters, who are now openly pressuring the HTO moderators to ban the word killing as well, spamming the "red flag" button to silence my opposition to the killing of unborn babies in our city and elsewhere. I am sure the HTO moderators have nothing better to do than read through dozens of spam reports from Leftists who are trying to silence any and all dissenting views on abortion. I am sure that some of the reports will be acted upon and posts will be deleted in violation of explicitly stated HTO policy.
What this hysterical attempt at censorship does is demonstrate once again the Left's intolerance for free speech. Only approved speech should be allowed, while speech that falls outside the very limited confines of Political Correctness must be silenced or punished. We see this in the absurd "speech codes" in higher education as well as efforts to criminalize so-called "hate speech" - something that has already happened in Canada and much of Western Europe. Often the Left tries to justify prohibiting dissent by classifying it as harassment, inciting violence or libelous, but that is just a smokescreen. The purpose is to eliminate dissent.
Yes, abortion does kill a human being, and we have the photographic evidence to prove it. The unborn baby is not a part of the woman's body - he or she resides inside the mother's body as a result of a choice she freely made. (Rape and incest "hard cases" account for less than five percent of all abortions in the United States.) That baby has a completely unique DNA code from the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg and is simply in the process of growing and developing through the early stages of life.
Making it against HTO policy to use the word killing to describe abortion would effectively ban anti-abortion arguments from HTO. The entire point of the anti-abortion movement is that abortion is the willful and intentional termination of an innocent human life. Banning the word killing as they banned murder would rip the foundation out of the anti-abortion argument and give the pro-abortion commenters unhindered ability to express their point of view with no opposition permitted. Of course, this is exactly what my critic wants to see happen.
Supporters of legal abortion want to silence anti-abortion arguments (as shown by the wining about the use of the stronger term murder two years ago) because they do not want to be confronted with the reality of what they support. They have blood on their hands, either by indirectly supporting the slaughter of the unborn and sometimes by directly engaging in abortion. It is understandable - those who do evil hate the light.
Of course, the Herald-Times can implement whatever policy they want for their comments section, and no one's civil rights have been violated. HTO is their property and they can run it however they choose. But if the Herald-Times is truly interested in having sensible debate in the comments, they should reject the hysterical demands of a few crybabies to censor arguments those crybabies find uncomfortable.
