abortion

The anti-choice movement is not about “life”. Never has been.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Monica Potter quote
“Pro-life” leader in a moment of honesty of what this is all about.

Since last Friday when a deranged man murdered three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic and injured several more, even some veteran pro-choice people have been stunned at the response by anti-choice people to it, which has been equal parts callous and defensive.

“After all these years and millions of babies that have gone to their death, violence is to be anticipated,” said Judie Brown, president of American Life League, in a phone interview with MSNBC. “Because it’s acceptable to violently kill a baby, so why isn’t it acceptable to violently kill other people?”

“We never approve of violence against anybody, whether it’s the unborn babies or the clients of Planned Parenthood or anybody else,” Ann Scheidler, vice president of the Pro-Life Action League, told MSNBC. But, she added, “it’s not the fault of the pro-life movement that someone found out that Planned Parenthood is doing these things. It’s the fault of Planned Parenthood for selling the baby parts.”

Planned Parenthood is a villain,” she said. “They undermine the integrity of families and the morality of young teen girls and kill babies on a regular basis, day after day. We’re not going to say, ‘Oh, poor Planned Parenthood, we should never say anything negative about what they call ‘services.’ Because they are a blight on our culture.”

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MSM bias toward anti-choicers needs to stop.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

I blame both for contributing to the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting but SportsGirl101 does make an excellent point about the mainstream media’s complicity in anti-choice violence due to their giving them a mostly uncritical platform to peddle lies about reproductive health and insidiously attack women’s autonomy. Because it’s often done under the banner of “balance”, news people who do this don’t see themselves as playing an aiding and abetting role. But they are. Witness how it’s done in this Reuter’s piece:

Planned Parenthood said on Sunday that news reports that the gunman who attacked its Colorado health clinic had uttered “no more baby parts” during his arrest showed that the suspect was motivated by an anti-abortion agenda.

The remark attributed to suspect Robert Lewis Dear was an apparent reference to Planned Parenthood’s abortion activities and its role in delivering fetal tissue to medical researchers, a hot button issue in the 2016 race for the presidency.

“We now know the man responsible for the tragic shooting at PP’s health center in Colorado was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion,” the organization said on Twitter.

Conservatives have accused Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit that provides a range of health services, including abortion, of illegally selling baby parts, an accusation it has strenuously denied.

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Legal abortion is so “safe” in some places that women are resorting to DIY ones

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

self induced abortion

Friday’s Supreme Court announcement was understandably eclipsed by the events in Paris but we pro-choice folks paid close attention to it. The court has agreed to hear a challenge to a passel of abortion restrictions passed in Texas in 2013 under the guise of “safety”. The Texas laws, which led to several clinic closures as intended, were the result of anti-choicers taking advantage of past court decisions allowing states broad latitude in regulating abortion prior to viability so long as their stated reason was to protect the health of women and that it did not place an “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion. Arizona, being a red state run by raving misogynists, has passed similar laws, modeled on national templates.

If you think that solid scientific evidence should be required before forcing women (many of whom will have to drive long distances) to wait 24-72 hours before getting an abortion, or for claiming that abortion will increase her chances of breast cancer and depression, or for requiring clinics to be fully ambulatory surgical centers and doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals before one of the simplest surgical or medication procedures available can be done, then you don’t know anti-choice judges. The famously right wing 5th Circuit, which upheld the Texas law that will be decided by SCOTUS, found such considerations to be irrelevant:

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For once, lack of evidence stops an anti-choice law

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Evidence pyramidIllustration and explanation: Chelsea B. Polis, PhD www.chelseapolis.com

Pro-choice forces won two victories in Arizona last week. One was the federal court striking down a ban of off-label use of abortion medication (known to be safer than the original FDA protocol) and the other was the court blocking a new law requiring doctors to give abortion patients dubious information about the possibility of “reversing” a medication abortion.

It gets even better with the latter decision, per Jessica Mason Pieklo, Senior Legal Analyst for RH Reality Check:

Attorneys for the State of Arizona asked the court to postpone the trial, in part because its primary expert to defend the law lacked the “publication and research background and experience” to be qualified as an expert witness.

Federal courts are required to determine whether an expert is qualified to testify, including whether the expert’s methodology is sufficiently reliable to support the proposed opinions. The court must further decide whether the expert’s proposed testimony will, through the application of scientific, technical, or specialized expertise, assist the court in understanding the evidence or determining a fact at issue.

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For my friends who continue to believe that legal abortion is safe

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On this very day in 2015 there are still liberals who cling to the belief that the anti-abortion stance is merely a ploy by wily “establishment” (whatever the hell that means) Republicans to keep the rank-and-files docile and the campaign coffers full. I, of all people, still hear this claim constantly from I know! “They’ll never overturn Roe! They need abortion as a wedge issue too much!”

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