Anti-Choice Roundup
Feb. 2nd, 2011 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsI've been ignoring the individual news stories, but there's been such a perfect storm of anti-choice, anti-woman actions building that I thought it was time I mentioned them in passing. The actual legislative outcome of most of this is as yet unknown.
Catholic Hospitals -- it's been almost a year since a Catholic hospital provided an abortion so clearly life-saving that even the people on their ethics committee said that they needed to save the woman's life instead of the doomed fetus'. A couple of months ago, the local Bishop ... you can Google his name; I can't help but think of him as Bishop BunchedPanties -- literally threw the hospital out of the Catholic diocese, in part because the abortion was provided and in part because the hospital steadfastly refused to apologize for, as the administrator put it, "saving the life we could save." This is hot news here (Maryland was founded as a wildlife preserve for Catholics back when it wasn't safe to be one in England and is still heavily Catholic) because there has been a hard-fought struggle over whether there will be a new Catholic hospital built in the next county or an Adventist one. The Adventists have pointed out that they don't have the same take on women and reproduction that Catholics do.
H.R.3. That's the official name of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," the first of the money-saving bills introduced into the U.S. Congress. It saves money by reducing funding for abortions - in part by disallowing people to use their own pre-tax money to buy health insurance that covers abortions. It then reduces the number of abortions that can be funded by public money by drawing distinctions between "rape" and "forcible rape" - only that latter being allowable unter the new law. Boehner insists it's not changing anything. Women's rights groups point out that if this bill passes, suddenly statutory rape, drunk/drug date rape, or rape via threat instead of actual force aren't, in Whoopie Goldberg's prhasing "rape-rape and thus don't count. (I cite the Polansky case very deliberately, because while he was twice the girl's age and drugged her, he didn't hit her... and thus this would indeed not be rape under the new law.)
The abortion and mental health study. Big news recently; hundreds of thousands of European women were tracked for mental health between going through with a pregnancy or aborting. The study clearly found that women were more likely to have mental health (stress and post-partum depression) if they gave birth vs. having regrets after an abortion. As Justice Scalia specifically cited post-abortion depression and regret as possibilities that made it reasonable for the Supreme Court to limit abortion in the U.S., this is of major, legal interest here. I have already seen objections that it was flawed (in a LifeNews report that severely undercounted the number of women involved), that women who were already contemplating an abortion were already in a bad mental state instead of neutral as the study suggested, and that the study didn't run long enough because women don't regret it for years and years (after folks like LifeNews have been telling them over and over for years and years that they *are* and *should be* regretting it, but that, of course, isn't mentioned.)
The Planned Parenthood Sting. News is hitting today that there's undercover video showing Planned Parenthood making abortion "easier" and covering up an underaged sex ring. It's going to get lots of play, just like the Acorn and Sherri Sherrod video did. However, at least this time the reputable news outlets are *also* mentioning that two weeks ago Planned Parenthood contacted the FBI and local law enforcement saying that there was either a sex ring they should take down or PP was being set up.
Lastly, I'm going to mention the butcher of PA, the guy without a license who was killing women and apparently live-birth babies right and left. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY on the pro-choice side of things is championing this idiot. He's a charlatan and a murderer and deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail. So don't be holding him up as what really goes on in Planned Parenthood or other licensed, regulated clinics as performed by trained, licensed medical providers. You know what he is? A return to the back street illegal butchers. You know how he managed to operate for so long? Because women were THAT desperate. Read the reports of the women who survived his butchery. At least one directly says that she went to him because his hole wasn't surrounded by protesters; she started out at Planned Parenthood but was turned back by the protesters there.
And that is why I escort, right there. Because otherwise, women don't go have a baby that they magically love and take care of, or is eagerly adopted. Because if a woman who does not want or cannot bear that pregnancy to term cannot get a legal procedure done by a licensed professional, she's going to turn to the first whackaloon with a knife.
Catholic Hospitals -- it's been almost a year since a Catholic hospital provided an abortion so clearly life-saving that even the people on their ethics committee said that they needed to save the woman's life instead of the doomed fetus'. A couple of months ago, the local Bishop ... you can Google his name; I can't help but think of him as Bishop BunchedPanties -- literally threw the hospital out of the Catholic diocese, in part because the abortion was provided and in part because the hospital steadfastly refused to apologize for, as the administrator put it, "saving the life we could save." This is hot news here (Maryland was founded as a wildlife preserve for Catholics back when it wasn't safe to be one in England and is still heavily Catholic) because there has been a hard-fought struggle over whether there will be a new Catholic hospital built in the next county or an Adventist one. The Adventists have pointed out that they don't have the same take on women and reproduction that Catholics do.
H.R.3. That's the official name of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," the first of the money-saving bills introduced into the U.S. Congress. It saves money by reducing funding for abortions - in part by disallowing people to use their own pre-tax money to buy health insurance that covers abortions. It then reduces the number of abortions that can be funded by public money by drawing distinctions between "rape" and "forcible rape" - only that latter being allowable unter the new law. Boehner insists it's not changing anything. Women's rights groups point out that if this bill passes, suddenly statutory rape, drunk/drug date rape, or rape via threat instead of actual force aren't, in Whoopie Goldberg's prhasing "rape-rape and thus don't count. (I cite the Polansky case very deliberately, because while he was twice the girl's age and drugged her, he didn't hit her... and thus this would indeed not be rape under the new law.)
The abortion and mental health study. Big news recently; hundreds of thousands of European women were tracked for mental health between going through with a pregnancy or aborting. The study clearly found that women were more likely to have mental health (stress and post-partum depression) if they gave birth vs. having regrets after an abortion. As Justice Scalia specifically cited post-abortion depression and regret as possibilities that made it reasonable for the Supreme Court to limit abortion in the U.S., this is of major, legal interest here. I have already seen objections that it was flawed (in a LifeNews report that severely undercounted the number of women involved), that women who were already contemplating an abortion were already in a bad mental state instead of neutral as the study suggested, and that the study didn't run long enough because women don't regret it for years and years (after folks like LifeNews have been telling them over and over for years and years that they *are* and *should be* regretting it, but that, of course, isn't mentioned.)
The Planned Parenthood Sting. News is hitting today that there's undercover video showing Planned Parenthood making abortion "easier" and covering up an underaged sex ring. It's going to get lots of play, just like the Acorn and Sherri Sherrod video did. However, at least this time the reputable news outlets are *also* mentioning that two weeks ago Planned Parenthood contacted the FBI and local law enforcement saying that there was either a sex ring they should take down or PP was being set up.
Lastly, I'm going to mention the butcher of PA, the guy without a license who was killing women and apparently live-birth babies right and left. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY on the pro-choice side of things is championing this idiot. He's a charlatan and a murderer and deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail. So don't be holding him up as what really goes on in Planned Parenthood or other licensed, regulated clinics as performed by trained, licensed medical providers. You know what he is? A return to the back street illegal butchers. You know how he managed to operate for so long? Because women were THAT desperate. Read the reports of the women who survived his butchery. At least one directly says that she went to him because his hole wasn't surrounded by protesters; she started out at Planned Parenthood but was turned back by the protesters there.
And that is why I escort, right there. Because otherwise, women don't go have a baby that they magically love and take care of, or is eagerly adopted. Because if a woman who does not want or cannot bear that pregnancy to term cannot get a legal procedure done by a licensed professional, she's going to turn to the first whackaloon with a knife.
