Life Links 11/8/11

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Pittsburgh area abortion protester and sidewalk counselor Meredith Parente. Parente is accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Act for allegedly shoving two abortion clinic escorts. Looking over the FACE Act, I'm struggling to see how shoving volunteer clinic escorts (if it actually happened) would violate the FACE Act. How does shoving clinic escorts impede someone looking for an abortion from entering the clinic?

The Justice Department press release notes: "The FACE Act prohibits the use of force against any person providing or obtaining reproductive health services, or those seeking to do so, with the intent to injure, intimidate or interfere with that person."

Volunteer clinic escorts aren't providing (unless "providing" is used in an incredibly broad sense) reproductive health services nor are they seeking them.


Overheard on Russian abortions:

Women of all ages used to fill gynecologist Lyubov Yerofeyeva's Soviet state clinic, lined up by the dozen for back-to-back abortions. "It was more common to take sick days for an abortion than for a cold in those days," she said.

Dennis Byrne compares the use and acceptance of graphic images used to dissuade smoking and abortion.

For years, pro-life groups have been condemned for trying to publish (mostly unsuccessfully in the mainstream media) gruesome images of aborted fetuses. The opposition to their publication comes down to something like this: It coarsens public discourse or, more generally, it will offend. Mysteriously, though, that argument didn't seem to occur to liberals that oppose publication of the "products of pregnancy termination" while at the same time favoring the forced display of the "products of smoking."

We're in a gray free-speech area, but it occurs to me that there is one significant difference: Pro-life advocates have not used the force of law to require that gruesome images of aborted fetuses be prominently displayed on the exterior of abortion clinics for all to see.

Indian officials have raided another suspected illegal abortion clinic and arrested the husband-wife team.

The two-room clinic was allegedly run by a couple without having mandatory certificates and permission of the Punjab health department. During raids, the health department team has seized blood soaked clothes, placenta of delivery, medicines and other instruments.

"Ashok Kumar and his wife Devinder Kumari were working as doctors, conducting deliveries and selling medicines without having any certificate," said Surinderpal, district family planning officer of Patiala, who was the member of the raiding team.