In one of the least surprising moves ever, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin (PPAWI) is joining the Recall Walker campaign in Wisconsin. According to PPAWI, support of the recall stems from Walker’s “continued and unprecedented attack on Wisconsin’s women and families.”
Calling Governor Walker’s conduct “relentless and reckless,” PPAWI Executive Director Tanya Atkinson states: “Never before have we seen a governor act so quickly and against the wants and priorities of Wisconsin to restrict such a wide range of women’s health care services. We have seen a year full of unprecedented attacks against common sense public health policies that benefit the women and families of Wisconsin.”
Atkinson fails to acknowledge that the reason Planned Parenthood’s funding has been cut is because of its abortion activities. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin operates three of Wisconsin’s five abortion clinics and performed 62% of Wisconsin abortions in 2010. Yet, PPWI insists that the taxpayer continue to pour dollars into its operations which serve as a base for its lucrative abortion services. Not interested in the truth, PPWI also claims that a bill to allow Wisconsin to opt-out of taxpayer-funded abortion coverage under Obamacare is a bill “to ban private insurance coverage of abortion.”
“…we have seen a relentless wave of ideologically directed attacks to reduce women’s access to essential reproductive health care services. We must act now to preserve what remains of women’s health care access and the health and well-being of our communities,” concludes Atkinson.
With the sky falling in Wisconsin, according to PPWI, no wonder the organization is all-in to recall our strongly right-to-life Governor.
Once the darling of the media and general public, believing wrongly that Planned Parenthood was as American as apple pie, Planned Parenthood has fallen on hard times. Just ask President Cecile Richards. She sent a fundraising letter to her groupies and donors telling them the last year has been the “most difficult year in our history.”
It’s hard to know where to start but here goes:
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the subject of a congressional investigation. One of the allegations is that of fraud and improper spending of federal taxpayer dollars.
Starting with Abby Johnson, several Planned Parenthood employees have resigned or been fired and are now speaking out about Planned Parenthood’s emphasis on abortion. One of the latest, Catherine Adair, worked for Planned Parenthood in Boston for over 10 years. Says Adair: “My time there was not spent providing prenatal care to pregnant women, providing counseling or basic health care services or educating women about reproductive health. Instead, I spent my days urging women to terminate their pregnancies. My superiors constantly reminded me of our abortion-centered business model: abortions first, everything else came second.”
Planned Parenthood is now the nation’s (and the state’s) largest abortion provider and is building mega-clinics in major cities to increase its abortion business. Planned Parenthood has mandated that all affiliates provide abortions by 2013.
Videos by Live Action expose Planned Parenthood in numerous locations around the country (including Wisconsin) giving false information about a developing unborn child, not reporting child sex abuse, and facilitating sex trafficking of young children.
Message to Ms. Richards: Perhaps your year is difficult because of you and what you do. May the hard times for Planned Parenthood roll!
You can always tell when it’s presidential election time — some prominent Democrat retreads the oft-repeated myth that abortions go down under Democratic Presidents. Sadly, people tend to believe this falsehood if they want to find an excuse to vote for a pro-abortion Democrat.
This year, the myth is being touted by former Maryland Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend who recently spoke to students at Catholic University of America. “In response to the issue of abortion, Townsend stated that when a Democrat gets elected, the abortion rates go down,” according to Annie Backscheider, reporting for the college newspaper. “She says that this results from the safety net ensued by higher taxes.”
Here is a brilliant rebuttal written by NRLC Director of Education Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon a few years ago. Save it, because Kennedy Townsend and others will raise the myth repeatedly in the next year in a naked attempt to steer pro-life voters to Obama.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Latest Guttmacher Report Slams Door on Democrats’ Abortion Increase Myth
By Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon
You may remember the myth that appeared right around the time of the 2004 presidential election, the bizarre claim that abortions had increased under George W. Bush. Turns out not to have been true. It fact, just the opposite occurred.
National Right to Life researched and refuted the report that spawned this urban legend, but that has not stopped Democratic leaders such as Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean from continuing to promote this urban legend in their effort to confuse pro-lifers and the larger public.
But a new report in May from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), showing that abortion totals, rates, and ratios all have gone down since 2000, will make it much harder for these politicians to get away with the re-telling of this tall tale.
According to AGI, Planned Parenthood’s one-time special research affiliate, there were a total of 30,000 fewer abortions in George W. Bush’s first two years of office than there would have been had the number of abortions stayed the same as they were in Clinton’s last year. And that’s an accomplishment a pro-life president can be proud of.
Democratic Leaders Promote Myth of Abortion Increase
The myth of the abortion increase under President Bush was largely perpetrated by a California seminary professor, Glen Stassen (see NRL News from November 2004 and February 2005). Stassen looked at limited state abortion figures and projected what he saw as a national increase of 52,000 abortions from 2000 to 2002.
National Right to Life looked at Stassen’s data,found serious errors in his analysis, and made those known to the press. Nevertheless, those faulty statistics have continued to be repeated in several quarters, most notably among pro-abortion Democrat politicians.
AGI Estimates Of Abortion All Lower
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a national report on abortions in November 2004, showing a slight decrease in raw numbers for 2001. However, this was largely ignored by the press and the politicians.
By contrast the newest report from AGI examined data from at least 43 states from 2001 and 2002, and found a more substantial decline in abortion totals, rates, and ratios. With AGI’s reputation for accuracy, its conclusions drew much more attention.
According to AGI, the state data it examined indicated not just that the raw numbers of abortions had gone down, but the abortion rates and ratios as well in the period since AGI last conducted its national survey in 2000. AGI estimates that there were 1,303,000 abortions in 2001–ten thousand fewer than the year before–and 1,293,000 in 2002.
All told, that would be 30,000 fewer abortions than there would have been if things had remained the same as 2000. AGI has not reported a lower number of abortions since 1976.
AGI’s abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 as of July 1 of each year) dropped from 21.3 to 20.9 in from 2000 to 2002. The abortion ratio (which AGI defines as the number of abortions per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth1) dropped from 24.5 in 2000 to 24.2 in 2002. Both the abortion rates and the abortion ratios are the lowest Guttmacher has reported since 1974.
While AGI does periodic surveys of abortion clinics, in this instance its researchers relied on reports of state data to develop its estimates of national abortions for 2001 and 2002.
Glen Stassen, the California seminary professor whose pre-election analysis appeared in newspapers and websites all over the country, used a similar method, with fewer states, but came to far different conclusions. Looking at just 16 states, Stassen claimed he saw increases in 11 of them and projected that there had been 52,000 more abortions in 2002 than in 2000.
NRLC immediately challenged Stassen analysis. We noted that he had misread data in a couple of states, failed to consider newer data in other states, and included data from states such as Arizona and Colorado where state officials had cautioned earlier numbers might not be reliable due to changes in the way the incidence of abortion was reported.
Instead of 16 states, AGI used data from over 40 states, eliminating only those states which do not report abortion statistics to the federal government (Alaska, California, and New Hampshire) and states such as Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Maryland and the District of Columbia because of “incomplete” or “inconsistent reporting.” Wyoming was not counted in 2002 because it had no available data when the AGI report was being prepared.
Numbers for those states not counted were estimated on the basis of trends in reporting states. AGI says that it attempted to exclude all states with inconsistent reporting, but said that the possibility of improved reporting in the included states might mean that earlier state reports were too low, resulting in an underestimation of the decline. “Thus,” says AGI, “our new estimates of the number of abortions would be too high.”
The Meaning of the Trends
While AGI has called its results “provisional,” pending the outcome of its next national survey, recent state data is consistent with this downward trend. Illinois saw a drop of nearly 5,000 from 2002 to 2003. Wisconsin reported just 9,943 abortions for 2004, considerably less that half the 21,754 abortions the state reported in 1980.
National abortion totals first began to decline under the first pro-life president George Bush. That decline actually initially accelerated under pro-abortion Bill Clinton.
But the longer Clinton stayed in office, the more rapidly the decline began to dissipate. According to AGI’s analysis, the decline from 1998 to 1999 was just 4,200.
From 1999 to 2000, covering Clinton’s last full year in office, the decrease had declined to just 1,800. Not much of a legacy for a man who said he wanted to make abortion “more rare.”
It will be years before the full impact of George W. Bush’s pro-life policies can be measured, but AGI’s latest analysis strongly suggests that the election of a pro-life president coincided with a return to more substantial declines. The decline the first year (from 2000 to 2001) was 10,000–from 1,313,000 to 1,303,000. For the second year (2001-2002), the figure dropped to 1,293,000–20,000 fewer than the number of abortions in 2000.
Certain leaders in the Democrat party want people to accept the counter-intuitive notion that the way to reduce the number of abortions is to elect a pro-abortion president. While they got away with saying that for a while, now we know that the numbers tell a far different story.
It took the nightmare on 38th Street—the location of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society”—to shake up the status quo in Pennsylvania.
A 281-page Grand Jury report stated that hundreds of viable babies had been aborted alive and killed when Gosnell snipped their spinal cords. At least two women had died (although there were only records for one) and when law enforcement officials accidentally discovered Gosnell’s “House of Horrors,” they found blood-stained furniture and the remains of babies strewn throughout the abortion clinic. According to the Grand Jury report, Gosnell made millions.
Various employees have pled guilty to charges up to and including murder. Gosnell is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of seven babies aborted alive and then killed when their spines were severed; and with third-degree murder in the case of the 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, who died from a drug overdose reportedly prescribed by Gosnell.
But pro-abortionists are adamant: no to a proposed law that would apply to abortion clinics the same rules that govern ambulatory surgical centers!
I just had a chance to read another exchange online (“Defending and disputing plan for changing Pa. abortion regulations”), and I am amazed how cavalier pro-abortionists are about women’s safety. Which, of course, they insist abortion poses no dangers to.
“What people don’t understand is how abortions are done and how simple they are,” said Jennifer Boulanger, executive director of the Allentown Women’s Center. “I’m going to speak very frankly; an abortion is a five-minute procedure.”
And because abortions are supposedly so simple every requirement that treats abortion clinics more rigorously than nail salons is an affront. (By the way the grand jury report said, in fact, nail salons ARE regulated closer than abortion clinics.)
State attempts to regulate these abortion clinics are all politics, according to Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, and will do nothing to make “abortion safer.” Ironically, in a program that aired on NPR, she cited one set of proposed regulations that regulate the width of hallways.
According to the grand jury report, when authorities raided Gosnell’s West Philadelphia abortion clinic, “Ambulances were summoned to pick up the waiting patients, but (just as on the night Mrs. [Karnamay] Mongar died three months earlier), no one, not even Gosnell, knew where the keys were to open the emergency exit. Emergency personnel had to use bolt cutters to remove the lock. They discovered they could not maneuver stretchers through the building’s narrow hallways to reach the patients (just as emergency personnel had been obstructed from reaching Mrs. Mongar).”
None of this makes a difference to the Abortion Industry. Let a thousand Gosnell’s bloom and let us keep making money.
It was an unforgettable day. I was across the world in Asia, watching the final days of the passage of Obamacare unfold in March of 2010. I hate to admit that I yelled at the television set in deep anguish as I watched Rep. Bart Stupak, up until then one of my treasured heroes, cave in to pressure from the administration to give up his quest to ensure that the nation’s gigantic health care measure would not cover or pay for abortions. Stupak folded under the ridiculous “promise” by the President that he would, by Executive Order, accomplish the purpose of the Stupak amendment. We all knew it was a phony, empty promise as it is elementary that an Executive Order does not have the force of law and cannot override the law itself.
Now, the Administration’s stunt is exposed. The US Supreme Court will take up the constitutionality of Obamacare and groups have asked Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself since she was the Solicitor General at the time Obamacare was enacted. Emails between Kagan and notoriously pro-abortion attorney Larry Tribe have been made public which read as follows:
Kagan on the day Obamacare passed: “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.”
Tribe: The bill’s passage is “remarkable.” “And with the Stupak group accepting the magic of what amounts to a signing statement on steroids!”
Stupak and friends were chumps. Just ask Kagan and Tribe. And we as a nation suffer the abortion and rationing damages of a sweeping expansion of government-run health care. It makes you want to cry.
This is a huge story in the ongoing saga of destroying embryos for research purposes. Geron Corporation was among the biggest cheerleaders of this unethical research for years. Geron was awarded the first human trial by the FDA using a product of embryonic stem cells for treatment of spinal cord patients. According to the Washington Post, Geron will “stop enrolling new patients but will continue to follow those currently participating.”
The Post story announcing this switch is heavily biased, of course, in favor of embryonic stem cell research, opening its story with the following statement: “The company doing the first government-approved test of embryonic stem cell therapy is discontinuing further stem cell work, a move with stark implications for a field offering hope of future medicines for conditions with inadequate or no current treatments.”
Geron is laying off significant staff and will concentrate instead on cancer drug tests. The company said the decision “was made after a strategic review of the costs,…timelines and clinical, manufacturing and regulatory complexities associated with the company’s research and clinical-stage assets.”
Wesley Smith raises some interesting questions about the Geron turnaround. “Was it the recent European ruling banning the patenting of embryonic stem cell products…a factor? Was its human trial a disappointment? If it is out of money, why aren’t venture capitalists more willing to invest more in the field if it is so promising?”
Whatever the real reason, this is a huge failure and setback for the fledgling embryonic stem cell field. And, very good news for embryos about to be sacrificed on the altar of research.
Late last month, Arand Grover, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, presented a report to the UN General Assembly that explicitly calls for every nation to legalize abortion as a “health” issue. According to Grover, laws which prohibit abortion violate the right to health protected “by international human rights law.”
Reaction was immediate. Grover’s report was praised by the European Union countries, Norway, South Africa and the United States. Opposing the recommendation were Chile, Swaziland, Egypt, Honduras and The Holy See. The Egyptian representative criticized Grover’s “systematic attempts to reinterpret internationally agreed conventions.” The Holy See said, regarding abortion as a violation of the right to health, that “the very opposite is the case: abortion is itself a violation of the right to health both of the unborn child and of the mother.” The delegate from Chile stated the importance of recognizing the right to life of all human beings, including the unborn.
It is discouraging that the United States concurred with Grover’s report. Not surprising, however, given the Obama administration’s pursuit of abortion in every corner of the country and the world.
For years we have been told that people who are unconscious are “vegetables.” Decisions are made every day to withhold treatment and even food and water from patients diagnosed as being in a “persistent vegetative stat (PVS),” using the rationale that these individuals have lives with no meaning.
Now, several studies have been published which challenge the notion that all of these patients are unaware of their surroundings. The most recent appeared in the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet. The researchers did not use MRI to assess function because of cost and physical stress to the patients. They instead used EEG tests to assess patients in two European centers who were diagnosed as “vegetative.” The authors conclude: “These findings confirm that a population of patients exists who meet all the behavioral critera for the vegetative state, but nevertheless retain a level of covert awareness that cannot be detected by thorough behavioural assessment.”
Sixteen patients diagnosed as “vegetative” were compared to 12 patients who were healthy. All of the patients were asked to imagine they were making a fist and wiggling toes. Researchers found that three of the “vegetative” patients (19%) “could repeatedly and reliably generate appropriate EEG responses similar to those of the conscious controls.”
The authors state that their findings substantiate what was learned in previously published, more complex studies using MRI tests. They also state that their research “shows unequivocally that a null EEG outcome does not necessarily indicate an absence of awareness.” In other words, one cannot conclude that patients who did not exhibit EEG responses similar to patients in the control group could still experience awareness.
Burke Balch of National Right to Life states: “The Lancet EEG study, together with earlier functional MRI studies, holds out the hope that we may develop ways to communicate with aware patients who have routinely been diagnosed as ‘vegetative,’ much as today eye movements and blinks are used to communicate with some patients with paraplegia.” There is also hope that medical people will start treating these patients as individuals who deserve, at minimum, to be given food and drink instead of being condemned to a starvation and dehydration death.
District Judge Steve Tatum today dismissed 23 felony charges and 26 related misdemeanor charges against Planned Parenthood because the original paperwork critical to proving the charges was destroyed by the Kansas Health department (KDHE) in 2005.
However 58 misdemeanor charges for illegal late-term abortions remain to be prosecuted, and the next hearing is scheduled for February 22.
Editor’s note. As this story was about to be posted, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported that:
“Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has asked the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office to conduct an investigation into the destruction of documents considered key evidence in a criminal case against a Kansas City-area Planned Parenthood clinic.
“Schmidt disclosed Wednesday he has asked the Shawnee County sheriff to investigate and the county’s district attorney has agreed to handle any resulting case.
“’(Schmidt) wants a complete, separate investigation from an outside law enforcement agency,’ Sheriff Dick Barta said. ‘That’s why we were requested to do that.’”
The paperwork in question are the ‘Induced Termination of Pregnancy’ compliance forms (called ITOPs) submitted monthly to the state by abortionists, with a copy required by law to be kept in the patient medical file. ITOPs do not include the patient’s name or other personal identifiers, but they do include critical information about late-term viability and the medical reasons that banned abortions were performed.
Planned Parenthood allegedly failed to keep patient file copies of ITOPs and then allegedly committed the more serious felony-level crimes of recreating the forms when they were requested. Until he was gagged from testifying in the case, District Judge Richard Anderson had said in open court that a police forgery expert backed up those suspicions.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe explained that he did not believe the felony charges could be won since a previous attorney general destroyed ITOP evidence on April 7, 2009. Those ITOPs had been held in the attorney general’s office after Kline’s term was over. Howe said the destruction appeared to violate the attorney general’s policy on such matters.
The 107 total criminal charges against the Kansas City suburban Planned Parenthood had been originally filed in 2007 by then-Johnson County District Attorney, Phil Kline, using state records he obtained under court order in 2004 when he was Attorney General.
Two weeks ago, Howe dropped the bombshell that only recently had it been discovered that the evidence for this case (the original ITOPs from 2003) had been shredded in 2005 by the KDHE.
Noteworthy is that KDHE had never volunteered– in defense filings or personal court appearances– that the paperwork had been shredded as the case dragged on for years with interventions from past attorneys general and the state Supreme Court. There has been no comment yet from the KDHE defending the destruction of records which were known to be part of an ongoing investigation.
In Wisconsin, it was the first right-to-law passed after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — conscience rights. Our Wisconsin law, and subsequent federal law, protects medical professionals and facilities who do not want to participate in or provide abortions. Now, conscience rights are under siege as pro-abortion groups work to make abortion “mainstream” and force the participation of medical personnel.
Conscience rights are under fire within the Obama administration, with mandates to force Catholic entities to provide contraceptives and sterilization. This blog reported last week on the Catholic Church losing a major grant from the Obama administration to assist victims of sex trafficking because the Church refuses to do abortion referrals.
Now, a nurse, Lorna Jose Mendoza, who works in a New Jersey hospital, is suing the hospital because it wants to force her to participate in abortions. The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed on behalf of Mendoza and 12 nurses who have encountered threats to their jobs because of a policy change which requires them to participate in abortions even if they have religious or moral objections.
ADF attorney Matt Bowman said the policy change came “out of the blue.” Bowman told Fox News that the hospital has been performing abortions for decades but did not previously require that nurses participate. In October, according to ADF, the hospital imposed the new policy on nurses “and repeatedly threatened that they must assist abortions or be terminated.”
“When one nurse objected to assisting abortions on the grounds of her religious beliefs, a supervisor responded that UMDNG has ‘no regard for religious beliefs’ of nurses who object to participating in abortions.”
A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the hospital, prohibiting it from forcing the 12 nurses to participate in training to do abortions and actually participating in performing them.
It is not enough that abortions are performed for virtually any reason at any stage of pregnancy. Now pro-abortion groups want to force us to participate.
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