Tag: Abortion

This is My Shocked Face

Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, in whose name Roe v. Wade was filed, and who, for the past 20 some odd years, has been a poster-child for the people who want to criminalize abortion, has it was all a lie she was paid to make by the Christian right:

In its final 20 minutes, the documentary film AKA Jane Roe delivers quite the blow to conservatives who have weaponized the story of Jane Roe herself—real name, Norma McCorvey—to argue that people with uteruses should have to carry any and all pregnancies to term.

McCorvey, who died in 2017, became Jane Roe when, as a young homeless woman, she was unable to get a legal or safe abortion in the state of Texas. Her willingness to lend her experience to the legal case for abortion led to the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortions in all 50 states (though red states do all they can to get around this; recently, several have even used the COVID-19 pandemic to make abortions functionally impossible to procure). But conservatives had a field day in the mid ’90s when the assertive, media-savvy pro-choice advocate and activist McCorvey became an anti-abortion born-again ex-gay Christian with the help of leaders of the evangelical Christian right, Reverend Flip Benham (of the infamous Operation Rescue) and Reverend Rob Schenck. A conservative film, Roe v. Wade, starring Jon Voight and Stacey Dash, will dramatize McCorvey’s “conversion.”

But those filmmakers, and the rest of the pro-life evangelical community, have another curveball coming. In the final third of director Nick Sweeney’s 79-minute documentary, featuring many end-of-life reflections from McCorvey—who grew up queer, poor, and was sexually abused by a family member her mother sent her to live with after leaving reform school—the former Jane Roe admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was “all an act.”

“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.” “Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. “Well,” says McCorvey, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”

………

Reverend Schenck, the much more reasonable of the two evangelical leaders featured in the film, also watches the confession and is taken aback. But he’s not surprised, and easily corroborates, saying, “I had never heard her say anything like this… But I knew what we were doing. And there were times when I was sure she knew. And I wondered, Is she playing us? What I didn’t have the guts to say was, because I know damn well we’re playing her.” Reverend Schenck admits that McCorvey was “a target,” a “needy” person in need of love and protection, and that “as clergy,” people like Schenck and Benham were “used to those personalities” and thus easily able to exploit her weaknesses. He also confirms that she was “coached on what to say” in her anti-abortion speeches. Benham denies McCorvey was paid; Schenck insists she was, saying that “at a few points, she was actually on the payroll, as it were.” AKA Jane Roe finds documents disclosing at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the anti-abortion movement to McCorvey.

So, the anti-abortion terrorists and their pet were running a scam on each other, and on the American public.

Of Course Texas Joins In

Joining with Ohio, Texas is using the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to ban abortions.

Can we please give it back to Mexico?

The governor and attorney general of Texas are moving to ban most abortions in the state during the coronavirus outbreak, declaring they don’t qualify as essential surgeries.

Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday that the order issued over the weekend by Gov. Greg Abbott barred “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”

Failure to comply with the order can result in penalties of up to $1,000 or 180 days of jail time, Paxton said.

“No one is exempt from the governor’s executive order on medically unnecessary surgeries and procedures, including abortion providers,” Paxton said. “Those who violate the governor’s order will be met with the full force of the law.”

………

Amid the moves by Ohio and Texas, a coalition of anti-abortion groups urged its allies across the nation to ask governors to ban most abortions on the grounds they were not essential.

“If abortion is a ‘choice’ then abortion is an elective procedure,” said Mark Harrington, president of the anti-abortion group Created Equal.

These people are beneath contempt.

This is not the opposition, it is the enemy, and it should be treated as such.

Politics in the Coronavirus Response

The Republican Attorney General of Ohio has decided to use the corona virus as a way to shut down abortion clinics in the state.

When Democrats talk about not politicizing the crisis, you need to understand that the Republicans ARE politicizing the crisis as we speak:

Ohio’s attorney general has ordered clinics to halt many abortions under a new statewide measure to conserve health-care resources amid the coronavirus pandemic, going against the urgings of many medical professionals.

Officials in Washington state and Massachusetts have clarified that similar orders pausing elective surgeries do not apply to abortions, and several national medical associations earlier this week advised against canceling or delaying the procedures — a key part of “comprehensive health care,” they said — because of the coronavirus outbreak. But Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) on Friday and Saturday ordered several facilities, about which he said the Health Department has received complaints, to stop their “nonessential” abortions.

As clinics say they will proceed undeterred, the fight over what constitutes essential care in Ohio could be the first of many as more states heed the U.S. government’s calls for hospitals to suspend unneeded operations and as doctors and nurses warn they’re running out of masks, gowns and drugs.

Seriously, the Democrats are bringing a rubber chicken to a gun-fight.

There Are Worse Hypocrites Than Republican Senators

It appears that THIS person is an anti-abortion activist as long as it is not HER ox that is gored:

This is real. This is a real-life post by an anti-abortion activist. You can’t make this shit up. pic.twitter.com/wDjmU2ZHyh

— Hayley Farless (@hayleyfarless) February 3, 2020

Note that this woman, who claims to be dedicated to the sanctity of life, is turning her back on her own sister.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Alabama’s new anti-abortion law is too extreme for Pat Robertson.

What the f%$#?

Longtime televangelist Pat Robertson decried Alabama’s new abortion ban as “extreme,” saying on his show on Wednesday that the state legislature has “gone too far.”

Alabama’s law, which has been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, includes a penalty of up to 99 years in prison for doctors who perform abortions and has no exceptions for rape or incest, Robertson noted on his show.

“They want to challenge Roe vs. Wade, but my humble view is I don’t think that’s the case I’d want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose,” Robertson told viewers of CBN’s “The 700 Club” on Wednesday.

Let me repeat this:  What ……… the ……… f%$#?

Being Evil

What a surprise, Google has been giving free advertising to one of those phony anti-abortion pregnancy crisis centers.

To paraphrase the late Abe Vigoda, “It wasn’t only business,” it’s the deliberate promotion of deceptive advertising ti promulgate some sort of nefarious corporate agenda:

Google has given tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising to an anti-abortion group that runs ads suggesting it provides abortion services at its medical clinics, but actually seeks to deter “abortion-minded women” from terminating their pregnancies.

The Obria Group, which runs a network of clinics funded by Catholic organisations, received a $120,000 Google advertising grant in 2015, according to a public filing. In 2011, it received nearly $32,000. Such grants are designed to support and expand the reach of non-profits around the world.

Obria was awarded the 2015 grant despite the fact Google had faced intense criticism a year earlier, after a pro-choice group found the platform was running deceptive ads for clinics that appeared to offer abortions and other medical services, but instead focused on counseling and information on alternatives to abortion.

In some cases, such clinics, known as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), are located close to Planned Parenthood clinics and provide some medical treatment, such as pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and prenatal counseling. But they also seek to deter women who enter from seeking abortions and do not offer referrals for alternative treatment.

Obria runs a network of clinics across the US, many of which suggest on their websites that they offer abortion. The clinics are actually opposed to abortion and all forms of contraception.

………

Obria did not return a request for comment.

The group recently faced scrutiny after it was awarded $1.7m in federal funds – known as Title X funding – meant to support healthcare providers that offer family planning services. Obria does not offer birth control, including condoms, in its clinics, offering “natural family planning” methods instead.

………

Google continues to feature ads for the clinics that appear to violate its policies. In one such case, an ad for a Texas clinic called the Grapevine Women’s Clinic pops up if a user does a local search for “abortion clinic”.

I don’t know what there game is, nor do I care.

I just know that they have aligned themselves with the folks who read The Handmaiden’s Tale, and said, “I want me some of that.”

Anti-trust enforcement anyone?

Clearly, The FBI Will Save Us From Putin

A domestic terrorism briefing the FBI gave to law enforcement agencies in 2017 warned them about the threat of “pro-abortion extremists.” That would be fine, except—as the FBI’s own briefing materials subsequently admit—violent pro-abortion extremists barely exist, and in no universe do they constitute an organized domestic terror movement. The existence of this briefing was uncovered by Property of the People, a government transparency group that uses Freedom of Information Act requests to shed light on the workings of the government.

To make the extent of the non-problem clear: Only one person could be fairly described as a “pro-choice terrorist” (he indeed described himself that way), and that is Theodore Shulman, who went to prison in 2012 for harrassing and threatening to kill two leading figures in the anti-abortion movement. (Shulman served 41 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.) The only known death of an anti-abortion protester is Jim Pouillon, who was shot and killed in September 2009 while holding a gory sign and protesting outside a Michigan clinic. Harlan James Drake, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, was severely mentally ill, according to his lawyers. He also killed a gravel pit owner the same day, reportedly believing both men had wronged his mother. According to evidence presented at trial, Drake shot Pouillon not because he was a radical pro-choice activist, but because he was offended that Pouillon was holding a disturbing sign in view of school children.

Anti-abortion groups, meanwhile, have harassed doctors and clinics who provide abortions for decades, leading to arson, constant death threats, a wave of bombings throughout the 1990s, and the murders of some 12 people between 1993 and 2012, all either clinic staffers or physicians. The nature of these constant threats, combined with consistent state and federal-level legislative efforts to curtail abortion or ban it outright, has changed the nature of abortion access in America.

And yet the FBI’s briefing to law enforcement agencies appears to be based on the idea that there are threats, particularly dangerous lone wolf-type extremists, on both sides.

Gunita Singh, the staff attorney at Property of the People, told us, “It should strike any reasonable person as astounding, irrational, and even offensive to see the words ‘pro-choice extremist’ strung together. Yet, in this FBI document we see this configuration appear in an Abortion Extremism Reference Guide, juxtaposed alongside ‘pro-life extremists,’ as if they’re somehow two sides of the same coin.”

The FBI is still the misbegotten child of J. Edgar Hoover, and if you view them with anything other than suspicion, you are a fool.

And Now Advertisers are Aiding Terrorists

Yes, our friends who want to use cell phone tracking to sell us shoes have been selling their services to anti abortion operatives:

Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to figure out which consumers might be interested in buying shoes, cars, or any of the other products typically advertised online, what if he used the same technology to figure out which women were potentially contemplating abortion, and send them ads on behalf of anti-choice organizations?

The executive—John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising—set to work. He put together PowerPoint presentations touting his capabilities, and sent them to groups he thought would be interested in reaching “abortion-minded women,” to use anti-choice parlance.

Before long, he’d been hired by RealOptions, a network of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in Northern California, as well as by the evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services.

Flynn’s endeavors quickly won him attention in the anti-choice world. He was invited to speak at the Family Research Council’s ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit in January this year, and he got a few write-ups in anti-choice press.

In an interview with Live Action News—the website for Live Action, the group run by anti-choice activist Lila Rose that is responsible for bogus attack videos against Planned Parenthood—Flynn gave some details about his strategy. He sends advertisements for his clients to women’s smartphones while they are sitting in Planned Parenthood clinics, using a technology known as “mobile geo-fencing.” He also planned to ping women at methadone clinics and other abortion facilities. His program for Bethany covered five cities: Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; St. Louis, Missouri; and New York City.

“We are very excited to bring our mobile marketing capabilities to the pro-life community,” Flynn told Live Action News.

This is why the self-described “disrupters” in the tech industry need to be kept under a tight regulatory leash.

If you don’t find this completely terrifying, you have not been paying attention.

A Big Old F%$#-You to Anti-Abortion Zealots

California is looking at requiring state colleges to carry abortion pills in their health services:

California legislators are set to plunge into an election-year debate over abortion access, taking up a bill that would make the state the first in the nation to mandate public universities offer medication abortion as part of basic student health services.

The measure, which passed the state Senate in January, would expand abortion rights at a time when some other states are enacting new restrictions on the procedure. The bill on Wednesday came before a key Assembly committee, which decided to determine by the end of next week whether it will move to the floor. The Assembly would have to clear the measure by Aug. 31 for it to reach Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.

It’s good policy, it’s better and safer than pregnancy, and a lot less expensive.

As to the politics, f%$#ing with the anti-abortion Talibaptists is a good thing too.

Handmaiden’s Tale in Arkansas

The Supreme Court has allowed Arkansas’ draconian abortion restrictions to stand:

The Supreme Court refused on Tuesday to hear a challenge to an Arkansas law that could force two of the state’s three abortion clinics to close.

As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for turning away the appeal. The case will continue to be litigated in the lower courts.

The law concerns medication abortions, which use pills to induce abortions in the first nine weeks of pregnancy. The law, enacted in 2015, requires providers of the procedure to have contracts with doctors who have admitting privileges at a hospital in the state. Abortion clinics in Arkansas said they were unable to find any doctors willing to sign such contracts.

After the Supreme Court’s action, Planned Parenthood said it would for now stop providing medication abortions in the state.

We are going to see Roe v. Wade overturned in the next few years.

The Free Women of Ireland: 1 — Catholic Church: 0

Irish voters have just voted overwhelmingly to legalize abortion:

Ireland has voted by a landslide to legalise abortion in a stunning outcome that marks a dramatic defeat for the Catholic church’s one-time domination of the Republic.

The Irish electorate voted by 1,429,981 votes to 723,632 in favour of abolishing a controversial constitutional amendment that gave equal legal status to the lives of a foetus and the woman carrying it. The result was a two-thirds majority: 66.4% yes to 33.6% no.

By voting yes in unexpectedly large numbers to abolish the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution, the country has enabled the government in Dublin to introduce abortion in Ireland’s health service up to 12 weeks into pregnancy.

 Saturday’s triumph for abortion reformers occurred only months before a papal visit to the country – the first since John Paul II’s tour of Ireland in 1979. After Pope Francis leaves Ireland in August, the Irish minority government, with the backing of opposition parties, will within weeks start the process of drawing up legislation to allow for abortion, which was once an unthinkable political project in Ireland.

And Pope Frank will be visiting in a August.

I welcome Ireland to the ranks for first world nations.

It Was Inevitable………

The Trump administration is going balls to the wall to defund Planned Parenthood and reduce access to birth control services by reviving the Reagan gag rule:

The Trump administration is proposing to bar clinics that provide abortion services or referrals from receiving federal family-planning funds, a far-reaching move that would deprive Planned Parenthood and other women’s health centers of millions of dollars a year.

The proposal would require a “bright line” of physical and financial separation between clinics that receive $260 million annually in federal funding and any organization that provides abortions or referrals to abortion clinics.

The move delivers on a long-held objective of abortion opponents, who are staunch supporters of President Trump. In a statement Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that it “would ensure that taxpayers do not indirectly fund abortions” and that Trump “is pleased to support” it.

The president plans to unveil the proposal Tuesday in a speech before the Susan B. Anthony List, a political action committee that opposes abortion, according to two administration officials.

The Republicans look at the Margaret Atwater’s book The Handmaiden’s Tale, and they think, “I gotta get me some of that.”

Appeals Court: 1 — Mike Pence: 0

In what is a remarkably uncontroversial upholding of legal precedent, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago just ruled that Mike Pence’s Indiana anti-abortion law is unconstitutional:

Indiana’s ban on “selective abortions,” which was signed into law in 2016 by then-Gov. Mike Pence (R), is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

The law banned women from having abortions based on the gender, race or disability of the fetus.

The law imposes an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to get an abortion, said the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

“The Supreme Court has been clear: the State may inform a woman’s decision before viability, but it cannot prohibit it,” Judge William Bauer wrote.

Similar bills passed or proposed in other states have specifically tried to ban abortions based on a Down syndrome diagnosis.

Good.  Let’s hope that there will be more defeats of the Talibaptists nationwide.

Buh Bye

Anti-abortion firebrand Tim Murphy (R-PA) was caught pressuring his mistress to get an abortion.

First, he announced that he would not be running for reelection, and now he has resigned from Congress

Rep. Tim Murphy said Thursday that he will resign from Congress this month, a day after the eight-term Pennsylvania Republican announced that he would not seek reelection amid a personal scandal.

“Upon further discussion with my family, I have made the decision to resign my position” effective Oct. 21, Murphy wrote in a letter to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “I am grateful for the opportunity to have served the people of southwestern Pennsylvania and to have worked with the talented and dedicated men and women of the United States Congress.”

………

The resignation of Murphy, a clinical psychologist, comes after a news report claimed that the married Republican had asked a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Mr. Murphy, Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

Republican Family Values

Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA 18), a prominent anti-abortion wingnut, has been caught trying to convince his mistress to get an abortion.

A text message sent in January to U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy by a woman with whom he had an extra-marital relationship took him to task for an anti-abortion statement posted on Facebook from his office’s public account.

“And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options,” Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted last month to having a relationship, wrote to Mr. Murphy on Jan. 25, in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare.

A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, “I get what you say about my March for life messages. I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”

The congressman has been lauded by the Family Research Council, for his stance on abortion, as well as for family values, generally. He also has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights, and is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation that is often cited by his office.

As Atrios notes, “I am sure that there isn’t a single anti-abortion male who would object to an abortion if an inconvenient pregnancy happened.” (This is true of many of the women as well.)

The article actually covers a whole litany of what is called “Mishugas” by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, including an office environment that his chief of staff described as, “A hostile workplace in which Mr. Murphy repeatedly denigrated employees, threatened them and created a state of terror.”

Hail Satan


How could I not invoke Monty Python?

In response to a Texas law requiring burial or cremation for fetuses, the Church of Satan is launching a campaign to have its supporters mail semen covered items to the governor and legislature:

Earlier this week, Texas officials finalized a set of rules requiring funeral services for fetuses in what many see as a transparent and particularly callous ploy to restrict abortion access in the state. In response, Satanic Temple spokesperson Jex Blackmore has announced plans to engage in a crass counter-attack.

Having mailed a ejaculate-covered sock to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, along with a handwritten note that says, “These r babies. Plz bury,” Blackmore is publicly encouraging others to send Governor Abbott semen-encrusted materials of their own (or, for those wary of sending bodily fluids through the mail, items coated in non-seminal-but-semen-esque substances).

According to Blackmore, this campaign, which is evocatively titled “Cumrags for Congress,” is meant to expose the absurdity of forcing people to treat fetal tissue as human remains. (Lucien Greaves, another spokesperson for the organization, tells Broadly that the campaign isn’t officially endorsed or encouraged by the Satanic Temple.) “The concept of the state mandating a non-medical ritual as part of the abortion procedure is offensive and crude, essentially demanding that all citizens adopt the moral, philosophical opinion that fetal tissue is comparable to a living human,” she tells Broadly. “Fetal tissue has the ‘potential’ to become a human, but is not a human yet, does not have consciousness, and cannot exist without the mother host.” She points out that semen and ova have the potential to become human life, yet “we do not mourn every ejaculation.”

I am not a usually big fan of guerilla theater, but the Church of Satan has been doing some magnificent trolling lately.

Not The Onion

In attempting defend their antiabortion law, the Kansas Solicitor General has cited Dred Scott v. Sanford:

The question of what’s the matter with Kansas has become even deeper and darker since Governor Sam Brownback completed his project of turning the entire state into a lab rat for bad economic theories, and since the state elected Kris Kobach, the big daddy of voter-suppression—and of demanding that brown people carry their papers at all times—to be its secretary of state. But now the state’s Solicitor General, Steven McAllister, is getting into the act in a spectacular way.

………

We now present a portion of the latter brief.

Courts across the country have recognized that “[t]he Declaration of Independence is a statement of ideals, not law.” Schifanelli v. U.S. Gov’t, 1988 WL 138496, at *1 (4th Cir. Dec. 22, 1988). See also Swepi, LP v. Mora Cty., N.M., 81 F. Supp. 3d 1075, 1172 (D.N.M. 2015) (same); Minyard v. Walsh, 2014 WL 1029835, at *4 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 17, 2014) (“Claim 4’s assertion of a violation of Plaintiff’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not cognizable. Those principles, described in the Declaration of Independence, do not guarantee enforceable rights.”); Black v. Simpson, 2008 WL 544458, at *2 (W.D. Ky. Feb. 27, 2008) (“There is no private right of action to enforce the Declaration of Independence.”); Borzych v. Frank, 2006 WL 3254497, at *8 (W.D. Wis. Nov. 9, 2006) (“the Declaration of Independence is not binding law”); Coffey v. United States, 939 F. Supp. 185, 191 (E.D.N.Y.1996) (“While the Declaration of Independence states that all men are endowed certain unalienable rights including ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,’ it does not grant rights that may be pursued through the judicial system.”). See also Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1856)


Wait. What was that again?

See also Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1856)…

Holy cow. The state of Kansas has a lawyer citing Dred Scott in support of its position. In defense of a law aimed at limiting a woman’s right to choose. What in the fck is the matter with Kansas?

Dred Freaking Scott!

I am not a lawyer, nor am I a legal scholar, although I do function as one here in the shebeen. But there’s a nice shiny nickel for anyone who can tell me the last time anyone cited that monstrous ruling in support of anything. Jesus, these people.

(emphasis original)

This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.