"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. 

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."