April 9, 2013 (WPVI) -- A local abortion clinic is under fire, facing allegations of unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
A series of emergency calls made from the Planned Parenthood of Delaware this year are raising concerns about what's happening behind the closed doors.
Two former nurses who both quit are speaking exclusively with Action News about what they saw inside.
Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, former employee said, "It was just unsafe. I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was."
Werbrich alleges conditions inside the facility were unsanitary.
"He didn't wear gloves," said Werbrich.
Another former employee, Joyce Vasikonis told Action News, "They were using instruments on patients that were not sterile."
The former nurses claim that a rush to get patients in and out left operating tables soiled and unclean.
Werbrich said "It's not washed down, it's not even cleaned off. It has bloody drainage on it."
"They could be at risk of getting hepatitis, even AIDS," added Vasikonis.
Both of these nurses said, they quit to protect their own medical licenses, stunned by what they called a meat-market style of assembly-line abortions.
Vasikonis said, "I felt I could be held liable if a patient was harmed."
"Planned Parenthood needs to close its doors, it's needs to be cleaned up, the staff needs to be trained, said Werbrich."
In Delaware, abortion clinics are not subject to routine inspections. The state only steps in when they have a patient complaint. Planned Parenthood is essentially in charge of inspecting itself.
Mary Peterson from the Delaware Department of Health and Human Services said, "I am not going to lie to you, we don't have the manpower to do routine inspections."
She says, her investigators went into the facility in October of last year after a complaint.
We asked Peterson, did they find any problems with the sterilization of utensils. She told us "no, no." We then asked if blood was being left after one patient had surgery and another one came in, she replied, "absolutely none."
Investigators say, they have not found evidence to support the claims raised by Vasikonis and Werbrich.
Since January 4th, five patients allegedly have been rushed from the facility to the emergency room, again placing the clinic in the spotlight.
Peterson says, it raises concerns and they are in the process of looking into what is causing the issues to occur.
Action News has learned during our investigation that one doctor and two more nurses at the clinic have mysteriously left.
Planned Parenthood would not confirm if they were fired or resigned.
In a statement, the new CEO, Ruth Lytle-Barnaby told Action News:
"Planned Parenthood of Delaware has provided high-quality services for more than 80 years. Each year, we provide confidential, compassionate care that includes breast cancer screenings, birth control, prevention and treatment of STDs, Pap tests, sexual health education, abortion, and health counseling to more than 11,000 women, men and teens in all three Delaware counties.
Planned Parenthood's medical standards and guidelines are informed by the most trusted medical knowledge as well as professional and scientific organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
In my role as the new CEO of Planned Parenthood of Delaware, recently my staff and I launched a review of patient services. I determined that we need to take immediate steps to assure our patients of our high-quality care, including enacting immediate personnel changes. We do not tolerate employees that fail to meet our standards for patient care and services.
Ensuring high-quality care and maintaining the valued trust of our community is of the utmost importance. In addition to the significant steps I have already taken, at my invitation, a team of medical experts from our national office is on site to confirm we are addressing every concern. We are confident patient care is high quality, but if we identify any additional issues with our quality of services we are prepared to take swift action. Any employee who does not live up to our standards of patient care will be terminated. Patient health and safety has always been and remains our top priority."
(Copyright ©2013 WPVI-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
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When Rep. Todd Akin made his outrageous comments about “legitimate rape” it was front page news — and rightly so. But when a representative of Planned Parenthood is caught on camera defending infanticide, it merits barely a mention in the mainstream media.
Testifying against a Florida bill that would require abortionists to provide emergency medical care to an infant who survives an abortion, Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow was asked point blank: “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” She replied: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”
Jaws in the committee room dropped. Asked again, she repeated her answer.
Only after a firestorm erupted in the conservative media did Planned Parenthood issued a statement that in the “extremely unlikely and highly unusual” event that a baby were born alive it would “provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.” That is debatable, since a Planned Parenthood counselor has been caught on tape admitting that the organization leaves infants born alive after an abortion to die. But if Planned Parenthood really does provide such care, why was it lobbying against a bill requiring such care in the first place?
The fact is, it is not as unusual for children to be left to die after a failed abortion as some might think. Right now in Philadelphia, abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial for the murder of seven infants who were born alive. According to District Attorney Seth Williams, Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord.” Prosecutors said that Gosnell ended hundreds of pregnancies in this way. “These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them. They were considered ‘standard procedure.’ ”
Across the border in Canada, the government reports that between 2000 and 2009, 491 babies were left to die after they were born alive during abortions. There are no similar statistics here in the United States, but according to the Abortion Survivors Network there are an estimated 44,000 abortion survivors living in the country today. How many more did not survive for lack of medical care?
Recently a major motion picture, October Baby, told the true story of one abortion survivor in search of her birth mother and of her struggle to forgive her. The woman depicted in the movie, Gianna Jessen, testified before Congress about why she lived after her mother underwent a saline abortion: “Fortunately for me the abortionist was not in the clinic when I arrived alive... I was early.... I am sure I would not be here today if the abortionist would have been in the clinic, as his job is to take life, not sustain it.”
Amazingly, some argue that killing babies like Gianna is morally permissible. Recently two bioethicists, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, published a paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Ethics entitled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” They wrote: “[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”
This is Orwellian. The term “after-birth abortion” is an oxymoron. You can’t kill an unborn child after it has been born.
The fact that Planned Parenthood aggressively lobbies against legislation requiring medical care for such children is appalling. The fact that a Planned Parenthood official testified that killing such children is permissible is shocking. And the fact that most major media outlets — including The Post — all but ignored her comments is distressing.
Our country is deeply divided over the question of abortion. But can we not all at least agree that killing a born child is murder — not a question that “should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician”?
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April 3, 2013 3:51 PM
One of the most sinister characters on TV appears in AMC’s hit series The Walking Dead and is known as the Governor. Initially presented as a selfless leader, the Governor is soon exposed as a deranged tyrant who demands absolute loyalty from everyone around him and worships death to the point of preserving human heads in aquarium tanks. In this season’s finale, he even slaughters his own people in a frenzy of bloodlust.
Philadelphia has its own Governor character, a man with a team of dedicated followers who presents himself as a caring community leader. Philly’s “Governor” is no fictional villain, however.
Over three decades, abortionist Kermit Gosnell and his staff dispensed death to thousands of unborn babies, born-alive babies, and at least two women. Like the Governor, Gosnell kept trophies of his victims—bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses and fetus parts that were scattered throughout his squalid West Philly “clinic.” Gosnell is now on trial for the first-degree murder of seven newborn babies and the third degree murder of a mother who died after a botched abortion.
When the FBI raided Gosnell’s facility in February 2010, they found it littered with animal feces, blood-stained furniture, and unwashed and unsterilized medical instruments. According to an FBI agent, at one point during the search, Gosnell returned to the clinic office to resume being interviewed and have some dinner. “He came back and ate his food still wearing the bloody, torn latex gloves,” the agent testified.
In his high-volume abortion mill, Gosnell was the only doctor on staff. But I use the term “doctor” loosely. His medical license was revoked in 2010, and he was named in more than 45 medical malpractice suits.
Most of Gosnell’s staff had little or no medical training at all. But, as the grand jury report stated, “That didn’t stop them from making diagnoses, performing procedures, administering drugs.”
Gosnell made millions performing illegal late-term and after-birth abortions. The bigger the baby, the bigger the payday was his creed.
The abortion rights movement has long insisted that unborn babies are nothing but clumps of tissue. But the only clumps of tissue evident at Gosnell’s trial, which started on March 18, have been those used to soak up the tears shed by former employees and patients who recounted what took place in Gosnell’s “house of horrors.”
Former medical assistant Adrienne Moton cried as she told how she killed at least 10 late-term babies after they were delivered. She was struck, she said, at how life-like one of the babies looked as it lay dead before her.
Gosnell’s defense team has accused city officials of a “prosecutorial lynching” of Gosnell, who is black. They’ve called the murder case “an elitist, racist prosecution.”
What an absurd accusation; in fact it is Gosnell who is charged with carrying out something close to actual lynchings. Gosnell preyed almost exclusively on minority women and their babies. And he routinely delivered viable late-term babies and severed their spinal cords with scissors, a process he called “snipping.”
The few white women who entered Gosnell’s clinic were treated slightly better. Former medical assistant Tina Brown told the grand jury that in such cases Gosnell would escort the patients to the one clean room. Baldwin testified:
It was a race thing. …Like if a girl, the black population was – African population was big here. So [Gosnell] didn’t mind you medicating your African American girls, your Indian girl, but if you had a white girl from the suburbs, oh, you better not medicate her. You better wait until he go in and talk to her first. And one day I said something to him and he was like, that’s the way of the world. Huh? And he brushed it off and that was it.
Gosnell’s arrest was met by silence by much of the media. Some of those who commented argued that Gosnell was the product of a community in which abortion isn’t accessible enough. “No woman would subject herself to such a place if she thought she had somewhere else to go,” journalist Michelle Goldberg wrote.
But that’s wrong. Like most cities, Philadelphia has no shortage of abortion facilities. It is proof of the power of the abortion lobby, which regards any effort at oversight or regulation as an infringement of a woman’s constitutional right, that Gosnell was able to dispense death so haphazardly for so long. The grand jury report stated:
We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, and because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.
Gosnell’s clinic had not been reviewed by the department of health in nearly two decades. At one point, an ex-employee approached the board of medicine with a complaint about conditions at Gosnell’s facility. But the board assigned an investigator who failed to inspect the facility, talk to employees or examine any records. Gosnell kept on murdering.
The FBI discovered Gosnell’s house of horrors only by chance. The raid was called in not to investigate Gosnell’s abortion mill but an illegal prescription drug ring that he ran upstairs from the abortion mill.
Gosnell is evil and possibly crazy, but he has said one reasonable thing since his arrest. When at his arraignment Gosnell was read the charges against him (one count of murder for the botched abortion and seven counts of murder for the born alive babies he killed) he responded, “I understand the one count. But I don’t understand the seven counts.”
Gosnell’s bafflement is understandable. He operated in a country whose highest court has declared that the right to kill one’s children is embedded in its constitution and whose president has opposed laws to criminalize some of the very acts for which Gosnell is being prosecuted.
Kermit Gosnell’s victims will haunt our consciences for years to come, reminders not only of the abortionist who slaughtered them but also of the society that let it happen.
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11:36 AM, MAR 29, 2013 • BY JOHN MCCORMACK
Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.
Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.
"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief," said Rep. Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”
"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.
Rep. Daniel Davis then asked Snow, "What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?”
"I do not have that information," Snow replied. "I am not a physician, I am not an abortion provider. So I do not have that information.”
Rep. Jose Oliva followed up, asking the Planned Parenthood official, "You stated that a baby born alive on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family. Is that what you’re saying?”
Again, Snow replied, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”
“I think that at that point the patient would be the child struggling on the table, wouldn’t you agree?” asked Oliva.
"That’s a very good question. I really don’t know how to answer that," Snow said. "I would be glad to have some more conversations with you about this.”
Later another representative asked Snow, “What objection could you possibly have to obligate a doctor to transport a child born alive to a hospital where it seems to me they would be most likely to be able to survive?”
Snow said Planned Parenthood was concerned about "those situations where it is in a rural health care setting, the hospital is 45 minutes or an hour away, that’s the closest trauma center or emergency room. You know there’s just some logistical issues involved that we have some concerns about.”
You can watch the full exchange at the 39-minute mark of this video.
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Thursday, February 28, 2013
CNSNews ^ | February 25, 2013 | Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted on 2/25/2013 7:08:31 PM by jazusamo
(CNSNews.com) - While presenting an oral argument in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last fall, a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that the Obama administration believed it could force the judge’s own wife—a physician—to act against her religious faith in the conduct of her medical practice.
The assertion came in the case of Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius, a challenge to the Obama administration’s regulation requiring health-care plans to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
Tyndale is a for-profit corporation that publishes Bibles, biblical commentaries and other religious works. Tyndale House Foundation, a religious non-profit organization, owns 96.5 percent of the corporation’s stock and receives 96.5 percent of its profits. The foundation’s mission is “to minister to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through grants to other religious charities.”
As a matter of religious principle, the foundation believes that human life begins at conception and that abortion is wrong.
The corporation self-insures, providing its employees with a generous health-care plan. But, in keeping with its religious faith, it does not in any way provide abortions. For this reason, Tyndale sued the Obama administration, arguing that the Obamacare regulation that would force it to provide abortion-inducing drugs and IUDs in its health-care plan violated its right to the free-exercise of religion.
“Consistent with the religious beliefs of Tyndale and its owners, Tyndale’s self-insured plan does not and has never covered abortions or abortifacient drugs or devices such as emergency contraception and intrauterine devices,” Tyndale said in its legal complaint, prepared by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
When Tyndale sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the administration from enforcing the regulation on the company before the federal courts could determine the issue on its merits, Benjamin Berwick, a lawyer for the Civil Division of the Justice Department presented the administration's argument for why Tyndale should be forced to act against the religious faith of its owners. The oral argument over the preliminary injunction occurred Nov. 9 in Judge Walton’s court.
Berwick argued here--as the administration has argued in other cases where private businesses are challenging the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate--that once people form a corporation to conduct business they lose their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion insofar as their business is concerned.
In the face of this argument, Judge Walton asked an interesting question. His wife, a graduate of Georgetown Medical School, is a physician. She has incorporated her medical practice. Does that mean, according to the Obama administration’s argument, that the federal government can force her to act against her religious faith in the conduct of her medical practice?
Berwick effectively answered: Yes.
Here, from the official court transcript, is the verbatim exchange between this Obama administration lawyer and Judge Walton:
Benjamin Berwick: “Well, your honor, I think, I think there are two distinct ideas here: One is: Is the corporation itself religious such that it can exercise religion? And my, our argument is that it is not. Although again, we admit that it is a closer case than for a lot of other companies. And then the second question is, can the owners--is it a substantial burden on the owners when the requirement falls on the company that is a separate legal entity? I think for that question precisely what their beliefs are doesn't really matter. I mean, they allege that they're religious beliefs are being violated. We don't question that. And we don't question that that is the belief.
Judge Reggie Walton: But considering the closeness of the relationship that the individual owners have to the corporation to require them to fund what they believe amounts to the taking of a life, I don't know what could be more contrary to one's religious belief than that.
Berwick: Well, I don't think the fact this is a closely-held corporation is particularly relevant, your honor. I mean, Mars, for example--
Judge Walton: Well, I mean, my wife has a medical practice. She has a corporation, but she's the sole owner and sole stock owner. If she had strongly-held religious belief and she made that known that she operated her medical practice from that perspective, could she be required to pay for these types of items if she felt that that was causing her to violate her religious beliefs?
Berwick: Well, Your Honor, I think what it comes down to is whether there is a legal separation between the company and—
Judge Walton: It's a legal separation. I mean, she obviously has created the corporation to limit her potential individual liability, but she's the sole owner and everybody associates that medical practice with her as an individual. And if, you know, she was very active in her church and her church had these same type of strong religious-held beliefs, and members of the church and the community became aware of the fact that she is funding something that is totally contrary to what she professes as her belief, why should she have to do that?
Berwick: Well, your honor, again, I think it comes down to the fact that the corporation and the owner truly are separate. They are separate legal entities.
Judge Walton: So, she'd have to give up the limitation that conceivably would befall on her regarding liability in order to exercise her religion? So, she'd have to go as an individual proprietor with no corporation protection in order to assert her religious right? Isn't that as significant burden?
In a series of interviews conducted in 2007 by the Historical Society of the District of Columbia, Judge Walton reported that his wife was a doctor of medicine who had attended Georgetown Medical School.
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Monday, February 11, 2013
GERMANTOWN, MD, February 8, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The news that a 29-year-old woman died of a late term abortion on Thursday has filled the pro-life community with waves of sorrow, outrage, and resilience.
“Never again,” said Students for Life of America (SFLA) in a press release.
“We pray for this young woman and her family and recommit ourselves to abolishing all abortion so that never again will a woman feel that killing the life within her is her only choice,” said SFLA President Kristan Hawkins.
“We are heartbroken at the news that another mother and child have fallen victim to the horrors of legal abortion in this country,” she said.
Human Life International called the young woman's death, during an abortion in her eighth month of pregnancy, “truly tragic” on its Facebook page.
“How many women and children are killed by abortionists like Carhart without our ever knowing, their deaths covered up by pro-abortion physicians?” asked Lila Rose of Live Action. “Those women who are lied to and misled about these 'procedures' deserve to know exactly what Big Abortion – and their abortion bosses like Carhart – seek to do to them.”
The death comes days after the debut of a new film at the Sundance Festival, After Tiller, that seeks to “humanize” those who, like Carhart, perform late-term abortions – a fact Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League noted.
The death also came the same day that Scheidler's organization filed a legal complaint with the Illinois state government over the death of 24-year-old Tonya Reaves from a legal abortion last July. Thecomplaint, filed by Illinois Department of Professional Regulation by Thomas Brejcha of the Thomas More Society, said Planned Parenthood's decision to allow Reaves to hemorrhage for five-and-a-half hours, then deposit her at a local hospital without telling officials of a possible uterine perforation violated state law and amounted to the “abandonment of a patient.”
Pro-life leaders say they refuse to abandon Reaves, or the newest victim of the abortion industry.
“The state of Maryland has to shut down Carhart's killing business,” said Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. He encouraged “every person who cares about” this woman's death “to spread the word immediately about this tragedy, to awaken the consciences of our neighbors. This includes pastors speaking out about the harm abortion does, and it includes all of us telling the stories of those harmed and killed by abortion.”
“We need to redouble our efforts to mobilize people in the pro-life cause,” he said. “If this latest tragedy isn't enough evidence that the time to end abortion is now, then what is?”
“No longer will we allow these women to remain unknown to the American public,” Father Pavone said. “The silence ends today.”
Fr. Pavone was on hand as Dr. Alveda King read a litany of names of women who had died from legal abortion, led by Reaves, at the National Memorial Service for the Preborn and their Mothers and Fathers in Constitution Hall, just before this year's March for Life.
Pro-life leaders are planing a prayer vigil and memorial outside Carhart's clinic next Monday at 9 a.m.
“Please pray that this tragedy will be a turning point in abortion and that the barbaric practice of 3rd trimester abortions will end (along with all abortions),” said Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser at Operation Rescue, who broke the story of the latest adult abortion casualty. “We also won't rest until Carhart is brought to justice through the legal system.”
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Alabama Supreme Court: ‘Unborn Children Are Persons With Rights’
January 16, 2013
(CNSNews.com) – The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in a case on Friday that “unborn children are persons with rights that should be protected by law.”
The case involved two women who had been charged under a “chemical endangerment” law because they had ingested illegal drugs – one, cocaine, and the second, methamphetamine -- while pregnant.
One woman’s baby tested positive for cocaine when born; the other baby was born prematurely and died shortly thereafter due to “acute methamphetamine intoxication.”
They women appealed their convictions, with their lawyers making numerous arguments but one in particular: that the word “child” did not apply to an unborn child or a fetus. The Court said otherwise.
In its concluding remarks, the Alabama Supreme Court said: “The decision of this Court today is in keeping with the widespread legal recognition that unborn children are persons with rights that should be protected by law. Today, the only major area in which unborn children are denied legal protection is abortion, and that denial is only because of the dictates of Roe.”
“Furthermore, the decision in the present cases is consistent with the Declaration of Rights in the Alabama Constitution, which states that ‘all men are equally free and independent; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” said the Court.
After the ruling on Jan. 11, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said, “The court has ratified our argument that the public policy of our state is to protect life, both born and unborn."
"It is a tremendous victory that the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed the value of all life, including those of unborn children whose lives are among the most vulnerable of all," he said.
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013
BAUER: ABORTION’S NEW NORMAL
Forty years after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, abortion has become, in one sense, a normal part of many women’s lives: nearly one in three American women will have an abortion at some point in her lifetime. And of those who abort, half will have at least one more abortion.
But in another sense, abortion is still very abnormal. Despite that more than one million abortions are committed each year, most Americans don’t consider abortion to be a “normal” part of healthcare. And most don’t consider it moral or natural.
The abortion-rights movement has spent the last 40 years trying to “normalize” abortion, and it is only now acknowledging the failure of those efforts.
But don’t take my word for it. Abortion rights leaders are making my case. “In general, the pro-choice movement leaves people with the feeling that we don’t see these things as complex because the answer is almost always, ‘Well it’s a woman’s decision,’” Francis Kissling, formerly head of Catholic for a Free Choice, recently told Time magazine.
“When people hear us say ‘abortion is just another medical procedure,’ they react with shock. Abortion is not like having your tooth pulled or having your appendix out. It involves the termination of an early form of human life. That deserves some gravitas.”
This is a startling admission coming from one of the abortion-rights movement’s most high-profile leaders.
For decades, abortion advocates have labored to portray abortion as normal. They lobbied Hollywood script writers to have abortion depicted sympathetically on TV shows.
They constructed websites with names like “I’mNotSorry.net” and introduced “I Had an Abortion” T-shirts that encouraged women to, as one abortion activist put it, “own-up” to their abortions. The abortion industry continues to do all it can to mainstream abortion into medical school training, even to the point of forcing medical professionals to perform them.
Most recently, abortion advocates worked alongside pro-abortion Democrats to remove the word “rare” from the Democratic Party’s platform calling for abortion to be “safe” and “legal.” The notion that abortion should be rare stigmatizes the procedure, they claimed.
But “normalization” belies the experiences of millions of women—especially those who suffer physical and emotional trauma post-abortion.
Hundreds of state laws have been enacted that remind people that abortion is anything but normal. Some require ultrasounds before an abortion, while others mandate that abortionists inform women of the risks of abortion. Still others require that women seeking abortions be told that the procedure involves the killing of a whole, separate, unique living human being.
There are laws that outlaw abortions after unborn babies can feel pain, laws that require that women wait 24 or 48 hours before an abortion and laws that require abortionists to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
Abortion advocates claim pro-life laws humiliate, degrade and shame women. But they mainly act as a prick to the consciences of those considering abortion. They are a reminder that abortion is serious business and that the decision to abort should not be taken lightly.
Most Americans get it. A new Pew Research Center poll finds that only 13 percent of Americans believe abortion is “morally acceptable.” That includes just 10 percent of women and just 17 percent of Democrats.
Amazingly, just 17 percent of respondents who think Roe should not be overturned also believe abortion is “morally acceptable.” That means that the overwhelming majority of Americans who support abortion-on-demand also believe abortion is immoral.
A 2009 poll by The Polling Company found that of adults who knew a woman who had had an abortion, 55 percent said her abortion was a negative experience, while just 33 percent said it was positive. A majority of respondents (53 percent) said abortion is almost always a bad thing for women; 13 percent said it is almost always a good thing.
The increasingly obvious humanity of the unborn child has had an effect on medical professionals. The number of doctors willing to train in and perform abortions has dropped by half in recent years, as medical professionals increasingly refuse to be a part of the marginalized specialty.
There are signs that the abortion industry is starting to understand its problem. Planned Parenthood has a new messaging campaign that moves away from the language of choice, because, as Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards put it, abortion is “a complicated topic and one in which labels don’t reflect the complexity.”
Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens even conceded that the word “’choice’…sounds frivolous.” These concessions are no doubt a result of recent polls showing more Americans identifying as “pro-life” than as “pro-choice.”
Not surprisingly, even as the abortion movement talks about adopting new euphemisms, it’s making clear that it will not alter its hardline stance against efforts to reduce abortion. Laguens told BuzzFeed that Planned Parenthood won’t adopt language about making abortion “rare” because it sounds too judgmental.
Incidentally, Planned Parenthood recently announced that it performed 334,000 abortions in 2011, up from recent years. That’s one abortion every 94 seconds, and that’s more than $150 million in revenue from abortions.
The abortion industry can try to improve its “messaging” all it wants. But unless abortion advocates change their devotion to abortion-on-demand, the only message Americans will receive is that the abortion industry is only really interested in improving its bottom line at the expense of the most defenseless among us.
Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.
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Wednesday, January 9, 2013
EDITOR'S CHOICE
THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE
In two weeks, America will mark the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision creating a constitutional right to abortion and legalizing most abortions.
Much will be written about the consequences of that decision. While both sides of the debate will insist they are winning, abortion rights advocates will have a difficult time claiming any kind of victory. As the cover of the new Time magazine declares, “40 Years Ago, Abortion Rights Activists Won an Epic Victory With Roe v. Wade. They’ve Been Losing Ever Since.”
Opinion polls show that a larger share of the country identifies with the “pro-life” position than at any time since Roe. Abortions have fallen by one third since their peak twenty years ago. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that both the number and rate of abortions dropped five percent in 2009, the largest decrease in a decade.
An important reason why “pro-life” is winning is the mounting evidence revealing the humanity of the unborn child. Taken together, developments in science belie the pro-choice assertion that an unborn child is nothing more than a clump of cells.
Read more at: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/01/07/gary-bauer-the-language-of-life/
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Friday, December 28, 2012
The Supreme Court decisions in Roe and Doe are still deeply divisive and have not been accepted by a deep consensus of the American people because they allow the killing of millions of children in the womb. Because the issue is one of life and death, it will not go away until either the Supreme Court or the American people through a constitutional amendment get it right. Abortion is such a grave and immoral injustice, on such a massive scale, that it can never be accepted completely by the American people.
From It's Past Time for the Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade | LifeNews.com
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