Archives for August 2011

Abortion proponents and providers keep reiterating their claim that more legislation and inspections of facilities will be putting up road blocks and that in the end it’s the women who want abortions that will suffer. But the gruesome story of Dr. Kermit Gosnell exposes just what happens when facilities go unchecked, and it’s not simply a shorter wait time.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania abortion provider, was charged with murder and infanticide. Gosnell is accused of breaking state laws by performing late-term abortions, killing children born alive as the result of botched abortions and using unsterilized medical instruments. At least one patient died while under Dr. Gosnell’s care and many others have been infected with venereal diseases.

For 17 years, these practices went undiscovered because Gov. Ridge felt that forcing abortion clinics to undergo a yearly health inspection would be “putting up a barrier to women.”

On June 20 of this year, Planned Parenthood of Kansas filed a lawsuit against the state of Kansas in order to prevent the implementation of new laws passed by Gov. Sam Brownback aimed at expanding health requirements and inspections of abortion providers. Planned Parenthood is, thus far, the only one of three abortion providers in Kansas to receive a license to continue performing abortions. The license was given after the clinic, at the last minute, purchased a “neo-natal crash unit” required under the new provisions. Planned Parenthood has since dropped its lawsuit but is still fighting the new regulations.

Planned Parenthood sells itself as “America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care.” Trusted? Planned Parenthood is fighting health regulations aimed at ensuring women’s health and safety. These regulations are modeled after similar ones in South Carolina, and specific provisions in the law have been taken from the “industry standards” set by the National Abortion Federation. Yet Planned Parenthood is seeking and claiming to have the “trust” of women?

After the tragic discovery of the practices of Dr. Gosnell in Pennsylvania, one would expect that an organization that claims to be “pro-women” would be embracing measures aimed at keeping them safe. Sadly, this is not the first time Planned Parenthood has fought against common-sense laws to protect women, despite its supposed commitment to “protect women’s rights and health.”

Worth reading every word of this one. The author, Kay Hymowitz, debunks myths about the gender pay gap (again) but takes the whole idea seriously, identifying and attempting explanations where real problems remain.

Should Canada reconsider the criminal prohibition on assisted suicide?

Vote in this CTV poll. Scroll down on the right hand side.

…I go to The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. (I love the fact that for a joke, satirical newspaper, you can pick it up on the street in boxes in Washington, D.C.)

The beauty is that they pick up on a strain of truth, so that the satire resonates:

During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group’s long-standing mission and values. Although we’ve traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion,” said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood’s new slogan, “No Life Is Sacred.” “And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it’s going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day.”

Be sure to click on the map of the new enlarged facility. My fave there is the daycare space where “young children can play while their unborn siblings are being terminated elsewhere in the facility.”

This may well be old news by now. I’m on a longer than usual holiday weekend and it’s hard to take a computer with you on your windsurfer. Sorry about the slow posting days, but I think we all need a couple of those. Anyway, Facebook will now have a new “expecting” option:

The social networking site has added that option — “Expected: Child” — that users can add as part of their family members.

This is surely a sign that Facebook is quite far away from the coolio university network that Mark Zuckenberg first intended. It also does betray the idea that there is a child on the way in every pregnancy. Stating that is not quite as obvious as it may seem at first glance… plenty of people “on the other side” of this debate work pretty hard to pretend otherwise.