Life Links 12/13/13

Indiana/Illinois abortionist Ulrich Klopfer will lose his "Physician Designee" in Fort Wayne after Klopfer failed to quickly report statutory rape and admitting he encourages victims of statutory rape to go to other states.  This means Klopfer may not be able to legally perform abortions in Fort Wayne in the new year.

The Allen County Patient Safety Ordinance requires that doctors who practice but don't live in the county to have a relationship with a local doctor who can legally practice in Allen County. State law requires abortion doctors to have local admitting privileges or have entered into an agreement with a physician who has admitting privileges at a hospital in case of an emergency.

Dr. Geoffrey Cly, OB/GYN, notified Dr. Ulrich Klopfer in a letter dated December 12 that he will no longer serve as the "back-up" physician for Klopfer effective December 31, 2013.

Big thanks to RHRealityCheck for posting the interview in which Klopfer admits he encourages victims of statutory rape to go out of state. 


The New York Times Magazine has an article on “The Heroic Commutes of Abortion Providers.”  It’s funny how some abortion advocates act like abortion isn’t a big money maker yet how else would these abortionists/clinics be able to afford such long commutes? 


Politico covers Michigan’s legislation to require abortion insurance coverage be purchased with an optional rider

Michigan became the 24th state to ban most abortions in its exchange plans when the state legislature passed a bill Wednesday afternoon by sizable margins.

The action follows an an unusual citizens’ petition drive that allows state lawmakers to resurrect a bill the governor had vetoed and vote it into law without his signature. The ban goes into effect 90 days from Friday.

Jessica Valenti has an interesting piece in which chides abortion advocates for calling the Michigan abortion insurance legislation "rape insurance."  She points out that focusing on the hard cases doesn't help (and actually undermines) the pro-choice movement's goal to win support for abortion in more typical situations.  

I understand why many in the pro-choice movement focus on the most extreme examples when we talk to the media; they are truly harrowing and serious issues. And we need public support—but not at the expense of our feminist values.

As Merritt Tierce, executive director of Texas Equal Access Fund, told me in an interview last month: “The lawsuits and the media coverage always focus on the most sympathetic cases, without acknowledging that while of course those cases absolutely deserve our sympathy, most women will not experience anything like what they see and hear in the media.”

Life Links 12/5/13

Jorge Martin-Santana, a medical assistant at a Sacremento Planned Parenthood, has been charged with sexual battery for allegedly touching a patient inappropriately in October. 


Notorious abortionist Steven Brigham is back in the news after New Jersey prosecutors revealed that Brigham lied under oath about whether he had malpractice insurance.

Now, as Brigham, 57, tries to regain his license, New Jersey prosecutors have submitted evidence that his sworn statement was yet another lie. They allege that not only did he stop carrying required liability insurance around 2006, but last month produced a phony insurance policy when forced to back up the statement.

The Bermuda-based company that purportedly issued his policy was itself a sham. It has not issued policies since 2006, when the company operator went to jail for insurance fraud and money laundering, according to legal papers filed Nov. 27 by New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Jeri L. Warhaftig.

"Brigham also produced a fraudulent receipt for payment for a policy issued by" the sham company, Warhaftig wrote.

ABC covered Chris Smith’s announcement that the vast majority of health plans offered to Congress and their staffers include abortion coverage.

The disclosure Wednesday by abortion opponent Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., also highlights an emerging issue nationally: It may be hard for individual consumers to determine whether abortion is a covered benefit in plans offered through the new online insurance markets.

For government insiders, there's another twist: Lawmakers and their staffs now appear to be the only federal employees with access to abortion coverage through their government-supported health insurance plans.

Smith said only nine of the 112 insurance plans offered to members of Congress and their staffs through the Washington, D.C., insurance market exclude abortion as a covered benefit.

A Washington city may pull a grant from a family resource center which provides information which directs women to abortion referring clinics. 

Michigan Planned Parenthood President Lori Lamerand struggles to argue for standard abortion insurance

In a flailing attempt to kept abortion as a standard part of tax-subsidized insurance plans in Michigan, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan President Lori Lamerand has a Huffington Post editorial which even received a tweet in support from PP's grand leader Cecile Richards.

Lamerand writes,

Under the proposed law, if a woman wants insurance to cover abortion, she'll have to anticipate the need well in advance and purchase a separate rider to cover the procedure.

And this is bad why?  If a woman wants abortion coverage then she can pay for it.     

Michigan politicians have invoked this rarely-used legislative maneuver only five times in its history -- and three of those times it has been used to attack women's access to health care.

Actually, politicians don’t invoke this legislation.  It’s called “citizen-initiated legislation” because Michigan citizens have to initiate the legislation by collecting hundreds of thousands of valid signatures from registered voters.   The reason it is rarely used is because it is difficult to collected more than 300,000 signatures in less than 6 months.  That's the same reason Planned Parenthood isn't mounting their own effort to collect signatures to get the legislation on the ballot.  They don't have the grassroots resources and they don't want to spend the money to pay signature gatherers.

Insurance coverage of abortion is not a partisan issue -- it is a health issue. 

Nice assertion.  Any argument or evidence?

Last December, the Michigan Section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed an abortion insurance ban and "any legislation that seeks to restrict access to the legitimate medical services necessary to preserve and protect the reproductive health and well being of the women of Michigan."

Guess not, unless saying a pro-choice group is opposed to prolife laws is evidence for something being solely a health issue.    

Why would the legislature interfere with how private parties contract to cover a safe, legal and constitutionally protected medical procedure?

That is an interesting argument coming from someone who favors Obamacare and the HHS Mandate which interfere in how private parties contract over health insurance much more than Michigan’s Abortion Insurance Opt-Out legislation.  The reason they'll pass the legislation in because Obamacare creates tax-subsidized insurance policies which cover abortion if states don't opt-out. 

The medical community objects to the abortion insurance ban.

Really?  The entire medical community does?

Republican Party leaders have vetoed it in the past and polls show that only 36 percent of Michigan voters support the provision.

So two Republican governors vetoed it (compared to the dozens who voted for it) and one poorly-worded poll with showed 36% support on an issue that large swaths of the public don't understand and that means what exactly?

Legislators should take this opportunity to stop injecting themselves into private health decisions and let Michigan voters decide what kind of insurance coverage is best for them and their families.

Again, this is coming from someone whose organization supports Obamacare and its various rules which require certain coverages.  If Lamerand actually gave a hoot about letting Michiganders decide their insurance coverage, she would be opposed to Obamacare.   

Life Links 11/26/13

A legislator in China has called for public hospitals to provide free abortions to students.

Wei Aimin, a deputy of the Beijing People’s Congress and a lawyer with Beijing Dangdai law firm, told Beijing-based Morning Post that many students seeking abortions went to underground clinics to prevent their parents and teachers from finding out and because they could not afford to go to large hospitals.

“All public hospitals in the city should offer abortions to pregnant students for free or for a minimal charge of 100 yuan,” Wei was reported as saying, “So they are not forced to go to cheaper unlicensed clinics.”

When U.S. abortion advocates whine about restrictions on webcam abortions, remember that in Canada, RU-486 abortions aren’t available because no company is distributing the drugs.

A manufacturer would have to apply to bring the drug to market in Canada. And Dr. Sheila Dunn, one of the authors of the commentary published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, said it's not clear why no one has applied to market mifepristone in Canada before now.

"We don't ever know the reasons that people have for not bringing drugs into different countries," says Dunn, a family physician who specializes in reproductive medicine at Toronto's Women's College Hospital.

There were clinical trials of the drug in Canada early in the last decade. But one was stopped after a woman who received the drug died of a bacterial infection.

A New York man has been convicting of assaults on his wife, including one where he killed his unborn child.

Vikas Jagota of 28 Butternut Drive in New City was found guilty of abusing his wife and convicted by a jury on felony counts of abortion and assault and five misdemeanor charges. The 37-year-old Jagota faces a maximum of seven years in state prison when he is sentenced on March 18, 2014.

Life Links 11/25/13

The Planned Parenthood in Austin, Texas resumed abortions on Friday after their abortionist obtained admitting privileges at a local hospital.  This was the same Planned Parenthood which cancelled Marni Evans’ abortion.  By the way, Evans has deleted her tweets asking various media individuals to contact her about her cancelled abortion.           


The Miami Herald has an article on the frequent use of misoprostol (aka Cytotec) as an abortion drug in Haiti. 

“There is no control over the medication. People go to any pharmacy and ask for this medication and they give it to them,” said Dr. Vladimir Larsen, head of the Society of Haitian Obstetrics and Gynecology , which has conducted two studies in the last four years on the widespread popularity and use of misoprostol.

When Nadia, 19, asked a friend to purchase misoprostol at a local pharmacy to terminate her five-week pregnancy, she wasn’t prepared for how her body would react. The friend bought three pills and told her “they said take two and insert the third.”

“You hear people talk. But you don’t realize where it can have you end up,” Nadia said from her hospital bed after an incomplete abortion. Two days after secretly downing two pills, the teen landed at the emergency obstetrics center run by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in the city of Delmas in Haiti’s capital. She had shivers, heavy bleeding, a fever and a headache........

A Miami Herald reporter easily purchased the pill from pharmacies, and street merchants near the country’s public State University Hospital. Every vendor quoted a different price and instructions on how much to take to terminate a 12-week pregnancy. Almost all suggested it be taken as part of a cocktail mix of wine or beer, as they dug deep into colorful cone-shaped buckets to retrieve the pill from a silver package. They simply smiled when asked why it was hidden.

   
State officials in Delaware have reached a consent agreement with former Planned Parenthood  abortionist Timothy Liveright after the state found he was a “clear and immediate danger to the public.”

A hearing on the complaint was scheduled for Friday but was canceled after Liveright signed a consent agreement drafted by the attorney general's office. Officials refused to disclose details until the agreement is accepted by the Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline at its January meeting.

Vladimir Putin has signed a law to make abortion ads illegal in Russia.

Life Links 11/22/13

Melissa Kwoka, a former staff accountant at Planned Parenthood Western New York, stole more than $100K from her former employer.  Planned Parenthood hired her despite her having a history of theft. 

Kwoka, 44, of Lockport, has a history of larceny. She has three theft convictions dating back to May 2002, when she admitted stealing $212 from the City of Lockport Building Inspection Department. She worked there as a secretary for a little more than a year.

While awaiting sentencing in the Planned Parenthood theft, she was accused last month of electronically transferring $520 from a friend’s bank account so she could make a car payment. She had been held on $1,000 bail in the Niagara County Jail on a fourth-degree grand larceny charge in that case.

Now she heads to the Erie County Correctional Facility to serve a six-month jail term that Michalski imposed Thursday for second-degree grand larceny in the Planned Parenthood theft.

Chicks on the Right Amy Jo Clark and Miriam Weaver discuss Sarah Silverman’s idiotic idea that prolifers are scared of vaginas.

And this begs the question, do liberal women not understand the difference between a living, developing baby and vaginas? Do we need to sit down and have a basic anatomy lesson? There is a big difference between a child growing in your womb and your “ladyparts.” Contrary to Silverman’s preposterous claim to Chris Hayes, people are not scared of vaginas. But thinking people are perplexed by the inability of liberals to differentiate between a vagina and a child. Because when a separate and distinct human being enters the picture, the picture is about more than your ladyparts.

Marie Stopes is pushing to get the RU-486 abortion drug to Kenyan women.

Marie Stopes Kenya launched a new product, MedipristTM (Mifepristone), geared towards safe motherhood, with the primary aim of reducing maternal mortality caused by unsafe abortion.

Statistics in Kenya show that unsafe abortion accounts for approximately 35 per cent of maternal deaths.

The launch saw 100 healthcare providers - gynaecologists, medical officers, clinical officers, pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists- from Mombasa, Kilifi and Kwale counties, come together at Sarova Whitesands Beach Resort and Spa to engage in discussions around prevention of maternal mortality and unsafe abortion.

FOX San Antonio did a segment about the illegal sale of abortion drugs in south Texas.  Too bad they didn’t include any prolifers.

Life Links 11/18/13

Slate’s L.V. Anderson thinks horrific abortion stories appearing in pro-choice media outlets are good for the pro-choice movement.

It helps no one when women feel that their feelings about their own personal experiences with abortion and contraception are somehow “not okay.” Which is why it’s wonderful that New York and Elle are reclaiming these stories from religious conservatives. Some women are pressured into getting abortions, and not every abortion provider is skilled and compassionate. Some women get depressed when they take the pill, and some experience agony during their medication abortions. Abortion and contraception can be good or bad for the patient, depending on her biology, her socioeconomic circumstances, her provider. To acknowledge these realities is to treat reproductive healthcare like any other kind of medical care—and isn’t that what feminists have been fighting for all along?

I doubt that NARAL and Planned Parenthood will be sharing horrific abortion stories (unless they are pre-legalization ones) anytime soon. 


The UK’s Daily Mail has a story of a Chinese man who begged his girlfriend not to have an abortion. 

A Chinese man sunk to his knees in an abortion clinic and made a tearful plea to his girlfriend’s mother not to force her to have an abortion, it was reported in local media.

The mother, Liu Rong, had deemed the man, called Zhang, as being unworthy of her daughter as his social standing was too low.

Because Zhang worked in IT and was not from the civil servant class – the new ruling elite of China – she allegedly declared him to be ‘beneath’ her daughter’s status.

           

Mollie Hemingway writes about Planned Parenthood’s abortion theater. 

So the question is obvious. If 97% of Planned Parenthood’s services aren’t abortion, why in the world would an abortion regulation cause a dozen Planned Parenthood clinics to close?

Closing clinics make for great headlines and more dramatic court briefs. But a media mildly more skeptical of savvy public relations campaigns and well-scripted legal wrangling might serve the public a bit more.

The Toronto Star reports on declassified information from abortion debates within Prime Minister Mulroney’s cabinet in the late 80's/early 90's.

Abortion stories in NYT Mag feature coercion, scary clinics and complications

New York Times Magazine has published 26 stories from women who’ve had abortions. 

Many of the stories are sad and show how abortion is far from empowering for many women.  Nicole shares how she didn’t want an abortion but was coerced into it by her boyfriend.     

We went to get $1,000 from a gas-station ATM. I was hysterical, and he said, “Okay, you don’t have to go back.” I was so happy. Then he said, “We drove all this way. Stop crying, act like a woman.” I was angry, but I was so sleepy and tired of fighting.

   
Heather notes her experience during her first abortion and shares how her in-laws pushed her into a second one.

My first was two years ago. My husband and I were having financial problems and were considering separating. I just had to shut my conscience down. The doctor was grotesque. He whistled show tunes. I could hear the vacuum sucking out the fetus alongside his whistling. When I hear show tunes now, I shudder. Later, he lost his license.....

They gave us $500 cash to bring to the clinic. I felt very forced. I felt like I was required to have an abortion to provide for my current family. Money help is a manipulation. I’m crazy in love with my daughters—imagine if I did that to them? It’s almost too much to open the door of guilt and shame because it’ll all overcome me.

Dana Weinstein’s story is featured and she describes delivering her dead child (at 31 weeks) while sitting on the toilet. 

At six in the morning on the day I was supposed to return to the clinic, I felt my water break. I was alone in a hotel bathroom so far away from my home. I wanted to protect my husband. I didn’t let him in. I delivered her intact, sitting on the toilet, and I sat there until the doctor and nurse came and took her away properly. It’s different for me than my husband. I carried her. I didn’t have relief until my next daughter was born.       

Abby’s experience with a RU-486 abortion didn’t go well.

After the contractions started, my hands turned into claws. I was dehydrated. I had this underlying feeling that I was being made to suffer, to repent for my situation. I called my boss. He took me to the ER. It cost $2,000. When I stood up, the bed was covered in blood.

Madeline (in a Catholic high school at the time) shares how her parents took her for a 20-week abortion that cost $2,000. 

I found it notable that many of the women also share the circumstances around children they didn’t abort or make a point to mention that they have living children.  Overall, the stories paint a rather bleak picture of abortion as an often frightening procedure you have because you're coerced into it or you feel you don't have another choice and then often think about for years afterwards.

That important detail NARAL left out

  
In their latest effort to attack legislation which bans abortion after 20-weeks, NARAL has posted a video featuring Dana Weinstein discussing her late-term abortion. NARAL (and other pro-choice groups) have used Weinstein and her story before. 

What’s interesting about this new video is the detail NARAL leaves out.  The video says Dana had an abortion "after more than 20 weeks of pregnancy."  That’s true but the video seems  to imply that Dana's situation would have been affected by 20 week bans (which regulate abortions typically between 20-24 weeks). 

There’s one problem with that.  Dana had her abortion at 31 weeks.  This means 20-week bans wouldn’t have affected her case because her abortion was well passed the viability standard of 24 weeks.  That’s why she had Warren Hern (abortionist in Colorado) do her abortion.  There’s not many other abortionists doing abortions at 31 weeks.   

The federal 20-week ban wouldn't deter Hern from performing late-term abortions because he's already stated that he "will certify that any pregnancy is a threat to a woman's life."

Life Links 11/6/13

Notorious abortionist Stephen Brigham has opened an abortion clinic in Philadelphia.  Brigham’s presence has pushed other abortion providers to send an alert to the state.

The new clinic, Integrity Family Health, is on Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia. The state Department of Health did an initial inspection and issued a permit, called a registration, eight weeks ago, then added the facility to its online list of abortion clinics in the Keystone State.

The new clinic's connections to Brigham are circumstantial but were enough to concern some longtime critics of his operations - in this case, other abortion providers......

Then they called the toll-free number for Brigham's multistate abortion company, American Women's Services, and found that appointments were being made for Integrity Family Health. They also got Integrity's prices, directions, and heard a recorded abortion-counseling message.

Then they alerted state health officials.

A district court judge has issued a temporary stay on Iowa’s rule which prevents abortionist from prescribed chemical abortions thru a webcam. 

Polk County District Judge Karen Romano ordered a temporary stay on a rule passed by the Iowa Board of Medicine, which effectively would ban use of the first-in-the-nation video-conferencing system. The medical board said its rule was based on concern for patient safety. But Planned Parenthood supporters said the rule was a political attempt to limit rural women’s access to legal abortions......

The stay means the system may continue to be used while the issues are argued more extensively in court, which could take months.

Wendy Davis really is an Abortion Barbie.  Read how she tried to sue a local paper for libel after losing an election.  Remember that Davis got a law degree in 1993.

In 2000, nearly four years after her loss, Texas’ 5th Court of Appeals rejected Davis’ claim that she was libeled by the Star-Telegram during her 1996 campaign for city council. Rubbing salt in the wound, the court wrote in its 3-0 decision that they “cannot conclude a person of ordinary intelligence would perceive the statements as defamatory.”

Ouch. 

Indifferent, emotionless couple whine about cancelled abortion

The Texas Tribune has an article and a video interview with an engaged couple (John Lockhart and Marni Evans) who recently had an appointment for an abortion at Planned Parenthood cancelled.  Their appointment was cancelled because of 5th Circuit Court ruling on a Texas law which requires abortionists to have local admitting privileges.  Apparently, the abortionist at the Planned Parenthood in Austin didn’t have admitting privileges.     

Marni Evans, 37, a self-employed sustainability consultant, was scheduled to undergo a surgical abortion on Friday morning at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin. She said in an interview that she received a call from Planned Parenthood late Thursday evening informing her that her procedure for the following day had been canceled due to the appellate court ruling.

“My first reaction was to feel fairly devastated, to feel like my rights were being taken away from me,” Evans said, "to feel very disappointed that elected officials had the ability to make decisions about my and my fiancé’s life.”

After the cancellation, Evans went online to find another provider. She said she struggled to determine which abortion clinics around the state were still providing abortion services and had available appointments.

At six and a half weeks pregnant, Evans said, “it is important for me to have an abortion now, and I think probably less painful, less expensive and less emotionally heart-wrenching.” To avoid delaying the procedure, she decided to purchase a plane ticket to Seattle, where she previously lived, to have the procedure at a Planned Parenthood clinic there. She used frequent flyer miles she said she had saved for her honeymoon.

Questions:
   
How did the Texas Tribune find Evans and Lockhart so quickly if they weren’t involved with pro-choice groups?

Here’s how.  Evans used her twitter account to contact various individuals in the media.  In other words, she had her appointment cancelled and then went to the media with the story nearly immediately.  What kind of person does that?  Someone trying to gain fame in progressive circles, perhaps?

When Planned Parenthood cancelled her abortion, why didn’t they refer her to the other abortionist in town who could have done her abortion?  If Planned Parenthood really cared for their patients and abortion is such an important service wouldn’t it make sense that they would refer to another provider?   Or did they refer her and Evans forget to mention that?

After having her abortion cancelled why would Evans buy a plan ticket to Seattle instead of seeking out another in-state abortionist?  Is it really that hard to call other abortion clinics and ask if they are still doing abortions?  Does Evans not have basic life skills? 

She says she wanted to avoid the bureaucracy of Texas but if she just looked for another abortionist nothing would have changed except she would have gone to a different abortionist.  My guess is that the Seattle angle is a lame attempt to gain pity.  "Woe is me.  I have to travel out of state and waste my frequent flyer miles because I can't make phone calls."

Why does her fiancee think she’s going to have a different and more invasive procedure?  The only reason this would make sense is if she was scheduled to get a chemical abortion and is now past the deadline. 

The couple comes off as impulsive and rather thoughtless.  Are we really supposed to feel sorry for a middle-aged engaged couple who have enough resources to get a plane ticket to Seattle for an abortion without taking the time to see if there is another abortionist in town? 

I don’t. I feel sorry for the child they’re about to have killed. 

Dave Andrusko has more.

Life Links 10/31/13

Prolifers in Tennessee are beginning a year-long campaign to overturn a 2008 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling which prevents them from passing certain prolife laws.


12 News Now covers the inspection of a Beaumont, Texas abortion clinic and its 13 violations.

The October 3 inspection at Whole Woman's Health of Beaumont turned up potential health issues.

The report says the facility failed to provide a safe environment for patients and staff.  The suction machines which were used on patients had numerous rusty spots which, "had the likelihood to cause infection."

The report also says, "the facility failed to have the EKG monitoring equipment ready if an emergency situation occurred..."

The Planned Parenthood in Midland, Texas will remain closed as Texas’s recently passed abortion regulations had nothing to do with their closing. 

In fact, the bill passed by the Texas Legislature during their second special session this year had nothing to do with the location’s closure in September, board member Carl Moore said......

While there was an abortion clinic in Midland under Planned Parenthood, Moore said he was on the board over the woman’s health clinic.  The abortion clinic, he added, was run by different board members.

Moore said he hopes the offices in Odessa and Midland would open soon, but said if it did, it would be in new buildings.

“If by any chance we’re able to open, it would be a brand new Planned Partenthood with a different board,” Moore said. “This one has been officially closed.”

During a Project Truth display at Butte College, two pro-choice students were arrested. 

A group of pro-choice supporters gathered nearby with signs in opposition on Oct. 22, the first day of the protest. The demonstration by each side continued well into the afternoon of the next day, until a student identified by Butte College Police as Sophia G.L. Green apparently took offense and reportedly grabbed a poster to take it down. Witnesses said another student, whom campus police identified as David Boone, interceded to prevent members of the anti-abortion group from physically stopping Green. Someone associated with Project Truth called the police, who responded and cited Green for vandalism and arrested Boone on a charge of assault.

"My client didn’t murder his unborn child, he aborted her"

That’s the argument Roger Holland’s attorney is making for him before the Minnesota’s man trial, where Holland is charged with strangling his wife and murdering his 15-week unborn child. 

Margorie Holland's husband, Roger Holland, is charged with murder in the deaths. But with his trial scheduled for Monday, his attorneys are making a novel argument: The death of the fetus was an abortion, not a murder, and the only person whose rights that such an act could have violated -- the mother -- already was dead.

Dakota County prosecutors disagree, arguing the murder charge is appropriate and that the idea Holland can't be charged in the death of the fetus is "patently offensive."

Surprise! Abortionists don't like new rules for abortion clinics

The alternative headline to this story could have been:

"Abortion doctor doesn't like new laws regulating abortion doctors/clinics"

"I believe that both of these provisions will harm women - - harm Texas women,” Paul Fine, a Houston doctor who performs the procedures, testified today as Planned Parenthood’s first witness. The rules are “absolutely not” necessary, he said.

Life Links 10/16/13

The Maryland Board of Physicians has closed the probe into abortionist LeRoy Carhart in the death of Jennifer Morbelli from complications of a late-term abortion.         

In his first direct comments on the case, Carhart said: “I totally believe that we did everything as correctly as possible.

“It’s a horrendous thing for the family and it’s hard for me. I think about it every day.”

      
AL.com has the story of Auburn’s 100th homecoming queen and her prolife story.

Molly Ann Dutton made headlines on Saturday when she was crowned Auburn’s 100th homecoming queen.

This week, the 22-year-old horticulture student is making headlines, again; but it’s the story behind her unique "Light up LIFE" platform that’s getting all the attention this time around.

Dutton is the daughter of a young, married woman who survived a sexual assault in California and became pregnant, according to a news release this week from "Light up LIFE," the horticulture club-based group that ran her campaign. To compound matters, the woman’s husband gave her an ultimatum: Abort the baby or get a divorce.

Rather than having the abortion, Dutton’s mom chose to move to Alabama and carry the baby to term. She worked with Lifeline Children’s Services, a Christian adoption group in Birmingham, Ala., to place the child in a home. 

At the Hill’s Congress Blog, Marjorie Dannenfelser discusses how most late-term abortions are elective. 

Life Links 10/15/13

Prolife groups in Indiana have documented the incredibly sloppy work of abortionist Ulrich Klopfer on the abortion reports he submits to the state of Indiana.  Recently, another complaint was filed against Klopfer when he failed to report statutory rape in a timely manner. 

The 487 reports included more than 3,000 errors and omissions on pregnancies terminated between July 2011 and June 2013, said Cathie Humbarger, executive director of the Allen County Right to Life.

Errors included incorrect clinic addresses and fetal development stages, while omissions included the county name and dates of the patients’ last menstruation cycles......

Every report in 2012 and 2013 listed an old clinic address and gave the fetal development stage as 88 weeks, Humbarger said.

A man in Washington has been arrested after threatening violence towards an abortion clinic where his ex-girlfriend was scheduled to have an abortion. 


A woman in India has died from abortion complications.

Inspector Ganesh More of Paud police station said, "After the family came to know about the woman's pregnancy, they admitted her to a private hospital in Paud on Wednesday."

The police said the woman died on Friday morning following reported complications leading to excessive bleeding. Health officials said she was brought dead at the Paud Rural Hospital. 

Another Indian abortionist has been arrested after performing an abortion at 18 weeks.  

"The hospital, where the abortion was conducted, can perform a medical termination of pregnancy up to 12 weeks. The doctor violated the hospital's registration norms," he added. The police have the clinic's licence and other papers; some medicines have also been confiscated.                               

Why get rid of unsafe abortion providers when you can just have nurses do abortions?

That seems to be the main thought in Irin Carmon’s piece on the new California law which allows a variety of non-physicians to provide first trimester abortions. 

Today, California Governor Jerry Brown didn’t mention Gosnell’s name, but by signing the Early Access to Abortion Bill into law, he did more than any of those legislators to prevent another Gosnell.

The Early Access to Abortion Bill will enable trained nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician assistants to perform first-trimester abortions by vacuum aspiration. It’s the logic of cause and effect: If you make it easier to access an abortion, earlier, and from a legitimate provider, there will be fewer desperate customers turning to unsafe providers.

Instead of attempting to get rid of unsavory abortionists, pro-choice commentators like Carmon seem to think that allowing more people to provide abortions will diminish the likelihood of women going to Gosnell-like providers. 

But isn’t a better solution to get rid of the Gosnell-like providers by regularly inspecting clinics?  If the main goal is really keeping women safe, isn’t it a better idea to do inspections than hope women will have plenty of choices for abortion providers and not happen to choose an unsavory one? 

Sally Kohn ludicrously claims abortion activists exposed Gosnell

Pro-abort Sally Kohn seems to have lost her mind.

In a speech to NARAL reprinted at the Daily Beast, she asserts that Kermit Gosnell “was exposed because of abortion activists.”  She lists no source or evidence for this absurd claim as everyone with the slightest knowledge of Gosnell knows that he and his practices were exposed after a DEA raid, the Grand Jury report and subsequent reporting (pro-choicers providing a very small percentage of that reporting).  She seems to believe that some articles about Gosnell after he was arrested led to his arrest and convictions. 

Reading about the atrocities in Gosnell’s clinic—it takes your breath away. What he did was monstrous. Monstrous. And thanks to repeated exposure by reproductive justice activists and feminist journalists, Gosnell was exposed and arrested and tried and convicted for his crimes. What Gosnell did wasn’t medical treatment. It was illegal, unethical and criminal. Period.  

These must have been the same abortion advocates/clinics who were referring women seeking late-term abortion to Gosnell.  

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.