Life Links 10/16/14

The New York Times covers Planned Parenthood’s continuing attempts to corner the market on abortion.  They’re building a $9 million facility in Queens.

While there are other women’s health centers in Queens that offer abortions, the absence of a Planned Parenthood was “something that had to be corrected,” Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, Democrat of Queens, said. 

Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives abortion clinic is re-opening at a new location after the old clinic couldn’t meet standards set forth in Alabama’s Women’s Health and Safety Act of 2013.  If you watch the video of the newscast you can see a sign on a door which reads, “NO CHILDREN ALLOWED IN THE BUILDING!!!”


Katha Pollitt is out and about promoting her new book on abortion.  The latest is this Huffington Post column excerpted from her book where she claims, “We need to see abortion as an urgent practical decision that is just as moral as the decision to have a child -- indeed, sometimes more moral” and “Actually, abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children....”

Life Links 10/8/14

The Abortion Gang has a guest post by Canadian Mel Waters in which she describes her experience in Colorado for an elective abortion after 24 weeks at Warren Hern’s clinic. The story is sad on many levels.

It was a long physical recovery; the mental scars have been a longer journey, and after 4 years I am still working through it. I can’t close my eyes at night without reliving the whole thing again, I still have nightmares!

Cosmopolitian magazine has endorsed....drumroll.....Wendy Davis (I know big surprise right?)  The start of the story mentions the pink shoes as if that’s a reason to vote for her. 

An 11-hour filibuster. A bold stand for women in a red state. Those pink tennis shoes.

They’d probably call other media outlets sexist for mentioning the shoes. 

The end of this sentence caught my eye.

A Davis governorship would represent all Texans, including those who are traditionally underserved by Austin, setting the state on the road to restoring basic women's health care and ensuring that the children women do choose to have are cared for.

Why the need to mention “the children women do choose to have”?  Why not just say "ensuring that children are cared for”?  Cosmo concedes the reality that women are aborting "children" they don’t want. 


An abortion clinic in El Paso is shut down again after being open for part of the day on Saturday after they received an exemption that was meant for another clinic in El Paso.  In another example of how abortion is a business, the clinic isn’t referring women to the abortion clinic in El Paso but instead to one of their affiliated clinics in New Mexico. 

They are not completely closed, though. They still take walk-ins and phone calls and instruct women requiring an abortion to go to their clinic in New Mexico. 

Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards changes tune on over the counter birth control

Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards has an editorial in CNN which claims that making the birth control pill available over the counter would “push women back to 1950s.” 

At first glance, this appears to be a welcome shift, a reflection of the growing support for making birth control available to more women.

It's not. When health insurance doesn't cover birth control and women have to pay out of pocket at the drugstore, it won't expand access to birth control but shrink it.....

Offering over-the-counter birth control instead of insurance coverage for birth control amounts to a $483 million tax on women.

Compare that to a Huffington Post piece written by Richards in 2013 where the FDA’s decision to make emergency contraception available over the counter for women of all ages (including teen girls) was hailed as “wonderful news” and meant that there would be “no barriers, no shame.”

This is a historic moment for women's health -- and a huge step forward in Planned Parenthood's work to expand access to birth control. Hopefully, with this decision, women all over the country will soon be able to walk into a pharmacy and pick up emergency contraception off the shelves, as soon as they need it -- no barriers, no shame.

Will Planned Parenthood and Richards now lobby to stop emergency contraceptives from being sold over the counter? 

Wendy Davis claims her unborn child suffered while she claimed the opposite in her famous filibuster

In her recently released book, Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis claims her unborn daughter Tate Elise was suffering and this is one of the reasons she opted for an abortion. 

"At some point in the almost two weeks of second and third and fourth opinions and tortured decision making, I could feel her little body tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her, and I knew then what we needed to do. She was suffering …”

An unborn child in the second trimester was suffering physical pain?

That’s a strange assertion coming from Davis who claimed just the opposite when she famously filibustered against the prolife law in Texas.

At about the 13 minute mark of the video below, Davis begin discussing a paper in which the authors claim fetal pain probably isn't possible until the third trimester. 


 
She continues in this video.






So her position is that Texas shouldn’t ban late second trimester abortions based on unborn children feeling pain because they don’t feel pain but I had a late second trimester abortion because my unborn child felt pain and I didn't want her to suffer any more.

Life Links 8/27/14

Time has a piece by Laura Stampler attempting to promote abortion advocates and their lame Taco or Beer challenge.  The piece is entitled “New Viral Fundraiser” despite only having 127 posts (at this moment) on Tumblr. 


A newborn baby boy in Utah is in critical condition after his mother abandoned him in a trash can and was found by neighbors who thought they were hearing a kitten. 

Police say the 24-year-old mother later returned to the scene and told officers that she'd left the baby there about an hour before he was found.

A woman in Indiana has been charged with feticide after allegedly attempting to use RU-486 to abort her late-term pregnancy.  The child was apparently born alive and then left in a dumpster. 

A pathologist ruled the infant was born alive and took a breath, but Patel's lawyer, Jeff Sanford, told the judge the pathologist's tests don't prove that.  Sanford told WSBT he has big questions about tests the pathologist did and did not do to determine whether the infant was born alive. 

Dawn Laguens’ piece attempting to defend Planned Parenthood’s transition away from “pro-choice” terminology included this absurd assertion:

As evidence, he quotes Hillary Clinton saying abortion should be "safe, legal and rare," a message that peaked in the 1990s, when President Clinton first said it, and was probably last used around 2006. Nobody says that anymore.

2006?  Here’s a CNN article from 2010 where President Obama uses the “safe, legal and rare” message.

Life Links 8/20/14

Newsweek has a long article on Lila Rose’s and Katie Stack’s respective undercover trips into abortion clinics and pregnancy centers. 

What’s really interesting to me is how Katie Stack (who appeared on MTV’s No Easy Decision) now describes her abortion.

Stack describes her choice to terminate a pregnancy, which she did in college, as “empowering” and says it aided her in “adapting a feminist framework” that led to her investigations. “It was the first time I felt like I had any control over anything, having that abortion,” she says. “I’m happy with my abortion. People get uncomfortable when I say my abortion was a good experience, but it was.”

During the No Easy Decision program in 2010, Stack cried on at least two occasions and mentioned how she had difficulty being around her newborn nephew after the abortion.  At that time, she also said she viewed abortion as a "parenting decision" because she acknowledged her child as “a baby.”   

That’s doesn’t sound empowering to me.  Only in pro-abort La-La Land is staying in a hotel room because you can’t imagine seeing your newborn nephew equal "empowering." 

After the airing of the No Easy Decision program, Stack then tried to start a pro-abortion version of Live Action called The Crisis Project which hasn’t had quite as much success.


Martin Haskell’s abortion clinic in Sharonville is dropping their appeal.  They’ll stop performing surgical abortions on Friday.  They apparently plan on trying to stay in business by offering RU-486 abortions. 


“Intellectual” Richard Dawkins told someone that bringing a child with Down Syndrome to birth is immoral. 


An abortion clinic in Alabama which couldn’t meet safety standards at its current location has been given the permission to relocate.

Life Links 8/19/14

A judge in Iowa has upheld the ban on telemed/Skype abortions. 

The judge wrote that the medical board has significant authority to regulate such issues. "There is no question that the board has the power to establish standards of practice for the medical profession. Those standards include the authority to adopt and enforce standards regarding the minimal standards of acceptable and prevailing practice," he wrote.

The system has remained in use while the two sides wrangled in court. The judge's ruling is set to take effect in 30 days. A Planned Parenthood spokeswoman said her agency would file a legal appeal.

Gillian Ropespierre, director of Obvious Child, wants people to stop calling her film an “abortion comedy.”

But, because the plot revolves around an abortion, it’s not being called, simply, a ‘comedy’. Instead, it’s being referred to as - whisper it - ‘that abortion comedy.’

Director Gillian Robespierre isn’t particularly pleased that her work of art has been given this label.

"'Abortion comedy' gives a sense, in the semantics of that sentence, that we’re making light of abortion. And we’re not doing that,” she tells me. “I was a little angry because it makes our movie sound glib and sarcastic.”

At the Washington Post, liberal political strategist Carter Eskew joins the trend of abortion advocates who are criticizing “choice” language. 

The pro-choice side cannot win the debate as it is currently framed; it can achieve only small victories when the other side overreaches. An example: Requiring an ultrasound is okay, not just an invasive one. The reason pro-choice advocates can’t and won’t win is because they don’t have an affirmative argument, only a defensive one......

The problem is “choice” will never trump “life.” Choice is valuable, but life is precious. As long as there is no competing affirmative value for abortion, then life will always win.

Life Links 8/5/14

Ad Week asked 6 ad women to rebrand “pro-choice.”  The results are....well....ummm....see for yourself.  If this is the best 6 ad women can come up with then maybe abortion advocates should stick with pro-choice.

Simply evolving the language and sentiment from pro-choice to something like pro-me would acknowledge that reproductive rights are a personal decision, one of many, that young women actively participate in every day.

                    
Toledo’s last abortion clinic, whose licensed is scheduled to be revoked in a week, is claiming they’ll become a “woman’s clinic” which doesn’t perform abortions if their surgery license is taken away. 

Capital Care’s owner Terrie Hubbard said her attorney will file a petition with the court next week asking that the clinic be allowed to continue offering abortion services while appealing the state order.

Even if the stay is not granted, however, Ms. Hubbard said she plans to keep Capital Care open as a women’s clinic. The clinic would offer gynecological services as well as abortion counseling, Ms. Hubbard said.

In Florida a woman has been arrested months after leaving her newborn child under a sink.  She claims she hid her pregnancy because she was forced to have an abortion previously. 

A police document shows Breanna LaSean Ross was 18 years old when she gave birth in January. She told police she hid her pregnancy because previously, her mother and the mother of her baby's father forced her into having an abortion. She thought they would make her do the same with this pregnancy.

Life Links 8/1/2014

Another Texas abortion clinic closes its doors.

A women's clinic in North Austin closed its doors Thursday because it can not comply with the House Bill 2 standard of an ambulatory surgical center, Whole Woman's Health said........

The Austin Whole Woman's Health Clinic had 10 employees and two doctors. Its license officially expired at the end of last month.

The company's CEO told KVUE's partners at the Austin American-Statesman that renovations to create larger operating rooms, a sterile ventilation system and other changes could cost up to $2 million, and they didn't have the money to make the changes.

In Illinois a pregnant teenager and her boyfriend have been charged in the death of her mother.  The boyfriend claimed he killed the mother because she wanted his girlfriend to have an abortion.  


An Australian couple have abandoned a child they paid a surrogate to carry because the child has Down Syndrome.  When they learned about the child diagnosis (he also has a congenital heart defect), they asked the surrogate mother to have an abortion.

Mrs Pattharamon, who is married, said she became pregnant via IVF and four months later learnt that one of her children had Down's syndrome. Doctors told the Australian parents of the baby's condition, and they then said they wanted her to have an abortion.

Life Links 5/21/14

The nation of Armenia may move to restrict sex selection abortions. 

The head of RA National Assembly Standing Committee on Healthcare, Maternity and Childhood Affairs Ara Babloyan held a workshop on the topic “Sex selective abortion occurrences and causes in Armenia” where he mentions that the problem must be treated on a legislative level.

Upon the discussed project, it is suggested not to inform the parents about the child’s sex before the fetus is thirty weeks old. The project is not yet put to circulation, however after the discussions it will be sent to the government.

A mother of two daughters and one son, 35-year-old Marine Sargsyan from Echmiadzin says that before giving birth to her son she did a sex selective abortion three times, because every time the fetus was a girl.

A Dutch man was jailed for disturbing a euthanasia.  

The man created the disturbance at a nursing home in Waalwijk, upsetting the dying patient and family in the last moments of life, news agency ANP reports. The man also refused to leave when asked to do so.

The judge in the case said he was also concerned about the man's opposition to abortion. He considers all doctors who help out at abortions should be killed, ANP says.

Margo Davidson, the cousin of Gosnell victim Semika Shaw, won her primary race in Pennsylvania.  Abortion advocates pushed for Davidson's removal after she voted in favor of abortion clinic regulations which would have protected her cousin.

Life Links 5/15/15

The Missouri House has passed a bill to extend their abortion waiting period to 72 hours.  It passed 111-39.  Pro-aborts are lamely doing a cermonial filibuster outside the Capitol.   

The House voted 111-39 in favor of the measure Wednesday, sending it to Nixon, who has previously allowed other abortion restrictions to become law without his signature. That included a measure last year that requires doctors to be in the room for the initial dose of a drug used in medical abortions.

Nixon said Tuesday that he would review the extended waiting period and act in a manner consistent with his other actions on abortion legislation.

Louisiana appears it will be the next state which passes a bill to regulate abortion clinics and require admitting privileges.  A bill passed their Senate by a 34-3 vote.

Abortion-rights groups say the restrictions would close three of Louisiana's five abortion clinics, but in the strongly-conservative state, those objections don't sway many lawmakers. The protests and sharply-divided debates of Texas haven't taken place during the Louisiana Legislature's discussion of the proposal, which has received bipartisan support.

Amid protests, Planned Parenthood is opening a new abortion clinic in  Kissimmee, Florida.  Currently in the midst of a nasty divorce, Congressman Alan Grayson attended the ribbon cutting.  Also, attending was Peggy Howland who doesn’t seem to realize her talking points from the 60's and 70's have been disproved.

The Rev. Peggy Howland, 80, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church since 1958, worked with fellow clergy in the 1960s to make abortion legal. She was on hand to give the invocation at the center — and make her case for abortion rights.

Before Roe v. Wade, she said, "there were a million illegal abortions in the U.S. every year, and these were done in places that were unsafe, and many women died.

Emily Letts Q and A with Philadelphia Magazine on abortion decision

After Cosmopolitian magazine publish abortion counselor Emily Letts’ explanation of filming her abortion, she’s received a fair amount of media coverage, including a Q and A with Philadelphia Magazine.  

The Cosmo article shows how the Cherry Hill clinic has pretty low standards for who can be an abortion counselor.

I reached out to Cherry Hill right after I finished my training. I asked to volunteer, but instead they asked me to come in for a job interview. I was hired on the spot to be one of the clinic’s abortion counselors.

In her interview Letts shares how she has a special relationship with the image of her aborted child.  

But you do understand that there's a huge segment of the population that looks at you as a murderer, that you have destroyed life that God created? You can't deny that this was at least potential life, and that you ended it.

Yes, I do realize it was potential life. I have a special relationship with my ultrasound. People say it sounds weird, it’s my process. I realize it was potential life, and I love it in my own special way. I’m not glib and cavalier. I’m comfortable with my decisions.

After claiming not to be glib and cavalier, Letts then comes off as glib and cavalier regarding her decision not to use birth control.

Yes, and that here you are, counseling women about their reproductive choices, when many see you as irresponsible in your own decisions.

It's been an unexpected departure from what I thought I was going to talk about. I'm not quite sure what people want me to say.

I wasn't on hormonal birth control, and I wasn't consistently sexually active. I wasn't super interested in putting hormones in my body. I tried to get an IUD five years ago, but it was like $600.

So, yes, I am a sex educator, and I didn't use a condom. Yeah. Absolutely. How many times did you do something that you knew had consequences but you did it anyway? How many times did you not wear your bike helmet? How many times did you get in a car with someone who had been drinking?

It was a mistake to not use a condom. Life is full of mistakes. It happens.

Letts also reveals that not all of her clinics patients are filled with relief after an abortion.

Trust me. I counsel women on grief and loss all the time. You feel very much like you're saying goodbye, a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of giving up an idea.

Life Links 5/1/14

Boxer Floyd Mayweather apparently broke up with his finance because she aborted his twin children. 

According to documents obtained by FightHype.com, Ms. Jackson had an abortion not long after learning she was pregnant with twins by Mayweather.

According to one source, Jackson originally claimed to have had a miscarriage, but it didn't take long for Mayweather to discover the truth of the abortion. Mayweather was said to be affected "emotionally and mentally" as abortions go against his belief of killing babies. Furthermore, we're informed that Mayweather began to question if the babies she was carrying were really his, causing him to call an abrupt end to the relationship.       

Michael Stokes Paulsen on men and abortion and how "her rights" quickly becomes "her responsibility."

It’s not hard to grasp the Court’s intuition: If abortion is the “privacy” right of the woman— a function of her autonomy, her body, and her life, needed to further her social and economic equality—it makes little sense to give fathers a veto, or even a vote, in the abortion choice. But the unintended consequence of vesting the abortion right entirely in the woman is to absolve the man of all responsibility. If it is exclusively her right, it is exclusively her responsibility. He is free! It’s not his choice at all! He can go on his merry way, leaving the pregnant woman the choice to abort her child.

An 18-year-old in Arizona has been arrested after he allegedly sexually assaulted a number of teenage girls.  One girl apparently became pregnant and had an abortion.

An another case, a victim became pregnant after she was allegedly raped, PCSO said.

"One of the 13 victims actually became pregnant because of the sexual assault, and she subsequently had an abortion," Babeu said. "These are horrible crimes that cannot be tolerated in our community."

Life Links 3/19/14

A Lutheran charity has purchased the former Delaware abortion clinic where Kermit Gosnell worked part-time.


In Arizona, all health clinic are inspected without warning.  That is except for abortion clinics, which get 10 day warning.

Inspectors work through observations, interviews and reviews of documents, like patient files and policies. They’re checking, for instance, to see if a clinic has a disaster plan or if employee experience matches up with job duties. If it passes, the facility gets a stamp of approval for up to 24 months.

“All of the surveys are unannounced,” Belden said.

But there’s one big exception. Abortion providers get a 10-day heads up.

"Pregnancies they can carry" is the latest jargon Jessica Valenti is using to attempt to ignore the unborn child.  

Anti-choicers cannot escape the truth of their movement: despite rhetorical efforts to the contrary, the foundation of fighting against abortion accessibility is the idea that women are less important than the pregnancies they can carry.

This is why the pro-choice side is losing.  They can't accurately describe the prolife position.  Therefore, they can't make solid arguments against it.  They're stuck trying to come up with lamer and lamer ways of dehumanizing the unborn.  

When your senior legal analyst has no clue what she's talking about, you might want to find a new senior legal analyst

     
In a recent piece for RH Reality Check, their Senior Legal Analyst Jessica Mason Pieklo argues that prolife business owners are trying to undermine settled science by claiming they have moral qualms with covering emergency contraceptive.  

The question, framed by Reuters as “deceptively simple” of whether certain forms of birth control prevent conception or destroy a fertilized egg, is not actually a controversy or debate within the mainstream scientific and medical community. In fact, the mainstream scientific and medical community all agree that the vast majority of emergency contraceptives don’t prevent fertilization, and that pregnancy begins at implantation.

The last sentence is confusing because I’m wondering if Pieklo thinks fertilization and implantation are synonymous or if she made a typo.  Pieklo links to a Guttmacher paper which undermines her claim since it says, “Rather, both Plan B and ella work primarily by preventing ovulation” which, if true, would mean they do prevent fertilization since there would be no ovulation, ergo no fertilization. 

She also doesn’t seem to understand that defining pregnancy as beginning at implantation doesn’t change whether a human embryo (or “fertilized egg” in RH Reality Check jargon) is destroyed or not.  Nor would it alleviate prolife concerns.  Maybe this is a case of pro-choicers constantly trying to use language to deceive others that they struggle to understand the meaning of the terms they're using. 

The more you read of Pielko, the more you realize she doesn’t appear to have any clue what she is talking about.   

In 2003, Congress passed the “Partial-Birth Abortion Act,” a law that banned a specific type of abortion procedure known as an intact D&E (dilation and evacuation) without any exception for the life of the pregnant person.

Wrong.  Here’s the text of the law in PDF. On the bottom of page 6, the text clearly has a life of the mother exception.

This subsection does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.

Pielko continues talking about the law:

The law was eventually challenged, and in 2006 the Roberts Court sided with Congress, holding that so long as a matter of science is up for debate, lawmakers are free to pick a side in that debate in passing legislation if their doing so is reasonable.

Nope.  The case was decided on April 18, 2007.

If Pielko’s the senior legal analyst at RH Reality Check, I can’t imagine how bad the regular legal analyst’s are. 

Life Links 3/6/14

A woman seeking to replace racist Alabama State Rep. Alvin Holmes responded to his comments in which he said white would encourage abortion if their daughters were impregnated by a black man. 

"He said that being pro life was for white people, that's not true. Pro life is loving babies whether they're inside the womb or outside of the womb. Whether you're black or white - it doesn't have a color," said Tijuanna Adetunji.

An accidental break room fire at Martin Haskell’s Indianapolis abortion clinic caused $30,000 worth of damage.  While all patients had left, five clinics staffers were there at the time. 


The University of Georgia paper, the Red and the Black, has a number of pictures showing pro-choice students attempting to cover up a recent prolife display which includes images of abortion victims.  One pro-choice student’s sign indicates she thinks legal abortion ended women dying from unsafe abortions. 


Whole Woman’s Health is closing 2 clinics in Texas. 

Whole Woman’s Health in Beaumont and McAllen will close after providing abortions in the areas for a decade. Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, which operated five abortion clinics before the law went into effect, said the provision requiring physicians to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic was proving the most problematic.

Miller said hospitals near her McAllen clinic refused to grant her physicians’ applications for privileges. Some hospitals in the area require their privileged physicians to live nearby. Others require a current physician to co-sign applications for privileges, which many are unwilling to do for fear of being targeted or stigmatized.

In Beaumont, one 75-year-old physician secured privileges, but a second one could not, Miller said.

Life Links 3/5/14

A pro-choice legislator in Alabama is claiming prolife legislators wouldn’t be prolife if their daughters were impregnated by a black man.              

But during the debate, Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said that his Republican colleagues would support abortion if their daughters were impregnated by black men.

"Ninety-nine percent of the all of the white people in here are going to raise their hand that they are against abortion," he said. "On the other hand, 99 percent of the whites who are sitting in here now, if their daughter got pregnant by a black man, they are going to make their daughter have an abortion."

As horrible as these comments are, I’m guessing the national media will look the other way.  Listen to the audio which makes Alvin Holmes sound even more awlful as assumes nearly every white person would be ashamed to have a bi-racial grandchild. 


At the Huffington Post, a University of Michigan student (who is a former Planned Parenthood intern) has a rambling, poorly edited piece regarding access to abortion which has a number of gems.

In fact, I did not know anyone who was pro-life growing up except for the one house in my town that posted pro-life lawn signs....

Other laws were put in place to incite guilt and trickery like prohibiting doctors who work for a state-funded women's health service from referring patients elsewhere for an abortion.....

All of these circular mechanisms entrap women with financial and emotional burdens that actualize into limited freedom....

Planned Parenthood of Arizona is suing to prevent a state law regarding abortion drugs from taking effect.

The 2012 law now being implemented says any medication used to induce an abortion must be administered "in compliance with the protocol authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,'' as outlined in the final labeling instructions for that drug.

In the case of RU-486, that means only through the seventh week of pregnancy. But Planned Parenthood advertises that it uses it into the ninth week.

More emphatically prolife with every pro-choice rhetorical ploy

Feministe has a truly remarkable post by Molly Westerman in which she argues her pro-choice position was solidified by her pregnancies with her born children.  It’s remarkable not for it’s argument but for the lengths Westerman takes her rhetoric. 

I have been so lucky to avoid unwanted pregnancies and to have unambiguously healthy planned ones. I have felt two beloved fetuses moving inside my body.

Who would describe their own children growing inside them as fetuses?  Apparently they're so beloved they can’t be called “babies” or “children” until they’ve emerged from the womb? 

My only thought is someone who is either very creepy or someone has seen prolife people point out the absurdity of how the rhetoric of abortion advocates changes when discussing wanted pregnancies and is trying to avoid using terms she likely used while she was pregnant. 

I had no idea, before experiencing it myself, how whole-body and huge and permanently-changing pregnancy and birth are. I also had a less-direct understanding of the process of fetal development and what all that means as a physical and emotional reality for the person whose body creates and sustains that other/same body.

So were your unborn children part of your body or another body?  She’s trying to make a point about how a pregnant woman body sustains the unborn’s body and the toll that can take but then realizes that in order to make her point, she would have to honestly describe how the unborn have separate bodies and then for some reason calls attention to her troubles by writing “other/same.”

It’s just that I can’t wrap my heart around forcing anyone to stay pregnant, and I can’t wrap my head around the idea that a potential future person’s right to join the human community trumps an existing person’s right to bodily autonomy and self-determination.

Not content with one word to indicate the unborn aren’t really persons, Westerman feels compelled to use both potential and future to describe the personhood of the unborn. 

Life Links 2/27/14

Prolifers are suing  over Madison’s abortion clinic buffer zone law. 

The City Council approved the ordinance Tuesday. It creates a protective zone within 160 feet of health care facilities to allow patients and others to enter and exit without obstruction.

Under the ordinance, people on public way or sidewalks within that 160-foot radius may not approach, without consent, another person within 8 feet for the purpose of oral protest, education, counseling, passing leaflets or handbills, or displaying signs. Violations of the ordinance are punishable by fines ranging from $300 to $750.

         
A Kansas man has been charged with first degree murder after he allegedly crushed up an abortion pill and put it in a woman’s pancake, causing the death of an unborn child.

Scott R. Bollig, 30, is accused of intentionally killing the 8- to 10-week-old fetus by putting a crushed form of the medication on a pancake eaten by the woman, according to a criminal complaint filed in Trego County District Court and posted on the attorney general’s website.

The Daily Beast has a puff piece on Medical Students for Choice which bemoans the limited number of abortion training programs and how hard it is for medical students who want to learn how to kill unborn to get learning experiences.

Are prolife laws the problem?

In a RHRealityCheck article Tara Murtha attempts to use the case of a Pennsylvania mother who endangered her teenage daughter’s life by giving her abortion pills which were purchased online to argue that prolife laws are the problem. 

While the Gosnell grand jury report indicated that the rogue provider was able to operate undetected as a result of lawmakers treating abortion as a political issue rather than a public health one, the response of the state legislature was to further politicize abortion.

What?  No.  Murtha intentionally equivocates between how pro-choice individuals in the administrations (Departments of Health and State) of pro-choice governors Tom Ridge and Ed Rendell didn’t enforce rules and how prolife legislators passed laws to further regulate abortion clinics to make sure something like Gosnell doesn’t happen again.  For Murtha to act like the Grand Jury report would somehow be against these new regulations (the Grand Jury report specifically calls for abortion clinics to be treated like ambulatory surgical facilities) is intentionally deceptive. 

The Whalen case reveals we’re at a tipping point in Pennsylvania: The politicization of abortion ultimately means the criminalization of pregnancy.

Unable to defend a mother who endangered her daughter’s life by buying abortion pills online, Murtha claims pregnancy (!) is going to somehow be criminalized as opposed to illegally giving abortion pills to your daughter.  Yes, prolife laws which regulate abortion clinics are going to be used to round up all pregnant women.  That's makes sense in bizzaro land.   

Study after study shows that restricting access to safe, legal abortions by outlawing the procedure or, as is the preferred method in the United States, implementing geographic, logistical and financial barriers, doesn’t result in fewer unplanned pregnancies or abortions.

Murtha’s “study after study” actual links to one Huffington Post article and one Guttmacher Institute web page where "the studies" in question are really pro-choice researchers guessing how many abortions are performed in countries where abortion is illegal. 

Unfortunately for Murtha, that has nothing to do with how prolife laws in the U.S. which restrict abortion affect unplanned pregnancies and abortions in the U.S.  I wonder why Murtha didn't provide a study showing that prolife laws in the U.S. don’t result in fewer abortions since that’s the issue she’s talking about? 

Neither strategy reduces the need for safe abortion. They both result in women seeking abortion through other, unregulated and often unsafe means. That is one of the main reasons pre-Roe pro-choice advocates argued for regulations.

I wonder why she doesn’t provide any evidence for these assertions either.  In Michigan, abortions are down by more than 50% in the last 25 years in part because of prolife legislation yet Murtha would have us believe that somehow these ten of thousands of women in Michigan are seeking illegal abortions and yet the hospitals aren’t filled with women suffering from complications for these illegal procedures.  Please.  

Abortion advocates like Murtha can't have it both ways.  If prolife laws don't do anything to reduce abortion and only lead women into taking dangerous means to end pregnancies then why aren't our hospitals filled with women who've been injured by these dangerous methods?  Either prolife laws reduce abortion and illegal abortions are quite rare or prolife laws lead to lots of illegal abortions which are quite safe. 

Absurd story of the day: Prolife woman gets ticketed for parking car with prolife magnets in the buffer zone

This is absurd: 

Molly Jesse of Essex Junction, who opposes abortion, was ticketed by a Burlington police officer in June for parking near the clinic — within the 35-foot buffer zone where city law states that no one may “knowingly congregate, patrol, picket or demonstrate” — while she prayed nearby, outside of the buffer zone.


Jesse’s car had three magnetic signs, including one ribbon on the tailgate that said “choose life” and a larger sign on the door that said “your baby is forever, love you.” She contested the ticket.



In a six-page judgment issued Feb. 13, Vermont Judicial Bureau Hearing Officer Howard Kalfus wrote that the signs on Molly Jesse’s car amounted to a demonstration.

Buffer zones and the rights of women considering abortion not to be "harassed" are so sacrosanct that women considering abortion can't even be confronted with small car magnets which ask them to "choose life" if they happened to look at the back of Molly Jesse's car.  

Life Links 2/20/14

Bishop Richard Malone of the Archdiocese of Buffalo has spoken out strongly against the “evolved” position on abortion of State Senator Timothy Kennedy. 

“For anyone to say that he or she is a faithful Catholic and to be pro-abortion/pro-choice rights is totally inconsistent with Catholic teaching, which is clearly articulated in the catechism of the Catholic Church,” Malone said......

The bishop’s blast at Kennedy follows a Buffalo News report Sunday in which the senator explained that his views on abortion have “evolved” in the last few years, despite earlier views that fell into the pro-life category and even in the past earned support from the Conservative Party, which opposes the procedure.   

In the Wisconsin State Journal, Chris Rickert notices how some protestors are more equal than others. 

Speeding its way through the city’s legislative process is an ordinance that would create “buffer zones” around patients as a way to keep anti-abortion protesters from trying to accost women going into Madison’s lone abortion clinic.

Under the ordinance, you risk a $300 ticket if you get within 8 feet of a patient with a leaflet or a plea to reconsider. And it doesn’t matter if you’re on a sidewalk or other public property if the property is within 160 feet of the clinic.

By contrast, there are no buffer zones or really any other meaningful government restrictions on free speech in the Capitol rotunda.

Pro-abortion groups are continuing their push against the Michael Boggs nomination. This is why the abortion positions of prolife Democrats often “evolve.”  If you want to move up, you’ll be opposed tooth and nail by pro-abortion groups.  


Someone upset with a Iowa church’s prolife sign has vandalized it twice.

But sometime Saturday night, a pro-life sign outside the church was spray-painted. The word “abortion” was crossed out and the “s” in kills covered, leaving “Kill God’s Children.”

Life Links 2/18/14

The Planned Parenthood in Flagstaff, Arizona has resumed providing RU-486 abortions.  They found a physician would prescribe the pills but is apparently only available one day a week which might eventually force them to stop again. 

Howard said it has taken this long to find a physician who could provide the service at the Flagstaff location. The physician will be available once a week on Tuesdays, and unlike before, an appointment is now necessary.

The law now requires that women seeking a medical abortion first undergo a face-to-face meeting with the physician. After a 24-hour waiting period, the woman may then be given the abortion pills. But, in Flagstaff, because the physician comes only one day a week, the next possible visit for a woman would be a week later.

And, in April, when a new law is scheduled to take effect, it is possible that a physician also will be required to dispense the second round of the abortion medication, which is taken 24 hours after the first round. Currently, a patient can self-administer the second pill or a nurse practitioner can dispense it.

If that happens, it is possible the Flagstaff center will again have to end abortions, Howard said, unless a physician can provide that follow-up day of service as well.

The government of North Korea is apparently worse than I’d imagined. 

North Korea forces women to undergo abortions and young mothers to drown their newborn babies, and has starved and executed hundreds of thousands of detainees at secret prison camps — atrocities that the chairman of a U.N. panel that documented the abuses compares to those of Nazi Germany.

“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the U.N. Commission on Inquiry said in a 372-page report released Monday on North Korea’s atrocities. These crimes are ongoing because “the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place.”

The Students for Life group at the University of Alabama received an apology after their display was taken down. 

Guttmacher Institute can't stop making stuff up about IUD use

The Guttmacher Institute is really pushing this idea that health insurance needs to provide free contraceptives so poor women will get IUDs.  Here's Eyal Press in the New Yorker:

Thanks to publicly funded family-planning services provided to poor women under Title X—a federal program that House Republicans have repeatedly tried to eliminate—there is evidence that more low-income women have been using I.U.D.s in the past decade. But the total number of users is still small, and the cost, which can exceed a thousand dollars before insertion, remains prohibitive for many low-income women who don’t qualify for Medicaid and cannot afford private insurance. “We know that cost is a major factor in a woman’s ability to choose and access a method of contraception that works best for her, and behind the cost is access to health-insurance coverage,” Kinsey Hasstedt, a public-policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, told me.

I wonder why they don’t provide any evidence.  Is it because the percentage of women who used IUDs in 2006-2008 (table 11) hardly varied between income levels?  Also, noteworthy is that the increase in IUD use from 2002 to 2006-2008 is much higher in the 300+% of poverty level group than in the lower income groups.  IUD use went up from 1.5% in 2002 to 5.9% in 2006-2008 among women making 300+% of the poverty level while only went from 4.1% to 4.8% for women in the 0-99% of poverty level. 

Or why don't they mention that poor women are much more likely to use female sterilization (which is typically more expensive than an IUD) as their contraceptive method than their richer peers? 

It would be nice if reporters actually examined studies on contraceptive use as opposed to just parroting the Guttmacher Institute’s talking points. 

Wendy Davis is now okay with 20-week abortion ban.....well, not really but kind of, sorta

Texas gubernatorial candidates Wendy Davis is trying real hard to have it both ways on legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks.  Try to sort through this:

“The Supreme Court sets that viability and it probably will be revisited,” Davis said. “It’s one that deserves that kind of reflection to determine whether that kind of constitutional protection should exist at a time period less than what it is right now.”

Davis said she could have supported a bill that contained only a 20-week ban, but the law’s restrictions on clinics and doctors have greatly curtailed access to the procedure in parts of Texas.

“It was the least objectionable,” she said. “I would have and could have voted to allow that to go through, if I felt like we had tightly defined the ability for a woman and a doctor to be making this decision together and not have the Legislature get too deep in the weeds of how we would describe when that was appropriate.”

So she could have support a 20-week abortion ban if it allowed women and their abortionists to make the decision (which wouldn’t be a ban at all)? 

Criminal abortionist caught in Germany and extradited to U.S.

Local Georgia media outlets are reporting that abortionist Charles Rossman was caught in Germany and extradited back to Georgia after a decade on the run.

VPD says that Rossmann was arrested last year in Germany and has now been extradited to Valdosta, to face multiple counts of criminal abortion, drug charges and a FBI warrant for Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution.

Rossmann fled the area shortly after being investigated for performing illegal abortions at his medical practice in Valdosta.   

Here a LifeNews article on the 2003 case which involved a 31-week abortion.

The woman was 31-weeks pregnant at the time, Heaton said, and investigators
believe the woman may have requested the abortion because she feared the child
had Down syndrome.

After starting a procedure — presumably to induce labor — Rossmann allegedly
provided the woman with contact information and left her alone in his office,
Heaton said. The doors to the building were locked, though Heaton said the
woman could have left the building if she wanted and was able. There is no
indication that she was held against her will, he said.

The woman unsuccessfully attempted to contact Rossman, couldn’t reach him, and was forced to call 911.

Rossmann was subsequently charged with two more counts of criminal
abortion after two more alleged victims came forward. He is also charged with four counts of having prescription medications out of their original container. Rossmann’s office is also not licensed by the state for child births.

Eclectablog’s Obamacare Posterboy Ed Mulak was convicted in 2006 for having child porn

Eddie Mulak via Eclectablog

In an attempt to shine a positive light on Obamacare, Eclectablog published a story by Amy Lynn Smith featuring 31-year-old “young invincible” Eddie Mulak and his experience with Obamacare. 

Unlike many of his fellow young Americans, who are expected to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) right before the 2014 enrollment deadline on March 31, Mulak signed up in December. He knew the initial glitches at HealthCare.gov would be worked out — and they were. By the time he used the site to enroll he says it was “easy breezy.”

.........

As a college student working multiple jobs, Mulak appreciates the tax subsidies that kept his premiums down to just $20 per month. The maximum he’ll have to pay out-of-pocket in a year is $750 and he has a $0 deductible. That’s right: zero. He also pays nothing for generic prescription drugs and just $10 to see his primary care physician. Mulak also got to choose his doctor, which was important to him.

I googled Ed Mulak as I wondered where someone would be working to get insurance for $20 a month.  I found a little more than I was expecting. 

This CBS News story from 2006 came up about a 23-year-old Edward Mulak being arrested for having child pornography on his computer.  At the time he was roommates with Ken Gourlay whose work setting up child porn web sites made the New York Times. 

I placed a comment at Electablog asking if it was the same Ed Mulak because they have the same name, live in the same area and the ages seem to line up.  My comment was deleted. 

When I tweeted the author and the web host (Chris Savage) about why my comment was deleted, Savage responded that he deleted the comment because it was not true and called me a "dumbass."   
                                   
My first thought was, “If it’s not the same guy then why would you delete the comment instead of merely saying, ‘That’s not him.’” So then I did some more web searching and found this story about an Ed Mulak who talks about his former addiction to crystal meth and his use of pornography.            

"Most times if there was ever the inclination to use again, ... it was immediately dashed away by thinking, 'Well, do you really want to go back to that?'" Mulak said. "'Do you really want to go back to being stuck in someone's basement, ... having sex ... watching porn and being down there and not realizing that three days have gone by?'

Edward Mulak 2009 via Otis

I then went to OTIS and found this rap sheet on Edward Mulak (the picture looks eerily similar to the one on Eclectablog) which notes a conviction for possession of child sexually abusive material, use of a computer to commit a crime, and possession of meth.

Among other current jobs, Eddie Mulak’s LinkdIN page lists that he is the Communications Director for Rudy Serra, a candidate for Michigan’s 27th House.  It also shows a lack of work history during the time Edward Mulak was in jail.

Life Links 2/6/14

This is a great paragraph in the Washington Post’s GovBeat blog regarding which states have the highest and lowest abortion rates. 

The highest abortion rates recorded were in New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware and New Jersey, with 27 to 34 abortions per thousand women ages 15 to 44. Wyoming, Mississippi, South Dakota, Kentucky and Missouri had the lowest, at one to five per thousand.

Michelle Goldberg writes about the New Yorker piece on abortionist Steven Brigham.

The important question, though, is what makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Without a doubt, Brigham’s ability to operate represents a legal and regulatory failure, one aided by official indifference to poor women’s health care. But, like Gosnell, his business depended on the stigma around abortion and the difficulty many women have in accessing safe procedures.

She should have stopped after the second sentence.  Brigham has centered his operations in New Jersey and Maryland, both of which use state tax dollars to fund abortions and where access to abortion is not difficult. 


A local Arkansas TV station has a story on a prolife billboard and a woman who choose life for her unborn child.


In Pennsylvania, a woman has been charged with “ a felony count of medical consultation and judgment“ after getting abortion drugs online and giving them to her teen daughter.     

On Feb. 6, 2012, her daughter was transported to the Geisinger Medical Center emergency room with severe abdominal pain. Medical records obtained by police stated she was "treated for an incomplete abortion and a urinary tract infection."

Is the falling abortion rate due solely to fewer women becoming pregnant?

I’m somewhat skeptical of the Guttmacher Institute’s latest estimates for annual abortion numbers because of the large number of abortion providers which didn’t respond to them.  Regardless, some abortion advocates have attempted to argue that a decline in pregnancies is close to the only cause of the decline in abortion rate.

For example, Libby Anne argues: 

It’s particularly interesting to note that the abortion rate fell during this period, even as the birth rate fell. In other words, the falling abortion rate wasn’t the result of more women choosing parenthood and the falling birth rate isn’t a result of more women having abortions. Instead, both are the result of a third external factor—fewer pregnancies.

The problem is she does no number crunching.  The birth rate is falling alongside the abortion rate.  Okay.  But are they falling in tandem?  

According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortion rates fell 13% from 2008 (1.21 million and a rate of 19.4) to 2011 (1.06 million and a rate of 16.9) with there being 150,000 fewer abortions a year. 

According to the CDC, fertility rates (which are based number of births by 1,000 women aged 15-44) fell 7.2% from 68.1 in 2008 to 63.2 in 2011.  There were 294,104 fewer births in 2011 (3,953,590) than in 2008 (4,247,694).

That would mean there were approximately 450,000 fewer pregnancies which were ended either by birth or abortion in 2011 than in 2008. 

In 2008, the abortion ratio (abortions per 1000 births in the same age group) was 285.  In 2011, it’s 268.   That’s a 6% decline. 

Now maybe that decline is solely caused by a subset of women who would have had abortions if they became pregnant doing things to prevent pregnancy.  But then that argument has to be made.

The problem with making it is the abortion ratio for the non-existent pregnancies in 2011 vs. 2008 (150K abortions/294,104 births) is 510.  That’s a higher number than the CDC has for the 2010 abortion ratio of sub-groups of women who have very high abortion ratios.  For example, according to the CDC, the abortion ratio of 16-year-olds in 2010 was 394.

The CDC’s abortion ratio only goes above 510 for 15-year-olds (541) and girls younger than 15 (837). 

So while it’s true that a good percentage of the abortion decrease is based on fewer pregnancies (based on abortion ratio numbers, I would estimate at least half), that’s not the whole story for the abortion decrease.

"Non-existent prolife laws to blame for Steven Brigham or something"

Amanda Marcotte comments on the New Yorker piece on abortionist Steven Brigham and unsurprisingly attempts to blame his abortion empire on prolife laws and social stigma. 

So what can be done to stop dangerous abortion providers? One major thing is to stop marginalizing abortion from the rest of medical care through anti-choice legislation and social stigma.

Interestingly, she never cites any of the prolife laws in New Jersey and Maryland which might have lead to Brigham operating there.  That’s because both states receive high marks from NARAL because of their lack of prolife laws. 

Marcotte has previously blamed the existence of Kermit Gosnell and his abortion practice on Pennsylvania’s ban on tax-funded abortions.  Both New Jersey and Maryland use tax dollars to pay for abortions.

Life Links 1/27/14

The New Yorker has a lengthy article on infamous abortionist Steven Brigham.  The author is a daughter of an abortionist and her connections to the abortion industry helped her get an interview with Brigham.  Most of it will be a rehash for prolifers who’ve followed Brigham’s numerous exploits.  The exception will be the abortion providers who still defend him. 

Yet not all of his peers view him as a rogue provider. Among the expert witnesses at his trial was Gary Mucciolo, an abortion provider and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at N.Y.U.; he argued that Brigham’s conduct did not deviate from medical norms. During a break in the proceedings, Mucciolo, who received fifteen hundred dollars from the defense, told me that he considered the trial “a witch hunt.” (Later, he added, “Does Brigham have a good track record? Frankly, I don’t know.”) Another abortion provider told me, “The real story is that the government, the insurance companies, and the hospitals don’t care. They don’t want us in business, and that’s exactly why people like Brigham exist—and you know what, maybe they should exist, because, if they don’t exist, women will get abortions even more illegally. It’s better than nothing, and nothing is coming.”

The public editor of the New York Times feels the March for Life deserved more than just a photograph.   


Christopher O. Tollefsen writes in Public Discourse about Roe.

The court declined to answer this question: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” But Justice Blackmun then proceeded to suggest that the reason this question did not need settling was its unsettle-ability. Doctors, philosophers, and theologians have failed to reach consensus; ancient and medieval theorists subscribed to different theories. Thus did Blackmun imply that the answer to this question was private in the following sense: our answer is largely a matter of private opinion, of speculation.

Life Links 1/24/14

The city of Elgin, Illinois has settled a lawsuit with a prolife group with uses vans equipped with ultrasounds.       

The settlement announced Thursday allow non-profit organizations to operate out of vehicles, the Chicago Tribune reported. Elgin agreed to change a zoning ordinance adopted in 2012 and to waive permit fees.

Elgin will also pay $280,000 to Life Center. The group says the money will be used for legal expenses.

      
                       
The Republican National Committee passed a resolution asking prolife politicians to stop being silent on the abortion issue.

“Staying silent fails because this strategy allows Democrats to define the Republican brand,” the resolution said, “and prevents the Republican Party from taking advantage of widely supported pro-life positions … to attract traditional and new values voters.”

Here’s a solid letter to the editor.

What is it about being “in there” that makes him not a person but being “out here” that does make him a person? I have searched the libraries and the Internet with diligence and thoroughness and, except for abortion, I cannot find a single other human endeavor or field of study which proposes, or has ever proposed, a theory by which an object’s “essence of being” is transformed by moving it a few inches from here to there.

A Swedish nurse is suing for religious discrimination when a work offer was taken after she mentioned her opposition to taking part in abortions.

The student nurse spent her internship at a hospital in Eksjö where claimed she had been promised to work extra in the summer. When she told them that her faith prevented her from taking part in abortions, the hospital retracted its offer of summer employment, Ellinor Grimmark claimed in a complaint that has submitted to the Swedish discrimination watchdog Diskrimineringsombudsmannen (DO).

About that 3% number from Planned Parenthood

For the file on rebutting Planned Parenthood's claim that abortion is only a small part of what they do is this from the RH Reality Check: 

Between 10,000 and 15,000 people visit the Planned Parenthood St. Louis clinic each year, according to Gianino, including patients, family members, vendors, and employees. About 6,000 people per year visit the clinic to receive abortion care.

 So then between 40% and 60% of Planned Parenthood St. Louis clients are their for abortions?

Life Links 1/22/14

Gerard Bradley looks at the prolife movement 41 years after Roe v. Wade.

First, there would be—and should be—thanksgiving and even joy. It is evidence of Divine Providence and proof of human love that we are here at all. Quick quiz: which other developed democracy can claim a pro-life movement that is a fraction of the one in the United States? Answer: none......

Almost no one now speaks of the unborn as “tissue,” a “blob,” or an internal organ of the mother. Most abortion proponents no longer speak of the unborn at all, because there is nothing they could plausibly say that would serve their “pro-choice” cause.....

Yet we have not won. We are not even winning. And the pro-life movement faces challenges greater than it has ever confronted.

Media Matters is hilarious.  They have an article entitled, “How The Media Is Helping Conservatives Kill Roe v. Wade”. 


An abortion clinic escort reviews the study which produced the “1 in 3" women will have an abortion statistic and finds the study doesn’t really say that. 

It is misleading to assume that one-third of a given group of women (such as a group of female protesters standing on the sidewalk) will have an abortion, or that one-third of your friends will have an abortion. I am not implying that anyone who has used the “1 in 3” figure when discussing abortion has been intentionally trying to twist the facts or mislead people. What I am saying is that there are a lot of critical limitations to consider with research – things that don’t fit cleanly into sound bites or onto posters.

  

Life Links 1/21/14

Abortionist Martin Haskell plans to appeal the Ohio Department of Health’s order that he close his Women’s Med Center abortion clinic. 

The clinic’s attorney, Jennifer Branch of Cincinnati, said an appeal would be filed within the required 15-day period, asking a local common pleas court judge to allow the facility to remain open until the case is resolved. She called the state’s action “unprecedented” and part of “a regulatory witch hunt on abortion providers at the bequest of Governor John Kasich.”

   
NFL running back Arian Foster is counter suing the mother of his unborn child for defamation. 


The New Yorker discusses the cases of Jahi McMath and Marlise Munoz. 

But, forty years after Roe v. Wade, the intensity of the abortion debate has not waned. Indeed, as these cases illustrate, the controversy grows and spreads into new areas that are logically unrelated to abortion itself. This American struggle never ends.

   

Life Links 1/17/14

The Washington Post has one of those columns from one of those professors who write some of those books which attempt to study prolife people or Christians like we’re exotic animals.  It has some hilarious assertions like claiming that prolife legislation on the state level “largely went unnoticed, and thus popularly unopposed, until Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis’s filibuster brought attention to the strategy.”

Joshua Wilson is writing about Massachusetts’ 35 foot buffer law and compares sidewalk counseling and clinic blockades but never mentions the FACE Act which has a much greater effect on clinic blockades than any buffer zone law. 


At National Review, Ed Whelan points out that the primary evidence Massachusetts’ lawyer cites for why the 35 foot buffer zone was needed is “pro choice advocates swearing and screaming at pro life advocates” in the smaller buffer zone. 


Local media outlets are taking notice of Planned Parenthood in Birmingham closure. 

Spencer did not comment beyond her statement.

"Planned Parenthood in Birmingham prioritizes patient care, and provides essential reproductive health care to over 1,600 women, men and teens each year," she said. "We are slowing down our services in Birmingham temporarily in order to upgrade our operations.

"Planned Parenthood Southeast is committed to excellence, and the effort we are taking is to verify that we are doing everything we can to ensure patients have a safe, positive experience while in our care. "

Life Links 1/15/14

Slate’s William Saletan describes the mindset of pro-choice people who think prolifers are misogynists who don’t really care about abortion.

The assertion that pro-lifers don’t really care about abortion—that what really motivates them is misogyny, controlling other people’s bodies, and forcing anyone who has sex to have a baby—is morally comforting to a lot of pro-choice people. It reassures us that we’re on side of compassion, justice, and progress, and that there’s no reason to feel ambivalent about this issue. We have nothing to heed or learn from our enemies. Our only challenge is to defeat them.

This is one of those echo-chamber beliefs that won’t survive a reality test.   

Julia Herrington writes about how she changed her mind on abortion and the framework of the abortion debate.

But with an awareness of the framework we’re dealing with, we have the opportunity to start a new dialogue. Actually, I think it is incumbent upon us to change the conversation, addressing the topic from new and varied points of view. The conversation need not be first and foremost political. And the friction enshrouding abortion needs to be diminished. This requires that we really examine the nuts and bolts of the issue, turn it on its head and find new angles as entry points for discussion.

At the Boston Herald, Margery Eagan shares her discomfort with how abortions are mostly performed at abortion clinics.

Abortion clinics should be closed and women seeking them should be able to get them where they get the rest of their medical care: their physician’s office. Outpatient clinics that also treat asthma, diabetes, broken bones or aching backs. Secure clinics within big hospitals.

Do you think Mass. General, Brigham and Women’s, Beth Israel — or their ?influential patients and ?patrons — would put up with screaming protesters outside their front doors? No, they wouldn’t. Not for one minute.

So why then are women, in 2014, still being farmed off like pariahs?

Because hospitals don’t want the hassle of abortion. Most doctors don’t, either. Insurance companies don’t want to pay more than they’re already paying.

And pro-choice women let everybody get away with this disgrace.

Ladies, we are fighting the wrong fight, accepting crumbs from the table, and being played for fools. When will we wake up?

Life Links 1/14/14

A 20-year-old college student is suing Houston Texans running back Arian Foster, claiming he is pressuring her to have an abortion.

Norwood said everything changed when she told Foster she was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby.

"He's like, 'You can't have this, you can't have this kid, like, we cannot bring a child into this, like, think about my kids,' " Norwood said.

She said Foster began sending text messages urging her to end the pregnancy.

"You just can't bring a life into this world under these circumstances. It's not fair to anyone. It's not just about you," read one message, according to Norwood.

The Atlantic has a piece on abortion clinics in Texas and its prolife laws which mentions this tidbit.

I discovered a similar problem when reporting on reproductive laws in Texas. Though countless abortion clinics and providers made themselves available to me, they could not put me in touch with a single woman who has so far been impacted by the new law. Even Susan, though she squeaked in just before the deadline, was ultimately able to terminate her pregnancy. When I asked roughly a dozen pro-choice groups for examples of patients who had suffered under the law, they responded either that nobody wanted to come forward out of privacy concerns, or that it’s hard to know when someone isn’t able to do something.    

Pro-choice groups in Michigan can’t get their act together.  That’s good news for the unborn. 

Reproductive rights groups opposed to Michigan's new abortion insurance law will not seek to overturn it at the ballot box in 2014.

The ACLU of Michigan, along with state chapters of Planned Parenthood and the National Organization of Women, had been considering a referendum to repeal the law, which prohibits insurers from covering most abortions unless a woman or her employer has purchased an additional rider in advance.

"The timing is just not right for a referendum or initiative at this point," Rana Elmir, deputy director for the ACLU of Michigan, said Tuesday.

Life Links 1/13/14

The current CEO of Massachusetts Planned Parenthood is a former legislator who sponsored abortion clinic buff zone legislation.  There’s one problem with this.  It’s against Massachusetts’ law. 

Furthermore, the law has specific restrictions once people leave state employment. There is a “forever ban” on working for anyone other than the state on a matter that an individual worked on as a state employee.......

“It would appear that former State Representative Walz is covered by the definition of this statue. State Representative Walz was the leading sponsor of the Buffer Zone Law, and then was hired to a position directly related to the Buffer Zone Law that has paid $250,000 per year,” Lyons says in his joint letter with Lombardo to the attorney general.

After reading this Time story, I think the author (Eliana Dockterman) doesn’t actually believe the Pope is really prolife.                                 

   
Clark Forsythe discusses the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear Arizona’s appeal on their 20-week abortion ban.

The Court simply declined to hear the case, and the Court (as is usual) issued no opinion explaining why. (In legal terms, the decision to decline to hear the appeal is not “precedential.” Lawyers can speculate as to the reason, and the most likely is that there was no “split” or “conflict” between different federal courts of appeal, which would require the Supreme Court’s reconciliation of the conflict.)

......

States outside the Ninth Circuit can and should enact 20-week limits to protect unborn life and protect women’s health. The Court has often “passed” on issues several times – six or seven times on the issue of flag salutes by school children – before addressing them.

New ultrasound study shows small percentage of women change mind about abortion

Slate has a piece on a new study which found “voluntarily viewing the ultrasound image may contribute to a small proportion of women with medium or low decision certainty deciding to continue the pregnancy.”  Pro-choice groups will likely use the study to attack ultrasound legislation as only a small percentage of women who viewed the ultrasound changed their mind but the study also disputes the idea that having/viewing an ultrasound is some burden-laden experience.  Caveats about how the abortion clinic staff showed/explained the ultrasound apply. 

Katy Waldman writes,

Yet viewing the ultrasound images did influence some of the wavering women to stick with their pregnancies. Even though the number is very small, this is important to acknowledge. It means not only that forcing or pressuring women to look at their fetus will probably prevent a sliver of abortions—which is relevant for those who oppose and want to reduce abortions—but also that some women do respond to these pictures. I don’t buy the patronizing notion that patients seeking abortion “know not what they do”—that they have some false idea about the contents of their uteruses to be toppled by an “adorable,” “precious” or “lifelike” sonogram. I also doubt all women even have the maternal instinct right-wingers hope these images will fan to life. But I do trust that unsure women who voluntarily look at ultrasounds and then decide against abortion are acting as rationally as the ones who decide to go through with it. We all make choices along a variety of axes: the financial axis; the relationship-status axis; the personal goals and dreams axis; the ethical axis; and, yes, the emotional axis. Expecting women to ignore any one scrap of data (as if they are not capable of weighing it, carefully, alongside the others) is underestimating women.

At Time, reporter Eliana Dockterman is apparently unaware the women in the study who didn’t look at the ultrasound still received one and thinks the study re-enforces the idea that “putting these women through the process of an ultrasound is an undue physical and emotional burden.”

This study lends more credence to the idea that women who are certain that an abortion is the right choice for them are not going to change their mind, and putting these women through the process of an ultrasound is an undue physical and emotional burden as The Supreme Court has indicated in its rulings so far.

Huh?  If they're not going to change their mind then why is it a undue emotional burden?  It's not a physical burden because they already receive the ultrasound because as the first line(!) of the study's abstract notes ultrasounds as a "routine part of preprocedure abortion care." 

Also, as far as I know the Supreme Court of the United States hasn't provided a ruling (much less "rulings") on ultrasound/abortion legislation.  They declined to review a ruling which struck down Oklahoma's ultrasound law but that's hardly a ruling as they decline to review most cases.