Deceitful Lawmakers Seek to Silence Pro-Life Opposition

Deceitful Lawmakers Seek to Silence Pro-Life Opposition

Written by Laurie Higgins

The stench from the swamp-dredged resolution sponsored by our Big Brothers and Sisters in Springfield and titled “Illinois Family Action-Hate Speech,” hangs over the General Assembly stinkin’ up the joint. For those unaware, this is the pernicious resolution riddled with bigoted language, non sequiturs, red herrings, and outright lies and intended to diminish the rights of IFI and IFA and other social conservatives to speak freely, assemble, and petition our government for the redress of grievances.

The resolution arose after IFI contributor Teri Paulson wrote an article in which she suggested that there is little moral difference between the macabre anti-life views of “progressives” and the macabre anti-life views of the Third Reich, and it appeared just days after a remarkable pro-life lobbying day on which 4,500 pro-life Illinoisans showed up in Springfield to oppose the macabre human slaughter bills (HB 2495 and HB 2467) sponsored by the very same Big Brothers and Sisters and their ideological allies.

Accompanying Paulson’s article was a provocative meme plucked from the Internet that compared views of Democrats on particular issues to views held by the Nazi Party on those same issues. Of course, the meme was not an argument with contentions and evidence. It was a meme. In that way—the way of provocative suggestions with no evidence—it was remarkably similar to the resolution and the way “progressives” in Swampland go about their daily business.

Liberal Lawmakers don’t really care about a provocative meme. What they really care about is exploiting a provocative meme by using it is a smelly red herring, dangling it madly in front of pro-life colleagues and constituents, saying “Don’t look at my genocidal views of the unborn. Looky here, looky here at this really, really icky meme!”

And pro-lifers fall for the cunning deception every time.

Well, maybe not every time. This time some have decided they’ve had enough of being called haters for stating the obvious, which is that the left’s view that humans outside the womb may kill humans in the womb for any and no reason and at any age is at least as bereft of moral justification (and compassion) as the view of the Nazi Party that one group of humans—the politically powerful—is entitled to kill other groups based on traits deemed “undesirable” by the powerful group.

This analogy is neither hateful nor uncommon. Daily Signal commentary editor and podcast co-host Daniel Davis wrote this in his piece just last week on the pro-life movie Unplanned:

[Abortion is] like slavery because it turns certain human beings into the property of others. It’s like the Holocaust because it writes off a whole segment of the population as being “life unworthy of life,” and so sends those human beings to their deaths.

The resolution co-sponsors (who bear a troubling resemblance to the unethical Southern Poverty Law Center) are going to have a whole lot of work to do what with investigating countless organizations and people for distributing allegedly “anti-Semitic, threatening, and hateful” posts.

While busy trying to wash the slime from their hands from all the herring-handling, the resolution’s sponsors apparently haven’t found time to respond to these foundational questions:

Do you believe the product of conception between two humans is a human, created in the image and likeness of God with intrinsic worth and dignity and endowed by God with an unalienable right not to be exterminated by the more powerful?
What is the moral distinction between the “progressive” view that physically superior humans have a right to exterminate “defective” humans (e.g., those with Down Syndrome) and the Nazi principle of “life unworthy of life”?

Early on in the brouhaha, IFI/IFA’s part-time lobbyists resigned, claiming that the article or meme or my follow-up article created a “caustic” environment in Springfield in which they could not work. Translated, they meant Leftists in Springfield became enraged. No siree, whatever else you do, Conservatives, do NOT poke the “progressive” bears in Springfield.

Leftists throw a huge tantrum, stamp their feet, hurl epithets and lies, claim to be “hurt,” and conservatives whimper, “Oh my gosh, look what we have caused.” Those conservatives command other conservatives not to rock the boat that “progressives” are sinking and drowning everyone aboard.

This reminds me of the California school that recently prohibited students from wearing MAGA hats, saying that the hats would create a disruption. It’s not the hats or a meme that create a disruption. It’s “progressives” who can’t stand the truth or anyone standing up defiantly against their bullying tactics, central to which is calling those who dare to dissent “haters.”

We haven’t spoken about these resignations publicly because doing so would necessitate criticizing the views of our former part-time lobbyists, Ralph Rivera and Frank Bass. We avoided talking about their resignations because we don’t want to undermine whatever good work they may be able to accomplish in the increasingly polluted, morally vacuous General Assembly and because we genuinely care about these two men with whom we’ve worked for years.

But their decision to quit in the face of hostility, and the exploitation of their resignations by Leftists like freshman lawmaker and resolution co-sponsor State Representative Jonathan Carroll (D-Buffalo Grove) have made it impossible for us to remain silent. So, here’s the story Leftists aren’t sharing because they assume rather than inquire.

We view the decisions of our former lobbyists to quit as more evidence of the undeserved and counterproductive deference Christians proffer to “progressives” when faced with the persecution and hatred God has promised those who follow Christ.

Mr. Bass and Mr. Rivera evidently believe it is more important to pacify “progressives” who seek to make it easier to exterminate babies than it is to call them out boldly and unequivocally on their murderous policies. Mr. Bass’ and Mr. Rivera’s philosophical and strategic views on how to contend against the rank evil that pervades the Democratic Party no longer aligns with ours and hasn’t for some time. We view our separation, though personally painful, as a good thing.

Being “nice” to “progressives” in Springfield will achieve no good. Groveling before a party with increasingly evil and oppressive desires in the desperate hope of having a legislative crumb tossed our way does not justify rhetorical appeasement. Perhaps 20, 30, or 40 years ago, when the dreams and desires of “progressives” were not quite as evil, such tactics would have been warranted. Now, they’re foolhardy.

With supermajorities of Democrats in both houses, and a governor who wants to make Illinois a feticidal slaughterhouse nonpareil, Democrats have neither the desire nor need to compromise.

In addition to co-sponsoring the resolution, freshman Carroll has been a dutiful busy beaver of a bully, sending out emails to constituents that say,

“When an organization compares me to a Nazi and has three of its lobbyists quit due to their messaging, I’d suggest they’re not innocent.”

and

“They can spin their actions any way they’d like, but when you create a graphic comparing me to the Nazis you’re calling me a Nazi. [T]he two lobbyists… are very respected members of our Springfield community. I can only suggest they left because of the horrible graphics created by this organization. I appreciate those who are pro-life. I will never criticize someone for his/her beliefs. But I believe this organization hides behind religious values to promote hate. Several of my Republican pro-life colleagues agree.”

Not surprisingly, Rep. Carroll didn’t make clear of what charge we’re guilty, so there’s no way to respond to his charge. Two factual points of clarification: No one called Carroll a Nazi, and we didn’t create any graphics. If Carroll is offended by the comparison of his ugly anti-life views—views that have resulted in the extermination of 60,000,000+ lives—with those of the Third Reich, I would suggest he revisit his views.

It’s rich that Carroll would refer to our position as “spinning.” Leftists in Springfield are spinning our actions and words like mad persons in order to shut us down, and they’re doing so while never addressing the elephant in the rotunda—the horrific and growing pile of slaughtered humans whose corpses rest at the feet of “progressives.”

When Carroll says that some of his pro-life colleagues agree with him, he is employing the argumentum ad populum fallacy, suggesting that because “most or many people in general or of a particular group accept a belief as true” it must be true.” Good thinkers don’t measure whether a proposition, assumption, or claim is true by the numbers of people who agree with it.

Carroll apparently missed the irony in this claim: “I will never criticize someone for his/her beliefs.” Lol. He co-sponsored a resolution and wrote more than one email criticizing us for our beliefs. Just sayin’.

Carroll isn’t alone in his penchant for lying. His colleague, freshman State Representative Terra Costa Howard (D-Lombard), sent email messages to who knows how many constituents, falsely claiming that IFI “spreads hateful speech and lies” and that she was a “victim” of an “attack ad” of ours. Unsurprisingly, she included not one piece of evidence for her scurrilous claims.

The “hateful speech” accusation is just a deceitful tactic by Leftists for recasting moral propositions they hate as “hate speech,” thereby avoiding discussions of their moral propositions they don’t want to have.

Neither IFA nor IFI spread “lies.” If we have, then it should be easy-peasy for Howard to produce them.

Neither IFA nor IFI have funded or created any attack ads against Howard. If we have, then Howard should produce it or them.

Howard should know a bit about lying campaign ads since her campaign was exposed by CBS 2 Chicago for its shocking and despicable ad falsely accusing former State Rep. Peter Breen of standing “with Republican insiders who backed a politician accused of repeatedly preying on young girls.” How this woman got elected is baffling.

In his book Kingdoms in Conflict, Chuck Colson writes about the failure of the church to oppose the extermination of Jews. Immediately following the naming of Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, the persecution of the church began in earnest. In response, a resistance movement sprang up headed by Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Initially, they had the support of the dominant Protestant group, the German Evangelical Church, but as the persecution increased, so did the cowardice and concomitant rationalization of cowardice on the parts of most church leaders. In Germany only a remnant, who came to call themselves the Confessing Church, remained standing courageously in the gap for truth. The German Evangelical Church acted in ways virtually all Christians now view as ignoble, selfish, and cowardly. Some pastors believed that a “‘more reasonable tone would be more honoring to those with different views.’”

Sound familiar?

Anyone who dares to identify the sickening evil of “progressive” views toward the unborn will be smeared by Democrats with nary a backward glance as they goosestep onward toward the “Final Solution of the Unwanted Baby Question” that they call “Health Care.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state senator and representative to ask them to reject this dangerous resolution. Ask them to vote down HJR 55 and the unprecedented and tyrannical action being taken by extreme partisans in the Illinois General Assembly.