Root of nation's economic crisis is moral crisis
Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist - 2/16/2009 8:00:00 AM
A black pastor awaits sentencing, which could amount to
two years in prison and $4,000 in fines, for standing outside an inner
city abortion clinic holding a sign saying "Jesus Loves You & Your Baby,
Let Us Help You," and offering pro-life literature.
Walter Hoye, founder and chairman of the Issues4Life Foundation, was found
guilty of "unlawful approach" under the "Access to Reproductive Health
Care Facilities Ordinance" enacted in Oakland in 2008.
Under the ordinance, it is prohibited, within 100 feet of the entrance to
a "reproductive health facility," to approach within eight feet of a
client "for the purpose of counseling, harassing, or interfering" with
that person.
"Harassing" means holding up a sign, passing out literature or offering
counseling.
The "reproductive health care facility" in question is Family Planning
Specialists in Oakland. Looking over their Web site, it's clear that there
is only one kind of reproductive health care they provide. Abortions.
According to testimony of the facility's executive director, they perform
about one hundred abortions per week. Assuming an average of $600 per
abortion (from the fee schedule on the website), that's about $3 million a
year in revenue. Not bad for an inner city neighborhood business.
Pastor Hoye's conviction is strange in that no "victim" testified against
him -- there was only testimony from those with an interest in the clinic
-- employees and volunteers, no specific incident was cited, videotape
showed Hoye standing peacefully holding his sign and materials, and the
convicting jury was given no instructions regarding the definition of
"approach."
Nevertheless, Hoye has been convicted and may wind up in jail and liable
for thousands of dollars in fines.
But beyond the troubling details of this trial and conviction,
circumstances surrounding the case convey the realities of our deeply
confused and lost nation.
Abortion clinics such as Family Planning Specialists strategically locate
to optimize their deadly business. This means in poor black neighborhoods.
A search of the 94607 zip code in Oakland where this facility is located
shows that the population is 50 percent black, the median household income
is 40 percent that of the median household income in the state of
California while 30 percent earn below the poverty line and 58 percent of
households with children are single parent households.
The poor black kids from the broken families and communities there go to
failing public schools in Oakland where half of them drop out.
In these failing public schools, it is prohibited to teach the most
important thing that these children could possibly hear. That there are
absolutes in this world -- that there is right and there is wrong.
As religion and tradition have been purged from public life in America,
the most immediate victims have been the weakest and most vulnerable.
California deals with this problem by subsidizing it. Every poor girl that
goes to Family Planning Specialists gets her abortion paid for by
California state insurance, Medi-Cal.
This fiscal year Medi-Cal will spend $52 million of taxpayer funds paying
for abortions of poor young women. This while Governor Schwarzenegger has
announced an anticipated deficit of over $40 billion and tens of billions
from the federal government in the new trillion dollar "stimulus" package
will be sent to bail out the state.
The stated purpose of the Oakland ordinance, which may send Walter Hoye to
jail, is to protect 'right of privacy." "Right of privacy" of teenage
girls not old enough to vote, but who can get a state paid for abortion
without informing a parent.
Yet the first amendment of our constitution no longer protects the freedom
of a pastor to peaceably stand in front of an abortion clinic and tell
these lost young women there is another way.
Something is wrong in America today. Very, very wrong.
A
travesty of justice has occurred in Oakland, California. But realities
surrounding this local issue point to how the economic crisis in our
nation is symptomatic of and flows from a deeper fundamental moral crisis.
