Abortion supporters have reason to look askance at Sotomayor

Sotomayor Voted to OK Asylum for Spouses of Women in China Forced Abortions

Sotomayor has made some judicial calls that will give the folks at NARAL, NAF, and Planned Parenthood reason to shake in their shoes.

1. She upheld the Mexico City Policy, which blocked US funding of organizations that promote abortion in other countries.

2. She passed a ruling in favor of prolife protestors.

3. She backed political asylum for the spouses and unmarried partners of Chinese women facing forced sterilization or abortion.

That third one will particularly stick in the abortion advocacy craw because of what she wrote in her opinion on the case:

“The termination of a wanted pregnancy under a coercive population control program can only be devastating to any couple, akin, no doubt, to the killing of a child,” she wrote

"The harm is clearly directed at the couple who dared to continue an unauthorized pregnancy in hopes of enlarging the family unit," she added.

Sotmayor also noted “the unique biological nature of pregnancy and special reverence every civilization has accorded to child-rearing and parenthood in marriage.”

To the abortion lobby, them's fighting words.

AbortionInfo - a fascinating read

I stumbled across this LiveJournal community while checking out searches that brought people to my blog. Where else did it bring folks? I came in on their "recommended clinics" page. But I was drawn to Multiple abortions. Here's a sampling:

so I've got records for 3 of my abortions. one place agreed to fax them to my doctor, too- this accounts for five procedures. [whew]

one place I went to twice has closed down since I went there. I have no idea how to get those records!

I'm hoping to try to get all of them; I want ammo for my appointment, I'm about fed up trying to get the tubes tied.

This has been a very familiar theme in talking to prochoice women who have had multiple abortions. They are -- I think justifiably -- angry that they can't simply get their tubes tied, that there are so many obstacles.

Now don't get me wrong -- I think that vasectomies and tubal ligations are mutilating healthy bodies. I guess you could say I'm "personally opposed" to vasectomies and tubal ligations. But they're a wrong you choose to do to yourself. Unlike abortion, vasectomy and tubal ligation really are just a matter of what you do to your own body. Why is it so much harder for a woman who knows she doesn't want children to get a tubal ligation? Yeah, it's (usually) irreversible mutilation of a healthy body. But abortion is utterly irreversible destruction of a healthy body. Why should it be easier to take action to kill somebody else in order to prevent yourself from parenting than it is to do something to your own body to prevent yourself from parenting?

Here's a puzzler -- why aren't the "prochoice" lobbying groups screaming bloody murder about barriers to tubal ligation? They say they're all about women making choices about their own bodies. They vehemently oppose informed consent and waiting periods for abortions. But they don't have equal outrage about virtually insurmountable barriers to tubal ligations. Shouldn't they be beating this drum? Because women might later regret their tubal ligations? That can't carry much weight -- women often later regret their abortions to the point where there's a culture of post-abortion support and counseling. I don't see any similar thing for tubal-ligation regret.

Something very fishy there.

I've had more than 10 abortions. I'm 36.

I had my first when I was 16, and my most recent just two weeks ago. I've had two 2nd trimester abortions, one at 19 weeks, and the most recent one was at 18.3 weeks. all the rest were fairly early first trimester. (i can't remember all the specifics and don't want to make this post too too long.)

....

I've been pregnant twice while using the pill, once on the patch. I wasn't forgetting anything or doing anything wrong, apparently hormonal methods don't work very well for me. with one of these I was taking antibiotics and wasn't told it'd interfere with my birth control. thanks doc!

I've gotten pregnant once on the shot- I forgot my appt date and went in a week late for my third installment...bingo.

I've gotten pregnant using condoms (every single time I've been pregnant!) and once with an IUD!

....

I am apparently a baby machine...except I have never wanted children. I have tried several times to get a tubal, and been refused because I'm childfree and single...and "might change my mind". also, the cost...it's more than I usually have available. (ive been without insurance for fifteen years.)

....

I don't regret any of my abortions. I have never, and still don't, want children.
I do get mad that I was unable to prevent pregnancy even by trying many different methods, and I get angry at the patronizing tone I've gotten from gyn.s when I've asked for more reliable birth control (sterilization)

1. So much for the idea that throwing contraceptives at people will prevent abortions. Would this woman have been as sexually adventuresome if she'd internalized that any act of intercourse could result in a pregnancy? Especially if it could result in a pregnancy she couldn't just pop down the street and get scraped out?

2. So much for the idea that nobody aborts cavalierly.

3. Here again we visit the theme, "Where are the 'choice' people screaming bloody murder when women who want tubal ligations can't get them?" This woman chose more than ten times to end somebody else's life -- with no barriers to that choice whatsoever -- largely because the "choice" lobby isn't as averse to barriers to sterilization as they are to "barriers" to abortion.

There was no broken condom or bad vasectomy; I got pregnant because I was an idiot with a strong sex drive. I was having a lot of sex with a dear friend of mine, and we usually used condoms. One night, we were having a really, extraordinarily wild time out on the couch, far from the nightstand with the condoms in it. He stopped just before pushing himself inside me and said, "wait, is this ok?"

I lied.

"Yes," I whispered; "I can't get pregnant right now." In truth, I had no idea where I was in my cycle or even what day of the month it was; what I wanted was for him to fuck me until we both screamed. I didn't want to stop the momentum to get up, go into the bedroom and laboriously put on the loathsome condom. Also, the man in question had only one testicle; how fertile could he be?

The sex was amazing.

I got knocked up.

No comment.

Well, I have to leave for work now.

For Students: The Grosvenor-Sessions Abortion Case

This is aimed primarily at students who might be looking for a topic for a term paper, debate, or speech. Instead of doing my write-up, I am going to provide primary source documents for an historic abortion case in the US Colonial era, along with some questions for you. The entire exercise is an excellent one for honing research and analysis skills. And although you can't draw definitive conclusions from just one case, you can use it as an example to combine with other evidence to try to paint as accurate a picture as you can of abortion as practiced in Colonial times.

I've found that writing up these historic abortion cases challenged many of my assumptions, introduced ideas that hadn't occurred to me before, and reinforced other assumptions. I'm hoping that regardless of your stand on abortion it will do the same for you. The more thought and consideration we give to the dynamics of abortion, the more we can do to prevent the practice -- a goal all prolifers and most prochoicers would agree on.

Before you start looking at the documents, think a while about some of what you've been taught about abortion historically -- what the different people have said to you, what you've seen written up, and what conclusions you yourself have drawn.

Was it common?

Was it legal in the time period in question?

Was it approved of? By whom? Why or why not? What role did concern for the fetus play? Concern for the mother? Other concerns (social stability, religious beliefs, etc.)?

Was it perceived as safe or dangerous? Why?

Was the perceived safety or danger the primary concern?

Was it practiced openly or secretly?

How did people go about arranging abortions?

Who took the the lead in making abortion arrangements?

Was abortion thought of as killing a baby?

Since this is a death, it's also important to ask before you read:

Was the mother's death thought of as the only crime, the primary crime, the secondary crime?

How much significance was placed on the death of the fetus?

Now it's time to start reading original source documents. The involved parties' depositions are here, and the indictments here.

As you read, try to develop a timeline of who was doing what and when it was happening. What roles did various people play? What was their perception of what was happening? What impact did social mores, laws, religion, relationships, and other circumstances play?

You can double-check your timeline against this chronology when you're finished. More commentary and questions are available here, and another person's commentary here.

Were any aspects of this case surprising to you? What aspects played out the way you thought they would have? What did you learn? Do you think your preconceptions played a role in how you interpreted the events? Read these accounts and analyses, and consider what sorts of conclusions others drew from the same source documents. What other sources might they have had access to that you lack? What further information do you need?

"Taking the trade": abortion and gender relations in an eighteenth-century New England village. (abstract)

Sexual Borderlands

Sarah Grosvenor vs. Mary Fish

Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America

Meehan Reports (Use search to find the reference, then look at the surrounding work and compare it to what you see elsewhere.)

When Abortion Was a Crime (Use search to find the reference, then look at the surrounding work and compare it to what you see elsewhere.)

Do you think this young woman's death could have been prevented? If so, how? What role did law, social mores, family and social dynamics, the relationship with the man, and medical practices of the time play in her death?

Most importantly: What are we doing today that might be preventing such tragedies? Facilitating them? What can or should we change? What can or should we maintain or protect?

Mortality Trends: Can you spot Roe?

One of the data massage tricks the abortion lobby does to convince people that legal abortion saves lives is to compare abortion deaths from the five-year period prior to Roe to the five-year period after Roe. "Look!" they proclaim, "See the dramatic effect Roe vs. Wade had on abortion deaths!"

Was Roe really that significant an event in terms of reducing abortion mortality? I have come up with an exercise to see. I have abortion mortality data from 1940 through 2003. I wanted to pick 20-year periods so that we can look at what the trends were, and see if there is a sign that a particular event changed abortion mortality trends. If the claims of the abortion lobby are true, it should be easy to spot Roe vs. Wade on an unlabeled chart of abortion mortality, because of the sudden, clear drop in maternal deaths.

I went to a random number generator and had it choose for me 3 random years between 1940 and 1973, and then for each of those year I made a chart showing the abortion mortality for the 20-year period. Which of the following charts shows the impact of the first states legalizing abortion? Which charts shows the impact of Roe vs. Wade? Can you spot those two significant changes in the legal status of abortion?

Each bar shows the total number of abortion deaths for that year. I took off the numbers from the left hand side so that you'd be looking at trends to see where there was something that changed the trend, without giving you a clue from the numbers.

As you look at each chart, ask yourself these questions:

*What years does this chart illustrate?
*Which milestones of abortion law, if any, took place during these years?

Try to spot exactly where you think these milestones took place. Then answer the question and see if you were right.




Which charts show periods where there were major changes in abortion law? (There may be more than one right answer.)
Period A
Period B
Period C

Search: Are abortions used as birth control?

Are abortions used as birth control? A better question would be "How often are abortions used as birth control?" The answer depending on how you define "using abortion as birth control". The hard-liners, defining "abortion as birth control" as any abortion chosen because the woman doesn't want to have the baby, put the "abortions as birth control" rate at 95%. The middle ground, judging by repeat abortions, puts "abortions as birth control" at 45%. And the most conservative count, just counting abortions on women who weren't using contraception, put "abortions as birth control" at 42%. Even the low end, the conservative estimate of 42%, is still, by anybody's reckoning, a lot of abortions.

Collateral damage

I've been trying to find the ratio of unintended civilian casualties for every enemy combatant killed by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, to no avail.

The closest I can get to an estimate of how much collateral damage our troops are causing is this piece, that estimates a little more than one civilian death for every 12 bombs or missiles our troops use.

I'll round it up, say that it's two civilian deaths for every dozen bombs or missiles.

Our targets aren't so much enemy combatants as enemy equipment -- tanks, weapons caches, munitions factories, and so forth -- and efficacy is counted in terms of whether the target was destroyed, not whether combatants were killed. But the equipment isn't just sitting there unattended. I think it's a safe assumption that if a bomb hits its intended target, it's also taking out at least one enemy combatant. And for the sake of comparisons, I'll go for the very lowest estimate and say that each successful bomb or missile is taking out only one enemy.

This article estimates that 75% of bombs were hitting their intended targets. That's 3/4, which is 9/12.

To eliminate a hundred guys like this, we accidentally kill 22 people we didn't intend to kill.

So, if we're making the low estimate of combatant casualties (one per successful bomb or missile) and a high estimate of civilian casualties (two per dozen bombs or missiles), every dozen missiles is taking out nine enemy combatants and two civilians. For every 100 of the enemy killed, we are (at the absolute highest estimate) taking out 22 civilians.

Let's compare the War on Terror, then, to the War on Down Syndrome, which kills three genetically standard babies for every "enemy" (baby with Down syndrome) successfully eliminated. For every 100 of the "enemy" killed, we are killing 300 "civilians" -- non-targeted "normal" babies. That's at least 13 times the "collateral damage" rate of combat bombing missions.

To eliminate 100 people like this guy, we accidentally kill 300 people we didn't intend to kill. So evidently we consider this guy thirteen times as threatening as that guy in the other picture.

What has the world come to, when doctors have at least a 13-times higher collateral damage rate than military bombers?

Who is killing indiscriminately here?

Call for substantiating documentation

I check daily to see which posts people are seeing in my blog and what searches brought them there. So I was reminded today that I still have been utterly unable to find verification for the four abortion deaths I found at the National Organization for Women web site. I tried asking NOW and didn't get an answer.

They listed a collection illegal abortion deaths, one of which I know from original source documents was a miscarriage death, not an induced abortion. I have the othera listed in my Cemetery of Choice, but I really hate having some of them there when I can't verify the stories as being from any more reliable source than one I know is wrong on 1 out of 7.

The four I can't find any verification on are:

Vivian Campbell, Pittsburgh area, May 6, 1950, mother of the late Pittsburgh police chief Gwendolyn J. "Gwen" Elliott. Everything I've found says that Gwen found out her mother had really died from an illegal abortion when she got her death certificate years later. One story says that the death certificate said "spontaneous abortion" (which is a miscarriage), the other story says the death certificate read "abortion (?)" -- which could be an induced abortion or a miscarriage. Going just by the sources I can find, then, Vivian is a definite unconfirmed, most likely actually being a miscarriage death mistakenly blamed on a criminal abortion by a shocked adult child who didn't realize that "abortion" is the medical term for a miscarriage.

Clara Bell Duvall, Pittsburgh, March 27, 1929. In this one, the woman's daughter states that as an adult her older sister, who spent time with their mother in the hospital prior to her death, told her that her mother had successfully sought several other abortions, but that this one had done her in. But I can't find anything in the Pittsburgh papers other than an obituary: no investigation, no arrests. Supposedly her husband was an industrialist, but I googled him and can't find anything. Would her high profile husband have hushed the abortion up? Or would the high status have made the story too juicy for the press to resist? I'd put Clara in the "probable abortion death" category.

Ruth Irene Friedl, Denver, August 21, 1929. NOW's site said that pregnancy was life-threatening for Ruth, but they don't specify why, nor do they say why she was denied an abortion. NOW says that Ruth drank an herbal abortifacient and died. No clue as to where the story came from.

Pauline Roberson Shirley, Arizona, hemorrhage, August 22, 1940. Again, no further information available about sources.

It really ticks me off that I get prochoicers accusing me of just making things up, when I cite my sources, but they just take these stories at face value from abortion advocacy sources without so much as a single cite of a single source document. I'll take four of my deaths at random (by clicking on the Memorial graphic at the bottom of my RealChoice pages) to give you a comparison:

Sharonda Rowe: District of Columbia Certificate of Death, File # 81-6576

Betty Damato: Rocky Mountain News 12/4/81

Luz Rodriguez: "Clinic head faces complaints," Arizona Republic July 15, 1998; "History of trouble at clinics," Arizona Republic, January 17, 1999

Ruth Montero: Miami Herald 1-5-83; Obstetrics & Gynecology September 1986; CDC Abortion Surveillance 1982; Florida Today 6-1-83



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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Checking the facts on Obama and abortion

Obama Misleads Voters on His Abortion Record

Didn't Illinois law really protect abortion survivors anyway before the BAIPA? No. The law "on the books" — 720 ILCS 510.6 — applied only where an abortionist declared before the abortion that there was "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb." So if the doctor was wrong and the baby was capable of survival, the law didn't allow anybody to second-guess him. The baby was not a baby under the law, because the abortionist had declared him or her to not be a baby by the mere decision to proceed with the abortion in the first place. (You can read here about how George Tiller determines if a fetus is pre-viable and thus suitable for aborting. I'm not sure what methods Illinois abortionists use.)

Doesn't Obama only support third trimester abortions when they're necessary to protect the mother's life or health? Only if you define "health" so broadly that "She feels distressed and thinks an abortion will alleviate her distress" actually constitutes "health".

Doesn't Obama want to focus on "common ground" efforts to support women who don't want abortions? No. He wants to cut off funding to the very pregnancy centers that help women to avoid unwanted abortions.

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1977: The death the abortion lobby had been waiting for

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" -- much the way they are keening now about the upcoming vote in South Dakota.

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 abortion advocacy 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 Jiminez had shown up at the emergency room of McAllen General Hospital in the Texas border town of McAllen, with septic shock. She was put in intensive care, but died on October 3 from renal and cardiac failure caused by disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (failure of the blood to clot properly) triggered by gas gangrene from a criminal abortion. She left behind one child.

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 story they could leverage, they hoped, into the restoration of tax money flowing into abortion clinics.

One voice stood out from the crowd: Ellen Frankfort, author of Rosie: the investigation of a wrongful death. Frankfort was disgusted with the bulk of the prochoice movement, who seemed content to make note of the 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. 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 Frankfort went, to learn all she could.

Rosie had already undergone two abortions at taxpayer expense. The first time, she had not been using contraception, and a private ob/gyn in McAllen aborted her 9-week fetus on July 15, 1975. She went on birth control pills after this abortion, but quit using them when a physician told her they might impair future fertility. She quickly became pregnant again and had a second tax-funded abortion, this one done at a facility Rosie had been referred to by a local Planned Parenthood, at 11 weeks of pregnancy.

The CDC's investigation after Rosie's death could not determine if she used any form of birth control after this second abortion. She became pregnant yet again. In September of 1977, she suspected that she was again pregnant, and consulted with a cousin and a friend, who told her that Medicaid would no longer pay for elective abortions.

Rosie had also gone to her family physician, Dr. Homer, in McAllen for treatment of pain in her sternum. She mentioned that she might be pregnant. The physician did not arrange for a pregnancy test or discuss her options with her in any way. He simply informed her that Medicaid would no longer pay for abortions, and let it rest at that.

It is interesting to note that in all the finger-pointing following Rosie's death, no prochoicer thought to place any blame on this physician. Evidently he knew about the two previous Medicaid abortions. Why did he consent himself with telling Rosie that there would be no more free abortions? A referral seemed to have been in order, either to a prolife center that would help her with the expenses of continuing the pregnancy, or to the local Planned Parenthood, that could arrange an abortion on a sliding scale and could possibly help her tap into private funds for elective abortions. Dr. Homer, in fact, was very much in favor of abortions and was aware the Dr. C performed them and that Planned Parenthood referred for them on a sliding scale.

Regardless, Rosie's physician just dropped the news -- no more tax-funded abortions -- and effectively abandoned his patient.

The week of September 19, Rosie went to Mexico for some sort of injection to cause an abortion. She had the shots at a pharmacy, at $5 each. The second injection made her ill, and she abandoned this means of attempting to get rid of the unwanted fetus.

On September 25, she consulted with her cousin, saying that she wanted to find a cheap abortionist quickly. Rosie's cousin brought her to a lay midwife in McAllen, who charged $120 to insert a catheter into Rosie's uterus. Fifteen minutes later, she sent Rosie home.

Rosie had pain and cramping upon returning home. Over the next 12 hours, she developed an increasing fever, and had nausea, vomiting, chills, dizziness, and increasing vaginal bleeding. The next afternoon, Rosie was unable to get out of bed. She asked a friend to take her to the hospital. She was admitted at 5 p.m., roughly 22 hours after the abortion.

Rosie lied to the doctors when she was admitted, telling them that she was suffering from leg cramps and abdominal pain, saying that her period had just started and denying an abortion. She had a fever of 100.8, a rapid pulse of 108, respiration of 24, and a blood pressure of 110/80. These vital signs are an indication that something is wrong, but are not in and of themselves alarming.

The physical examination, however, revealed cause for concern. Her abdomen was tender and guarded -- meaning that she tensed up when touched. Her uterus was enlarged and tender, and her cervix was soft and dilated wide enough for doctors to pass a ring forceps inside. She had dark bloody vaginal discharge. These are all signs of a recent terminated pregnancy -- whether by miscarriage or by induced abortion -- with infection and possible retained tissue.

So despite Rosie's insistence that nobody had done anything to terminate her pregnancy, McAllen General's doctors accurately diagnosed a septic incomplete abortion. They did a blood culture and found clostridium perfringens bacteria -- gas gangrene.

The doctors immediately put Rosie on intravenous antibiotics and fluids. They also performed a D&C to remove retained tissue from Rosie's uterus. These tissues, also, showed clostridium perfringens infection. Doctors also found placental tissue, confirming their belief that Rosie had indeed been pregnant.

Despite the aggressive treatment, Rosie's condition deteriorated over the next twelve hours. She developed severe jaundice. Her pulse was a racing 160 beats per minute. She developed a rash over her torso and thighs. Her urine output fell, causing the doctors to suspect kidney failure.

More laboratory tests were performed, which led the doctors to believe Rosie was developing disseminated intravascular coagulopahty. They performed a hysterectomy to get rid of the source of the infection. After surgery, her blood pressure was a low 90/60, her pulse a still-rapid 120, and her respirations a panting 30 breaths per minute.

Within six hours of surgery, Rosie's heart failed. A consulting physician recommended intense measures to support Rosie's failing body. Over the next three days, her respiratory problems grew worse, and she was put on a ventilator. Doctors administered medications to correct the clotting failure, antibiotics to attack the infection, and intensive supportive therapy to support her failing organ systems, to no avail. Rosie died on October 3.

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

What is particularly telling in Rosie's death is 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 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.

Frankfort was particularly disgusted with the response of public health officials, who likewise simply announced Rosie's death and began a call to restore abortion funding, but made no effort to close down the illegal abortion practice where Rosie had undergone her fatal abortion.

Frankfort took it upon herself to orchestrate a sting, with local law enforcement. She coordinated a dramatic raid that put the lay abortionist out of business.

And what of the hysteria? Had it been justified?

There was indeed a small spike in reported illegal abortion deaths after the Hyde Amendment (from 2 in 1976 to 4 in 1977 to 7 in 1978). But there was likewise a spike in reported legal abortion deaths as well -- a far larger spike, from 11 in 1976 to 17 in 1977. (I don't believe that the CDC's reported death numbers are accurate, but they're all we have to work with, and more to the point, abortion supporters place great faith in them.)

Lest prochoicers attribute this jump to women having later abortions because they need time to get funds, we'll note that reported legal abortion deaths fall to 9 in 1978, then leap to 22 in 1979. And although the Hyde Amendment remained in effect, reported illegal abortion deaths fell to 0 in 1979, and remained at 0, 1, or 2 per year. Since this is fewer than the 19 in 1973, 6 in 1974, and 4 in 1975, when federal funds were available for elective abortions, it's hard to say that the Hyde Amendment was causing more illegal abortion deaths.

The most likely explanation lies in Atlanta, not in Washington. When the Hyde Amendment was passed, the CDC launched a study designed to prove that cutting funds for elective abortions would hurt women. They intensified surveillance of hospital admissions for complications of all abortions -- legal, illegal, and spontaneous (miscarriages). Such intense, sudden increase in interest in abortion complications is likely to uncover abortion deaths that would otherwise go unreported.

While it likely triggered the reporting of more deaths than would have otherwise been reported, the study did not find a higher rate of abortion-related hospitalizations for Medicaid-eligible women. To the contrary, the study, "The Effect of Restricting Public Funds for Legal Abortion," found "no evidence of a statistically significant increase in the number of complications from illegal abortions." In fact, they found that while there was no change in the illegal abortion complications, there was a significant decrease in publicly funded hospitalizations for legal abortion complications in cities where funding was restricted, compared to cities in areas where state or local government picked up the tab for elective abortions.

In other words, cutting funds for elective abortions actually had a measurable positive impact on abortion complication rates for Medicaid-eligible women.

So was Rosie's death a fluke? Probably not. The heavy publicity put out by the prochoice movement about how poor women would be "forced" to resort to dangerous criminal abortions probably left Rosie, and some others like her, with the mistaken impression that criminal abortion (rather than birth or even sliding-scale legal abortion) was their only option.

So I'd place the blame for the death of Rosie Jiminez not on the Hyde Amendment, but on several factors:

Readily available public funds for abortion had taught her that she need not be careful about her sexual activity and/or birth control.

Public relations efforts by prochoice groups left women like Rosie with the belief that criminal abortion was their only option.

Rosie's doctor abandoned her, instead of referring her for appropriate counseling and care.

The McAllen midwife was willing to play Russian roulette with women's lives instead of referring them for either prenatal care or low-cost sanitary abortions.

Since she'd never had to pay for her own abortion before, Rosie was apparently unaware that a legal abortion was available for only a few dollars more than what the dirty local midwife was charging.

I agree with abortion advocates that the death of Rosie Jiminez was avoidable. But I disagree with them that lack of public funding was to blame. Prochoice organizations had ample opportunity to tout other resources. Prochoice people all around Rosie had opportunities to steer her toward a "safe and legal" abortion, had they chosen to do so. Not a one of them did. And the bigger problem was that nobody ever seemed to entertain the notion that abortion might not be the answer in the first place.

What's additionally puzzling about this whole turn of events is that the facility to which Planned Parenthood referred abortion patients charged only $130 for an abortion for poor women, just $10 more than Rosie paid for the amateur abortion that took her life. It's difficult to believe that a $10 price difference put the legal abortion out of Rosies's reach, especially since the day before her abortion she'd spent $8 on a cake for a friend's baby shower, and when she died she had a $800 scholarship check in her purse.

Rosie remains a poster child of the abortion lobby. Their own role in her death is never acknowledged. Henry Hyde is blamed instead -- in spite of his key role in passing a law that reduced abortion injuries among women like Rosie, and in reducing complications, surely also reduced abortion deaths -- in spite of the abortion lobby's best efforts.




For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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Paging Captain Obvious

Pro-Abortion Forces Air TV Ad That is Deliberately Misleading

I've yet to see them put out an ad -- or even a simple statement or press release or bumper sticker or t-shirt -- that wasn't deliberately misleading. Bringing out women or families whose situations wouldn't be impacted by a law is old hat. When the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act was being debated, abortion advocates went so far as to have a woman speak to the legislature about her personal tragedy, when her baby died in-utero during the third trimester. They had her claiming that the law would have prohibited her doctor from inducing labor to deliver the already-dead fetus. Since laws against abortion only ban the deliberate killing of live babies in the womb, the Act was no more relevant to that woman's situation than a homicide law is to the selection of funeral caskets.

Go read the article, since it's clear and straightforward and serves as yet another example of the old adage, "How do you know an abortion advocate is lying? His lips are moving."

For more on why the ad is deliberately misleading, see this.

For more about abortion-advocacy dishonesty, see Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

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Three more reasons to vote for McCain

Three Facts About John McCain's Extreme Position on Choice

I'll re-post them, with comments:

1. John McCain is running on the Republican platform, which would ban all abortions - even in cases of rape and incest.

That is the Republican platform. Though what McCain has specifically promised is to nominate Supreme Court justices who don't invent new "rights" -- like the "right" to abortion -- out of "emanations from a penumbra". If it ain't in the Constitution, it ain't in the Constitution, and either learn to adjust or change the Constitution.

What does this mean for fans of abortion? That it'd go back to the states. Would this mean scores of coathanger-impaled women littering the emergency rooms of America? Hardly.

This is the same scare tactic the abortion lobby brings up every four years. Yawn.

2. John McCain voted to criminalize doctors who support women in their reproductive choices, even when a woman's health is at risk.

McCain has, not my knowledge, never voted to criminalize doctors.

What they're implying here is that McCain would make it a crime for doctors to do certain things. Which he no doubt would like to do. But it's already illegal for doctors to do certain things, like have sex with underage patients, commit fraud, etc. None of these laws "criminalize doctors". So enough with the overblown rhetoric already.

And enough with calling abortion "support[ing] women in their reproductive choices". Abortion is a choice made after the woman has already reproduced. (Get out your old biology textbooks if they're still laying around the house. Gamete meets gamete, make zygote. Reproduction has taken place.) They need to be honest and say that what they're talking about is prohibiting doctors from helping women impose death on their own offspring. That's not the same as interfering with any reproductive choice. Reproductive choices would include having sex, abstaining from sex, using an artificial contraceptive, not using an artificial contraceptive, using fertility awareness methods to increase or decrease the odds of conception, getting your tubes tied, having infertility treatments, choosing c-section or vaginal childbirth, choosing home birth or hospital birth, etc. A plethora of reproductive choices all untouched by any laws regarding the one choice abortion advocates focus on.

Then let's touch the specter of the woman's health being at risk. In what way would restricting abortion prevent doctors from doing what's in women's best health interests? Another cheap ploy. Having abortion readily available is nice for lazy doctors -- they don't have to help women with health problems during pregnancy. They can just refer them for an abortion and not be bothered. I'm not clear on how this helps women with health problems during pregnancy. Abortion isn't medical care for sick women. It's a way to avoid providing health care.

3. Since 1983, John McCain has voted 125 times against women's reproductive health choices.

Translated into English: Since 1983, John McCain has voted 125 times against the abortion lobby's wishes.

This is only bad news if you're in the abortion business. But very few of us either work in abortion facilities or for organizations that rely on the abortion agenda.

So, thank you, JohnMcCainRecord.com, for giving people who care about women and children three more reasons to vote McCain, and three more reasons to not trust you any further than we could spit a rat.

"Nobody is Pro Abortion." Revisited Again.

HT: Right Wing News

The Curse

When tests made it clear that Palin’s pregnancy, which happened around the age of 43, had chromosomal abnormalities, she did not do the rational and even humane thing: return to nothing that which was still a no-thing.

Bigotry is alive and well. So much for "tolerance" and "diversity". There is only tolerance for the diversity that doesn't make the elitists uncomfortable.

"Respecting choice" and "Nobody is for abortion"

"This baby should have never been allowed to live a life of suffering. Gov. Palin should have aborted the pregnancy and saved this person a life of difficulty."

"Howard [Stern] thought that Sarah Palin should have not delivered the child that was going to be born with a reduced resources, and he went on and on about it." (NB: Stern hates Bristol's baby, too: “Any self respecting mother would have taken her daughter to an abortion clinic and had that blood clot removed”)

"Sarah Palin’s judgment is despicalble. She knowingly whelped a Mongoloid child earlier this year, probably to pander to the Right to Life Nutbags."

"No one has the right to bring a defective child into the world it is a form of self-love and shows no love for the child." (Scroll down)

"She should have aborted the Downs child…. no, giving him life was not the best thing." (Comment #387)

"I disagree with condemning the baby to a second-class life full of discomfort. I think it's more cruel to bring a baby into this world that you know will suffer and that cannot be cured. .... The issue is KNOWING that the baby will have Down syndrome and still being callous enough to bring it into the world." (Answer 2)

"She shouldn't have gotten pregnant. It was selfishness. And she should have aborted the fetus."

"It's obvious this comment came from some ignorant poor THING with self-esteem issues and the mental capacity of Palin's poor THING of a son that she should have aborted as soon as she knew he would never be a productive member of society!" (#33)

Feel the love!

Those are just the people who wish Trig Palin dead. I've found, but not included, quotes from people who wished other children dead.

Nobody's for abortion. They're all just for "choice".

Yeah. And I've got some land in Florida for sale at a good price, if you're buying this.

Just tissue, or what?

Is the fetus a "blob of tissue"? Big Blue Wave does an excellent job addressing this question, along with the standard ad hominem attacks. I would add that there are circumstances in which the "products of conception" really are just tissue; nobody objects at all to the removal and disposal of said tissue.

Nancy Pelosi: Roe trumps all

Nancy Pelosi “Meet the Press” transcript

Staggeringly, amazingly, unbelievably, Tom Browkaw asked Nancy Pelosi how she, as Speaker, would advise Obama about when human life begins. Pelosi, who calls herself "an ardent, practicing Catholic" (in which case I'm Mrs. Craig Ferguson), says:

I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition.

Bullshit. You can study Catholic teaching for about ten minutes and find out what church doctors have said: You shall not kill.

Which Browkaw, again astonishingly, held her feet to the fire on:

So after her waffling, she concludes that it doesn't really matter when human life begins, because "The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose."

In other words, if she wants it dead, kill it. Don't bother yourself with trivial questions such as "Is this a human being we're pulling to bits?"

She pulls out this old fallback for "Christians" who want to justify abortion: "But it is, it is also true that God has given us, each of us, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions."

Well, yeah, Nancy. "I have set before you life and death. Therefore choose life." Does this chick really believe that God gave us free will for the express purpose of patting us on the head and calling us good little servants when we choose evil? Or maybe -- this takes a bit of sophistication, Nancy -- did He give us free will so that we could CHOOSE good rather than be constrained to it? Think about when you give your kids a chance to choose. "Fine!" you tell your teenage son. "Go to bed whenever!" Are you just as pleased if the kid stays up until 5 a.m. playing "Grand Theft Auto" as you are if the kid does his homework, reads a story to his sister, and is snoozing under the covers at 10:30? Granting the capacity to make a choice doesn't mean that any choice made is equally valid.

According to Nancy Pelosi, God gave humans free will for the express purpose of allowing the females among us the opportunity to choose abortions!

Then she wriggled off into Contraceptive Land, as if encouraging people to think of sex without reproduction as an entitlement will somehow make them less likely to see abortion as a natural response to pregnancy.

This woman spat out every lame justification she could think of for her support of abortion without ever answering the question. Because, to her, it doesn't matter. If somebody wants it dead, kill it. Don't bother yourself with trivialities like life or death.

Which makes me kind of glad Ms. Pelosi doesn't hunt. I can't see her making very sure her target is a deer and not a fellow hunter with the "When it doubt, kill" attitude she espouses.

"It's easy to be given choices when you're not the one that has to walk them out."

Based on Angele's experience watching her baby drown in an abortion clinic toilet.

That first line nails it.

"It's easy to be given choices when you're not the one that has to walk them out."

Frontline: Abortion Clinic

"I wake up. Someone is crying. Someone is bleeding. It's me. It's me."

There's more.

And more.

And more.

And still...

"It's easy to be given choices when you're not the one that has to walk them out."

Let's be clear who they're trying to reach out to

The blogosphere is alive with commentary about how the Democratic party is supposedly trying to reach out to "moderates" or "prolifers".

Democrats Reach For Moderates On Abortion: "Democrats say their new platform plank on abortion takes a step toward “establishing common ground” with abortion opponents and reaches out to evangelcals, Catholics and others who oppose abortion."

Dems' New Abortion Language Courts Pro-Life Moderates: "As CBN's David Brody notes, the new language is an effort to make the Democrats' position on abortion more palateable to moderate Evangelical and Catholic voters who agree with the Dems on other issues."

Uh, huh. Let's get some slightly clearer thinking here:

Dems Reach Middle Ground on Abortion?: "Some Catholics and evangelicals are touting efforts by the Democratic Party to write into their platform specific support for women to carry babies to term."

And here we've nailed it. Finally, the Democratic party isn't all about abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion, nothing but abortion, it's an absolute fundamental right that ought to be paid for by the taxpayers, it's all we ever wanted, it's all we've ever needed! Now they're finally conceding that yeah, now that you hold our feet to the fire, having the baby is okay, too.

They're not seeking middle ground with prolifers. They're seeking middle ground with PROCHOICERS. We're seeing a shift from shameless and braezen abortion advocacy to making concessions, albeit small, to those who think women might occasionally want to make another choice.

Again: This shift in the proposed wording of the platform isn't a move toward a middle ground between prochoice and prolife. It's a move toward a middle ground between proabortion and prochoice.

Which is a shift toward moderation the way moving from Berkeley to San Francisco is a shift toward Middle America.

But it's progress all the same.

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It's not working! Let's do more of it!

High abortion rate worries NY experts

In most of the United States, 24 abortions are carried out for every 100 live births. In New York, 72 abortions occur for every 100 live births.

The continuing boom in abortions—90,157 were performed in the city in 2006, the last year for which statistics are available—apparently means that many women are using abortion as their birth control method of choice. ....

No surprise here. But then we get to hear a public health official say something truly insane, at least according to Albert Einstein, who was credited with defining insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The easy availability of abortion and not enough access to affordable contraception may be reasons behind the city's high abortion rate. An average of 250 abortions are performed in the city each day at more than 200 clinics and doctor's offices.

And even though free or low-cost contraception is offered through 59 publicly funded programs at 218 sites in New York state, mostly in New York City, more could be provided, says Deborah Kaplan, deputy commissioner of the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“To me, the problem is access,” says Ms. Kaplan. “If we improved access to contraceptives, there would be a reduction in abortion.”

You can't spit in New York City without hitting someplace that's dispensing cheap or free birth control, but still the abortion rate is astronomical. The proposed solution? MORE BIRTH CONTROL!

More access to contraception means more people engaging in sexual intercourse in untenable situations. Now, I know that this is a heretical thing to say in this day and age, but SEXUAL INTERCOURSE IS WHAT CAUSES PREGNANCY. The more you do it, the more likely you are to get pregnant.

The lowest rates and rations of abortions are in Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

In the Alan Guttmacher Institutes's Contraception Counts grading system:

Idaho:
* 22nd in service availability
* 26th in laws and policies
* 30th in public funding
* 26th overall

Wyoming:
* 5th in service availability
* 26th in laws and policies
* 3rd in public funding
* 7th overall

South Dakota:
* 40th in service availability
* 40th in laws and policies
* 37th in public funding
* 44th overall

Only Wyoming gets what the AGI would consider any good scores, but they're considered pretty sucky, by AGI standards, on "laws and policies". Idaho and South Dakota, on the other hand, rank 26th and 44th for "preventing unintended pregnancy" even though they actually rank 1st and 3rd for actually having low rates of pregnancies so troublesome that they land the mother on the abortion table.

The AGI doesn't show New York City separately, but you can see here how they rank the state as a whole:
* 25th in service availability
* 3rd in laws and policies
* 13th in public funding
* 5th overall

"Overall", the Alan Guttmacher Institute ranks New York State 5th in "pregnancy prevention" efforts. I'd have to suggest that maybe these "prevention" efforts are, in New York City at least, failing miserably. Maybe New York City needs to take some lessons from Idaho.

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"Are Democrats Now Pro-Life?"

ABC News Asks: 'Are Democrats Now Pro-Life?':

Today ABC News's Web site asks "Are Democrats Now Pro-Life? As Convention Draws Near, New Talk of a Pro-Life Presence." The story points out that after many years of being strongly pro-choice, "the party and its presumptive nominee, Barack Obama, are rethinking how they talk about the issue."

....

Diverse views on abortion? Not likely. NARAL Pro-Choice America used to travel under the more honest name of the National Abortion Rights Action League. It still rates members of Congress based on abortion votes. Its most recent scorecard for the U.S. Senate shows 45 members achieving a 100% pro-choice rating.

Of that number, only three are Republicans. The remaining 100 percenters are Democrats and independent Senators Lieberman and Sanders, who caucus with the Democrats. The tally for the House of Representatives shows a similar pattern. Overwhelmingly, Democrats - including presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama ... - vote in favor of abortion.

The Democratic party isn't very open to dissent on abortion. Bob Casey was silenced at the 1992 Democratic National Convention because he wanted to -- gasp! -- speak heretical words in support of life. The Minnesota delegates got beaten up in front of TV cameras -- footage you and I will never see -- for holding prolife and pro-Casey signs. NewsBusters is guessing that ABC News is trying to present Democrats as moderate, as not being in the hip pocket of the abortion lobby. I, for one, am not buying it.

One of Life's Great Mysteries. NOT!

The Abortion Counseling Conundrum

Abortion advocate Dana Goldstein laments that you just can't get deep-pockets abortion-advocacy contributors to donate money to "prochoice" post-abortion efforts.

That's because to remain "prochoice" you have to maintain the illusion that abortion makes everything all better. If it's leaving women screwed up and needing help, what's the point of supporting it in the first place?

Get a clue, Ms. Goldstein.