Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-07-07 Children of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Request details
Highly relevant verifiable facts from reliable sources is systematically being deleted from the article Children of Joseph Smith, Jr., as well as a summary sentence from the summary article Joseph Smith, Jr. There has been no legitimate justification for deleting this material, and no substantive challenge to the reliable sources provided, say by citing other reliable sources, as is required by Wikipedia policy. Rather, the only challenge has been POV regurgitation of calumny made against the reputation of one of the original sources, Sarah M. Pratt, by Joseph Smith, Jr., slanders that dismissed as "highly improbably" and "slander" by the Mormon historian Richard S. Van Wagoner link. To date, no reliable sources or rationale consistent with Wikipedia policy has been provided for deleting the cited facts, in spite of numerous requests for the parties to provide these.

This is a very important subject because it has direct bearing on the history of the early LDS movement, as well as highly relevant biographical details about the life of Joseph Smith, Jr. Therefore, please regard this mediation request as one for facts cited on the pages Children of Joseph Smith, Jr., as well as a summary sentence in the article Joseph Smith, Jr.

The nature of the verifiable facts are, as expressed in the proposed compromise sentence based upon a slight modification of a suggestion by CO GDEN  for the article Joseph Smith, Jr. are:
 * "Smith has been accused of allowing his second-in-command John C. Bennett, a medical doctor, to perform abortions for Smith's Nauvoo wives who were officially single."

As several historians have pointed out, these allegations against Smith directly address the question of his progeny from his, at the time, secret plural wives. Or, as put by Sarah Pratt in a conversation with Smith's son Joseph Smith III, who asked, "If my father had so many connections with women, where is the progeny?," Pratt replied, "Your father had mostly intercourse with married women, and as to single ones, Dr. Bennett was always on hand, when anything happened." Such allegations are especially important in the content of the current geneological search for Smith's progeny via his polygamous wives. These allegations against Smith are cited in the reliable sources:
 * Newell 1994, p. 111. Standard reference biography on Smith's wife Emma Hale Smith.
 * Smith 1971, p. 113. Won the John Whi