A girl's right to life begins when her parents find out she's a girl or something.....

Rahila Gupta thinks pro-choicers shouldn’t "make a fetish of choice" and defend sex-selection abortion.  In her desire to prevent discrimination against unborn girls she uses some odd language coming from a pro-choicer.

We must be careful not to make a fetish of choice. If the technology allows and a woman wants a blue-eyed, blonde baby, do we support her because we are pro-choice? While we must be vigilant about the "pro-lifer"-infested waters, we must be prepared to refine our pro-choice position; it must be circumscribed by context. Approximately 60 million women are "missing" in India. The cultural reasons for this femicide do not magically disappear with migration. A girl's right to life has to be a basic tenet of any feminist position and cannot be compromised by an absolutist pro-choice narrative.

A girl’s right to life?  An unborn girl’s right to life?  Or only a unborn girl’s right to life when the parents know she’s a girl and don’t want a girl?  When does this mysterious right to life appear for Gupta? 

Gupta is certainly right about pro-choicers needing to refine their pro-choice position because Gupta’s position makes no sense.   

Man sentenced to six years for forcible aborting his child

A man in the UK has been sentenced to six years in jail after forcing abortion pills into his mistress.  The child was born alive. 

Ahmed Raofi, 29, became enraged when lover Irene Santos refused to terminate their unborn child, so he hatched a plan to kill the foetus without her consent.

After hours of internet research, Raofi bought packets Misoprostol online and invited Ms Santos to his flat in Edgware, northwest London, on April 9, with the promise of sex, Blackfriars Crown Court heard. 

He then pounced when Ms Santos was on the bed, taping her hands, feet, and mouth when she began to scream out for help. 


Within a few hours, Ms Santon - a Filipino national working in Britain - began getting crippling cramps.

She miscarried the 19-week-old foetus, which was still breathing and showed signs of life, paramedics told the court.

The baby survived for ten minutes outside the womb.

Gosnell saw himself as "a solidier in the war on poverty"

Abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell has done an interview with Steve Volk which will be in Philadelphia Magazine tomorrow.  In the interview, Gosnell says he committed hundreds of illegal abortions as "a soldier in a war against poverty."       

Volk, who covered Gosnell's trial and has been speaking and corresponding with him since he entered prison, said that the convicted killer sees abortion as sinful on some level, but a lesser sin than a child being born into a life of poverty.

"It's not as if he feels guilty about what he did. He sees the world is a dark place. He sees himself as having performed a noble function in society. For him, in a perfect, idealized world, it wouldn't be necessary," Volk said.

WaPo claims "no evidence" of problem clinics after choosing to ignore evidence from last year's inspections

The Washington Post has an editorial in which they ludicrously claim that if Ken Cuccinelli is elected governor then “most of the remaining 18 (abortion) clinics are likely to shut their doors within months.”

Their evidence for this assertion is nowhere to be found and how Cuccinelli would go about this is left up to the reader’s imagination.         

Being in favor regulations which closed a couple of clinics (at the time abortion advocates claimed the regulations would close nearly all the clinics) apparently means Cuccinelli will be able to close more than half of the remaining clinics since they claim they won't be able to meet Virginia's standards. 

There is no evidence that women are at risk in Virginia’s abortion clinics, nor is there evidence of serious or widespread unsanitary conditions that endanger women’s health. The state’s clinics are pawns in the clash over abortion rights.

Except for the fact that when Virginia finally did inspect the clinics a year ago, inspectors found widespread deficiencies to the tune of 80 deficiencies in 9 clinics.   Seven clinics had “no clear division between clean and dirty utility areas” and four clinic had out-of-date drugs in stock.  Some did no background checks. 

And these were found after announced inspections. 

I couldn't find the Post coverage of the report of the inspected clinics except for this mention from an article about a Board of Health vote. 

“We are pleased that the Board wasn’t fooled by the abortion industry’s distractions from the real issue of abortion centers in Virginia found with bloody patient tables, unsanitized conditions and untrained staffs,” Cobb said in the statement, referring to clinic inspection reports she had publicized in the days leading up to the meeting. 

No one calls for abortion on demand, right?

Back in January, Katha Politt wrote a piece in the Nation which claimed that,

An “extreme” pro-choice position would be the one pro-lifers falsely claim Roe protects: it would permit abortion on demand up until the day before birth. No pro-choice organization calls for that.

At the time, I pointed out how some pro-choice organizations rally (not media savvy Planned Parenthood) behind the "abortion on demand and without apology" line.  

In hilarious fashion, the Nation published a piece by Jessica Valenti yesterday in which Valenti pushes the pro-choice movement to stop being so soft. 

It’s time resuscitate the old rallying cry for “free abortions on demand without apology.”

Valenti then goes on to describe All Above All, "a campaign dedicated to restoring public funding for abortion."

All Above All website's vision "is to restore public insurance coverage so that every woman, however much she makes, can get affordable, safe abortion care when she needs it."

Life Links 8/9/13

The Toledo Blade covers the possible closure of the last abortion clinic in Toledo.

Dr. Theodore Wymyslo, director of the Ohio Department of Health, notified the facility in a letter dated Aug. 2 that it had 30 days to request an administrative hearing. Ms. Pollock said that if Capital Care does not respond within that time, the health department will proceed with revocation.

Terrie Hubbard, identified by the health department as Capital Care Network of Toledo’s owner, did not return phone calls or an email seeking comment.

However, as of Thursday morning, Capital Care was open and seeing patients.

Ross Douthat responds to his critics regarding the comparison between abortion laws in Europe and the U.S.

This variation, in turn, gives us more data on the original question that my column asked: What happens to a modern society when abortion is restricted? And I don’t think that either Pollitt or Lemieux offered much of a rebuttal to my suggestion that Europe’s variations and their apparent consequences pose a problem for two commonplace pro-choice assumptions: That restrictions on abortion don’t actually reduce abortion rates (which appears to be true in neither the U.S. nor in Europe), and more importantly, that any restrictions on abortion are necessarily threats to female professional advancement and bodily health.

Kirsten Powers uses her latest column to point out how Wendy Davis doesn’t know what she’s talking about when she speaks on abortion. 

Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed.  Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria.

Politico has an article on the GAO’s investigation into Planned Parenthood.

On Friday, the GAO confirmed to POLITICO that the request from the lawmakers was accepted and an investigation opened. No press release or pubic statement was put out by the office at the time.

Chuck Young, GAO managing director of public affairs, said the scope of the investigation was still being determined, and no completion date had been set.

Life Links 8/8/13

Salon has a piece by Katie McDonough in which fetal pain is called “a lie.”  McDonough’s cited sources for this conclusion is one review of studies by abortion advocates and late-term abortionist Anne Davis, who is also the consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health.  Davis claims children (born or unborn) can’t feel pain until 26 weeks.  This might be one reason Davis is so opposed to fetal pain legislation. 

“Patients are now asking me about fetal pain. This was not happening 15 years ago,” Davis says. “When you’re sitting in your office with a woman who is 22 weeks into a pregnancy with a severe fetal anomaly — she’s depressed, she’s stressed and now she’s worried, ‘Is my baby going to feel pain?’ It’s just another thing these women have to struggle with. And why? These are created concerns. They are not based in science, they are based in politics.”

 
Cleveland Right to Life is no longer affiliated with National Right to Life after CRTL added opposition to same-sex marriage to their mission statement. 

 
In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson tries to defend Wendy Davis and attack Erick Erickson for his “Abortion Barbie” tweet.  I’m not surprised Davidson doesn’t include Davis’ actual quote.  Here’s how Davidson describes the exchange:

Kermit Gosnell was the doctor convicted on murder charges after running an unsafe, illegal operation. Davis had answered a question about him and, after saying that she didn’t know much about the case, had gotten a fact about it wrong. (It had to do with whether Gosnell’s clinic was licensed as an ambulatory-surgical center.) Davis, who has a degree from Harvard Law School, rightly pointed out its disconnect from the Texas bill.    

Had gotten a fact wrong about it?  Yeah, she got wrong the only thing she said about it (her incorrect claim that Gosnell was operating a surgical ambulatory facility) and I don’t know how you could think there is a “disconnect” between tightening regulations on abortion clinics and the reality that Gosnell was allowed to operate without being inspected for more than a decade. 


Yesterday, an ambulance was called to Mississippi’s only abortion clinic.

The Clarion-Ledger reached out to Jackson Women’s Health Organization owner Diane Derzis but she declined to comment.

Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen issued a court filing that hospitals in Wisconsin can’t deny admitting privileges to abortionists just because they provide abortions

Federal law "provides that hospitals accepting federal funds may not discriminate against a physician because that physician has participated in or refused to participate in abortions," the state Justice Department said in its filing in federal court.

According to experts on federal law, if doctors can prove they were not granted privileges specifically because they perform the procedure, the hospital systems — Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Columbia St. Mary's Health System and Hospital Sisters Health System — could lose federal dollars in the form of research and public health grants.

Life Links 8/6/13

Texas Senator Wendy Davis apparently seems to think Kermit Gosnell and Douglas Karpen are the same abortionist.  When asked by the Weekly Standard about Gosnell, she gave this response.         

I don't know what happened in the Gosnell case. But I do know that it happened in an ambulatory surgical center. And in Texas changing our clinics to that standard obviously isn't going to make a difference.

Only Gosnell’s clinic was obviously not a surgical ambulatory facility.  But you know whose is?  Texas abortionist Douglas Karpen.  The same abortionist who was exposed for killing infants who survived abortion (just like Kermit Gosnell) and has been called the Texas Gosnell.  Either Davis got the two confused or isn't aware they're different people.  


The landlord of building which will soon house a Sacramento abortion clinic made a deal with the clinic regarding how many abortions they would perform in a year because he “didn’t want them to turn into an abortion clinic.” 

He said the amount of Women's Health Specialists' business related to abortions is less than 5 percent.

"It's not some abortion clinic that's cranking out abortions," he said. "They provide all kind of health services. Ninety-five percent of their services are non-abortion-related."

Still, he said, he did negotiate with Women's Health Specialists to place a "tight" restriction on the number of abortions that they could perform at the location. He declined, however, to specify the number.

"I didn't want them to turn into an abortion clinic," he said. "I want to do a good job as a landlord. I'm surprised that anyone is concerned about this."

The Irish Medicines Board has detained more than 250 abortion pills so far this year.

The IMB, in conjunction with the Revenue’s Customs Service and gardaí, monitors and investigates instances of the illegal supply of such produces via the internet, “and actively enforces against suspected breaches of the law”, a spokeswoman said.....

A total of 259 tablets have been detained in 10 consignments since the start of 2013. Of these, 256 contained misoprostol and three mifepristone.

Last year, 487 abortifacient tablets were seized, of which 471 contained misoprostol and 16 mifepristone, from 25 detentions. A total of 635 tablets were seized in 2011 from 28 detentions.

Life Links 8/2/13

Another North Carolina abortion clinic failed their inspection.  The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services found the clinic wasn’t complying with 23 rules. 

In addition to other findings, the survey found the facility:
• Failed to maintain anesthesia (nitrous oxide gas) delivery systems in good working condition, with torn masks and tubing held together with tape. This could lead to patients not receiving the intended dosage and risk patients not being fully sedated during surgical procedures, leading to pain and physical harm.
 • Failed to ensure emergency equipment had weekly checks to ensure the equipment was suitable for use in patient care and failed to ensure that emergency medicine wasn't expired.
• Failed to have a resuscitator available.
• Failed to sweep and mop the operating room floor and failed to properly clean operating room beds.
• Failed to have a director of nursing responsible and accountable for all nursing services.
• Failed to have an agreement/contract with an anesthetist or anesthesiologist.
• Failed to have an agreement/contract with a registered pharmacist to assure appropriate methods, procedures and controls for obtaining, dispensing, and administering drugs.   

 FEMCARE, Inc.'s last inspection was on January 16, 2007, a follow up inspection of a previous survey, which found the clinic in violation of personnel and quality assurance rules.

Kirsten Powers has a column in the Washington Post on the Delaware Planned Parenthood whistleblowers.

After Vasikonis and Mitchell-Werbrich aired their complaints at the first state Senate hearing in June, the abortion-rights Web site “RH Reality Check” said that, “The nurses’ allegations have not been substantiated by any other source.”  How many sources are needed? What better “source” is there than two abortion-rights nurses who saw it first hand? Vasikonis told me, “I am a liberal, and I have been shocked that liberal Democrats, who I thought had supported women, would turn their backs on women’s health safety just to support abortion rights.”

Yes, it is sad that the people who are always lecturing us about how they are the only ones who care about women ignored the pleas of their own employees. Until they went public, of course. Makes you wonder how many other clinics are operating like this.

The New York Times is covering the fetal pain legislation in their typical manner today.  I did find this quote by Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights to be notable.

The Supreme Court, including Justice Kennedy, has repeatedly affirmed viability as the point at which the state’s interest in protecting life outweighs a woman’s right to control her body, Ms. Northup noted.

“There is no other line that is workable,” she said. “It is an appropriate line to draw.” 

Life Links 8/1/13

Mollie Hemingway has a great point on the national media turning a blind eye towards Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid fraud. 

It’s so confusing how a private breast cancer charity choosing not to give Planned Parenthood a couple hundred thousand dollars generated thousands of stories but that same abortion group paying a $1.4 million $4.3 million fraud settlement doesn’t generate hardly any.

   
Nightline went to the last abortion clinic in Mississippi.

Is it me or is it really odd to be using a hula-hoop while holding a sign “I Do Not Regret My Abortion”? 

Also, think about how thoughtless abortion clinic owner Diane Derzis' comment is regarding whether she’s wrong about the morality of abortion.  If she's wrong it may be between Derzis and God but she’d be partially responsible for the death of thousands of people and the possibility of that doesn't faze her. 


The new abortion regulation law in Texas may lower the number of Mexican women who cross the border for abortions. 

With limited options, Mexican women routinely cross the border to seek services at abortion clinics in Texas.

“It would be a great impact because some of those women will have nowhere to go,” said Gerri Laster, administrative director of Reproductive Services.

It’s one of the few clinics where women in the region can get abortions.

Thirty percent of the El Paso clinic’s patients are women from Mexico. Some live just across the border in Ciudad Juarez, but others travel from the interior of Mexico, including Aguascalientes, Durango and Sonora.

Life Links 7/30/13

Abortionist Nicola Riley has been allowed to keep her Utah medical license despite almost killing a woman in Maryland and at one point being charged with murder.  All she has to do is write an essay. 

A Salt Lake City doctor once accused of murder for a botched abortion in Maryland will be allowed to keep her medical license in Utah.

Utah's Physician Licensing Board ruled recently that Dr. Nicola Riley could keep her license so long as she writes an essay about what she learned from the 2010 incident, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.....

In August 2010, Riley performed an abortion at a clinic in Elkton, Md., however, the 18-year-old patient's uterus ruptured. The young woman survived, but Maryland prosecutors got an indictment against her on murder and conspiracy charges.

Another former employee of Planned Parenthood of Delaware is set to testify about the dangerous practices at their clinic. 

Former manager Melody Meanor and two nurses said they will testify today at a legislative hearing in Wilmington that Planned Parenthood failed to inform as many as 200 women that they tested positive for gonorrhea and chlamydia, and failed to notify 87 women of results of their colposcopies.

The city of Portland officials are looking into options to limit a group who have been protesting at a local abortion clinic. 

Since last summer, 10 to 20 protesters have stood outside the clinic every Friday morning with pictures of aborted fetuses and pamphlets to discourage clients from choosing abortion. More recently, they have been showing up on Saturday mornings, too.

City officials said in December they were looking into their legal options for limiting the protests, but the matter has not come before the council and the meeting Tuesday is seen by some as a possible first step in the process.

Legislators in Tasmania’s Upper House are hearing testimony on a bill to legalize abortion up to 16 weeks. 

Life Links 7/25/13

A Green Bay, Wisconsin clinic which performed abortions will no longer after being bought.  The abortionist, Robert DeMott agreed to no longer perform abortions after selling his Ob/Gyn Associates clinic to Bellin Health System.  Ob/Gyn Associates was the only abortion provider in Green Bay.

In the declaration by DeMott, he acknowledges the sale to Bellin, indicates he will become an employee of Bellin, and as a condition of employment with Bellin he says, "I may not provide abortion services to any patient."

      
In light of the J.J. Redick abortion contract, New York Magazine’s Kat Stoeffel writes that an abortion contract has “practical potential.”

Abortion can be kind of heavy, so abortion contracts should be lighthearted and verbal — along the lines of “our objective is not procreation, pinky swear” — and definitely precoital. When they are hashed out after the fact, abortion contracts can become contentious, expensive, and even a little supernatural, as it did for abortion-contract pioneer and NBA player J.J. Redick.

The Washington Post discovers that most people (including the majority of Democrats) would prefer abortions to be restricted after 20 weeks.  The poll also found that only 1% of people volunteered the opinion that abortion should be "always legal" compared to 8% who volunteered "never legal." 

Life Links 7/23/13

RH RealityCheck has another post in which a child who was born alive and left to die in a dumpster is described as a fetus.  RHReality Check’s Senior Legal Analyst Jessica Mason Pieklo has this description of local authorities prosecuting a woman who left her child (who was born around 30 weeks gestation and whom the coroner says breathed after being born alive) to die in a dumpster then lied about giving birth and the child’s gestational age to authorities.

The State of Indiana is prosecuting another woman for a failed pregnancy, this time charging a woman with felony neglect after a fetus was found in a dumpster. Prosecutors had originally considered charging the woman with feticide, like in the case of Bei Bei Shuai. Either way, the state has made it clear any pregnancy that does not result in a successful live birth will be viewed first and foremost as a probable crime, which is a terrifying reality for women in the state.             

It wasn’t a failed pregnancy and the reason the state didn't charge her with feticide was because the child wasn't a fetus.  The evidence clearly suggests that Purvi Patel ordered abortion drugs online, took them, gave birth to an approximately 30-week child at her home, and then disposed of her child (who was born alive) in a dumpster.  Pregnancies that don't result in successful live births will probably only be viewed as a possible crime if the mothers lie about being pregnant, lie about their gestational age, and dump their born alive child in a dumpster.


The New York Times has a promotional puff piece on Senator Wendy Davis.  I’ve seen EMILY’s List e-mails promoting candidates less effusively than this. 

She was an overnight sensation.

In short order, she pumped life into the moribund Texas Democratic Party, recharged the state’s women’s movement, raised nearly $1 million in two weeks for her re-election campaign and, not least, was beseeched by supporters and some in her party to run for governor in 2014, which might be a quixotic quest in a state that has not elected a Democrat to that office in 20 years.

A building with an abortion clinic in El Paso has a “for lease” sign in the window but clinic employees say the clinic doesn’t plan on closing. 

But a woman who answered the phone at the Hill Top Women's Reproductive Clinic on Schuster Avenue said it had no plans to close. Another woman who returned a phone call said another building on the same property had been up for lease for several years.

Two people in India are being held after a young woman died after an abortion. 

Police said the victim and the man, identified as Deepak from Dadri, had been in a relationship. On realizing that the victim was pregnant, Deepak arranged for an abortion. He took the victim to a quack, Nisha Rani, who allegedly performed an illegal abortion on July 18. During the procedure, the victim allegedly became serious which scared Deepak. He then decided to rush her to Naveen Hospital where he abandoned the victim and fled, police said.

Life Links 7/22/13

In 2012, a woman who traveled from Ireland to Great Britain for an abortion died in a taxi cab after having an abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic. 

The woman died in January 2012. An inquest has not yet been held into the woman's death as the police investigation is continuing.

The woman's husband, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he was still waiting for answers but was frustrated at the lack of progress.

"I think if this was an Irish or a British woman, we would know what happened to her. But I am still waiting for answers," he told the Irish Times in Dublin.

Ross Douthat on the Texas abortion experiment: 

In the first case, many European countries already have versions of Texas’s late-term abortion ban on the books. France, Germany and Italy all ban abortions after the first trimester, and impose waiting periods as well.

Notably, these nations tend to have lower abortion rates than the United States, and none of them are exactly reactionary dystopias in the style of Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale.” So the European experience suggests that at least some abortion restrictions are compatible with equality and female advancement.

The man in Ireland who claimed his girlfriend was being forced into an abortion by her family has dropped his attempt to get an injunction after his girlfriend said she wasn’t proceeding with the abortion.

Counsel said the woman had sworn a statement in reply to the man's claims. While no details contained in the statement were revealed in open court, counsel said his client was "happy to put faith" in the statement and "matters would continue as at present in relation to the pregnancy".

The couple, who cannot be identified by order of the court, are both foreign nationals and reside in Ireland.

They sat beside each other and held hands during the short hearing. 

Life Links 7/19/13

Sharon Griggs, the editor of the Dallas News, writes about how her position on abortion has changed over the years and how she didn’t find HB2 in Texas to be unreasonable.

Fast forward to House Bill 2, the sweeping and controversial abortion regulations bill. While my thinking hasn’t moved to the place that I’m ready to lead a board revolt to change our pro-choice stand and call for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, neither do I think the provisions of House Bill 2 are unreasonable.

When our board debated the restrictions in this bill, I couldn’t really find a lot of fault in the rules. I certainly think the 20-week limit is reasonable. And I don’t think the surgical center rules — even being able to get a gurney through the door — are unreasonable. I recognize that almost never does something go wrong in an abortion procedure, but it can. The “admitting privileges” at a nearby hospital is troublesome, but not so much that I think it was cause to oppose the bill.

In Indiana, a woman named Purvi Patel has been charged with felony neglect of a dependent after putting her premature newborn child into a dumpster. 

The affidavit alleges Patel took drugs she ordered from Hong Kong to induce an abortion, but gave birth to a live baby that a forensic pathologist determined was born at least 7 months from conception.......

Last Saturday, hospital staff called police when Patel went to an emergency room bleeding, with the umbilical cord still protruding, but had no baby with her.

Patel told doctors she had never been pregnant but later told them she miscarried and put the body in the Dumpster behind the Mishawaka restaurant that she manages.

The affidavit says a forensic pathologist concluded the infant could have survived outside of the womb and did take a breath after it was born.

RHReality Check’s Robin Marty repeatedly describes the dead newborn child in the case as a “fetus.”


Abortionist James Pendergraft has reopened his Orlando clinic which closed after debt collectors removed equipment.

Media decides to investigate deceptive pro-choice claims after legislation passes

It’s funny how Reuters decided to investigate the absurd claim which was repeated non-stop that only 5 clinics in Texas would stay open after their prolife legislation passed.  Why they didn't investigate these claims while the legislation was being debated and making national news is anyone's guess.

Twenty-six states have laws that require abortion clinics to meet varying levels of hospital standards, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Pennsylvania, Virginia and Missouri passed strict health and safety rules similar to Texas, it said.

In those three states, however, most clinics were able to stay open after the laws passed, some by reallocating dollars to comply with building upgrades, according to abortion providers and state health department officials interviewed by Reuters.....

 Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights but does research cited by both sides, said the new law will have an impact in Texas but maybe less than the worst fears.

"Clinics will close," she said. "But I can't say we are going to go down to six."
                                  
.........

Only one clinic has closed in Virginia since a new law was implemented there earlier this year, the state health department said. No clinics have closed in Missouri because of a tough law passed there in 2007, abortion provider Planned Parenthood of Kansas and mid-Missouri said.

Life Links 7/18/13

I would suggest women stay far away from Jessy Jordan Holtzkamp if he ever gets out of prison.

From Pierce County Jail

Holtzkamp, a second-year high school senior, told an officer he was too young to be a father and wanted the unborn child to be aborted or not be born alive, according to the complaint.

When the officer told Holtzkamp his situation would be worsened if Alters-Meulemans suffered a miscarriage, he replied, "Why I wanted that to happen; I would love for that to happen," according to the complaint.

After he was advised he was being booked into jail on suspicion of attempted first-degree homicide of an unborn child, Holtzkamp "started making himself out to be a celebrity, stating, 'We got a murderer up in here,' " and then started singing a song about killing the baby, the complaint states.

When an officer asked him if he felt any remorse for trying to kill the fetus, he replied, "Hell naw," according to the complaint. 

Mary Kate Cary on legislation to regulate abortion clinics like surgical facilities. 

What does having a doorway 32 inches wide have to do with having a safe abortion? Not a thing, say abortion rights advocates. In fact, they argue that state restrictions on abortion clinics are arbitrary, cosmetic and aimed at ending women's access to reproductive health care services. But that 32-inch rule isn't from out of the blue: it is in the Life Safety Code (LSC), which is now part of the U.S. Code and was originally written by the National Fire Protection Association. The LSC regulates everything from exit signs to sprinklers to revolving doors to elevators – you name it – in day care centers, health clinics, hotels, schools, prisons, businesses and homes across America. Alabama's latest abortion law, for example, doesn't mention 32-inch doors anywhere; it simply says abortion clinics must abide by the LSC.

And so when I read that several states have required abortion clinics to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers – with doorways wide enough for ambulance gurneys, in case things go wrong – that didn't strike me as "extremist" or a "war on women." It struck me as common sense. I've been in a situation where a gurney couldn't fit through a door to help save someone who was dying, and it was horrendous. It's also common sense to have nurses on duty, a safe blood supply, and a hospital within 30 miles. Having a doctor with hospital admitting privileges, so there won't be an hourslong wait in the emergency room, seems like a good idea too.
   

Former rock singer and bass player Suzi Quarto still thinks about her abortion after more than 40 years.

The former rocker fell pregnant shortly after striking up an affair with a married man at the age of 18, and she decided not to keep the baby.....

"I would have loved to have had that baby. Not a year goes by when I don't think about it - what that child would be like, how old they would be," she told Britain's Daily Mail.

Life Links 7/17/13

A woman in Texas is making and selling voodoo dolls of Governor Rick Perry and donating the proceeds to Planned Parenthood.

"I was inspired to make them because I wanted to figure out something I could make that would send a message and raise money for Planned Parenthood," said Sinched. "What's better than sticking pins in Gov. Goodhair or burning him at your own doll sized stake? I would probably best describe myself as pro choice and pro life. No one ever wants to face the abortion choice but it happens. I believe no one has the right to make that choice but the woman it affects.

Governor Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island vetoed a Choose Life license plate bill because he claims it violates the separation of church and state. 

Chafee wrote to lawmakers in his veto message that the function of a license plate is "to register and identify a motor vehicle."

"It is my belief that state participation in the transmission of funds to this organization would violate the separation of church and state, one of the fundamental principles upon which our state was founded," he wrote.           

A man in Ireland is trying to prevent his girlfriend from going to Great Britain for an abortion.  He claims she is being pressured by her family.

He says his girlfriend's family is of the view she will be ruined if she has a child with a non-white man. The couple are both foreign nationals.

The man sought court orders to stop his girlfriend leaving Ireland until it can be established she is acting from her own free will.

The orders were not granted but his girlfriend did come to court this afternoon.

Texas Senator Wendy Davis should really provide some evidence for this claim about post 20 week abortions.

In nearly all of these cases, a family in tragic circumstances has had to make the difficult and private decision to let go of a much-wanted pregnancy because of a major medical concern.

                   
Also, notice how Davis brushes off the 20-week ban because post-20 week abortions are only 1% of abortions but then says the lack of a rape exception is "no small matter."  Rape is typically given as a reason for around 1% of all abortions and in all likelihood an even smaller percentage for women who have abortions after 20 weeks.  Logic fail. 

Life Links 7/16/13

Rich Lowry on the abortion extremism of Texas Senator Wendy Davis:

Davis likes to say that fewer than 1 percent of abortions in Texas take place the 20th week or later, without realizing how that damns her own case. By her own admission, she is not willing to give up even 1 percent of abortions. Nationally, opponents of the 20-week prohibition cite the same 1 percent statistic. Even if it is accurate — and no one can know for sure — that means 8,000 abortions a year after 20 weeks.

The New York Times is getting two writers for the price of one with David Leonhardt.  He writes:

About 60 percent of Americans favor access to abortion in the first trimester (or first 12 weeks) of pregnancy, but close to 70 percent think it should be illegal in the second trimester, according to Gallup.

Then later in the same article:

Perhaps the best weapon of abortion rights advocates is their opponents' extremism. The Texas bill, for instance, would close most of the state's abortion providers and ban the procedure after 20 weeks, without exceptions for rape or incest. A clear majority of Americans support such exceptions, as well as those for the health of the mother, polls show.                    

So 70% of Americans think abortions should be legal in second trimester but prolifers are extreme for backing a bill which would make late second trimester abortions illegal?  He noticeably doesn't link to any poll showing a clear majority of Americans favoring exceptions for rape and the health of the mother after 20 weeks.

       
Buried deep in the Washington Post article on the closure of the NOVA abortion clinic in Virginia show more than clinic regulations is effecting this clinic.

In addition, the filings said, NOVA clients had been seen regularly inside the building "lying down in corridors . . . and, in some instances, even vomiting." One filing said witnesses would testify that this was a daily occurrence.

Also, the apparent transfer of ownership interest from Mi Yong Kim to Taehyun Kim, which Eaton Place alleged was a full transfer, would have constituted an illegal sublet of the fifth-floor office space, the suit said. These issues constituted violations of NOVA's lease, Eaton Place alleged, asking that the tenant be declared in default. Eaton Place's lawyer, Sean Roche, declined to comment.....

In April, Eaton Place sued NOVA in Fairfax General District Court for failure to pay $95,000 in back rent. In June, NOVA agreed to pay the back rent and surrender the space, court records show.

In India, 4 people have been arrested for kidnapping a teenager and forcing her to have an abortion. 

According to API Walmik Patil of Palghar police station, Sandeep Balwant, 36, a resident of Jiwdani Nagar of Palghar East was in a illicit relationship with the girl from the same locality following she became pregnant.

Balwant then threatened the girl into silence and forcibly took her to Vaishali Nursing Home and got their child aborted, the complaint by the victim's mother said.

Life Links 7/11/13

The New York Times has a long article on abortionist Stephen Brigham, his abortion caravans and how Maryland regulates abortion clinics.

Dr. Brigham, who was not licensed to practice in Maryland, had not even been required to notify the state health department when he set up the Elkton center to complete late-term abortions, after about the 14th week of pregnancy. He initiated the procedures in New Jersey, where he was not authorized to perform them, then led his startled patients to Maryland, where the abortions were completed......

As he had with dozens of other patients over the previous months, Dr. Brigham began the young woman's procedure at his clinic in Voorhees Township, N.J., initiating the cervical dilation of the woman, who was 21.5 weeks pregnant, and using a standard injection to kill the fetus.

The next morning, he led the puzzled patient, her mother and boyfriend, along with two other patients, in a car caravan 60 miles south, across Delaware, to the clinic in an unlabeled suite in Elkton. There, Dr. Brigham advised Dr. Nicola I. Riley, who had a Maryland license but limited experience in late-term abortions, as she administered anesthesia and began extracting the fetus. "It seemed like he was training her," the patient later testified.

Soon, Dr. Riley testified, she realized that she was tugging not on the fetus but on intestinal tissue, indicating a potentially life-threatening perforation of the patient's uterus and damaged bowel.

Illinois' Supreme Court will finally let the state's parental notification law take effect.  It was passed in 1995.  The law will be enforced in 35 days. 

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday to uphold a circuit court's earlier dismissal of the case challenging the parental notification law filed by a Granite City women's health clinic and a doctor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The decision means the state's parental notification law now has to be enforced - unless there's an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In its opinion, the court noted that the nation's high court has found parental notification laws to be constitutional.

"Those precedents were followed here to find no due process or equal protection violation in Illinois," the court wrote.            

PoltiFact Ohio gives Rachel Maddow a "pants on fire" rating for her recent comments about a prolife ultrasound law in Ohio.

In interpreting some of the budget's more-ambiguous abortion language, Maddow contended that the new regulations included a "mandatory vaginal probe at the insistence of the state."
.......
 In other words, not only are external methods such as transabdominal ultrasounds allowed under the new law; they are required. That sinks Maddow's claim of a "mandatory vaginal probe."

We reached out to MSNBC and asked representatives if Maddow had anything more to say, but we did not hear back from them.