While Republicans use Abortion as an issue among the Christian Right and swing vote against the Democrats, Democrats are too polite to bring up the fact that GOP Governor LEavitt (now HHS Secy) and GOP Senator Hatch have repeatedly refused to prosecute charges of INCEST among FLDS members, who all practice POLYGAMY.
Hold the GOP accountable for its support of Polygamy Incest and Inbreeding! Which is worse to an Evangelical? Abortion or Incest? Tell all this to Christian Righties and find out.
Add the payments for inbred disabled children and adults to the GOP welfare subsidies for FLDS Mormon Polygamists, and we're talking real money. It is GOP HHS Secy Mike Leavitt who will be making it easy for the FLDS members to keep collecting AFDC--even though those children are born with defects from incest!
Ex-members' claims of incest are bolstered by court records claiming John Ortell "failed either to support or acknowledge" three children by his niece, (Susan) Mary Gustafson. In an effort to recoup $15,679 in welfare, the Utah Department of Social Services filed an order declaring John Ortell the father of three of Gustafson's children.
John and Charles' brother, Merlin Barnum Kingston, married and had children with four nieces and a half-sister, say ex-members, including one of his own daughters. At least six of Merlin's incestuously conceived children in turn married half-siblings, couplings that subsequently produced children with various deformities, says Rowenna Erickson, an ex-member who left her polygamous husband.
"It makes you sick; it turns your stomach," she says. "And yet nobody wants to do anything about it. Nobody, from the police to [Utah] Gov. [Mike] Leavitt, cares that these children are abused from conception to marriage."
...Genetics of Incest: Pre-eclampsia is a condition that can be traced genetically from one generation to the next and is prevalent among some Kingstons, Rugg says.
Several Kingston offspring of incestuous couplings also have been born without fingernails, a disease that could be linked to a number of genetically caused abnormalities, although an exact diagnosis is impossible without closer study of medical records. Since most Kingston children are born in homes under the scrutiny of trusted and secretive family midwives or clan leaders, documentation of medical abnormalities is rare, but not unprecedented.
In 1996, the now 31-year-old Kingston mother of two slow-growing children sought explanations at Primary Children's Medical Center. Initially, she tried to conceal her marital relationship.
"I didn't dare talk about it," she says. Eventually, she admitted she had married her half-brother and given birth to three children.
Two years later, a pair of geneticists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., flew to Utah where they hoped to stage a seminar for Kingston family members about the dangers of incest and birth defects, and, presumably, gain permission to study the clan.
Two minor members of the clan attended the NIH seminar, conducted in a Woods Cross hotel room -- not far from the Kingston dairy. Disappointed more family members did not attend, the scientists left.
"I tried to get people to come, but nobody would listen," says the mother, who left the group and her marriage after her sons were diagnosed with dwarfism. She says her parents, Merlin Barnum Kingston (John Ortell's brother) and Joyce Fransden, were uncle and niece. And her ex-husband's parents, Merlin and Carolyn Kingston, were uncle and niece.
"I knew I would have to marry my [half-] brother ever since I was 12," says the woman. The couple had lived together since the age of 7, when the mother of the woman's half-brother died.
The rate at which Kingstons marry each other is "frightening," she says. "It's a bomb that's going to explode."
Her half-brother is still married to another half-sister (whose parents also were half-sister and brother) and are still members of the Kingston's order.
Other possible genetic traits include: microcephaly, a malformation of the skull in which the infant has a small head (ex-members say two children with microcephaly have died and eight others are institutionalized); blindness; spina bifida; Down syndrome; kidney disease and abnormal leg and arm joints.
While none of these can positively be linked to incest without DNA testing, geneticists say most of the conditions are exacerbated by incest.
Some genes linked to conditions like microcephaly and dwarfism are "autosomal recessive," and are found among the 22-linked pairs of chromosomes that do not include the X and Y sex chromosomes, says Lynn Jorde of the University of Utah's Eccles Human Genetics Institute, a leading genetics research center.
"You don't want to jump to the conclusion and say all of these are the result of inbreeding," he says. "But just on general principles, the offspring of uncle-niece, or half-siblings have an elevated level of genetic disease. There is no doubt about that at all. So when you see all of these diseases occurring in the children, it's possible some are the result of inbreeding."
Global Incest: Worldwide, mating among first cousins is somewhat common and sometimes encouraged. First-cousin mating doubles the chances that genetic abnormalities will be passed along. Roughly 3 to 4 percent of children from couples who aren't relatives are born with genetic defects. The rate of genetic birth defects for first cousins is 6 to 8 percent.
Stillbirths and infant deaths also are much more likely when blood relatives mate. A Norwegian study published in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health found the risk of stillbirths and infant deaths was at least 70 percent greater when parents were first cousins rather than unrelated.