The year has gotten off to a bad start for everyone with a stake in the fight over abortion rights. Instead of focusing efforts to repeal Roe v. Wade on political solutions and lobbying, the pro-life movement continues to adopt the tactics of obstruction at all costs, dragging medical professionals into a political minefield and putting patients at risk.
In Pennsylvania, when a grand jury indictment for abortionist Kermit Gosnell went public, the whole country got a reminder of what it looks like when medicine is allowed to fester without oversight. Gosnell was a butcher who for whom medical malpractice was his standard operating procedure. In the process, he was aided and abetted by the state of Pennsylvania and its negligent regulations. His squalid, unsanitary clinic, which was decorated with a macabre assortment of fetal limbs preserved in formaldehyde, could not have passed a safety inspection. And he certainly merited an inspection, since his patients had a tendency to end up in real hospitals requiring emergency services. Gosnell wasn't caught for so long because regulations in Pennsylvania were weak and poorly enforced.
This lax system is a betrayal of the women of Pennsylvania, who expect that medical facilities and doctors are subject to a reasonable level of oversight. Unfortunately, the pro-choice side has not always been a force for strong regulation and enforcement. Many pro-choice activists develop an embattled, suspicious attitude when it comes to proposals to regulate abortion. That's not surprising, since plenty of proposed regulations are deliberately designed to obstruct abortion providers, not protect the health of the woman.
This week, Congress adopted a particularly egregious tactic of this type in the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act." The bill, which John Boehner called a top priority, would change the usual exemption allowing abortion in the case of rape or incest. The new bill would limit the incest proviso to minors only and abortions would be permitted only in case of 'forcible rape.' That means that a woman who was drugged and date-raped would no longer have really been raped since she wasn't threatened with physical violence. A woman who consented to a certain level of physical intimacy and then asked her partner to stop wouldn't really be raped unless her partner hit her.
Medical professionals are supposed to be able to put the health of the patient first, not be hampered by political tricks. The actions of Boehner and Congressional Republicans put women at medical and legal risk by diminishing the definition of rape. Activists with no background in medicine may not understand the consequences of their critiques or challenges.
In a 'sting' video filmed surreptitiously at a Planned Parenthood in New Jersey and released yesterday, two pro-life activists representing themselves as a pimp and a prostitute, asked a clinic worker for advice. The pro-life group has castigated Planned Parenthood for colluding with and 'offering business advice to a pimp.' This accusation is based on the clinic worker's advice that, if any of the prostitutes had an abortion, they should abstain from all sexual activity for a minimum of two weeks. When the faux-pimp asked if they could do anything else for money during that period, the Planned Parenthood employee clarified that they could only do anything from the waist up.
Conservative ire quickly built up online, but, in this instance, the clinic worker was doing her medical duty. She had no contact with the pimp's prostitutes and no guarantee that she would see them in the future, so she gave pertinent, essential medical advice to the pimp, the only person she had access to. Her first duty was to the patients, and she couldn't afford to reprimand the pimp in the office for fear he might deny his escorts their shot at life-saving medical care. (Planned Parenthood did report the fake pimp to the FBI after he left, since he had implied he was trafficking minors, but they did not confront him in the video). The clinic behaved mostly ethically, assuming their goal was to make sure the girls would have access to treatment, if the police didn't catch the pimp, but their ethics are a question for a formal regulatory board or investigation, not inflammatory activists borrowing a trick from provocateur Andrew Breitbart.
People who have a principled opposition to abortion have every right to work to see it outlawed, but the battle over abortion access can't be fought using regulations as weapons. Both sides need to declare a truce and accept that, while abortion is legal, it should be regulated according to the same standards as any analogous medical procedure. Writing medical regulations requires medical expertise and isn't a project for congresswomen or activists who don't understand the duties of doctors. Perhaps it would be best to appoint a non-partisan commission of doctors at the state or federal level, to recommend regulations that are designed for the safety of the patient, not as an end-run around the law. I suspect even that solution would end up politicized, so here's an easier one: simply pick the regulations/inspection schedule for a roughly analogous medical procedure and implement those.
When medical regulation becomes a political battlefield, the patients are sure losers.
Follow Leah Anthony Libresco on Twitter: www.twitter.com/leahlibresco
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Then all the pro-life women can put their money where their mouths are and have these babies themselves.
(b) The abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.
And the pro choice crowd has been missing in action.
Result? Today, many states have no abortion providers. There are about 850 abortion clinics in the country and 4000 anti choice "pregnancy crisis centers." (according to HBO documentary.)
The anti choice crowd has so manipulated the debate and the very language of this issue that now they feel it is OK to manipulate the language of the law as it pertains to CRIMINAL acts (incest, rape.) in pursuit of a social agenda.
Where are all the constituional conservatives who say the USC means exactly what it says it means but are silent when it comes to intepreting criminal law?
And where is the pro choice crowd confronting conservative legislators with the same tactics as their anti choice opponents?
Want the media to pay attention to the plight of womens' reproductive health access in this country?
Follow Bohner and Cantor and McConnell and Pence around with signs that say:
"No Means No"
or
"Don't rape me twice."
Pro choice supporters need to forget the noble idea that the law will protect them because as we see in this article, the law is what the anti choice crowd says it is.
What the GOP is trying to do is make permanent the temporary ban of use of Federal funds for abortions that currently must be periodically renewed. While I encourage anyone who does not want that to happen to act, blog, take whatever steps are necessary; recognize the firestorm about "massive new restrictions" is being purposely overblown to political ends. Cheers ;)
You seem to be against biology in other parts of your post. Women have control of their bodies without abortion. To say otherwise is pretty insulting to women if you stop and think about it.
I don't like abortion, and I chose not to have one when pressured, but that was my choice. I had a choice, and I think all women should have the choice. If not, perhaps, as gleitz05 suggests, men should be subject to mandatory vasectomy. After all, no woman gets pregnant on her own.
I also can't figure out how you think I am against biology. Women have control of our bodies without abortion? The point is we should have control with abortion as well. The only thing insulting to women here is your post. Perhaps you should stop and think about it.
Any other kind of abortion is paid for by the woman, and is no one's business, under any circumstances.
It might have more effect on women, but everyone's the poorer for it.
WE are now the MAJORITY of voters in this country. WE demand EQUAL REPRESENTATION. WE demand #gop men STOP ATTACKING THEIR MOTHERS AND WOMBS IN GENERAL.
WE demand #gop & #dem #DLCSUCKS MEN CONTROL EVERY SPERM THEIR BODIES PRODUCE. Let's see how far THAT goes
Note to all anti-choice people ( you are not pro-life, just as people who are pro-choice are not anti-life): if you succeed in outlawing abortion, you simply put women's rights back 40 years...and women will once against resort to knitting needles, abortifacients, drug overdoses and back alley abortionists. You won't have saved any foetuses, you will simply have the blood of more women on your hands. Women who would have been alive, until some self-righteous so-called "pro-lifer" interfered in their personal business.
People who want to outlaw abortion should try to come up with plans to minimize harm done to women, which is another reason to work within the legal system instead of bringing the fight into the hospitals.
They can onject all they want, but it still comes down to:
her body, her choice.
No one else's business.
(darn typos)
I already fanned you but it doesn't to have taken so I will fan you again! And fave!
If she does the research, she will realize that there are two issues at hand.
The first is abortion.
The second is redefining rape in order to facilitate a religious agenda in a political arena.
The real question is still why is the right so anti-abortion? The premise of the value of life fails as they tend to put less value on the mother's life/health and also tend to be pro-war, pro-death penalty and for limiting access to health care. To the right the value of that life plummets as soon as it leaves the womb. If they truly want to eliminate the need for and use of the procedure, then why are they so against birth control and sex education?
The conservative religious right doesn't care about the health of the woman, disabled kids who have a hard time getting treatment, OR starving kids and adults overseas.
Why do they get so bent out of shape on abortion?
Easy answer. To control women's bodies is to control women. It makes women at the mercy of men and makes them "pay" for daring to have sex, even in marriage. Only (young fertile) women who forgo all sex are safe.
Religions are patriarchal and what better way to keep women in their place than to make sure they have fewer rights over their bodies? Never mind the religions that get all upset over most birth control.
Women can NOT become men's equals. Uh, uh, they MUST be kept in their place one way or another.
There seems to be a scarcity of real men these days. all we have are a lot of worthless bums who won't man up.
Conservatives, the real social conservatives, don't want anyone having sex until they're married. Unfortunately for a lot of men, that would require behaving like adults, and they don't want to do that. Men want to have sex without consequences. That means they want women to have free abortions.
sorry kids, you want chicks to have abortions, YOU pay for them yourself.
The death penalty, in my eyes, is much different. A person in that situation has proved they cannot be in society without presenting danger to those around them, or the crime may be so heinous that they must be punished. I feel a long life in jail is much more punishment. These criminals can no longer be productive citizens and must pay for what they did. The criminals were born and given life. Most on death row have taken the lives of others, so they took away choice from someone. I believe the death penalty is fair for the action.
I don't believe in a woman's right to "choose." I am a woman. I don't understand the talk of reproductive rights. I don't believe I can choose whether someone can live or die. Just because the fetus is in my body doesn't give me the power to decide whether he or she can live or die. OKay, I ran out of space again. I guess that's it.
Women can use all the birth control they want, the fact is that there is a significant failure rate with all birtch control methods......
Women have been seeking abortions for millenia. Accidents happen.