Gearing Up for When the Inevitable Happens

 HT: Jill Stanek

Big Abortion is in a sorry state, with loud lamentations and dramatic hand-wringing such as this Planned Parenthood post. Their cry is that laws setting medical standards for abortion clinics are "restricting and eliminating safe and legal abortion access via technicality and needless regulation."

Their intended-to-be alarming little animated GIF shows both the real and projected closings of abortion facilities due to state requirements that they stop making do with doctors that can't get hospital admitting privileges.

Note that each and every closing is characterized as a loss of "access to safe and legal abortion," with no qualifiers whatsoever. If the place does abortions, the presumption is that it's safe for women to entrust themselves to the care that place provides.

The Lie of "Access"

As we've seen from Planned Parenthood's GIF, the mere existence of an openly operating, presumably legal abortion facility is "access" to "safe and legal" abortion.

Abortionist Gosnell

I might remind the reader that this same presumption of "safe and legal" care was made of Kermit Gosnell. In fact, the presumption of safety in Gosnell's case was so powerful that reputable prochoice organizations and abortion clinics referred patients to him -- one of whom later learned that Gosnell had severed her unborn baby's feet and kept them in a jar. Furthermore, a National Abortion Federation clinic hired him part-time and allowed him to take their patients to his Philadelphia "house of horrors" to be doped within inches of their lives by untrained staff then set aside to moan and writhe on torn recliners under blood-stained blankets amid the fleas and cat feces until their living, viable babies would be expelled and then killed by a scissors to the spinal cord. Even more to the point, the paramount value placed on "access" -- and the presumption that any legal abortionist is a safe abortionists -- is the excuse that Pennsylvania authorities used to turn a deliberate blind eye to the goings-on under Gosnell's roof.

Abortionist Carhart.

As the post goes on, Planned Parenthood pooh-poohs the idea that abortionists should be required to provide continuity of care for their hospitalized patients. "Providers," Planned Parenthood assures us, "already have plans in place in case of an emergency to ensure patient safety."

I might remind the reader that the emergency phone number that prochoice "hero" LeRoy Carhart provided to his patient Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli actually rang to Carhart's wife's equestrian-supply business answering machine. Attempts made, first by Jennifer and then by her family, to reach Carhart delayed the treatment that might have saved Jennifer's life. Is that the sort of "plan" that Planned Parenthood has in mind? If this is what one of their heroes provides, what can patients expect at lower-quality facilities?

Cause for Alarm

The abortion business is currently in a downward spiral. Every year there are fewer abortions and more clinic closures. To people who dislike abortion, this is a good thing. But if abortion is your bread and butter, that's a scary thing. It's scary for abortion clinic owners, who are watching their livelihood vanish. It's scary for abortion practitioners, who are finding fewer and fewer places where they can fly in with their pockets empty and fly out with them full. It's scariest of all for professional abortion-rights activists, because the money that keeps their jobs funded all comes from the abortion clinics that are shutting down at an increasing rate.

Thus, the professionals are facing a choice: Go to work promoting something other than abortion, or batten down the hatches and keep the abortion business afloat.

A Two-Part Strategy

Providers already have plans in place in case of an emergency to ensure patient safety. - See more at: http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/elections-politics/blog/latest-tactic-restrict-safe-and-legal-abortion-admitting-privileges/#sthash.EGrnzx3Z.dpuf

The strategy is two-part, and we need to be ready. Right now we're seeing the groundwork. They're raising the alarm and working to establish two ideas in people's minds:

1. Legal abortion practices are always trustworthy and safe.
2. If there is no handy legal abortion practice, women will universally resort to risky methods to achieve abortions.

That the first is false is obvious to anybody who gives it even a moment's thought, but that's the point. It's meant to block any sense of a need to give the matter any thought.

The second takes a bit more than a moment's thought but also becomes clearly false upon examination. Nobody thinks that women are reflexively going to reach for the rustiest coathanger in the closet if there's not an Acme Reproductive Services just down the street. Some women will travel further to arrange an abortion, some will ferret out a doctor closer to home that doesn't advertise but will do the occasional abortion, and the most fortunate will find that the initial panic passes and they come to welcome the new baby.

The point of the abortion lobby's efforts in general, and Planned Parenthood's in particular, isn't to get people to think. The idea is to prevent people from thinking by hammering an idea into their heads before they even have a reason to think about it. There are two techniques used currently:

1. Keep referring to "safe, legal abortion" as if "safe" and "legal" were two parts of one whole. The constant pairing of "safe" and "legal" together links them in the mind, so that if one is heard, the other is presumed.
2. Change the opposite of "legal" to "unsafe." Abortion-rights activists now speak only of "legal" abortion and "unsafe" abortion as though that were the natural dichotomy. This is no accident. The intention is to establish an unexamined idea that if "legal" abortion is not available, only "unsafe" abortion is available, and that the only way to eliminate "unsafe" abortion is to replace it with "legal' abortion. It's the biggest PR coup for the abortion lobby since the term "pro-choice" was coined in the 1960s.

Moving in for the Kill.

restricting and eliminating safe and legal abortion access via technicality and needless regulation. - See more at: http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/elections-politics/blog/latest-tactic-restrict-safe-and-legal-abortion-admitting-privileges/#sthash.EGrnzx3Z.dpuf

restricting and eliminating safe and legal abortion access via technicality and needless regulation - See more at: http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/elections-politics/blog/latest-tactic-restrict-safe-and-legal-abortion-admitting-privileges/#sthash.EGrnzx3Z.dpuf

restricting and eliminating safe and legal abortion access via technicality and needless regulation - See more at: http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/elections-politics/blog/latest-tactic-restrict-safe-and-legal-abortion-admitting-privileges/#sthash.EGrnzx3Z.dpuf

Having established the "legal = safe" and that the alternative to "safe, legal abortion" is only "unsafe abortion" and not help addressing the woman's actual problems, the preparations are already in the works for any contingency that they can play to the abortion lobby's benefit. You can be certain they're ready for those states that will soon be without a dedicated abortion facility. We've seen this sort of thing play out before, so we know what's going to happen. 

We need to take a lesson to prevent needless tragedy -- a specific needless tragedy that the abortion advocacy movement desperately needs to regain momentum.

It's important to note up front that it is not the average pro-choice citizen who is gearing up to create and exploit a tragedy. It's Big Abortion -- an unholy alliance of population control zealots, abortion practitioners, eugenicists, and Sandra Fluke-style feminists. They are putting the pieces in place, and average prochoice citizens are being primed to play their part in protecting Big Abortion's interests under the guise of protecting women.

Big Abortion is losing traction. The main thing they need to regain momentum is a corpse. If you think they're not gearing up to produce one, think again. We only need to look back to 1976.

Lessons From the Past

In 1976, the Hyde Amendment went into effect, banning the use of Federal funds to pay for abortions except to save the mother from an immediate threat to her life. The measure was named for its author, Congressman Henry Hyde. Abortion advocates had been keening from the moment the Hyde Amendment was up for vote. They painted a ghastly picture of coathanger-impaled women littering the streets as poor women were driven to desperation by lack of "access," just as today abortion enthusiasts are keening about what will happen if we start actually holding abortion clinics up to standards more rigorous than what you see in a bus station men's room.

When the Hyde Amendment went into effect, abortion advocates ramped up the hysteria and waited for a death, any death, they could hang around Henry Hyde's neck. On October 3, 1977, the Big Abortion vultures got what they'd been waiting for: a dead woman they could use as leverage in the fight to once again force taxpayers to fund elective abortions.

On September 26, 1977, 27-year-old Rosie Jimenez had shown up at the emergency room of McAllen General Hospital in the Texas border town of McAllen, suffering from septic shock caused by an infection from an illegal abortion. She was put in intensive care, but died on October 3.

The initial response of the abortion lobby to news of Rosie's death was little short of euphoric. They had their trophy, their dead woman whose face they could hide behind in order to push for the restoration of tax money flowing into abortion clinics.

An Unexpected Investigation

One voice stood out from the crowd: Ellen Frankfort, author of Rosie: the investigation of a wrongful death. Ms. Frankfort was disgusted with the bulk of the prochoice movement, who seemed content to pounce on Rosie's death and then milk it for political gain. She began an investigation into what had led Rosie to her death, and she found a lot that neither the Centers for Disease Control nor abortion advocacy organizations had been willing to look for, since all they'd wanted was political leverage. Unlike Ellen Frankfort, they weren't looking for the real culprit behind Rosie's death: they'd had a bogeyman in mind even before she'd died, in the form of Henry Hyde.

Off to McAllen Ms. Frankfort went, to learn all she could. She learned:

1. Rosie had already undergone two abortions at taxpayer expense. (Hence, she had no idea what an abortion would actually cost, and had been taught that it was the government's job, not hers or her lover's, to keep her uterus empty.)
2. (Thanks to the efforts of the abortion lobby) Rosie's friends and relatives knew that there were no more free abortions, and told her so.
3. Her regular doctor abandoned her; he simply told her there were no more free abortions, without referring her for any help (either for a sliding-scale abortion or help with addressing her life issues that made her feel like abortion was her only choice).
4. Rosie's cousin brought her to a lay midwife in McAllen who charged $120 to perform an abortion using a catheter, a procedure once used by doctors but since abandoned because of infection risk. 
5. The sliding-scale abortions (that Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates pointedly failed to raise awareness about) cost $130 -- only $10 more than the illegal abortion. (This is something Rosie probably would have known if not for the fact that the government, not Rosie herself, paid for the previous two abortions.) 
6. The day before her abortion, Rosie had spent $8 on a cake for a friend's baby shower. She had a scholarship check for $800 in her purse. (Rosie could have afforded a legal abortion; she just evidently was never told that such an option was available.)
7. Rosie, predictably, took ill, waited to go to the hospital until she was moribund, and in spite of heroic efforts by the doctors there she died.

There is no evidence that, at any point, anybody informed Rosie of resources such as Birthright that could have helped her to address her problems without resorting to abortion in the first place.

The Reaction

The doctors reported the death to the CDC. The CDC notified their allies in the abortion lobby. Rosie's death was quickly trumpeted nationwide as proof that Henry Hyde was a murderer and that taxpayers should immediately resume funding elective abortions to prevent another such death.

It is worth reiterating, when we look at Rosie's death, that prochoice groups had been very successful in spreading the word that public funding for abortion had been cut -- Rosie's friend and cousin, as well as her physician, were well aware of this fact -- but they had pointedly failed to also pass out the word that Planned Parenthood still referred for abortions on a sliding scale, and that private funds were available. It's almost as if the public-relations departments of Planned Parenthood and other abortion-advocacy groups had deliberately increased the odds of a tragedy like Rosie's death in order to provide the corpses needed in order to prop up a drive to restore tax monies to abortion facilities.

Lessons for Today

Let's start with some simple facts:

1. As long as people perpetrate abortions, there will be a certain number of women who die as a result of those abortions. This is true whether the abortions are legal or illegal.



Tonya Reaves

2. If the woman dies from a "safe" legal abortion (Tonya Reaves, Christin Gilbert), the abortion rights machine will minimize the death and wait for any bad press to blow over.
3. If the woman dies from a quacktastic legal abortion (Karnamaya Mongar, Carolina Gutierrez), the abortion rights machine will do the convoluted routine of "It's all the antichoicers' fault because they regulate and inspect abortion clinics and won't give them money."
4. If the woman dies from a politically useless illegal abortion (Daisy Roe, Kris Humphrey), the abortion machine will ignore it.
5. If the woman dies from a nice gory "back alley" style illegal abortion, the full-blown, aggressive Blame Game will begin in earnest. It will be Rosie Jimenez all over again but with the aid of social media.

It all boils down to this: Abortionists are killing women now and will continue to kill women once abortion becomes illegal. It's an inevitable side effect of their trade.

A Crucial Point

Many states have taken steps to make abortion facilities put up or get out. The first woman that an abortionist kills in one of those states will become a martyr to the abortion cause in a way we haven't seen since Ms. published the crime scene photo of Geri Santoro in 1973. But it's not 1973 any more.

In 1973, it was hard to muster a groundswell of fear and outrage because after all Geri had been dead for nearly a decade and Roe vs. Wade had just supposedly put an end forever to women's gruesome abortion deaths.

Abortion rights groups, from the local NOW chapter to the International Planned Parenthood Federation already have established relationships with the mainstream news organizations. The new martyr that the abortion machine creates will become the focus of a campaign that will have all the fury and media hype that Big Abortion can muster. The result will be a well-coordinated assault that will make D-Day look like it was thrown together haphazardly by a bunch of drunken frat boys.

We also need to remember that Big Abortion will find out about the dead woman long before we will. They have connections in public health agencies that we simply don't, because they began planting them there back when Planned Parenthood was still calling itself the Birth Control League. Those connections will give them adequate lead time before allowing the story to break. Public health officials will not be neutral sources of information -- though of course they will pretend to be. They will be a key part of the orchestrated media blitz, just as the Centers for Disease Control was a key player in the media campaign when Rosie Jimenez died. The specifics of which woman Big Abortion manages to get killed, and under what specific circumstances, will be well known to the abortion lobby, and we will be playing catch-up to find out what really happened.

Look at the traction the international abortion movement is gaining in Ireland from the death of a woman who was not promptly given antibiotics during a miscarriage. It took a wild stretch of the imagination to blame that woman's death on lack of "safe and legal abortion," but that hasn't stopped the abortion machine and its media lackeys. Ireland is poised to come under the control of Big Abortion. Can you imagine what hay they can make with a death they have actually engineered and prepared for? The press releases are already drafted, templates for rally signs are awaiting a photograph, and the logistics for "spontaneous" rallies have long since been worked out and are being updated as circumstances change. We know this because we've seen how flawlessly coordinated Big Abortion has always been when a tragedy strikes.

So Now What?

I don't have all the answers, but I have a good starting point: The prolife movement already has everything in place necessary to prevent there from ever being another abortion death. We have pregnancy help centers. No woman needs to be without friends, help, and hope. The abortion machine has recently launched another assault on those who dare to stand in their way.

Our work needs to be two-pronged:

1. Make sure vulnerable women are fully aware that their choices are not limited to Acme Reproductive Services or a rusty coathanger. There are thousands of prolife centers all over the country, and millions of prolife citizens, ready to lend a hand. No woman is facing any pregnancy alone unless Big Abortion is successful in cutting off her access to real help.
2. Expose Big Abortion's tactics for what they are: a way to fatten abortionists' purses and give more power to the abortion lobby 

We can't fully prevent Big Abortion from creating and exploiting another Rosie Jimenez. Some women will resort to a seedy abortionist or an online purchase of abortion drugs -- and there are scads of abortion enthusiasts ready to help her to an abortion, any abortion, even one that puts her in an early grave. There are some people who are absolutely determined to make sure that abortions keep happening, and all of our efforts to reach vulnerable women can only reach those who are able to see abortion and its proponents for the trap they are.