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.