Life Links 2/28/11

According to Jim Geraghty, Planned Parenthood will be spending $200,000 to play the ad below which stresses their need for tax dollars. Notably missing is any mention of the a-word.



Robert George discusses Bernard Nathanson's prolife conversion at Public Discourse.

Fourth, the abortion movement sought to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike by promoting feticide as a way of fighting poverty. Why are so many people poor? It's because they have more children than they can afford to care for. What's the solution? Abortion. Why do we have to spend so much money on welfare? It's because poor, mainly minority, women are burdening the taxpayer with too many babies. The solution? Abortion. Initially, Nathanson himself believed that legal abortion and its public funding would reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and poverty, though (as he later admitted) he continued to promote this falsehood after the sheer weight of evidence forced him to disbelieve it.

A new Planned Parenthood facility is opening today near San Francisco.

"And while most of our clients are not high school students, some of them are," Estes said. "Those students in particular don't always have access to cars, so being close to the high school was important. It was a combination of factors that made this the best space for us."

Pastor Pat Michaels of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Oakdale Ave. was less enthused than Estes about the arrival of a clinic that would be providing abortions.

The article also notes how Planned Parenthood has been able to move back into the San Francisco area so quickly after disaffiliating the former Planned Parenthood Golden Gate.

Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific has received about $1 million in donations to help fund its expansion, including grants from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Estes said.

Melanie Phillips writes in the Daily Mail about the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' latest guidance.

This guidance, intended for all doctors, nurses and counsellors advising women contemplating having an abortion, said such women should be told that terminating a pregnancy was safer than having a baby.
To which one can only ask: safer for whom, precisely? Not for the baby, certainly.

This is not meant to be a flip comment. For the point is that these doctors seemed to have totally lost sight of some basic humanity here.

Overheard: Pro-choice blogger says planned child was "an alien life form"

Pro-choice blogger Left Hand of Feminism discusses her two abortions and then how she felt when she was pregnant with a planned child.

The next time I got pregnant I meant to. I got really sick again–but it was, as a dear friend and ob-gyn told me, “a good sick.” I did not enjoy being pregnant. I felt invaded by an alien life form. I had been invaded by an alien life form, albeit one who shared some of my genes. But I choose to bring it to term, and I was very lucky that he turned out to be healthy and beautiful and himself. I was ready for him–although it still seemed too soon.

Former commenter arrested by the FBI

I knew SoMG/Operation Counterstrike/Theodore Shulman had some serious issues when he left like 20 comments on my blog under 4 different names during a night in which no one responded to him. I didn't know his issues went so far as to threaten violence against prolifers.

Friday Big Girl Blogging

Snow fun

Life Links 2/25/11

The prolife billboard in New York which caused a stir has been taken down after the advertising company feared for public safety. Pro-choicers had apparently been harassing staff at a nearby restaurant.


I wonder if William Saletan's latest piece which discusses a number of abortionist horror stories in a variety of states will get any pro-choice bloggers to get off the company line that prolife laws are what led to Gosnell's clinic.

The clinic's owner, Barbara Lofton, blamed reports of her recklessness on the pro-life views of the local paramedic chief. He denied that he held such views. Months later, on 60 Minutes, Lofton's former employees and patients alleged that she had practiced medicine without a license and had nearly killed a patient by botching her abortion. CBS correspondent Meredith Vieira reported that "many pro-choice leaders knew about problems at Hillview but didn't want them publicized. National Abortion Federation head Barbara Radford admitted she was just hoping we would go away."

Nor were these leaders eager to address the underlying problem: Maryland had no laws for abortion clinics or outpatient surgery centers. Anesthesia and emergency medicine in these facilities were unregulated. That was why Lofton had moved her clinic to Maryland when the District of Columbia ordered her to stop performing abortions without a clinic license. A pro-choice legislator in Maryland had sought to regulate clinics but had met resistance from her colleagues. "There's only so much of a willingness to try to push ... the pro-choice movement to do what I think is the responsible thing to do," the lawmaker lamented, "because they then treat you as if you're the enemy."

The country of Hungary is so desperate for children that they're extending maternity leave to 3 years along with a variety of other measures including the possibility of giving parents more voting rights. Plans to ban abortion were scrapped.


The prolife group at Carelton University in Canada is suing their university for discrimination.

The $225,000 lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court on Feb. 18 by Carleton students Ruth Lobo and John McLeod claims the university breached its own human rights policies and procedures by refusing to let a campus club called Carleton Lifeline set up a controversial display featuring large images of aborted fetuses and genocide atrocities in the Tory Quad, a high-traffic square at the centre of campus. (University officials offered the group space at a different spot.)

Claiming the university was trying to censor its message by suggesting the group set up its displays in an alternative location, Carleton Lifeline attempted to set up its display in Tory Quad last October and were arrested by Ottawa police and campus security.

Virginia passes abortion clinic regulation bill

The Virginia Senate, in a 20-20 vote (where the Lt. Gov. had to play tie-breaker), passed a bill to regulate abortion clinics like hospitals.

Abortion rights advocates say it will make the state one of the most restrictive for abortions in the country and could force as many as 17 of the state's 21 abortion clinics to close.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has said he will sign the bill, which gives the state's Board of Health 280 days from the law's enactment to write new rules for clinics that perform at least five first-trimester abortions a month....

The practical impact of the vote will rest heavily on guidelines ultimately approved by the Virginia Board of Health. Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, said she fears the worst, though the 15-member board is dominated by holdover appointments made by former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).

Life Links 2/24/11

A prolife billboard in New York is drawing the ire of abortion advocates. Apparently, there's something racist about providing objective information regarding the dangers to unborn African-American children.


Rapper Kanye West tweeted about abortion and how it can cost men he knows $50,000-$100,000 to pay women they've impregnated (Kanye uses more colorful language) to get an abortion.


Part 6 of William Saletan's piece on dangerous abortion clinics in Florida and pro-choice efforts to prevent any type of regulations is up.

The draft bill released by the committee on March 5 was hardly earthshaking. Clinics would have to submit the names of their doctors to HRS as part of their annual license renewal. HRS would have to verify with DPR that each doctor was licensed. Anyone who leaked a doctor's name would be fired and charged with a first-degree misdemeanor. In fairness, and to close a loophole, the same rules would apply to any private doctor's office whose business was mostly abortions. Mary Grizzle, the bill's sponsor, wanted simple sanitation standards but agreed to propose none until Judge Gonzalez relaxed his injunction......

The rest of the pro-choice lobby—Florida NOW, POWAR, the ACLU, and the Florida Abortion Rights Action League—refused. They dismissed as persecution any crackdown aimed only at abortion clinics. They saw no proof that the unsavory conditions in south Florida had caused any injuries. At bottom, they believed that no law could be a good law.

The wife of prolife advocate Bryan Kemper recently miscarried.

As you may know Carrie and I lost a child this morning through miscarriage. I had to rush Carrie to the hospital as she was losing a lot of blood. The Doctor in the ER was able to stop the bleeding.

He updates that his wife will be able to go home today.

Trouble for Delaware abortion clinic which employed Kermit Gosnell

Delaware's AG's office wants the suspension of the medical licenses of two abortionists at the same clinic (Atlantic Women's Medical Services) where abortionist Kermit Gosnell worked part-time. Atlantic Women's Medical Services was certified by the National Abortion Federation up until it came to light that Gosnell worked there part-time.

Because of regulatory reforms passed last year after sex-abuse charges were lodged against Lewes pediatrician Earl B. Bradley, the board now has the ability to act on emergency complaints within 24 hours, meaning the two doctors -- Albert Dworkin and Arturo A. Apolinario -- may be suspended from practicing in Delaware as soon at this evening.......

Prosecutors charge that Dworkin knew or should have known about the "deplorable" conditions at Gosnell's clinic along with the substandard care that was provided to patients there, including "permitting unlicensed employees to administer drugs ... and perform examinations and procedures on patients ... and murdering babies born alive at the clinic."......

Delaware prosecutors also are asking the Board of Medical Licensure to issue an immediate cease-and-desist order against Atlantic's owner and sole shareholder, Panzy Myrie, charging she has been holding herself up in online advertisements as a doctor and gynecologist even though she has no license to practice medicine in Delaware.......

The Attorney General's Office also is asking the board to impose the maximum possible fines against Atlantic for the many violations of the doctors and the owner, which could be up to $10,000 for a first offense and up to $50,000 for subsequent violations.

Abortions up at Planned Parenthood again

In the least surprising news of the day, abortions provided at Planned Parenthood rose for the umpteenth year in a row. Their total for 2009 was 332,278 abortions. In the meantime, prenatal clients and adoption referrals were down.

Here's the Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet and ALL's press release.

From the ALL press release:

"Despite its protestations that abortion is only a small part of its services," said Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, "Planned Parenthood has increased its number of abortions for 15 straight years. During that time, it has gone from committing 9.3 percent of all abortions in the United States to committing 27.5 percent."

Sedlak also noted that Planned Parenthood now does 340 abortions for every one adoption referral and 47 abortions for every one prenatal care client.

Life Links 2/23/11

William Saletan has continued his piece on how pro-choice groups in Florida lobbied against abortion clinic regulations and how the lack of regulations allowed shoddy abortion clinics to stay open. In light of the Gosnell case, it really shows how abortion activists are all talk when it comes their claims about wanting abortion to be "safe."

The third scandal was worse still. More scrupulous abortion providers who considered the clinic unsavory had never filed a complaint or spoken out against it. A few months before the Herald article appeared, pro-choice activists who privately disdained the clinic had rallied to its premises to resist a pro-life blockade and to present a united pro-choice front to the media.

The cover-up effort extended even to the Herald story. In a letter representing three other clinic operators, Patricia Windle had asked the Herald's publisher to sit on the story until after the special session. Windle called the Dadeland clinic "wretched" but warned Sontag that "we don't want to give the hysterics weapons." She argued, as Sontag put it in her article, that "pro-choice advocates must maintain a hard line: that a woman is safer when abortion is legal. To acknowledge that in some instances women are still not so safe is to dilute the argument, to hand something over to the other side."

Two doctors in India have been sentenced to two years in prison for carrying out a sex-selection abortion. It appears the only reason they were caught was because they said the child was female when he was actually a male. This angered the family looking for a male child.


Legislation regulating abortion clinics which perform first-trimester abortions is headed for a vote in Virginia.


An illegal abortionist in Botswana who killed a woman is defending herself by saying that her illegal abortion practice is safe as long as the women don't lie about how far along they are.

Tshekiso argued that even though the accused conducted abortion on Maruping, the act is not the one which killed her because the accused had been performing this successfully in pregnant woman that were less than three months but never died.

“The deceased is the cause of her death because she deceived the accused telling her she was two months pregnant while she was five months in actual fact,” charged Tshekiso.

Overheard: Killer uses abortion to try to convince girlfriend to spouses

From The Independent:

Colin Howell tried to convince Hazel Stewart to go along with his murder plan by telling his lover her abortion proved she could kill, the court heard today.

The mother of two alleged the killer dentist used the depraved logic when he outlined his plot to kill his wife Lesley and her policeman husband Trevor Buchanan.

She told investigating officers: "He threw up my abortion - he said sure you've killed a child, what's the difference of killing other people."

Life Links 2/22/11

In India, two individuals have been arrested after a woman died during an abortion. Sounds like it might have been an sex-selective abortion.

Two persons, a head nurse of the district hospital here and the husband of a four-month-old pregnant woman were arrested after the woman died during abortion here, police sources said today. Deputy Superintendent of Police Girish Pandey said Sabatina Toppo, the head nurse of the district hospital, was conducting the abortion on 32-year-old Seema Devi in an illegal private clinic when she died in process last evening. Seema Devi's husband Lalan Prajapati, who brought her to the clinic and Toppa were arrested by the police after Devi's grandfather lodged an FIR in the town police station today. The two were arrested on the charge of conducting operation in an clinic being run illegally, causing death in the process as well as destroying female foetus, the DSP said.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier has a piece in the Huffington Post which seems to strongly indicate that she didn't have an abortion but rather she had a D and E to remove a miscarried child.

You admit guilt, but for me there was no guilt, only the pain of a pregnancy that did not work. The fetus had slipped from my uterus into my vagina and could not survive. To stave off a life-threatening infection and to keep the possibility of a future birth alive, I had what's called dilation and evacuation or "d & e." But for people, particularly my colleagues who don't want Planned Parenthood to be funded, I simply had an abortion.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the AP all have articles on the death of NARAL founder turned prolife advocate Bernard Nathanson.

Overheard

I enjoyed this Washington Post letter.

Letter writer Tony Gorman [Free for All, Feb. 12] chastised The Post for characterizing prenatal surgery patients as "babies" instead of "fetuses."

I understand his indignation. While I was pregnant, I searched desperately at the store for the section of clothes for women accommodating a parasitic womb inhabitant. Oddly, I found only the "maternity" section.

Other events during my pregnancy were puzzling as well - when the doctor found the heartbeat, I convinced myself that it was simply a mass of tissue beating in a rhythmic fashion.

One night, while I was resting on the couch, a little foot-like impression appeared on my belly, from the inside out. I dismissed that; it simply had to be intestinal.

My friends and I enjoyed cupcakes and tea for my "fetus shower"; what a joyous occasion.

Goodness, all during the pregnancy, I just loved my little ba-, I mean, fetus.

Kerry Haslam, Alexandria

Life Links 2/21/11

Here's the roll call on the Pence Amendment to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

David Freddoso writes about how Congress voted on the Pence Amendment including this about my representative, Congressman Justin Amash, who voted present.

I'd also point out that Justin Amash, R, a freshman from western Michigan, was the only member to vote "present." Here is the explanation he gives on his Facebook page:

Legislation that names a specific private organization to defund (rather than all organizations that engage in a particular activity) is improper and arguably unconstitutional. Moreover, the legislation is easily thwarted because the organization may simply change its name.

As a conservative, and as the Representative for the people of Michigan’s Third District, I cannot vote "yes" on legislation that violates the rule of law and does not take the process of legislating seriously. A responsible amendment—one that I would fully support—would defund all abortion providers. That is why I support Mike Pence’s H R 217, which cuts off all federal funds to any organization that performs an abortion—including Planned Parenthood.

I think he makes a mistake by accepting the premise that individual groups have some kind of right to federal money and that barring them is constitutionally dubious. No such right exists, and the Second Circuit Appeals Court ruled on the latter issue this last year when it upheld the ACORN defunding provision.

Two of the women who appeared alongside Markai Durham to talk about their abortions in MTV's No Easy Decision are hosting screenings of the show with Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin.

Natalia got involved with the MTV program because she was active in the reproductive rights community. Katie worked for Barack Obama’s campaign and got in touch with some people through her work with the National Abortion Right Action League.

Kacey Jordan, the "adult" film actress Charlie Sheen recently partied with, had an abortion in her home state of Oregon. Jordan told RadarOnline that she gets pregnant easily and has had 3 previous abortions.

Overheard - Pro-choice leader says pro-choice arguments are "failing us"

Former leader of Catholics for Choice, Frances Kissling in the Washington Post today:

Meanwhile, those of us in the abortion-rights movement have barely changed our approach. We cling to the arguments that led to victory in Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a private decision, we say, and the state has no power over a woman's body. Those arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us, and focusing on them only risks us all the gains we've made.....

We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. We can no longer seek to banish the state from our lives, but rather need to engage its power to improve women's lives....

The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event....

We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in the most extreme cases.....

If the choice movement does not change, control of policy on abortion will remain in the hands of those who want it criminalized. If we don't suggest sensible balanced legislation and regulation of abortion, we will be left with far more draconian policies - and, eventually, no choices at all.

Life Links 2/18/11

Pennsylvania newspapers have requested information about a court case where a minor was denied a parental consent waiver be open to the public.

Last March, a pregnant teenager three months shy of her 18th birthday asked an Allegheny County judge if she could have an abortion without her parents' consent.

Judge Philip Ignelzi said no.

His denial launched a legal battle in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that could change a state law that has allowed teenagers to obtain abortions without their parents' permission since it took effect in 1983......

The high court's decision to review the case, including whether the law requires parental consent, has galvanized groups on both sides of the abortion issue.

It also has prompted a petition from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and several other media companies to make the court decision public.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has released two opinions which could prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving state family planning funds.

The rulings stem from a request made by Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, who has not hidden his desire to get Planned Parenthood clinics out of the state's Women's Health Program. Deuell says the 2005 law that created the program should exclude them already. It says that participating clinics can't "perform or promote election abortions" or be "affiliates" of those that do.

But HHSC has for years overlooked the rule, fearing that barring Planned Parenthood clinics might be unconstitutional. After Deuell asked the AG for an opinion, HHSC Commissioner Tom Suehs sent in his own request for an opinion, asking the AG if HHSC had the authority to define the term "affiliate."

Abbott says there's no constitutional problem, and that the state is within its rights to exclude certain types of providers from Medicaid programs. He also said HHSC is within its rights to define the word "affiliate."

An Indiana county has settled a lawsuit with traveling abortionist George Klopfer.

The law, known as the Patient Safety Ordinance, requires doctors who practice in Allen County but don’t live there to designate a local backup doctor, so that doctor can treat patients who experience complications.....

Klopfer sued, arguing the enforcement provisions – which required patients to sign a form saying they had been given contact information for the backup doctor – violated privacy statutes because the ordinance allowed county officials to inspect the forms.

County Commissioner Nelson Peters, who championed the law, said the settlement keeps all the key provisions of the law in place, but drops the ability of county officials to inspect the forms.

Congresswoman talks about her abortion(?) on House floor

According to a FOX News blog and The Hill a congresswoman from California named Jackie Speier told the House of Representatives she had an abortion.

A contentious debate over blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer money took an unexpected turn just before midnight Thursday when Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) shocked her colleagues by announcing on the House floor that she once had an abortion.

Just before Speier assumed the floor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), one of the most ardent anti-abortion voices in Congress, spent several minutes reading explicit descriptions of what happened to one woman when she had an abortion.

"I planned to speak about something else. But the gentleman from New Jersey just put my stomach in knots," Speier began. "I'm one of those women he spoke about just now. I had a procedure at 17 weeks pregnant with a child who moved from the vagina into the cervix. The procedure you just described is the procedure I endured."

I'm not sure if she was misquoted but an unborn child can't move from the vagina (did she mean uterus/womb?) into the cervix.

The Hill article includes this quote:

“I lost the baby. And for you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous,” Speier said, glaring at the Republicans on the other side of the aisle.

That makes it sound like she had a miscarriage and then the child was removed after he or she died.

A Washington Post article notes that Representative Smith was reading Abby Johnson's description of an ultrasound guided abortion from her book unPlanned.

How pro-choicers keep dangerous abortion clinics open

William Saletan has a piece at Slate, part of which was originally intended for his book, regarding the factions in the abortion industry on how pro-choice organizations refused to speak up against subpar abortion clinics.

But much of what's documented in the Philadelphia report—unsanitary conditions, sloppy anesthesia, unlicensed practitioners, busted emergency equipment, lax record-keeping, and a patient's death—was found in the Florida clinics, too. And when legislators tried to step in, abortion rights advocates stopped them.......

Providers varied considerably in motives and quality. Insiders divided them evenly into two categories: mission clinics and entrepreneurs. Mission clinics often operated in rural areas, especially in central and north Florida. The only people willing to perform abortions in the face of the hostility common to such regions were those driven by moral commitment. Most were maverick feminists. Where nobody else would meet women's needs, they would. Entrepreneurs favored more profitable, tolerant, and anonymous urban areas. If business went bad, they would pack up and turn to other trades. But the mission clinics would find a way to stay open......

Twenty-three clinics in Florida belonged neither to NAF nor to FLAC. Some had failed to meet the requisite standards. Others hadn't bothered to apply. Nearly all were entrepreneurial. Most were owned by doctors. Many were concentrated in a stretch of south Florida, around Miami, that was foreign to leaders of the clinic associations. These clinics didn't cooperate with the associations on peer review. They enjoyed the legal protections hard won by activist providers but shared none of the work or expense. And stories about them, involving dissatisfied patients and substandard care, circulated among the more responsible clinics.

In south Florida, conscientious providers privately blacklisted the bad clinics and avoided referring women to them. Many referred patients only to NAF or FLAC members. But making this private rating system public seemed unthinkable. As little as the good providers trusted the bad ones, they trusted the government less. Nothing would make them break their silence. Not even a woman's death.

Life Links 2/17/11

In Canada, the speech police have again gone after another prolife club. This time at Victoria University where the Students' Society has ruled the prolife group Youth Protecting Youth violated the university's harassment policy by comparing abortion to the Holocaust.

"Because many students on campus are capable of having abortions and/or are students of Jewish decent, YPY should have reasonably thought to have known that using marketing materials for their presentation, which compares the Holocaust to abortion, could reasonably create a hostile, intimidating, threatening or humiliating environment on campus for individuals of the student body," said UVic Students' Society chair James Coccola. "In this case, we felt that the harassment policy was broken by YPY."

The censure is little more than a public disapproval, Coccola said, confirming that YPY's club status, reinstated last spring in B.C. Supreme Court, is not in question.

In Slate, Dave Weigel discusses the pro-choice movement's strategy:

1) Wait for the pro-life movement, now at an apex of political power, to do something stupid.
2) Pounce on the stupid thing that it just did.
3) Repeat.

In California, a man named Steven Smith was found guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter but not guilty of attempted murder and attempted murder of a fetus after he shot his pregnant girlfriend.

Smith was accused of shooting Gina Stanko, 35, in the head and hand with a .22-caliber pistol Nov. 6, 2009, in her Paso Robles home. During the trial, Smith was described as a narcissistic womanizer by prosecutors and characterized by his defense as a man emotionally driven to violence by the woman he feared.

Do you really understand people's aversion to abortion?

Jackie Walkins, writing in the Smith College Sophian shows how you can undermine yourself almost immediately.

I understand people's aversion to abortion. Really, I do. What I don't understand is the need to legislate against it. Roe v. Wade is the law of the land; no human beings' lives are destroyed - just some cells. Can't we just leave it at that?

She further display her ignorance by thinking that tax-funded abortions are "tax-deductible."