Life Links 3/13/13

In his Best of the Web column from yesterday, James Taranto hits on a number of issues related to abortion, out-of-wedlock births and sex-ratios as he comments on New York City's new campaign to stigmatize teen births and Planned Parenthood's response. 

Planned Parenthood may describe itself as a "health organization," but in reality it is an ideological outfit. It is committed to the idea of "reproductive rights" that belong only to women. In the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, for instance, the group persuaded the Supreme Court that a married woman has a constitutional right to abort her husband's child without telling him.

If men have no reproductive rights, it follows logically that they have no reproductive responsibilities.......

The contemporary problem of illegitimacy, then, is largely the consequence of Planned Parenthood's ideology of female "reproductive rights" and the technology that made it feasible. Planned Parenthood's hostility toward any effort to tackle, or even acknowledge, the problem is anything but coincidental.......

The "98%" poster alludes to that life script and makes the dubious supposition that following it--at least if one leaves out college--is realistic for all women. But an important reason women bear children out of wedlock is because they don't expect to find husbands.

Intersections South LA has an article about sidewalk counselors and abortion clinic escorts at one South LA abortion clinic. 

On one side, a group of people kneel on a broken sidewalk, sliding rosary beads through their fingers as they call for divine action. And across the sidewalk, another group stands silently; dressed in bright orange vests and black sunglasses. They escort patients into the clinic. Both sides stay on their sides without budging an inch, unless someone tests the boundaries.

An unlicensed pharmacy in Bangkok has been shut down for illegally distributing abortion drugs.

"One of our officers who is three months pregnant entered the store and asked to buy abortion pills. The pharmacist gave her the pills and charged her 16,000 baht," Ministry of Health legal officer Chatree Pinyai explained.