For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
Luke 2:11
Rumpole's Christmas Sermon:
The key word in the biblical verse is "You". "For unto YOU..."
Who is you? Is it just citizens? Or Kings? Or Potentates? Or the rich and powerful?
No.
For unto you means humanity. All those who were created in the image of their maker; a savior was born for them. For Presidents, potentates, and the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the weak and the strangers amongst us- the immigrant huddled in a doorway hungry and cold. This is who Jesus arrived in a manger for.
Remember that in the coming months as the rhetoric heats up and people are dehumanized and called animals by the same people who attended Mass last night and today. Remember who the lord came on earth for.
Merry Christmas.
H. Rumpole, Esq.
Blog Proprietor and raconteur.
12 comments:
You are quoting the Bible now? Really? What next-- will you post The Ten Commandments too?
Pirates too?
Raconteur?
Rumpole - Who are you? NEIL ROGERS??
There are Miami Beach filmmakers (Billy Corben, Alfred Spellman and David Cypkin) who named themselves after a phonetic spelling of the storyteller word: Rakontur. I remember when they came out with Cocaine Cowboys, just one of a string of 22 documentaries that followed their 2001 flick Raw Deal: A Question of Consent. Cocaine Cowboys drove home the theory was that modern Miami was built on the back of the drug trade, that cocaine took Miami from God’s waiting room to America’s Riviera, despite the postural distancing that the political and business community have done with Miami's history. Those guys have made a killing telling stories, that investors rush to back in a heartbeat.
@12:29-- And not to mention TV show Miami Vice which was partly responsible for putting Miami on the map.
@7:20, this much is quite TRUE
Different time, different era, but all history
A number of Americans believe the United States is a Christian nation. The good book has numerous examples of Jesus Christ healing the sick. So why can it be so difficult for Americans to get healthcare? Jesus cured a blind man who was uninsured. Jesus cured ten lepers without a co-payment. Jesus cured a paralytic without prior authorization. Maybe Jesus was sending a message. But his alleged followers, from Rick Scott to deceased CEO Brian Thompson, found a way to make billions of dollars by denying healthcare to the American people.
Jesus made no opinion about abortion, that I know about. Pope Francis says the aborted ascend to heaven. But what about wrongful life? Ron DeSantis says ban abortion after 6 weeks. Fine. Where is the class-action case for damages to the child born with birth defects? Damages for the parents of an impaired child? Damages for the birth the unwanted offspring of rape or incest or...?
Wrongful life, Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition. Refers to type of medical malpractice claim brought on behalf of a child born with birth defects, alleging that the child would not have been born but for negligent advice to, or treatment of, the parents. Azzolino v. Dingfelder, 315 N.C. 103, 337 S.E.2d 528, 532. See also Wrongful birth; Wrongful conception.
Wrongful birth, Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition. A medical malpractice claim brought by the parents of an impaired child, alleging that negligent treatment or advice deprived them of the opportunity to avoid conception or terminate the pregnancy. Bruggeman By and Through Bruggeman v. Schimke, 239 Kan. 245, 718 P.2d 635, 638. See also Wrongful conception; Wrongful life.
Wrongful conception, Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition. Also know as wrongful pregnancy, it is a claim by parents for damages arising from the negligent performance of a sterilization procedure or abortion, and the subsequent birth of a child. Miller v. Johnson, 231 Va.
Also see, 100HarvLRev 2017, Wrongful Birth Actions
34VillLRev681, To Be or Not to Be
KUSH v. LLOYD, 616 So.2d 415 (1992)
When wrongful birth claims went racist, the case of the woman who sued because she wanted a white baby, and the sperm bank mixed things up and gave her black sperm. See https://fordhamlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/16_Paul-Emile-2811-2820.pdf.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wrongful-birth-white-woman-sues-after-she-mistakenly-receives-sperm-from-black-donor/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/05/judge-dismisses-white-woman-lawsuit-black-sperm-donation
Re: 3:57:09 PM
Racist? Parents want children who look like themselves. Are couples who self-select partners of the same race, with the intent to reproduce, engaged in racial supremacy, regardless of their race? Parents also expect offspring with ten fingers and ten toes. Pregnant couples may use ultrasound to foretell abnormalities, and under Roe, could abort the deformed fetus prior to birth. Right to life is fine in theory, until the time comes to pay the extraordinary expense of congenital defects, a preexisting condition to insurers, an extraordinary expense beyond the means of ordinary people, an extraordinary expense which then shifts to the public. And for folks afflicted with congenital or genetic defects, is it even ethical to reproduce? Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes believed "Three generations of imbeciles are enough". Perhaps the childless cat lady is ethically childless after getting genetic counseling.
Why do we need ART [assisted reproductive technology] anyway, so long as there are children without parents and families? As lesbians, the couple in the story might encounter adoption barriers on that basis, especially from some Christian groups. Dr. Paul-Emile noted in the paper you linked, "The gamete market upon which ART relies is stratified by race with white sperm and eggs valued more highly than the gametes of other groups. For example, the eggs of a white, blond, highly educated donor can command as much as $100,000." Is capitalism racist? $100k for white eggs? A kid with two mommies might have concerns regardless of race. Maybe a one-night stand instead of ART, with a real person, not a numbered vial of sperm. The fornicators might actually get to know and like each other.
That's not the kind of racist I was talking about. Not talking about that "white supremacy" or the all of everyone is trying to make this into a systematic form of discrimination. This isn't that kind of "party". No one is trying to force black kids on white parents and what have you.
I am talking about the term "wrongful birth" in that context. It is a loaded term. I absolutely agree if a couple wants a white baby they should have a white baby and not a black baby. If a set of black lesbian partners ended up with a biracial baby by mix up, I would understand their issue as well. But they have got to come up with a better term than that for those kinds of cases. As per the prior post indicated for the definition of wrongful birth, "A medical malpractice claim brought by the parents of an impaired child, alleging that negligent treatment or advice deprived them of the opportunity to avoid conception or terminate the pregnancy."
To put it simply enough, this whole area kind of borders on the notion of eugenics. Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. If taken to its nth degree, we are eliminating all of the undesirable qualities from the gene pool. But here it is more palatable, because wrongful birth as defined, sounds like we are avoiding having kids with onerous conditions like Down syndrome, severe congenital defects that make life for that child growing up harder, children born deaf and blind, children with malformed body parts, etc.
PART 1
Mind you, there are people who claim that doing this is "ableism" but I am not going to have the dog in that fight. See Brown, L. (2018). Legal Ableism, Interrupted: Developing Tort Law & Policy Alternatives to Wrongful Birth & Wrongful Life Claims. Disability Studies Quarterly, 38:2, https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/6207/4903. I will go ahead and agree, that despite however much it may seem close to eugenics, that it is okay to want to avoid giving birth to kids with severe disabilities.
Nonetheless, it sounds absolutely terrible word wise. Now take that a step further and tack on "being of the wrong race is a disability".
Or put in the alternative if I didn't look at the definition, and just assumed what I think it means, when I hear wrongful birth I hear, "I got a baby of the black race, this has saddled me with a defective child that should not have been born to me". For all of the wordsmithing in the world, you would have to think that there is a better way to describe this legal scenario without labeling the child as somehow disabled, undesirable, or what have you.
And this is not the first time I have heard terms like "impairment" and "disability" tossed around in the context of black kids. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a piece of American legislation that ensures students with a disability are provided with a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that is tailored to their individual needs. IDEA was previously known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) from 1975 to 1990. In 1990, the United States Congress reauthorized EHA and changed the title to IDEA. Overall, the goal of IDEA is to provide children with disabilities the same opportunity for education as those students who do not have a disability.
Guess who tends to get over-represented in cases selected for IDEA? Black kids. Black children are overrepresented in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) due to a complex mix of factors including systemic bias in education, cultural bias in assessments, socioeconomic disparities, and teacher perceptions, often leading to misidentification of learning differences as disabilities, particularly when it comes to behavioral issues or learning challenges that might not be accurately interpreted in the classroom setting; essentially, Black students are more likely to be labeled as having a disability than their peers, even when their learning needs are identical, comparable, or similar.
"Research has consistently found that minority students are identified with disabilities at higher rates than white students, based on straightforward comparisons of classification rates across racial groups." From Elder, T.E., Figlio, D.N., Imberman, S.A., and Persico, C.L. (2021). Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education: New evidence on the debate over disproportionality. Education Next, 21(2), 62-68, https://www.educationnext.org/segregation-racial-gaps-special-education-new-evidence-on-debate-over-disproportionality/.
Here are some articles that talk about that:
Niedenfuer, J.D. (2015). The Overrepresentation of African American Students in Special Education: A Review of the Literature. Culminating Projects in Special Education. 3. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=sped_etds.https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/sped_etds/3
Pfende, P. (2024). The case of Blackness and Disability: Disproportionality in Special Education Identification. The Vermont Connection, 45(1). https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol45/iss1/7.
So that is what I am talking about 10:27PM.
PART 2
RE: Sunday, January 12, 2025 10:24:27 PM, Part 1 and Part 2
The term "wrongful birth" was coined by the legal profession, along with the terms wrongful life, and wrongful conception. These words offend your sensibility? Okay, so noted. That does not change the issues of this class of cases: The extraordinary expenses of congenital and genetic prebirth injuries, lifetime disability, and abortion. After the Dobbs decision, abortion (and your reference to eugenics) is no longer an option. Fine. We The People ought to take our win, and hold society accountable for damages. Society is the electorate and money behind MAGA, and their conservative courts, who just prevailed over the "eugenics" party, the Democrats.
Personally I refer to this class of cases as "aggrieved life" on my web page, Face Matters
https://www.nosue.org/facematters-org/
"The purpose of this webpage, a work in progress, is to create awareness of "aggrieved life", the extraordinary costs, expenses, and other burdens incurred by a person with a congenital craniofacial anomaly (CFA) before and after the age of majority."
My page includes a video by U.S. District Court Judge Myron H. Thompson, Middle District of Alabama, who is black and had childhood polio and paralysis. Judge Thompson claims the worst form of discrimination he felt in life was because he was disabled, not because he was black. See Pathways to the Bench: U.S. District Court Judge Myron H. Thompson
https://youtu.be/pogQvbLOiPo
The child in Jennifer Cramblett's wrongful birth case is a normal, healthy child, The Ohio state court dismissed the wrongful birth claim, with leave to refile a negligence claim against the sperm bank. Instead, Cramblett filed a federal diversity lawsuit in Illinois that was stayed pending the outcome in the Ohio state court case. I do not know what happened after that ruling.
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Cramblett.complaint.pdf
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2016cv04553/325662/29/
Jonathan Turley profiled the Cramblett case, see "Ohio Woman Loses Lawsuit Against Sperm Bank That Mistakenly Impregnated Her With African American Sperm"
Turley wrote in part, "The sperm bank lawyers prevailed in arguing that the only successful "wrongful birth" cases tend to be babies with severe birth defects."
https://jonathanturley.org/2015/09/08/ohio-woman-loses-lawsuit-against-sperm-bank-that-mistakenly-impregnated-her-with-african-american-sperm/
The comment section is rich, including this one, which underscores I why I profiled the Cramblett case on my web page.
"Lots of conventional couples have kids for their amusement, similar to having pets. The kids sometimes make it and sometimes they don’t. The problem here is that with a lesbian couple there might have been something strong, a model for the child to learn by, that love and intelligence are the main ingredients. This works with a lot of gay couples and their children. The kid learns to separate that which is really important from the paint job. However, these two gems have destroyed that and revealed that they were just shopping for a pet. Poor kid, will grow up mean and angry or perhaps strong. The kid will never be able to erase the fact that their moms weren’t happy with the promises made by the pet store."
In my experience as a nonlawyer advocate, I find the reaction of parents to the birth of a deformed child varies considerably, from abandonment or mental breakdown, to the five stages of grief: Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote about the five stages of grief in her book On Death and Dying. The birth of a deformed child ends the fantasy of egotistical reproduction. Birth defects may also offend some religious beliefs. Because the afflicted was not "created" in the image of their "god", they must be evil.
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