The Atlantic and Who is Responsible for Quackery

I recently addressed Garance Franke-Ruta's article in The Atlantic in which she takes abortion-rights blame-shifting to flabbergasting new levels by placing blame for Kermit Gosnell's "house of horrors" not on state authorities who had the means and authority to shut him down but chose not to, not on mainstream prochoice groups and people and facilities who referred women to him, or even on the highly-reputable National Abortion Federation clinic that had hired Gosnell and handed off their patients to him. Instead, Franke-Ruta places the blame squarely on the prolifers for failing to investigate Gosnell, failing to develop a rapport with the women going in and out, and insisting on trying to get states to inspect abortion facilities and shut down the ones that are seedy and unsafe.

Today I'd like to address another astonishing situation that Franke-Ruta notices but fails to address. This is the issue of who is actually keeping tabs on abortion practitioners and what nasty things abortion doctors and/or facilities are doing:

Operation Rescue, the Kansas-based national anti-abortion group, keeps a list of every abortion clinic in the country, according to Senior Policy Adviser Cheryl Sullenger. And while she said that it does a great deal of work investigating abortion-providing facilities and filing third-party complaints against them...

Notice who is not keeping a list of every abortion clinic in the country and doing a great deal of work investigating abortion-providing facilities and filing third-party complaints against them.

It isn't prochoice organizations that investigate abortion facilities and file third-party complaints against seedy ones. It isn't abortion-rights groups that refer women to these facilities. It isn't mainstream abortion clinics that refer women to these facilities. It's those prolifers who are sniffing out and addressing seedy abortion mills.

Franke-Ruta simply presumes that it's not the prochoice movement's job to investigate abortion facilities, try to get nasty ones smacked down by the state, and warn women away when the state fails to act. The prochoice movement bears exactly zero responsibility.

It's the prolifers' responsibility. As if prolifers have any control over what goes on inside those facilities. As if prolifers have any control over prochoice groups and facilities that refer women for abortions. As if prolifers are the ones with all the power to dictate and address abortion practices.

But on the flip side, she simultaneously blames prolifers for addressing seedy abortion mills, on the grounds that if you close down seedy abortion mills, there won't be as many abortion facilities and this will force women to go to the seedy abortion mills that the prolifers have been trying to shut down.

Here's a novel idea, Ms. Franke-Ruta: Start holding prochoicers responsible for blocking efforts to address abortion quackery. Start holding prochoicers responsible for referring women to quacks. Start holding abortion practitioners responsible for what they're doing behind closed doors. And most of all, drop the schizophrenic attitude toward abortion quackery, that somehow prolifers can prevent it if only they'd learn to simultaneously find it and ignore it.