A columnist, Neil Steinberg, for the Chicago Sun-Times today called late term abortion “Murder Lite” and asked what’s the real meaning behind the “anti abortion frenzy?”

Frenzy?

Weird word to use to describe pro-lifers when you think that that the killing of 42 million babies since the legalization of Roe V. Wade would most certainly qualify as a frenzy. Those people praying for it to stop and writing letters would not. It’s really not that difficult a concept. He says of late term abortion:

Abortion isn’t murder — well, not until the last stage of pregnancy, when it is — but rather a sort of murder, murder lite, and I’m glad that I’ve conducted my life in such a way that I’ve never been party to one.

Then, of course, he brings up that pro-lifers are full of rage. But let’s face it, this guy doesn’t know any pro-lifers. If he did he’d have a clue. He’s seen a few Law & Orders and figures that “ripped from the headlines” means it’s an accurate depiction of reality.

And then I love this part which proves how little he knows about the pro-life movement.

If being pro-life meant an across-the-board reverence for life — if pro-life activists were also Human Rights Watch members, also fierce opponents to capital punishment and vigorous battlers of AIDS in Africa, and of course anti-handgun and anti-war — then I could almost understand the compressed rage that pro-lifers often exhibit.

Hmmm. I’m trying to think of an organization that champions human rights, opposes the death penalty, is against unjust war, and leads the battle against AIDS in Africa. Oh yeah, I remember it’s called THE CATHOLIC CHURCH! The pro-life Catholic Church which does more charity work than any organization in the world.

And you think Mr. Steinberg can get any more off base but he’s hardly gotten started.

There is an intensity — at times a frenzy — behind the abortion debate, which hints that something else is going on, that religion is attacking modern sexually open society at its weakest point, taking a stand that requires them to not only see abortion as a morally significant act, which it is, but to insist that morality cannot shift under any circumstance, and that having an abortion is the same if you’re 14, or 24, or 64.

A shifting morality isn’t a morality at all, Mr. Steinberg. It’s an excuse to do whatever one feels like and feel good about it.

He continues:

The “abortion is murder” line is just that — a slogan. The people saying it obviously don’t really believe that, in their hearts, because otherwise they’d be even more extreme than they already are. If it’s murder, then why aren’t they talking about, not only banning abortion, but also conducting enormous public trials to prosecute the millions of women who have had one? That doesn’t seem to be on the table.

This is one of the favorite last resorts of pro-aborts. They say unless you want to prosecute woman who’ve had abortions and put them all behind bars then you obviously don’t believe it’s murder. Clever, eh? But what he doesn’t understand is that the angry frenzied pro-lifers are the only ones caring for women who suffered through abortions.

The pro-aborts don’t put money or effort into helping these women because to do so would highlight the fact that these same women are victims of the abortion culture as well. So they ignore them. If you will, they’re in a frenzy to get away from them and pretend they don’t exist.

We pray for those women. We counsel those women. We run homes for mothers who choose life. We’re left picking up the pieces left by the shifting morality folks. But that’s ok because we’ve been picking up the broken pieces of a broken world for 2,000 years now. We’d just rather you just didn’t call us names while we did it.

And look, every crime is not persecuted the same way. Not to draw a close comparison but the state doesn’t prosecute people who attempt suicide though surely they attempted to take a life. Society seeks to help those people who were driven to do such a horrible thing. However, many states still do prosecute doctors like Dr. Kevorkian who seem to be in a “frenzy” to take part in “suicides.”

But then the columnist continues and guess whose name he’s dropping to bolster his argument. Yup. The great racist eugenecist Margaret Sanger. And he sees her like a Nelson Mandela type:

I called this issue the “Hundred Years War” above, after checking to see what year Margaret Sanger went to prison for running a birth control clinic — 1917. Not quite a century, but I’m confident that whatever Barack Obama says Sunday, we’ll still be arguing this at the end of his second term.

It helps to connect the abortion debate to the contraception debate because it is a continuum, the way World War II was really the second act of World War I. If you believe that sex is for procreation and nothing else, then a pro-life stance flows naturally. If you believe it’s for procreation, at certain times, but also for fun, then you’re pro-choice. Don’t hate me for bringing the news, but the for-fun element seems to be winning, no matter what last week’s poll numbers say

Hey, we agree on something. We agree that abortion is an outgrowth of the contraceptive culture.

But I should thank him for drawing the timeline from Margaret Sanger right to Obama because it’s a direct extension. And not one anyone should be proud of. We do see birth control and eugenics on the same timeline as did Sanger, who said these little comments:

“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.”
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

And just so Steinberg knows, his sainted martyred Sanger herself wouldn’t be too pleased with Obama as she once said:

“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

But we’re the angry, hypocritical, frenzied nutjobs?

Now the columnist wants to leave ’em with a big finish but he obviously can’t think of anything so he steals a joke from Sarah Silverman and he writes:

Today’s chuckle . . .
Abortion almost defies joking, but Sarah Silverman rose to the task: I want to get an abortion. But my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving.

This column would be monstrous if there was any logic to it but the thinking in it so shallow it’s likely harmless on its own.

But next time, anyone asks why newspapers are going out of business, remember this guy’s name: Neil Steinberg.