abortion

Why adding family leave to an anti-abortion bill is bogus

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Charles Camosy
Photo: Catholic Star Herald

Anti-choicers are egregious in general but they are most frustrating to deal when they pretend to be seeking common ground while in reality pushing for the same bad forced birth policies under a thin veneer of caring about women. Some, like Democrats For Life and Secular Pro-Life, pretend to be liberal, all the better to lull reporters and the general public into believing that it’s possible to want to deny women basic bodily autonomy for non-reactionary ends (hint: it’s not). I honestly prefer Trent Franks sobbing about holocausts and the candor of the people in my Twitter feed screaming how I’m a murdering whore because I’ve had an abortion because at least they make it clear where they’re coming from.

A relentlessly self-promoting author and academic, Charles Camosy, “associate professor of Christian ethics at Fordham University and board member of Democrats for Life, author of Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation” has joined this dubious cohort. The title of his book (on several occasions Camosy has, annoyingly, shilled said book to me in response to specific questions I’ve asked him about policy positions he has stated publicly rather than simply answering them) seems to describe a worthy, and benign, goal.

Camosy provides an example of what he considers a “way forward” in a recent oped in the LA Times:

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No, anti-choicers, there aren’t thousands of clinics that could easily replace Planned Parenthood

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

PlannedParenthoodIsCritical-HealthAffairs

As anti-choice activists continue to push the now-thoroughly discredited “Planned Parenthood sells baby parts!” story as a ruse to defund the organization and deprive millions of women of contraception and health screenings (since federal funds can’t be used on abortion), you will often hear them speak of “thousands of community health clinics” that are readily available to low income patients who currently use Planned Parenthood. This, it turns out, is a bunch of garbage (as is approximately 99.9% everything claimed by anti-choicers but mainstream news people continue to treat them as a credible movement for dog knows what reason). The Congressional Budget Office commissioned an analysis of health provider availability for women who need contraception and found that Planned Parenthood is a crucial provider of birth control to a large number of regions and the women who live in them, as the graph above illustrates.

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Turns out all the Planned Parenthood “sting” videos were deceptively edited. Will some mainstream reporters who legitimized the story care?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

I Love Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood isn’t taking the bogus “sells baby parts!” attacks on them sitting down, and commissioned an independent expert to analyze the supposed full video footage released by the fake Center for Medical Progress outfit.

Per Sarah Kliff of Vox.com:

Planned Parenthood hired a forensic research firm to analyze about 12 hours of footage that the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) secretly taped when it had actors pose as employees of a fetal tissue procurement company.

“This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation, but we did identify cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera angle,” the report from Fusion GPS, the firm that Planned Parenthood hired, concludes.

CMP took no steps to hide the fact that it edited its shorter, more widely viewed clips of undercover meetings with Planned Parenthood. The group interspersed news clips and overlaid text on top of the video; there’s clear evidence of production work.

But the group held that these “full footage” tapes were complete, unbiased presentations of its Planned Parenthood meetings. If CMP also edited these “full” tapes — ones that it told viewers were complete footage — then the group is guilty of deceiving the public the exact same way it deceived Planned Parenthood.

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EJ Montini would like people to discuss jailing women for abortion more politely

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

EJ Montini

Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini finds the way that some people engage in the ongoing debate over the fair use of the female breeding chattel to be unseemly.

What?

No placards? No shouting? No exchange of insults and accusations?

Actually, no. Just people with different opinion having their say and responding to others in a way that suggests that they actually listened to the other side.

It began when a long-time anti-abortion advocate I hear from now and then wrote to me with this question:

“Was throwing away a baby worse than abortion?”

She was talking about the case of Samantha Perez, who was 16 years old when she gave birth to a baby girl in her family’s bathroom then dropped the newborn out a window into an outdoor storage room, where the injured infant was found by sheriff’s deputies. (The child is fine now, according to authorities.) Perez had hidden her pregnancy from her parents.

This week she was sentenced to five years in prison and lifetime probation.

“Do you agree with her getting prison time?” the woman asked me.

Yes.

“And yet if she’d had an abortion nothing would have happened to her, how is that right?”

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Planned Parenthood was rallied for and protested in Phoenix!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

anti choice phoenixIdiots

On Saturday morning I went to the rally for Planned Parenthood at its new location in midtown Phoenix, which was held in response to an anti-choice protest planned to be held outside. Abortion opponents were there as part of a nationwide protest of Planned Parenthood locations (several of which don’t actually perform abortions, as pro-choice advocates noted on social media). I showed up at the Phoenix event fully prepared with water and sunscreen for what was to be a brutally hot August morning. I was pleasantly surprised to find that our rally was to be held in the parking garage where we’d be warm but at least out of the sun. And those of us who showed up in support of Planned Parenthood were treated to donuts and rousing speeches and music, which was blasted on to the anti-choice crowd outside.

The anti-choicers weren’t so lucky but it was their decision to hold their protest outside the Planned Parenthood building so they could block Pierson Street, which was ridiculous because the building was still easily accessible from 15th Street and Pierson is not even remotely a major thoroughfare. I hear that a few protesters collapsed from the heat (not surprising). It was rage-inducing to see how several of the antis brought their youngsters with them to roast in that hot sun, including one Father of the Year strutting around showing off his toddler and baby, both of whom were uncovered and the baby wasn’t even wearing a hat. If grown idiots want to make themselves martyrs to the cause of anger over women having unpunished sex, that’s one thing, but endangering non-consenting children like that is simply criminal.

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