Planned Parenthood is once again offering its “Choice On Earth” Christmas cards for the holiday season,
I suppose you could use it to accompany a gift of a Planned Parenthood lanyard,
Or that “I had an abortion” t-shirt,
Sources:
Planned Parenthood Attacked for ‘Choice on Earth’ Cards. Kathleen Rhodes, CNSNews.Com, November 30, 2004.
The New York Times created quite a controversy earlier this year when it published an account of one woman’s decision to have an abortion. The Times didn’t disclose that the woman in question was a prominent abortion rights activist and the reasons she gave for the abortion read like a right wing parody of the pro-choice movement.
The essay describes the decision Amy Richards made when she found out she was pregnant with triplets. Richards decided to abort two of the fetuses. The article identified Richards as a freelance writer, but left out the fact that she has also worked for Planned Parenthood and is a founder of the Third Wave Foundation which, among other things, has paid for abortions.
But what pro-lifers seized on was Richards explanation that she aborted the two fetuses largely for lifestyle reasons. Richards told the Times’ Amy Barrett,
“My immediate response was I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, do I want to? I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ‘Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?’ The obstetrician wasn’t an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.”
Elsewhere in the article, Richards complained that if she actually went through with having the triplets, “I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”
All-in-all the article was an early Christmas present for the anti-abortion movement. Way to go, Amy.
Source:
When One Is Enough. Amy Richards as told to Amy Barrett, New York Times, July 18, 2004.
The Associated Press reports that a three-judge panel in the 9th District Court has thrown out the controversial civil lawsuit against the Nuremberg Files web site.
The Nuremberg Files was a web site set up by anti-abortion activists. Among other things, the site listed names and other personal information about doctors who performed physicians. It also included posters that mimicked wanted posters but included pictures of abortion providers and described as “baby butchers.”
Three doctors whose names appeared on lists maintained by the Nuremberg Files were murdered. Planned Parenthood sued the Nuremberg Files in court under provisions of the RICO statute claiming that the web site was essentially the focal point of a criminal conspiracy. That nobody involved with the web site had committed or even planned any acts of violence was irrelevant — the contents of the web site itself made the Nuremberg Files responsible, in part, for abortion-related violence.
A jury agreed with Planned Parenthood and the proprietors of the site were ordered to pay damages to Planned Parenthood and several abortion doctors.
The 9th District Court unanimously agreed that the jury was wrong — what the Nuremberg Files did was speech protected by the First Amendment. In the majority opinion, Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote,
If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict. But if their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment.
I suspect the Supreme Court will overturn the 9th District’s opinion, even if it ultimately sides with the Nuremberg Files, since the decision provides a gaping legal hole for people conspiring to commit murder to exploit.
Source:
Court: OK to Encourage Abortion Threat. David Kreats, Associated Press, March 28, 2001.
Camille Paglia is pro-choice but, like me, she is troubled by the extremism of much of the core of the pro-choice movement. In her regular column for Salon.com, Paglia rips into groups such as Planned Parenthood which often seem more concerned with being adjuncts of the Democrat Party rather than providing reproductive health services. Paglia writes,
…As a member of Planned Parenthood, for example, I am outraged by the obscene waste of assets by abortion rights organizations whose leaders have become shills for the Democratic Party. The funds diverted to endless “emergency” ads and mailings calling for political action should directly support women’s health care instead. If all the pro-choice men and women in this country would donate their money to needy women instead of to politicians and fancy fundraisers, government support for abortion services would be less critical.
Bush’s cutoff of funding for overseas abortion counseling, virtually the first act of his presidency, hardly made a ripple in public consciousness (though the Philadelphia Inquirer tried to whip things up by making it the lead headline). If national support for choice is starting to slip, as has been reported, it’s because of the arrogant insularity of the feminist elite, who for 20 years have ridden roughshod over the legitimate ethical objections and arguments of abortion opponents. Though I firmly support unrestricted access to abortion, I feel the nation has been polarized and doctors endangered by an intolerance and extremism that began on the secular left.
Well put.
Source:
Crying wolf. Camille Paglia, Salon.Com, February 7, 2001.
Feminists from the National Organization for Women and other feminist organizations claim that George W. Bush’s pro-life views are extremist. In fact whether you agree with Bush or NOW, Bush’s anti-abortion views are very mainstream. One of the biggest problems feminists are creating for themselves is exaggerating the level of support there is for abortion, and more specifically vastly overestimating the public support for the sort of restriction-free abortion that NOW and other groups advocate.
A poll conducted by the Gallup organization in October 2000 found 47 percent of Americans described themselves as “pro-choice” while 45 percent described themselves as “pro-life.” Although polling data on abortion varies widely over time, probably due to the controversial nature of the procedure, that is a marked change from 1995 and 1996 polls by Gallup that found 56 percent of those polled described themselves as “pro-choice” and only 33 percent described themselves as “pro-life.”
Still, every poll Gallup has conducted in the past 5 years has found a majority of people in the “pro-choice” column. Unfortunately for NOW and Planned Parenthood, what many Americans consider to be a “pro-choice” view is close to what those groups consider “pro-life.”
Although 46 percent of respondents said that abortion laws shouldn’t be made any stricter, when asked about specific procedures overwhelming majorities favored additional restrictions on abortions. Only 28 percent of those polled by Gallup said that abortion should be “legal under any circumstance.” Forty-nine percent said it should be legal only in “most circumstances”or “only in a few circumstances” while 19 percent said it should be “illegal in all circumstances.”
In what sort of circumstances shouldn’t abortion be legal? For one, most Americans oppose so-called “partial birth abortions.” When asked whether they would personally vote for a law to ban “partial birth abortion except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother,” 63 percent of those polled said they would vote for such a law. This level of support has remained relatively consistent over time, with 57 percent of respondents in a 1996 poll telling Gallup they would vote for such a law.
These sort of results indicate a public that is generally in favor of abortion, but on the other hand believes that strong regulation and restrictions on the procedure are also a good idea, especially when it comes to late term abortions.
Source:
Majority of Americans Say Roe v. Wade Decision Should Stand. Joseph Carroll, Gallup News Service, January 22, 2001.
The National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and the other usual suspects were outraged when, after only two days in office, George W. Bush issued an executive order blocking federal funds from going to international family planning groups that perform abortions or provide abortion counseling. But is supporting government-funded abortion really a consistent pro-choice position.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Cathy Young argues that federal funding for abortion is wrong “both as a matter of principle and as a matter of strategy.”
As Young writes,
The most powerful pro-choice argument is that a woman’s decision about something so personal as whether or not to bear a child should be free from governmental interference. A fundamental belief in individual rights has led a majority of Americans, however uncomfortably, to support legal abortion, at least in the early stages of pregnancy. But asking the government to finance abortion is a very different matter.
In fact it is absurd for pro-choice activists on the one hand to argue that an abortion is essentially a decision that must be solely left to a woman and her doctor, but then drag the rest of us along into the doctor’s room by demanding we open our wallets to subsidize other people’s choices.
If a woman wants to have an abortion, I have no problem whatsoever with that, but I do have a problem when NOW and Planned Parenthood says I should be required to pay for abortions.
This sort of hypocrisy highlights one of the main problems at the core of big government feminism. On the one hand we are told that women are independent and capable of making their own decisions, thank you very much. In the next breath, of course, NOW and others inform us that women’s independence can only exist so long as women have access to a whole bevy of government programs.
Which is it — are women independent creatures or are they wards of the state?
Personally, I don’t think Bush went far enough. He should have forbidden all federal funding of abortion, period. That’s the only consistent pro-choice position.
Source:
Choice Yes, Subsidy No. Cathy Young, The Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2001.
Cathy Young has a very long, very well written piece in Salon.Com about an idea originally propounded by the men’s rights movement that is likely to be tested in courts within the decade — do men have unequal rights when it comes to issue of abortion that should be solved via a legal remedy?
The basic argument simply turns pro-choice argument on its head. If women should be able to have control over entering in to parental obligations, why not men as well? The idea seems inane at first, but most of the arguments against it, in one way or another, rely on claims that abortion rights activists already say are preposterous when used by pro-lifers. Typically feminists reply that if men don’t want to have to pay child support they should keep their pants on, which is a crude version of an early argument against abortion — if women don’t want to get pregnant, they shouldn’t sleep around. As Young notes, there is a “willingness to liberate women but not men from the unwanted consequences of sex…”
Young quotes from a Planned Parenthood pamphlet, “9 Reasons Why Abortions Are Legal,” which says, in part,
At the most basic level, the abortion issue is not really about abortion. … Should women make their own decisions about family, career and how to live their lives? Or should government do that for them? Do women have the option of deciding when or whether to have children?
Young essentially wants to know that if they are serious about the rhetoric, why shouldn’t men have the same opportunities. And if not, why not?
Most people of the folks who support the so-called men’s right to choose typically have some scheme whereby either parent is able to forego parental obligations — women can obviously abort a fetus as a remedy, and typically the remedy for men would be to renounce parental obligations during the pregnancy.
Does this sort of thinking make sense? Up to a point there are some important insights to be taken away from this sort of argument, but ultimately it has no chance of being accepted by courts and is suspect morally. The problem for feminists, however, is that the reason most people will find the men’s right to choose arguments fallacious is the persistent sexual stereotypes which see men as economic providers for children. The idea of father simply being able to renounce their parental obligations is probably revolting non-feminists and feminists alike (who, when contemplating it, might get a hint of how pro-lifers feel about the idea of a woman being able to abort a fetus) largely because of expectations society has of fathers.
Personally I think that’s, on balance, a very good thing. Besides technological solutions on the horizon such as the male birth control pill are likely to put men and women on more equal technological footing when it comes to controlling reproduction, and a massive change of the sort proposed by those advocating for a man’s right to choose would be a very bad idea.
On the other hand there is a subset of cases of forced fatherhood which Young cites which probably does deserve additional looking into. Namely, how should the law handle the responsibilities of a man when he is forced into being a father thanks to nonconsensual sexual activity?
Young finds a couple of doozies that are stunning. In one case a woman seeking to get pregnant took advantage of a male co-worker who had passed out drunk at a party, and subsequently bragged to friends that she saved a trip to the sperm bank. In another, a woman had oral sex with a man and requested he use a condom. Afterward, unbeknownst to him, she used a syringe to retrieve semen and inseminate herself. In both cases, the mothers sued for and won child support payments from the involuntary father.
And of course there was a much-reported case of a woman convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a 12 year-old. Even though the state concurred that this was in fact a criminal sexual act, the young boy was forced to pay child support when he was 18.
Some sort of legal remedy is in order for those sorts of bizarre cases, but otherwise dramatic legal changes in the way parental obligations are established would be a very bad idea.
Source:
A man’s right to choose. Cathy Young, Salon.Com, October 19, 2000.
Even if I tried, I don’t think I could write a parody of the contemporary feminist movement that accomplished half of what The Vagina Monologues did last year. For those of you who haven’t yet heard of this play, the Vagina Monologues features women representing vaginas who talk about their experiences onstage. The premise is typically wacky, and meant to focus on issues of domestic violence.
The play earned a lot of criticism, however, for its positive portrayal of the statutory rape of a 13 year old girl by a 24 year old woman. At the conclusion of that scene, the 13 year old girl tells the audience that it might have been rape, but “well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape.” If a male playwright depicted the statutory rape of a 13 year old girl by a 24 year old man and then had the girl say that if it was rape, it was a good rape, feminists would never stop grousing about the play (and rightly so), but as is typical among leftist movements, the same rules simply don’t apply to feminists. That part of the play reached national attention when a male columnist at Georgetown’s student newspaper was fired for writing a column asking if there was such a thing as a “good rape” (in the official explanation of his dismissal, the paper complained the student had attacked “a women’s issue on campus.”)
Anyway, Feminist.Com is trying to arrange for colleges and universities to perform the play on V-Day. V-Day is the radical feminist attempt to redefine Valentine’s Day. According to a Feminist.Com press release, “V-Day is still Valentine’s Day. But the “V” now also stands for vagina, anti-violence and victory.”
With backing from Planned Parenthood and others, the goal is to have The Vagina Monologues produced at campuses around the nation. The open question is whether or not they’ll get to portray the “good rape” scene. Wendy McElroy in a column for LewRockwell.Com notes that the Feminist.Com press release specifically warns colleges thinking about performing the play that they will be given a special script and,
You must use the version of the script of “The Vagina Monologues” that is included in the Performance Kit that you will receive. No other version of the play is acceptable for your production. Do not use the book of the play or versions of the script from previous College Initiatives. The new script must be followed. You may not edit any introductions or monologues. And you may not exclude or change the order of any of the monologues.
McElroy speculates that the V-Day folks want to do a little rewriting of history and exclude the now infamous “good rape” scene.
Either way, the play and the reactions to it will provide yet more examples of the intellectually bankrupt nature of the radical feminist enterprise. Take this quote, included in the Feminist.Com press, from a woman who staged the play, release intended to show the life altering potential The Vagina Monologues possesses:
“Overall, I loved how I felt being part of a movement that empowers women. During the months leading up to the performances, and especially during the few weeks just prior to the event, I relished in the fact that I was able to use the word “vagina” in my everyday vocabulary. Every time I saw a cast member on campus, we would speak loudly and confidently about how excited we were to be part of “The VAGINA Monologues.” During staff meetings and in casual conversation with College Deans, I would ask of they were going to attend “The VAGINA Monologues.” In dining halls, the campus store, in libraries, bars and restaurants, it was my favorite topic of conversation. Because of the College Initiative, I said VAGINA at least a dozen times a day for two months, and I was able to reclaim it as a word.”
All that rhetoric about seeing women as more than sex objects and respecting women as moral, social and political equals; now it turns out that the big message of radical feminism is that women are nothing more than sex objects after all (who can benefit from a “good rape” even), and the path to liberation is saying “vagina” three times.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering reclassifying a number of prescription drugs and turning them into drugs that would be available over the counter. Among the drugs under consideration for OTC status is the birth control pill. Such a move is long over due.
There is already some precedent for making this move. In some states pills that induce abortion can already be dispensed by pharmacists which makes them effectively over the counter drugs. Why not make the Pill, which hundreds of millions of women have safely taken, available without a prescription as well? Why shouldn’t a woman be able to walk into a drug store and buy birth control pills without going to see a doctor first?
The main argument against making the Pill available over-the-counter are the tired old paternalist arguments about protecting patients from themselves. Although the Pill is a relatively safe drug, a small percentage of women will have side effects and need to consult a physician to find the best drug for them. But this problem is no more egregious than the side effects that other OTC drugs have — after all aspirin is a potential killer when taken by certain people, yet it’s been available over-the-counter literally since it was first widely available.
It’s very important to have the convenience of popping down to a drug store for an aspirin or ibuprofen pain killer, and the same sort of freedom and convenience should be extended to birth control drugs.
Ironically while only one major anti-abortion group, the American Life League, has weighed in decrying the move to make birth control easily available without a prescription, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League and Planned Parenthood are both oddly ambivalent about the whole issue. Salon quotes NARAL attorney Elizabeth Arndorfer as saying, “Using emergency contraception is a one-time thing that many recent studies have shown to be effective. But there are contraindications for some women using the birth control pill longer term. It may be better for a doctor to keep an eye it.”
So women are intelligent and capable of making the choice for themselves whether or not to have an abortion, but they are too irresponsible to seek out information on the birth control pill and decide for themselves whether or not to take it.
Women are not simply moral patients, they are moral actors. Women are more than capable of deciding for themselves whether or not to take a drug such as the Pill. The FDA should approve the Pill for over the counter sales as soon as possible.
Sources:
The silence of the Pill. Leah Kohlenberg, Salon.Com, July 10, 2000.
No prescription for the pill?. CNN, June 29, 2000.
The fundamental problem with American
politics is that it is largely unprincipled. Groups and lobbies often
seem more interested in getting their own outcome — regardless of the
methods they need to use.
This simple maxim was underscored
with last week’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling that Planned Parenthood
could sue Operation Rescue and other pro-life groups under the Racketeer-Influenced
and Corrupt Organization laws. Planned Parenthood’s “victory”
is nothing less than a stunning blow to the very freedom and choices that
the organization pretends to cherish so deeply.
RICO was passed in 1970 in an effort
to give prosecutors a bigger weapon against organized crime. Congress
wanted to make it easier to go after legitimate businesses that had been
infiltrated and controlled by organized crime outfits.
RICO never did make much of an
impact on organized crime, but prosecutors and other groups were more
than willing to use its provisions for political purposes. The Reagan
administration, for example, encouraged the use of the RICO statutes to
crack down on pornography.
In 1988, The Nation reported
the story of Dennis and Barbara Pryba who owned three adult bookstores.
In 1987 they were charged and found guilty of selling six obscene magazines
and four obscene videotapes. Under RICO, which only requires two criminal
acts to apply, this made the couple an organized crime racket and the
government seized over $1 million in property from the couple.
Reagan’s Attorney General Ed
Meese set up a special anti-obscenity task force whose sole purpose was
to use the RICO laws to drive adult bookstores out of business.
What Meese and Reagan never understood
was that restricting speech can cut both ways.
When a machinists’ union claimed
that Texas Air was violating airline safety rulings, Texas Air promptly
sued the union claming that such criticism constituted “a pattern
of racketeering activity.”
When John Spear, editor of a small
weekly newspaper in New York criticized the way police in West Hartford,
Conn., handled abortion protesters, West Hartford sued him under the RICO
statute, claiming his editorials were an attempt to intimidate West Hartford
police. They argued that Spear’s damaging criticisms constituted
an extortion attempt.
And now the Supreme Court has ruled
that RICO may be used against antiabortion groups.
The National Organization for Women
argued that Operation Rescue had engaged in a conspiracy of racketeering
to run abortion clinics out of business. Operation Rescue concedes it
want to see abortion clinics out of business, but argued that since its
motivation was political and not economic, RICO could not be used against
the organization. The Supreme Court ruled that the motivation of the group
is immaterial to whether or not RICO may be applied.
NOW’s case against Operation
Rescue will now go to trial. If it can convince a jury that blocking entrances
to abortion clinics constitutes a form of extortion, or if it can tie
a couple members of Operation Rescue to other criminal acts, such as bomb
threats, it can probably put Operation Rescue out of business.
This is a horrible application
of RICO and one that will be felt in other areas besides the conflict
over abortion.
“Under this decision, Martin
Luther King Jr. would have been a racketeer,” Randall Terry, founder
of Operation Rescue, told The New York Times. “What I’d
say to the AIDS activists, the anti-nuclear groups, the animal rights
people, is get your affairs in order and line up, because you’re
next.”
If abortion clinics can use the
RICO statutes against abortion protesters, what’s to stop corporations
from using it against animal rights protesters?
“Animal rights activists sometimes
use peaceful, non-violent protests … and we’re concerned that this
kind of decisions is going to chill that First Amendment activity,”
Todd Davis, a lawyer for People for the Treatment of Animals, told USA
Today.
In fact NOW might eventually find
itself on the other side of the RICO law.
Given the shaky grounds that Roe
v. Wade was construed on, and the clear desire by some Supreme Court justices
to overturn the decision, it’s not inconceivable that the Supreme
Court might turn the issue of abortion back to the states. Operation Rescue
then might find use for this law in going after pro-abortion groups and
protesters.
By attacking Operation Rescue with
RICO, NOW has demonstrated that achieving its short-term political aims
is more important than preserving the First Amendment protection guaranteed
to all Americans.
Someday, NOW might regret that
decision.