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 | | From: | james g. keegan jr. | | Subject: | Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 18:48:38 GMT |
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 | Post-Roe Postcard
by SHARON LERNER
[from the February 7, 2005 issue]
The Nation
Jackson
As you read this piece about abortion in Mississippi thirty-two years
after the right to have an abortion was affirmed by the Supreme Court,
the government of Mississippi is marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade
in another way. Governor Haley Barbour has issued an official
proclamation declaring the seven days leading up to the anniversary "a
week of prayer regarding the sanctity of human life." Barbour also
authorized the placement of tiny white crosses on the lawn of the state
Capitol "in memory of the unborn children who die each day in America,"
according to the decree. The crosses have been planted for the past
three years, though this year Barbour will be at President Bush's
inauguration during the official anniversary event, and the display was
moved to a nearby churchyard. Barbour is a Republican, but it should be
noted that the tradition of transforming the Capitol lawn into a
symbolic mini-graveyard was begun by the previous governor of
Mississippi, who was a Democrat.
With eight of nine US Supreme Court Justices over 65 and one seriously
ill with cancer, much of the country is understandably focused on the
possibility that their soon-to-be-appointed replacements will overturn
the decision upholding the right to abortion. But in Mississippi, in
many ways, Roe has already fallen. Abortion is legal here, of course, as
it must be throughout the country while the landmark ruling stands. Yet,
for many women, the ability to terminate a pregnancy is out of reach,
buried under state laws that make the process unnecessarily difficult,
discouraged by a sense of shame enforced by practically every public
authority, and inaccessible for many who lack money to pay for it.
How Mississippi all but outlawed abortion is a story people on both
sides of the abortion debate are still struggling to understand. Few
would expect this famously conservative Southern state to be prochoice.
And Texas, Louisiana and a few other states have been competing for the
dubious distinction of being the worst place to be if you want or need
to end a pregnancy. But Mississippi has gone further in its hostility to
abortion even than other Bible Belt states. A small, mostly rural
population and the absence of local prochoice organizations have helped
turn Mississippi into the perfect laboratory for antiabortion
strategists.
Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here, from
a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling, to a
requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
abortion, to thirty-five pages of regulations dealing with such physical
characteristics as the width of a clinic's hallways and the size of its
parking lot. The mounting restrictions (Mississippi passed six
antiabortion laws last year alone) have delighted antiabortion activists
all over the country, who have hailed--and copied--the state's
innovations.
Meanwhile, prochoice activists see Mississippi as a glimpse of what
might become the norm in a possible post-Roe future. "It's the canary
dying in the mine," says Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for
Reproductive Rights. If the Supreme Court were to reverse the decision,
abortion would likely become illegal in thirty states, including
Mississippi, according to a 2004 report by the center. Across what can
seem like a great divide, the twenty other states have laws,
constitutions or court decisions that would protect the basic right to
abortion even if Roe falls. While some of these, including New York and
Washington State, which both decriminalized abortion before 1973, will
likely remain strongly prochoice, others may pass restrictive laws like
Mississippi's.
Even while Roe stands, Mississippi is a cautionary tale for the rest of
the country. "It's what can happen if the constant strategy of chipping
away at Roe is not met with sufficient push-back from the prochoice
movement," says Northrup. So in order to preserve the right to abortion,
prochoice Americans would do well to learn how Mississippi all but
eliminated it.
Jackson Women's Health Organization occupies a small stucco building on
a quiet, tree-lined street. If not for a handful of people holding I'll
Pray for You and Don't Kill Your Baby signs, you'd hardly know it was
Mississippi's only remaining abortion provider. There used to be others.
In 1996, there were six medical facilities providing abortions in
Mississippi. But since last August, there has been only the Jackson
clinic, which is staffed by three part-time physicians, only one of whom
lives in Mississippi. (Two others fly in from other states to work for a
few days at a time.)
Many of the chairs in the clinic's waiting room are full on the four
days a week that abortions are done, but the Jackson Women's Health
Organization is not overly busy. That's because the number of abortions
performed in the state has plummeted as restrictions have mounted. While
there were 21.3 abortions for every thousand women of reproductive age
nationwide in 2000, in Mississippi there were only six, down from more
than thirteen in 1991.
With the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, Mississippi's
low number of abortions is not an illustration of the "safe, legal and
rare" ideal that many talk about, in which a decline in unwanted
pregnancies creates a corresponding drop in abortions. Rather, it is the
direct consequence of concerted opposition to abortion from the
grassroots to all levels of government.
Such concern for the rights of fetuses does not appear to translate into
a commitment to promoting the well-being of the children they may
become. The uncomfortable irony for an opposition movement purportedly
concerned with saving "innocent babies" is that restrictions on abortion
are associated with worse outcomes for actual babies. Indeed, children
fare terribly in Mississippi. The state with arguably the least access
to abortion also has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the
country, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Mississippi's infant
mortality rate--a good indication of the health of both women and
children--is the highest in the country. For every 1,000 live births,
10.5 infants under age 1 die in Mississippi. In parts of the
impoverished Delta region, that number ranges up to 18. (The national
infant mortality rate, by comparison, is 6.8.) Interestingly, a
postelection comparison found that "red" states had higher infant
mortality rates than "blue" ones. In general, states that restrict
abortion spend far less money per child than prochoice states on
services such as foster care, education, welfare and the adoption of
children who have physical and mental disabilities, according to a 2000
book by political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel.
Schroedel also found that women in antiabortion states are worse off
than their counterparts in prochoice states. They suffer from lower
levels of education, higher levels of poverty, and a larger gender gap
in earnings. They are also less likely to enjoy mandated insurance
coverage for minimum hospital stays after childbirth. Together, the
conditions make for an abysmal reality for women in Mississippi, which
came in fifty-first in a 2004 ranking of the status of women in the
fifty states and Washington, DC, published by the Institute for Women's
Policy Research.
The poverty of women in Mississippi both increases their need for
abortions and their difficulty in obtaining them. In the poorest state
in the country, where more than one in five women lack health insurance
and live below the poverty line, girls and women are often unable to get
birth control. Only about two in five women and teens in Mississippi who
need publicly financed contraception receive it, according to the Alan
Guttmacher Institute, which does research on reproductive issues. Though
the inability to prevent unwanted pregnancies makes women only more
likely to want abortions, many of the forces behind the anti-abortion
movement here also oppose contraception. Pro-Life Mississippi, for
instance, regularly protests the only Planned Parenthood office in
Mississippi, which is in Hattiesburg, even though it provides only birth
control, not abortion.
Because of the intensely hostile climate toward abortion, 60 percent of
Mississippi women who want to end their pregnancies go out of state to
do it, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Some others may even
resort to illegal abortions. In the Delta, the poorest region in the
state, parts of which are four hours from Mississippi's one clinic, "lay
midwives" minister to unwanted pregnancies, according to several
sources. Many others want the procedure but simply cannot afford to pay
for it.
Betty Thompson hears from these women regularly. Thompson, who worked as
counselor and then director of the Jackson Women's Health Organization
for years and is now a consultant to the clinic, says women often call
saying they want abortions but don't have the money to pay for them, and
delay the procedure because they lack the funds. (The clinic charges
from $380 to $615 for an abortion, depending on the stage of pregnancy.)
About once or twice a week, she says, the clinic gets calls from women
who, while trying to gather money or arrange to travel to Jackson, have
passed the sixteen-week gestation point, beyond which the clinic can't
provide abortions. "There's nothing we can do then," she says.
Thompson, a stately grandmother who had her first child when she was 16,
says the National Women's Health Foundation used to provide money to
help women who couldn't afford abortions at the clinic. But since the
funds dried up last year, she often finds herself encouraging
resourcefulness among women desperate for abortions. "I have to play the
social worker," she explains. But hers is an unusual sort of social
work. "I say to them, have you tried to borrow money from everyone you
could? Have you tried to sell your jewelry yet?"
Mississippi forbids facilities that receive public money from performing
abortions and bans Medicaid funding for them. Though the law officially
makes exceptions for cases of rape, incest, fetal anomaly and danger to
the woman's life, clinic staff say they have not once succeeded in
collecting Medicaid reimbursement in these cases. "We've filed for it
and we've never been paid for them, and so we don't even file anymore,"
says Susan Hill, the Jackson Women's Health Organization's president.
Hill, who was a social worker before Roe, says, "Mississippi is like the
rest of the country was before 1973." Women who arrive at her clinic
"have that same look in the eye now," she explains. "They have to go
through the same kind of struggles."
Some, for instance, end up spending the night in their cars after
driving to the Jackson clinic. Mississippi requires that everyone
seeking an abortion wait at least twenty-four hours after an
informational session before having the procedure. Because 98 percent of
women here live in a county without an abortion provider and some live
several hours away, getting an abortion can turn into a two-day ordeal,
and many patients struggle to find childcare and a place to stay while
they're away.
The mandatory delay has also lowered the number of abortions and caused
many to be performed later in pregnancy. The abortion rate in the state
declined from 11.3 percent to 9.9 percent in the six years after the law
was enacted in 1992, according to a study published in Family Planning
Perspectives in 2000. (Another study compared Mississippi's abortion
rates to those of South Carolina and Georgia during the same period and
found the drop to be specific to the state, suggesting that the policy
change was responsible.) The study also showed that after the law went
into effect, the proportion of second-trimester abortions increased by
53 percent among women whose closest provider was in Mississippi.
In case the waiting period and the cost aren't enough to discourage
teens from ending unwanted pregnancies, Mississippi also has a well-
enforced requirement that minors get the permission of both parents
before having an abortion. The only way a girl can get around the law--
one of only two in the country--is to go before a judge and explain why
she wants an abortion and can't tell her parents. One attorney, who has
represented minors in such judicial reviews and did not want to be
identified, said her clients, who have included an 11-year-old whose
mother was a crack addict, were "scared to death" by the process. "It's
a huge deterrent," she said.
Doctors who perform abortions, meanwhile, bear the brunt of the
organized antichoice movement's wrath. Consider what happened to Donald
Whitaker, a young doctor who until January 2004 was part of an Ob-Gyn
practice in Hattiesburg and also provided abortions on a volunteer basis
at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Mobile, Alabama. Last winter,
protesters in Mobile identified the doctor, tracked down the address of
his Hattiesburg office and began protesting in front of it--even though
neither Whitaker nor his colleagues performed abortions there. The
protests were led by antiabortion activist Father Edward Markley, who
spent time in federal prison after attacking clinic employees and taking
a sledgehammer to a clinic in Alabama. Weeks after these protests began,
the doctor resigned from his job and left the state.
An unmistakable undercurrent of violence runs through the antiabortion
movement in Mississippi. Roy McMillan, for instance, who can be found
most afternoons in a lawn chair across from the clinic in Jackson, has
been arrested sixty-two times in his twenty-five-year career as an
activist. He has threatened clinic staff, and put his fingers in the
shape of a gun and "shot" them, earning himself a federal injunction
that requires him to remain at least twenty-five feet from the building.
McMillan also signed a declaration calling the murder of abortion
providers justifiable and was a longtime friend of Paul Hill, the
antiabortion activist who was executed for murdering Florida abortion
provider Dr. Bayard Britton and his clinic escort, 74-year-old Jim
Barrett.
McMillan, who was dressed in a Santa outfit when I met him on a 50-
degree day in December ("This is a time for peace on earth, not war in
the womb," he explained), seems happy to play the part of extremist. He
shouts "For shame!" at women heading toward the clinic, carries a
plastic baby doll with him and hasn't held a job in nineteen years. Yet,
nutty and dangerous as he may seem to many, McMillan enjoys a certain
legitimacy in Jackson. He is married to a prominent local physician, who
after providing the first abortions in the state had a religious
conversion (and married McMillan) and is now one of several Ob-Gyns in
the area who refuse to prescribe birth control. And though McMillan says
he would like the state to move more quickly to become the first to be
"abortion-free," he says he feels his state government is on his side.
This is not McMillan's imagination. The Governor has made his
antiabortion passions perfectly clear. The local circuit courts have
repeatedly shown themselves to be negatively inclined toward abortion.
And I was unable to find any Mississippi legislators who openly identify
themselves as prochoice. "Either you say you're prolife or you don't say
anything," explains Erik Fleming. A Democratic state representative who
was described to me as the most likely state legislator to call himself
prochoice, Fleming bristled at the term. "I don't like to be put into
that label thing, because when you put a moniker saying you're against
life, that's pretty strong," says Fleming, who supports limiting
abortion and has sponsored legislation that would ban abortions after
the first trimester of pregnancy.
The equivocation of folks like Fleming, who works as an abstinence
educator when the legislature is not in session, is still better than
the outright terror of the issue some other Mississippi politicians
display. In the November election for state lieutenant governor, the
incumbent, Republican Amy Tuck, accused the Democratic candidate, state
Senator Barbara Blackmon, of being prochoice. Blackmon, who does support
abortion rights, might have said, "One in three American women has an
abortion by age 45. I support keeping it safe and legal for them." Or
maybe even simply, "Yes, I'm prochoice. Next question?" Instead, she
responded by accusing Tuck of having had an abortion herself, and
challenged her to sign an affidavit swearing she hadn't. Tuck signed the
affidavit and won the election.
The fear of being associated with the issue extends beyond government
officials. Even Mississippians who are outraged about how their state
has handled abortion were afraid to be named in an article about it.
("I'm a Catholic, my priest would kill me," is how one explained it.)
And the issue is "too divisive" for the Mississippi Coalition on Women
to address, according to one of the group's founders. Meanwhile, the few
willing to work openly on the issue are overwhelmed. Susan Hill, who
runs clinics in Wisconsin, Indiana, Delaware, Georgia and North
Carolina, in addition to Mississippi, says she saves her energy for the
big fights. Currently she's leading the battle against a renewed push to
ban abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy, which ends around
the twelfth week. Already, the state limit is sixteen weeks, though Roe
allows abortions until the point of fetal viability, at least twenty
weeks into pregnancy. Sixteen weeks is a significant cutoff, since
amniocentesis and other tests for fetal abnormalities are performed at
that point. As a result, women cannot get abortions in the state because
of problems discovered through these tests.
Operating in triage mode has meant that no one in Mississippi has found
the time to sue over highly questionable state policies. So, by law,
clinic doctors must give the scientifically unfounded warning that
having an abortion might increase the risk of breast cancer. The state
issues "Choose Life" license plates despite the fact that the practice
has been found unconstitutional in other states. And the governor's
proclamation, which declares that "the time has come" to overturn Roe v.
Wade in addition to authorizing the display of the crosses, has gone
unchallenged.
Mississippi, the proclamation tells you, lives by a different law from
the rest of the land--for now, anyway. And even while they challenge it
simply by running Mississippi's last remaining abortion facility, Susan
Hill and Betty Thompson have been forced to accept that reality. In his
lawn chair outside the clinic, Roy McMillan rejoices in it. And the
women of Mississippi, who sleep in their cars, shuttle out of state and
bear unwanted children in poverty, live it.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=lerner
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| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:54:29 +0000 |
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| james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Finally, something about abortion from James!!!
> Post-Roe Postcard
>
> by SHARON LERNER
>
> [from the February 7, 2005 issue]
> The Nation
>
> Jackson
>
> As you read this piece about abortion in Mississippi thirty-two years
> after the right to have an abortion was affirmed by the Supreme Court,
> the government of Mississippi is marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade
> in another way. Governor Haley Barbour has issued an official
> proclamation declaring the seven days leading up to the anniversary "a
> week of prayer regarding the sanctity of human life." Barbour also
> authorized the placement of tiny white crosses on the lawn of the state
> Capitol "in memory of the unborn children who die each day in America,"
> according to the decree. The crosses have been planted for the past
> three years, though this year Barbour will be at President Bush's
> inauguration during the official anniversary event, and the display was
> moved to a nearby churchyard. Barbour is a Republican, but it should be
> noted that the tradition of transforming the Capitol lawn into a
> symbolic mini-graveyard was begun by the previous governor of
> Mississippi, who was a Democrat.
FInally someone is remembering them.
>
> With eight of nine US Supreme Court Justices over 65 and one seriously
> ill with cancer, much of the country is understandably focused on the
> possibility that their soon-to-be-appointed replacements will overturn
> the decision upholding the right to abortion. But in Mississippi, in
> many ways, Roe has already fallen. Abortion is legal here, of course, as
> it must be throughout the country while the landmark ruling stands. Yet,
> for many women, the ability to terminate a pregnancy is out of reach,
> buried under state laws that make the process unnecessarily difficult,
> discouraged by a sense of shame enforced by practically every public
> authority, and inaccessible for many who lack money to pay for it.
This might be the only way for sentient state legislatures to protect
their unborn children.
> How Mississippi all but outlawed abortion is a story people on both
> sides of the abortion debate are still struggling to understand. Few
> would expect this famously conservative Southern state to be prochoice.
Pro-abortion.
> And Texas, Louisiana and a few other states have been competing for the
> dubious distinction of being the worst place to be if you want or need
> to end a pregnancy.
Unless you are an unborn child, in which case the odds are better.
But Mississippi has gone further in its hostility to
> abortion even than other Bible Belt states. A small, mostly rural
> population and the absence of local prochoice organizations have helped
> turn Mississippi into the perfect laboratory for antiabortion
> strategists.
Every little bit helps.
> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here, from
> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling, to a
> requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> abortion, to thirty-five pages of regulations dealing with such physical
> characteristics as the width of a clinic's hallways and the size of its
> parking lot. The mounting restrictions (Mississippi passed six
> antiabortion laws last year alone) have delighted antiabortion activists
> all over the country, who have hailed--and copied--the state's
> innovations.
I'd like to know more.
> Meanwhile, prochoice activists see Mississippi as a glimpse of what
> might become the norm in a possible post-Roe future. "It's the canary
> dying in the mine," says Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for
> Reproductive Rights. If the Supreme Court were to reverse the decision,
> abortion would likely become illegal in thirty states, including
> Mississippi, according to a 2004 report by the center. Across what can
> seem like a great divide, the twenty other states have laws,
> constitutions or court decisions that would protect the basic right to
> abortion even if Roe falls. While some of these, including New York and
> Washington State, which both decriminalized abortion before 1973, will
> likely remain strongly prochoice, others may pass restrictive laws like
> Mississippi's.
Every little bit helps.
>
> Even while Roe stands, Mississippi is a cautionary tale for the rest of
> the country. "It's what can happen if the constant strategy of chipping
> away at Roe is not met with sufficient push-back from the prochoice
> movement," says Northrup. So in order to preserve the right to abortion,
> prochoice Americans would do well to learn how Mississippi all but
> eliminated it.
> Jackson Women's Health Organization occupies a small stucco building on
> a quiet, tree-lined street. If not for a handful of people holding I'll
> Pray for You and Don't Kill Your Baby signs, you'd hardly know it was
> Mississippi's only remaining abortion provider. There used to be others.
> In 1996, there were six medical facilities providing abortions in
> Mississippi. But since last August, there has been only the Jackson
> clinic, which is staffed by three part-time physicians, only one of whom
> lives in Mississippi. (Two others fly in from other states to work for a
> few days at a time.)
Fantastic news!!! I dig the clinic's name!
>
> Many of the chairs in the clinic's waiting room are full on the four
> days a week that abortions are done, but the Jackson Women's Health
> Organization is not overly busy. That's because the number of abortions
> performed in the state has plummeted as restrictions have mounted. While
> there were 21.3 abortions for every thousand women of reproductive age
> nationwide in 2000, in Mississippi there were only six, down from more
> than thirteen in 1991.
Good.
> With the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, Mississippi's
> low number of abortions is not an illustration of the "safe, legal and
> rare" ideal that many talk about, in which a decline in unwanted
> pregnancies creates a corresponding drop in abortions. Rather, it is the
> direct consequence of concerted opposition to abortion from the
> grassroots to all levels of government.
Any means to the end.
> Such concern for the rights of fetuses does not appear to translate into
> a commitment to promoting the well-being of the children they may
> become. The uncomfortable irony for an opposition movement purportedly
> concerned with saving "innocent babies" is that restrictions on abortion
> are associated with worse outcomes for actual babies. Indeed, children
> fare terribly in Mississippi. The state with arguably the least access
> to abortion also has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the
> country, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Mississippi's infant
> mortality rate--a good indication of the health of both women and
> children--is the highest in the country. For every 1,000 live births,
> 10.5 infants under age 1 die in Mississippi. In parts of the
> impoverished Delta region, that number ranges up to 18. (The national
> infant mortality rate, by comparison, is 6.8.) Interestingly, a
> postelection comparison found that "red" states had higher infant
> mortality rates than "blue" ones. In general, states that restrict
> abortion spend far less money per child than prochoice states on
> services such as foster care, education, welfare and the adoption of
> children who have physical and mental disabilities, according to a 2000
> book by political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel.
Non sequitur.
>
> Schroedel also found that women in antiabortion states are worse off
> than their counterparts in prochoice states. They suffer from lower
> levels of education, higher levels of poverty, and a larger gender gap
> in earnings. They are also less likely to enjoy mandated insurance
> coverage for minimum hospital stays after childbirth. Together, the
> conditions make for an abysmal reality for women in Mississippi, which
> came in fifty-first in a 2004 ranking of the status of women in the
> fifty states and Washington, DC, published by the Institute for Women's
> Policy Research.
Non sequitur.
> The poverty of women in Mississippi both increases their need for
> abortions and their difficulty in obtaining them. In the poorest state
> in the country, where more than one in five women lack health insurance
> and live below the poverty line, girls and women are often unable to get
> birth control. Only about two in five women and teens in Mississippi who
> need publicly financed contraception receive it, according to the Alan
> Guttmacher Institute, which does research on reproductive issues. Though
> the inability to prevent unwanted pregnancies makes women only more
> likely to want abortions, many of the forces behind the anti-abortion
> movement here also oppose contraception. Pro-Life Mississippi, for
> instance, regularly protests the only Planned Parenthood office in
> Mississippi, which is in Hattiesburg, even though it provides only birth
> control, not abortion.
Contraception culture leads to higher levels of pregnancy.
And PP do provide abortions nationally.
>
> Because of the intensely hostile climate toward abortion, 60 percent of
> Mississippi women who want to end their pregnancies go out of state to
> do it, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Some others may even
> resort to illegal abortions. In the Delta, the poorest region in the
> state, parts of which are four hours from Mississippi's one clinic, "lay
> midwives" minister to unwanted pregnancies, according to several
> sources. Many others want the procedure but simply cannot afford to pay
> for it.
>
> Betty Thompson hears from these women regularly. Thompson, who worked as
> counselor and then director of the Jackson Women's Health Organization
> for years and is now a consultant to the clinic, says women often call
> saying they want abortions but don't have the money to pay for them, and
> delay the procedure because they lack the funds. (The clinic charges
> from $380 to $615 for an abortion, depending on the stage of pregnancy.)
> About once or twice a week, she says, the clinic gets calls from women
> who, while trying to gather money or arrange to travel to Jackson, have
> passed the sixteen-week gestation point, beyond which the clinic can't
> provide abortions. "There's nothing we can do then," she says.
>
> Thompson, a stately grandmother who had her first child when she was 16,
> says the National Women's Health Foundation used to provide money to
> help women who couldn't afford abortions at the clinic. But since the
> funds dried up last year, she often finds herself encouraging
> resourcefulness among women desperate for abortions. "I have to play the
> social worker," she explains. But hers is an unusual sort of social
> work. "I say to them, have you tried to borrow money from everyone you
> could? Have you tried to sell your jewelry yet?"
>
> Mississippi forbids facilities that receive public money from performing
> abortions and bans Medicaid funding for them. Though the law officially
> makes exceptions for cases of rape, incest, fetal anomaly and danger to
> the woman's life, clinic staff say they have not once succeeded in
> collecting Medicaid reimbursement in these cases. "We've filed for it
> and we've never been paid for them, and so we don't even file anymore,"
> says Susan Hill, the Jackson Women's Health Organization's president.
> Hill, who was a social worker before Roe, says, "Mississippi is like the
> rest of the country was before 1973." Women who arrive at her clinic
> "have that same look in the eye now," she explains. "They have to go
> through the same kind of struggles."
Good.
> Some, for instance, end up spending the night in their cars after
> driving to the Jackson clinic. Mississippi requires that everyone
> seeking an abortion wait at least twenty-four hours after an
> informational session before having the procedure. Because 98 percent of
> women here live in a county without an abortion provider and some live
> several hours away, getting an abortion can turn into a two-day ordeal,
> and many patients struggle to find childcare and a place to stay while
> they're away.
And?
> The mandatory delay has also lowered the number of abortions
Good.
and caused
> many to be performed later in pregnancy. The abortion rate in the state
> declined from 11.3 percent to 9.9 percent in the six years after the law
> was enacted in 1992, according to a study published in Family Planning
> Perspectives in 2000. (Another study compared Mississippi's abortion
> rates to those of South Carolina and Georgia during the same period and
> found the drop to be specific to the state, suggesting that the policy
> change was responsible.) The study also showed that after the law went
> into effect, the proportion of second-trimester abortions increased by
> 53 percent among women whose closest provider was in Mississippi.
>
> In case the waiting period and the cost aren't enough to discourage
> teens from ending unwanted pregnancies, Mississippi also has a well-
> enforced requirement that minors get the permission of both parents
> before having an abortion. The only way a girl can get around the law--
> one of only two in the country--is to go before a judge and explain why
> she wants an abortion and can't tell her parents. One attorney, who has
> represented minors in such judicial reviews and did not want to be
> identified, said her clients, who have included an 11-year-old whose
> mother was a crack addict, were "scared to death" by the process. "It's
> a huge deterrent," she said.
>
> Doctors who perform abortions, meanwhile, bear the brunt of the
> organized antichoice movement's wrath. Consider what happened to Donald
> Whitaker, a young doctor who until January 2004 was part of an Ob-Gyn
> practice in Hattiesburg and also provided abortions on a volunteer basis
> at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Mobile, Alabama. Last winter,
> protesters in Mobile identified the doctor, tracked down the address of
> his Hattiesburg office and began protesting in front of it--even though
> neither Whitaker nor his colleagues performed abortions there. The
> protests were led by antiabortion activist Father Edward Markley, who
> spent time in federal prison after attacking clinic employees and taking
> a sledgehammer to a clinic in Alabama. Weeks after these protests began,
> the doctor resigned from his job and left the state.
Good.
> An unmistakable undercurrent of violence runs through the antiabortion
> movement in Mississippi. Roy McMillan, for instance, who can be found
> most afternoons in a lawn chair across from the clinic in Jackson, has
> been arrested sixty-two times in his twenty-five-year career as an
> activist. He has threatened clinic staff, and put his fingers in the
> shape of a gun and "shot" them, earning himself a federal injunction
> that requires him to remain at least twenty-five feet from the building.
Doesn't quite fit the image of a state acting illegitimately does it?
> McMillan also signed a declaration calling the murder of abortion
> providers justifiable and was a longtime friend of Paul Hill, the
> antiabortion activist who was executed for murdering Florida abortion
> provider Dr. Bayard Britton and his clinic escort, 74-year-old Jim
> Barrett.
>
> McMillan, who was dressed in a Santa outfit when I met him on a 50-
> degree day in December ("This is a time for peace on earth, not war in
> the womb," he explained), seems happy to play the part of extremist. He
> shouts "For shame!" at women heading toward the clinic, carries a
> plastic baby doll with him and hasn't held a job in nineteen years. Yet,
> nutty and dangerous as he may seem to many, McMillan enjoys a certain
> legitimacy in Jackson. He is married to a prominent local physician, who
> after providing the first abortions in the state had a religious
> conversion (and married McMillan) and is now one of several Ob-Gyns in
> the area who refuse to prescribe birth control. And though McMillan says
> he would like the state to move more quickly to become the first to be
> "abortion-free," he says he feels his state government is on his side.
Good.
> This is not McMillan's imagination. The Governor has made his
> antiabortion passions perfectly clear. The local circuit courts have
> repeatedly shown themselves to be negatively inclined toward abortion.
> And I was unable to find any Mississippi legislators who openly identify
> themselves as prochoice. "Either you say you're prolife or you don't say
> anything," explains Erik Fleming. A Democratic state representative who
> was described to me as the most likely state legislator to call himself
> prochoice, Fleming bristled at the term. "I don't like to be put into
> that label thing, because when you put a moniker saying you're against
> life, that's pretty strong," says Fleming, who supports limiting
> abortion and has sponsored legislation that would ban abortions after
> the first trimester of pregnancy.
>
> The equivocation of folks like Fleming, who works as an abstinence
> educator when the legislature is not in session, is still better than
> the outright terror of the issue some other Mississippi politicians
> display. In the November election for state lieutenant governor, the
> incumbent, Republican Amy Tuck, accused the Democratic candidate, state
> Senator Barbara Blackmon, of being prochoice. Blackmon, who does support
> abortion rights, might have said, "One in three American women has an
> abortion by age 45. I support keeping it safe and legal for them." Or
> maybe even simply, "Yes, I'm prochoice. Next question?" Instead, she
> responded by accusing Tuck of having had an abortion herself, and
> challenged her to sign an affidavit swearing she hadn't. Tuck signed the
> affidavit and won the election.
>
> The fear of being associated with the issue extends beyond government
> officials. Even Mississippians who are outraged about how their state
> has handled abortion were afraid to be named in an article about it.
> ("I'm a Catholic, my priest would kill me," is how one explained it.)
> And the issue is "too divisive" for the Mississippi Coalition on Women
> to address, according to one of the group's founders. Meanwhile, the few
> willing to work openly on the issue are overwhelmed. Susan Hill, who
> runs clinics in Wisconsin, Indiana, Delaware, Georgia and North
> Carolina, in addition to Mississippi, says she saves her energy for the
> big fights. Currently she's leading the battle against a renewed push to
> ban abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy, which ends around
> the twelfth week. Already, the state limit is sixteen weeks, though Roe
> allows abortions until the point of fetal viability, at least twenty
> weeks into pregnancy. Sixteen weeks is a significant cutoff, since
> amniocentesis and other tests for fetal abnormalities are performed at
> that point. As a result, women cannot get abortions in the state because
> of problems discovered through these tests.
Thank God.
> Operating in triage mode has meant that no one in Mississippi has found
> the time to sue over highly questionable state policies. So, by law,
> clinic doctors must give the scientifically unfounded warning that
> having an abortion might increase the risk of breast cancer. The state
> issues "Choose Life" license plates despite the fact that the practice
> has been found unconstitutional in other states. And the governor's
> proclamation, which declares that "the time has come" to overturn Roe v.
> Wade in addition to authorizing the display of the crosses, has gone
> unchallenged.
>
> Mississippi, the proclamation tells you, lives by a different law from
> the rest of the land--for now, anyway. And even while they challenge it
> simply by running Mississippi's last remaining abortion facility, Susan
> Hill and Betty Thompson have been forced to accept that reality. In his
> lawn chair outside the clinic, Roy McMillan rejoices in it. And the
> women of Mississippi, who sleep in their cars, shuttle out of state and
> bear unwanted children in poverty, live it.
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=lerner
YES!!!!!!
|
|
| | From: | james g. keegan jr. | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 19:14:08 GMT |
|
|
| Michael Calwell wrote in
news:41f3f653$0$21786$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk:
> james g. keegan jr. wrote:
>
> Finally, something about abortion from James!!!
more lies from michael.
>> Post-Roe Postcard
>>
>> by SHARON LERNER
>>
>> [from the February 7, 2005 issue]
>> The Nation
>>
>> Jackson
>>
>> As you read this piece about abortion in Mississippi thirty-two years
>> after the right to have an abortion was affirmed by the Supreme
>> Court, the government of Mississippi is marking the anniversary of
>> Roe v. Wade in another way. Governor Haley Barbour has issued an
>> official proclamation declaring the seven days leading up to the
>> anniversary "a week of prayer regarding the sanctity of human life."
>> Barbour also authorized the placement of tiny white crosses on the
>> lawn of the state Capitol "in memory of the unborn children who die
>> each day in America," according to the decree. The crosses have been
>> planted for the past three years, though this year Barbour will be at
>> President Bush's inauguration during the official anniversary event,
>> and the display was moved to a nearby churchyard. Barbour is a
>> Republican, but it should be noted that the tradition of transforming
>> the Capitol lawn into a symbolic mini-graveyard was begun by the
>> previous governor of Mississippi, who was a Democrat.
>
> FInally someone is remembering them.
>
>>
>> With eight of nine US Supreme Court Justices over 65 and one
>> seriously ill with cancer, much of the country is understandably
>> focused on the possibility that their soon-to-be-appointed
>> replacements will overturn the decision upholding the right to
>> abortion. But in Mississippi, in many ways, Roe has already fallen.
>> Abortion is legal here, of course, as it must be throughout the
>> country while the landmark ruling stands. Yet, for many women, the
>> ability to terminate a pregnancy is out of reach, buried under state
>> laws that make the process unnecessarily difficult, discouraged by a
>> sense of shame enforced by practically every public authority, and
>> inaccessible for many who lack money to pay for it.
>
> This might be the only way for sentient state legislatures to protect
> their unborn children.
>
>
>> How Mississippi all but outlawed abortion is a story people on both
>> sides of the abortion debate are still struggling to understand. Few
>> would expect this famously conservative Southern state to be
>> prochoice.
>
> Pro-abortion.
>
>> And Texas, Louisiana and a few other states have been competing for
>> the dubious distinction of being the worst place to be if you want or
>> need to end a pregnancy.
>
> Unless you are an unborn child, in which case the odds are better.
>
> But Mississippi has gone further in its hostility to
>> abortion even than other Bible Belt states. A small, mostly rural
>> population and the absence of local prochoice organizations have
>> helped turn Mississippi into the perfect laboratory for antiabortion
>> strategists.
>
> Every little bit helps.
>
>
>> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>> from a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling, to
>> a requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have
>> an abortion, to thirty-five pages of regulations dealing with such
>> physical characteristics as the width of a clinic's hallways and the
>> size of its parking lot. The mounting restrictions (Mississippi
>> passed six antiabortion laws last year alone) have delighted
>> antiabortion activists all over the country, who have hailed--and
>> copied--the state's innovations.
>
> I'd like to know more.
>
>> Meanwhile, prochoice activists see Mississippi as a glimpse of what
>> might become the norm in a possible post-Roe future. "It's the canary
>> dying in the mine," says Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for
>> Reproductive Rights. If the Supreme Court were to reverse the
>> decision, abortion would likely become illegal in thirty states,
>> including Mississippi, according to a 2004 report by the center.
>> Across what can seem like a great divide, the twenty other states
>> have laws, constitutions or court decisions that would protect the
>> basic right to abortion even if Roe falls. While some of these,
>> including New York and Washington State, which both decriminalized
>> abortion before 1973, will likely remain strongly prochoice, others
>> may pass restrictive laws like Mississippi's.
>
> Every little bit helps.
>
>>
>> Even while Roe stands, Mississippi is a cautionary tale for the rest
>> of the country. "It's what can happen if the constant strategy of
>> chipping away at Roe is not met with sufficient push-back from the
>> prochoice movement," says Northrup. So in order to preserve the right
>> to abortion, prochoice Americans would do well to learn how
>> Mississippi all but eliminated it.
>
>> Jackson Women's Health Organization occupies a small stucco building
>> on a quiet, tree-lined street. If not for a handful of people holding
>> I'll Pray for You and Don't Kill Your Baby signs, you'd hardly know
>> it was Mississippi's only remaining abortion provider. There used to
>> be others. In 1996, there were six medical facilities providing
>> abortions in Mississippi. But since last August, there has been only
>> the Jackson clinic, which is staffed by three part-time physicians,
>> only one of whom lives in Mississippi. (Two others fly in from other
>> states to work for a few days at a time.)
>
> Fantastic news!!! I dig the clinic's name!
>
>>
>> Many of the chairs in the clinic's waiting room are full on the four
>> days a week that abortions are done, but the Jackson Women's Health
>> Organization is not overly busy. That's because the number of
>> abortions performed in the state has plummeted as restrictions have
>> mounted. While there were 21.3 abortions for every thousand women of
>> reproductive age nationwide in 2000, in Mississippi there were only
>> six, down from more than thirteen in 1991.
>
> Good.
>
>> With the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country,
>> Mississippi's low number of abortions is not an illustration of the
>> "safe, legal and rare" ideal that many talk about, in which a decline
>> in unwanted pregnancies creates a corresponding drop in abortions.
>> Rather, it is the direct consequence of concerted opposition to
>> abortion from the grassroots to all levels of government.
>
> Any means to the end.
>
>> Such concern for the rights of fetuses does not appear to translate
>> into a commitment to promoting the well-being of the children they
>> may become. The uncomfortable irony for an opposition movement
>> purportedly concerned with saving "innocent babies" is that
>> restrictions on abortion are associated with worse outcomes for
>> actual babies. Indeed, children fare terribly in Mississippi. The
>> state with arguably the least access to abortion also has the
>> second-highest rate of child poverty in the country, according to the
>> Children's Defense Fund. Mississippi's infant mortality rate--a good
>> indication of the health of both women and children--is the highest
>> in the country. For every 1,000 live births, 10.5 infants under age 1
>> die in Mississippi. In parts of the impoverished Delta region, that
>> number ranges up to 18. (The national infant mortality rate, by
>> comparison, is 6.8.) Interestingly, a postelection comparison found
>> that "red" states had higher infant mortality rates than "blue" ones.
>> In general, states that restrict abortion spend far less money per
>> child than prochoice states on services such as foster care,
>> education, welfare and the adoption of children who have physical and
>> mental disabilities, according to a 2000 book by political scientist
>> Jean Reith Schroedel.
>
> Non sequitur.
>
>>
>> Schroedel also found that women in antiabortion states are worse off
>> than their counterparts in prochoice states. They suffer from lower
>> levels of education, higher levels of poverty, and a larger gender
>> gap in earnings. They are also less likely to enjoy mandated
>> insurance coverage for minimum hospital stays after childbirth.
>> Together, the conditions make for an abysmal reality for women in
>> Mississippi, which came in fifty-first in a 2004 ranking of the
>> status of women in the fifty states and Washington, DC, published by
>> the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
>
> Non sequitur.
>
>> The poverty of women in Mississippi both increases their need for
>> abortions and their difficulty in obtaining them. In the poorest
>> state in the country, where more than one in five women lack health
>> insurance and live below the poverty line, girls and women are often
>> unable to get birth control. Only about two in five women and teens
>> in Mississippi who need publicly financed contraception receive it,
>> according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which does research on
>> reproductive issues. Though the inability to prevent unwanted
>> pregnancies makes women only more likely to want abortions, many of
>> the forces behind the anti-abortion movement here also oppose
>> contraception. Pro-Life Mississippi, for instance, regularly protests
>> the only Planned Parenthood office in Mississippi, which is in
>> Hattiesburg, even though it provides only birth control, not
>> abortion.
> Contraception culture leads to higher levels of pregnancy.
>
> And PP do provide abortions nationally.
>>
>> Because of the intensely hostile climate toward abortion, 60 percent
>> of Mississippi women who want to end their pregnancies go out of
>> state to do it, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Some others
>> may even resort to illegal abortions. In the Delta, the poorest
>> region in the state, parts of which are four hours from Mississippi's
>> one clinic, "lay midwives" minister to unwanted pregnancies,
>> according to several sources. Many others want the procedure but
>> simply cannot afford to pay for it.
>>
>> Betty Thompson hears from these women regularly. Thompson, who worked
>> as counselor and then director of the Jackson Women's Health
>> Organization for years and is now a consultant to the clinic, says
>> women often call saying they want abortions but don't have the money
>> to pay for them, and delay the procedure because they lack the funds.
>> (The clinic charges from $380 to $615 for an abortion, depending on
>> the stage of pregnancy.) About once or twice a week, she says, the
>> clinic gets calls from women who, while trying to gather money or
>> arrange to travel to Jackson, have passed the sixteen-week gestation
>> point, beyond which the clinic can't provide abortions. "There's
>> nothing we can do then," she says.
>>
>> Thompson, a stately grandmother who had her first child when she was
>> 16, says the National Women's Health Foundation used to provide money
>> to help women who couldn't afford abortions at the clinic. But since
>> the funds dried up last year, she often finds herself encouraging
>> resourcefulness among women desperate for abortions. "I have to play
>> the social worker," she explains. But hers is an unusual sort of
>> social work. "I say to them, have you tried to borrow money from
>> everyone you could? Have you tried to sell your jewelry yet?"
>>
>> Mississippi forbids facilities that receive public money from
>> performing abortions and bans Medicaid funding for them. Though the
>> law officially makes exceptions for cases of rape, incest, fetal
>> anomaly and danger to the woman's life, clinic staff say they have
>> not once succeeded in collecting Medicaid reimbursement in these
>> cases. "We've filed for it and we've never been paid for them, and so
>> we don't even file anymore," says Susan Hill, the Jackson Women's
>> Health Organization's president. Hill, who was a social worker before
>> Roe, says, "Mississippi is like the rest of the country was before
>> 1973." Women who arrive at her clinic "have that same look in the eye
>> now," she explains. "They have to go through the same kind of
>> struggles."
>
> Good.
>
>> Some, for instance, end up spending the night in their cars after
>> driving to the Jackson clinic. Mississippi requires that everyone
>> seeking an abortion wait at least twenty-four hours after an
>> informational session before having the procedure. Because 98 percent
>> of women here live in a county without an abortion provider and some
>> live several hours away, getting an abortion can turn into a two-day
>> ordeal, and many patients struggle to find childcare and a place to
>> stay while they're away.
>
> And?
>
>
>> The mandatory delay has also lowered the number of abortions
>
> Good.
>
> and caused
>> many to be performed later in pregnancy. The abortion rate in the
>> state declined from 11.3 percent to 9.9 percent in the six years
>> after the law was enacted in 1992, according to a study published in
>> Family Planning Perspectives in 2000. (Another study compared
>> Mississippi's abortion rates to those of South Carolina and Georgia
>> during the same period and found the drop to be specific to the
>> state, suggesting that the policy change was responsible.) The study
>> also showed that after the law went into effect, the proportion of
>> second-trimester abortions increased by 53 percent among women whose
>> closest provider was in Mississippi.
>>
>> In case the waiting period and the cost aren't enough to discourage
>> teens from ending unwanted pregnancies, Mississippi also has a well-
>> enforced requirement that minors get the permission of both parents
>> before having an abortion. The only way a girl can get around the
>> law-- one of only two in the country--is to go before a judge and
>> explain why she wants an abortion and can't tell her parents. One
>> attorney, who has represented minors in such judicial reviews and did
>> not want to be identified, said her clients, who have included an
>> 11-year-old whose mother was a crack addict, were "scared to death"
>> by the process. "It's a huge deterrent," she said.
>>
>> Doctors who perform abortions, meanwhile, bear the brunt of the
>> organized antichoice movement's wrath. Consider what happened to
>> Donald Whitaker, a young doctor who until January 2004 was part of an
>> Ob-Gyn practice in Hattiesburg and also provided abortions on a
>> volunteer basis at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Mobile, Alabama.
>> Last winter, protesters in Mobile identified the doctor, tracked down
>> the address of his Hattiesburg office and began protesting in front
>> of it--even though neither Whitaker nor his colleagues performed
>> abortions there. The protests were led by antiabortion activist
>> Father Edward Markley, who spent time in federal prison after
>> attacking clinic employees and taking a sledgehammer to a clinic in
>> Alabama. Weeks after these protests began, the doctor resigned from
>> his job and left the state.
>
> Good.
>
>
>> An unmistakable undercurrent of violence runs through the
>> antiabortion movement in Mississippi. Roy McMillan, for instance, who
>> can be found most afternoons in a lawn chair across from the clinic
>> in Jackson, has been arrested sixty-two times in his twenty-five-year
>> career as an activist. He has threatened clinic staff, and put his
>> fingers in the shape of a gun and "shot" them, earning himself a
>> federal injunction that requires him to remain at least twenty-five
>> feet from the building.
>
> Doesn't quite fit the image of a state acting illegitimately does it?
>
>> McMillan also signed a declaration calling the murder of abortion
>> providers justifiable and was a longtime friend of Paul Hill, the
>> antiabortion activist who was executed for murdering Florida abortion
>> provider Dr. Bayard Britton and his clinic escort, 74-year-old Jim
>> Barrett.
>>
>> McMillan, who was dressed in a Santa outfit when I met him on a 50-
>> degree day in December ("This is a time for peace on earth, not war
>> in the womb," he explained), seems happy to play the part of
>> extremist. He shouts "For shame!" at women heading toward the clinic,
>> carries a plastic baby doll with him and hasn't held a job in
>> nineteen years. Yet, nutty and dangerous as he may seem to many,
>> McMillan enjoys a certain legitimacy in Jackson. He is married to a
>> prominent local physician, who after providing the first abortions in
>> the state had a religious conversion (and married McMillan) and is
>> now one of several Ob-Gyns in the area who refuse to prescribe birth
>> control. And though McMillan says he would like the state to move
>> more quickly to become the first to be "abortion-free," he says he
>> feels his state government is on his side.
>
> Good.
>
>> This is not McMillan's imagination. The Governor has made his
>> antiabortion passions perfectly clear. The local circuit courts have
>> repeatedly shown themselves to be negatively inclined toward
>> abortion. And I was unable to find any Mississippi legislators who
>> openly identify themselves as prochoice. "Either you say you're
>> prolife or you don't say anything," explains Erik Fleming. A
>> Democratic state representative who was described to me as the most
>> likely state legislator to call himself prochoice, Fleming bristled
>> at the term. "I don't like to be put into that label thing, because
>> when you put a moniker saying you're against life, that's pretty
>> strong," says Fleming, who supports limiting abortion and has
>> sponsored legislation that would ban abortions after the first
>> trimester of pregnancy.
>>
>> The equivocation of folks like Fleming, who works as an abstinence
>> educator when the legislature is not in session, is still better than
>> the outright terror of the issue some other Mississippi politicians
>> display. In the November election for state lieutenant governor, the
>> incumbent, Republican Amy Tuck, accused the Democratic candidate,
>> state Senator Barbara Blackmon, of being prochoice. Blackmon, who
>> does support abortion rights, might have said, "One in three American
>> women has an abortion by age 45. I support keeping it safe and legal
>> for them." Or maybe even simply, "Yes, I'm prochoice. Next question?"
>> Instead, she responded by accusing Tuck of having had an abortion
>> herself, and challenged her to sign an affidavit swearing she hadn't.
>> Tuck signed the affidavit and won the election.
>>
>> The fear of being associated with the issue extends beyond government
>> officials. Even Mississippians who are outraged about how their state
>> has handled abortion were afraid to be named in an article about it.
>> ("I'm a Catholic, my priest would kill me," is how one explained it.)
>> And the issue is "too divisive" for the Mississippi Coalition on
>> Women to address, according to one of the group's founders.
>> Meanwhile, the few willing to work openly on the issue are
>> overwhelmed. Susan Hill, who runs clinics in Wisconsin, Indiana,
>> Delaware, Georgia and North Carolina, in addition to Mississippi,
>> says she saves her energy for the big fights. Currently she's leading
>> the battle against a renewed push to ban abortions after the first
>> trimester of pregnancy, which ends around the twelfth week. Already,
>> the state limit is sixteen weeks, though Roe allows abortions until
>> the point of fetal viability, at least twenty weeks into pregnancy.
>> Sixteen weeks is a significant cutoff, since amniocentesis and other
>> tests for fetal abnormalities are performed at that point. As a
>> result, women cannot get abortions in the state because of problems
>> discovered through these tests.
>
> Thank God.
>
>> Operating in triage mode has meant that no one in Mississippi has
>> found the time to sue over highly questionable state policies. So, by
>> law, clinic doctors must give the scientifically unfounded warning
>> that having an abortion might increase the risk of breast cancer. The
>> state issues "Choose Life" license plates despite the fact that the
>> practice has been found unconstitutional in other states. And the
>> governor's proclamation, which declares that "the time has come" to
>> overturn Roe v. Wade in addition to authorizing the display of the
>> crosses, has gone unchallenged.
>>
>> Mississippi, the proclamation tells you, lives by a different law
>> from the rest of the land--for now, anyway. And even while they
>> challenge it simply by running Mississippi's last remaining abortion
>> facility, Susan Hill and Betty Thompson have been forced to accept
>> that reality. In his lawn chair outside the clinic, Roy McMillan
>> rejoices in it. And the women of Mississippi, who sleep in their
>> cars, shuttle out of state and bear unwanted children in poverty,
>> live it.
>>
>> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=lerner
|
|
| | From: | legend_89 at hotmail.com | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 20:21:00 -0800 |
|
|
|
> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
from
> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
research lab and collect their dollars.
to a
> requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> abortion,
As they should! They are minors! If abortion is 'never easy', and not a
choice 'made on a whim', why shouldn't minors be able to discuss the
situation with their parents. The argument is often made that the minor
may be pregnant after incestral rape, if this IS the case then these
minors should be able to seek advice from other sources.
to thirty-five pages of regulations dealing with such physical
> characteristics as the width of a clinic's hallways and the size of
its
> parking lot.
All buildings have regulations.
The mounting restrictions (Mississippi passed six
> antiabortion laws last year alone) have delighted antiabortion
activists
> all over the country, who have hailed--and copied--the state's
> innovations.
Any time abortion is restricted it is a GOOD thing. Abortion is not
necessary (very very rarely needed). Abortion should be a last resort,
when there is NO other option.
Respect the unborns life as well as the mother. Help women, don't give
them abortions to shut them up.
|
|
| | From: | Ray Fischer | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 05:18:20 GMT |
|
|
| wrote:
>
>> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>from
>> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>
>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry?
Why do you think that there's any hurry?
> Why do they not
>want women to reconsider?
Why should anyone have to "reconsider" their rights?
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
|
|
| | From: | Osprey | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:39:19 -0500 |
|
|
|
wrote in message
news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
>> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> from
>> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>
> As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> research lab and collect their dollars.
>
> to a
>> requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>
>> abortion,
>
> As they should! They are minors!
Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their children,
they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
done.
If abortion is 'never easy', and not a
> choice 'made on a whim', why shouldn't minors be able to discuss the
> situation with their parents. The argument is often made that the minor
> may be pregnant after incestral rape, if this IS the case then these
> minors should be able to seek advice from other sources.
>
> to thirty-five pages of regulations dealing with such physical
>> characteristics as the width of a clinic's hallways and the size of
> its
>> parking lot.
>
> All buildings have regulations.
>
> The mounting restrictions (Mississippi passed six
>> antiabortion laws last year alone) have delighted antiabortion
> activists
>> all over the country, who have hailed--and copied--the state's
>> innovations.
>
> Any time abortion is restricted it is a GOOD thing. Abortion is not
> necessary (very very rarely needed). Abortion should be a last resort,
> when there is NO other option.
>
> Respect the unborns life as well as the mother. Help women, don't give
> them abortions to shut them up.
>
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 20:47:00 -0800 |
|
|
| In article , Osprey
wrote:
> wrote in message
> news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >
> >> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> > from
> >> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >
> > As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> > want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> > aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> > research lab and collect their dollars.
> >
> > to a
> >> requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >
> >> abortion,
> >
> > As they should! They are minors!
>
> Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their children,
> they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
> years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
> done.
Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
|
|
| | From: | Elmo | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 20:49:10 -0800 |
|
|
| On 2005-01-23 20:47:00 -0800, "David W. Barnes" said:
> In article , Osprey
> wrote:
>
>> wrote in message
>> news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>>> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>> from
>>>> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>
>>> As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>> want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>> aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>> research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>
>>> to a
>>>> requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>
>>>> abortion,
>>>
>>> As they should! They are minors!
>>
>> Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
>> children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen
>> is under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any
>> surgical procedure is done.
>
> Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
> younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
> is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
Very good point! The lies are constant.
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 20:51:07 -0800 |
|
|
| In article <2005012320491016807%anto@salescom>, Elmo
wrote:
> On 2005-01-23 20:47:00 -0800, "David W. Barnes" said:
>
> > In article , Osprey
> > wrote:
> >
> >> wrote in message
> >> news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >>>
> >>>> Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> >>> from
> >>>> a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >>>
> >>> As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> >>> want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> >>> aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> >>> research lab and collect their dollars.
> >>>
> >>> to a
> >>>> requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >>>
> >>>> abortion,
> >>>
> >>> As they should! They are minors!
> >>
> >> Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
> >> children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen
> >> is under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any
> >> surgical procedure is done.
> >
> > Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
> > younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
> > is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
>
> Very good point! The lies are constant.
Actually, it is hypocrisy. They are full of it.
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 05:20:01 +0000 |
|
|
| David W. Barnes wrote:
> In article , Osprey
> wrote:
>
>
>> wrote in message
>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>
>>>from
>>>
>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>
>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>
>>>to a
>>>
>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>
>>>>abortion,
>>>
>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>
>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their children,
>>they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
>>years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
>>done.
>
>
> Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
> younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
> is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
if they are going to be aborted?
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:16:56 -0800 |
|
|
| In article <41f48582$0$15395$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
wrote:
> David W. Barnes wrote:
> > In article , Osprey
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >> wrote in message
> >>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >>
> >>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> >>>
> >>>from
> >>>
> >>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >>>
> >>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> >>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> >>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> >>>research lab and collect their dollars.
> >>>
> >>>to a
> >>>
> >>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >>>
> >>>>abortion,
> >>>
> >>>As they should! They are minors!
> >>
> >>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their children,
> >>they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
> >>years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
> >>done.
> >
> >
> > Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
> > younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
> > is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
>
> Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
> if they are going to be aborted?
I am saying Osprey is claiming that a person under 18 has diminished
rights because of their age. But when that argument is used on an
unborn fetus, he claims he doesn't agree. That is called hypocrisy.
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:20:31 +0000 |
|
|
| David W. Barnes wrote:
> In article <41f48582$0$15395$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
> wrote:
>
>
>>David W. Barnes wrote:
>>
>>>In article , Osprey
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> wrote in message
>>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>>>
>>>>>from
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>>>
>>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>>>
>>>>>to a
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>>>
>>>>>>abortion,
>>>>>
>>>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>>>
>>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their children,
>>>>they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
>>>>years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
>>>>done.
>>>
>>>
>>>Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
>>>younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
>>>is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
>>
>>Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
>>if they are going to be aborted?
>
>
> I am saying Osprey is claiming that a person under 18 has diminished
> rights because of their age. But when that argument is used on an
> unborn fetus, he claims he doesn't agree. That is called hypocrisy.
A person under 18 has diminished rights because of their age. That's not
injustice. However the responsibility not to kill people is applicable
to all, especially children.
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:23:14 -0800 |
|
|
| In article <41f493af$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
wrote:
> David W. Barnes wrote:
> > In article <41f48582$0$15395$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >>David W. Barnes wrote:
> >>
> >>>In article , Osprey
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> wrote in message
> >>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>from
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> >>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> >>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> >>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>to a
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>abortion,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>As they should! They are minors!
> >>>>
> >>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
> >>>>children,
> >>>>they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
> >>>>years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
> >>>>done.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
> >>>younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
> >>>is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
> >>
> >>Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
> >>if they are going to be aborted?
> >
> >
> > I am saying Osprey is claiming that a person under 18 has diminished
> > rights because of their age. But when that argument is used on an
> > unborn fetus, he claims he doesn't agree. That is called hypocrisy.
>
> A person under 18 has diminished rights because of their age. That's not
> injustice.
How open minded of you.
> However the responsibility not to kill people is applicable
> to all, especially children.
We were talking of a fetus.
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:33:43 +0000 |
|
|
| David W. Barnes wrote:
> In article <41f493af$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
> wrote:
>
>
>>David W. Barnes wrote:
>>
>>>In article <41f48582$0$15395$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>David W. Barnes wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>In article , Osprey
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> wrote in message
>>>>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>from
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>to a
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>abortion,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
>>>>>>children,
>>>>>>they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
>>>>>>years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
>>>>>>done.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
>>>>>younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
>>>>>is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
>>>>
>>>>Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
>>>>if they are going to be aborted?
>>>
>>>
>>>I am saying Osprey is claiming that a person under 18 has diminished
>>>rights because of their age. But when that argument is used on an
>>>unborn fetus, he claims he doesn't agree. That is called hypocrisy.
>>
>>A person under 18 has diminished rights because of their age. That's not
>>injustice.
>
>
> How open minded of you.
Jeez. Would you let a four year old drive a car or fly a plane? Don't be
a cretin.
>
>
>>However the responsibility not to kill people is applicable
>>to all, especially children.
>
>
> We were talking of a fetus.
Yes, a child.
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:40:16 -0800 |
|
|
| In article <41f496c7$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
wrote:
> David W. Barnes wrote:
> > In article <41f493af$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >>David W. Barnes wrote:
> >>
> >>>In article <41f48582$0$15395$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>, Michael Calwell
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>David W. Barnes wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>In article , Osprey
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> wrote in message
> >>>>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>from
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> >>>>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> >>>>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> >>>>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>to a
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>abortion,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>As they should! They are minors!
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
> >>>>>>children,
> >>>>>>they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under
> >>>>>>18
> >>>>>>years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure
> >>>>>>is
> >>>>>>done.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
> >>>>>younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
> >>>>>is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
> >>>>
> >>>>Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
> >>>>if they are going to be aborted?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>I am saying Osprey is claiming that a person under 18 has diminished
> >>>rights because of their age. But when that argument is used on an
> >>>unborn fetus, he claims he doesn't agree. That is called hypocrisy.
> >>
> >>A person under 18 has diminished rights because of their age. That's not
> >>injustice.
> >
> >
> > How open minded of you.
>
> Jeez. Would you let a four year old drive a car or fly a plane? Don't be
> a cretin.
Typical pro-life "argument." LOL!
> >
> >
> >>However the responsibility not to kill people is applicable
> >>to all, especially children.
> >
> >
> > We were talking of a fetus.
>
> Yes, a child.
No - a fetus. A non-person who has no legal rights under our system of
law.
|
|
| | From: | Ray Fischer | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 05:28:06 GMT |
|
|
| Michael Calwell wrote:
>David W. Barnes wrote:
>> Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
>> younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
>> is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
>
>Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
>if they are going to be aborted?
Should a rapist have the right to choose whether to have with a
woman?
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:04:39 +0000 |
|
|
| Ray Fischer wrote:
> Michael Calwell wrote:
>
>>David W. Barnes wrote:
>
>
>>>Ironic, isnšt it, how prolifers believe that when one is even a day
>>>younger than 18, they have diminished rights. But when that argument
>>>is used on a fetus, they pretend they don't understand.
>>
>>Are you suggesting that the unborn child should have the right to choose
>>if they are going to be aborted?
>
>
> Should a rapist have the right to choose whether to have with a
> woman?
>
Are you comparing the choiceless child in the womb to a rapist?
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 05:15:37 +0000 |
|
|
| Osprey wrote:
> wrote in message
> news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>
>>from
>>
>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>
>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>
>>to a
>>
>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>
>>>abortion,
>>
>>As they should! They are minors!
>
>
> Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their children,
> they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is under 18
> years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical procedure is
> done.
>
But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
|
|
| | From: | Osprey | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:33:53 -0500 |
|
|
|
"Michael Calwell" wrote in message
news:41f48479$0$21791$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
> Osprey wrote:
>> wrote in message
>> news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>
>>>from
>>>
>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>
>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>
>>>to a
>>>
>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>
>>>>abortion,
>>>
>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>
>>
>> Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
>> children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is
>> under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical
>> procedure is done.
>
>>
>
>
>
> But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
> you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
> receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
So basically they want to get to the children and bypass the parents all
together.
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:18:15 -0800 |
|
|
| In article , Osprey
wrote:
> "Michael Calwell" wrote in message
> news:41f48479$0$21791$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
> > Osprey wrote:
> >> wrote in message
> >> news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >>
> >>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> >>>
> >>>from
> >>>
> >>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >>>
> >>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> >>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> >>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> >>>research lab and collect their dollars.
> >>>
> >>>to a
> >>>
> >>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >>>
> >>>>abortion,
> >>>
> >>>As they should! They are minors!
> >>
> >>
> >> Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
> >> children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is
> >> under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical
> >> procedure is done.
> >
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
> > you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
> > receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
>
> So basically they want to get to the children and bypass the parents all
> together.
You just keep getting dumber and dumber.
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:17:16 +0000 |
|
|
| Osprey wrote:
> "Michael Calwell" wrote in message
> news:41f48479$0$21791$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
>
>>Osprey wrote:
>>
>>> wrote in message
>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>>
>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>>
>>>>from
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>>
>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>>
>>>>to a
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>>
>>>>>abortion,
>>>>
>>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>>
>>>
>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
>>>children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen is
>>>under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical
>>>procedure is done.
>>
>>
>>
>>But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
>>you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
>>receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
>
>
> So basically they want to get to the children and bypass the parents all
> together.a
>
>
Of course. Think about it. There's a possibility that if a child sees
their parents, that those parents will tell them the truth about
abortion. If you take that possibility away, you can feed them the
pro-abortion deceit. Why else to pro-abortionists support parental
ignorance and pro-lifers oppose it?
This is the joke about these clowns calling themselves "pro-choice".
They deny that choice, if it is to have any worth, requires all the
information from all sources and time to make a reflected decision.
You should see the reaction you get from "pro-choicers" when you try and
show people pictures of aborted children! It really betrays the reality
of their stance - they are pro-abortion.
|
|
| | From: | Osprey | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 01:24:21 -0500 |
|
|
|
"Michael Calwell" wrote in message
news:41f492ec$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
> Osprey wrote:
>> "Michael Calwell" wrote in message
>> news:41f48479$0$21791$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
>>
>>>Osprey wrote:
>>>
>>>> wrote in message
>>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>>>
>>>>>from
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>>>
>>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>>>
>>>>>to a
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>>>
>>>>>>abortion,
>>>>>
>>>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
>>>>children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen
>>>>is under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical
>>>>procedure is done.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
>>>you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
>>>receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
>>
>>
>> So basically they want to get to the children and bypass the parents all
>> together.a
>>
> Of course. Think about it. There's a possibility that if a child sees
> their parents, that those parents will tell them the truth about
> abortion.
Right, and there is the possibility that the parents may want to help her
and she may raise the child. But if the abortion clinics get to her and some
of these liberals, they will convince her that abortion is her best choice.
If you take that possibility away, you can feed them the
> pro-abortion deceit. Why else to pro-abortionists support parental
> ignorance and pro-lifers oppose it?
I agree
>
> This is the joke about these clowns calling themselves "pro-choice".
I know, I have known that for a very long time.
> They deny that choice, if it is to have any worth, requires all the
> information from all sources and time to make a reflected decision.
>
> You should see the reaction you get from "pro-choicers" when you try and
> show people pictures of aborted children! It really betrays the reality of
> their stance - they are pro-abortion.
I have seen their rants at those pictures, they choose to live in denial.
>
>
|
|
| | From: | David W. Barnes | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:25:21 -0800 |
|
|
| In article , Osprey
wrote:
> "Michael Calwell" wrote in message
> news:41f492ec$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
> > Osprey wrote:
> >> "Michael Calwell" wrote in message
> >> news:41f48479$0$21791$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
> >>
> >>>Osprey wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> wrote in message
> >>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>from
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
> >>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
> >>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
> >>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>to a
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>abortion,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>As they should! They are minors!
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
> >>>>children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen
> >>>>is under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical
> >>>>procedure is done.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
> >>>you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
> >>>receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
> >>
> >>
> >> So basically they want to get to the children and bypass the parents all
> >> together.a
> >>
> > Of course. Think about it. There's a possibility that if a child sees
> > their parents, that those parents will tell them the truth about
> > abortion.
>
> Right, and there is the possibility that the parents may want to help her
> and she may raise the child. But if the abortion clinics get to her and some
> of these liberals, they will convince her that abortion is her best choice.
Osprey thinks that since prolifers force their views on others, the
pro-choice do the same.
>
>
> If you take that possibility away, you can feed them the
> > pro-abortion deceit. Why else to pro-abortionists support parental
> > ignorance and pro-lifers oppose it?
>
> I agree
Baaaaahhhhh
>
> >
> > This is the joke about these clowns calling themselves "pro-choice".
>
> I know, I have known that for a very long time.
Baaaaahhhhh
>
> > They deny that choice, if it is to have any worth, requires all the
> > information from all sources and time to make a reflected decision.
> >
> > You should see the reaction you get from "pro-choicers" when you try and
> > show people pictures of aborted children! It really betrays the reality of
> > their stance - they are pro-abortion.
>
> I have seen their rants at those pictures, they choose to live in denial.
Sheep.
|
|
| | From: | Pat Winstanley | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 08:13:02 -0000 |
|
|
| In article <230120052225217279%spam@aol.com>, spam@aol.com says...
> > Right, and there is the possibility that the parents may want to help her
> > and she may raise the child. But if the abortion clinics get to her and some
> > of these liberals, they will convince her that abortion is her best choice.
>
> Osprey thinks that since prolifers force their views on others, the
> pro-choice do the same.
>
I suspect he believes that anyone who disagrees with him is trying to
force their views on him! ;-))
Then again, in all the years I've known him here, he's always lived in
do-lally land. :-))
|
|
| | From: | Michael Calwell | | Subject: | Re: Post-Roe Postcard | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:31:39 +0000 |
|
|
| Osprey wrote:
> "Michael Calwell" wrote in message
> news:41f492ec$0$21776$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
>
>>Osprey wrote:
>>
>>>"Michael Calwell" wrote in message
>>>news:41f48479$0$21791$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk...
>>>
>>>
>>>>Osprey wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> wrote in message
>>>>>news:1106540460.057118.237590@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>from
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>As should be the case every where. Whats the hurry? Why do they not
>>>>>>want women to reconsider? I thought these 'pro choicers' were not 'pro
>>>>>>aborts'. I suppose they want to guarantee they get the fetus to the
>>>>>>research lab and collect their dollars.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>to a
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>abortion,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>As they should! They are minors!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Absolutely! Parents are responsible for the well being of their
>>>>>children, they are also responsible for their medical care. If a teen
>>>>>is under 18 years of age, parents should be notified before any surgical
>>>>>procedure is done.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>But if you can get them in the clinic and brainwash them about "choice"
>>>>you've got a complete monopoly on the information they are likely to
>>>>receive. You can then get their "consent" and kill their child.
>>>
>>>
>>>So basically they want to get to the children and bypass the parents all
>>>together.a
>>>
>>
>>Of course. Think about it. There's a possibility that if a child sees
>>their parents, that those parents will tell them the truth about
>>abortion.
>
>
> Right, and there is the possibility that the parents may want to help her
> and she may raise the child. But if the abortion clinics get to her and some
> of these liberals, they will convince her that abortion is her best choice.
Exactly.
>
>
> If you take that possibility away, you can feed them the
>
>>pro-abortion deceit. Why else to pro-abortionists support parental
>>ignorance and pro-lifers oppose it?
>
>
> I agree
>
>
>>This is the joke about these clowns calling themselves "pro-choice".
>
>
> I know, I have known that for a very long time.
I agree.
>
>
>>They deny that choice, if it is to have any worth, requires all the
>>information from all sources and time to make a reflected decision.
>>
>>You should see the reaction you get from "pro-choicers" when you try and
>>show people pictures of aborted children! It really betrays the reality of
>>their stance - they are pro-abortion.
>
>
> I have seen their rants at those pictures, they choose to live in denial.
|
|
|