Thursday, August 30, 2012

Can we end the media created "abortion is so important to all pro-choice women" myth?

Watching the Today Show this morning as Matt Lauer interviewed Jeb Bush regarding the convention, Lauer asked a question which contains an assumption I've heard or read over and over again. Transcript from Newsbusters:
"Governor Romney has chipped away at the gender gap....But some people worry that the addition of Paul Ryan to this ticket, and bringing with him his staunchly conservative views on topics like abortion, will slow that momentum? Do you share that fear?"

Over and over again I've heard this belief that there are millions upon millions of women who vote solely or mostly based on abortion or there are women who like Mitt Romney but are so turned off by the Republican Party's position on abortion that they'll vote for Obama. This is a myth.

Also, who are these "some people" that worry?

Abortion is a huge issue for a small percentage of the electorate. For example, here's the results of a January 2012 NY Times/CBS poll asking about most important issues.
3. In deciding who you would like to see elected President this year, which one of thefollowing issues will be most important to you: 1. Abortion, or 2. The federal budget deficit, or 3. The economy, or 4. Health care, or 5. Illegal immigration, or 6. Something else? IF SOMETHING ELSE, ASK: What is that? ISSUES WERE ROTATED.

1/12-17/12
Abortion 3
Federal budget deficit 15
Economy 56
Health care 14
Illegal immigration 5
Something else 6
DK/NA 2

3% says abortion is the most important issue for them. Guess what? If they're pro-choice, they're not voting for Romney regardless of who his running mate is.

An ABC exit poll from the 2010 elections for people who voted for Congressional candidates shows that what someone thinks on abortion hardly budges voting for the vast majority of voters.

Which comes closest to your position? Abortion should be: (2,772 respondents)

Voted For Democrat (D) Voted For Republican (R)

Legal in all cases
19% of Respondents 51% 49%
Legal in most cases
23% of Respondents 45% 55%
Illegal in most cases
25% of Respondents 46% 54%
Illegal in all cases
28% of Respondents 50% 50%

See that? For people at the ends of the spectrum of abortion positions, they still voted half the time for Republicans and half the time for Democrats despite the huge difference in the position's of the Congressional candidates.

National Right to Life and the SBA List have results from other exit polls which show that for the small percentage of voters who view abortion as a top or top-ish election issues, the large majority are prolifers.

So regardless of what the producers of all the political news shows believe, it is simply not true that being prolife hurts candidates in national elections. There isn't some army of suburban women ready to flee the Republican party and vote for Democrats because Paul Ryan doesn't have exceptions for rape and incest. If you're ready to vote for Barack Obama because of Paul Ryan's position on abortion, then guess what? You were never planning on voting for Mitt Romney anyway and most likely you're one of the phony Republicans the Democrats always find.

In reality, the percentage of people who vote mainly/solely based on abortion policies is small and it appears the large majority of them are prolife.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Florida woman to be charged after putting baby in dumpster

A Florida woman named Alexandria Sladon-Marler appears to have given birth in a hotel room and then dumped her son in the trash. The child was found dead. Police say they will charge her with homicide when she's realized from the hospital.
A Fort Lauderdale woman is under investigation in connection to a newborn found dead in the trash, police said Monday.

"Officers arrived at the hotel and subsequently located an infant's body in an exterior dumpster," Fort Lauderdale Police Det. DeAnna Garcia said.

Someone wrapped the child in a towel and placed him in a pillow case before dumping him with the trash, Det. Garcia explained.....

Detectives said doctors found Sladon-Marler still had an umbilical cord attached when she was treated. According to physicians, the manner in which it was severed matches the umbilical cord found attached to the child.

Tonya Reaves' mother sues Planned Parenthood over daughter's death

The mother of Tonya Reaves is suing Planned Parenthood and Northwestern Memorial Hospital for the death of her daughter after an abortion at Planned Parenthood in Chicago.
Dorsey Johns, Reaves' mother, claims staff at the Planned Parenthood clinic "carelessly performed" the elective abortion and failed to properly monitor and assess her daughter's condition after the procedure, according to the suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.

The suit further claims the clinic did not do enough to stop Reaves' bleeding, and that staff members failed to adequately warn an on-call doctor about the potentially life-threatening condition.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Life Links 8/28/12

Jeff Jacoby notes something that anyone with any political sense knows but is often hidden by the media: Both major parties have positions on abortion which aren't middle of the road.

The 2012 platform, in language recycled from 2008, vows to "oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine" the availability of abortion. While solid majorities of Democrats back some limitations on abortion -- 59 percent would ban partial-birth abortions, for example, and 60 percent endorse a mandatory waiting period -- the official position of their party is that even common-sense restrictions are unthinkable.

In 2000, the Democratic platform said the party's goal was "to make abortion less necessary and more rare." The 2004 platform declared, "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." But even calling for abortion to be "rare" is now too much for the Democrats' platform committee, which deleted the word in 2008. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is a committee member.

The Telegraph has a piece on international couples coming to the U.S. and paying big bucks for sex-selection IVF. Notice the dehumanization in the article where the author claims "eggs" go through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

He said women first attended London clinics which were affiliated with Fertility Institutes, where they were given drugs to stimulate egg production, before flying to the US for the rest of the treatment.

Eggs are then collected, fertilised in the test tube, and then screened for genetic abnormalities and gender using a now well established technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). ......

He admitted clients from some countries were almost exclusively interested in boys. Demand from China - currently under pressure to revoke its controversial one child policy - was 98 per cent for boys, he said, while from India it was 97 per cent.

There really must be something in the records of Planned Parenthood in Kansas as they've asked for the records back. We know it's not patient privacy Planned Parenthood is concerned with, it's covering up their willingness to not report statutory rape.


In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin is disappointed that the President and the Democratic party have focused so much on the hard cases of abortion and failed to make an argument for why abortion should be generally available.
But as framed by Democrats and the President, the current debate about abortion—centered as it is around rape victims and the health exception—put women in the position of supplicants, seeking permission to end their pregnancies. Most people, fortunately, think there are circumstances where that permission should be granted. But true freedom is not freedom to ask permission—it's freedom to make a decision. That's what pro-choice really means, and it would be healthy for abortion-rights supporters to say so clearly and often.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Life Links 8/24/12

CNN has posted the Republican party plank on the sanctity and dignity of human life.


The Obama campaign really has no shame. They're attacking Mitt Romney for not wanting to waste his time talking about Representative Akin's comments and fulfilling the media's and the Democratic party's dream of it lasting another week in the news. This attack from a campaign which doesn't allow reporters to interview campaign surrogates unless the give them veto power over their quotes.


Rebecca Rosen badly garbles abortions in America pre-Roe at the Atlantic. This paragraph is embarrassing. Where are the editors?
Of course no official statistics were kept, but Reagan cites some late-19th-century doctors as estimating a rate of about two million abortions per year. Studies confirmed their prevalence: One, of some 10,000 working-class women who visited birth-control clinics in the late 1920s, found that 10 to 23 percent had had abortions. A smaller study at a clinic in the Bronx in the early 1930s found that 35 percent of women -- Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike -- had had at least one abortion. And of course, because abortion occurred mostly on the black market, they were very dangerous: One estimate placed the annual death toll at 5,000 women.
2 million abortions a year in the late 19th century? That abortion rate would be astronomical. The census bureau estimates there were only around 76 million people in the U.S. in 1900. So approximately 1/4 as many people were having nearly twice as many abortion as today? Back when abortions were illegal? If Leslie Reagan thinks 2 million annual abortion is a good estimate of late-19th-century United States, then maybe you shouldn't believe a word she says because she's clearly not competent.

Rosen then provides some other numbers for women who said they had abortions but does nothing to show how those unnamed studies would prove anywhere near 2 million annual abortions especially since the percent of women who supposedly admitted to having had abortions in one of the studies is lower than the number (1/3) touted by abortion advocates today.

Lastly, she doesn't mention that the annual death estimate of 5,000 has been debunked for decades.

How do these people find writing jobs?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Life Links 8/22/12

Abortion is a reason for gender gap between Republican and Democratic voters? Not so much.


The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a temporary injunction which temporarily prevented Texas from eliminating Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women's Health Program. From this AP article, the average reader would leave with the impression that Planned Parenthood isn't America's leading abortion provider but is just "linked," "tied," and "affiliated" to some other unnamed abortion provider.


Secular Pro-Life takes apart Marco Rossi's magical-journey-down-the-birth-canal argument. What's truly sad is that Rossi isn't ignorant of secular prolife arguments, as he accurately describes a prolife argument, he just actually thinks the assertion that birth "transforms us" is a fact. He waves away examples of past "personhood" discrimination because Jews, blacks, women and children are "are all autonomous beings" without ever explaining how newborn children and individuals on respirators are autonomous.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Tennesee abortion clinic goes out of business

An abortion clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee has closed. The Volunteer Women's Medical Clinic doesn't have an abortionist with admitting privileges.
The Volunteer Women's Medical Clinic had two physicians providing abortions. One died after suffering a stroke within days of obtaining hospital privileges, said clinic director Deb Walsh. Another retired physician working with the clinic has not obtained privileges.

"I've been able to keep the doors open and the phone staff working up until this week," Walsh wrote in a public letter titled, "End of an Era."
The other abortion clinic in Knoxville also seems to be struggling to find physicians willing to abort full-time.
In May, Dr. Morris Campbell obtained admitting privileges at University of Tennessee Medical Center. He died five days later. He was both a doctor providing services at the Volunteer Women's Medical Clinic and the medical director of the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health.

In addition to losing Campbell, the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health lost another part-time physician who had stepped forward to help after "she felt intimidated by pro-life protestors," Rovetti said.

The clinic is relying now on two part-time doctors with their own private practices who already have admitting privileges locally.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Abortion clinic worker tells story of woman who wanted sex-selection abortion at her clinic

I guess this kind of blows up the claim used by some abortion advocates that sex-selection abortions don't really occur in the U.S.
Are there ever times you feel a little – uncomfortable – with a woman's reason for having an abortion? We're not all Saints of Non-judgment, though some of us may strive to be. (Err…maybe some of us don't…)

Last week, a recent immigrant from an Asian country (I won't say which) came to our clinic for an abortion. I was the abortion counselor that day. She was in her second trimester and wanted to know if we could figure out the sex of the fetus. This isn't a completely strange question, but I don't get asked that often.

Because she was less than 18 weeks and because we don't perform diagnostic ultrasounds, I explained we wouldn't be able to identify the sex. I let her know that usually diagnostic ultrasounds to determine the sex are done between 18-22 weeks and that if she had a physician/midwife, she could schedule an ultrasound with them at that time (as it is standard practice).

She wasn't willing to wait at least another month to have an abortion. You know the drill: she'd have to travel out of state; the cost would be much higher; she'd have to spend time away from home; someone would have to watch her small daughter while she left the area (and explain why she needed a babysitter); and her husband would have to get a lot of time off work.

We don't ask patients why they want to have an abortion. Really, it's none of our business. Still, lots of women offer their reasons when we ask if they're sure of their decision, if they have support, etc.

The woman from last week calmly offered she didn't want to have a girl.

It's interesting how the Abortioneers don't seem to always grasp that the clinic experiences they often talk openly about often refute the talking points of abortion advocates.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Life Links 8/15/12

At least one local North Carolina media outlet has picked up on the YouTube video of abortionist Ashutosh Virmani telling members of Operation Save America that they should "adopt one of those ugly black babies."


Politico covers the unwillingness of abortion advocates to challenge the majority of fetal pain/late term abortion bans.
Similar fetal pain laws are on the books in seven other states, and a ninth law, in Georgia, takes effect Jan. 1. But unlike the numerous legal challenges to state laws on "partial-birth abortion", there hasn't been a massive national mobilization to challenge the fetal-pain laws, which clash head on with Roe v. Wade, the law of the land since 1973......

Asked if the abortion-rights community would be nervous about the outcome of the case if it were to travel to the Supreme Court, Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, chose her words carefully: "There's no question that this Supreme Court as remade by George Bush is very hostile to reproductive rights."

CBS notes President Obama's continued push to make abortion an election issue and his campaign's apparent belief that all women favor legal abortion.
The Obama campaign has seized on that particular issue. Over the weekend, President Obama sent out a set of messages via Twitter, writing, "Make sure the women in your life know: Paul Ryan supports banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest." The Romney campaign says that Ryan does believe some exceptions can be made by families and their doctor when the life of the mother is at risk.

Monday, August 13, 2012

How prolife candidates should answer Planned Parenthood funding questions

Tim Skubick's recent column focused on U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra's unwillingness to answer a question about his position on funding Planned Parenthood.

So after Mr. Hoekstra poised for the unity photo with the former opponents, he stepped off the stage into the glaring lens of a TV camera with this question: "What's your position on federal funding of Planned Parenthood?"

It was a loaded question. For one thing, moderate women demand the funding and Mr. Hoekstra needs some of them to beat incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow. But he also needs to hang onto his conservative GOP base which is loathed to back federal aid for anything, but especially Planned Parenthood.

So what was the poor, newly unified candidate to do?

Punt, of course.

"I mean we're not going to be getting into those specifics at this time," he dove for the high grass.

"We're talking about jobs," he moved from the grass to more comfortable ground.

But the Planned Parenthood issue was still on the table, unanswered, and he conceded the point but added, "We're not going to be caught in those things right now."

To me, it's frustrating when a prolife candidate punts on a question like this instead of providing a thoughtful answer. They're going to accuse you of wanting to defund Planned Parenthood anyway so why not have a good answer for them?

Here's how a prolife candidate could answer that question and educate the public at the same time.

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. Their latest annual report indicates they perform more than 300,000 abortions a year. That's about a 1/4 of all abortions performed in America. While the number of abortion performed across the U.S. has been decreasing in recent years, the number of abortions provided by Planned Parenthood has risen dramatically over the last decade. Abortion brings in more than $100 million dollars in revenue for them per year. At the same time, they receive a huge amount of federal taxpayer dollars to help women prevent unplanned pregnancies. I see a huge conflict of interest there.

Shouldn't we think twice about sending millions of family planning taxpayer dollars to an organization whose revenue stream requires women to have unplanned pregnancies? Wouldn't it be preferable to send taxpayer dollars for family planning to organizations which don't have a financial incentive for women to have unplanned pregnancies?

Planned Parenthood is also the subject of a Congressional investigation and investigations on the state level, a former employee has brought a whistleblower lawsuit against them, alleging Medicaid fraud and a young woman died in July after receiving an abortion at Planned Parenthood in Chicago. Planned Parenthood employees in various states have also caught on undercover camera being willing to help people get sex-selection abortions, violate mandatory reporter laws and aid sex-traffickers. These are troubling issues that plague this organization and I'm uncomfortable with an organization plagued by so many problems receiving such a large percentage of our federal government's domestic family planning dollars.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Democrats for Life testify regarding Dems pro-abortion platform

Melinda Henneberger writes in the Washington Post about how prolife Democrats were actually allowed to testify on the pro-abortion plank in the party's platform.

This time around, Janet Robert, who founded Minnesota’s progressive talk radio station AM 950, with talkers such as Ed Schultz and Thom Hartmann, was given seven minutes to make the case, and she used it to argue that the party simply cannot win back Congress without Democrats who differ from the ’08 platform on this one issue. She cited a slew of stats, including a Gallup poll from last year in which 44 percent of Democrats said abortion should only be legal “in a few circumstances.”

The plank they want to rewrite says the party “unequivocally” supports Roe v. Wade and spells out that “we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”

Robert urged the committee members to prove that Democrats are more tolerant and open-minded than their opponents across the aisle: “Republicans are continually telling people they are unwelcome because of who they are, what they believe or where they were born. We are not that party.”

Good luck proving Democrats are more tolerant of dissenting views on abortion with Nancy Keenan on the committee.

Friday, August 03, 2012

"Vote for me because my mommy loves me"

One way to disqualify yourself from public office in my eyes is to air a commercial (in this case - the campaign's first commercial) where you have your mom do the voice over.

When you're a young and inexperienced candidate, do you really think it's a great idea to have your mommy be the feature of your commercial?

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Life Links 8/2/12

A Nigeria doctor has been arrested for murder after a botched abortion left a 22-year-old woman dead.
Anyanwu disclosed that Edeye's victim was 22-year-old Miss Tolani Adenuga, who was carrying a five-month old pregnancy, which she requested to be terminated.

The prosecutor said that the defendant claimed to have cautioned the deceased about the danger inherent in the procedure, but when she insisted proceeded to administer some undisclosed drugs on her.

In India, a woman has been arrested after allegedly forcing her daughter to have an abortion.
Udayasurya became pregnant and she was living with her husband, when her aunts Jeyarani, Punitha and eight others came to their house and forcibly abducted her on May 21, this year. She was taken to Tiruchuli and later to Ramanathapuram, where she was admitted to a private hospital. Udayasurya was told that she delivered a premature eight-month-old baby on May 27. Her mother had also allegedly told her that she had delivered a dalit boy and that it was a sin to touch it and therefore did not show the baby to the mother

Udayasurya's husband managed to get her back on June 20, after much struggle, but the girl was distraught as she did not know what happened to her baby. She lodged a complaint with the Aruppukottai All-Woman Police station, who conducted an inquiry and found that the girl had actually been forced to undergo an abortion.

The 9th Circuit Court has issued a temporary stay on Arizona's fetal pain law.
The appellate court put the ban on hold until a pending appeal is decided, which will take at least several months. It said in a brief order that it will hold a hearing as soon as possible this fall after receiving legal briefs due in September and October.